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Last August, I wrote an article asking why we expect the government to insist on informed consent for vaccines when they don’t do the same for alcohol:

When someone goes into a pub, the bartender doesn’t hand them a consent form before pouring him a pint. He doesn’t say, “Hey Bob, just want to make sure you know that a Johns Hopkins University study of 1,909 men and women found a link between low to moderate alcohol consumption and a decrease in the brain size of middle-aged adults leading to impaired cognition and motor functions.”

Or when someone drops by the liquor store for a bottle of red wine, the clerk doesn’t say, “Hey, Maria, remember that the Italian Association for Cancer Research (of all places) showed that even moderate consumption of vino tinto will increase your risk of cancer by 30%.”

Well, I stand corrected. A feature article, published yesterday by the CBC, states,

“The pressure on the government to put cancer warning labels on alcohol containers is growing, as experts say the majority of Canadians don’t know the risks that come with consuming even moderate amounts.”

From cancer to heart disease, the suppressed truth by Big Booze is coming out. The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction reviewed over 6,000 studies (mainly conducted in the last decade), concluding that “no amount of alcohol is safe and that consuming any more than two drinks a week is risky.”

I couldn’t agree more, but…

Is this some kind of red herring to distract from the rise in cancer and heart disease resulting from those “safe and effective” COVID-19 injections? More than two 34 ml shots of whisky, each week, over the course of 30-40 years certainly appears to put you at greater risk for a host of horrible ways to die. But just one 0.3 ml shot of the Pfizer vaccine can do the same in 30-40 days.

There’s no comparison about the risks involved.

At least with alcohol people are getting some “benefits” in the way of (albeit fleeting) euphoria, reduced anxiety and increased sociability. I don’t drink and am not recommending the stinky stuff, but am just pointing out that there’s an opportunity with alcohol for some semblance of a risk-benefit analysis.

With the vaccine there’s nothing. No benefit, big risk.

Anyway, I hope Health Canada doesn’t start putting cancer warnings on alcohol. They’ve lost the trust of most thinking people that such a warning might only increase consumption.

Maybe government needs to stop trying to protect people from disease, and focus on the hard enough job of protecting individual freedom and the right to personal autonomy.

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John C. A. Manley is the author of the full-length novel, Much Ado About Corona: Dystopian Love Story. He is currently working on the sequel, Brave New Normal, while living in Stratford Ontario, with his wife Nicole and son Jonah. You can find out more about his controversial work of fiction at MuchAdoAboutCorona.com. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

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On January 18, a helicopter carrying senior Ukrainian officials crashed on the suburbs of Kiev, killing 14 people, including interior minister Denys Monastyrsky and his first deputy Yevgeny Enin. There are different narrations of what happened. At first, media said that the incident occurred due to a malfunction in the helicopter’s engine, but there are a number of contradictions between the versions, with people believing that it was a planned sabotage.

The helicopter crashed at 8:20 am on January 18, in Brovary, a city of the Kiev oblast. The site was in foggy conditions according to local informants, but so far there is no data to prove that the weather could really disturb the flight. The fall took place near a kindergarten, which led the tragedy to reach even greater proportions, as dozens of children were affected – three of them dying. As many people, including several children, remain hospitalized, it is possible that the number of deaths will increase in the coming days.

The helicopter was a French Airbus H225 (also known as Eurocopter EC225 Super Puma) and belonged to the Ukrainian emergency service since 2018. The reasons for its collapse are still being investigated. The most commented hypothesis is that there has been a technical malfunction, although all possibilities are considered – including sabotage. A report from the local Ukrainian media states that it was already known that this helicopter model had many technical difficulties:

“The helicopter that crashed today in Brovary was from a batch of helicopters purchased from France in 2018. The EC225 (or H225) model, the fall of which the authorities confirmed today, had a number of technical problems. At that time, Airbus Helicopters had several lawsuits over ‘inherent’ malfunction”.

Indeed, one question remains: if it was already known that there were technical problems with the equipment, why did the Ukrainian authorities continue to use it to attend important officers?

This is why many unofficial narratives about the possibility of deliberate assassination have emerged on the internet. The Ukrainian government admits the possibility, claiming to be investigating a hypothesis of sabotage against the Minister, but obviously it does so based on the idea that there would be an intention on the part of the Russian forces to kill him – which is doubtful, considering the low military relevance of such an act.

However, an even more curious fact is that several residents of Brovary commented that they saw a missile in the air hitting the airbus. The rumors have been reported by independent channels on social media, mainly through on the ground journalists who are investigating the case unofficially. The news raises a series of other possibilities.

It is important to remember that the Ukrainian air defense system has made serious mistakes recently, destroying civilian areas and killing innocent people due to the inaccuracy of its attacks. There are many factors that help to understand this process. First, since the beginning of the conflict, Kiev has shown that it does not have a military doctrine concerned with civilians, so there does not seem to be any special care on the part of artillery operators to avoid non-military casualties.

Second, there is the technical issue. Currently, due to significant losses on the battlefield, Kiev is recruiting personnel without military qualifications, incompetent to operate the war equipment that is being used in the conflict. The case becomes even more serious considering that the neo-Nazi regime is receiving NATO’s weapons with which its soldiers are even less familiar, increasing the possibility of errors.

It is important to remember that Monastyrsky was the second major official that the Zelensky government lost in less than twenty-four hours. Earlier, top adviser Alexey Arestovich had resigned precisely for accidentally revealing mistakes made by the Ukrainian artillery.

The fact is that if a projectile did hit the Ukrainian helicopter, it is much more likely that it came from Kiev’s own artillery – accidentally or intentionally – than from Russian artillery, which was not shelling the place at the time. Furthermore, the mere point that Kiev was allowing a top official to fly over a country at war using an unsafe airbus already shows that either the government simply did not care about his safety.

It is important to mention that Monastyrsky, as Interior Minister, was the head of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias, as since 2014 the ultranationalist gangs have been incorporated into the Kiev’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. So, he certainly had sensitive information about how the neo-Nazi regime manages its security forces.

In July, Kiev bombed a Russian prison in Olenivka where Azov’s militants were placed after their surrender in Azovstal. On that occasion, 50 neo-Nazi soldiers died in what was probably an attempt by Kiev to avoid confessions that could threaten the confidentiality of some data. Ukraine obviously tries to hide information about the practices of its neo-Nazi troops, such as war crimes, training camps for children, arms trafficking, terrorism, among others. In this sense, considering that Monastyrsky had much more concrete information about these same crimes, it is possible that there was an intention to eliminate him, in case Zelensky was really promoting a purge.

So far, the data are uncertain, and many questions remain unanswered. But the evidence seems to point to yet another criminal incident.

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

We bring to the attention of Global Research readers the text of an unpublished Lecture delivered in 1992 by the late Sean Gervasi on the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the US Strategy formulated during World War II to bring down the USSR.

The full transcript and video of Sean Gervasi’s presentation is preceded by Dennis Riches’ Introduction.

Scroll down for the Video

Introduction

We defeated totalitarianism and won a war in the Pacific and the Atlantic simultaneously… We worked together in a completely bipartisan way to bring down communism… So now we have to use our political processes in our democracy, and then decide to act together to solve those problems. But we have to have a different perspective on this one. It [global warming] is different from any problem we have ever faced before…[i] – Al Gore

These words above were spoken by former US vice-president Al Gore in 2007 in his film An Inconvenient Truth. Because audiences at the time were in rapt awe of him, treating him as a savior in the campaign to solve the global warming crisis, they never seemed to reflect on the outrageous assumptions underlying his comments about “defeating totalitarianism” and “bringing down communism.” These are worth examining for what they say about perceptions of world history among the American political class, and they even hint at how the errors in these perceptions led Mr. Gore to being self-deceived about what would be necessary to solve the problem he has devoted himself to since he has been out of power.

Although the United States played a crucial role in WWII, it was slow to get involved and it let the Soviet Union do much of the heavy lifting and suffer the heaviest losses. The United States had a lot of help in achieving the victory Mr. Gore claims for America, and we could assume he knows this, so the way he chose to describe historical events is telling.

Perhaps acknowledging the reality would have detracted from his second point about “bringing down communism.” Everyone knows that what he is referring to so proudly is the destabilization and destruction of the USSR, the Warsaw bloc nations, and Yugoslavia, not the abstract notion of communism. He is referring to a “victory” which precipitated civil wars and a disastrous collapse of the economy and social welfare systems in these countries, one that killed and impoverished millions. In China, Cuba and the DPRK, contrary to what he stated, these nations’ versions of socialism haven’t been brought down at all. [1992]

Explicitly describing the “bringing down of communism” as America’s deliberate actions to dismantle the USSR might run the risk of reminding the audience about the illegality of interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign nations, and it might have reminded people of what a betrayal this was of America’s WWII ally and partner in the détente of the 1970s. The inconvenient truth is that the USSR was the WWII ally that played a crucial role in the victory that Mr. Gore claimed solely for America.

Nonetheless, the comment about “bringing down communism” is refreshingly, and maybe accidentally, very honest. Most descriptions of the Soviet collapse, even those done by historians specializing in this field, pay little attention to American efforts to undermine the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. The political class always denied that America had a plan to dismantle the USSR, and denied having any significant influence on events which they claim arose from domestic causes. If America’s influence is addressed at all, it is considered as a matter of speculation, a mystery hardly worth thinking about when one can more easily look at the dramatic events that occurred on the surface within the Soviet Union in the last decade of its existence. The following transcript of the lecture by Sean Gervasi, delivered in 1992, shortly after the collapse, is unique and valuable for what it reveals about the significant, and perhaps decisive, American role in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In his conclusion, Mr. Gervasi came to this judgment:

The Soviet Union today, in the absence of this extraordinarily crafty, well-thought-out, extremely costly strategy deployed by the Reagan administration, would be a society struggling through great difficulties. It would still be a socialist society, at least of the kind that it was. It would be far from perfect, but it would still be there, and I think, therefore, that Western intervention made a crucial difference in this situation.”

The journey to how he came to this conclusion is well worth the reader’s time.

A final comment about Mr. Gore’s remarks: He is oblivious to the inconvenient solution that has been staring him in the face all these years: that the necessary reduction of carbon emissions will require severe constraints on capitalism, a thesis developed by Jason W. Moore in Capitalism in the Web of Life.[ii] Mr. Gore should know that a radical solution is needed. In his recent sequel to An Inconvenient Truth he complains about the undue influence of “money in politics” that has gotten so much worse over the last ten years, but that’s as deep as the class analysis and ideological exploration can go in America. He evinces no awareness of the historical figures who developed answers to the problem of unaccountable private control of a nation’s government, resources and productive capacities. Gore is still proud of having actively worked against a revolution in human affairs that aimed to curtail the savage capitalism that led to the present ecological catastrophe.

In spite of the flaws one might see in what the Soviet Union actually became, flaws that arose to a great extent because it had to fight against external threats throughout its existence, the goals of the revolution of 1917 are still relevant to the crises of the 21st century, and this is what makes Sean Gervasi’s research so valuable now, after a quarter century in which America doubled down on its “winning ways” and worsened the crises that were evident long ago in 1992.

About Sean Gervasi

Sean Gervasi (1933-1996) spent the latter part of his career exposing the role of the United States and Western powers in the breakup of the USSR and Yugoslavia. He was working on a book,Balkan Roulette, at the time of his death.

Gervasi was an economist trained at the University of Geneva, Oxford and Cornell. His political career began when he took a post as an economic adviser in the Kennedy administration. He resigned in protest after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

After his resignation, Gervasi was never able to get work again in the United States as an economist, despite his impressive academic credentials. He became a lecturer at the London School of Economics after leaving Washington. Notwithstanding his great popularity, the school refused to renew his contract in 1965.

During the 1970s and 1980s he was an adviser to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East, helping them navigate the hostile and predatory world of transnational corporations and megabanks. He also worked for the UN Committee on Apartheid and the UN Commission on Namibia.

In addition, Gervasi was a journalist, contributing to a wide range of publications, from the New York Amsterdam News to Le Monde Diplomatique. He was a frequent commentator on the listener-supported Pacifica radio station WBAI in New York. In 1976, Gervasi broke the story of how the U.S. government was secretly arming the apartheid regime in South Africa.

In the late 1980s, Gervasi began to focus on the Cold War and what he called the “full court press,” a basketball term for a highly aggressive “all in” strategy. In an article published in the Covert Action Information Bulletin in early 1991[iii], when the breakup of the USSR was imminent, Gervasi showed how the Reagan administration’s strategy of economic isolation, a gargantuan arms buildup with the threat of a nuclear attack, overt funding of internal dissent, and CIA-directed sabotage had been decisive in bringing down the USSR. Gervasi backed up his analysis with careful scholarship and documentation.

Gervasi was widely respected as a leading independent figure in the left, but his views were contrary to the fashionable dogma that attributed the USSR’s collapse almost exclusively to such things as failures of leadership, centralization of the economy, the black market, Chernobyl, or independence movements, and not to external hostility. These are the subjects which he addressed in the following lecture given to a small audience in January 1992. The lecture can still be found on internet video sites, but the thesis of this lecture still remains marginal and obscure two decades later, even though it is highly pertinent to the Cold War replay that is underway in the second decade of the 21st century—one in which Russia stands accused of turning the tables and doing a comparatively very tame version of the propaganda war waged on the USSR in the 1980s.

After 1992, Gervasi focused his attention on the breakup of Yugoslavia, which he discovered was a replay of the strategy used to break up the Soviet Union. He became active in exposing the role of external powers, particularly the U.S. and German governments, in fomenting the civil war in the Balkans. His view that the war in Bosnia was sparked by the aggressive machinations of these nations, and not age-old ethnic rivalries, alienated Gervasi from much of the liberal and progressive movement.

Journals to which he had once regularly contributed would no longer print his articles. He had great difficulty finding a publisher for his book on the Balkans, but some of his research on this topic can be found in the article “Why Is NATO In Yugoslavia?”[iv] published by Global Research in 2001.[v]

Dennis Riches, November 2017

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VIDEO

Scroll down for the full Transcript

Byline of the video: 

Propaganda expert reveals details in 1992 of RAND Think Tank plan under Reagan to bring down USSR, the major socialist challenge to capitalism in crisis, called Operation Full Court Press when announced at a Reagan limited invitee press conference upon its launch. It involved targeting mid-level Soviet bureaucrats with publications and Air America broadcasts pointing to problems they were facing having better outcomes in the US, military provocations when they were considering their budget in order to spend them into bankruptcy, luring them into Afghanistan followed by arming the Mujahadeen with surface to air missiles and such; and fanning flames of ethnic rivalries within the Soviet Union, like by sending publication equipment to Baltic ethnic groups.

In first 20 minutes Sean prophetically lays out the impending crisis of capitalism that drives their urgency to stamp out socialist competition. Sean died under mysterious circumstances in Belgrad where he had set up shop pointing out a PR effort in the US Congress by Ruder Finn hired by Croats and Kosovo Albanians to start a US war against Yugoslavia for their secession.

Event January 26, 1992 arranged by Connie Hogarth of WESPAC, Camera: Beth Lamont

Transcript

(edited by Dennis Riches)

Introduction

I’ve been speaking in the last year or so about developments in the Soviet Union from the perspective of a person who follows the workings of the Western intelligence agencies, something in which I was tutored while I was working at the United Nations, and was on the receiving end of quite a lot of that activity.

That is an important theme that one needs to look at: the role of the West in developments which have taken place in the Soviet Union, and it’s one that I’ve been focusing on, but of course the wider and more important issue is: how shall we understand the meaning of events in the Soviet Union in the last five, six, ten years? That’s really the critical question.

As you know, the developments, particularly the end or collapse of communist rule in the Soviet Union, and finally the breakup of the Soviet Union itself, have been presented in our media insistently and incessantly as evidence that socialism or social democracy, or what-have-you, which we’ll discuss, is unworkable. And this, of course, in tandem with the theme which has been disseminated so energetically by these same people in the last decade, that capitalism:

1. a) is more or less the same thing as democracy, and
2. b) must be seen as the core and triumphant achievement of Western civilization…

Hence the thesis that this is the end of history, that we have achieved everything that there is to achieve, that the present system of institutions in which we live in the West represents the pinnacle of human capacities, intellectually and organizationally, and is the best of all possible worlds.

That’s the thesis, or those are the twin theses which surround us and which have been, I think, creating an enormous amount of confusion and consternation because I think people sense there is something wrong with this idea, and the effort to close off all discussion about alternatives to, what I would term, our “regime” in the United States today, and possibly in Western Europe, which is a moving backward from the more enlightened and liberal capitalism, liberal democracy and capitalism, which evolved after the Second World War in Western Europe and the United States.

We are today, I think, living in an irrational and savage capitalism of the 19th-century variety, which for particular reasons, people who have power in this society either have acceded to or have energetically worked to institute.

Part 1. The Crisis in the United States

The question is whether this great wave of propaganda makes any sense, and so I think we should examine whether the idea that socialism and alternatives to raw capitalism are impossible, undesirable, and unworkable. I think we have to look at that in two ways. First of all, we have to examine our own situation in the United States, historically, and we have to also, I think, look at what has happened in the Soviet Union because what has happened in the Soviet Union is really very different from what we are told by the mass media. We have not merely witnessed a collapse of communism in the Soviet Union. We have seen something really very different, but it has been systematically misrepresented in the Western media.

I would start then with examining the basic proposition. I would start by examining our situation in the United States today, and I’d frankly start with Charles Beard’s interpretation of the American Constitution.

There’s a great deal of misunderstanding about the kind of society that American democracy really represents, and that misunderstanding is both historical and contemporary. There is a tremendous tension which we are all aware of in our society. It is a tension between egalitarianism and inequality. It is a tension born of the evolution in the in the 16th, 17th and 18th century in England, and the transfer of a particular kind of society onto American soil through British political traditions, notwithstanding our rebellion as colonists at the end of the 18th century. And that is the particular set of institutions known as liberal democracy. Liberal democracy is a combination of parliamentary government and capitalism, and liberal democracy inevitably, therefore, contains some very serious tensions because the progressive development of parliamentary democracy has tended to give greater and greater scope to the principle of equality in human life and politics. That’s why in the course of British 19th century political development there was a progressive expansion of the franchise. And that’s why in the United States there was also an expansion of the franchise. The United States did not have the same encumbering property qualifications in the beginning, although we did have property qualifications in the 18th century in the United States, but eventually we had the full franchise extended to all adults, and we’ve been redefining adults most recently. We’ve dropped the level of political maturity or political enfranchisement to 18 years.

Capitalism, on the contrary, is a system of economic and social institutions based on the principle of inequality, and there’s a rationale for that inequality which also comes from the 18th century, but the idea, essentially, is that it makes sense from the point of view of efficiency, and indeed equity, given all the considerations that one must take into account, to have a society based on the unequal distribution of property organized around that institution, to have an economy based on private property because, in the final analysis, it is most efficient, and in the long run holds the greatest promise of continuous progress. By the way, that’s an argument that Marx made at a certain point—that at a certain stage of history a capitalist society is extremely progressive, that it gathers the technical capacities of mankind, personkind, and develops them and accumulates and accumulates until it creates something new, which we won’t talk about just now.

But historically and currently in the United States we very strongly sense this tension so that we go back and forth between periods when we have enormous pressures to give predominance to the principle of inequality, to pay attention to the rights of property, and periods when egalitarian tendencies have been very strong. For instance, as in the turn of the century during the expansive phase of American populism and during the antitrust… of the great popular movements that sought—not just popular—but that sought to contain the power of the cartels and the trusts in the United States. And today we sense that too. We passed the law in 1946 that’s called the Employment Act. By the way, it’s not called the Full Employment Act. You have to remember that legislation. And yet we realize that our adherence to the principle of full employment was tenuous even in the 25 years which followed the Second World War, and completely spurious today. Why is that? It’s because of this tremendous tension between the realities of power under capitalism and the rather fragile hold which democratic principles and institutions have on that power.

Let’s go back to the Constitution and the Philadelphia Convention. I’ve been rereading Beard and I’m very impressed by his grasp of who predominates really in this delicate balance in liberal democracy between the principles of egalitarianism, the principles of parliamentary democracy and the enormous concentration of power, which even then was inherent in the dominance of the institutions of private property. Beard’s argument essentially is that in the final analysis a small group of men, whom he refers to as one-sixth of the adult male population—the only people who ratified the Constitution, the participants in the ratifying conventions who voted positively for the Constitution—represented one-sixth of the adult male population. That is to say 8% of the adult population in today’s terms. Against our values that represents 8% of today’s population—the equivalent.

Now, what was obtained in that framing of the Constitution? What was obtained was a system of political science, a system of government which was so structured as to ensure the dominance of private property, the power of private property in any contention between the forces of democracy and the forces of private property, and the forces of inequality, if you like, so that the structure which constitutes, at the founding of this republic, which constitutes the framework within which we operate today, is one which ensures that predominance.

I know that Beard has been attacked by many people, and it’s perfectly understandable when you read Beard carefully, but it seems to me that today Beard becomes more illuminating. Why? I say I pay attention to the Constitution, to the Philadelphia Convention, to its ratification, to the numbers who ratified it and to the purposes which they saw themselves as furthering by their framing and ratification of this constitution because that is the framework within which the United States experienced the most successful and untrammeled Industrial Revolution in the history of mankind. Untrammeled. We had a straight run of industrialization which was the first to transform the condition of man in human society, by which I mean something very, very specific. And here I speak to things which were said by people like [John Maynard] Keynes, by people like [Joseph Alois] Schumpeter, but really ignored because they’re extremely uncomfortable.

The rationalization for inequality in the institution of private property, in the thinking of eighteenth century philosophers, was that property had to be shared unequally and income had to be unequal because this inequality provided incentives which would constitute a constant assurance of the drive to the expansion of production. That was the rationalization, but in the 20th century, according to the economic historians and according to people like Keynes, countries like the United States and Great Britain began to end, began to transform the historical situation within which these institutions were conceived. How? By developing such a capacity to produce that gradually more and more numbers were lifted out of anything which could be historically or comparatively called poverty so that scarcity, which dominates the reasoning of economists, was really beginning to end in many respects. And Joseph Schumpeter was able to say, for instance, in 1928, that if economic growth continued in the United States for another 50 years we would see in 1978 the end of anything that could reasonably be called poverty.

Now that didn’t quite happen. That didn’t quite happen because of the enormous influence of inequality in the distribution of this productive abundance. But what it did transform was the lives of many, many people, and it transformed everyday life and the historical condition. Look between 1870 and 1970 at how the number of hours that the average American works falls. In the period between 1945 and 1970, per capita production trebled, just in that period, and we already had a huge industrial base at that time, so I would argue [agree], with Galbraith, who—because he was right was vilified and ignored by the economist profession and studiously made little of by the mass media—that indeed America began to be transformed with the success of its enormous industrial revolution by the end of the period after 1865, when really heavy industrialization began to take place. And indeed I would argue that the reason for the Great Depression was that the United States had lost the ability to continue to absorb everything that it could produce in an adequate way, given the institutions of the time.

So what happened then was that within this framework, which is the same framework conceived by the James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. To further the purposes of property and to insure against what Madison called “the leveling attacks of democracy,” we have industrialization enhance the expansion of an enormous power, which is the power that controls the machinery and the resources of that productive system. That is to say large corporations. The largest 500 corporations in the United States today, plus the largest 500 banks and the largest 50 financial corporations control more resources than the Soviet planners ever dreamed of controlling. The control of those resources, which is made invisible by the clever workings of economists, inheres in the ability to make investment decisions. Investment decisions are the key decisions in any economic system. The power to make those decisions is the power to continuously transform and to determine the terms of everyday life among human beings in any society. That power is not only invisible in our system of thought, carefully hidden by the descendants of the 18th century philosophers, but it is also totally unaccountable.

Now maybe you could say, and we did say this between 1945 and 1975:

“OK this is a contradiction of democracy. This is the inheritance from the Philadelphia Convention, the Constitution in its ratification and the dominance of this one-sixth of the male adult population in 1789, but this system is so productive that we can alleviate the resulting social and political tensions by raising the standard of living of ordinary folks.”

And that was the whole philosophy of the sophisticated American leadership in the first generation after the Second World War. That was the philosophy of the Rockefellers when they talked about the new enlightened capitalism of 20th century. Capitalism could deliver the goods and hence people would be content, despite the fact that the realities of power born at the end of the 18th century, and essentially enhanced by the enormous accumulation of power represented by industrialization and the growth of large corporations and their concentrated power in the economy. We could live with that because the United States economy was so productive.

Now, that’s our history, and the tremendous tension of our situation today as contrasted with the post-war period because one thing is very clear today: that for 20 years in the United States this system has not been working. There has been a systematic retreat from full employment, high wages, advancing standards of living, security in one’s job, and the advance of the welfare state. We have systematically been retreating from those things so that we have higher and higher official and real unemployment, which of course is about double the official unemployment—and the statisticians work very hard to hide the realities of life.

Sean Gervasi

Between 1977 and 1992, according to the Congressional Budget Office, 70% of American families have seen their after-tax income fall. 70%! In the lower ranges of the income distribution those falls are quite sharp. Purchasing power falls by twenty 20.8% for the poorest fifth, by something like 12% for the next fifth, by something like 11% for the third fifth, and by smaller amounts for those in the middle of the income distribution system. So I would say that that represents, and people are increasingly becoming aware of it, a collapse of the American standard of living. And this collapse of the American standard of living is related to a gradual economic decline which is causing the post-war system, as we have known it in the United States between 1945 and 1970, to begin to disintegrate. And I think this is the reality of what is happening so that today even according to Wall Street forecasters like the Levies, attached to Bard College up here in the county, we are facing what they call a contained depression, which may be worse than the kind of depression we saw in the 1930s because the stabilizing role of the government makes it possible not to avoid some of the awful horrors that occurred in the depression, but to diminish them to a degree which makes them almost invisible.

So we have a very tense situation. I ask you to reflect on that when we confront the enormous economic difficulties from which there follow all kinds of social problems in our society today which we face. These are connected to, and, if you like, made possible by the arrangements conceived by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. If this crisis which we have been living in for 20 years, and have become more acutely aware of in the last 10, is intractable, it is, above all, intractable because of this invisible concentrated power which exists today after industrial growth—the rise of the large corporations in the framework conceived by Madison, Hamilton and the other Federalists.

So if you want to argue today that we need to reconsider this framework, you run into very fundamental problems. You run into the problem that the Constitution is treated like an icon, that people are unaware that the preamble to the Declaration of Independence is not the law of the United States, that people are unaware of the fact that the Bill of Rights, which is supposed to compensate for some of the failings of our constitutional system, has been systematically shredded by the two most recent administrations. Witness William Kunstler and his remarkable talks on what has happened to the Bill of Rights in the last ten years.

Part 2 . The Crisis in the Soviet Union

Now, let’s get to the Soviet Union, keeping in mind always that it is against this background of crisis and the intractability of crisis, and it’s rooting in the historical origins of the Constitution that we are asked, that we are invited—without anybody saying that that’s the background—that we are invited to ponder the proposition that there is no alternative to the kind of capitalism that we have, and that this capitalism is the quintessence of democracy.

Now let us look at that proposition against a second set of data, if you like, which is supposed to prove the case that there was socialism in the Soviet Union, that the Soviet Union then, along with its Eastern European partners, collapsed in chaos owing to the essential unworkability of this kind of a system. Let’s look at that.

When the Reagan administration came into office we all became aware rather quickly that something new was happening. We should have known that something new was happening because, in fact, the arrival of the Reagan administration in power had been preceded by a very careful build-up which was, in part, visible in the American polity, and that was the emergence of the development and the elaboration of the power of a group which we now call the new right—people who 20 years ago, 28 years ago in 1964, after Goldwater lost the Republican National Convention. Rockefeller took command of the party that had been relegated to what every major political commentator at the time called the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party. These were the people who, particularly in California, were coming out of the walls in the late 1970s, creating foundations, buying chairs of economics at universities. Look at it: the Coors, the Mises, with all of their contacts. These were the people who were building a new group, and the purpose of this group was to put a stop to the kind of systematic democratic entrenchment which they thought had been going on in the 1960s and the 1970s.

In the 1960s and the 1970s, there were three movements: (1) the movement for workers’ rights, for unionization, the expansion of unionization, particularly among city employees and for raising wages, and the tremendous industrial disruption that attended the 1960s and the early 1970s in the industrial sector, (2) the civil rights movement, which preceded that, beginning in the late 1950s, and (3) the movement against the war in Vietnam, the war in Vietnam being one of the ways in which this society managed to utilize, in a profitable fashion, its enormous productive capacity without giving it to ordinary folks, without giving its fruits to ordinary folks.

The new right was determined to do something quite new. One of the new things that it did, and Reagan really was not its spokesman because that implies a degree of activity which I think he’s incapable of. You can always program a spokesman. I don’t think he had the wheels to do that.

Reagan launched, as you know, a massive, serious, intense, ugly confrontation with the Soviet Union, ideologically. At the same time we became aware that there was a significant drive on to re-arm the United States, to throw enormous resources— ultimately it was in excess of 1.7 trillion dollars during the 1980s—to throw enormous resources into the military sector, to throw enormous resources into shifting the technology of the military sector to war in space, SDI [Space Defense Initiative], etc. All of those things were on the agenda, but many of us at the time puzzled about this. I remember asking myself, “What is it with these folks? Do these fellows really want a world war? Can they not see that this can be the outcome?”

And I remember those discussions, and I remember when many of you and I on June 12, 1982 were at the demonstration of 750,000 to 1 million people in the center of New York City, which was an expression of the alarm that people felt at this enormous aggressive policy which was coming out of the Reagan administration, which threatened to shred US-Soviet relations.

But in fact, retrospectively, we can see that there was something else behind it, that it was not just irrational madness. There was a bit of that, but there was a rationality to what was being done, and in fact, to understand that, it’s important to see that it is connected to every single major line of innovative policy that the Reagan administration developed. It was extremely well thought-out, extremely shrewd. And [it involved] the military buildup and the aggressive rhetoric towards the Soviet Union, the deliberate effort to create difficulties in the relationships between the Soviet Union and the European powers. You remember that in 1982 the United States tried to force the European powers not to accept natural gas from the Soviet Union, to deny shipments of technology to the Soviet Union which would make it possible for the Soviet Union to exploit that natural gas, to earn foreign exchange, etc. It was all part of a very complex strategy, but it was a very clear strategy.

Let me say, though, that many of us, at least I at the time, missed that. We didn’t quite comprehend what was going on, but we had in the back our mind flickers that something was wrong. There were people who were saying or hinting clearly at what was happening, and shrewd people, intelligent people who did begin to grasp what was happening.

Let me quote from one or two. Writing in 1982, Joe Fromm, who was then the editor of the United States’ US News and World Report, said,

“There was something behind,” I’m quoting him, “the shift to a harder line in foreign policy.” The US, in fact, seemed to be “waging limited economic warfare against Russia to force the Soviets to reform their political system.” That suggests… that’s a nice journalist, a reasonably liberal journalist at US News and World Report, but Joe then quoted a State Department official saying (actually, a National Security Council official), “The Soviet Union is in deep, deep economic and financial trouble. By squeezing wherever we can, our purpose is to induce the Soviets to reform their system. I think we will see results over the next several years.” That’s in 1982.

Robert Scheer wrote a book in 1982 called With Enough Shovels: Reagan and Bush and Nuclear War. I think I’ve got the title almost right. This is a very interesting book in which Scheer saw that there was something behind this enormously aggressive foreign policy, foreign and military policy, that the Reagan administration was deploying. And he saw that the United States was not simply playing nuclear chicken with the Soviet Union, as he put it, but that it was embarked on a policy designed to create such pressure for the Soviet Union as to force changes within the Soviet Union.

Now of course it had always been the case that the Cold War consisted of moves designed to affect the behavior of others. The Cold War, from the point of view of the West, had always aimed at modifying, as the State Department cookie pushers liked to put it in their delicate prose, the behavior of our antagonist. But this, I think you will see, went beyond that because, in fact, the Reagan administration embarked on a policy of many dimensions which included pressure around the world on countries with close ties to the Soviet Union. Insurgencies were initiated in Mozambique, Angola, Cambodia against Vietnam, Nicaragua, and, quite a lot, Afghanistan.

I don’t want to get into too many complicated discussions of Afghanistan, but I think anybody who reflects upon the United States’ response to the Soviet entry into Afghanistan in 1979 must realize that the United States did not want the Soviet Union to leave Afghanistan, and in fact the purpose of these insurgencies around the world, which as you know, had expended billions of dollars, was to pin the Soviet Union down, and to inflict economic costs upon the Soviet Union. The purpose of the remilitarization in the West was to force the Soviet Union, at the risk of exposing itself to the pressure of escalation, to meet our resource commitments, to defend itself, or to place itself in a position to resist our pressure.

The purpose of escalating the technology of nuclear warfare, again, was to impose costs upon the Soviet Union. [This was ] the purpose of every principled measure, such as withholding advanced technology from the Soviet Union, foreign assistance programs aimed not at assisting countries on the basis of their needs, but on assisting countries on the basis of the contribution they would make to putting pressure on the Soviet Union. All of these things were part of a systematic strategy designed to create havoc in the Soviet Union.

Now I’ll say a little bit more about what the purpose of that was, but first let me point out that this is a systematic strategy consisting of a number of pieces, and that it did pose enormous economic and other costs upon the Soviet Union.

But who is Gervasi [the speaker] to say that this is so, beyond quoting Joseph Fromm? Well, let me tell you a little bit about an interesting experience I had. I had lunch one day with a friend who was passing through the United States, who had been in jail in South Africa for eight years, and had just got out. He had been engaged in planning one of the principal sabotage operations against the South African nuclear installations, and he was very happy to be out of jail. We sat at lunch and he said to me—we talked about many things, mostly about Africa which he and I had worked on together—and he said to me,

“What’s going on in the Soviet Union?” I said to him, “Well, you know, I really can’t figure this out. I can’t figure out what’s going on.” He said, “It seems to me that the Soviet Union is being destabilized.” “My goodness,” I say to myself quietly.

The thought had never passed my mind, but when my friend, Christie, said this I thought I should look into this, and I did.

The first thing I found was… I spent a little bit of time on a computer and some things came up, and I said that looks very interesting. Within a very short time I had discovered reams of material being generated at the end of the 1970s and in the early 1980s by organizations like the RAND Corporation. You know what the RAND Corporation is. It’s an Air Force/CIA contracting agency in Southern California, very large, very powerful, very influential in the so-called intellectual defense community, the military industrial complex, and in Washington. People go back and forth from the CIA, from the DIA to the State Department to the RAND Corporation. And what were the chaps at the RAND Corporation doing? Well, they were producing very interesting studies with titles like Economic Factors Affecting Soviet Foreign and Defense Policy: A Summary Outline, The Costs of the Soviet Empire, Sitting on Bayonets: the Soviet Defense Burden and Moscow’s Economic Dilemma: The Burden of Soviet Defense, Exploiting Fault Lines in the Soviet Empire: Economic Relations with the USSR.

Anyway, I started reading the stuff. First of all, I started collecting it and I started reading this stuff, and I found out something very interesting: that these fellows at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s were clearly fashioning a plan in which we began to see the pieces of in the emerging parts of foreign and military policy, foreign and military and economic policy under the Reagan administration. And the basic reasoning of this plan—I’ll give it to you—is as follows: the Soviet Union was in a dual crisis. They knew what was going on in Soviet Union. Economic growth in the Soviet Union had begun to slow down. It had been very rapid, by the way, in the period from 1950 to the early 1970s. Between 1960 and 1984 per capita income and per capita production in the Soviet Union trebled, so it wasn’t slow. That was a 4 or 5% rate of growth, very rapid considering that we’re growing at about 1.5 which, is about, by the way, equivalent to the rate of growth on average during the decade of the 1930s in the United States.

Now, what I found out was that they also understood there was a leadership crisis in the Soviet Union. The old line of principal Soviet leaders born in the early stages of Soviet redevelopment after the Revolution, formed in the Second World War—that leadership was dying out, as we all knew. And in fact Mikhail Gorbachev, selected by Andrei Gromyko, was the first representative of a new generation of Soviet leaders, but in the late 70s and early 80s, people were dying. The major figures Andropov, Chernenko and Brezhnev, were dying, and there was a very great confusion about succession.

So the country was in a kind of crisis. The CIA calls it a dual crisis, a leadership crisis, not knowing to which new people of a new generation the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet Union should pass, and at the same time a beginning of faltering of economic growth, which was serious because since the Soviet Union had to always, like any country, choose between investing, competing in the arms race, and raising the standard of living of its population. The fact that economic growth fell off made that more difficult.

Now the next step in the reasoning of the RAND Corporation, gentlemen and ladies from the RAND Corporation, was that the United States and its allies could take various actions which would force the Soviet Union to increase its defense spending and its military assistance to allies and friends. They could take measures to deny the Soviet Union credits, which they did, and to deny it technology. They could also take measures which would reduce the overall volume of resources available to the Soviet Union and hold back the growth of productivity, which would exacerbate the problem, or force them to shift resources from consumers to investment. And [they knew] that all of these effects would (to quote them) “aggravate the difficulties confronting the Soviet leadership in a stagnant economy. So, a combination of these measures to impose costs on the Soviet Union could be expected to lead to falling investment and/or living standards, and such measures consequently might generate pressures within the Soviet Union for withdrawing from the world stage, and for political reform.”

So the purpose of this operation, which I will try to define more clearly in a moment, was to impose, in a variety of ways, enormous costs on the Soviet Union, or to reduce the resources available to them in such a way as to exacerbate their economic difficulties. Let me quote from Abraham Becker, one of the shrewder Rand analysts:

Thus the Reagan administration seized Soviet economic troubles as an opportunity to complicate further their resource allocation difficulties dilemma, in the hope that additional pressures would result in a reallocation of resources away from defense, or would push the economy in the directions of economic and political reform.

The purpose of this new aggressive multi-dimensional strategy was to force reform upon the Soviet Union. What that reform was to be is a later chapter. Now, it’s one thing to say that these plans exist, and I’ll talk about other plans. For instance, I managed to pull together a collection of documents from the National Endowment for Democracy, which as you know, is supposed to be a quasi-government institution. It’s not a quasi-government institution. It’s funded by Congress. It’s a government institution funded by Congress, which sees it to be its business to “promote democracy outside the United States” in the rest of the world, where by “democracy” one means essentially, and when you come down to it it’s clear now in the Soviet Union, “capitalism” and “liberal democracy,” if you like [the latter term].

Now, it’s one thing of course to talk about all this planning, to try on your own to reason that all of these things fit together, but in fact we began to get official indications and documentation, as early as the spring of 1982, that the government had signed on to this strategy, that this was not the wild thinking of a few eager folks in a few think tanks, that it was policy and that it was policy which the American public knew very little of, did not understand the purposes and consequences of, but would nonetheless be required to pay for to the tune of several trillion dollars, which did indeed help to create the situation in which we presently find ourselves at home, locked in the Philadelphia Convention.

In the spring of 1982 I had spoken to two of the participants in this little meeting. A senior National Security Council official charged with responsibility for Soviet affairs called a number of influential Washington correspondents and asked them to come to the National Security Council for a briefing. Two of them told me that they left this briefing extremely shaken. They didn’t want to say too much about it, but they gave me to understand that they thought that this was an extremely aggressive, dangerous, and highly risky strategy which the administration was describing and stating that it was about to embark upon.

Helen Thomas of UPI was one of the people who was in that meeting, and she described the results of the briefing—this briefing on the Soviet Union—in the following manner:

A senior White House official said Reagan has approved an eight-page National Security document that undertakes a campaign aimed at internal reform in the Soviet Union and the shrinkage of the Soviet empire. He affirmed that it could be called a full-court press against the Soviet Union.[vi]

A little later, just a few days later, in fact, further evidence, this time quoting official documentation, not hearsay from a briefer at the National Security Council, but quoting official documentation: Richard Halloran, the defense correspondent of The New York Times published an article in that paper on May the 30th of 1982, just a few days really after Helen Thomas sent out her UPI dispatch. Halloran quoted from the fiscal years 1984-1988 Defense Guidance, of which The Times stated that it had a copy.[vii] The Secretary’s Guidance Document recommended what Halloran called “a major escalation in the nuclear arms race.” Apart from that it indicated that a number of other measures were being taken “to impose costs on the Soviet Union.” Note the language is the language of the RAND planners. Some of the same people probably wrote the document. I quote from Halloran’s direct quote from the National Guidance document of the Secretary of Defense:

“As a peacetime complement to military strategy, the Guidance Document asserts that the United States and its allies should, in effect, declare economic and technical war on the Soviet Union.”

This is interesting. “And so I think,” it went on. They wrote,

“to put as much pressure as possible on the Soviet economy already burdened with military expenditure, they should develop weapons that are difficult for the Soviets to counter, impose disproportionate costs, open up new areas of major military competition, and obsolesce,” (Nice English. I’ve put sic in my article) “precious Soviet investments.”

So I think it’s safe to say, and a number of people prove it to us a little later on, that this policy was instituted. Let me just race ahead to one of the more recent proofs. David Ignatius, who is a correspondent at The Washington Post, published a very remarkable article about “spyless coups” not long ago, in October, if I’m not mistaken. Perhaps it was September. Ignatius is a correspondent with very close ties to the intelligence community, to be very polite about it. I quote from his article: “Preparing the ground…” This is immediately after the Yeltsin double event of August 1991 in which Mr. Gorbachev was seemingly threatened by a coup and in which Mr. Yeltsin did not seem to take power but did. He described the event in this way:

Preparing the ground for last month’s triumph was a network of overt operatives who, during the last ten years, have quietly been changing the rules of international politics. They have been doing in public what the CIA used to do in private, providing money and moral support for pro-democracy groups, training resistance fighters, working to subvert communist rule.[viii]

Could he have written that in The Washington Post in 1982? It’s difficult, I would have thought. It might not have passed muster. Some people might have noticed, but in 1991, evidently, it was all right to say that this is what we were doing.[ix]

If you look very carefully you can find many traces by officials stating that the United States had embarked upon a strategy which, retrospectively, it is very clear, was nothing more and nothing less than a strategy to destabilize the Soviet Union. Mr. Casey’s magnificent and expansive imagination had carried covert operations beyond the narrow confines of Third World countries and aimed them at the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. If you go back and look at the history of these events in this perspective, reading some of the documents, you’ll see things very differently

Judd Clark [name indistinct, spelling uncertain], for instance, speaking at a private seminar at Georgetown University, again around 1982, said,

“We must force our principle adversary, the Soviet Union, to bear the brunt of its economic shortcomings.”

Well, that’s slightly veiled language that means the same sort of thing that everybody else was saying. It wasn’t, though, until 1985, that the redoubtable and incomparable Jeane Kirkpatrick appeared on the stage with the full text of the play in hand, and she gave a speech, not surprisingly in front of the Heritage Foundation, at a conference room on Capitol Hill in which she said, “The Reagan doctrine, as I understand it, is about our relations with the Soviet Union,” and she then described every principal element of the strategy which Helen Thomas in 1982 called, repeating the NSC briefer’s statement, “a full-court press against the Soviet Union.”

If you read her speech to the Heritage Foundation, which everybody should read because it was 1985, she was saying that the United States is bent upon a strategy aimed at overthrowing the Soviet Union through internal and external pressures. She principally described the external pressure.

I want to say a little bit about the debate over the internal pressure. Again, in 1982, there was a nasty little debate between some members of Congress and the then-Secretary of State General Alexander Haig. Mr. Haig was very anxious that the United States should embark upon the program which Ronald Reagan was going to describe before the British Parliament in June 1982, at just about the time most of us were going to be in the streets of New York to protest some of the things that he was doing. And Hague said in the debate over the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy, which the Congress had insisted should not spill over into efforts to meddle in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union, Mr. Haig said,

“Just as the Soviet Union gives active support to Marxist-Leninist forces in the West and the [Global] South…” [ironic commentary:] (because it owns Newsweek, for instance and it manipulates the Columbia Broadcasting Company… such enormous power the Soviet Union has in the West) “…we must give vigorous support to democratic forces wherever they are located, including countries which are now communist. We should not hesitate to promote our own values, knowing that the freedom and dignity of man are the ideals that motivate the quest for social justice. A free press, free trade unions, free political parties, freedom to travel, and freedom to create are the ingredients of the democratic revolution of the future, not the status quo of a failed past.”

The founder of the Central Intelligence Agency said that propaganda is the first arrow of battle. A statement by Alexander Haig in 1982 to the Congress signals what the United States would attempt to do with the National Endowment for Democracy, that it would try to create and participate in the creation of [a false narrative of ] a failed past in the Soviet Union. And, in fact, as you know, all that went ahead.

Now, let’s look at that for a second. I know that it’s very difficult to believe this. I ask you to look at the second of the articles which I read, or to search for what I’ve written. You can read it and search for some of the documentation easily available. You will find that the mission statement of the National Endowment for Democracy, which functions as a kind of consortium bringing many of the pressures of the US government to bear inside the Soviet Union.

Destabilization requires external pressure and a manipulation of the internal situation to move political developments in the direction you desire. That’s what targeting a country for destabilization involves. We deprive Cuba of sugar, of medicines etc. and that creates internal pressure, and utilizing the internal pressure, you insert yourself, create groups, diffuse ideas which are inconsistent with those prevailing and suitable to power, and you begin to work on that discontent. If the discontent deepens and spreads, you get better and better odds, and because the Soviet Union was already in a kind of crisis, which, as Abraham Becker said,

“the United States then systematically sought to intensify and exacerbate.”

The National Endowment for Democracy and literally dozens and dozens of pseudo-private foundations, which I’ll talk about in a second, went into the Soviet Union under the new umbrella of glasnost, created academic presses, created newspapers, created radio stations, and began to mobilize and to work upon the natural dissent and discontent that existed in the Soviet Union, not only because of the historical past but also because of the difficulties of the present as exacerbated by the United States and its Western partners.

If you look at how much money… I’ll just give you an idea of some of the projects that were involved, and this is just one agency. You have to recognize that if this was going on in the National Endowment for Democracy that there were many, many other channels of finance and influence into the Soviet Union that were working on this.

For instance, in 1984 the NED gave $50,000 to a book exhibit in the Soviet Union: America through American Eyes. At the book fair in 1985 (I mean I’m just selecting [a few]): $70,000 via the Free Trade Union Institute, which is part of the National Endowment, to Soviet Labor Review for research in publications on Soviet trade union and worker rights.

In 1986, $84,000 to Freedom House to expand the operations of two Russian language journals published in the US and distributed in the higher levels of the Soviet bureaucracy and intelligentsia, already an arresting description. Imagine the Soviet Union publishing two English-language journals in the Soviet Union during the 1980s and having them distributed and eagerly read in the highest levels of the United States bureaucracy and intelligentsia. I don’t think that would have stuck very well in the United States.

In 1987, Freedom House, for the Athenaeum Press, rushed $55,000 for a Russian-language publication house in Paris to publish unofficial research conducted in the USSR by established scholars writing under pseudonyms. Now what does that mean? If you get down to 1989, we’re talking already in the $200,000 category.

For instance, the Center for Democracy, which is related to the National Endowment for Democracy, began to create a center for assistance to independent and nationalist groups, including the Crimean Tatar movement for human and national rights. In other words, they began to finance ethnic and nationalist separatism, began to finance separate trade unions, began to finance their own academics etc., except this is open, but it’s very large-scale, very large-scale.

I’ve done a little calculation and I can tell you that very large amounts of money were being spent, probably on the order of, by all the Western allies, minimum, inside the Soviet Union in the period from the mid to the late 1980s, one hundred million dollars a year—a hundred million dollars a year to finance organizations which might begin like WESPAC but would then grow, develop, have outreach, which would become extraordinary with that kind of funding, and did finally change things.

If you look at perestroika in the Soviet Union, [we know it started when] Mr. Gorbachev became the Soviet leader. This is the background to the two stages in which we must understand perestroika. In the first stage it was clear that the Soviet leadership was desperate to find a way to renew socialism, that Mr. Gorbachev was bent upon the reformation of the notion of socialism, and that he had widespread support inside the Soviet Union.

There were genuine economic improvements which took place between 1986 and, sort of, let’s say, the end of 1988, in the Soviet Union, as a result of those efforts, but the principal question we have to ask ourselves, since today we confront a fragmented, or, if you like, disassembled Soviet Union, the supremacy of nationalism, ethnic conflict, and Mr. Yeltsin—who represents an extremely right-wing constituency at the present moment—and the supremacy of capitalism. And a capitalist society is now being created in the Soviet Union, ending Mr. Gorbachev’s experiment… the crucial question to ask ourselves is a very simple one: how is it that between 1985 and 1990 a movement which began as an attempt to transform and renew socialism in the Soviet Union was supplanted by a right-wing movement aiming at the creation of a capitalist society in the Soviet Union? That is the key question. That is the key question because that’s what’s happened, and it’s strange.

That’s why many of us were puzzled about the contradictory evidence coming out of the Khrushchev [sic? Brezhnev?] era. It was very difficult to understand. At first, it seemed very positive, and then from the end of 1988, the fall of 1988, it became increasingly clear that things were going to pieces, that Mr. Gorbachev was either not able to control the forces which he had unleashed or that indeed he was bent upon creating, as I heard on the French radio in 1988 for the first time stated very clearly—it arrested my attention: the purpose, said Mr. [name indistinct], on the radio in his not-bad French, was to create a regulated market economy. That was the purpose of perestroika, not when it began, but somehow something had happened.

In fact there’s a lot of very interesting information out there now on the whole process. There was clearly a large dissatisfied set of strata in the Soviet intelligentsia. What has happened in the Soviet Union is more complex than the collapse through its own internal contradictions of the system of socialism in the Soviet Union. I really don’t want to talk very much about whether the Soviet Union was a socialist society. There are people who say it was and people who say it wasn’t. It’s a long discussion between Trotsky and Stalin etc., but for my part I would say this: that the Soviet Union began as a genuine attempt to establish socialism. There were always in the Soviet Union people genuinely seeking to further socialism, and people who didn’t give a damn. On balance, the thing we have to ask ourselves is whether the existence of the Soviet Union, as an apparently perceived socialist society, was a positive thing in the world equation at this particular time of history. I, on balance, having spent years in the United Nations, seeing that under the attacks of the Western countries, which in many cases were very ugly, most of the Third World countries which emerged in the late 1950s and 60s and early 70s were really only barely saved by the few sources of support which they got in the socialist world. And when the Soviet Union went down, they went down too; [for example] Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua.

So in many respects I would have thought that the Soviet Union, for all its defects, stood as a positive development in history, with all of the horrors that took place. The United States has had its horrors.

The question is this: did the Soviet Union collapse because socialism is unworkable and central planning doesn’t work? No, it didn’t.

There was a crisis in the Soviet Union. I would argue that in the absence of the kind of pressure [that was applied], it’s very difficult to weigh the balance.

How important were the internal forces?

How important were the difficulties experienced internally, and how important was the external pressure and the externally intervening force?

How important that balance was is very difficult to get. We have to read through all a lot of intelligence to understand that, to begin to get a grasp of things, but that’s our duty as people who are living history, or who seek to understand history.

We have to try to do that, and my basic conclusion still at this moment is this: the Soviet Union today, in the absence of this extraordinarily crafty, well-thought-out, extremely costly strategy deployed by the Reagan administration, would be a society struggling through great difficulties. It would still be a socialist society, at least of the kind that it was. It would be far from perfect, but it would still be there, and I think, therefore, that Western intervention made a crucial difference in this situation. That’s a judgment.

Conclusion

All right. Now, there is a question irrespective of that: what does it mean that the Soviet Union now has disappeared as a result of the kind of process that I’m talking about, a combination of internal difficulties and external pressure and intervention? Does it mean that socialism doesn’t work? Does it mean that [there is no alternative to] the kind of capitalism that we live in today, which I think increasingly of as a return to irrational and savage 19th century capitalism? If you walk through the Bronx and Brooklyn and Harlem, how can you not conclude that we are living in an irrational and savage capitalism in which the leveling attacks of democracy have been dealt with, in which the possibility of remedying that situation by the constitutional means which exist in the normal political channels of our government are very small, that electoral changes, in other words, are not going to be very significant, until there’s a mass mobilization of American people to make something happen.

If this is so, then the fact that what has happened in the Soviet Union has happened as it happened has no bearing whatsoever on our problems, and we should not be confused or pushed into consternation by it. Why? Primarily, for a very simple reason: The Soviet Union was conceived at a time when, in Marxist terms, it was not ready. The Soviet Union did not have the material base of abundance which would make it possible to create a society at once egalitarian and democratic because the struggle to create that base would require a degree of repression and authoritarianism, particularly heightened by external intervention and attack, which inevitably would distort the nature of socialism.

I sympathize with Isaac [name indistinct], but I think it’s too simple when he says socialism in a backward country is backwards socialism. But the critical fact for us is this: the Soviet Union was a society conceived as a socialist society prior to the creation of the economic base which would permit the creation of a socialist society with ease. We live in a society whose capacity to produce, whose potential abundance is so great that the inability to make use of it is literally tearing this society apart.

We live in a society which is ready, and when I say that, I want to go back to the terms of the discussion on the constitutional conventions. Well, why can’t we have economic democracy? What does economic democracy mean? Economic democracy inevitably would mean a number of these things: the accountability of the enormous concentrated power which exists in our society today to public democratic institutions. The planned rational use of resources at the public level, with democratic participation in the same manner that that planned rational use is conceived within the framework of the corporations, where the exercise of those decisions is not accountable. So it seems to me that in our day, when our society is riven by its contradictions, unable to use its abundance, unable to use its productive capacity in a rational, humane and democratic manner, that what is on the agenda today is the democratization of economic power, the rendering accountable of the enormous economic potential and power that exists in our society to make this a better and decent and democratic world.

Voilà.

End of lecture

Question Period

Well, dear friends, first of all, we have to have this serious debate because the real terms of the debate are rendered invisible by the absurd rhetoric and the absurd way in which we speak about ourselves, and by the mass media whose power and determination is to keep the real terms of the debate invisible. The real terms of the debate are: why is this society collapsing? Why does this economic machine not work? Who is responsible? If the people who are responsible are not going to do something about it, let them get the hell out.

Moderator: I know there have got to be lots of questions. We’ll allot a certain amount of time. We’ll try to recognize everyone.

Question: You’ve analyzed this quite well, but what does one do to change [the situation]?

Well, I think part of the problem… I don’t mean to be repetitious… but I think that people are clearly immobilized and confused at the moment. I think one of the reasons that people are immobilized and confused is that the proper debate is not out there. It’s not possible for people to express what they know from their experience to be true, to assert its truth. The public debate rejects our experience and understanding because the public debate is designed to contain us, to make us accept and even to believe in the superiority of this situation. I think people know what needs to be done out there. In a sense the quintessential problem confronting our country is the enormous concentrated power to shape people’s lives, to define discourse, as [name indistinct] pointed out, which is accountable to no one. The democratization of that power means, I think, certainly radical changes in the structure of our society, but ones for which in many respects people are ready and which indeed are supported by most of the values that this society has lived by historically and attests to.

It seems to me it’s really quite simple. We don’t have democracy in the sense in which we normally understand ourselves to have democracy in which people often speak of us as having. We don’t have that. Why do we not have it? Because of this eternal and now much more intensive, much more intense tension that has existed from the beginning between property and democracy, between popular majorities as the Federalists called them, disdainingly, and the rights of property. This now has become an enormous incubus on American society. We have enormous concentrated power for which nobody is accountable, and this is not acceptable. Roger and Me [the documentary film] is a reflection of a sensitivity that says, “We’ve got to talk about this, Roger. You’re responsible for this.” So I really think by not knowing these things, not changing the discourse of our lives, and the discourse in the public arena, coming to agreements amongst one another by hard work, by hard discussion, how can we know it’s true?

And by the way, I don’t think this can be done in the absence of action. That is to say, in a haltingly naive phase of my recent existence, I tried to convince some people in the Congress that we were headed into a really horrible situation, and they didn’t want to know. They didn’t. They don’t want to believe what is uncomfortable for them to believe, so my decision was that you have to go into the trenches, that you have to work on projects that are going to materialize these ideas, that you have to work against plant closings, that you have to work for measures that alleviate the social burdens that exist in a city like New York, that you have to work for things while articulating these ideas because it seems to me it’s only in the combination of action and debate of ideas that people will begin to understand the relevance and the necessity of a new discussion. You can’t have in that sense—I cede your point—you can’t have a drawing-room discussion which will prevail.

Certainly the people in the National Endowment for Democracy believe that. They don’t just sit back and spend millions of dollars on printing books and making radio tapes and television shows. No. They created new political institutions. They then created new political parties, financing people like Arkady Murashev, the Inter-Regional Group in the Soviet Parliament, until recently. It doesn’t exist anymore. The Inter-Regional Group was the group of pseudo-democrats, pro-capitalists, speaking, in many respects for the interests represented in the agglomeration of black market operations in the Soviet Union. Arkady Murashev was systematically cosseted, financed and trained by an organization in Washington very closely tied to certain agencies whose names we don’t want to pronounce in the present circumstances. Murashev was a liaison man between Washington and Yeltsin. The National Endowment for Democracy gave $40,000 just for the faxes, and the printing machines and the telephones in the Initiatives Foundation, which was the organization that the Inter-Regional Group used to put out its messages, get itself organized, make contacts, etc. The United States was financing that operation. Arkady Murashev is now the chief of police of the city of Moscow.

This is heavy stuff. I mean, really, it’s incredibly dramatic, but we mustn’t go on in this vein because there are questions to be answered.

Question: Does every country have to go through this period of savage capitalism to become socialist?

No. I don’t believe that. No.

Question: Bush seemed to like Gorbachev. Was Gorbachev foolish? Was he taken for a ride?

These are the great mysteries. There are, as you know, there are a different views. There are different theories about that. One of them is that Gorbachev was a mole, that Gorbachev was a deep-cover or Western intelligence agent. I believe that’s exaggerated. I believe that’s off the wall, but I do believe that there’s an element here that’s important to understand.

There was in the Soviet Union, as a result of the very success of the industrialization of the Soviet Union, an enormous alienated set of strata amongst the educated population because the Soviet elite absorbed people at a very small rate. It didn’t reach out to large numbers of people. They were educating enormous numbers of people, professional scientific workers, managers, and these people were mostly urban people. They were the fruit, in many respects, of industrialization. At the same time, being urban people, they found themselves trapped in the most difficult conditions in the Soviet Union because in its industrialization the Soviet Union really ignored a lot of problems. Theyfound themselves, in many respects, in a similar situation as the United States, where the decay of urban areas, the lack of equipment, the lack of infrastructure, the lack of adequate facilities for health or education etc. became a real problem. They didn’t have the resources to industrialize, to raise the standard of living in the really poor republics of the Soviet Union, and to deal with the urban problem, as we call it in the United States.

So these people were… imagine… all educated people earning this education and looking upon themselves as deserving of the advantages and prerogatives of their Western counterparts, living in the equivalent of New York City, but earning the wages of a skilled worker. They didn’t like it. They felt shut out. They were angry, and it’s those people that the neoliberals were recruiting, not just the American neoliberals but their own neoliberals. There were neoliberals in the Soviet Union. There were reactionary people in the Soviet Union this [name indistinct] operation out in Siberia, the so-called sociological think tank. There are people who, I don’t know why… Perhaps when you become very isolated from the world and separated from reality you conjure up the most amazing dreams in your mind. I think Marx called it idealism. In any case, these people were very much Western idealists and they came, frankly, into Moscow and Leningrad fervent believers in the need to embrace Western institutions because of their frustration, because of their understanding of their own past. Whether it was distorted or not, it’s not for me to say. It’s because of the way they viewed and felt about their past, because of their own personal frustration, because of the problems which were very real that they experienced by the Soviet leadership, by the Soviet economy and society. They were alienated, and that’s where there was recruitment. When economic growth slowed down it made it much worse, and it spread the basis of recruitment very effectively.

There is a collection of essays which I think is quite remarkable and valuable, which gives you some background about the incredible contradictions in the Soviet Union, and how the Soviet Union, in fact, more than a decade and even two decades ago, was in fact being prepared for what is happening. It was ripening for some big bull shaking the tree, which is eventually what happened. That’s the collection that The Monthly Review has published recently, After the Fall, something like that. After the Fall of the Soviet Union is really a very valuable collection of essays on the Soviet Union, or whatever it is after communism. Very useful stuff.

Question: Could you talk about Third World countries?

That’s a really hard question. I’ve worked in Third World countries which were socialist countries and which were under attack. I worked in Mozambique in the beginning of the 1980s when the South African-Western-CIA operations were really beginning to [take a toll], and people were dying by the tens of thousands because the roads had been cut, and the supplies had been cut, and the health stations blown up, and I think that it was very hard for them to survive that. Socialism proved very frail in Mozambique, even though the leaders of the revolution had been born in armed struggle, formed by armed struggle, were dedicated to armed struggle, but the society just couldn’t withstand that kind of pressure.

In some ways I think that’s true of the Soviet Union. There was a war in the shadows waged against the Soviet Union on a massive scale, and what these events prove is the Soviet Union was insufficiently strong to stand up to those pressures, and I think this is all the more true in the Third World. I don’t know, but I don’t want to say that I know the answer, whether they should try to make that jump or not. I think that will depend on what happens in the Western world. I don’t see any reason why the jump couldn’t be made if the West, Western Europe and the United States, in particular North America saw [supported] significant transformation of the present system of power. Then it’s not a problem, but with this massive opposition coming from the West, it’s very difficult to survive.

Question (apparently edited from video recording): __________________

These same people today, and we’re talking about within a few months, within the end of the year there being not 50,000 but between six and eight million unemployed people in Russia, 130 million people, labor force of 65 or 70 million, and I saw this same thing happening in East Germany.

I was very briefly in Humboldt University in 1989 or 1990, I can’t remember which now. The whole situation was in upheaval, and I saw many intellectuals genuinely enraged by the arrogance of the Honecker regime, and at the same time, unfortunately, completely unaware of what would happen if that regime went down, taking everything, “really existing socialism,” with it. And my question would be, OK, it’s a question. You know the old version of this question used to be what about Stalin, but it’s a little different now.

My problem is this: let’s look at it in human terms, OK? Just forget ideology. What has happened as a result of the materialization of the dreams of the so-called reformers and democrats in the Soviet Union? What has happened is what has happened in Poland, and worse: that the standard of living of ordinary people is going to collapse, that old people will be destitute, that children will be without health care, that the transportation system is collapsing, that there will be no food distribution by spring, that people will starve, that there is continuous ethnic conflict. Now, the Soviet system of prices and of raw material supplies were such that enormous quantities… that the supply system worked in a way which led to the waste of vast quantities of raw materials and semi-finished products. I mean vast quantities.

So the idea was to go in to work at the enterprise level to create incentives to create better accounting, a system of prices which would reflect the real value of these raw materials and not the fact that they could be replaced anytime you wanted because all you have to do is put an order in. It didn’t matter what you did with them. It [the reform] was focused on the enterprise, on profit incentives, and this loosening of the tight bonds on the enterprise, really did lead to a recrudescence of output. For instance, between 1986 and 88 there was a 17% increase in housing production in the Soviet Union. There was a 30% increase in overall production. The production, the economy, accelerated in the period 1986-88. In those three years the economy accelerated, but as I said, there were two stages of perestroika. There was a stage of perestroika where the effects were quite beneficial, where it was clear that perestroika and glasnost were aiming to energize and develop andfree and move forward the Soviet Union.

As a friend of mine said, the only way to ensure the social development of the Soviet Union is to undertake these reforms, but there was another stage, a second stage beginning in late 1988 to, obviously, the end of 1991, where the forces that were unleashed utilized the reform program to destroy socialism, clearly to destroy socialism, and Mr. Gorbachev was either helpless before that or a willing apprentice of that process. I could not pretend to pronounce which of those was the case. It’s very difficult to say.

On the other hand, I really don’t know how anybody in his right mind could have conceived of the notion that the way forward for the Soviet Union—and this was the quintessential statement of perestroika by the principle Soviet leaders in the mid-1980s—the way for the Soviet Union was to integrate the Soviet Union into the world economy. I mean to an economist with any degree of sophistication and critical approach, that is sheer unadulterated madness. It’s like saying that the North American free trade agreement will lead to real economic development in Mexico. It’s absurd. I mean we know what those processes are. How can a much weaker, less industrialized Soviet Union hope to stand up against the economic forces arrayed against it and capable of penetrating it, once it declares its intention to integrate itself into the world economy? When I heard that, I said, “It’s all over, boys. These people don’t know that they’re doing,” and indeed, listening to Soviet economists as I did when I was still teaching in Paris, and meeting with some of these people, until 1989, I got the impression of two things: they had not the least actual understanding of what was going on in the West, and that their theoretical conceptions were taken out of a handbook by Voltaire making fun of the French aristocracy.

Transcript produced by Youtube “auto-caption” speech recognition software, corrected and edited by blog author, Dennis Riches.

Notes

[i] Davis Guggenheim (Director), Al Gore (Writer), “An Inconvenient Truth,” Paramount Classics, 2006.

[ii] Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life (Verso, 2015), 267-268. “What is really needed is proper planning of available resources globally, plus a drive, through public investment, to develop new technologies that could work… and, of course, a shift out of fossil fuels into renewables. Also, it is not just a problem of carbon and other gas emissions, but of cleaning up the environment, which is already damaged. All these tasks require public control and ownership of the energy and transport industries and public investment in the environment for the public good.”

[iii] Sean Gervasi, “Western Intervention in the USSR,” Covert Action Information Bulletin No. 39, Winter 1991-92, 4-9.

[iv] Sean Gervasi, “Why Is NATO In Yugoslavia?” Global Research, September 9, 2001,https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-is-nato-in-yugoslavia/21008. This paper was presented by Sean Gervasi at The Conference on the Enlargement of NATO in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, Prague, January 13-14, 1996.

[v] Gary Wilson, “Economist Exposed U.S.-German Role in Balkans,” Workers World News Service, Aug. 29, 1996, https://www.workers.org/ww/1997/gervasi.html. The short biography written here borrowed some wording and information from this obituary published by Workers World News Service.

[vi] Helen Thomas, “Reagan approves tough strategy with Soviets,” United Press International (UPI), May 21, 1982, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/05/21/Reagan-approves-tough-strategy-with-Soviets/7761390801600/.

[vii] Richard Halloran, “Pentagon Draws up First Strategy for Fighting a Long Nuclear War,” The New York Times, May 5, 1982, http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/30/world/pentagon-draws-up-first-strategy-for-fighting-a-long-nuclear-war.html?pagewanted=all.

The reference appears to be to this article. The dates 1984-1988 may appear to be an error because the report referred to was written in 1982. However, the Defense Guidelines were focused on plans for the future, fiscal years of 1984-1988.

[viii] David Ignatius, “Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups,” The Washington Post, September 22, 1991, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/09/22/innocence-abroad-the-new-world-of-spyless-coups/92bb989a-de6e-4bb8-99b9-462c76b59a16/?utm_term=.e9976e81e6d1.

[ix] As we know from the perspective of 2017, the normalization of such interventions continued shamelessly, going from a bad habit to a deranged addiction. The political establishment in America now resorts to economic warfare, violence and military intervention as the solutions for every problem in international relations.

All images, except the featured, in this article are from the author.

Video: Pfizer’s “Secret” Report on the COVID Vaccine. Beyond Manslaughter. The Evidence Is Overwhelming. The Vaccine Should be Immediately Withdrawn Worldwide

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 18, 2023

This confidential Pfizer Report provides data on deaths and adverse events recorded by Pfizer from the outset of the vaccine project in December 2020 to the end of February 2021, namely a very short period (at most two and a half months). The data from mid-December 2020 to the end of February 2021 unequivocally confirms “Manslaughter”. Based on the evidence, Pfizer had the responsibility to immediately cancel and withdraw the “vaccine”.

Nazis’ Children at the World Economic Forum

By Rodney Atkinson, January 18, 2023

Among those attending this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos are Chrystia Freeland, (Deputy Prime Minister of Canada and avid supporter of the Ukrainian State) Ursula von der Leyen and of course the founder of the WEF Klaus Schwab who have in common that their fathers or grandfathers were leading Nazis.

Ukraine War Spills Over Into the Middle East

By Philip Giraldi, January 18, 2023

There is considerable hypocrisy in the US/European point of view as the US and NATO have been invading and regime changing governments in a number of countries since 9/11, including that of Ukraine in 2014.

“Punishing Vladimir Putin”: Duplicitous EU Bureaucrats Demand War Crimes Tribunal

By Kurt Nimmo, January 18, 2023

German Foreign Minister Anna Baerbock is nursing a fantasy. She believes one day Vladimir Putin will be hauled into The Hague and tried for war crimes. Her dream is to punish Putin for fumigating Nazis in Ukraine.

Pottery, Poetry, and Protest: “Hear Me Now” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Prof. Sam Ben-Meir, January 18, 2023

This is an extraordinary exhibition, the significance of which can hardly be overstated. One can perceive these ceramics fashioned by the hands of slaves, as the material incarnation of human freedom: on one hand, they are the work of men in bondage and yet they stand witness to an inwardness, a human core that cannot be enslaved.

‘Fragmented World’ Sleepwalks Into World War III

By Pepe Escobar, January 18, 2023

The self-appointed Davos “elites” are afraid. So afraid. At this week’s World Economic Forum meetings, mastermind Klaus Schwab – displaying his trademark Bond villain act – carped over and over again about a categorical imperative: we need “Cooperation in a Fragmented World”.

Canadian Academics for COVID Ethics

By Canadian Academics for COVID Ethics, January 18, 2023

Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics (CA4CE) is a group of researchers and scholars from fields spanning the natural and social sciences and humanities. We are greatly concerned about the mismanagement of the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic response in Canada and around the world. We are publicly funded experts trained in thinking through problems, integrating knowledge, and sharing our findings in written and spoken form. Therefore, it is our duty to raise these concerns.

How Facebook Removed “True Content” for Pfizer and the White House

By Igor Chudov, January 18, 2023

Facebook willingly and enthusiastically participated in a cruel, dishonest, manipulative scheme that ended up with millions affected by Covid vaccines. Was it done “for the good of humanity”? Was it an honest mistake? It was NOT an honest mistake.

A Picture of Global Complicity: Aiding Myanmar’s Military Regime

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, January 18, 2023

International relations remains the sum game of vast hypocrisies, a patchwork of compromises and the compromised.  Every moral condemnation of a regime’s conduct is bound to be shown up as an exercise in double standards, often implicating the accusers.  In the case of the military regime in Myanmar, double standards are not only modish but expected.

After COVID Vaccine Rolled Out, the FAA Tacitly Admitted that Pilots Electrocardiogram (EKG) Are No Longer Normal.

By Steve Kirsch, January 18, 2023

In the October 2022 version of the FAA Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners, the FAA quietly widened the EKG parameters beyond the normal range (from a PR max of .2 to unlimited). And they didn’t widen the range by a little. They widened it by a lot. It was done after the vaccine rollout.

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Among those attending this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos are Chrystia Freeland, (Deputy Prime Minister of Canada and avid supporter of the Ukrainian State) Ursula von der Leyen and of course the founder of the WEF Klaus Schwab who have in common that their fathers or grandfathers were leading Nazis.

The basis of Nazism and fascism is corporatism – that democracy-bypassing, unholy alliance between right wing big business and left wing socialism, both sustained by and exploiting the totalitarian State. The biggest parade of that combination today is the “World Economic Forum” and its annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. How politicised this “economic” forum has become can be seen in the above image. And how disreputable in other ways is reported here:.

The “Stakeholder Capitalism” which Schwab promotes is of course classic corporatism which Schwab sees as a positive aspect of “the Chinese model”. He describes China as 

“a very attractive model for quite a number of countries” because like all corporatist fascists Schwab wants to enforce “Order” on the world:

“If no one power can enforce order, our world will suffer from a ‘global order deficit.‘

Dictators and imperialists always seek “Order” (their own) while democrats seek international competition, a myriad forms of freedom and development daily challenging economic and political power with individuals and countries seeking advancement as an example for others. Only through competition between alternatives can truth be revealed and prosperity promoted.

But the Nazi and fascist traditions persist, nurtured by the European Union, founded as it was by leading Nazis and Fascists and latterly by NATO in which, post 1945, many leading roles are filled by “former” Nazis. Werner von Braun became the Head of NASA, Kurt Waldheim became the Secretary General of the UN, Walter Hallstein became the first President of the European Union (EEC), Adolf Heusinger became NATO chief of Staff, Hans Globke became State Secretary under Adenauer – to mention but a few. (see my book And into the Fire https://www.amazon.com/and-into-the-fire-ebook/dp/b00e68o9sg)

But what of the trio of Nazis children/grandchildren who are attending this year’s WEF meeting in Davos?

Chrystia Freeland, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister sits on WEF’s board of trustees and is a fanatical Ukrainian apologist identifying with extreme Ukrainian Nationalists. Her grandfather was a  Jew hating Nazi and editor of the fascist Polish newspaper Krakivski Visti which operated under the notorious rule of Hans Frank (executed after the war). Expropriated from a Jewish owner under Nazi law, Krakivski Visti published an editorial on 6th November 1941 which said:

“There is not a single Jew left in Kiev today, while there were 350,000 under the Bolsheviks, the Jews “got their comeuppance.”(referring to the mass shooting of Kiev’s Jewish population at Babi Yar. In just two days, Sept. 29-30, 1941, a total of 33,771 people were murdered.)

No wonder Freeland uncritically supports the politically ugly State of Ukraine today.

Klaus Schwab the Dr Strangelove figure who dresses in quasi masonic regalia and boasts of controlling governments through his “graduates” – ie attendees at his World Economic Forum conferences. A world hegemonist promoting corporatist power, transhumanism, technocratic elites, the end of private property and the end of nations.

No wonder – since his father Eugen Schwab headed the Nazi supporting Swiss engineering firm Escher Wyss which used slave labour (it maintained a small special camp for forced labourers on the factory premises) and helped to produce heavy water for the Nazis nuclear programme in Norsk Hydro’s plant in Norway. Despite British and Norwegian resistance raids on the plant (depicted in the film The Heroes of Telemark!) Escher Wyss’s technology came close to providing Hitler with a war winning nuclear bomb. Escher Wyss was praised personally by Adolf Hitler and was designated a “National Socialist Model Company”. 

Schwab became a director of the merged Sulzer Escher Wyss in the mid 1960s when the firm was involved with the supply of nuclear technology for the development of South Africa’s nuclear weapon.

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission has a slightly less pernicious connection to the Nazi period (and ironically Ukraine). Her grandfather Carl Albrecht a Bremen Cotton trader who spoke Russian, worked for the Nazi Ministry of Foreign Affairs and arranged the economic aspects of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939. Once Germany invaded the Soviet Union, her grandfather was important for the Foreign Ministry. Carl Albrecht was mainly active in Ukrainian matters from 1941 to 1943 – at the height of Nazi and Ukrainian Nationalists atrocities in Ukraine.

RE-SETTING A DISASTER

Addressing his WEF Schwab boasts:

“Let’s also be clear: The future is not just happening. The future is built by us – a powerful community as you here in this room. We have the means to improve the state of the world, but two conditions are necessary. The first one is that we act all as stakeholders of larger communities, that we serve not only our self-interest, but we serve the community. That’s what we call ‘stakeholder responsibility’. And second, that we collaborate. This is the reason why you find many opportunities here during the meeting to engage in very action- and impact-oriented initiatives to make progress related to specific issues on the global agenda.”

The point about the “global agenda” is that its proponents are unconstrained by public discussion and election to parliament or the messy business of offering a manifesto to the peoples of nations. A few people organise and summarise the discussions and expect their “graduates” to install their conclusions in Government programmes. Schwab does not even bother with the UN’s legislative dictates to Government. His people work inside those governments and inside the large corporations which lobby them.

That is corporatism. That explains the mess the world is in. Schwab’s “Great Re-set” is no more than perpetuating the power structures which brought about the chaos, the debt crisis, the pandemic and its COVID dictatorship and excess deaths, the powerlessness of parliaments and the road to world war.

In other words it is not a world solution but re-setting a world disaster.

*

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And Into The Fire

Fascist elements in post war Europe and the development of the European Union

By Rodney Atkinson

With contributions from William Dorich and Edward Spalton

Publisher: ‎ GM Books; 1st edition (July 25, 2013)
Publication date: ‎ July 25, 2013
Print length: ‎ 164 pages

Click here to view this and other titles by Rodney Atkinson.

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In spite of an overwhelming flood of disinformation coming from the Western mainstream media and governments, there continue to be obviously widely divergent views on the current war between Ukraine and Russia. The official and media supported narrative is that Moscow attacked its neighbor in violation of “rule based” principles of international relations, whereby an attack on any nation by a neighbor with the intent to seize territory is always and unambiguously wrong. That line of thinking, summed up in the media by the endlessly repeated phrase “Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression” has provided justification for the US/NATO intervention to support the Volodymyr Zelensky government’s effort to fight back against the Russians. It has also fed into the line that Ukraine and its supporters are standing up for “freedom,” “democracy” and even “good against evil.”

Flipping the argument to the Russian point of view, the Kremlin has argued that it has repeatedly sought to negotiate a settlement with Ukraine based on two fundamental issues that it claims threaten its own national security and identity.

First is the failure of Ukraine to comply with the Minsk Accords of 2014-5 which conceded a large measure of autonomy to the Donbas region, an area indisputably inhabited by ethnic Russians, as is Crimea.

Since that agreement however, Ukrainian militias and other armed elements have been using artillery to shell the Donbas, killing an estimated 15,000 mostly Russian residents. Second, Russia has balked at plans for NATO to offer membership to Ukraine, which would place a possibly superior hostile military alliance at its doorstep.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has observed that the issues were both negotiable and that Zelensky only had to agree to maintain his country as “neutral,” i.e. not linked to any military alliance. Reportedly it was the United States and Britain that pushed Ukraine into rejecting any and all of the Russian demands in a bid to initiate a war of attrition using Ukrainian lives to destabilize Putin’s government and reduce its ability to oppose US and Western dominance.

There is considerable hypocrisy in the US/European point of view as the US and NATO have been invading and regime changing governments in a number of countries since 9/11, including that of Ukraine in 2014. Some critics of the fighting consider the Russian demands to be legitimate in that Putin has laid down very clear markers and is genuinely protective of his country’s security, though one might agree that it is a step too far to embrace any armed attack by one country on another unless there is a clear and imminent threat. But in this case, the escalating involvement of the US and NATO in the fighting is an extremely dangerous development because it could easily escalate the conflict and turn it into what might become a devastating nuclear exchange. One would like to see a truce initiated to stop the fighting right now followed by serious negotiations to come to a settlement of the territorial dispute. But, of course, the United States, which has provided Zelensky with more than $100 billion in aid, has made it clear that it is not interested in a negotiated settlement unless Putin is willing as a confidence building first step to surrender all occupied Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. In other words, he must surrender.

Concerns that the fighting in Ukraine might somehow involve more players and could become regional and even grow beyond that point seem to be borne out by the content of a New York Times article that appeared recently. It is entitled U.S. Scrambles to Stop Iran From Providing Drones for Russia and subtitled “As the war in Ukraine grinds on, some officials have become convinced that Iran and Russia are building a new alliance of convenience.” Now bear in mind that anything appearing in a major American news outlet is likely to be a placement or leak by the US government itself. The Times sources the report to “…interviews in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, a range of intelligence, military and national security officials [who] have described an expanding US program that aims to choke off Iran’s ability to manufacture the drones, make it harder for the Russians to launch the unmanned ‘kamikaze’ aircraft and — if all else fails — to provide the Ukrainians with the defenses necessary to shoot them out of the sky.”

All of that means that the sources of the information are unnamed and should be consider anonymous and therefore not verifiable, but the article is intriguing nevertheless. Its lead paragraph states “The Biden administration has embarked on a broad effort to halt Iran’s ability to produce and deliver drones to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine, an endeavor that has echoes of its yearslong program to cut off Tehran’s access to nuclear technology.”

So, it would appear that the proxy war against Russia has now entered the Middle East, more specifically Iran, where the United States and Israel have long engaged in assassinations of scientists and technicians as well as sabotage of facilities and introduction of cyberattack “worms” (Stuxnet) into computer operating systems at research facilities. Indeed, the article states that Israel and the US have been engaging in discussions regarding exactly how to proceed in targeting the Iranian drone production. On December 22^nd, a secure video meeting took place between Israel’s top national security, military and intelligence officials and Jake Sullivan, the Biden Administration’s national security adviser. The participants “discussed Iran’s growing military relationship with Russia, including the transfer of weapons the Kremlin is deploying against Ukraine, targeting its civilian infrastructure and Russia’s provision of military technology to Iran in return.”

There certainly is a large measure of hypocrisy clearly evident in Washington’s efforts to stop Iran’s sale of weapons to Russia while the US is simultaneously giving many billions of dollars-worth of weapons to Ukraine. Initial US efforts to reduce the alleged impact of the drones on the battlefield have up until now focused on blocking the sale or distribution of the non-Iranian produced technology that goes into the construction of the drones. The US military has, as well, provided Ukraine with intelligence that would enable counter-strikes on the Russian launch sites. But these efforts have only been partially successful as the electronic components being used are widely available or can be adapted employing “dual use” components if one source of supply is cut off. Also, those crafty Russians have apparently learned to change launch sites frequently as the drones and the trucks they are mounted on are very mobile.

But the Times article raises more questions than it answers. For example, it appears that the Iranians have sold to the Russians something like 1,700 drones and as of mid-December an estimated 300 of them have been used, hardly a game changer in the type of fighting taking place in Ukraine, particularly as their use in a so-called kamikaze role means that they strike their target detonating an explosive attached to the drone. That means they are destroyed in one use. And there have also been reports of supply chain problems, so it is not clear how many of the drones have actually been delivered. And the Russians certainly have their own drone factories as part of their highly sophisticated arms industry, so it is not like they were desperate for assistance from Iran in spite of claims to that effect in the US media.

To be sure, Iran has an active drone program and Iranian drones have been used in attacks directed against US military bases in Syria as well as against Saudi Arabian refineries. The “Shahed” drones are cheap and simple but effective and it is believed that Iran can mass produce them, if necessary, as long as it can continue to obtain the necessary components. It might be said that they constitute a “poor man’s” choice of weapon to use against much more powerful and sophisticated enemies like the United States or Israel.

Be that as it may, there is something that makes no sense about the Biden Administration’s sudden desire to take on Iran in a more active way, with Israel as a partner, using the Ukraine war and Russia as an excuse.

Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have walked away from renewing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear monitoring agreement with Iran even though Tehran was prepared to make concessions and it is in the US national security interest to have such an agreement in place. Newly reinstalled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already addressed the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and called for a “close alignment” with Washington to work aggressively against Iran. A series of meetings between Israeli and US intelligence and national security personnel are now scheduled to be held in January. And, of course, the Biden State Department and National Security agencies are full of advocates for a hard line vis-à-vis Iran, Russia and now even China. Most of them are also outspoken Zionists, many with close ties to Benjamin Netanyahu, which makes them partial to Israeli interests.

Iran, which does not actually threaten either the US or any identifiable strategic interests of Washington, is already on the receiving end of virtually every sanction imaginable put in place over more than forty years by successive American presidents. And now, because Iran is friendly with Russia and supplying that country with weapons that are surely welcome but unlikely to change the course of the war, the US is again preparing to make and take on yet another enemy, possibly with Israeli clandestine or even open help. One wonders nevertheless how much of the posturing by the White House is real and how much of it is fake. Since the United States is now approaching a $1 trillion defense budget for 2023, somebody has to figure out a way to both justify the expenditure while also making all that money politically useful by telling the public that the spending is making Americans “safe.” And what could be better than using all those shiny new weapons on a few “enemies” here and there, guaranteeing that the defense contractors will get even richer and will kick back even more to the very politicians who are the source of the largesse. Could it all be as simple as that?

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Early in 2021 the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology accepted an undisclosed amount of money from the US government (HHS WH) as part of the COVID-19 Community Corps Program. From that point forward, ACOG broke with traditional practice on experimental and and novel therapies being contraindicated, and with federal dollars in hand, moved to a wholesale endorsement of COVID-19 vaccination with no assurances on short or long-term safety. Throughout the campaign, enthusiasm for vaccination was tepid among gravid women with <20% at any time having accepted a vaccine. However, the sharpest decline in rates of uptake occurred in the gravid and by summer of 2022, fewer than 2% were getting vaccinated.

Click here to enlarge

There were no large scale randomized, placebo-controlled double blind clinical trials demonstrating safety in pregnant women. The non-randomized literature was prone to financial conflict-of-interest bias since the doctors and editors were likely affiliated with ACOG, and influenced by the government money and aspiration to promote mass vaccination. Thus, as a clinical scientist, my concern is only the neutral papers on safety were being written and published. A paper by Dick et al, caught my attention by reporting a nearly fourfold post-partum hemorrhage rate among those triple compared to double vaccinated. One could imagine how large the magnitude would have been compared to unvaccinated where hemostasis is not impaired.

Dick A, Rosenbloom JI, Karavani G, Gutman-Ido E, Lessans N, Chill HH. Safety of third SARS-CoV-2 vaccine (booster dose) during pregnancy. Am J Obstet Gynecol MFM. 2022 Jul;4(4):100637. doi: 10.1016/j.ajogmf.2022.100637. Epub 2022 Apr 7. PMID: 35398583; PMCID: PMC8988438.

In 2021, McCullough and Stricker published that because of the known dangerous mechanism of action of COVID-19 vaccination and the lack of any assurances on maternal-fetal safety, that all of the products are considered pregnancy category X which means they should not be used. This message got out to the community and rates of vaccination have progressively winnowed. As we sit here today, we should understand that ACOG and the OB/GYN community is compromised and thereby putting the maternal-fetal health of women at risk by promoting COVID-19 vaccination. Under no circumstances should a woman of childbearing potential or gravid should receive a COVID-19 vaccine. It is absolutely contraindicated.

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Sources

Dick A, Rosenbloom JI, Karavani G, Gutman-Ido E, Lessans N, Chill HH. Safety of third SARS-CoV-2 vaccine (booster dose) during pregnancy. Am J Obstet Gynecol MFM. 2022 Jul;4(4):100637. doi: 10.1016/j.ajogmf.2022.100637. Epub 2022 Apr 7. PMID: 35398583; PMCID: PMC8988438.

McCullough PA Lack of Compelling Safety data for mRNA COVID Vaccines in Pregnant Women, 2021

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Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics (CA4CE) is a group of researchers and scholars from fields spanning the natural and social sciences and humanities. We are greatly concerned about the mismanagement of the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic response in Canada and around the world. We are publicly funded experts trained in thinking through problems, integrating knowledge, and sharing our findings in written and spoken form. Therefore, it is our duty to raise these concerns.

Please note that the following publications and media appearances do not necessarily represent CA4CE-wide consensus and should always be attributed to the named author(s) or speaker(s).

Completed Group Publications

• Post-secondary COVID-19 policies in Canada must end. Troy Media, 27 September 2022. In this commentary, we reiterate the ineffectiveness and outright absurdity of the “health & safety” policies for COVID-19 on Canadian post-secondary campuses. We extend the argument of the preceding open letter to mask mandates and natural immunity. References for scientific claims made include articles in Nature, Environmental Research and Public Health, and the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, which are available upon request.
• Re: Post-secondary COVID-19 vaccination policies in Canada must end now. Open letter, 27 August 2022. Letter to our faculty colleagues, campus unions, and college and university administrators reminding them of worker rights to decline coerced medical treatments as well as updated public health recommendations that make campus COVID-19 vaccination policies unfounded and irrational. For references, see Vaccination mandates on post-secondary campuses have run their course and must never return and Dr. Moore’s press conferences.
• COVID-19 vaccination policies at post-secondary institutions in Ontario. Open letter, 9 February 2022. Letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, copied to Ministers Dunlop (Colleges and Universities) and Elliott (Health) and Drs. Moore (Chief Medical Officer of Health) and Gardner (Chair, Council of Ontario MOHs), requesting the immediate removal of campus vaccination policies in light of recent acknowledgements that the COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent virus transmission.
• Another year of chaos at Ontario’s universities and colleges. Troy Media, 23 December 2021. In this article, we discuss the futile attempts at the province’s higher-education institutions to return to a “normal” winter 2022 semester. We are concerned about the push for total vaccination of students and the impact of campus mandates on employees like ourselves.
• Five facts all parents should know about the mRNA vaccines. Troy Media, 24 November 2021. In this article, we remind parents that the available mRNA injections are experimental, genetic-based therapeutics not comparable to traditional childhood vaccines; that the under-powered safety trials were not designed to detect serious side effects such as myocarditis; and that children are at statistically zero risk from COVID-19. Therefore, applying an oft-cited “abundance of caution”, we should not be vaccinating children, youth, or any other sensitive group.
• Hands off our children! Open letter, 6 November 2021. Letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford emphasizing the unfavourable benefit-risk ratio of COVID-19 “vaccines” for children, the minimal contribution of young people to the spread of SARS-CoV-2, and the existence of safe and effective drugs—written in response to a recent science brief by the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table titled “Behavioural Science-Informed Strategies for Increasing COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake in Children and Youth”.
• Mandatory experimental shots – Canadians are being tricked, not treated. TrialSiteNews, opinion article, 1 November 2021. Commentary on the experimental nature, unproven safety, and failing efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, co-authored with members of the Canadian Covid Care Alliance. Full text also available here.
• Response: COVID-19 vaccine mandates for Ontario’s hospital workers. United Health Care Workers of Ontario, 28 October 2021. Open letter to Premier Doug Ford providing scientific evidence supporting the right of health care workers to make an informed decision about their own health.
• The problems with The Canadian Press – and those who spread its message. Exclusive to OpEdNews, 15 October 2021. Rebuttal of a Canadian Press article that perpetuates misinformation about early treatment options for COVID-19 and uncritically reports on the silencing of an independent physician.
• COVID Policies and Universities. Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, Newsletter No. 90, 10 October 2021. Special issue containing several contributions by CA4CE members.
• The Mandates, Restrictions and Propaganda: The Death Knell of Universities? Global Research – Centre for Research on Globalization, 7 October 2021. Polemic arising from a group email thread about the failure of academics, faculty associations, and university leadership to support critical dialogue about the mishandling of the corona crisis.
• The Greater Toronto Declaration. Petition, 5 October 2021. We ask governments and public health officials to re-focus the global pandemic response on medical treatment options for the ill, encourage broader scientific and public discourse, and restore all suspended democratic processes and civil liberties.
• Vaccine concerns weighed against natural immunity. Ontario Civil Liberties Association, 21 September 2021. Informational summary of the state-of-the-science on natural immunity against COVID-19 compared to the limited protection from the vaccines, written for a lay audience.
• Open Letter to Public Health Officers. Ontario Civil Liberties Association, 13 September 2021. Call for the resignation of all medical officers of health in Ontario, due to their unfounded, ill-advised, and unconstitutional emergency orders.
• A Letter to the Vaccinated. Ontario Civil Liberties Association, 30 August 2021. Open letter denouncing the transient nature of ‘fully vaccinated’ status and the growing rift in society.
• No, COVID-19 vaccine passports and mandatory vaccination do not ‘protect the health and safety of Canadians’. Running title “Mandatory vaccination for COVID has no rational basis”. Toronto Sun, 24 August 2021. Op-ed about the flawed logic of vaccine mandates given unproven impact on transmission, plus disregard for natural immunity after recovery.
• A Letter to the Unvaccinated. Ontario Civil Liberties Association, 2 August 2021. Open letter supporting the vaccine-hesitant in their decision.
• It’s time to follow the scientific method — and re-evaluate Canada’s COVID approach. Toronto Sun, 28 June 2021. Op-ed calling for updated science and risk/benefit analysis.

Media Appearances Related to CA4CE

Some CA4CE members have published written work and photography in the recently created Toronto Moon. The Moon is not formally associated with CA4CE.

• Drs. Julien Beillard, Jeff Graham, and Claus Rinner on The Amity Project Podcast with Curtis Heinen (multiple video snippets extracted from each interview, ca. 20 June to 25 July 2022).
• Dr. Jeff Graham on the The Richard Syrett Show, News Talk Sauga 960 AM, 1 April 2022 (starting at 0:47:00 into the recording).
• Dr. Daphene Francis in an Interview with Pastor Michael Thiessen, Liberty Coalition Canada, published 15 December 2021.
• Dr. Claus Rinner in an Interview with Pastor Michael Thiessen, Liberty Coalition Canada, published 10 November 2021.
• Dr. Claus Rinner on the The Richard Syrett Show, News Talk Sauga 960 AM, 3 November 2021 (starting at 0:12:30 into the recording).
• Dr. Claudia Chaufan in Covid: la guerra de la tiranía sanitaria contra la ivermectina y otros tratamientos, interview with La Prensa, Argentina, 26 September 2021 (Spanish).
• Dr. Anton de Ruiter on the The Richard Syrett Show, News Talk Sauga 960 AM, 14 September 2021 (starting at 1:02:00 into the recording).
• Drs. Angela Durante and Laurent Leduc in an Interview with Pastor Michael Thiessen, Liberty Coalition Canada, published 8 September 2021.
• Dr. Angela Durante on the The Richard Syrett Show, News Talk Sauga 960 AM, 2 September 2021 (starting at 1:00:00 into the recording).
• Dr. Claus Rinner in Carta de académicos a los no vacunados, interview with La Prensa, Argentina, 15 August 2021 (Spanish). Translated to English by People News Chronicle, 18 August 2021.

Member Platforms and Individual Work

• Dr. Angela Durante’s video channel, Too Cool for School
• Dr. Douglas Farrow’s blog, Desiring a Better Country
• Dr. Maximilian Forte’s blog, ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY
• Dr. Jeffrey Graham’s video channel, FREEDOM-WALKS
• Dr. Anthony J. Hall’s GlobalResearch archive
• Dr. Daniel Lemire’s GETTR account
• Dr. Denis Rancourt’s web site and Twitter account
• Dr. Claus Rinner’s digital presence
• Dr. Travis D. Smith’s Convivium author page
• Dr. Don Welsh’s Twitter account

Seminal Essays, Letters, and Media Appearances by Canadian Academics

• Canada’s freedom truckers inspire (some) academics to write in solidarity and support. The Toronto Moon, 4 February 2022.
• Academics Breaking the COVID Spell by Dr. Douglas Farrow, The Epoch Times, 26 November 2021.
• Why vaccine mandates are in legal trouble by Drs. Dionne Pohler and Rafael Gomez, The Line, 23 November 2021.
• Till We Have Faces: An Analysis of COVID-19 and Public Policy by Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh, Canadian Covid Care Alliance, 22 November 2021.
• Vaccine Mandates: Civil Liberties Trampled by a Panicked Mob by Dr. William McNally, C2C Journal, 8 November 2021.
• Urgent appeal by COVID-19 vaccine survivor Gordon Polevoy asking Ontario Premier Doug Ford to stop new post-secondary campus vaccination mandates. Mr. Polevoy was injured by the mRNA injection that he took due to his workplace vaccination mandate. The acceptances of his adverse event report, long-term disability claim, and WSIB file cannot make up for a destroyed career and constant agony from the neurological injury he suffers.
• Letter to University of Toronto President Dr. Meric Gertler by Betty’s Law, Counsel for Justice and Equity, regarding a group application to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario about breaches of basic rights in the context of the university’s vaccination mandate. See also March 21, 2022 – PRESS RELEASE: The University of Toronto continues to breach the rights of staff, faculty and students under the Ontario Human Rights Act as well as LifeSite News’ report University of Toronto drops vaccine mandate after being hit with human rights complaint, The Epoch Times article University of Toronto Drops Vaccine Mandate After Staff, Students File Human Rights Complaint, and a mention in the National Post’s commentary Canadians divided better than creepy conformity.
• Data scientist files internal appeal of Bank of Canada’s mandatory vaccination policy by Dr. Joseph Hickey (via Ontario Civil Liberties Association).
• Open letter to UW officials: Repeal the COVID vaccination and testing mandates by University of Waterloo professors Michael Palmer, Edward R. Vrscay, Richard Mann, Wayne Oldford, Samuel WK Wong, and Xiaosong Wang along with numerous University of Waterloo staff members, students, student parents, and alumni.
  See also other University of Waterloo correspondence and updates.
• Open Letter Regarding University Vaccination and Testing Mandates by University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University professors Daniel Smilek, David M. Haskell, William J. McNally, and Nikolai Kovalev (via Ontario Civil Liberties Association)
• A Plea Not to Deregister Laurier Students by Dr. David Haskell (via Ontario Civil Liberties Association)
• Open letter to the president of the University of Guelph by Dr. Byram Bridle (via Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms)
• Re: McMaster’s Vaccination Policy…A Good Faith Letter in Defense of Research Ethics and Human Dignity by Dr. Philip Britz-McKibbin (via Doctors for COVID Ethics)
• Letter to Ryerson regarding my rights by Dr. Paul Bali (scroll for letter or find PDF here)
• Request for accommodation with respect to the Bank of Canada’s COVID-19 Vaccination Policy by Dr. Joseph Hickey (via Ontario Civil Liberties Association)
• RE: Mandatory mRNA vaccine mandate for Alberta physicians by Dr. Eric Payne (via Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms)
• Vaccine Mandates are the Rehearsal, the Future will be Worse by Dr. David Millard Haskell, professor of religion and culture at Wilfrid Laurier University. Published 27 November 2021. Prof. Haskell is shown speaking at an event for students resisting coercion under campus vaccination policies across Ontario.
• Valentina Capurri: Canada imposing vaccine to ‘protect’ people will let her die without MS meds. Interview by Eva K. Bartlett, 16 October 2021.
• Ethics 101 – A Lesson in Courage and Integrity by Dr. Julie Ponesse, professor of ethics at Huron College, Western University. Published by Canadian Covid Care Alliance, 7 September 2021. Prof. Ponesse received her letter of termination a few days later, just before the start of an interview with Bright Light News, and continues to fight unethical vaccine mandates, e.g. in a recent speech at the Brownstone Institute.
• Hatred towards the unvaccinated is a result of continuing misinformation in the media about what COVID-19 vaccines can and cannot achieve by Drs. Steven Pelech, Julie Ponesse, and Claus Rinner on behalf of the Canadian Covid Care Alliance, 30 August 2021. Letter to the editor of the Toronto Star in response to hate speech against unvaccinated Canadians published on the newspaper’s front page.

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Today’s Twitter Files drop contains several notable pieces of evidence.

First, that lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry launched a ‘massive lobbying blitz to crush any effort to share patents/IP for new covid-related medicine,” according to The Intercept‘s Lee Fang. As part of this effort, lobbying group BIO “wrote to the newly elected Biden admin, demanding the U.S. gov sanction any country attempting to violate patent rights and create generic low cost covid medicine or vaccines.”

Of note, Pfizer and BioNTech raked in $37 billion in revenue in 2021 alone from the COVID-19 vaccine, while Moderna made $17.7 billion the same year (and has recently announced a plan to hike the price of the Covid-19 vaccine by approximately 400%).

BioNTech, which developed the Pfizer vaccine, “reached out to Twitter to request that Twitter directly censor users tweeting at them to ask for generic low cost vaccines.”

5. That brings us to Twitter. The global lobbying blitz includes direct pressure on social media. BioNTech, which developed Pfizer's vaccine, reached out to Twitter to request that Twitter directly censor users tweeting at them to ask for generic low cost vaccines. pic.twitter.com/6cVIRcUDZV

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 16, 2023

According to Fang, “Twitter’s reps responded quickly to the pharma request,” while “A lobbyist in Europe asked the content moderation team to monitor the accounts of Pfizer, AstraZeneca & of activist hashtags like #peoplesvaccine.”

Meanwhile, the “fake accounts” flagged by the pharmaceutical companies for action were real people – one of whom Fang spoke with on the phone.

8. It's not clear what actions Twitter ultimately took on this particular request. Several Twitter employees noted in subsequent messages that none of this activism constituted abuse. But the company continued monitoring tweets.

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 16, 2023

“For more than two years, a global movement has been speaking out against pharmaceutical greed and demanding that everyone, everywhere has the tools to combat pandemics,” said Maaza Seyoum, a campaigner for the People’s Vaccine Alliance. “Whatever nasty tricks companies and governments pull,” she continued, “we cannot and will not be silenced.”

Second, ‘Pfizer & Moderna’s lobbying group, BIO, fully funded a special content moderation campaign designed by a contractor called Public Good Projects (PGP), which worked w/Twitter to set content moderation rules around covid “misinformation.”‘ according to Fang.

BIO funded the PGP campaign, “Stronger,”  to the tune of $1.275 million. Its focus? Helping Twitter ‘create content moderation bots,’ selecting which public health accounts would be verified, and helping to crowdsource content takedowns.

Of note, the Moderna/Pfizer-funded campaign included regular emails to Twitter officals with takedown and verification requests.

“Here’s an example of those types of emails that went straight to Twitter’s lobbyists and content moderators. Many focused on @zerohedge, which was suspended.”

Fang includes a screencap of an email with two excel spreadsheets containing said requests.

13. Notably, this massive push to censor and label covid misinfo never applied to drug companies. When big pharma wildly exaggerated the risks of creating low-cost generic covid vaccines, Stronger did nothing. The rules applied only to critics of industry. https://t.co/FTzQsGKM9i

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 16, 2023

From Fang’s Intercept piece, below is one of the flagged tweets in question – which links to a ZeroHedge article aggregated from NakedCapitalism, and which logically posits; “if a vaccinated person and an unvaccinated person have roughly the same capacity to carry, shed and transmit the virus, particularly in its Delta form, what difference does implementing a vaccination passport actually make to the spread of the virus?”

"if a vaccinated person and an unvaccinated person have roughly the same capacity to carry, shed and transmit the virus, particularly in its Delta form, what difference does implementing a vaccination passport actually make to the spread of the virus?"https://t.co/HNiND8uInP

— Stephanie Seneff (@stephanieseneff) August 29, 2021

“To try and stifle digital dissent during a pandemic, when tweets and emails are some of the only forms of protest available to those locked in their homes, is deeply sinister,” said Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now.

More on one of the people behind this effort, courtesy of Twitter user @TexasLindsay

2. The woman advocating for the censorship of inconvenient truths at the behest of her funders rife with COI’s is Savannah Knell, MPH MSSP, the Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships at The Public Good Projects (PGP). pic.twitter.com/vkdUaAt5xQ

— TexasLindsay™ (@TexasLindsay_) January 16, 2023

4. Knell claims to have extensive experience in Public Health Comm. & Social Marketing. And aims to “largely focus on managing the development & execution of strategically targeted & tailored behavior change campaigns with an eye toward health equity.” pic.twitter.com/2N7yFsBGsn

— TexasLindsay™ (@TexasLindsay_) January 16, 2023

“To translate the above into layman’s terms she is a narrative enforcer. She’s funded by Big Pharma and aided by Big Brother to be the ministry of truth. She aims to create social norms by means of censorship and propaganda. She wants to tell you & I—how/what to say and think.”

Meanwhile, as this bullying progressed this was happening…

*PFIZER JUMPS AS MUCH AS 6.8% TO RECORD DEFYING MARKET ROUT

behold Pfizer McPfizerface pic.twitter.com/hCZwT0DAW6

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 26, 2021

Finally, as this latest ‘Twitter Files’ thread spreads across a holiday market, Elon Musk himself has opined on the efforts to bully the former Twitter executives into censoring ZeroHedge:

Zerohedge can be jerks at times, but they did nothing warranting suspension

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 16, 2023

We’ll take the ‘being jerks’ jab… isn’t that what the media is supposed to be?

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German Foreign Minister Anna Baerbock is nursing a fantasy. She believes one day Vladimir Putin will be hauled into The Hague and tried for war crimes. Her dream is to punish Putin for fumigating Nazis in Ukraine.

But there is a problem. Russia and Ukraine are not parties to the Rome statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC), thus the court does not have jurisdiction in those two countries. Ukraine tried to circumvent this by accepting ICC jurisdiction.

Russia removed itself from the ICC after the court declared the referendum-backed liberation of Crimea to be an occupation. The peninsula, for centuries part of Russia, was rife with Nazi psychopaths determined to find and kill ethnic Russians.

In Odesa along the coast of the Black Sea, Stepan Bandera worshippers burned people alive and beat others to death with metal pipes for the crime of their heritage and language spoken. No investigation or prosecution of the perpetrators followed.

Anna Baerbock would like to see this barbarism and sadistic mistreatment of largely defenseless civilians continue. She proposed a “new format” for the court, that is she would have the ICC set up a court in Ukraine and “derive its jurisdiction from Ukrainian criminal law.”

In short, the ICC would be working with ultranats and Nazis. Baerbock apparently does not see a contradiction.

“That would be different to tribunals under international law, such as those for the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia,” the AFP notes. “And while tribunals for Cambodia and Kosovo have used local laws, they were not able to try aggression between one state and another.”

Baerbock’s proposal is likely to hit a brick wall. The other option is to take the case to the United Nations, but that is also a dead end. Russia, as a permanent member of the Security Council, will undoubtedly veto any such move.

According to Baerbock’s fantasy,

A special tribunal would target Russia’s civilian and military leadership for ordering and overseeing the invasion of Ukraine, Baerbock said.

While the ICC could charge Russian soldiers and commanders on the ground, Baerbock said it was “important that the Russian leadership cannot claim immunity.”

Aggression was the “original crime that enabled all the other terrible crimes”.

Hypocrisy abounds, yet few seem to notice. Baerbock’s Germany was deeply involved in the effort to kill Afghans for the crime of attempting to end the occupation of their country. The Bundeswehr was told they didn’t have a combat mission in Afghanistan, but that was nothing more than a flimsy cover.

“US troops as well as the Bundeswehr and other allies not only supported war criminals on the ground, they also committed serious crimes themselves. None of the perpetrators was ever convicted in court for this,” Fabian Scheidler wrote for the Orinoco Tribune.

Germans under NATO command “bombed a mainly civilian trek… with over one hundred dead or seriously injured, including children. The proceedings against those primarily responsible, Colonel Georg Klein and Defense Minister Jung (CDU), ended with acquittals.”

The ICC is apparently fond of European and USG war criminals. Recall the USG shelling the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz.

“The attack, which was clearly a war crime according to different human rights organizations including the United Nations, killed at least 42 civilians, mostly medical staff members and patients,” teleSUR reported in 2016. “ The ‘punishments’ are largely administrative, such as letters of reprimand and no further promotion.”

Gregor Link writes for WSWS,

Back in 2009, WikiLeaks published an internal Bundeswehr (German army) field report on a massacre in the Afghan province of Kunduz, which resulted in the deaths of up to 142 people, including “children and adolescents.” The bombardment of two fuel trucks was the bloodiest military action by the modern Bundeswehr, and marked a turning point in German post-war history.

As we know, Julian Assange is now locked up in Belmarsh prison for the crime of revealing USG and European war crimes.

The German “leadership” was eager to enter the war against the CIA-created Taliban. The German political elite wanted to show they are back in the game of killing officially designated (and created) enemies. Peter Schwarz writes,

German imperialism did not want to be left out of this war for the re-division of the world. On 11 October 2001, four days after the start of American hostilities in Afghanistan, Chancellor Schröder announced a fundamental reorientation of German foreign policy to the Bundestag (federal parliament).

Amnesty International is more focused on Taliban war crimes and abuses than those committed by USG, UK, Australian, and NATO troops over the course of twenty years of war and occupation.

This is quite natural and to be expected, considering where Amnesty’s funding comes from: the UK Department for International Development, the USG State Department, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation (funded by the CIA).

Anna Baerbock is not alone. In December, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested the creation of a special court to prosecute the New Satan, Vladimir Putin. Politico reported the following on von der Leyen’s statement,

“Russia must pay for its horrific crimes, including for its crime of aggression against a sovereign state… This is why, while continuing to support the International Criminal Court, we are proposing to set up a specialized court, backed by the United Nations, to investigate and prosecute Russia’s crime of aggression.”

It should be noted, to put this in its proper perspective, von der Leyen lied about the number of dead, saying (minus evidence, of course) “more than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 Ukrainian military officers have been killed so far.” The claim was later removed from the official statement.

The ICC didn’t approve of von der Leyen’s proposal. Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, attempted to defend his turf. He said the ICC is capable of dealing with war crimes on its own, the Associated Press reported in early December.

The ICC will not prosecute USG, British, Australian, and German war crimes, but it will, minus the legal ability to do so, attempt to prosecute Putin and selected Russian officials. This is, of course, nothing if not an exercise in futility.

Do Anna Baerbock and Ursula von der Leyen actually believe Vladimir Putin, General Sergey Surovikin, Colonel General Andrei Serdyukov, Major General Yevgeny Nikiforov, Lieutenant General Sergei Yudin, and other military officers of the Russian military command will get on a plane and fly to the Netherlands to be prosecuted?

USG, NATO: Long Record of War Crimes

The NATO and USG use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium in the Iraqi cities of Fallujah, Basra, Samara, Baghdad, and Mosul is apparently not considered a war crime by the ICC. Habib Siddiqui writes,

The use of firebombs puts the US in breach of the 1980 Convention on Certain Chemical Weapons (CCW) and is a violation of the Geneva Protocol against the use of white phosphorous, “since its use causes indiscriminate and extreme injuries especially when deployed in an urban area.”

The US and NATO ignored the 1980 Protocol on Incendiary Weapons and the Chemical Weapons Convention when they used white phosphorus in the attack on Fallujah, Iraq. New Zealand Brig. Gen. Hugh McAslan admitted to using phosphorus munitions against Iraqis in Mosul.

For well over a century, the USG has avoided responsibility for a large number of war crimes.

The genocide of “Indians” in America by the USG in the 1800s was an act of fumigation to open the West for unfettered exploitation. “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” declared Colonel James W. Forsyth during the Wounded Knee massacre.

During the 1899 USG invasion of the Philippines, the order was given by General Jacob H. Smith to “kill everyone over ten.” American history books drastically undercounted the number of Filipinos killed during the invasion, occupation, and subsequent colonial rule. The actual number of dead was over 3 million.

No Gun Ri, Korea, 1950. The USG 7th Calvary massacred Korean refugees attempting to escape the war. The refugees

were machine-gunned, mass-executed, and strafed by planes. Children, the elderly, and the disabled were all killed by the Americans. Survivors were forced to hide under corpses. It’s thought over 400 refugees died at No Gun Ri alone… When the Army’s subsequent cover-up was finally revealed by the Associated Press in 1999, the Pentagon refused to accept any responsibility.

The USG occupation of Haiti. “In addition to executions and violence against unarmed combatants, the US Army and its Haitian auxiliaries (the gendarmerie) allegedly committed massive killings and acts of violence against the civilian population… These included summary executions, rapes, setting houses on fire after gathering their inhabitants inside them, lynchings, and torching civilians alive.”

In 1945, 2 million German Wehrmacht POWs were held in 19 camps, known as Rheinwiesenlager (Rhine meadow camps). The camps were in violation of the Geneva Conventions. “Prisoners mostly slept without shelter, exposed to the elements. Rations were generally between 1000 and 1550 calories per day. There was often little or no access to clean drinking water. Thousands died,” writes Colin Fraser for War History Online.

Eisenhower decided to circumvent the Conventions by classifying the captured Germans not as POWs, but rather as “disarmed enemy forces.” The Red Cross was prevented from visiting the camps.

Henry Kissinger, grotesquely characterized as an “elder statesman,” presided over the secret carpet bombing of Cambodia (600,000 civilians killed). This destabilized the Lon Nol government and made way for the massive atrocities of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The campaign of indiscriminate violence during the Vietnam War also resulted in the murder of 350,000 civilians in neighboring Laos.

Did China ever target a USG embassy? Not to my knowledge. However, the USG, in its violent effort to break up Yugoslavia (resulting in the states of Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro), bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three journalists and injuring 20 staff. It used its notorious JDAMs to accomplish this war crime.

“NATO claimed it was acting on information that the embassy was actually the headquarters of the Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement,” the National Interest reported in 2017.

This is an outright lie. Recall Clinton’s Secretary of State, William Cohen, declaring NATO and the USG had used “the most precise application of airpower in history.” NATO said targets were “carefully selected,” thus we should have no doubt the Chinese embassy was deliberately targeted.

The above is a small sample of the manifest war crimes and violations of international and humanitarian law committed by the USG and its NATO attack dog. The crimes are largely ignored and never cited when the propaganda media “objectively” discusses the unverified war crimes of Russia in Ukraine.

Of course, the double standard blather of German Foreign Minister Anna Baerbock and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will predictably come to naught.

In response to calls for a war crimes tribunal in the EU, Russia may hold war crimes tribunals of its own and showcase the disgusting crimes of Ukrainian ultranats and neo-Nazis, guilty of torturing, murdering, and attempting to ethnically cleanse any person daring to speak Russian, celebrate Russian cultural events, object to the war, establish an opposition party, or attend the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Russians have commenced an International Public Tribunal on Ukraine, initiated in April. The objective of the tribunal is to “collect data and prove the commission of war crimes by the Kiev regime, discrimination against its own citizens, persecution on linguistic, national and ideological grounds,” according to a report posted by the Center for Information Resilience.

In order to understand the goal of this organization, consider that it has “partnered” with the Institute for War & Peace, and in turn consider the Institute works with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED, doing what the CIA formerly did), the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. These are described as “strategic partners” and sponsors of “soft power,” working for regime change behind the scenes.

The corporate propaganda media will continue to omit the crimes committed by the USG and NATO while pointing out Russian war crimes that have little evidentiary standing.

As I said in a previous post, all warring parties commit war crimes, either intentionally or “collaterally.” However, the war crimes of the USG, going back more than a century, cast a large shadow over the finger-pointing of German Foreign Minister Anna Baerbock and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Unfortunately, that shadow will remain invisible to those indoctrinated by revisionist history and the deliberate omission of the manifest crimes committed by the USG and its NATO attack dog.

*

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Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

In 1919, South Carolina’s Charleston Museum acquired an unusually massive jar bearing the inscription “made at Stoney bluff; / for making dis old gin enuff / May 13 – 1859 – / Dave & / Baddler”. The following year another large, alkaline-glazed vessel came into the museum’s possession bearing the same date and names within its inscription. At the time little was known about South Carolina’s pre-war stoneware industry or the highly skilled enslaved labor that it relied on at every level of manufacturing. It would not be until 1930 that “Dave” was identified as the “might good” potter, David Drake. The unadorned elegance of Drake’s stoneware is at the heart of Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This is an extraordinary exhibition, the significance of which can hardly be overstated. One can perceive these ceramics fashioned by the hands of slaves, as the material incarnation of human freedom: on one hand, they are the work of men in bondage and yet they stand witness to an inwardness, a human core that cannot be enslaved. The exhibition includes, for example, a storage vessel that Drake produced in 1858 and inscribed with a couplet: “A very Large Jar which has 4 handles = / pack it full of fresh meats – then light candles –” Another states: “I made this Jar = for cash – / though its called = lucre Trash / Dave / Lm Aug. 22, 1857 / Dave”. Notice that Drake has signed his name not once but twice, and boldly affirms his role as both potter and poet.

Slaves were forbidden from learning to read and write, as part of the general priority to keep them mentally degraded, spiritually isolated, and unable to communicate with each other through the written word. Those caught violating the prohibition on literacy could be brutally whipped or worse; as one enslaved Georgian recalled: “if they caught you trying to write they would cut your finger off and if they caught you again they would cut your head off.” Given that Drake was known to be missing a leg, it is very possible that he too suffered grievously for some such transgression.

Each of Dave’s poetic inscriptions was in its way an act of resistance, a rebellious declaration of his humanity, and the independence of his mind. As G.W.F. Hegel observes, “through the rediscovery of himself by himself, the slave realizes that it is precisely in his work wherein he seemed to have only an alienated existence that he acquires a mind of his own.” Hegel’s celebrated analysis of the relationship between dominion and servitude in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) can shed light on the admittedly uncomfortable intersection between creativity and coercion that this exhibition forces us to confront. The master is defined by his power to command the labor of another and affirms himself through the appropriation and consumption of objects which he himself does not produce. Inevitably, he finds that he is in fact utterly dependent on the slave who labors for him. The same holds true for antebellum America where, as the historian Walter Johnson points out, enslaved artisans possessed expertise and know-how that slaveholders “might command or even claim as their own, but they could never fully understand.”

With no need to engage the natural world, his needs being satisfied immediately, the master proves his position to be non-dynamic, non-developmental and ultimately a dead end. Even his satisfaction must ultimately be fleeting because he has reserved for himself the complete negation of the object, and as the object disappears so must the gratification. In work, however, we see something quite different: desire is “… held in check, fleetingness staved off; in other words, work forms and shapes the thing.” What Hegel wants to say is that in working, the slave achieves something the master was unable to do: that is, in shaping and fashioning the object, the laborer imprints his consciousness upon it, such that it is no longer a dead thing confronting him, but an expression of his independence given objective form. Instead of the transient enjoyment that is the master’s portion, the laborer enjoys seeing his essential action preserved in the object, “which in this externality is seen by him to be the truth.”

Image: Inscription: “this jar is to Mr Segler who keeps the bar in orangeburg / for Mr Edwards a Gentle man — who formly kept / Mr thos bacons horses / April 21 1858” “when you fill this Jar with pork or beef / Scot will be there; to get a peace, – / Dave”.
This monumental storage jar—a masterwork by the enslaved African American potter and poet David Drake—reveals his unmatched technical facility and command of language. (By Dave (later recorded as David Drake) (American, ca. 1801–1870s) ; made at Stony Bluff Manufactory, Old Edgefield District, Sout, Stony Bluff Manufactory) (Source: The MET)

Perhaps the most important aspect of Drake’s pottery is, precisely, its truth. As elaborated by Alain Badiou, truth is the “general name that philosophy gives to… the productions in time and space of something that may, for solid reasons, assume to have a universal value.” In this sense, truth can be “a painting by Picasso, the Bolshevik Revolution, Romeo and Juliet, or the Pythagorean theorem.” The crucial point is that truths arise within the world, but always have an exceptional quality which makes them both unforeseeable, and irreducible to the given state of affairs or status quo. Hence, a truth is an “immanent exception,” and in precisely this sense we can understand the universal value of the truth that is embodied in the pottery of David Drake. When, in 1857, he inscribes the words: “I wonder where is all my relation / Friendship to all – and every nation,” he is bearing witness to his own experience, the enduring trauma of forced family separation, but also, in some sense, transcending it. Drake’s couplet pronounces the truth of the situation from which it emerged, the reality of slavery, while in and through that same operation it intervenes itself and breaches the established order.

Hear Me Now also includes several dozen nineteenth century ceramic objects from the Old Edgefield district, the most remarkable of which are face vessels, also referred to as “grotesques,” and “voodoo jugs.” These bizarre looking faces, with their exaggerated features, their bulging eyes, and bared teeth, have an unmistakable power, an intensity that cannot be grasped solely in terms of the so-called primitive, “aboriginal” or West African art from which they are thought to be derived. Many of them unquestionably convey a certain horror, a sense of man in extremis, literally stretched to the brink, but somehow maintain an element of whimsicality, and even levity – a kind gallows humor.

The exhibition concludes with contemporary works by artists such as Simone Leigh, Theaster Gates, Woody De Othello, and Adebunmi Gbadebo – contributions that attest in various ways to the continued relevance of the older stoneware. Which is just to say that the truth of what David Drake and the enslaved artisans of Old Edgefield produced has not been exhausted: it continues to exert a claim upon us, such that we remain beholden to the universal value of their achievement, and the truth of their exceptionality.

*

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Sam Ben-Meir is an assistant adjunct professor of philosophy at City University of New York, College of Technology. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Why are so many people worried about the World Economic Forum?

Every few seconds the trending Twitter hashtags #NoNewWorldOrder, #ResistTheWEF, #WEFIsEvil, #Anti-WorldEconomicForum, and #WEFPuppets echo citizen concern.

These forebodings from ordinary people are signalling danger for our world.

Little wonder. The WEF, while failing to address the major problems facing humanity, is normalizing our minds to the Brave New World of centralized financial control and a transhuman makeover.

This quest to redesign humanity and its future is being carried out through a directed influence on our very perception of what is right, real, and true.

Understanding this surreptitious thought control will equip us to recognize and resist the WEF’s disturbing rise to functionally worthless power.

Introduction:  What has the World Economic Forum actually achieved to help humanity?

Since 1971, elite thought-leaders have gathered in Davos, Switzerland to share ideas about redesigning the world through new values and new data technologies.

Yet the WEF has failed to take effective action to reverse the three most destructive policies currently harming humanity:

• Failure to transition the $5.9 trillion in annual global fossil fuel subsidies to renewable energy (cited by the IMF for 2020[i]);
• Unscrupulous failure to challenge the coordinated suppression of proven early Covid treatments[ii] to save untold lives;
• Failure to constrain the wholesale printing of national currencies to shore up the dangerously indebted Western economy – while instead promoting centralized digital currencies.

Each of these failures will be briefly summarized in Part I, followed by classic, traditional solutions in Part II.

Part III will explore the question, “Is WEF’s Globalism the Inevitable Destiny for Humanity?” in context of the threat of centralized technology wresting power from our democracies.

PART I:  WEF Mission Statement, Composition, and Failures to Act  

WEF Mission Statement

The WEF has no goal-oriented mission statement.

From its website, under Our Mission, is the self-congratulatory, non-specific rhetoric:

The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.

The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.

It is independent, impartial and not tied to any special interests. The Forum strives in all its efforts to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance. Moral and intellectual integrity is at the heart of everything it does.

Our activities are shaped by a unique institutional culture founded on the stakeholder theory, which asserts that an organization is accountable to all parts of society. The institution carefully blends and balances the best of many kinds of organizations, from both the public and private sectors, international organizations and academic institutions.

We believe that progress happens by bringing together people from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change.[iii]

Under its letterhead appear the words, “Committed to Improving the State of the World.” (a play on words: “State of the World” globalism)

WEF Composition

The World Economic Forum is a non-profit Swiss-based NGO founded in 1971 by German engineer and economist, Klaus Schwab.  Schwab draws an annual salary of about one million Swiss francs from the WEF, which does not pay taxes.[iv]

It is more than 60% funded by 121 corporate “Strategic Partners”, which include large oil, automotive, pharmaceutical, media, tech companies, and banks.[v]

It has succeeded, over 50 years, in becoming the control center of the West’s financial-political complex. It started by bringing large corporations together, then national leaders, and later the invited major media.

It has infiltrated many Western governments through its Young Global Leaders programme.

Academia, which was the basis of the first conference in 1971, has been marginalised to the smallest participant group – according to The Economist – which also reported that of the 2,622 invitees to Davos, Switzerland in 2014, “just 15% are women. Two-thirds are from Western countries representing just 12% of the world’s population. Some 60% are from business, and 14% from government. The 46 presidents and prime ministers represent 1.8 billion of the world’s 8 billion people.[vi]

Three Critical Failures to Act

1. The failure to transition the $5.9 trillion in annual global fossil fuel subsidies to renewable energy

Although WEF founder Klaus Schwab’s introductory article on the “great reset,” published in June 2020, briefly mentioned “the withdrawal of fossil fuel subsidies,”[vii] a plan scheduling the withdrawal of subsidies has yet to be announced.

Instead, the WEF website page, “What’s the World Economic Forum Doing about Climate Change,” urges better consumer choices, more informed consumers, and a 2017 admonition to “Speed up Action on Climate Change” with “bold action” collaboration from civil society.[viii]

Unfortunately, the vested interests of the Davos banking, oil, automotive, pharma, and media elite do not lie in the direction of renewable energy as long as the fossil fuel energy system owes its existence to the heavy taxation of earth’s peoples.

2. The unscrupulous failure to challenge the coordinated suppression of proven early treatments for Covid-19

Before reading further, please glance briefly at this astonishing home page showing over 2000 early Covid treatment studies.

From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which according to the World Health Organization kills only 0.23% of those infected,[ix] enormous fear and panic were fuelled by the hourly drumbeat of a “one-voice” media, claiming that “delivery will come only with a vaccine.”[x]

The WEF is strongly pro-vaccine, having maintained an active vaccination news page since September, 2017.[xi]

In January, 2017, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)[xii], a global initiative to fight epidemics, was launched at the WEF in Davos.

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, plus several European governments, CEPI secures vaccines for global emergencies and pandemics.[xiii]  Public, private, and philanthropic contributions to CEPI were $2.3 billion in 2021.[xiv]

Very early in the Covid outbreak, from January 21-24, 2020 – with a total global case number of 274 people, and total loss of life from the virus at 16[xv] – CEPI met at Davos with leaders from Moderna to establish plans for a Covid-19 vaccine.[xvi]

The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency 6 days later, on January 30.[xvii]

The first year of Covid (2020), while awaiting vaccine development, major public health agencies, including WHO and the US-based National Institutes of Health, CDC, and FDA, ignored and discouraged the use of 80%-effective, cheap, safe and abundant repurposed-drugs for the early treatment of Covid-19.[xviii]

Meanwhile, these drugs were being prescribed off-label with remarkable success by frontline doctors in Europe and America. To illustrate, Santa Monica cardiologist Dr. Dan Wohlgelernter said in a June 18, 2020 interview:

“I’ve prescribed it [hydroxychloroquine]…recommended it to people…had conversations with physicians literally around the globe…and I’ve read the literature extensively. Hydroxychloroquine definitely has a role; that role is specific.  It’s an antiviral agent that is effective in early stages of infection; when used in that context it is effective and it is safe.[xix]

In May, 2020, well-known Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch reported that “HCQ + AZ[ithromycine] has been widely misrepresented in both clinical reports and public media…and should be made widely available and promoted immediately for physicians to prescribe”.[xx] Amazingly, his article in the top-ranked American Journal of Epidemiology never made the media.

Although hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin had both been on the WHO list of essential medicines for decades, the only officially sanctioned treatment option throughout 2020 was to sicken at home until difficult breathing required going to emergency.

The vaccinating of earth’s eight billion people began in late December, 2020. A tragic story unfolded in January, 2021, when the disease prevention organization, Unitaid,[xxi] influenced a British virologist not to medically publish the positive findings[xxii] of his meta-analysis of Ivermectin efficacy.

The researcher, Liverpool virologist Dr. Andrew Hill, had been seeking a global recommendation on Ivermectin – which at that point could have saved an estimated 500,000 lives in the ensuing weeks – but under pressure he suddenly downplayed his recommendation and revised his conclusions. That he or his university was probably compensated is documented by a fellow researcher.[xxiii] [xxiv]

The drug industry had won. Not a single major health agency has challenged the suppression of the cheap and effective drugs[xxv] hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

Indeed, the WEF added to the suppression of ivermectin in August, 2022 by publishing an article about its “fake research”:

“Ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug that is typically used in veterinary medicine and that was promoted by some without evidence as a treatment for COVID-19, was widely embraced in some parts of the world. However, after ruling out fake or flawed studies, a systematic review of research on ivermectin found that it had “no beneficial effects for people with COVID-19.”[xxvi]

3. The failure to discourage the wholesale printing of national currencies to shore up theWestern burden of debt

In Davos, Switizerland, on January 24, 2020, six days before WHO declared a global Covid emergency, the WEF announced:

“Today, the World Economic Forum announces the first global consortium focused on designing a framework for the governance of digital currencies, including stablecoins – the Global Consortium for Digital Currency Governance.”

Executive chairman Klaus Schwab said, “…we hope that hosting this consortium will catalyse the conversations necessary to inform a robust framework of governance for global digital currencies.”[xxvii]

Why did the WEF make this announcement at this time?

In May, 2022, as Covid concern was winding down, Ellen Brown, American attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, described a situation that had been developing for years:

“When the Fed bailed out Wall Street banks following the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-09 with quantitative easing [i.e., increasing the money supply]…quantitative easing did not fix the debt buildup, which today has again reached unsustainable levels.

As of March, 2022 the US federal government has a cumulative debt burden of $133.38 trillion… European countries have 44 trillion euros in unfunded pensions, and there is no source of funds to meet these obligations…The concern is that when people realize that the social security and pension systems they have paid into for their entire working lives are bankrupt, they will take to the streets and chaos will reign.”[xxviii]

This precarious situation – which was made considerably worse by the global lockdowns used to combat a virus that kills only 0.23% of infected people[xxix] – may have influenced the WEF’s announcement re the globalization of digital currencies.

Progress towards a global digital currency system has been greatly aided by two years of digital vaccine certificates and mandates recommended by the WHO, CDC, and FDA, and vigorously pursued in countries where the leaders had been schooled and infiltrated by the World Economic Forum Global Leaders Program (Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand).

One analyst summarized the downsides of a digital currency:

“Given the ubiquity of credit and debit cards, payment apps and other online payment systems, digital money has been bound to happen for some time. The risk isn’t the electronic part, that’s inevitable – it’s the fact that a central bank will oversee the digital currency…It’s impossible to overstate the risk presented by CBDC. Whether it’s a utopian vision based on good intentions or a sinister plot to crush our sovereignty, the result may be the same: control. A Central Bank Digital Currency has all the downsides of fiat money, plus the added layers of surveillance and programmability overseen by the state.”[xxx]

The movement towards digital currencies does not stop with individual central banks. In October, 2022, following an 18-month experiment on technologies and currencies, the financial messaging system SWIFT laid out a blueprint for a global central bank digital currency network.[xxxi]

Meanwhile, the WEF has declined to address the critical issue of national debts.

PART TWO:  Working Toward National and Intergovernmental Democratic Solutions

To address the failed policies above, three approaches to action could be planned immediately and cooperatively by sovereign democratic nations under an intergovernmental public, non-corporate umbrella:

1. Schedule a redirection of the $5.9 trillion in global subsidies away from the fossil fuel industry towards renewable energy

A global transition to responsible energy financing suggests an approach such as the ancient Public Trust Doctrine (PTD), which requires government stewardship of “the common wealth” – the natural resources upon which society depends for the benefit of existing and future generations.

A trust is a fiduciary relationship that imposes on trustees a duty to act for the benefit of beneficiaries. In the Public Trust Doctrine, government acts as a trustee, with the management accountability similar to that of an estate or investment account.

In her book “Nature’s Trust,” Professor Mary Christina Wood of the University of Oregon wrote:

“The res of Nature’s Trust consists of ecological assets, natural wealth that must sustain all foreseeable future generations of humanity. It amounts to humanity’s survival account – the only one it has. Government trustees must protect trust resources for the benefit of present and future generations.”[xxxii]

The Atmospheric Trust Litigation (ATL) attempts to do this.  It “’simply applies the public trust doctrine to the atmosphere,’ says Wood. This doctrine concerns ‘resources that the public relies on for its very survival,’ and ‘the atmosphere certainly qualifies.’”[xxxiii]

The international PTD movement is counting on domestic judiciaries to play their role. Prof. Wood explains further:

“As a legal doctrine, the public trust compels protection of those ecological assets necessary for public survival and community welfare. The judicial role is to compel the political branches to meet their fiduciary obligation through whatever measures and policies they choose, as long as such measures sufficiently reduce carbon emissions within the required time frame.”[xxxiv]

It is hoped that judiciaries around the world will do this in their own countries as a support to the international treaty system – especially with regard to Atmospheric Trust Litigation.”

Transnational public trusts could urge a global transition of fossil fuel subsidies to renewables at 7-8%/year for 10 years until the transition is complete. Working together through intergovernmental organizations, national governments could schedule a transfer of fossil fuel subsidies to non-resource-extracting nuclear, geothermal, and tidal energy projects.

The main thing is to devise a framework for the Public Trust Doctrine and the Atmospheric Trust Doctrine, promoting the two ancient doctrines as the philosophical and legal bases for earth management.

2. Reform major public health agencies to use repurposed-drugs for saving lives 

With regard to the long-recognized[xxxv] efficacy of a cheap, safe, early treatment for Covid-19 during the first week (pre-pneumonia phase) of the illness, it is astonishing that none of the now largely corporate-funded, but originally fully tax-supported public health agencies, ever referred to the early treatment efficacy of hydroxychloroquine[xxxvi] – even though it was championed by the most downloaded article in the history of the American Journal of Medicine,[xxxvii] written by 23 authors and published August 6, 2020 – before the Covid vaccines arrived.

Nor did the vaccine-oriented WEF ever refer to the treatment efficacy of hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.

Throughout the pandemic, the mainstream media regularly disparaged hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, while social media accounts were suspended if either of these drugs – both on the WHO list of essential medicines – were mentioned in relation to Covid-19.

How are we to prevent a recurrence of this mind-numbing censorship?  How are we to re-organize society when the crisis was exacerbated and prolonged by power, money, and propaganda?

In a superb podcast entitled “Collapse of the Public Health Narrative, and the Gathering Storm,”[xxxviii] evolutionary biologists Dr. Bret Weinstein and Dr. Chris Martenson consider the urgent need for social reform:

Dr. Weinstein: I am certain that the system must be reformed – that’s the only thing we can do. You cannot rebuild the system. You’re going to have to take the edifice and figure out how to make it function in spite of the fact that it is completely riddled with corruption of various kinds.

As the narrative comes apart, I don’t need to see Fauci punished…he has visited one of the most colossal catastrophes on planet Earth that we have ever seen…

Now we have also learned the names of many people who are willing to stand up to garbage narratives and tell us what we need to know rather than what we want to hear.

So there is an obvious solution but we’re going to watch everything thrown at the question of how to avoid it; everything will be thrown at the process of derailing an attempt to simply take the people who make sense and put them in positions where they can do good.

So my hope is that if we actually do manage to put decent people with the proper expertise in the roles at the heads of these organizations – yes, they have some bad apples but also a lot of decent people who haven’t been given a decent choice – and that maybe suggests that reform could work…

The post-Covid moment is critically important for reform:

Dr. Martenson: The fear that they have been putting out has been very contagious, but I’ve watched the opposite:  courage can be just as contagious. And so it’s really important that the people who have that capability to be courageous do so…

This is the time for us to stand up and stand together as courageously as we can. It is the biggest moment in history I’m aware of, so many things are going to be decided in the next few years.

Dr. Weinstein:

This is a truly global process that has unfolded… Something that can amplify a microscopic error into a global catastrophe, that tells you where we are and how much danger there is…

This is telling us that our lives – whether we like it or not – are overlapping a moment on which everything hangs. We are stuck with the responsibility of solving a problem no one has seen before and we have to get it right.

Dr. Martenson: I don’t know that in our lifetimes we will get a better opportunity to have the conversation we need about civilizational collapse, which is looming, because our systems have stopped doing what they’re supposed to do. So my greatest fear is waking up one day and Biden and Macron and all the other leaders are going say:  this is just like the seasonal flu, it’s endemic, we’re done, and let’s move on.

Why is that a fear? Because it means that we won’t have the accounting that we need – they’ll just try and slide past those failures.  I think those failures need to be brought forward…because they’re indicative of a larger system issue.

I think this is one of the most pivotal moments in human history… and the way we begin to address this is we have to have really open honest conversations where no ox is too sacred to gore – everything is on the table.  We need all hands on deck…

Regarding health agency failure, Dr. Martenson recommends:

1. No more revolving doors. Working in any decision-making capacity at any health agency means zero money or employment from any related industry for a period of 10 years post exiting your position.
2. No more funding the FDA through pharma “fees.”
3. Eliminate the so-called randomized control trial standard. Observational data is equally good if done right and ten times better than a scammed RCT.
4. Create a parallel body to the FDA which is equally funded and charged with using any combination of therapies or repurposed drugs to address any particular disease.[xxxix]

3. Follow classic fiscal management practices to rescue national currencies from debt

We know that national and global debt levels are unsustainably high. The following points show ways to restore responsible fiscal management to the present moment:

a) “When a central bank creates trillions of dollars out of thin air with no link to an underlying real asset, that dollar is nothing more than a symbol of broken faith rather than a store of genuine value. Since 1971, and when measured against a single milligram of gold, the USD, like all other fiat currencies, has lost greater than 95% of its value.”[xl]

“Will a new currency system solve the problem? It may delay the inevitable, and it will certainly further centralize control, but it is unlikely to do much else. …This once-in-a-lifetime situation creates the perfect tailwinds for gold’s eventual meteoric rise. Gold is fundamentally insurance against currency and bond market cataclysm, and nothing has changed its role as such.”[xli]

b) “The Norwegian Krone is perhaps one of the best examples of a real currency that correlates closest to its commodity assets.,,It is one of the largest exporters of oil globally with a high percentage of its overall economy reliant on natural gas and oil. This is the closest we have in the modern world of a system that works similar to the gold standard (other than gold itself) where countries buying power and reserves are related to the price of a commodity such as gold.

For comparison the US could sell all it’s gold reserves and not be able to pay down even 5% of it’s national debt. It has no wealth fund, and its gold reserves are less than 5% of it’s GDP. Unlike Norway, the US government is essentially bankrupt.”[xlii]

c) For a survey of effective historical measures that have been used to restore fiscal balance following periods of massive debt, see the work of attorney and advocate for public banks, Ellen Brown.[xliii]

Instead of imposing the global WEF-promoted digital financial system, Brown’s tried-and-true measures would allow sovereign nations to pursue and endure a responsible debt recovery period.

PART THREE:  Is WEF’s Globalism the Inevitable Destiny for Humanity?

More than 20 years ago, while discussing who was eligible for Davos, Klaus Schwab told Forbes: “Forget it if you’re retired. Even if your former job was running France or General Electric, you must be in power. No oldies.”[xliv]

The impact of this power policy on the status of world democracy is astutely summarized by Nick Buxton of the Transnational Institute:

Less well known is the fact that WEF since 2009 has been working on an ambitious project called the Global Redesign Initiative, (GRI), which effectively proposes a transition away from intergovernmental decision-making towards a system of multi-stakeholder governance. In other words, by stealth, they are marginalising a recognised model where we vote in governments who then negotiate treaties which are then ratified by our elected representatives, with a model where a self-selected group of ‘stakeholders’ make decisions on our behalf.

Advocates of multi-stakeholder governance argue that governments and intergovernmental forums, such as the UN, are no longer efficient places for tackling increasingly complex global crises. The founder of WEF, Klaus Schwab, says “the sovereign state has become obsolete”.[xlv]

Schwab is an engineer. In the three years (1967-70) before the World Economic Forum was founded in 1971, he was on the board of directors of the Sulzer industrial giant,[xlvi] which during his tenure illegally helped to develop six South African thermonuclear weapons.[xlvii]

Now Schwab is trying to replace the “obsolete” democratic constitutions that have been in force for hundreds of years with a digital-based global model that offers no constitutional protection for the citizens of self-governing nations.

Worse yet is that the WEF supports high-tech efforts to redesign the human being. For example, Young Global Leader Justin Trudeau’s Canadian government has quietly developed an extensive bio-digital convergence initiative headed by a director general.[xlviii]

In 2021, an analyst from the Spanish Republic identified the authoritarian role of thought control (“a new rationality”) during the Covid epidemic:

The global management of the coronavirus crisis is completely modifying citizens’ relationship to both science and the public sphere of life, two social spaces that are fundamental to the survival of modern democratic republicanism…Science and the public sphere have been subjected during the last year to the epistemic authoritarianism of algorithms and mathematical models.

This covert epistemic dictatorship aims to naturalize the emergence of a new rationality that, in the name of a digital-algorithmic conception of truth, completely transforms our conceptions of the res publica,[xlix] and gives rise to a new political regime that we can call digital ultra-liberalism.

Inspired by the ideology of trans-humanism and technological singularity, digital ultra-liberalism imposes on us the idea that the evolution of the digital revolution is not subject to discussion or to republican control, but rather an inevitable destiny for humanity.[l]

Nothing could be more evil or dangerous than an “inevitable” new rationality – not subject to discussion – replacing the God-given perception of truth that has served humanity for centuries:|

“Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it.” — Mahatma Gandhi

This is all we need to know to save our natural selves, our democracies, and our human destiny.

*

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Elizabeth Woodworth is highly engaged in climate change science and activism. She has published 42 articles on Global Research, is co-author of “Unprecedented Climate Mobilization”, “Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival,” and co-producer of the COP21 video “A Climate Revolution For All.” She is author of the popular handbook on nuclear weapons activism, “What Can I Do?” and the novel, “The November Deep”. For 25 years, she served as head medical librarian for the BC Government. She holds a BA from Queen’s and a Library Sciences Degree from UBC.

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[i] IMF, “Fossil Fuel Subsidies,” (https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies).

[ii] COVID-19 early treatment: real-time analysis of 2,429 studies (https://c19early.org/).

[iii] https://www.weforum.org/about/world-economic-forum

[iv] https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/geld-fuer-sicherheit-am-wef-knurrende-zustimmung-vom-staenderat-zu-wef-geldern

[v] https://www.weforum.org/communities/strategic-partnership-b5337725-fac7-4f8a-9a4f-c89072b96a0d#P and WEF Annual Report, 2021-2022, Revenue and Costs, p. 88 (https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Annual_Report_2021_22.pdf.)

[vi] “Who’s on the Magic Mountain?” The Economist, 23 January 2014 (https://www.economist.com/international/2014/01/23/whos-on-the-magic-mountain).

[vii] Klaus Schwab. “Now is the time for a ‘great reset,’” 3 June 2020 (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/now-is-the-time-for-a-great-reset/).

[viii] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/08/accelerating-climate-action/

[ix] Ioannidis J. “The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data,” Bull World Health Organ., Epub Oct. 14, 2020 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33716331/).

[x] Laurent Mucchielli, “How is built the ‘legitimate information’ on the Covid crisis,” UMR 7305, CNRS and Aix-Marseille University, April 2020 (https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/MS-Mucchielli.pdf). Translation from French.

[xi] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/vaccination?page=14

[xii] https://cepi.net/

[xiii] Donald G. McNeil Jr., “Donors and Drug Makers Offer $500 Million to Control Global Epidemics,” The New York Times, 18 January, 2017 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/health/partnership-epidemic-preparedness.html.)

[xiv] CEPI. “Board of Directors’ Report and Annual Accounts, 2021 (https://cepi.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2021-CEPI-Annual-BoD-Report-and-Annual-Accounts.pdf).

[xv] WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard”. covid19.who.int. Retrieved 9 September2020. (Evidence is Footnote #86 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Economic_Forum.)

[xvi] What we know about the Wuhan coronavirus and urgent plans to develop a vaccine for it”. 24 January 2020 (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/wuhan-coronavirus-china-cepi-vaccine-davos/).

[xvii] Andrew Joseph, “WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency,” STAT News, 30 January 2020 (https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/30/who-declares-coronavirus-outbreak-a-global-health-emergency/).

[xviii] Earlytreatment.com

[xix] “SECOND OPINION: Doctors Discuss the Politicization of Hydroxychloroquine,” June 18, 2020, 0:14 min. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=m_JIz780i5w&feature=emb_logo).

[xx] “Using Hydroxychloroquine and Other Drugs to Fight Pandemic,” Yale School of Public Health Newsletter, 01 June 2020 (https://publichealth.yale.edu/news-article/25085/).

[xxi] “Unitaid collaborates with global health partners and governments to: identify shortcomings in the global response” (https://unitaid.org/how-we-work/#en);  In 2017: https://unitaid.org/news-blog/unitaid-hails-new-us-50-million-contribution-bill-melinda-gates-foundation/#en.

[xxii] Dr. Andrew Hill reported his findings on January 19, 2021, to the Financial Times, “Cheap antiparasitic could cut chance of Covid-19 deaths by up to 75%,” January 19, 2021 (http://web.archive.org/web/20210119230658/https://www.ft.com/content/e7cb76fc-da98-4a31-9c1f-926c58349c84).

[xxiii] World Council for Health, “Dear Andy,” March (https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/multimedia/dear-andy-dr-tess-lawrie/, 4 March 2022, 18:53 min.)  Dr. Tess Lawrie recites a letter to Dr. Andrew Hill and asks him what made him turn his back on a potential cure for Covid-19. The tweets that Dr. Hill erased are shown. Link includes the transcript.

[xxiv] “Four days before the publication of Hill’s revised study, Kennedy says, Unitaid gave $40 million to the University of Liverpool.” Neville Hodgkinson, “The vaccine gold rush and the damning ivermectin tape,” The Conservative Woman, 2 December, 2021 (https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-vaccine-gold-rush-and-the-damning-ivermectin-tape/).

[xxv] COVID-19 early treatment: real-time analysis of 2,429 studies (https://c19early.org/).

[xxvi] World Economic Forum, “Sorting fact from fiction: how to spot fake research which can harm your health,” 23 August 2022 (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/08/fake-research-science-study).

[xxvii] World Economic Forum, “Governing the Coin: World Economic Forum Announces Global Consortium for Digital Currency Governance,” January 24, 2020 (https://www.weforum.org/press/2020/01/governing-the-coin-world-economic-forum-announces-global-consortium-for-digital-currency-governance).

[xxviii] Ellen Brown, “A Monetary Reset Where the Rich Don’t Own Everything,” Web of Debt, 5 May 2022 (https://ellenbrown.com/2022/05/05/a-monetary-reset-where-the-rich-dont-own-everything/).

[xxix] Ioannidis J. “The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data,” Bull World Health Organ., Epub Oct. 14, 2020 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33716331/).

[xxx] Joshua Stylman, “CBDC: How Covid Became the Path to Global Financial Surveillance,” The Daily Skeptic, 18 November 2022 (https://dailysceptic.org/2022/11/18/cbdc-how-covid-became-the-path-to-global-financial-surveillance/).

[xxxi] Marc Jones, “SWIFT sets out blueprint for central bank digital currency network,” Reuters, 5 October 2022 (https://www.reuters.com/technology/swift-sets-out-blueprint-central-bank-digital-currency-network-2022-10-05/).

[xxxii] Mary Christina Wood, “Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age,” Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 143.

[xxxiii] Fen Montaigne, “A Legal Call to Arms to Remedy Environment and Climate Ills,” Yale Environment 360, 2 January 2014.

[xxxiv] Mary Christina Wood, “Atmospheric Trust Litigation Across the World,” In: Charles Sampford, et al., Fiduciary Duty and the Atmospheric Trust, Routledge, 2012, 112.

[xxxv] Martin J. Vincent, et al., “Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread,” J. Virol., 22 August 2005 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16115318/).

[xxxvi] “HCQ for COVID-19: Real time meta-analysis of 376 studies,” 28 November 2022 (https://c19hcq.org/).

[xxxvii] Peter McCullough, et al., “Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection,” American Journal of Medicine, 06 August 2020 (https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(20)30673-2/fulltext).

[xxxviii] “Bret Speaks with Chris Martenson – Collapse of the Public Health Narrative, & the Gathering Storm,” 22 January 2022 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOT6nzzKrO8&list=PLjQ2gC-5yHEug8_VK8ve0oDSJLoIU4b93&t=5533s).

[xxxix] Dr. Chris Martenson, private communication to author, 7 December, 2022.

[xl] Matthew Piepenburg, “Modern American Policy:  Stupid or Sinister?” 10 August 2022 (https://goldswitzerland.com/modern-american-policy-stupid-or-sinister/).

[xli] Matthew Piepenburg, “A New Currency System in Emerging,” 27 September 2021 (https://goldswitzerland.com/matthew-piepenburg-a-new-currency-system-is-emerging/).

[xlii] “What Currencies are Backed by Gold? (2022 Update),” Greenery Financial (https://greeneryfinancial.com/gold-backed-currency/).

[xliii] Ellen Brown: “A Monetary Reset Where the Rich Don’t Own Everything, Part I,” Web of Debt, 5 May 2022 (https://ellenbrown.com/2022/05/05/a-monetary-reset-where-the-rich-dont-own-everything/); “A Reset that Serves the People, Part II, Web of Dept, 19 May 2022 (https://ellenbrown.com/2022/05/19/a-reset-that-serves-the-people/).

[xliv] Forbes, “Power Broker,” 15 November 1999 (https://www.forbes.com/global/1999/1115/0223108a.html?sh=282a91147e11.)

[xlv] Nick Buxton, “Davos and its Danger to Democracy,” Transnational Institute, 18 January 2016 (https://www.tni.org/en/article/davos-and-its-danger-to-democracy).

[xlvi] https://www.weforum.org/about/klaus-schwab

[xlvii] Johnny Vedmore, “Nazi Industrialism, Technocracy, Social Engineering: A History of Klaus Schwab’s Family Values,” SOTT: Signs of the Times, 28 February 2021 (https://www.sott.net/article/449477-Nazi-Industrialism-Technocracy-Social-Engineering-A-History-of-Klaus-Schwabs-Family-Values).

[xlviii] https://horizons.gc.ca/en/2020/02/11/exploring-biodigital-convergence/

[xlix] Res publica means public affairs

[l] My italics.  David Souto Alcalde, “The Covid-19 Crisis and the Emergence of Digital Ultra-Liberalism. An Approach to Republicanism From Polysystem Theory,” in: Circuits in Motion: Polysystem Theory and the Analysis of Culture,” David Souto, Aiora Sampedro, and Jon Kortazar, eds., Universidad des Pais Vasco, 2021 (https://webargitalpena.adm.ehu.es/pdf/USPDF212888.pdf.)

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I am very pleased that I have not used Facebook since 2021.

It turns out that Facebook enthusiastically removed (H/t Paul Thacker) and suppressed truthful content and groups devoted to discussions of such at the behest of Pfizer and/or the White House.

In addition to removing vaccine misinformation, we have been focused on reducing virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable misinformation. This is often-true content … but it can be framed as sensation, alarmist, or shocking.

We’ll remove these Groups, Pages, and Accounts when they are disproportionately promoting this sensationalized content.

Facebook willingly and enthusiastically participated in a cruel, dishonest, manipulative scheme that ended up with millions affected by Covid vaccines.

Was it done “for the good of humanity”? Was it an honest mistake?

It was NOT an honest mistake.

Watch this Zuckerberg/Fauci discussion where Fauci, in 2020, shows full awareness of the dangers of unproven, poorly tested vaccines and informs Zuckerberg. Fauci mentions the failed HIV vaccine trials, with the outcome of making people less resistant to the infection after vaccination, the same thing that happened with Covid vaccines.

Video: Fauci explained to Mark Zuckerberg that it’s possible for “a vaccine that looked good in initial safety [tests] actually made people worse.”

Totally unrelated, many countries/US states at 60-70 percent C19 vaccination have now same/worse case counts than pre-vaccines. pic.twitter.com/sLLSnEgwQn

— Yossi Gestetner (@YossiGestetner) December 14, 2021

So both Zuckerberg, and Fauci, were fully aware of the risks of unproven and rushed vaccines. And yet, both disregarded these risks and suppressed truthful discussion of them. This cannot be explained away as a well-intentioned mistake caused by ignorance.

Beware of Facebook, fact-checkers, and the White House asking for a “pandemic amnesty” and pretending that they “did not know.” They did. We have receipts.

As I wrote in September, both Google and Facebook are responsible for what happens to the health of billions of people worldwide. They recklessly breached their duty to allow potential victims to be informed of risks.

Google and Facebook will have to compensate their victims.

Would such compensation from businesses that made trillions while suppressing us be fair? Is asking for justice, investigations, and fair sanctions extremist?

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The self-appointed Davos “elites” are afraid. So afraid. At this week’s World Economic Forum meetings, mastermind Klaus Schwab – displaying his trademark Bond villain act – carped over and over again about a categorical imperative: we need “Cooperation in a Fragmented World”.

While his diagnosis of “the most critical fragmentation” the world is now mired in is predictably somber, Herr Schwab maintains that “the spirit of Davos is positive” and in the end we may all live happily in a “green sustainable economy.”

What Davos has been good at this week is showering public opinion with new mantras. There’s “The New System” which, considering the abject failure of the much ballyhooed Great Reset, now looks like a matter of hastily updating the current – rattled – operating system.

Davos needs new hardware, new programming skills, even a new virus. Yet for the moment all that’s available is a “polycrisis”: or, in Davos speak, a “cluster of related global risks with compounding effects.”

In plain English: a perfect storm.

Insufferable bores from that Divide and Rule island in northern Europe have just found out that “geopolitics”, alas, never really entered the tawdry “end of history” tunnel: much to their amazement it’s now centered – again – across the Heartland, as it’s been for most of recorded history.

They complain about “threatening” geopolitics, which is code for Russia-China, with Iran attached.

But the icing on the Alpine cake is arrogance/stupidity actually giving away the game: the City of London and its vassals are  livid because the “world Davos made” is fast collapsing.

Davos did not “make” any world apart from its own simulacrum.

Davos never got anything right, because these “elites” were always busy eulogizing the Empire of Chaos and its lethal “adventures” across the Global South.

Davos not only failed to foresee all recent, major economic crises but most of all the current “perfect storm”, linked to the neoliberalism-spawned deindustrialization of the Collective West.

And, of course, Davos is clueless about the real Reset taking place towards multipolarity.

Self-described opinion leaders are busy “re-discovering” that Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain was set in Davos – “against the backdrop of a deadly disease and an impeding world war” – nearly a century ago.

Well, nowadays the “disease” – fully bioweaponized – is not exactly deadly per se. And the “impending World War” is in fact being actively encouraged by a cabal of US Straussian neo-cons and neoliberal-cons: an unelected, unaccountable, bipartisan Deep State not even subject to ideology. Centenary war criminal Henry Kissinger still does not get it.

A Davos panel on de-globalization was rife on non-sequiturs, but at least a dose of reality was provided by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.

As for China’s vice-premier Liu He, with his vast knowledge of finance, science and technology, at least he was very helpful to lay down Beijing’s five top guidelines for the foreseeable future – beyond the customary imperial Sinophobia.

China will focus on expanding domestic demand; keeping industrial and supply chains “smooth”; go for the “healthy development of the private sector”; deepen state enterprise reform; and aim for “attractive foreign investment.”

Russian resistance, American precipice

Emmanuel Todd was not at Davos. But it was the French anthropologist, historian, demographer and geopolitical analyst who ended up ruffling all the appropriate feathers across the collective West these past few days with a fascinating anthropological object: a reality-based interview.

Todd spoke to Le Figaro – the newspaper of choice of the French establishment and haute bourgeoisie. The interview was published last Friday on page 22, sandwiched between proverbial Russophobic screeds and with an extremely brief mention on the bottom of the front page. So people really had to work hard to find it.

Todd joked that he has the – absurd – reputation of a “rebel destroy” in France, while in Japan he’s respected, featured in mainstream media, and his books are published with great success, including the latest (over 100,000 copies sold): “The Third World War Has Already Started”.

Significantly, this Japanese best seller does not exist in French, considering the whole Paris-based publishing industry toes the EU/NATO line on Ukraine.

The fact that Todd gets several things right is a minor miracle in the current, abysmally myopic European intellectual landscape (there are other analysts especially in Italy and Germany, but they carry much less weight than Todd).

So here’s Todd’s concise Greatest Hits.

• A new World War is on: By “switching from a limited territorial war to a global economic clash, between the collective West on one side and Russia linked to China on the other side, this became a World War”.
• The Kremlin, says Todd, made a mistake, calculating that a decomposed Ukraine society would collapse right away. Of course he does not get into detail on how Ukraine had been weaponized to the hilt by the NATO military alliance.
• Todd is spot on when he stresses how Germany and France had become minor partners at NATO and were not aware of what was being plotted in Ukraine militarily: “They did not know that the Americans, British and Poles could allow Ukraine to fight an extended  war. NATO’s fundamental axis now is Washington-London-Warsaw-Kiev.”
• Todd’s major give away is a killer: “The resistance of Russia’s economy is leading the imperial American system to the precipice. Nobody had foreseen that the Russian economy would hold facing NATO’s ‘economic power’”.
• Consequently, “monetary and financial American controls over the world may collapse, and with them the possibility for the US of financing for nothing their enormous trade deficit”.
• And that’s why “we are in an endless war, in a clash where the conclusion is the collapse of one or the other.”
• On China, Todd might sound like a more pugnacious version of Liu He at Davos: “That’s the fundamental dilemma of the American economy: it cannot face Chinese competition without importing qualified Chinese work force.”
• As for the Russian economy, “it does accept market rules, but with an important role for the state, and it keeps the flexibility of forming engineers that allow adaptations, industrial and military.”
• And that bring us, once again, to globalization, in a manner that Davos roundtables were incapable of understanding: “We have delocalized so much of our industrial activity that we don’t know whether our war production may be sustained”.
• On a more erudite interpretation of that “clash of civilizations” fallacy, Todd goes for soft power and comes up with a startling conclusion: “On 75 percent of the planet, the organization of parenthood  was patrilineal, and that’s why we may identify a strong understanding of the Russian position. For the collective non-West, Russia affirms a reassuring moral conservatism.”
• So what Moscow has been able to pull off is to “reposition itself as the archetype of a big power, not only “anti-colonialist” but also patrilineal and conservative in terms of traditional mores.”

Based on all of the above, Todd smashes the myth sold by EU/NATO “elites” – Davos included – that Russia is “isolated”, stressing how votes in the UN and the overall sentiment across the Global South characterizes the war, “described by mainstream media as a conflict over political values, in fact, on a deeper level, as a conflict of anthropological values.”

Between light and darkness

Could it be that Russia – alongside the real Quad, as I defined them (with China, India and Iran) – are prevailing in the anthropological stakes?

The real Quad has all it takes to blossom into a new cross-cultural focus of hope in a “fragmented world”.

Mix Confucian China (non-dualistic, no transcendental deity, but with the Tao flowing through everything) with Russia (Orthodox Christian, reverencing the divine Sophia); polytheistic India (wheel of rebirth, law of karma); and Shi’ite Iran (Islam preceded by Zoroastrianism, the eternal cosmic battle between Light and Darkness).

This unity in diversity is certainly more appealing, and uplifting, than the Forever War axis.

Will the world learn from it? Or, to quote Hegel – “what we learn from history is that nobody learns from history” – are we hopelessly doomed?

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This article was originally published on PressTV.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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International relations remains the sum game of vast hypocrisies, a patchwork of compromises and the compromised.  Every moral condemnation of a regime’s conduct is bound to be shown up as an exercise in double standards, often implicating the accusers.  In the case of the military regime in Myanmar, double standards are not only modish but expected.

A number of international declarations and measures have targeted Myanmar’s regime for its blood-soaked brutality, its genocidal practices against the Rohingya, and its general contempt for the human rights of its citizenry.  In a statement last November, US Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken took note of the military’s “brutal campaign of violence against the people of Burma, carrying out lethal air strikes against the political opposition and the broader civilian population.”

In response, the US Department of Treasury designated Sky Aviator Company Limited and its owner and director, Kyaw Min Oo “for operating in the defense sector of the Burmese economy.”  The company in question had “received multiple arm shipments from sanctioned entities”, while Kyaw had been responsible for facilitating “foreign military officers’ visits to Burma as well as the import of arms and other military equipment and provided assault helicopter upgrades.”

Despite such seemingly bold responses, Myanmar’s military junta is not short of business partners.  Indeed, business, notably in the arms market, continues unabated and with some energy.  Such conduct has also done much to make a mockery of the suite of sanctions and injunctions being imposed by the EU, United States and other states upon the country’s entities and its military personnel, notably since the February 2021 coup.

Last year, for instance, the Indian company Sandeep Metalcraft supplied 3000 fuses to Creative Exploration Ltd, Myanmar’s arms broker (formerly known as MySpace International).  This is despite India being a signatory to the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies, which obliges it to apply export controls on ammunition and associated products.  This becomes particularly important where the supply of such material might be used in violation of the Geneva Conventions, or to aid and abet the commission of crimes and atrocities.

In August that same year, Justice for Myanmar also noted that as many as 116 Myanmar and Singapore companies with 255 directors and shareholders brokered deals involving the furnishing of weapons and other equipment to the regime, including the period since the February 1, 2021 coup.

In a report from three former United Nations experts as part of the Special Advisory Council on Myanmar (SAC-M), the verdict about companies in the United States, Europe and Asia is distinctly negative.  Such entities are officially domiciled in thirteen states, including France, Germany, China, India, Russia, Singapore and the United States.  Using source materials comprising leaked budget documents from the Ministry of Defence, interviews with contacts with the Myanmar military, and statements from witnesses of human rights violations showing security forces armed with various weapons, a dark picture emerges.

The authors note that Myanmar’s military has progressively moved towards becoming more self-sufficient in weapons manufacturing in a number of areas.  The state, however, is not entirely weaned off foreign assistance.  The Directorate of Defence Industries (DDI) remains “reliant on international supplies, including for a variety of raw materials, parts and components and end-items, as well as machinery and technology, for the sustained production – both licensed and un-licensed – of the weapons in its arsenal.”

The DDI has also, whether through production taking place under license or not, “obtained the technology and know-how to produce a variety of its weapons through various types of transfer of technology (ToT) deals.”  Such deals have involved the receipt of whole weapon production plants, also known as turn-key projects, accompanied by engineer support for those supplying the technology.  These include State-owned companies from Italy to Ukraine.

The report identifies the role played by automated machines, including Computer Numerical Control machines, manufactured by companies with domiciles in Austria, Germany, Taiwan and the United States.  These are currently being used by the Myanmar military at factories responsible for its weapons production.  To accompany this are software programs made by companies which have their legal domicile in France, Israel and Germany.

The authors are keen to point out the role played by Singapore, which “functions as a strategic transit point for potentially significant volumes of items – including certain raw materials – that feed Myanmar military’s weapon production.”  Companies legally domiciled in Singapore have played significant roles in brokering deals and exporting military related items to the DDI or relevant civilian front companies for the Myanmar military.

Not to be outdone, Taiwan also fulfills an important role as transit point for the DDI’s purchase of high precision CNC machines, including those from European manufacturers, that aid KaPaSa arms manufacturing, a country-wide complex which involves some 25 entities.

The authors are direct and unequivocal about their grisly findings.  “In short, weapons produced by the Myanmar military in-country at its KaPaSa factories have been used in the military’s widespread and systematic attacks against civilian targets, prior to, during and after the 2021 attempted military coup, and continue to do so.”

A statement from the SAC-M’s Yanghee Lee, a former UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, recapitulated the point: “Foreign companies are enabling the Myanmar military – one of the world’s worst human rights abusers – to produce many of the weapons to commit daily atrocities against the Myanmar people.”

Lee went on to make the obvious point that such companies and their home states had “moral and legal responsibilities to ensure their products are not facilitating human rights violations against civilians in Myanmar.”  Not doing so made the parties “complicit in the Myanmar military’s barbaric crimes.”  It is a complicity that continues to be lightly worn in capitals from Washington to Brussels.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image: Type-92ARV(ZSL-92) armoured recovery vehicle of Myanmar Army (Licensed under CC0)

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When asked about the change, the FAA couldn’t justify it. Uh oh. Fact checkers aren’t going to touch this story.

Tucker covers @StKirsch’s bombshell finding about the FAA loosening its EKG range for pilots while offering no explanation as to why to the public. Guest: @LTCTheresaLong pic.twitter.com/vTwVjEDE5U

— TexasLindsay™ (@TexasLindsay_) January 18, 2023

Executive summary 

In the October 2022 version of the FAA Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners, the FAA quietly widened the EKG parameters beyond the normal range (from a PR max of .2 to unlimited). And they didn’t widen the range by a little. They widened it by a lot. It was done after the vaccine rollout.

This is extraordinary. They did it hoping nobody would notice. It worked for a while. Nobody caught it.

But you can’t hide these things for long.

This is a tacit admission from the US government that the COVID vaccine has damaged the hearts of our pilots. Not just a few pilots. A lot of pilots and a lot of damage.

The cardiac harm of course is not limited to pilots.

My best guess right now is that over 50M Americans sustained some amount of heart damage from the shot.

That’s a lot of people who will be very upset when they realize the vaccine they took to reduce their chance of dying from COVID actually worked in reverse making it:

1. More likely that people will get COVID
2. Be hospitalized from COVID and other diseases
3. Die from COVID (and other diseases)
4. You also have an excellent chance of getting a lifetime of heart damage for no extra charge.

But don’t worry; you can’t sue them. They fixed the law so none of them aren’t liable (the doctors, the drug companies, the government). After all, you took the vaccine of your own free will. It’s not like you were forced (or coerced) to take it or anything like that! And there were plenty of people warning you not to take the shots (even though they censored most of them).

In this article, I will explain the evidence and thinking behind all my claims.

As I learn more, I will refine the estimate.

Introduction 

On October 24, 2022, the FAA quietly, without any announcement at all, widened the EKG requirements necessary for pilots to be able to fly.

The PR (a measure of heart function) used to be in the range of .12 to .2.

It is now: .12 to .3 and potentially even higher.

This is a very wide range; it accommodates people who have cardiac injury. Cardiologist Thomas Levy is appalled at this change:

Why did they make the change?

Why would they do that?

I’ll take an educated guess as to why they did that. I believe it is because they knew if they kept the original range, too many pilots would have to be grounded. That would be extremely problematic; commercial aviation in the US would be severely disrupted.

And why did they do that quietly without notifying the public or the mainstream media?

I’m pretty sure they won’t tell me, so I’ll speculate: it’s because they didn’t want anyone to know.

In other words, the COVID vaccine has seriously injured a lot of pilots and the FAA knows it and said nothing because that would tip off the country that the vaccines are unsafe. And you aren’t allowed to do that.

Why we sure it was the vaccine that did it

There are several clues that are consistent with “it was the vaccine and not COVID”:

1. They were quiet about it. If it was COVID, you can be public. But the vaccine is supposed to be safe.

2. The timing. October 2022 is late for COVID. If it was due to COVID, it would have happened well before now. They can make changes every month.
3. The vaccine creates far more injury to the heart than COVID (which creates NO added risk per this large-scale Israeli study of 196,992 unvaccinated adults after Covid infection).
4. Anecdotally, cardiologists only started to notice the damage post-vaccine.
5. All the sudden deaths started post-vaccine.

The data supporting my 20% damage estimate 

I know from a study of 177 people in Puerto Rico (97% of whom were vaccinated) ages 8 to 84, that 70% of those people, when screened for cardiac injury using an FDA-approved testing device (from Heart Care Corp), exhibited objective signs of cardiac injury.

There was a study done on pilots. It will be published in The Epoch Times later this week. That indicated heart damage in over 20% of pilots screened (The Epoch Times will release the exact number).

The Thailand study showed nearly 30% of kids had abnormal cardiac biomarkers after the shot. But kids are indestructible so a 30% injury rate in kids translates into a higher rate for adults.

VAERS shows that cardiac damage happens at all ages, not just the young:

Bottom line: The most logical conclusion is that the FAA knows the hearts of our nations pilots have been injured by the COVID vaccine that they were coerced into taking, the number of pilots affected is huge, the cardiac damage is extensive, and passenger safety is being compromised by the lowering of the standards to enable pilots to fly.

The right thing would be for the FAA to come clean and admit to the American public that the COVID vaccine has injured 20% or more of the pilots (based on their limited EKG screening), but I doubt that they will ever do that.

The change: from 200 msec to 300 msec and beyond

The changes were made on October 24, 2022 to the GUIDE FOR AVIATION MEDICAL EXAMINERS.

Here is the change log where you can see the change listed (see page 4):

Here is what the policy was before the change. It was just one row:

Here are what it looks like as of Oct 24, 2022 (click the image to see the context):

So it’s now two rows, one for less than 300 ms (it used to be 200 ms), and a second row to handle 300 ms or more.

For more information about the change, see Myocarditis: Once Rare, Now Common.

The Thailand study

In the US, we are not allowed to do lab tests on people before and after the vaccine.

The reason for that is simple: it would make it crystal clear that the vaccines are unsafe. That is why there are no before/after studies in the US. There never will be.

Why? Because that is how science works in America today: it’s unethical to design a study that might expose that the COVID vaccines that they forced us to take cause harm.

Think I’m kidding about how they game the trials? Get yourself a copy of Turtles All the Way Down and just read the first chapter. It’s eye opening.

Even though we can’t do a before/after study in the US, they did such a study in Thailand on 301 kids. They found that 29.24% of the participants developed cardiac injuries within days after they got the second shot:

But here’s the most important part about that study that nobody points out:

None of the tests that were done in the Thailand study included doing a cardiac MRI with contrast on all the participants since that would be expensive and invasive. That test is the gold-standard for cardiac injury.

In other words, the 29% rate of injury was a lower bound of injury.

If you did a cardiac MRI on all those kids, you are going to find stuff that you will not find using the cheap and easy tests. Maybe a lot of stuff.

Summary

I believe that the actual rate of heart injury from these vaccines will be found to be well over the 29.7% rate of heart damage in the Thailand study.

At a more conservative 20% injury rate, we are looking at 50M Americans with heart damage caused by the jab.

As more studies are done, it’s going to be crystal clear why so many people are dying suddenly, especially kids. It’s also going to explain why nursing homes have lost up to 33% of their residents in 12 months where before they were losing only 1 or 2% a year. It’s going to explain why I was unable to find even a single nursing home where the all-cause mortality dropped after the vaccines rolled out. And it’s going to explain why none of the nursing homes wanted to talk to me about what happened to people after the shots rolled out.

Confidence in the CDC and the medical community should hit rock bottom after it is revealed how extensive the damage caused by these vaccines is.

The fact that the Thailand study was published in a peer-reviewed journal, that they only did the easy-to-do assessments (which only found a portion of the damage), and the FAA quietly changed their EKG guidance should at least open your mind to the possibility that I might be right.

This narrative is going to start falling apart at an accelerated rate.

Stay tuned. The best is yet to come. And it’s going to be epic.

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Late last month, President Biden signed a bill that clears the way for $858 billion in Pentagon spending and nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy in 2023.  That’s far more than Washington anted up for military purposes at the height of the Korean or Vietnam wars or even during the peak years of the Cold War. In fact, the $80 billion increase from the 2022 Pentagon budget is in itself more than the military budgets of any country other than China. Meanwhile, a full accounting of all spending justified in the name of national security, including for homeland security, veterans’ care, and more, will certainly exceed $1.4 trillion. And mind you, those figures don’t even include the more than $50 billion in military aid Washington has already dispatched to Ukraine, as well as to frontline NATO allies, in response to the Russian invasion of that country.

The assumption is that when it comes to spending on the military and related activities, more is always better.

There’s certainly no question that one group will benefit in a major way from the new spending surge: the weapons industry. If recent experience is any guide, more than half of that $858 billion will likely go to private firms. The top five contractors alone — Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman — will split between $150 billion and $200 billion in Pentagon contracts. Meanwhile, they’ll pay their CEOs, on average, more than $20 million a year and engage in billions of dollars in stock buybacks designed to boost their share prices.

Such “investments” are perfectly designed to line the pockets of arms-industry executives and their shareholders. However, they do little or nothing to help defend this country or its allies.

Excessive Spending Doesn’t Align with the Pentagon’s Own Strategy

The Pentagon’s long-awaited National Defense Strategy, released late last year, is an object lesson in how not to make choices among competing priorities.  It calls for preparing to win wars against Russia or China, engage in military action against Iran or North Korea, and continue to wage a Global War on Terror that involves stationing 200,000 troops overseas, while taking part in counterterror operations in at least 85 countries, according to figures compiled by the Brown University Costs of War project.

President Biden deserves credit for ending America’s 20-year fiasco in Afghanistan, despite opposition from significant portions of the Washington and media establishments.  Unsurprisingly enough, mistakes were made in executing the military withdrawal from that country, but they pale in comparison to the immense economic costs and human consequences of that war and the certainty of ongoing failure, had it been allowed to continue indefinitely.

Still, it’s important to note that its ending by no means marked the end of the era of this country’s forever wars.  Biden himself underscored this point in his speech announcing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. “Today,” he said, “the terrorist threat has metastasized beyond Afghanistan. So, we are repositioning our resources and adapting our counterterrorism posture to meet the threats where they are now significantly higher: in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.”

In keeping with Biden’s pledge, U.S. military involvement in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia remains ongoing. Meanwhile, the administration continues to focus its Africa policy on military aid and training to the detriment of non-military support for nations facing the challenges not just of terrorist attacks, but of corruption, human rights abuses, and the devastation of climate change.

Consider it ironic, then, that a Pentagon budget crafted by this administration and expanded upon by Congress isn’t even faintly aligned with that department’s own strategy. Buying $13 billion aircraft carriers vulnerable to modern high-speed missiles; buying staggeringly expensive F-35 fighter jets unlikely to be usable in a great-power conflict; purchasing excess nuclear weapons more likely to spur than reduce an arms race, while only increasing the risk of a catastrophic nuclear conflict; and maintaining an Army of more than 450,000 active-duty troops that would be essentially irrelevant in a conflict with China are only the most obvious examples of how bureaucratic inertia, parochial politics, and corporate money-making outweigh anything faintly resembling strategic concerns in the budgeting process.

Congress Only Compounds the Problem

Congress has only contributed to the already staggering problems inherent in the Pentagon’s approach by adding $45 billion to that department’s over-the-top funding request. Much of it was, of course, for pork-barrel projects located in the districts of key representatives. That includes funding for extra combat ships and even more F-35s. To add insult to injury, Congress also prevented the Pentagon from shedding older ships and aircraft and so freeing up funds for investments in crucial areas like cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.  Instead of an either/or approach involving some tough (and not-so-tough) choices, the Pentagon and Congress have collaborated on a both/and approach that will only continue to fuel skyrocketing military budgets without providing significantly more in the way of defense.

Ironically, one potential counterweight to Congress’s never-ending urge to spend yet more on the Pentagon may be the Trumpist Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives. Its members recently called for a freeze in government spending, including on the military budget. At the moment, it’s too early to tell whether such a freeze has any prospect of passing or, if it does, whether it will even include Pentagon spending. In 2012, the last time Congress attempted to impose budget caps to reduce the deficit, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that a giant loopholewas created for the Pentagon. The war budget, officially known as the Overseas Contingency Operations account, was not subjected to limits of any sort and so was used to pay for all sorts of pet projects that had nothing to do with this country’s wars of that moment.

Nor should it surprise you that, in response to the recent chaos in the House of Representatives, the arms industry has already expanded its collaboration with the Republicans who are likely to head the House Armed Services Committee and the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee.  And mind you, incoming House Armed Services Committee chief Mike Rogers (R-AL) received over $444,000 from weapons-making companies in the most recent election cycle, while Ken Calvert (R-CA), the new head of the Defense Appropriations Committee, followed close behind at $390,000.  Rogers’s home state includes Huntsville, known as “Rocket City” because of its dense concentration of missile producers, and he’ll undoubtedly try to steer additional funds to firms like Boeing and Lockheed Martin that have major facilities there.  As for Calvert, his Riverside California district is just an hour from Los Angeles, which received more than $10 billion in Pentagon contracts in fiscal year 2021, the latest year for which full statistics are available.

That’s not to say that key Democrats have been left out in the cold either.  Former House Armed Services Committee chair Adam Smith (D-WA) received more than $276,000 from the industry over the same period.  But the move from Smith to Rogers will no doubt be a step forward for the weapons industry’s agenda. In 2022, Smith voted against adding more funding than the Pentagon requested to its budget, while Rogers has been a central advocate of what might be called extreme funding for that institution. Smith also raised questions about the cost and magnitude of the “modernization” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and, even more important, suggested that preparing to “win” a war against China was a fool’s errand and should be replaced by a strategy of deterrence. As he put it:

“I think building our defense policy around the idea that we have to be able to beat China in an all-out war is wrong. It’s not the way it’s going to play out. If we get into an all-out war with China, we’re all screwed anyway. So we better focus on the steps that are necessary to prevent that. We should get off of this idea that we have to win a war in Asia with China. What we have to do from a national security perspective, from a military perspective, is we have to be strong enough to deter the worst of China’s behavior.”

Expect no such nuances from Rogers, one of the loudest and most persistent hawks in Congress.

Beyond campaign contributions, the industry’s strongest tool of influence is the infamous revolving door between government and the weapons sector. A 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office found that, between 2014 and 2019, more than 1,700 Pentagon officials left the government to work for the arms industry. And mind you, that was a conservative estimate, since it only covered personnel going to the top 14 weapons makers.

Former Pentagon and military officials working for such corporations are uniquely placed to manipulate the system in favor of their new employers. They can wield both their connections with former colleagues in government and their knowledge of the procurement process to give their companies a leg (or two) up in the competition for Defense Department funding. As the Project on Government Oversight has noted in Brass Parachutes, a memorable report on that process: “Without transparency and more effective protections of the public interest, the revolving door between senior Pentagon officials and officers and defense contractors may be costing American taxpayers billions.”

Pushing back against such a correlation of political forces would require concerted public pressure of a kind as yet unseen.  But outfits like the Poor People’s Campaign and #People Over Pentagon (a network of arms-control, good-government, environmental, and immigration-reform groups) are trying to educate the public on what such runaway military outlays really cost the rest of us.  They are also cultivating a Congressional constituency that may someday even be strong enough to begin curbing the worst excesses of such militarized overspending.  Unfortunately, time is of the essence as the Pentagon’s main budget soars toward an unprecedented $1 trillion.

A New Approach?

The Pentagon wastes immense sums of money thanks to cost overruns, price gouging by contractors, and spending on unnecessary weapons programs.  Any major savings from its wildly bloated budget, however, would undoubtedly also involve a strategy that focused on beginning to reduce the size of the U.S. armed forces.  Late last year the Congressional Budget Office outlined three scenarios that could result in cuts of 10%-15% in its size without in any way undermining the country’s security interests. The potential savings from such relatively modest moves: $1 trillion over 10 years. Although that analysis would need to be revised to reflect the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, most of its recommendations would still hold.

Far greater savings would be possible, however, if the staggeringly costly, remarkably counterproductive militarized approach to fighting global terrorism (set so deeply and disastrously in place since September 11, 2001) was reconceived.  This country’s calamitous post-9/11 wars, largely justified as counterterror operations, have already cost us more than $8 trillion and counting, according to a detailed analysis by the Costs of War Project.  Redefining such counterterror efforts to emphasize diplomacy and economic assistance to embattled countries, as well as the encouragement of good governance and anticorruption efforts to counteract the conditions that allow terror groups to spread in the first place, could lead to a major reduction in the American global military footprint. It could also result in a corresponding reduction in the size of the Army and the Marines.

Similarly, a deterrence-only nuclear strategy like the one outlined by the organization Global Zero would preempt the need for the Pentagon’s three-decades-long plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines at a cost of up to $2 trillion. At a minimum, hundreds of billions of dollars would be saved in the process.

And then there’s Washington’s increasing focus on a possible future war with China over Taiwan. Contrary to the Pentagon’s rhetoric, the main challenges from China are political and economic, not military.  The status of Taiwan should be resolved diplomatically rather than via threats of war or, of course, war itself. A major U.S. buildup in the Pacific would be both dangerous and wasteful, draining resources from other urgent priorities and undermining the ability of the U.S. and China to cooperate in addressing the existential threat of climate change.

In a report for the Project on Government Oversight, Dan Grazier has underscored just who wins and who loses from such a hawkish approach to U.S.-China relations. He summarizes the situation this way:

“As U.S. and Chinese leaders attempt to jockey for position in the western Pacific region for influence and military advantage, chances of an accidental escalation increase. Both countries also risk destabilizing their economies with the reckless spending necessary to fund this new arms race, although the timing of just such a race is perfect for the defense industry. The U.S. is increasing military spending just at the moment the end of the War on Terror threatened drastic cuts.”

When it comes to Russia, as unconscionable as its invasion of Ukraine has been, it’s also exposed the striking weaknesses of its military, suggesting that it will be in no position to threaten NATO in any easily imaginable future.  If, however, such a threat were to grow in the decades to come, European powers should take the lead in addressing it, given that they already cumulatively spend three times what Russia does on their militaries and have economies that, again cumulatively, leave Russia’s in the dust. And such statistics don’t even reflect recent pledges by major European powers to sharply increase their military budgets.

Forging a more sensible American defense strategy will, in the end, require progress on two fronts. First, the myth that the quest for total global military dominance best serves the interests of the American people needs to be punctured. Second, the stranglehold of the Pentagon and its corporate allies on the budget process needs to be loosened in some significant fashion.

Changing the public’s view of what will make America and this planet safer is certainly a long-term undertaking, but well worth the effort, if building a better world for future generations is ever to be possible.  On the economic front, jobs in the arms industry have been declining for decades thanks to outsourcing, automation, and the production of ever fewer units of basic weapons systems. Add to that an increasing reliance on highly paid engineers rather than unionized production workers.  Such a decline should create an opening for a different kind of economic future in which our tax dollars don’t flow endlessly down the military drain, but instead into environmentally friendly infrastructure projects and the creation and installation of effective alternative energy sources that will slow the heating of this planet and fend off a complete climate catastrophe.  Among other things, a new approach to energy production could create 40% more jobs per dollar spent than plowing ever more money into the military-industrial complex.

Whether any of these changes will occur in this America is certainly an open question. Still, consider the effort to implement them essential to sustaining a livable planet for the generations to come.  Overspending on the military will only dig humanity deeper into a hole that will be ever more difficult to get out of in the relatively short time available to us.

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William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author most recently of “Pathways to Pentagon Spending Reductions: Removing the Obstacles.”

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New measures proposed by the Scottish government in a recent document outline a war on carbon and a war on cars.  It includes a plan to implement restrictive 20-minute neighborhoods so that the Government can deliver on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Environmentalists have had it in for cars for years, wrote Spiked Online last year, we all know they’d like to ban cars altogether.  In the age of “net zero,” the car is public enemy No1.  And so, we’ve had a long line of proposals to make driving more expensive and difficult.

For example, in April 2022, Stefanie O’Gorman, who sits on the Scottish government’s Climate Emergency Response Group, said that the construction of houses with double garages drove her “bonkers.” She told the Edinburgh Science Festival that owning two cars ignores “the social and cultural changes taking place as we adapt our lives to live more sustainably… we can’t afford for everybody to have two cars.”

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“Instead of holding Big Oil executives accountable for price gouging consumers at the pump, the committee will be dominated by the interests of extractive industries,” said one government transparency advocate.

A leading government accountability watchdog on Tuesday called out leaders of the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives while revealing that the 21 GOP members appointed by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to the Natural Resources Committee took a combined $3.8 million in campaign contributions from Big Oil.

Oil and gas industry contributions to the 21 right-wing lawmakers range from more than $850,000 for Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana—the nation’s third-biggest fossil gas producer and a top-10 oil-producing state—to $18,800 for Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia, according to Accountable.US.

“The new MAGA-controlled House Natural Resources Committee aligns much closer with violent anti-public land extremists like the Bundys than they do with most Americans,” the group said in a statement, referring to former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” 2016 campaign slogan and the Nevada family that perpetrated an armed confrontation with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management over unpaid cattle grazing fees.

Accountable.US continued:

Of the Republicans on the committee, five outright oppose federal public lands, most have demonstrated support for election denial, and all have supported policies to expand industry-friendly federal leasing to Big Oil and other extractive sectors. While nearly all of the members have received donations from oil and gas companies, several have personal financial conflicts of interest in the form of either spousal employment or stock holdings.

“Big Oil’s investment is already paying off,” said Jordan Schreiber, director of energy and environment at Accountable.US. “McCarthy and his MAGA allies wasted no time delivering results for their wealthy industry donors, placing nine of the most extreme anti-conservation members on the House Natural Resources Committee.”

“Instead of holding Big Oil executives accountable for price gouging consumers at the pump, the committee will be dominated by the interests of extractive industries, enabling them to push bills that stymie cost controls, and clear the way for multibillion dollar corporations to exploit the American people’s land for private gain,” Schreiber added.

In addition to highlighting the money that the lawmakers have taken from the fossil fuel industry, the new report notes relevant actions and remarks, from Graves describing President Joe Biden’s climate plan as “ushering in a Soviet-style state” to Rep. Harriet Hageman of Wyoming comparing conservation efforts to dictators starving and killing people, claiming that “it’s about controlling people through controlling the food supply.”

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

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Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

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Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has forced a dramatic restructuring of energy markets in the west, with many European nations vowing to wean themselves off Russian energy products. The UK has been one of the more successful countries in achieving this target after committing to end imports of oil and coal from Russia by the end of 2022 and even recently legislated for a ban on Russian gas. By October, UK imports of Russian energy were down to a trickle, with the country buying just £2 million of oil, but zero coal or gas from Russia. But reports have now emerged that India has been offering a back-door for imports of Russian oil into Britain, blunting the country’s efforts to restrict funding for the Kremlin. Some British buyers have effectively replaced imports directly from Russia with imports from Russian-fed refineries, thereby indirectly supporting the Russian oil industry. 

Although such a supply chain is actually legal under UK rules, still it cannot be overlooked because this is another covert way to fund Putin’s war. Before the war began nearly a year ago, it was pretty rare for Indian refiners to process Russian crude. The refiners have always exported to Europe, but they are now exporting even more because it’s more attractive as Europe’s diesel prices are higher and also buying more Russian crude because Russia is offering heavy discounts.

Indeed, Oleg Ustenko, adviser to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, says these companies are “exploiting weaknesses in the sanctions regime”.

“The UK must close the loopholes that undermine support for Ukraine by allowing bloody fossil fuels to continue flowing across our borders. About one in five barrels of the crude oil that they process is Russian. A big chunk of that diesel they produce now will be based on Russian crude oil,’’ he has said.

Kpler data has revealed that the Jamnagar refinery on India’s west coast imported 215 shipments of crude oil and fuel oil from Russia in 2022, 4 times as much as it bought in the previous year. Meanwhile, the UK has imported a total of 10m barrels of diesel and other refined products from Jamnagar since the war began, 2.5 times what it bought during 2021 with Trafigura, Shell Plc (NYSE: SHEL), BP Plc (NYSE: BP), PetroChina Co. (OTCPK: PCYYF) and Indian multinational conglomerate Essar Group the key buyers.

According to Bloomberg’s oil strategist Julian Lee, Russia’s flagship Urals have been trading at a massive discount of as much as 40% to the international Brent crude oil. In contrast, in 2021, Urals traded at a much smaller discount of $2.85 to Brent. Urals is the main blend exported by Russia. Indeed, Moscow could be losing ~$4 billion a month in energy revenues as per Bloomberg’s calculations.

Europe Importing Russian LNG

But the UK is hardly the only culprit in Europe as far as helping fund Putin’s war machine goes. Whereas supplies of Russian pipeline gas–the bulk of Europe’s gas imports before the Ukraine war–are down to a trickle, reports have emerged that Europe has been hungrily scooping up Russian LNG.

Europe has been working hard to wean itself off Russian energy commodities ever since the latter invaded Ukraine. The European Union has banned Russian coal and plans to block most Russian oil imports by the end of 2022 in a bid to deprive Moscow of an important source of revenue to wage its war in Ukraine.

But ditching Russian gas is proving to be more onerous than Europe would have hoped for, with the Wall Street Journal estimating that the bloc’s imports of Russian liquefied natural gas jumped by 41% Y/Y in the year through August.

“Russian LNG has been the dark horse of the sanctions regime,” Maria Shagina, research fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, has told WSJ. Importers of Russian LNG to Europe have argued that the shipments are not covered by current EU sanctions and that buying LNG from Russia and other suppliers has helped keep European energy prices in check.

Although Russian LNG has accounted for just 8% of the European Union and UK’s gas imports since the start of March, the trade runs counter to the EU’s efforts to deprive Russia of fossil-fuel revenue.

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Alex Kimani is a veteran finance writer, investor, engineer and researcher for Safehaven.com. 

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

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***

The process toward a Turkish-Syrian rapprochement may lose momentum as a top aide to Turkish President Recep Erdogan threatened to derail it. On Saturday, Ibrahim Kalin, presidential advisor on foreign policy, stated during a media briefing in Ankara that the Russian push for peace did not mean that Ankara was abandoning the option of launching a new campaign in Syria. 

To quote Kalin,

“A ground operation is possible any time, depending on the level of threats we receive.” But he also added, “Turkey never targets the Syrian state or Syrian civilians.” 

This may seem like crying “wolf.” But Kalin’s comments came two days after Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad said that any future talks with Ankara should aim for “the end of occupation” by Turkey of parts of Syria. 

Syrian Foreign Minister Fayssal Mikdad since said at a joint press conference in Damascus on Sunday with the visiting Iranian FM Hussein Amir Abdollahian that a suitable environment must be created for Syrian-Turkish meetings at higher levels if necessary, and that any political meetings must be built on specific foundations that respect Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and the presence of the armed forces as a real guarantor of the Syrian and neighbouring lands, and this is the thing that determines the possibility of holding such meetings. 

Abdollahian’s own remark was equally revealing:

“Syria and Turkey are important countries in the region, and Tehran has distinguished and good relations with both of them, and when there were threats of Turkish military attacks against northern Syria, we worked to prevent that, and we are happy that the diplomatic efforts we made led to dialogue taking the place of war.” 

Plainly put, Tehran underscored that it has equity in any Syrian-Turkish normalisation. Arguably, Iran creates space for Syria to negotiate with Turkey. Iran is a balancer in the Syrian-Russian equations also, which has its complexities too. Basically, Tehran regards Damascus as part of the “axis of resistance” that is integral to Iran’s regional strategies. 

Significantly, this is also the thrust of a commentary recently by the influential NourNews which is wired into Iran’s national security establishment.

Indeed, Assad told Abdollahian that Damascus is keen on “continuous communication and coordination of positions” with Iran, especially since the latter was one of the first countries to stand by the Syrian people in their war against terrorism, and furthermore, such coordination is of the utmost importance today to “achieve common interests” when the two countries are witnessing “accelerated regional and international developments.”  

During Abdollahian’s visit, Syria and Iran agreed to renew an economic strategic agreement, which would be formalised during a forthcoming visit by President Ebrahim Raisi to Damascus. 

Apart from the crucial security role by tens of thousands of Iran-backed fighters in tilting the balance of forces in the Syrian conflict in Assad’s favour, Iran has also been a critical economic lifeline for Syria, delivering fuel and credit lines worth billions of dollars to help Damascus offset crippling Western-led sanctions. Syria and Iran signed almost a dozen economic deals in 2019 as part of the long-term strategic economic agreement to bolster their commercial ties.

Moscow may have pursued Ankara’s interests more in its relations with Syria lately. But Moscow’s shrinking strategic band width and diminished influence in Syria in the downstream of the Ukraine conflict does not translate as retrenchment. 

The redeployment of the Wagner Group from Syria’s southwest and far eastern regions to Ukraine, the transfer of a Syria-based S-300 missile defence system to Ukraine and even possible withdrawal of additional military assets from Syria can only be seen as tactical shift in Russia’s military footprint in Syria.  

Plainly put, Iran’s role is a factor of stability in the Syrian situation lest an empowered Turkey feels tempted to expand its presence in Syria. Equally, Russia also plays a trapeze act, leveraging its presence in Syria to encourage a conflicted Israel to navigate a precarious balance between its interests in Syria and its support for Ukraine and the West. 

The bottomline is that in the wake of the Ukraine conflict, the Syrian conflict’s power dynamic is dramatically shifting. On the one hand, there is a strategic “pull” toward a greater possibility of Damascus, Moscow, Tehran and Ankara working together to push US forces out of northeast Syria. 

On the other hand, the power dynamic with Russia may be shifting in Ankara’s favour lately. Erdogan’s capacity to hold Swedish and Finnish accession to NATO hostage; Erdogan’s intensified threats to launch another incursion into northeast Syria; Turkiye’s role as the sole custodian of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits which regulate the access to the Black Sea — these are factors that may encourage Erdogan to press his demands more forcefully once the Turkish elections slated for June get over and Russia’s primary leverage on Turkiye, which is economic rather than military, loses its potency. 

Make no mistake that Erdogan’s top priority will be the dismantling of the Kurdish project in northeast Syria. How Erdogan goes about it is the whole point. It may not be a bad thing for Russia since any such shift in the Syrian conflict landscape would ultimately cut down the Kurds, threaten the viability of the US-Kurdish partnership and eventually pressure the US to pull out of Syria. 

But the catch is, it may entail another limited Turkish invasion of Syria. Should Erdogan believe that his victory in the forthcoming election depends on another Syrian incursion, Russia will be unlikely to prevent the attack. Hence Moscow’s positive attitude toward Erdogan’s proposal on a trilateral meeting between Turkey, Russia, and Syria to address Turkiye’s security concerns. 

Any aggressive Iranian tactics at this point may weaken Russia’s capacity in fostering a Turkish-Syrian rapprochement. But then, the mitigating factor here is that in the present conditions under sanctions, Russia and Iran also have deepened their strategic ties well beyond their cooperation in Syria. 

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim reported on Sunday quoting an influential member of the Majlis that Tehran expects to take delivery of a number of Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets in the coming months plus “a series of other military equipment from Russia, including air defence systems, missile systems and helicopters.”

Su-35 is a 4++ generation twin-engine, super-maneuverable fighter jet and a game changer. It is for the first time since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 that Iran will be receiving advanced cutting-edge weaponry to boost its deterrence capability.  

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Featured image: Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad met Iran’s Foreign Minister Hussein Amir Abdollahian, Damascus, January 14, 2023 (Source: Indian Punchline)

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***

Two years ago, the outgoing U.S. administration of Donald Trump did some bureaucratic realigning of what countries fall under which military command groups. Israel, which had been part of the EUCOM (European Command) group was transferred to CENTCOM (Central Command), which encompasses the Middle East and some of South Asia. 

It was the sort of boring detail that doesn’t generate headlines, and many who do hear about it yawn and move on quickly. But when it was announced on January 15, 2021, it was celebrated by pro-Israel groups in the United States and by Israeli officials.

At the time, I noted that this was part of capitalizing on the Abraham Accords and pushing forward with the idea of forming a “Mideast NATO.” I tweeted, “This bears close watching. The burgeoning #Israel – Arab States military alliance, built by the #Trump administration for a military confrontation with #Iran, is not something @JoeBiden is going to reverse. The question will be how he manages it and what he decides to use it for.” We’re starting to see what this Biden policy looks like.

This bears close watching. The burgeoning #Israel – Arab States military alliance, built by the #Trump administration for a military confrontation with #Iran, is not something @JoeBiden is going to reverse. The question will be how he manages it and what he decides to use it for. https://t.co/XADpT8xoR2

— Mitchell Plitnick 🔥🕎 (@MJPlitnick) January 19, 2021

The Biden administration has pressed forward with the military aspects of the Abraham Accords’ vision, letting it be known at the end of 2022 that Israel, as part of its new position in CENTCOM, had been elevated to “full military partner” in terms of strategizing and planning with the United States.

In some ways, this is little more than a rhetorical change. After all, it’s no secret that the U.S. and Israel coordinate matters of regional strategy very closely, have lines of communication that are buzzing all the time between political and military planners from the top of the chain of command to the bottom, and work jointly throughout the Middle East region. But, as analyst Paul Pillar points out, this more public elevation of the U.S.-Israel military relationship brings the United States closer to a military alliance with Israel, a relationship which, if it results in an official alliance, runs the risk of an American commitment to Israel’s defense that could easily drag the U.S. into more fighting in the Middle East, even if that’s not Washington’s intention. And it would mean that commitment happens without any kind of public debate.

As Pillar notes,

“The risks of a closer military relationship with Israel center on Israel’s tendency to get involved in deadly scrapes. Israel is the Middle Eastern state that has thrown its military weight around, with multiple attacks on the territories of other nations, more than any other state in the region. Israel has repeatedly initiated wars, including the big one in 1967, which began with an Israeli attack on Egypt. Later came repeated Israeli invasions of Lebanon, multiple devastating military attacks on the Palestinian-inhabited Gaza Strip, an attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor (an attack that revived and accelerated a covert Iraqi nuclear weapons program), and a later similar attack in Syria.”

It is fair to argue that the de facto military alliance with Israel that Pillar fears already exists. If Israel goes to war, even if it’s a war of its own making, there is likely to be enormous pressure in Washington to support that effort. Whether that pressure would be successful is a matter of debate, a debate that could not happen if we officially commit to Israel as an ally.

We should keep in mind Pillar’s example of the 1967 war, a war that Israel started, but which is far more often described by Israel and its supporters as a “defensive war,” a claim which goes unchallenged the overwhelming majority of the time. (Note: This is a significant point that Israel still uses. To refute it and to see a more accurate history, see, among many sources, Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Even Israel’s former foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami refutes the pre-emptive strike idea.) The fact that there are relatively few people who understand that Israel was not facing an imminent attack, and both the United States and Israel itself knew it, illustrates the danger to the United States of an increased military commitment to Israel. The massive funding and diplomatic cover the U.S. gives Israel are bad enough. But as Pillar explains, the threat of Israel dragging the United States into another Middle East war, is already real and growing.

“With Netanyahu now back in power at the head of his radical coalition, and with Iran having expanded its nuclear program in response to Donald Trump’s foolish abandonment of the agreement that had severely restricted that program, the danger of Israel instigating a war with Iran is as great as ever,” he writes. “For Netanyahu, the preferred scenario would have the United States, rather than Israel, assume the main burdens and costs of such a war. Especially given Israel’s long record of covert operations against Iran, the ability of Netanyahu’s government to manipulate events and bring about such a scenario is substantial.”

Pillar, a longtime U.S. intelligence analyst, cautions that any U.S. military relationship, with Israel or any other country, entails serious risks and ought to be carefully weighed against the benefits to U.S. interests as well as widely debated and carefully considered.

Even aid to Ukraine is a matter of constant public debate, despite the fact that every aid package that is going there makes big headlines and remains quite popular with most Americans. Yet as Israel becomes a closer military partner, with the risks that entails, there is no more than a mention here and there.

What would that debate look like? As with any other policy matter that carries risk, it would depend on what you see as U.S. interests. Many of us believe that a more just, egalitarian world that respects human rights, shares resources equitably, and nurtures the human spirit is a U.S. interest. But that is clearly far from the world we live in.

Still, while we work to get more people to support those principles in a material way, we can also look at what a more conventional view of U.S. interests would include. Surely, it would include regional stability in the Middle East. But what does that mean?

I would argue that U.S. interests aren’t being well served by Joe Biden’s foreign policy in general. Even before he was elected, and certainly since he was elected, Biden has pursued a policy of belligerence toward China. He dragged his feet for an extended period regarding the restoration of the Iran nuclear deal until a more hardline and belligerent Iranian administration came in, compromising the international effort to get the deal back in place. I’ve described elsewhere at some length my issues with his approach to Russia, and how U.S. policy for decades has been misguided, although the invasion of Ukraine was an unmitigated and horrific crime for which Russia bears full responsibility. I do not think Biden’s zeal for revitalizing NATO (which Vladimir Putin, I assume unintentionally, has done an incredible job of helping with), and his utter refusal to deal with the ongoing refugee crisis that is largely the result of U.S. policies over decades in Latin America as well as Haiti serve U.S. interests well either.

In the Middle East, the elevation of Israel to partnership is meant in the short term to strengthen the idea of a regional alliance similar to NATO. Ironically, and rather foolishly, it’s an attempt by Biden to enhance the region’s ability to defend itself, but, as Pillar makes clear, it actually enables those very regional partners, Israel and the United Arab Emirates (which, itself, has considerable sway in Washington) to draw the U.S. into their conflicts.

Even aside from the more idealistic concepts of justice, freedom, and human rights, it is very much in the U.S. interest to distance itself from Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people and its regional aggression, which so often takes the form of covert attacks in Iran and overt ones in Syria and Lebanon. It is also in the U.S. interest to distance itself from the devastation that Saudi Arabia is still wreaking in Yemen, as well as its ongoing funding of various militias across the region; and from the UAE, which behaves in a similar fashion in the region and, like KSA, is one of the most brutal autocracies in the world.

It is in the United States’ interest to find mutually beneficial accommodations with China because, as it will learn to its chagrin, its regional allies in the Gulf and in the Levant are going to pursue their own interests and maximize the benefits available in relationships with both the U.S. and China, as well as with Russia. Instead, Biden dreams of a “Mideast NATO” that will stand against not only Iran, but China and Russia as well.

If that seems unrealistic, it is. Regional stability and U.S. interests are served by promoting Palestinian freedom, and democracy throughout the region. That means supporting movements for freedom and democracy throughout the region. It does not mean the United States, with its compromised positions throughout the world, leading some neoconservative crusade to bring democracy at the point of a gun or with murderous sanctions. Rather, it means working with and through the United Nations and other global institutions to support and enable civil society groups in these countries and letting them do their work of promoting justice in their homes.

Even that is far off the table, such egalitarianism being foreign not only to the United States but to states in general. But what is not unrealistic, is for the United States to at least cease acting against its own interests. The U.S. gains nothing and loses much by covering for Israel’s apartheid system and constant violations and outright denial of Palestinian rights. It gains less than it loses by groveling before Mohammed Bin Salman in Riyadh and deepening its partnership with the dictatorial UAE. It is in U.S. interest to lower tensions with Iran and encourage its reintegration. Magnifying the belligerence, especially at the behest of the Saudis and Israelis who want to force the current Iranian rulers out (a strategy which only makes it more difficult for Iranians struggling for their freedom and for the change they want to see in Iran) is a self-defeating strategy.

Since taking office, Biden has, of course, nurtured this pipedream of a “Mideast NATO,” most recently this week at a meeting of the so-called “Negev Forum,” which brings together the Arab states that have relations with Israel to plan for major trade deals and build the military alliance, with smaller, minor working groups focused on efforts mostly meant for public relations such as cultural and scientific exchanges.

The pace of normalization has been slower than Washington probably hoped, and there are no immediate prospects of more Arab states following the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco into the Faustian bargain with Israel. Indeed, the Negev Forum itself highlighted the difficulties faced by Arab countries trying to work with Israel as Jordan boycotted the confab in solidarity with the Palestinian Authority, who have refused to join the Forum, which they correctly understand to be aimed at thwarting their ambitions of freedom from Israeli domination.

U.S. interests are best served not by facilitating trade and military deals between brutal autocracies and apartheid states. They are not served by inching toward a security pact with Israel. They are served by using the considerable leverage the U.S. has with allies like Israel, Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, among others, to recognize the basic rights of those to whom they deny them. Continuing down the road of further enriching corrupt elites and ignoring or even shielding human rights violators from consequences in order to strengthen a belligerent stance against other states will only end in the same destruction, loss of life, and massive waste that have characterized U.S. policy in the Middle East for all of this century and much of the last one.

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***

The guest preacher last Sunday at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta – the spiritual home of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. – praised King as “a nonviolent warrior for justice.” That preacher was President Joe Biden, a warrior, period.

“We come to contemplate his moral wisdom and commit ourselves to his path,” said Biden in his sermon in honor of the celebrated minister, assassinated in 1968. But King’s path was nonviolent, which does not describe the President (as we will see below).

King would have been 94, had he lived to the present. His birthday was observed nationally on Monday, the 16^th. Senator Raphael Warnock, the church’s senior pastor, had invited Biden to highlight the church’s annual King commemoration.

A bust of King rests in the Oval Office. “He was my inspiration as a kid,” said the President. He called on churchgoers to make King’s “dream a reality.”

An argument is made that the King speech most significant for today’s world is not the famous “I Have a Dream” but the one he gave on April 4, 1967, pleading for peace. Delivered at New York’s Riverside Church one year to the day before his murder, it was titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to break Silence.”

Half a million U.S. soldiers had been sent to fight in Vietnam. The US had already dropped more ordnance on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos than it did on Europe during World War II. King condemned “an illegal and unjustifiable war.” Many condemned him for having done so, inasmuch as he was a civil rights leader. He needed to explain.

At a time of black unrest, King tied racism to war. “We have been repeatedly faced with the irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has not been able to set them together in the same schools.,… So we watch them in brutal solidarity, burning the huts of a poor village but to realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago….

“As I walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles will not solve their problems … that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, ‘What about Vietnam?” Their questions hit home.

“I knew I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.”

King’s war views

King touched on the war’s history. He cited US support for up to 80 percent of war costs of the French in protecting their colonies from an indigenous, revolutionary movement seeking land reform; and US support for corrupt, inept, dictators, who lacked popular support and who resisted that revolution.

It was officially a war against Communist aggression. But King saw irony for the world’s most powerful nation to complain of “aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8,000 miles from its shores.” He pulled no punches in describing at length what the US was doing to Vietnam, in the name of democracy and defense against aggression. A few excerpts:

“… We herd them off the land of their fathers, into concentration camps…. we poison their water … kill a million acres of their crops … destroy the precious trees. … So far, we have killed a million of them, mostly children…. Thousands of the children homeless, without clothes…. They beg for food … selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers…. We test out our latest weapons on them…. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions, the family and the village…. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.”

The US ended its direct involvement in the Vietnam War fifty years ago this month, with the signing of a peace agreement in Paris. The war had taken the lives of as many as two million civilians and over 58,000 Americans.

King wanted a revolution of values that says of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” He called for an end, not only to the Vietnam War, but to “this business of burning human beings with napalm”; causing people to hate; and sending men to bloody battlefields.

“We have a choice today: nonviolent co-existence or violent co-annihilation,” King said – still a meaningful statement today.

Biden’s violent acts

During the Vietnam War, Joe Biden escaped the draft through student deferrals. While viewing it as “lousy policy,” he admittedly had a “lack of moral outrage” at the war.

He has long supported some wars, though not others. In the nineties he encouraged President Bill Clinton to bomb Yugoslavia. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Biden in 2002 eagerly pushed through the measure that let President Bush Jr. decide whether to attack Iraq. Bush’s aggressive war of “shock and awe,” begun in 2003, caused over a million deaths, by some estimates. Though the war supposedly ended in 2011, we may not be done with the killing.

In aspiring to the presidency, Biden pledged to end “forever wars.” In February 2021, 37 days after his inauguration, he started bombing Syria. His first attack killed 22 people. They were supposedly “militants,” but how does a bomb distinguish one from a child or woman or peaceful man? Biden’s periodic attacks in Iraq and Somalia, as well as Syria, have taken many more victims.

Biden did end the Afghan war, as he said he would. But contrary to promise, he continues to aid the Saudi Arabian monarchy in its bombings of Yemen’s people in their homes, hospitals, markets, schools, buses, and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Biden continues his predecessors’ program of “modernizing” the nuclear arsenal, instead of trying to eliminate it in accord with the aim of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. His pledge to renew the Iran nuclear agreement, abandoned by Trump, remains unfulfilled. Nor has Biden sought to renew the Reagan-Gorbachev INF treaty to scrap nuclear missiles up to intermediate range, which Trump tore up too.

In March 2022, risking a global conflagration, Biden promised that the US would defend “every inch” of NATO countries against Russia; and in May, he pledged to defend Taiwan against China. Warships approach both lands provocatively. His threats against two nuclear-armed, major powers were not authorized by Congress, nor were any of his bombings.

He sends arms to Ukraine continually, raising questions; What is the end game? Is he prepared to fight to the last Ukrainian – or until nukes start dropping? So far, the word “peace” evades his lips.

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Paul W. Lovinger, of San Francisco, is a journalist, author, editor, and antiwar activist. (See www.warandlaw.org.)

Featured image is from ABC7 Chicago

A Third Intifada and the Last War. Palestine and the Global South

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, January 17, 2023

Today, many Israelis believe what Golda Meir had said, including Israel’s top cabinet member Itamar Ben-Gvir, a known far-right extremist who basically wants to annex the rest of what was once known as Palestine and expel the remaining Palestinians once and for all.

Ten Inconvenient Truths About Ukraine Largely Ignored by the Media

By Dan Fournier, January 17, 2023

In recent years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought guarantees from NATO and many of its European members that it would halt its eastward expansion and end military cooperation with Ukraine and Georgia, which are not members, observed Al Jazeera. Both Georgia and the Ukraine share borders with Russia and the latter has a significantly long border with the biggest former member of the Soviet bloc.

Sri Lanka Trapped into Debt and IMF Sponsored Poverty

By Shenali D Waduge, January 17, 2023

We have taken 16 loans from IMF since 1965, countless IMF officials have been landing & leaving advising every Government on how to manage the economy and yet we remain trapped into debt with no plan to come out. Instead of pruning the military, why doesn’t IMF insist on pruning the Govt starting off with reducing unlimited perks of politicians, the useless Provincial Council system along with unnecessary staff before trying to destabilize the national security apparatus of Sri Lanka?

Top 20 Most Cringeworthy Zelensky PR Moments

By Caitlin Johnstone, January 17, 2023

The US empire’s proxy war in Ukraine has had many jaw-dropping instances of imperialist sociopathy, propagandistic audacity and brazen journalistic malpractice that we’ve discussed in this space many times, but one of the most cringeworthy and degrading aspects of the globe-spanning narrative control campaign surrounding this war has been the way the nation’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has been turned into an ever-present corporate mascot for the most aggressive ad campaign ever devised.

Energy Crisis – A Ticking Time Bomb

By Stewart Brennan, January 17, 2023

The US has been drawing on its strategic oil reserves for over a year while refining it into gasoline for internal consumption while trying to keep the cost of gasoline down. But why is there an energy crisis in the first place?

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022): A Parable of Irrationalism

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, January 17, 2023

In real life, we are often presented with irrational proposals or events that are presented in a rational, calm, logical way by rational, calm protagonists; and where objectors are presented in caricatured ways as hippies, do-gooders, conspiracy theorists, liberals, commies etc., and we are persuaded that all is fine.

Polish PM Decries WWIII, Says More Arms to Ukraine Will Prevent It

By Kurt Nimmo, January 17, 2023

It should be obvious by now that pouring more military armaments into the USG-initiated conflict in Ukraine will result in a reciprocal response by the Russian armed forces. Russia’s SMO is tasked with disarming neo-Nazis and preventing them from killing the innocent people they hate in eastern and southern Ukraine.

Video: The Key to Ending COVID-19 Is Buried in the WTC Wreckage

By Emanuel Pastreich, January 17, 2023

The reason that the United States has been overrun with COVID-19 propaganda and that the government acted as a toy of the rich, pushing through policies that have no support, is that the entire system was gutted in the aftermath of 9/11 and a stark tyranny has replaced the flawed republic that once stood behind the halls of government.

Critical Woke Theory for Dummies

By Dr. Gary Null and Richard Gale, January 17, 2023

As we enter the new year, America has passed far beyond the threshold when the public needs to put ideological beliefs and partisan politics aside and honestly reevaluate how our culture has become a toxic stew of maladaptive groupthink.

Peru: Under Siege by the US, CIA and the WEF?

By Peter Koenig, January 17, 2023

Remember Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF) Academy for Young Global Leaders (YGL)? It looks like Dina Boluarte is one of Professor Schwab’s YGL academy graduates. And she knows her role. Not long ago, with regard to the YGL program, Schwab said, “We are proud having been able to infiltrate governments around the world with our YGLs.” See photo (origin ´Del Peruano’). Is Ms. Boluarte one of the infiltrees?

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A large majority – seven out of eleven, or 64% – of the members of an important new subcommittee tasked with evaluating the safety of GM foods and animal feed have potential, probable, or definite conflicts of interest,  in the form of vested interests in the liberalisation or commercialisation of GM technologies or related products, according to our analysis.

Our finding comes shortly after the publication of an important paper in Nature Food, the highest ranking journal on food science and technology, which found extensive conflicts of interest in UK regulatory committees on GMOs and other food safety issues. The experts who undertook this analysis point out that conflicts of interest (COIs) are critical to public trust in decision making and conclude that ideally such regulatory or advisory bodies “should not include anyone with COIs that deserve to be declared”.

But in our GMWatch analysis of the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee on products of genetic technologies destined for food and feed purposes, we found that four out of its 11 members have probable or definite conflicts of interest; and three out of the 11 have potential conflicts of interest that need to be clarified. In other words, only four out of the 11 (36%) have no apparent conflicts of interest.

Independent and transparent?

The ACNFP PGT Subcommittee was recently set up under the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP), with the vital role of conducting risk assessments of GM foods and feed under UK legislation. It reports to the ACNFP and advises the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland.

The ACNFP is sponsored by the FSA and calls itself “an independent expert committee”, which is why the issue of conflicts of interest is so important. The FSA is responsible for designing the risk assessment for the UK’s new regulatory regime on GMOs, including the policy on GMO labelling, although it is already clear that it has no intention of asking for GMO labels on new GMOs.

The ACNFP PGT Subcommittee met five times in 2022. Much of their business on GMOs is noted in agendas as “reserved” (or secret, at least for the time being), making a mockery of the FSA’s claimto act not just “independently” but “transparently”.

Study finds extensive conflicts of interest in UK’s GMO regulatory committees

Our findings on this important new GMO regulatory committee come soon after the publication of a paper by Profs Erik Millstone and Tim Lang on conflicts of interest in UK food regulatory institutions, including the FSA, the ACNFP, and another GMO regulatory body, the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE). Millstone and Lang found that each of them included members declaring interests at some point, with some panels having more experts with conflicts of interest than without.

Millstone and Lang based their findings on the declarations of interest of the members of the different committees. They did not analyse the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee, probably because it was formed after they wrote their paper – hence the need for our analysis.

Millstone and Lang found that on the FSA’s Science Council, the proportion declaring conflicts of interest has been rising, and in November 2022 there was a six-to-five majority with such conflicts.

Of the FSA’s five topic-focused committees, all had majorities with conflicts of interest at some stage. At the ACNFP, the “parent” committee of the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee, the proportion of people with conflicts of interest has risen in recent years, with nine out of 16 members (56%) declaring such conflicts in 2020, 11 out of 19 members (58%) in October 2021, and a peak of 14 out of 21 members (67%) in November 2022.

Too close to industry

In GMWatch’s view, a cynic might conclude that the numbers of conflicted people have risen with the UK’s departure from the EU and consequent plans to liberalise GMOs. That said, conflicts of interest on GMO regulatory committees have long been a source of concern. For instance, over two decades ago a UK government minister pledged to overhaul of the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE) because there was “a general view that some of the people were rather too close to the industry and rather too pro-GM”.

Despite that, Millstone and Lang found that only one of the seven current members of ACRE declared no conflicts of interest in 2022. The other six (86%) had conflicts of interest with 16 different corporations.

Indeed, our own GMWatch analysis of March 2022 found that 100% of the members of ACRE have potential or actual conflicts of interest that may enable them to benefit from the weakening of the regulations around GMOs. For our analysis, we expanded our research beyond the members’ own declarations of interest, and termed some conflicts of interest “potential” as well as the more obvious “actual” ones – possible explanations for the small single-person difference in conclusions between us and Millstone and Lang.

Millstone and Lang also found that despite earlier ministerial assurances that those with commercial conflicts of interest would always remain a minority, by 2008, a majority (nine out of 14) of FSA Board members had active or recent commercial conflicts of interest. The proportion of FSA Board members who declared conflicts of interest peaked in 2008 but subsequently declined. In 2014, the numbers with and without conflicts of interest were equal, but the chair was among those who declared a conflict, and chairs have a casting vote in the event of tied votes. In December 2020, the FSA Board had a five to four majority of those declaring conflicts of interest, but in 2022, three of nine declared them.

Millstone and Lang write, “COIs are important because they may undermine public trust in decision-making and challenge the FSA as it tries to enhance public trust.”

They conclude, “If the FSA, or any such regulatory or advisory body, is completely to eliminate and avoid corporate capture, its board and advisory committees should not include anyone with COIs that deserve to be declared.”

We agree with this conclusion and warn the public that decisions on GMOs reached by the committees examined in this article cannot be assumed to be objective.

Our analysis of the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee

We looked at the interests of the 11 members of the subcommittee, as they themselves declare them on the ACNFP website and from information available in the public domain, to identify actual or potential conflicts of interest that could compromise the person’s objectivity in evaluating the risks of GMOs.

We define conflicts of interest as vested interests in the liberalisation and commercialisation of GM technologies or products in the areas of agriculture, food, livestock animals, or food processing. “Vested interests” do not necessarily mean financial interests; instead they could be interests related to career progression and professional status.

Key

• No conflicts of interest found: (-)
• Equivocal or potential conflicts of interest: (+ -)
• Probable or definite conflicts of interest: (+)

Members

Dr Andy Greenfield (chair) (-)

Dr Andy Greenfield, chair of the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee, has a background in medical genetics and animal welfare ethics. He is named as an applicant and inventor on patents on a gene therapeutic agent for transplant patients. However, as the development, regulation and use of genetic modification technologies in medicine are separate from their use in agriculture and food, and because no government in its right mind would try to deregulate medical uses of GM, neither his patents nor his declared interests on the ACNFP website would appear to constitute a conflict of interest with his role on the Subcommittee. We therefore conclude that we found no conflicts of interest.

Professor Paul Fraser (+)

Professor Paul Fraser is chair of the management board of BBSRC-NIBB phase-II High Value Biorenewables (HVB) Network in Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy, a public-private partnership that “actively promotes and facilitates collaboration between academia and industry in the Biorenewables sector”, including facilitating “partnership and knowledge transfer between UK academia and industry”. Within that research programme he has acted as chair of the management board for the BBSRC-NIBB Network for High Value Chemicals from Plants.

The John Innes Centre (JIC) and the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products, University of York are represented in the HVB executive group. The JIC is a GM crop research and development centrethat is heavily oriented towards corporate interests. The Centre for Novel Agricultural Products researches and develops GM plants for agricultural, “phytoremediation” (environmental cleanup using plants) and industrial uses.

The HVB management board includes Johnathan Napier of the GMO crop development institute Rothamsted Research and Andrew Collis, synthetic biochemistry technical lead of the pharmaceutical company GSK Pharma Supply Chain.

Fraser reports receiving research funding from the Gates Foundation as well as the agbiotech company Syngenta, which develops GM crops. Bill Gates is “an evangelist for genetically engineered foods” who predicts that “GMOs will end starvation in Africa” and GMOs can “end world hunger by 2030” and the Gates Foundation funds GMO research and development projects worldwide.

Due to Fraser’s roles in the BBSRC-NIBB public-private partnership, as well as his funding from the Gates Foundation and Syngenta, he has conflicts of interest in the form of vested interests in the liberalisation of GMOs and should be excluded from the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee.

Professor Wendy Harwood (+)

Professor Wendy Harwood is Head of the Crop Transformation Group at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, where she also manages the BRACT (Biotechnology Resources for Arable Crop Transformation) Crop Transformation/Genome Editing Platform.

In her declaration of interests she lists funding from the BBSRC and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for projects involving genetic transformation and genome editing.

Due to her role at the John Innes Centre and her Gates funding for GMO projects, Harwood has serious conflicts of interest that should exclude her from serving on an “independent” expert panel on GMOs.

Professor Huw Jones (+)

Professor Huw Jones declares that he is a member of the “EPSO Plants for the Future gene editing working group” and the Plants for the Future European Technology Platform (Plant ETP).

EPSO is a scientist group that is very active in lobbying at the EU level for deregulation of new GMOs. Sixty-four per cent of the members of the EPSO working group on Agricultural Technologies, which develops opinions in this field for EPSO as a whole, have vested interests in the commercialisation of new GMOs.

Plant ETP was set up by EPSO and the GMO industry lobby group EuropaBio in 2004. It published a report that advocates “lowering barriers to market access” for “plant-based innovation” via “innovation-friendly” regulation. Plant ETP is composed of agricultural biotech companies and Copa-Cogeca, the EU representative of national farmer associations. It counts among its members EPSO and the John Innes Centre, as well as the agbiotech companies BASF, Bayer CropScience, KWS, Keygene, and Syngenta.

EPSO’s and Plant ETP’s activities and corporate links mean that Jones’s roles in the organisations constitute conflicts of interest that should exclude him from the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee.

Dr Ray Kemp (+ -)

According to his declaration of interests on the ACNFP website, Dr Ray Kemp is “a social scientist specialising in risk perception and communication” – notably in matters to do with radiation risks. He is an expert adviser to the International Atomic Energy Agency and a non-executive director of the UK government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which is responsible for nuclear issues, including nuclear waste management, and a member of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM).

The public might reasonably wonder why, with this background, Kemp is on a committee dealing with GM foods. The website of his former company gives a possible clue. He was managing director of his own risk communication consulting firm, Ray Kemp Consulting Ltd (now dissolved). The company specialised in “addressing controversial health, safety and environmental issues” about a number of risky and unpopular technologies, including radioactive waste disposal; nuclear power plants; and 5G, mobile phone masts, and smart meters. Since his appointment to the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee, we might add “GM foods” to that list.

The Oil, Gas and Energy Law website informs us of the stance he is likely to take on GM food risks. The website describes his speciality as “advising on projects, policies and programs where public and stakeholder perceptions of risk differ from the technically assessed levels”. For “technically assessed”, read “claimed by industry and accepted by compliant governments”. The cynical conclusion might be that he is on the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee in order to persuade the public to accept the risks posed by GM foods.

While such a role may not formally constitute a conflict of interest, it seems obvious that in the public interest, this “risk perception and communication” expert should be replaced by someone with a technical understanding of the risks posed by GM foods based on empirical research.

Dr Elizabeth Lund (-)

According to her declaration of interests on the ACNFP website, Dr Elizabeth Lund is a freelance consultant in the area of research ethics and nutritional study design and is alternate vice-chair of West London Gene Therapy Advisory Committee and Research Ethics Committee.

We did not identify any conflicts of interest for her.

Professor Hans Verhagen (+ -)

Professor Hans Verhagen is a board-certified toxicologist and nutritionist who is also the owner of his own consultancy business, Food Safety & Nutrition Consultancy, following his retirement from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in 2020, where he was Head of the Risk Assessment and Scientific Assistance Department, as well as a Senior Scientific Officer.

While toxicological and nutritional expertise is welcome in the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee, Verhagen’s consultancy business may put him in an awkward position regarding his duty to serve the public interest rather than that of the GMO developer applicant company. Having served in EFSA for several years, he now offers corporate clients help and advice on “anticipating the outcome of the evaluation of a dossier by EFSA (based on 9 years of practical experience)” and in “actual building [of] a dossier for an application or for a notification”.

A “dossier” is the collection of data that a company wishing to commercialise a GMO must submit to the regulator – in this case, EFSA, but presumably also its UK equivalent, the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee. Could Verhagen find himself in a position whereby in his consultant role, he advises a company how to get its GM food approved, either by EFSA or the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee, even perhaps helping the company compile the dossier, and then in his regulatory role on the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee, evaluates the safety of the same product?

The same or a very similar dossier is routinely used across multiple regulatory authorities, thanks to widespread “regulatory harmonisation” around the globe. So it’s possible that even if Verhagen hasn’t helped prepare the dossier for submission to the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee, he may have helped prepare it for submission to EFSA. The two agencies may appear to be independent of one another, but any given company could submit substantially the same dossier to both. Alternatively, a company that has been a client of Verhagen’s consultancy firm may submit a dossier to the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee on a product that the consultancy firm has not specifically dealt with, but there would still be a conflict of loyalty in that Verhagen would be evaluating the safety of a product made by a company that was, is, or is likely to be in the future, a client of his consultancy firm.

As is often the case with the declarations of interest on the ACNFP website, not enough information is given about these potential conflicts of interest and how they would be managed if a relevant situation arose, for the public to make a judgement about whether Verhagen’s consultancy business constitutes a conflict of interest. We therefore provisionally conclude, pending clarification, that he has potential conflicts of interest that mean he should be excluded from the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee.

Professor Bruce Whitelaw (+)

According to his declaration of interest on the ACNFP website, Professor Bruce Whitelaw is the interim director of the Roslin Institute, a BBSRC-funded Institute embedded in the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies at the Easter Bush Campus of the University of Edinburgh. The Roslin gained fame (or notoriety, depending on your viewpoint) as the place where Dolly the sheep, the world’s first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, was made. Dolly showed signs of accelerated ageing and developed arthritis and tumours in the lung, and had to be euthanised at only six years old. The natural lifespan of a sheep is 10-12 years.

Within the veterinary campus at Easter Bush, Whitelaw is Dean of Research and Innovation, Chairman of Roslin Innovation Centre (“the business location of choice for companies undertaking strategic, commercial and collaborative research in the animal and veterinary sciences”), and a director and non-executive board member of Roslin Technologies Ltd. Roslin Technologies is a private company with the objective “to advance disruptive biotechnologies to improve protein production”, in particular through lab-grown meat.

The ACNFP website clearly spells out Whitelaw’s vested interests in GM applications in livestock animals: “Through his bioscience research reflected in nearly 200 scientific manuscripts and 12 patents, he pioneers the application of genetic technologies in farmed animals. He currently focusses on genome editing technology and animal stem cells, aiming to advance novel applications for the agricultural and biomedical communities. He led the recent project to genetically engineer pigs to be resistant to Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Virus which has been taken forward into the commercial sector by Genus PIC Ltd.”

Due to Whitelaw’s patents (in the name of Christopher Bruce Whitelaw) and his various commercial interests in GM applications in livestock animals as well as lab-grown meat, he has conflicts of interest in the form of vested interests in the commercialisation of GMO animals and the foods derived therefrom, as well as in GMOs used in food production, such as in lab-grown meat. Therefore he should be excluded from the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee.

Professor Clare Mills (-)

Clare Mills is Professor of Molecular Allergology at the University of Manchester, where she applies molecular science to understand, better diagnose and treat food allergies. She is director and a founder shareholder of Reacta Biotech Ltd (mis-spelled as “React” on the ACNFP website), which develops, manufactures and commercialises oral food challenge materials to pharmaceutical standards for allergy testing.

Mills carried out unspecified work for the biotech company Solazyme (later TerraVia Holdings, Inc., now defunct), which specialised in food oils and algae products, as well as giving advice on allergens to Pepsico. However, these roles do not appear to constitute any conflict of interest with her role on the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee. We identified no conflicts of interest for her.

Professor Pete Lund (+ -)

Professor Pete Lund is a member of the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee who is “co-opted” from ACRE (the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment, which advises the UK government on the safety and acceptability of GMO releases). He is Emeritus Professor of Molecular Microbiology in the School of Biosciences and Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham.

The ACNFP website doesn’t give any information on Lund’s interests. However, according to our previous analysis of conflicts of interest of ACRE members, it appears that he has current career interests in biotechnology applications for various industries.

He “runs an active research programme funded by BBSRC, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Darwin Trust of Edinburgh”. No details of the programme are given on the University of Birmingham’s website but his research interests are described in general as “how bacteria respond to different stresses in their environment”. It is unclear whether this is GMO work and this should be clarified in his ACRE declaration of interests.

The Darwin Trust was founded with royalties from the American multinational pharmaceutical biotechnology company Biogen, though this funding came to an end in 2020-21. The BBSRC, the UK public funding body for science, has employees from the JIC in its Pool of Experts and a Research Committee. The JIC, as explained above, is heavily oriented towards corporate interests. This matters because together, the BBSRC’s Pool of Experts and Research Committees assess funding applications and thus decide what kind of science or technology taxpayer money will support.

He leads an EU COST Action research project on “understanding and exploiting the impact of low pH on micro-organisms”, which is relevant to “the microbiology of food and drink, many aspects of industrial biotechnology and bio-processing, and clinical and veterinary treatment of infections in a time of increasing antimicrobial resistance”.

He also “runs an active research programme funded by BBSRC, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Darwin Trust of Edinburgh”. No details of the programme are given on the University of Birmingham’s website but his research interests are described in general as “how bacteria respond to different stresses in their environment”. It is unclear whether this is GMO work and thus should be clarified in his ACRE declaration of interests.

Not enough information is given to know for certain whether Lund’s interests conflict with his role of assessing GM foods and processes on the Subcommittee, so we can only conclude that he has potential conflicts of interest that require clarification.

Professor Alastair Macrae (-)

Professor Alastair Macrae is a “co-opted member” of the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee. He is a senior lecturer in Farm Animal Health and Production, and Head of the Dairy Herd Health and Productivity Service (DHHPS), an independent consultancy, at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies at the University of Edinburgh. The ACNFP website gives no information about his interests, but his biography on the University of Edinburgh website shows that he is an animal health expert with a strong interest in nutrition and the diseases of intensive livestock production.

We found no conflicts of interest that could compromise his objectivity on the Subcommittee.

Findings

• No conflicts of interests found: (-) 4 out of 11 members
• Potential conflicts of interest: (+ -) 3 out of 11 members
• Probable or definite conflicts of interest: (+) 4 out of 11 members

According to our analysis of the limited information available on the ACNFP website and elsewhere, four out of 11 members of the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee have probable or definite conflicts of interest, in the form of vested interests in the liberalisation or commercialisation of GM technologies or products in the areas of agriculture, food, livestock animals, or food processing. Three out of 11 have potential conflicts of interest that need to be clarified further. Only four out of 11 have no apparent conflicts of interest.

In total, a majority – seven out of eleven, or 64% of the members – of the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee have potential, probable, or definite conflicts of interest in the liberalisation or commercialisation of GM technologies or products in the relevant areas.

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We have taken 16 loans from IMF since 1965, countless IMF officials have been landing & leaving advising every Government on how to manage the economy and yet we remain trapped into debt with no plan to come out. Instead of pruning the military, why doesn’t IMF insist on pruning the Govt starting off with reducing unlimited perks of politicians, the useless Provincial Council system along with unnecessary staff before trying to destabilize the national security apparatus of Sri Lanka?

Contrary to IMF claims that it reduces poverty, studies reveal IMF borrowing countries experience higher rates of poverty via its “reforms” resulting in unemployment, lower government revenue, increased costs for basic services, higher taxes, cuts to pensions & social security.

Privatization/Sale of SOEs results in sacking of redundant state workers contributing to unemployment falling on the State & raising poverty as well as higher prices for public services (water, electricity etc)

IMF’s demand to abolish taxes on repatriation of foreign profits claiming it attracts capital from abroad results in reducing govt revenues & further lowers social spending on the nation’s poor. IMF’s demand to change labor laws to attract foreign investors also effects unemployment & increase to poverty. Imagine the state of affairs if 150,,000 armed force personnel are sacked – this means 150,000 unemployed.

IMF’s demand for free trade zones, reduced tariffs & import duties further reduces govt revenues to serve the people. Lifting of Govt-subsidized price controls also raises costs for consumers especially the middle class & poor.

IMF’s demand on property rights & other perks for foreign investors is again promoting elite privileges only. A Govt has no choice but to seek more loans but no means to repay as all avenues have been drained by IMF.

It is interesting the players promoting going to IMF.

Are we intentionally being kept in debt?

However much the pundits glorifying IMF loans may say, the reality is that money is artificially printed given electronically as SDRs (Special Drawing Rights). Sri Lanka has taken 3,586,000,000 SDRs. These are not currency but countries use them to transact as well as pay back loans even back to IMF.

More & more it becomes clear that Sri Lanka cannot delay formulating a national plan of growth, development where stimulus has to be given to the middle income citizens and austerity has to be implemented for the small segment of rich. The middle class & poor cannot be taxed any more than they have – economic pundits in Sri Lanka must realize this.

In drawing up the national plan, we will have to think of ways that the State apparatus can be both service & profit oriented while benchmarking where cost cutting can and should take place.

Politicians & their families have to wake up to some ground realities – they cannot bathe in riches and luxuries at the cost of the poor and pretend everything is honky dory having agreed to take more loans piling the poor with more debt. Cost cutting for politicians & their families is a must.

The rich & elite need to honestly ask themselves how many pay taxes for all that they enjoy given by the State. The manner companies evade tax, how they are sheepishly taking out their profits & depositing in foreign countries while making a fuss over the need for “good governance” reeks hypocrisy. They too are part responsible for the economic crisis.

The JVP emerged unannounced. The LTTE emerged & flourished with Western-Indian backing. Post-LTTE their sponsors sought revenge from the players that defeated them. So much for their forgive & forget reconciliation mantras. That LTTE ground force is no more does not lessen the threat for the operations of the LTTE fronts together with runaway LTTE have not diminished. Their quest with gun is now quest with pen & the quest to separate Sri Lanka, demands the presence of the Armed Forces.

Contrary to the silly notions of some Colombo elite, the Armed Forces cannot be disbanded & then recalled in an emergency. All of the Colombo elite and pundits would have disappeared if a calamity as that which we experienced with both JVP & LTTE emerges. The Easter Sunday was also a good example that we have another debacle in the horizon. This further requires the presence of the armed forces & intel on call. Let us not forget that the suicide bombers were all rich, educated, socially accepted individuals – therefore we may never know who else is being indoctrinated to become the next suicide bombers. This entails the presence of intel & armed forces to be ready for any unexpected circumstance.

Many may have forgotten that it was the armed forces that ran Public transport, driving trains and buses during JVP/LTTE periods of terror. It was the armed forces that functioned as TV presenters during JVP/LTTE height of terror when they set about killing artists. It was the armed forces that came to the rescue in disaster situation – not the NGOs & foreign salaried Civil Society groups who made dramatic videos & appealed for foreign funds & kept 80% of that funds for themselves & gave away only 20% as “charity”.

That the armed forces & civil defe hello dubnse force also have their own agri units, with storage & transportation was seen during the covid crisis where the armed forces again came to the rescue to provide vegetables to people, doing a yeomen service. This was immediately stopped as some powers that be panicked thinking the public-armed forces unity was not too good for their agenda. However, what needs to be highlighted here, is that the agri apparatus of the armed forces can and should be strengthened and there is no reason for anyone in particular the LTTE agents or the NGO agents or even IMF to object. What kind of a spineless Govt or Parliament do we elect if they can only bark at the people but worship the enemies?

If the IMF is so concerned about helping Sri Lanka get its house in order – why could they not do so the 16 times that IMF provided assistance to Sri Lanka?

If the IMF is so concerned about corruptions – why are they not going after the corrupt politicians and public officials & demanding they be sacked first?

If the IMF is so concerned about reducing the cost to the state – why are they not looking at the areas where the costs are more?

When the people are all claiming the Provincial Council system is a white elephant, why does the IMF want its continuance instead of asking to close the PC system & with it the staff in it who provide no meaningful service to the people & these roles can easily be handed over to the Local Govts to do. Restructuring of this is essential.

Should we not look at all of the over staffed Govt offices, corporations etc? Should they not be pruned before targeting the armed forces, who are a professionally trained outfit that cannot be trained over night or re-recruited overnight in case of emergency. Unless, this is the whole aim of disbanding the armed forces, with intent to dislocate Sri Lanka’s ability to bring reinforcements in the event of a terror situation!

When the entities that seek to prune the armed forces (local & foreign) are key players that supported LTTE terrorism, separatism & disunity in Sri Lanka, it is natural for the sane to wonder what their game plan is. This request to reduce is a carry forward of their demand post-LTTE defeat to confine the military to barracks, close down military camps & remove the military from the North & East. Now their latest sing song is “reduce the military”. By now, people should realize the sequence in their demands & the hidden motives behind it.

However, it is baffling that the politicians are in agreement, unless they are threatened to – either prune the armed forces or face pruning their own privileges & perks. Probably, this threat may be hidden from public & that is why they are boldly claiming to agree to IMF demands.

Would these politicians agree to reduce their own security contingents first! Why should their wives, children or their domestics be given military escorts even for private events!

The military men providing security to the extended families certainly should be reduced & instead these men can be used for more important roles, especially in times where strikes take place, they can be used to support essential services. They should also continue their agriculture drive, but that is unlikely to happen because the mafia & their international networks would not want a disciplined army venturing into areas that they cannot influence.

Sri Lanka can certainly get back on its feet, but to do so the cuts have to be done at the right places. What we have is a bunch of people thriving on the poverty of the people & to sustain their livelihoods, people are being unfairly taxed. IMF is simply watching as it enables the West to fish in troubled waters.

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Shenali D Waduge is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka on April 13, 2022 in front of the Presidential Secretariat (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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***

In a live television appearance today on the BBC, cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra took the network by surprise when he made the “unprompted” suggestion that mRNA vaccines, such as the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, pose a cardiovascular risk.

Malhotra later tweeted the video from his BBC appearance, accompanied by the celebratory message, “We broke mainstream broadcast media,” generating instant controversy in the Twittersphere and elsewhere — ranging from triumphant tweets by those skeptical of mRNA vaccines, to calls for Malhotra to be “canceled” and questioning his claims.

BREAKING BBC News:

Cardiologist says likely contributory factor to excess cardiovascular deaths is covid mRNA vaccine and roll out should be suspended pending an inquiry.

We did it. We broke mainstream broadcast media 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/F72YS7JAuE

— Dr Aseem Malhotra (@DrAseemMalhotra) January 13, 2023

Malhotra’s father, Dr. Kailash Chand — a prominent general practitioner who was formerly deputy chair of the British Medical Association — died in July 2021.

In an October 2022 interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman and chief litigation counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), Malhotra shared how he was one of the first to take the Pfizer vaccine and how he publicly promoted the vaccines on TV. But that was before he thoroughly reviewed the scientific safety data, which convinced him the vaccines pose unprecedented harm.

Malhotra told Kennedy he was prompted to look into the safety data on the COVID-19 vaccine when his father — “a very eminent doctor in the U.K., considered one of the most prolific advocates for the National Health Service” — suffered an unexplained sudden cardiac death in July after getting an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

Malhotra has since publicly suggested that mRNA vaccines were a contributing factor in his death.

According to his online biography, Malhotra is a cardiologist and Visiting Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at the Bahiana School of Medicine and Public Health in Brazil. He is also an honorary council member of the Stanford University School of Medicine’s Metabolic Psychiatry Clinic and cardiology examiner at the U.K.’s University of Hertfordshire.

Malhotra: ‘mRNA vaccines carry a cardiovascular link’

Malhotra appeared on the BBC today to discuss a recent change in policy by the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) that loosened restrictions on prescribing statins — medications that reduce cholesterol in the blood — allowing general practitioners to prescribe them to anyone who wants them.

However, several minutes into his live appearance, in the context of a discussion of cardiovascular risk, he pivoted and addressed his views on mRNA vaccines. He said:

“What is almost certain — if I can just say this — my own research has found, and this is something that is probably a likely contributing factor, is that the COVID mRNA vaccines do carry a cardiovascular risk.

“And I’ve actually called for the suspension of this pending an inquiry, because there’s a lot of uncertainty at the moment over what’s causing the excess deaths.”

Malhotra’s remarks caught the network — and presenter Lukwesa Burak — off guard. Visibly uncomfortable, Burak followed up by stating, “So what you’re saying in terms of the mRNA link to cardiovascular risk is that that’s been proven medically, scientifically?”

According to the U.K.’s Press Gazette, a BBC spokesperson later issued a response to the incident, stating:

“Dr Aseem Malhotra was invited on to the BBC News Channel to talk about the latest NICE [National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] recommendations on statins. During the discussion he made unprompted claims about the COVID mRNA vaccine.

“We then asked Professor Peter Openshaw, who represents the overwhelming scientific consensus on the vaccine, to be interviewed on air on this topic and he challenged and rebutted the claims that had been made.”

Openshaw is a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, the same institution that developed “models” predicting large numbers of infections and deaths if severe COVID-19 countermeasures, such as lockdowns and social distancing, were not imposed.

Many people responded positively to Malhotra’s tweet and video.

Emma Kenny, a British psychologist and television presenter, tweeted:

It’s got to symbolise their resignation to being no longer able to hide this travesty and tragedy. Well done xx

— Emma Kenny (@emmakennytv) January 13, 2023

A tweet stated “WOW! Truthbombing on the BBC! Well done Sir.”

Another tweet read:

“Good job Aseem!! The interviewer was completely thrown and tried to challenge your statement regarding MRNA [vaccine] by suggesting your assertions unproven— but as soon as she realized she couldn’t, she quickly changed the subject. Doubt you’ll be invited back on the BBC anytime soon!”

Another Twitter user noticed that a copy of Kennedy’s “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” was visible behind Malhotra:

And a prominent copy of Kennedy's "The Real Anthony Fauci" on your bookcase. . . Based!

— Paul Oakley (@PaulJamesOakley) January 13, 2023

Another tweeted:

“Excellent. You came across very well and put the point about the vax link in a balanced and reasonable way.”

Some other Twitter users were less pleased. One user openly asked Ofcom, Britain’s telecommunications regulator, why the “disgraced, lying fraud” Malhotra was “allowed to do this” on the BBC.

Deborah Elaine tweeted a message about the BBC broadcast to Timothy Caulfield, a professor of law at the University of Alberta in Canada and host of a television program known as “A User’s Guide for Cheating Death.”

Caulfield later followed this up with an enraged tweet asking:

“What the HELL is the @BBCNews doing giving a notorious & discredited anti-vaxxer THIS platform???

“NO evidence to support his claims. He published his ‘analysis’ in a vanity journal that he edits. Etc.

“Pls, get it together, @BBCBreaking @BBChealth! So much damage with this BS!”

Some establishment media also criticized Malhotra. One Yahoo! News headline, for instance, reads “BBC Gives Unchallenged Platform to Anti-Vaxxer.”

The Press Gazette claimed “the overwhelming bulk of peer-reviewed literature suggests that mRNA vaccines are safe.”

Notably, the article was written by Bron Maher, whose Press Gazette bio states he previously worked for NewsGuard, a “fact-checking” firm that closely collaborates with the WHO and social media platforms, as previously reported by The Defender.

Malhotra previously published a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Insulin Resistance, “Curing the pandemic of misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence-based medicine.”

In July 2021, when his father died, Malhotra tweeted:

I’m left without any doubt that the mRNA product was a likely contributory factor in the sudden cardiac death of my father, Dr Kailash Chand Malhotra ( Honorary Vice President of the British Medical Association) https://t.co/XZRw7yh6EW

— Dr Aseem Malhotra (@DrAseemMalhotra) September 26, 2022

Following an October 2022 appearance on Fox News, Malhotra tweeted:

BREAKING:

How did my father die?

‘It’s very likely that the mRNA products cause rapid acceleration of coronary artery disease’

‘The evidence is clear & overwhelming for complete suspension of these vaccines pending an inquiry’

Today I take this to parliament.Let’s end this! pic.twitter.com/e3LaMAxjau

— Dr Aseem Malhotra (@DrAseemMalhotra) October 20, 2022

Malhotra said delays in an ambulance being dispatched by the U.K.’s beleaguered NHS to transport his father after suffering cardiac arrest also appears to have contributed to his death.

More and more studies demonstrating link between mRNA vaccines, cardiac problems

In a recent video, New Orleans-based emergency medicine physician Dr. Joseph Fraiman also called for the immediate suspension of the administration of mRNA vaccines.

Fraiman co-authored a peer-reviewed article, “Serious adverse events of special interest following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in randomized trials in adults,” published in August 2022 in Vaccine.

In his video, Fraiman stated:

“I was the lead author of a peer-reviewed study that reanalyzed the original Pfizer and the Moderna clinical trials for the messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccines. We found the vaccine increased serious adverse events at a rate of one in 800.

“At the time of publication, my co-authors and I did not believe our single study warranted the withdrawal of the messenger RNA vaccines from the market. However, since its publication, multiple new pieces of evidence have come to light, and this has caused me to reevaluate my position.

“An article published in The BMJ regarding the FDA’s [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] own observational surveillance data found the messenger RNAs were associated with multiple of the exact same serious adverse events identified in our original study. But the FDA had failed to inform the public of these findings.

“In addition, now we have multiple autopsy studies that find essentially conclusive evidence that the vaccines are inducing sudden cardiac deaths. Yet the rate of these vaccine-induced deaths remains unknown.

“I believe, given the information, the messenger RNA vaccines need to be withdrawn from the market until new randomized controlled trials can clearly demonstrate the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the serious harm now we know the vaccines are causing.”

Malhotra re-tweeted Fraiman’s video, remarking “This is huge.”

Earlier this week, Andrew Bridgen, a member of Parliament with the U.K.’s ruling Conservative Party, had his whip removed — meaning he was suspended by his party pending “formal investigation” — for tweeting that COVID-19 vaccines are “causing serious harms” and repeating a quote from a cardiologist who told ZeroHedge the COVID-19 vaccination campaign is “the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust.”

Numerous U.K. politicians, including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, quickly condemned Bridgen’s remarks. Bridgen is known for being outspoken regarding his views on COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccines, including during parliamentary speeches.

On Jan. 10, Kennedy, CHD and others sued the BBC, the Associated Press, Reuters and The Washington Post, which are all members of the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), a partnership spearheaded by the BBC.

The plaintiffs allege TNI members colluded with Big Tech to censor and de-platform voices questioning official COVID-19 and 2020 U.S. presidential election narratives.

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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

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Between the documentation obtained through a recent lawsuit against the White House and the Twitter files released by Elon Musk, it’s become quite clear that every facet of the U.S. government, including its intelligence agencies, are involved in illegal and unconstitutional censorship

We now have proof that the FBI has been acting as the key instigator and implementer of the government’s illegal censorship of Americans. The FBI has also actively interfered in multiple elections — all while inventing the narrative that foreign nations were interfering

Twitter has worked hand in hand with the U.S. Department of Defense to aid U.S. intelligence agencies in their efforts to influence foreign governments using fake news, computerized deepfake videos and bots

The Twitter files also reveal members of Congress have a direct line to Twitter and have had accounts suspended on their behalf and content removed at their whim

Discovery documents from a lawsuit against the White House filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana show at least 67 federal employees across more than a dozen agencies are also engaged in illegal censorship activities. This includes aides to President Biden, who pressured social media companies to change their policies to fit White House demands for censorship

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Between the documentation obtained through a recent lawsuit against the White House and the Twitter files released by Elon Musk, it’s become quite clear that every facet of the U.S. government, including its intelligence agencies, are involved in illegal and unconstitutional censorship.

In the video above, Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviews independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who has spent weeks sifting through the released Twitter files and reported on the contents.

FBI Has Gone Off the Rails

Importantly, we now have proof that the FBI has been acting as the key instigator and implementer of the government’s illegal censorship of Americans’ political and medical views. The agency has also, on a regular basis and for unknown purposes, asked Twitter to reveal the location of specific Twitter users, such as actor Billy Baldwin.

What’s more, internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memos, emails and documents show the DHS has worked on expanding its influence over tech platforms for years, so, government censorship is not something that came about in response to the COVID crisis. Nor is the censorship limited to COVID or public health information in general.

Evidence shows the FBI has actively interfered in multiple elections — all while inventing the narrative that foreign nations were doing the interfering.¹ As noted by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., these kinds of activities are “the biggest threat to our constitutional democracy today.”²

As just one example, we now know the FBI plotted to quench the Hunter Biden laptop story well before the first report about it was published. In collaboration with Twitter, Facebook and the Aspen Institute, the FBI held a tabletop exercise to practice the shaping of the media’s coverage of a potential “hack and dump” operation involving Hunter Biden material.^3,4 As reported by the New York Post:⁵

There’s also evidence showing the FBI has been shielding Hunter Biden and working with social media to censor bad press about him as far back as 2018.⁶ That job was probably made easier by the fact that reportedly former FBI agents work at both Twitter and Facebook.

For example, Jim Baker spent three decades with the FBI before becoming Twitter’s head lawyer,⁷and Facebook employs no less than 115 “former” employees of the FBI, CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies, most of whom now work in Facebook’s content moderation department.⁸

Twitter Paid to Censor Americans and Promote US Propaganda

Disturbingly, we now also have evidence showing that while Twitter insisted it was cracking down on covert government propaganda accounts, they only tracked down and banned foreign government-affiliated propaganda while working hand in hand with the U.S. Department of Defense to aid U.S. intelligence agencies in their efforts to influence foreign governments using fake news, computerized deepfake videos and bots.⁹ As reported by The Intercept:¹⁰

“Behind the scenes, Twitter gave approval and special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological ops. Despite knowledge that Pentagon propaganda accounts used overt identities, Twitter did not suspend many for around two years or more. Some remain active …

In 2017 a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) official sent Twitter a list of 52 Arab language accounts ‘we use to amplify certain messages.’ The official asked for priority service for six accounts, verification for one and ‘whitelist’ abilities for the others.”

Whitelisted accounts have a “validated” status similar to that of the blue check mark, which ensures they are promoted in searches. These accounts also don’t get shadow-banned or limited by other means. Adding insult to injury, the FBI has been using taxpayer dollars to pay Twitter for their censorship and propaganda services — more than $3.4 million between October 2019 and February 2021 alone.¹¹

Congressional Members Involved in Censoring Americans

The FBI has not acted alone, however. Far from it. The Twitter files reveal members of Congress have a direct line to Twitter and have had accounts suspended on their behalf and content removed at their whim. As reported by MSN:¹²

“… Taibbi … reported that Twitter ‘received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned.’ An example he shared was one sent in November 2020 by [Rep. Adam] Schiff’s office, who contacted Twitter hoping the tech giant would take action regarding ‘alleged harassment from QAnon conspiracists’ against Schiff’s staff, including aide Sean Misko.

‘Remove any and all content about Mr. Misko and other Committee staff from its service — to include quotes, retweets, and reactions to that content,’ the request to Twitter read. ‘Suspend the many accounts, including @GregRubini and @paulsperry, which have repeatedly promoted false QAnon conspiracies.'”

Other government leaders have been less clandestine in their censoring operations. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, wrote an open letter to Amazon demanding they ban my book, “The Truth About COVID-19.”

Similarly, two state attorneys general, Letitia James and William Tong, publicly threatened social media companies with legal ramifications if they refused to censor the “Misinformation Dozen.” President Joe Biden also publicly called on social media platforms to ban my accounts. But it gets worse.

Government Has Been Weaponized Against the People

Discovery documents from a lawsuit against the White House¹³ filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana (Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry) show at least 67^14,15 federal employees across more than a dozen agencies are engaged in these kinds of illegal censorship activities. This includes officials from:

Consultants from the strategic communications and marketing firm Reingold¹⁶ were also hired to manage the government’s collusion with social media in this intentional effort to violate our Constitutional right to free speech.

A Look Inside the White House Censorship Machine

In a January 8, 2023, op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Jenin Younes and Aaron Kheriaty reviewed a series of emails between White House digital media director Rob Flaherty and a Facebook executive, illustrating how the White House pressured the company to censor and remove vaccine content even though Facebook itself characterized the material as “often-true content:”¹⁷

“Newly released documents show that the White House has played a major role in censoring Americans on social media. Email exchanges between Rob Flaherty … and social-media executives prove the companies put COVID censorship policies in place in response to relentless, coercive pressure from the White House — not voluntarily.”

Flaherty also demanded Facebook limit the spread of viral content on WhatsApp, a private messaging app with broad reach among “immigrant communities and communities of color.” In the end, Facebook acquiesced to all of Flaherty’s demands to prevent the spread of vaccine hesitancy and control political speech. As noted by Younes and Kheriaty:¹⁸

“President Biden, press secretary Jen Psaki and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy … publicly vowed to hold the platforms accountable if they didn’t heighten censorship. On July 16, 2021, a reporter asked Mr. Biden [about] his ‘message to platforms like Facebook.’

He replied, ‘They’re killing people.’ Mr. Biden later claimed he meant users, not platforms, were killing people. But the record shows Facebook itself was the target of the White House’s pressure campaign.”

White House Pressured Google and YouTube to Do Its Bidding

Flaherty also had Google in his crosshairs, and accused YouTube of “‘funneling’ people into vaccine hesitancy,” adding that this concern was “shared at the highest (and I mean the highest) levels of the White House.”

“These emails establish a clear pattern,” Younes and Kheriaty write. “Mr. Flaherty, representing the White House, expresses anger at the companies’ failure to censor COVID-related content to his satisfaction. The companies change their policies to address his demands. As a result, thousands of Americans were silenced for questioning government approved COVID narratives.

Two of the Missouri plaintiffs, Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, are epidemiologists whom multiple social-media platforms censored at the government’s behest for expressing views that were scientifically well-founded but diverged from the government line — for instance, that children and adults with natural immunity from prior infection don’t need COVID vaccines …

The First Amendment bars government from engaging in viewpoint-based censorship. The state-action doctrine bars government from circumventing constitutional strictures by suborning private companies to accomplish forbidden ends indirectly.

Defenders of the government have fallen back on the claim that cooperation by the tech companies was voluntary, from which they conclude that the First Amendment isn’t implicated. The reasoning is dubious, but even if it were valid, the premise has now been proved false.

The Flaherty emails demonstrate that the federal government unlawfully coerced the companies in an effort to ensure that Americans would be exposed only to state-approved information about COVID-19. As a result of that unconstitutional state action, Americans were given the false impression of a scientific ‘consensus’ on critically important issues around COVID-19.”

Weaponization of Government Select Committee Impaneled

Taken together, the revelations from the Twitter files and this lawsuit clearly demonstrate that most, if not all, aspects of the U.S. government have been secretly weaponized to undermine and circumvent the Constitutional rights of the people.

As noted by Taibbi in his Fox News interview:

“This is not a partisan story. It’s a story about the architecture of the intelligence community and law enforcement getting its hands on speech, and on the ability of people to communicate with one another through platforms like Twitter and Facebook. And they’re doing this in a very profound way — it’s much more serious than what I thought at the beginning …”

While the danger we’re in as a nation is far more dire than anyone suspected, there is some good news. A new select committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, has been launched to investigate the weaponization of government, the politicization of the FBI and the DOJ’s investigation into and harassment of parents who spoke out against COVID mandates, critical race theory and the sexualization of their children at school board meetings. As reported by The Post Millennial:¹⁹

“This investigative panel will demand emails and correspondence between the Biden administration and big tech companies, and follows the massive revelations that came to light through the recent release of the Twitter files. Newly minted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy … was asked to form the committee as part of the negotiations that brought him to power …

The probe into communications between tech giants and President Biden’s aides will look for government pressure that could have resulted in censorship or harassment of conservatives — or squelching of debate on polarizing policies, including the CDC on COVID …”

While it’s likely that government personnel and agencies will try to ignore the committee’s requests for information, the committee does have subpoena power, and hopefully will not be too timid to use it.

Unfortunately, since the GOP does not control the Senate, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to pass any new laws based on the committee’s findings. That said, legislation to penalize government censorship has already been introduced, and you can help push it forward by asking your representatives to support it.

Support Legislation to Penalize Government Censorship

The Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act²⁰ (HR.8752), introduced by three Republican House Representatives on the House Oversight and Reform, Judiciary, and Commerce committees, including Jordan, is specifically aimed at preventing federal employees from using their positions to influence censorship decisions by tech platforms.

The bill would create restrictions to prevent federal employees from asking or encouraging private entities to censor private speech or otherwise discourage free speech, and impose penalties, including civil fines and disciplinary actions for government employees who facilitate social media censorship.

While the U.S. Constitution clearly forbids government censoring and restricting free speech, HR. 8752 could be a helpful enforcement tool — and we clearly need enforcement, seeing how more than a dozen agencies are flouting the Constitution and have done so for years. People might tend to think twice, though, when they know there’s a personal price to pay.

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Notes

¹ Coffee & Covid 2022 December 19, 2022

² Rumble Glenn Greenwald December 19, 2022 Timestamp: 44:23

³ Twitter Michael Shellenberger December 19, 2022

^{4, 6, 7, 8} Coffee & Covid December 20, 2022

⁵ New York Post December 19, 2022

⁹ Coffee & Covid December 21, 2022

¹⁰ The Intercept December 20, 2022

¹¹ Meryl Nass Substack December 20, 2022

¹² MSN January 3, 2023

¹³ State of Missouri and State of Louisiana Against President Joseph Biden, Civil Action No. 22-cv-1213

¹⁴ WAFB.com October 10, 2022

¹⁵ State of Missouri and State of Louisiana Against President Joseph Biden, Civil Action No. 22-cv-1213-TAD-KDM

¹⁶ Reingold

^17, 18 WSJ January 8, 2023

¹⁹ Post Millennial January 9, 2023

²⁰ HR 8752 — Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act

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In a “national consultation”, the Hungarian government asked Hungarians about the sanctions against Russia. Some 97 percent of the participants voted against the sanctions. The government regards the result as “indicative”.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is one of the harshest critics of sanctions against Russia. He saw this confirmed by the most recent survey in Hungary.

The results of the survey are “pointing the way”, said government spokeswoman Alexandra Szentkirályi on Facebook. It should also be heard in Brussels. The embassy is clearly in favor of a reassessment of the sanctions.

The Hungarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán repeatedly holds “national consultations” in which votes can be mailed or sent online. However, the surveys have no legally binding consequences.

Questions about sanctions with regard to energy sources, raw materials, tourism, inflation

This time, Hungarians were asked if they agree with EU sanctions against Russia on energy, raw materials and nuclear fuel rods. The referendum also dealt with the consequences of the sanctions policy for tourism and the rise in food prices due to the sanctions.

Orbán’s opponents have long considered the questions suggestive, manipulative and misleading. They claim that in practice, only answers in favor of the government were allowed. Eight million people are entitled to vote in Hungary and 1,4 million citizens took part in the vote.

Critics also pointed out that Hungary had actually agreed to all EU sanctions packages against Russia so far.

Last year, in October, the government launched a campaign against the EU’s policy: “Sanctions from Brussels are destroying us!” they warned in reference to multiple rounds of measures targeting Russia.

Orbán justified the appointment of the consultation at the end of September 2022 with sharp criticism of the sanctions: “The sanctions were not decided in a democratic manner, but Brussels bureaucrats and European elites decided on them.”

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The top US general is observing new, expanded combat training for Ukrainian forces in Germany. The German foreign minister is exploring ways to bring Russian President Putin to justice in The Hague. DW has the latest.

The US military’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, is visiting the Grafenwöhr training area in southern Germany on Monday to observe a program that trains Ukrainian forces.

The US military started giving hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers new combined arms training in Germany on Sunday to aid the troops in defending their homeland against Russian invasion, the top US military official said. Milley added the goal was to get some 500 troops combat-ready within five-to-eight weeks.

Milley told reporters traveling with him that the training was vital in aiding Ukraine’s forces to recapture territory seized by Russia in past months, the Associated Press reported.

“This support is really important for Ukraine to be able to defend itself,” Milley said. “And we’re hoping to be able to pull this together here in short order.”

He said he hoped the newly trained troops would be able to use freshly delivered Western weaponry and equipment before rainy weather sets in during the spring.

A full set of weapons and equipment is being provided to the Ukrainian soldiers in Germany.

The combined arms training provided in Germany will give participants the ability to launch offensives against the invading Russian forces and counter their attacks.

Click here to read the full article on DW.

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The US empire’s proxy war in Ukraine has had many jaw-dropping instances of imperialist sociopathy, propagandistic audacity and brazen journalistic malpractice that we’ve discussed in this space many times, but one of the most cringeworthy and degrading aspects of the globe-spanning narrative control campaign surrounding this war has been the way the nation’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has been turned into an ever-present corporate mascot for the most aggressive ad campaign ever devised. The way the most powerful institutions in the western world have been throwing their puppet in everyone’s face to sell the empire’s proxy warfare puts Ronald McDonald to shame.

Here are 20 of the cringiest moments of establishment PR using Zelensky to market the McProxy War to the western world, in no particular order.

1. A House Republican introducing a bill to place a bust of Zelensky in the US Capitol building

House Republican Introduces Resolution to Place Bust of Zelensky in the Capitol
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and other conservative GOP members blasted the idea
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave @RepMTG @RepThomasMassie #Zelensky #Zelenskyy #Ukraine https://t.co/E62LAoSOdK pic.twitter.com/7kF0keUkWl

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) January 12, 2023

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes:

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) introduced a bill this week that would place a bust of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the House wing of the US Capitol building, an idea that was strongly criticized by more conservative GOP members.

2. The fake Hollywood action hero-sounding “I need ammunition, not a ride” quote

The only source for the quote was a single unnamed US government official, yet numerous mainstream media outlets reported it as fact instead of ignoring it for the baseless nonsense that it plainly was, and now it’s part of the official narrative.

It was clear Ukraine was going to be the phoniest, most PR-intensive proxy war of all time when the entire mainstream press started baselessly ascribing a Hollywood action hero-sounding quote to Zelensky that he never actually said. pic.twitter.com/r6Ubq38SEf

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 2, 2022

3. The Vogue cover shoot

wartime vogue photo shoots. very serious. let’s keep sending ukraine weekly billion dollar aid packages to protect “democracy.” don’t question it. pic.twitter.com/MXVaW16K0y

— Logan Hall (@loganclarkhall) July 26, 2022

5. Time Magazine Person of the Year

TIME's 2022 Person of the Year: Volodymyr Zelensky and the spirit of Ukraine #TIMEPOY https://t.co/06Y5fuc0fG pic.twitter.com/i8ZT3d5GDa

— TIME (@TIME) December 7, 2022

6. Star Wars: Attack of the Drones

The Star Wars actor Mark Hamill has joined President Zelensky to raise money for drones to fight Russia, which the actor compared to the “evil empire” from the films https://t.co/OZKUHwcf9S

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) September 30, 2022

7. Zelensky giving a speech at the Golden Globes

I addressed the participants of the 80th @goldenglobes Awards. This award was born at a special time. WWII was not over yet, but the tide was turned – all knew who would win.
It is now 2023. The war in 🇺🇦 is not over yet but the tide is turning & it is already clear who will win. pic.twitter.com/u7pHr0u0lq

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 11, 2023

8. Zelensky giving a speech for the Grammys

⚡️Ukrainian artists, Zelensky address audience at the Grammys.

President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the audience in a pre-recorded video, wherein he said:“We are fighting Russia, which brings horrible silence with its bombs. The dead silence. Fill the silence with your music.” pic.twitter.com/DrUzTNqsDO

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 4, 2022

9. Zelensky getting an Academy Award from actor Sean Penn

Two-time Academy Award winner #SeanPenn gifted his Oscar to Ukrainian president @ZelenskyyUa as a symbol of strength #Zelenskyy #Ukraine #UkraineRussiaWar️ pic.twitter.com/8UITVC9y7T

— CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18News) November 9, 2022

10. Zelensky addressing the World Economic Forum

President Volodymyr Zelensky, addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, invited business leaders whose companies are leaving Russia to bring their firms to Ukraine to help rebuild his country.https://t.co/TV1uaCa2Tw pic.twitter.com/KyYA3PU22U

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 23, 2022

11. Zelensky giving a speech and ringing the bell for the New York Stock Exchange

Ukrainian President Zelenskiy kicked off trading at the New York Stock Exchange by remotely ringing the opening bell pic.twitter.com/2nsQY0A760

— Reuters (@Reuters) September 6, 2022

12. Zelensky giving a speech at the secretive Bilderberg Group (probably)

We’d never know if Zelensky actually did end up making a video appearance because of Bilderberg’s notorious secrecy, but ahead of the meeting The Guardian reported he probably would:

“The conference room is rigged up with video screens for shy dignitaries to make a virtual attendance, and it’s highly likely that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will Zoom in for a T-shirted contribution to the talks. Just a few days beforehand, Zelenskiy met with a Bilderberg and US intelligence representative Alex Karp, who runs Palantir, the infamous CIA-funded surveillance and data analysis company.”

13. Zelensky giving a speech at the Cannes Film Festival

Le président ukrainien Volodymyr Zelensky intervient en direct de Kiev pour la cérémonie d’ouverture du 75e @Festival_Cannes.

DIRECT ▶ https://t.co/RrJLcnrtd4#Cannes2022 pic.twitter.com/mn15iiIW0W

— France 2 (@France2tv) May 17, 2022

14. Zelensky giving a speech at the Glastonbury Festival

President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Glastonbury Festival on June 24.

"Glastonbury is the greatest concentration of freedom these days," he said, calling on attendees to spread the truth about Russia's war and donate to support Ukrainians.

Video: Glastonbury/Twitter pic.twitter.com/cExzOi41xr

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) June 24, 2022

15. Weird Hologram Zelensky at the Founders Forum in the UK

⚡️Zelensky addresses Founders Forum in U.K. as hologram.

President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared as a hologram at the Founders Forum, a gathering of tech entrepreneurs in the U.K., to call on Europe's tech leaders to help rebuild Ukraine and to announce a "digital lend-lease." pic.twitter.com/RurjCpPqxS

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) June 16, 2022

16. Zelensky meeting with Ben Stiller

17. The Ukrainian flag performance in the US congress

“The phoniest, most PR-intensive war of all time.” –@caitoz pic.twitter.com/OwULhyVvbD

— Lafayette (@LafayetteCahill) December 22, 2022

18. The bizarre Biden-Zelensky slow motion action-heroes-walking-away-from-an-explosion video clip

In Ukraine's fight against Russia's unprovoked, unjustified war, I’m proud to say they have not stood alone.
 
And on my watch, they never will. pic.twitter.com/2RV8dyXHxr

— President Biden (@POTUS) December 21, 2022

19. Guest on David Letterman’s show

20. The obligatory Bono psyop

Following a personal invitation from Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, U2’s Bono and the Edge visited Kyiv Sunday to perform an acoustic concert in one of the city’s subway stations-turned-bomb shelters https://t.co/ZT7lvH0X6F

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) May 8, 2022

Honorable mention: Zelensky meeting with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink to help “rebuild” (read: buy up) Ukraine

BlackRock to "rebuild" Ukraine. This is going to make the neoliberalism and privatization the U.S. inflicted on post-Soviet Russia look like child's playhttps://t.co/IOm6XckVDo

— Jordan (@JordanChariton) December 28, 2022

Honorable mention: DC party at the Ukrainian embassy openly hosted by the US military-industrial complex

A Ukrainian Embassy reception was sponsored by Northrop, Lockheed and Raytheon, reports @mideastXmidwest. (Not The Onion) https://t.co/U89y7gER8v pic.twitter.com/fNzika6utb

— Eli Clifton (@EliClifton) December 16, 2022

Are people not tired of having their intelligence insulted yet?

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***

In November of 2022, a Reuters report on yahoo stated that U.S. crude oil stocks in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell to 390.5 million barrels, the lowest level since March 1984 as told by the Energy Information Administration.

The report also stated that U.S. East Coast gasoline stocks fell in that period to 47.1 million barrels, which was its lowest level since November 2012. Refinery utilization in the region also rose to 102.9%, which was the highest on record.

So, what does this mean?

The US has been drawing on its strategic oil reserves for over a year while refining it into gasoline for internal consumption while trying to keep the cost of gasoline down. But why is there an energy crisis in the first place?

If there is enough oil in the world to last a long time as some believe, there would be no crisis at all and the US oil reserves would not have to be used, right?

Some may believe that the so called pandemic we experienced is the cause of the energy shortage. But that just simply isn’t true.

During the early stages of the 2020 plandemic, oil demand dropped around the world due to population lockdowns but the production that was already in the supply lines would have covered the restart of the economy. Remember, large corporations did not shut down then, nor did ocean going vessels. They continued offloading despite the delays at the ports due to labor shortages caused by lockdown mandates.

If the theory of endless oil is believed then, there would not have been 22 years of western oil wars if the oil abundance were true.

Today, in January 2023, diesel prices in Canada are still extremely high, $2.30 / liter in Montreal on Jan 14th, 2023. Possibly because the oil refinery is burning the midnight oil (pardon the pun) to maintain its gasoline needs. Maybe diesel fuel is being diverted to energy deficient Europe. Whatever the reason, as everyone knows by now, the high price of diesel fuel feeds inflation because if its on your table or in your home, it was brought by a diesel-powered truck.

The graph above shows that the SPR oil stocks continued to fall through December 2022 and no doubt will continue this year into 2023 or the price of gasoline will rise. The question is, how long will they draw on the strategic oil reserves before a major crisis causes a North American energy and economic crash? AND where will they get the future oil supply to power the growth of western economies?

We are in the midst of the economic storm, so by all indications given the current geo-political stance of the western nations with their economic energy war on Russia, I’d say less than a year…but where does it go from there, as economic wars can lead to military wars, but energy wars, with no off switch, will definitely lead to war between powerful nations.

The sooner sanity comes back into the world, the sooner we can address the long-term problems that the shortage of energy creates…and they are massive problems which require massive restructuring in the way in which we live.

The problem is simply not going to go away because the supply of oil and gas have limits with respect to growth economics. Economies and energy demand have been falling especially as this current recession has taken hold, yet energy prices remain high. We certainly do not need the kind of dystopian solutions that our western governments have provided, lockdowns, wars etc. Nor should we allow them to continue the warring trend that they’re currently on towards the future either.

We the people of the western world need to stand up and put the brakes on our governments, force them to sit down and begin rational conversations in foreign and domestic affairs.

Our governments are on the road to a major War and this is simply NOT an option that should even be contemplated in the nuclear age. The longer we the people wait and do nothing to stop them, the more real a global conflict will become; and the only way to stop our governments from going to war is for the people to unite together in each nation and then globally. Our divisions which are based on “belief” weather its based on research or propaganda, must end if we are to survive the road we are on. Surely people can see a major war on the horizon by now.

Stand up and put the reigns on your governments, war will surely come if we do not. Time is quickly running out..

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This article was originally published on World United News.

Stewart Brennan is a Geo-political and economic analyst, activist, blogger and author. He’s worked in the Aviation, Packaging, Transportation and Logistics Industries and is the author of “The Activist Poet”, two books of political activism and poetry. (See Here and Here) He’s also the author of several blogs including World United News and World United Music and a contributor on Global Research. 

All images in this article are from the WUN

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***

Pádraic Súilleabháin and Colm Doherty (the fiddle player) are old friends whose meetings are as regular as a clock – literally. They meet at 2 pm in the local pub for drinks every day as the bell tolls twice.

However, Colm is getting fed up and feels time is passing. He believes that he needs to start composing to leave something to posterity and decides to end his relationship with Pádraic. Being nice and good friends will all soon be completely forgotten about. He desires to get down to composing with his newly freed-up time instead of listening to Pádraic’s ‘dull’ conversation every day.

Pádraic does not take the news well and is bewildered. Even Pádraic’s sister Siobhán Súilleabháin is astonished. She confronts Colm who states baldly, ‘He’s dull, Siobhán’, who replies, ‘but he’s always been dull’.

Colm’s decision triggers an alarming set of events that lead to Colm self-mutilating and a series of tit-for-tat actions between himself and Pádraic.

These odd events appear to fit in with the general oddness that abounds on the island as everyone they come into contact with seems to have their own anger issues.

However, the strange thing is that Colm and Pádraic are actually the only two people on the island who are behaving calmly and rationally. They are always civil to each other (except once when Pádraic was drunk). There is no fisticuffs or use of weapons. In general they are the calmest two people on the island. They have polite discussions about their views of each other until the very end of the film. You could even say that everyone else around them is going mad while they are swimming in a sea of tranquility in the centre of the narrative.

Maybe that’s the whole idea. To take two people who are descending into madness and depict this decline from their point of view. How do all the people around Colm and Pádraic appear to them as their madness reaches new depths? While Colm and Pádraic see themselves as wanting what the other cannot give, and negotiating and discussing their problems in a calm way, the island inhabitants show more and more surreal forms of behaviour. It’s the island that’s going crazy, not them. We see the island folk the way Colm and Pádraic see them. Colm and Pádraic are the only sane people as everyone else becomes stranger and stranger.

Check out the actions of the dramatis personae:

Garda Peadar Kearney ‘never says hello’ or is extremely violent and punches Pádraic in the face. He looks forward to going to the Civil War executions with glee (for ‘6 bob and a free lunch’) but can’t figure out if ‘Free Staters are shooting the IRA or the other way around’. He laughs when he hears Pádraic’s donkey has died.

Jonjo (the barman) and Gerry (a customer) form a comedy double act repeating each other’s sentences (not surprising considering they used to be a very popular comedy duo in real life called the D’Unbelievables) and never seem to be disturbed by the horrific goings-on.

The shopkeeper Mrs. O’Riordan is absolutely obsessed with gossip and reading people’s letters while listing off all the people who had no news. Garda Peadar Kearney arrives in with horror stories of murders and Mrs. O’Riordan says to Pádraic ‘That’s a lot of news. This man has no news. Don’t you not, No-Newsy?’.

During confession with Colm the priest follows him out of the confessional screaming, ‘you will be pure fucked’ repeating Colm’s words back to him.

Dominic, the guard’s son, is obsessed with the much older women around him, and Colm’s fiddle students in the bar only seem slightly worried at Colm’s horrific bloody stumps despite the illogic of a man with no fingers on one hand teaching them the fiddle.

In fact, only Siobhán, Pádraic’s sister, and the old woman Mrs. McCormick seem to be aware of what is really going on.

When Siobhán confronts Pádraic about talking to Colm she warns him to leave Colm alone:

PADRAIC: Do you think?

SIOBHAN: Do I think?! Yes, I do think! He’s cut his fecking finger off and thrown it at ya!

PADRAIC: Come on, it wasn’t at me.

Siobhan escapes the madness and leaves the island before things get worse. She later invites Pádraic to the mainland but he has no interest and now has his cow and donkey living in the house with him.

Mrs. McCormick is an almost ghostly presence on the island and forecasts that two people will die on Inisherin ‘afore the month is out’. She is soon proved partly right when Dominic is found drowned.

Meanwhile Colm finishes composing his piece of music and tells Pádraic he is thinking of calling it The Banshees of Inisherin. He believes that there may be banshees but states: ‘I just don’t think they scream to portend death anymore, I think they just sit back amused and observe.’

Pádraic’s donkey chokes to death on one of Colm’s fingers and as revenge he tells Colm the day and the time he is going to burn down his house. Again Colm reacts calmly and the guard is not called.

The next day Pádraic burns down Colm’s house and meets him on the beach in front of the burnt-out remains. The old woman, Mrs. McCormick, arrives at the house and sits in a chair outside watching Colm and Pádraic talk, from a distance. Colm’s calm response is that he was thankful that the dog had been saved (by Pádraic), and that he thought it was fair revenge for the death of the donkey.

Even their last conversation is cordial, almost matter-of-fact, as Colm thanks Pádraic for minding his dog and Pádraic replies ‘anytime’ from a distance.

The film ends with Colm staring out to sea, lilting, while Mrs. McCormick watches on from the house.

Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Martin McDonagh at the premiere of the film at the 66th BFI London Film Festival

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***

Has Mateusz Jakub Morawiecki, the PM of Poland, lost his mind? It would seem so. He is basically calling for WWIII while claiming he is trying to avoid it.

PM @MorawieckiM in #Berlin: The defeat of #Ukraine may become a prelude to World War III, so today there is no reason to block support for Kyiv and postpone matters indefinitely. I call on the German government to act decisively by supplying all sorts of weapons to Ukraine.

— Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland (@PremierRP_en) January 16, 2023

It should be obvious by now that pouring more military armaments into the USG-initiated conflict in Ukraine will result in a reciprocal response by the Russian armed forces. Russia’s SMO is tasked with disarming neo-Nazis and preventing them from killing the innocent people they hate in eastern and southern Ukraine. Period. Everything else—Russian invasion of Europe, Russian meddling in USG elections, Putin’s cancer—are deceptive elements of the Big Lie.

Morawiecki was awarded the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, a medal for “distinguished services” in the name of the Ukrainian state.

Nancy Pelosi also received this award, as did a number of other foreign politicians supporting the coup government and its ethnic cleansing neo-Nazis committed to mass murdering Russians and other “untermenschen” minorities. Zelenskyy passed out these awards like hotcakes, desperate to flatter panhandling targets and wheedle more missiles, tanks, and cash out of the West.

The more arms the USG and Europe send to threaten Russia and kill its soldiers, the more Russia will respond by targeting Ukraine with kamikaze drones, Iskander ballistic missiles, Kh-22 missiles, Kalibr cruise missiles, P-800 Oniks, OTR-21 Tochka missiles, etc., and they will do so until the threat is eliminated.

Meanwhile, the Europeans seem to be suffering from severe brain fog. Less than half of polled Germans oppose sending Marder fighting vehicles to neo-Nazi ethnic cleansers.

In America, far away from the battlefield, the average person has largely bought into the various Big Lies about Russia. Good Guy vs. Bad Guy polarization and 24/7 propaganda have worked like a charm. Large numbers of Americans believe the neo-Nazis are in Russia, not Ukraine. They know nothing about the history of Ukraine and Russia, the relationship between the two, or the tribal conflicts that have arisen over the centuries in Eastern and Central Europe.

I have a small offering for these know-nothings.

In the summer of 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian separatist member of a secret Serbo-Croatian underground group of assassins, Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia), assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, then annexed by the Austro-Hungarian empire.

This event precipitated a political crisis that resulted in the “Great War,” one of the bloodiest wars in history. It claimed the lives of an astounding 40,000,000 people. This death toll would be overshadowed by WWII 2, in many ways a follow-up to the First World War. More than 60,000,000 people were sacrificed in that war, which ended in a nuclear attack on Japanese civilians.

The death toll in WWIII will be dramatically higher. It very well might be a life-terminating event.

Between the USG, Russia, and lesser nuclear powers, there are around 15,000 nuclear weapons. 100 of this obscene number “would easily result in a nuclear autumn and likely result in a nuclear winter, where the global temperature would drop because of soot from nuclear blasts blocking the sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface,” explains IFLScience, based on a peer-reviewed study from Michigan Technological University.

If WWIII does in fact occur and a semblance of civilization survives in its horrific, thermonuclear wake, the likes of Morawiecki, and his fellow travelers in Poland and America—specifically the neocon criminal organizations—will hopefully be dealt with posthaste in a crimes against humanity tribunal.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

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***

Iraq’s new prime minister told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Sunday that he supports a continued US troop presence in Iraq, breaking the silence on the issue since he came into office in October 2022.

“We think that we need the foreign forces,” Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani said. The US currently has about 2,500 troops in Iraq, but the presence is a divisive issue in Iraqi politics as al-Sudani’s supporters and Iraqi Shia groups have pressed him to reconsider the stationing of US forces in the country.

American troops are in the country to train government forces against ISIS, but in recent years, the US has been at odds with Iraqi Shia militias that it once allied with to fight ISIS. Tensions came to a head in January 2020 when the US killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a drone strike in Baghdad.

Al-Muhandis led the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a group of mostly Shia militias formed in 2014 to fight ISIS. The drone strike enraged many in Iraq, and Iraq’s parliament voted to expel US forces shortly after, but the US refused to leave.

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who came into office in May 2020, was under a lot of pressure to get the US to leave the country. The pressure led to Kadhimi working out a deal that led to the US formally ending its “combat mission” in Iraq, changing it to an “advisory role.” But changing the name of the US mission in Iraq had virtually no impact on the US presence on the ground as no troops were withdrawn.

A major reason for the continued US presence in Iraq is that it supports the US occupation of eastern Syria, where there are about 1,000 American troops. The US backs the Kurdish-led SDF in Syria against ISIS, but the presence is also part of the economic war against Damascus, as the US has Syria under crippling economic sanctions with the purpose of preventing the country’s reconstruction.

Sudani recognized that the US presence in Iraq is necessary to support US forces in Syria. He said it was needed to prevent a resurgence of ISIS in Syria, although the Syrian government is a sworn enemy of ISIS and would work with its allies to keep the group from regaining a foothold in eastern Syria if the US withdrew.

Sudani was voted into office by Iraq’s parliament after a year-long political stand-off between influential Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his opponents in parliament. Sadr’s party won the most seats in Iraq’s October 2021 elections but failed to form a government, and the tensions culminated in violent clashes in Baghdad that took place over the summer.

Unlike most factions in Iraq, Sadr wants the country to be independent of both the US and Iran and is against the US troop presence. Sudani is taking a different approach and told The Wall Street Journal that he hopes to have good relations with both the US and Iran. “I don’t see this as an impossible matter, to see Iraq have a good relationship with Iran and the US,” he said.

As long as the US remains in Iraq and Syria, it risks sparking a wider war with Iraqi Shia militias and possibly Iran. US bases in the two countries frequently come under rocket attack. While there have rarely been casualties in the recent attacks, the US has previously escalated the situation and launched major airstrikes in response, even though it’s impossible to know who was responsible.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

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***

As Americans flounder around, trying wrap their minds around the takeover of the Federal Government by unaccountable powers that now enforce the deadly rule of COVID-19, they struggle to find some solution, any solution.

But efforts to inform friends and family of the truth about vaccines and face masks, to push for accountability through the courts and the legislature have been frustrated.

When solutions are available, they are but gifts from the mighty above, and not the result of due process, or the function of government in accord with the Constitution.

The reason that the United States has been overrun with COVID-19 propaganda and that the government acted as a toy of the rich, pushing through policies that have no support, is that the entire system was gutted in the aftermath of 9/11 and a stark tyranny has replaced the flawed republic that once stood behind the halls of government. The United States after 9/11 is a republic in the sense that Disneyland is a republic.

COVID-19 will be replaced by artificial food shortages, planned inflation, the end of money, the promotion of mass surveillance, social credit totalitarian economics, and a host of other strategies for control.

Only when we Americans are ready to go back to the original sin of 9/11 and look at ourselves in the mirror, only when we are ready to take brave action and to cut off the gangrene parts of the Federal government that have metastasized into an enemy within, only then can we make any progress in fighting against the techno-tyrants who call the shots for the narcissistic and indulgent politicians who appear on television.

The 9/11 incident, that is to say the bombing of the World Trade Center, the firing of a projectile in the Pentagon, and the various secret policies carried out to create a shadow government within the Federal government, in cooperation with foreign interests in Israel, in Great Britain, and elsewhere, was the final blow to what remained of republican government in the United States of America.

Our debased culture, from which philosophy, theology, and aesthetics have been expelled, is blind to shifts in governance and policy unless they are immediately visible, unless they are on the evening news.

The 9/11 incident not only reduced large sections of the government to pay-to-play appendages of private equity, it infected universities, newspapers, civic organizations, and even families with a horrific virus of the mind, with a corrupt vision that securing money and being recognized by a criminal system was the highest priority. There is literally no organization left in the United States that works for the national good, or even a concept of what that national good might be.

The pundits and reporters “attribute evil” to specific presidents and to specific policies and engage in a useless debate about the minor and the trivial. The 9/11 incident has become a taboo topic precisely because it introduced a civilizational cancer into the body politic. If we wish to save our children from slavery, or worse, in a dying empire, we had better muster the courage to pull back the curtains and to look directly, with no illusions, at the withered corpse that our nation has become.

Burying the truth and erecting Potemkin villages of the mind to convince us of lies is not an option.

We must be prepared to take action that will be so decisive as to overwhelm the gatekeepers and puppet masters who have skillfully kept us from making progress for decades, leading us down dead ends like the 9/11 Commission, and paying off, or intimidating, authority figures into embracing myths.

What happened?

Truth is the strongest weapon in our arsenal. We will not bring down these monsters by raising more money because they control money, or by building better political networks because they already own them all. We must prove that they are by nature criminal and that the nation itself no longer has legitimacy with regards to the Constitution—that agreement that established the United States as a nation state. That contract without which government is but a criminal syndicate.

The 9/11 attacks were planned in advance by shadowy figures, primary in the military and in intelligence, lurking in the grey territory of contractors, consulting firms and private equity that stretches out between Washington D.C., London, and Tel Aviv. The relationship of figures like Dick Cheney to the attacks are easily confirmed, whereas others have spent fortunes to hide their tracks.

The motivation of the attacks was to create a government in the United States that was owned by the rich and that no longer followed the constitution—essentially an empire belonging to a handful of self-appointed royalty.

The immediate play was to destabilize the entire Middle East, and to topple the governments of all nations that could possibly challenge the hegemony of Israel.

There were some seeped in Zionist, or Christian Zionist, ideology who believed they were offering Israel the promised land in accord with the prophesies of the Bible, and following the directives from the Greater Israel Project (Odin Yinon Plan).

Others wanted to make fortunes from weapons sales in a forever war that would guarantee high returns.

And then there were those who wished to restructure the international community into a new world order in which a tiny handful of elders would decide the fate of humanity.

The military and intelligence contractors, military officers, and various ambiguous actors in Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia (and perhaps a few other places) who made the plans for this false flag operation, using the assets of Mossad, the CIA, the US Department of Defense, M16 and other agencies and private corporations, were many. Like Agatha Christie’s novel Murder on the Orient Express, everyone had a stab. But the operation was highly compartmentalized so as to make it difficult for those on the ground to grasp the full significance of their actions—or at least to give them the feeling that they were not culpable.

Thus those who made the plans for how to reduce the United States to a de facto “military dictatorship” with a passive population addicted to social media and consumption, for how to overthrow the governments of the entire Middle East and make it into Israel’s playpen, for how to create a new global governance model in which corporations and banks owned the entire Earth, that total plan was known only to the few.

Death threats, and real killings, were generously applied, as well as other economic and social punishments, to destroy, or to isolate, those brave souls who demanded the truth.

How did we get here?

Most educated people in the United States, and around the world, only know the fairytale of a handful of Arab Hijackers with box cutters hijacking four planes and taking down three World Trade Center towers, made of reinforced steel and concrete, and blowing up part of the Pentagon. The tale makes no sense. Yet the denial goes on, and on. Many suffer from cognitive dissonance, unable accept the possibility that the United States government was complicit in such a crime.

The psychology of denial is best understood through an analogy to incest.

If there is a fight in a family about money, it may be unpleasant, but it will be out in the open and can be debated, and even resolved. But in the case of incest, family members may go for decades playing stupid, pretending that the incestuous relationship does not exist. Incest is an attack on the family at a more profound level and so family members fall back on denial because the loss of face is too great.

Some Americans adopt the attitude of false pragmatism, convincing themselves that after twenty years the event is ancient history and we should move on. This dangerous attitude ignores the fundamental transformation of governance wrought by those attacks, to onset of totalitarian governance.

The consequence of that irresponsible attitude is COVID-19 in which the fusion of corporations and governments can now not only claim the right to wage endless wars for no reason other than profit, to can spy on citizens, and to control their every action with impunity, but it can also inject whatever substances it wishes into the bodies of citizens and attack the integrity of their genetic code.

There were Americans who were willing to stand up to this travesty from the moment that the twin towers collapsed defiance of the laws of physics any high school graduate could understand. It was clear that the outcry over this crime could not be completely silenced, but that those who were too effective would die mysteriously.

For example, Philip Marshall, published False Flag 911: How Bush, Cheney and the Saudis Created the Post-911 World (2008), The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror (2012) and he was writing an even more comprehensive book when his neighbors found him, his two children and the family dog shot to death in their home in February, 2013. The police immediately ruled this improbable case as a murder suicide, thus sending an unmistakable message to other seekers of truth as to what awaits them. Among those truth seekers who survived, many have been subject to bogus psychological exams, dismissed from their jobs, and in many cases forced to leave the country.

How do we end the nightmare?

The Federal government based on the Constitution of 1787 was gradually weakened, especially by the first and second world wars. The process sped up after the Kennedy assassination in 1963 when the insiders making a fortune of the national security state made it clear that politicians at the highest level, with wealth and influence, were not immune from retribution.

The decay deepened with the bombing of the Afred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma on April 19, 1995, a grotesque case in which criminal elements in the Federal government played footsie with anti-government forces to create a grey space wherein mass killing could be carried out with impunity.

Since the 9/11 attacks, a giant Homeland Security and National Security Agency bureaucracy has spread its tentacles to every corner of Washington D.C., taking on the unlimited, unconstitutional powers that were granted by the pre-prepared (and hurriedly pushed through congress) Patriot Act (October 26, 2001). Unlimited and unaccountable domestic spying has been the rule, not the exception, ever since.

We must first move beyond this culture of denial and fantasy and recognize that the governments of all the nations of the world are controlled by the rich and powerful and that citizens have access only to information presented by the media and by the schools that is created by multinational corporations to meet the needs of the globalists.

So complete is the control of information, and of all public intellectuals, that citizens have been overwhelmed, forced to embrace the implausible official 9/11 story, for over twenty years.

We must recognize that the only thing to fear is this fear itself. The powerful, through their multinational corporations, and through the politicians and journalists that they keep as pets, have done everything they could to induce fear and loathing among citizens.

If we remain fearful, clinging to what rights the billionaires condescend to grant us, our first amendment rights will be further eroded and the destruction of the Bill of Rights, including freedom from illegal search and seizure, will be assured. We will be left with an American republic only in the sense that Disneyland is a republic.

An International 9/11 Commission

The American 9/11 Commission was a travesty from the start that was intended to mislead and to confuse the public while making it clear to lawyers and politicians that there are certain topics that can never be discussed—a realm in governance that ordinary mortals cannot enter.

Few leaders in the world have dared to question the 9/11 fairytale. They are afraid that they will not get international financing, that they will be put at a disadvantage in trade, or that they personally will not enjoy the chance to grow rich—something assumed to be a natural benefit of political power.

The United Nations has been taken over by billionaires, as has almost every institution of global governance.

Perhaps the first step towards an International 9/11 Commission could start in the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC). After all the 1.8 billion Muslims suffered the most from the post 9/11 wars and they have the greatest incentive to take such a brave step. Once such an investigation is launched, however, it must be global in scale and must include the victims on all sides, including victims of the wars that were justified by, and financed using, the 9/11 incident.

There must be a demand for the full release of all information (declassifying all relevant documents in the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, and elsewhere), for the purpose of the criminal prosecution of those responsible. We must assume that this commission will end with the release to the public of the complete story and their seizure of the assets of those who planned, and who profited from, this conspiracy for compensation of victims around the world.

We must create an accountable, transparent, and scientifically administered organization to run this investigation, one that is empowered to convict and to punish the criminals, and to seize assets for compensation.

In a real sense, the international 9/11 commission will be the first accountable form of governance on the planet in the last two decades and can start the great transformation of the corrupt systems of governance based on lies that have become commonplace.

Although Israel is not uniquely responsible for the 9/11 operation, its government is so corrupt, and has such deep links with criminal networks in finance, money laundering, intelligence and even local government around the world as part of a strategy for full-spectrum domination of global governance. There is no solution to the crisis of global governance post-9/11 that ignores the role of Israel.

AIPAC has replaced the US Federal government that was defined by the Constitution at all levels. Private private equity, often closely linked to Israel, controls the media so completely that the actions of Larry Silverstein, Dov Zakheim, Michael Chertoff, and Philip Zelikow (of the 9/11 Commission) cannot be mentioned in the sources that citizens turn to for information.

Part of the process of ending the 9/11 nightmare must involve providing access to reliable scientific information for citizens in the United States, and around the world. The massive consolidation of the media over the last two decades means that 96% of the news we have access to is filtered through six massive media conglomerates which are controlled by BlackRock, Vanguard, Goldman Sachs and other private equity firms, shell companies that conceal the influence of the billionaire class. The media-entertainment cartels must be completely dismantled and citizens given access to accurate information as part of the resolution.

Once we are on track to facing down the 9/11 fraud, we must terminate the deadly lobbying industry that has made bribery of congressmen and federal judges not only legal, but de jure. So also the criminal rackets within the Department of Justice must be rooted out completely.

This process will be painful and humiliating, but there is no other way forward. As President Lincoln demanded in Gettysburg Address, America must have a “new birth of freedom,” and an international 9/11 commission will serve as the midwife.

The failure of educated Americans to resist the drive for tyranny of the few is a sad, and perhaps final, chapter in the history of our republic. The horrific decadence, complacency, and narcissism in our culture made governance by fear possible.

The resulting absence in public discourse and politics of educated Americans is precisely what made the COVID-19 operation, the controlled demolition of the global economy, possible.

Unless we expose the “criminal cabal” that led us to this dangerous valley back in September, 2001, unless we denounce the public figures who caved in to threats and bribes to embrace this vast fabric of lies stretching to the horizon, our children will face a totalitarian government determined to reduce them to submission, step by step, and to pry away from their hands the last fragments of freedom.

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Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla claimed during a November 2021 interview that a small group of “medical professionals” who are intentionally circulating “misinformation” critical of the Pfizer vaccine narrative are “criminals,” but Bourla didn’t mention the criminal history of his own company.

1/ THREAD🚨 #PfizerFiles

Pfizer has habitually engaged in illegal and corrupt marketing practices, bribed physicians, & suppressed adverse trial results.

This is no secret, yet this fact continues to be brushed under the rug by politicians & the media.https://t.co/1MXLYd4x8u

— kanekoa.substack.com (@KanekoaTheGreat) January 3, 2023

One of the most significant cultural transformations of the last two years has been the newfound glorification of the pharmaceutical industry.

An industry plagued by decades of fraud, corruption, and criminality managed to quickly rebrand itself as the savior of humanity during the covid-19 crisis.

But nothing inherently changed. Big Pharma still values shareholders’ profits more than people’s lives.

The regulatory agencies still operate as revolving doors to the pharmaceutical giants they are said to regulate.

Big Pharma still dominates lobbying efforts in Washington DC, and spends billions each year advertising pharmaceutical products.

Despite the notorious corrupt nature of the pharmaceutical industry, Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla claimed during a November 2021 interview that a small group of “medical professionals” who are intentionally circulating “misinformation” critical of the Pfizer vaccine narrative are “criminals.”

Bourla seemed to have forgotten about the history of his own company.

Pfizer’s Long History Of Criminal Behavior

• In 1992, Pfizer agreed to pay between $165 million and $215 million to settle lawsuits arising from the fracturing of its Bjork-Shiley Convexo-Concave heart valve, which at the time had resulted in nearly 300 deaths, and by 2012 had resulted in 663 deaths.

• In 1994, Pfizer agreed to pay $10.75 million to settle Justice Department claims that the company lied to get federal approval for a mechanical heart valve that has fractured, killing hundreds of patients worldwide. Under the settlement, Pfizer also agreed to pay $9.25 million in coming years to monitor patients who received the device at Veterans Administration hospitals or pay for its removal. The deal was criticized by consumer rights activists who urged Government officials to bring criminal charges and lobbied for a steeper civil penalty for the multibillion-dollar company that had covered up safety concerns even as the device was killing patients.

• In 1996, Pfizer administered an experimental drug during a clinical trial on 200 children in Nigeria but never told the parents that their children were the subjects of an experiment. Eleven of the children died, and many others suffered side effects such as brain damage and organ failure. A report by Nigeria’s health ministry concluded the experiment was “an illegal trial of an unregistered drug,” a “clear case of exploitation of the ignorant,” and a violation of Nigerian and international law. Pfizer did not obtain consent or inform the patients that they were the subjects of an experiment, not the recipients of an approved drug.

• In 2002, Pfizer agreed to pay $49 million to settle allegations that the drug company defrauded the federal government and 40 states by charging too much for its cholesterol treatment Lipitor. Lipitor had sales of $6.45 billion in 2001.

• In 2004, Pfizer agreed to plead guilty to two felonies and paid $430 million in penalties to settle charges that it fraudulently promoted the drug Neurontin for unapproved uses. Pfizer agreed that it aggressively marketed the epilepsy drug illicitly for unrelated conditions, including bipolar disorder, pain, migraine headaches, and drug and alcohol withdrawal. Pfizer’s tactics included planting company operatives in the audience at medical education events and bribing doctors with luxury trips.

• In 2008, the New York Times published an article entitled “Experts Conclude Pfizer Manipulated Studies.” Pfizer delayed the publication of negative studies, spun negative data to place it in a more positive light, and controlled the flow of clinical research data to promote its epilepsy drug Neurontin. Pfizer discontinued its marketing program for Neurontin in 2004 after the drug became available as a generic. That same year, the company paid $430 million to settle federal criminal and civil claims that one of its subsidiaries had promoted the drug for unapproved uses.

• In 2009, Pfizer was fined $2.3 billion, then the largest healthcare fraud settlement and the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the United States. Pfizer pled guilty to misbranding the painkiller Bextra with “the intent to defraud or mislead,” promoting the drug to treat acute pain at dosages the FDA had previously deemed dangerously high. The government alleged that Pfizer had paid kickbacks to compliant doctors and also promoted three other drugs illegally: the antipsychotic Geodon, an antibiotic Zyvox, and the antiepileptic drug Lyrica.

• In 2009, Pfizer paid $750 million to settle 35,000 claims that its drug, Rezulin, was responsible for 63 deaths and dozens of liver failures. Rezulin’s withdrawal from the U.S. market on March 21, 2000, followed negotiations between the drug’s manufacturer and the FDA. Senior FDA officials had long stood behind the drug despite a mounting death toll and Rezulin’s absence of proven life-saving benefits. The position of the FDA officials stood in contrast to their counterparts in Britain, where Rezulin was removed effectively on Dec. 1, 1997.

• In 2010, Pfizer was ordered to pay $142.1 million in damages for violating federal anti-racketeering law by its fraudulent sale and marketing of Neurontin for uses not approved by the FDA. The jury found that Pfizer’s marketing of ‘Neurontin’ violated both the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and California’s Unfair Competition Law.

• In 2010, the New York Times published an article entitled “Pfizer Gives Details on Payments to Doctors.” Pfizer admitted that it paid about $20 million to 4,500 doctors and other medical professionals for consulting and speaking on its behalf in the last six months of 2009. Pfizer also paid $15.3 million to 250 academic medical centers and other research groups for clinical trials in the same period. The disclosures were required by an agreement that the company signed to settle a federal investigation into the illegal promotion of drugs for off-label uses.

• In 2010, Blue Cross Blue Shield filed a lawsuit against Pfizer, accusing the pharmaceutical giant of illegally bribing 5,000 doctors with lavish Caribbean vacations, golf games, massages, and other recreational activities to convince doctors to use Bextra for off-label use.

• In 2010, leaked cables between Pfizer and US officials in Nigeria showed that Pfizer had hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general to blackmail him to drop legal action over the controversial 1996 Trovan trial involving children with meningitis. In 2009, Pfizer agreed to pay $75 million to the families harmed during the 1996 drug trial. Still, the cables suggest that the US drug giant was looking for blackmail to get the Nigerian attorney general to drop the $6 billion federal suit against Pfizer. The leaks showed that Pfizer’s investigators were passing ‘damaging’ information to the local media and threatening the attorney general that much more damaging information would come out if he did not drop the suit. The $6 billion lawsuit was dropped in 2009.

• In 2012, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Pfizer Inc. with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) when its subsidiaries bribed doctors and other health care professionals employed by foreign governments in Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Italy, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Serbia to win business. According to the SEC, employees of Pfizer’s subsidiaries authorized and made cash payments and provided other incentives to bribe government doctors to utilize Pfizer products.

• In 2012, Pfizer paid $1.2 billion to settle claims by nearly 10,000 women that its hormone replacement therapy drug, Prempro, caused breast cancer. The Prempro settlements came after six years of trials. Several plaintiffs were awarded tens of millions of dollars, including punitive damages for the drug maker’s actions in withholding information about the risk of breast cancer from Prempro.

• In 2013, Pfizer agreed to pay $55 million to settle criminal charges of failing to warn patients and doctors about the risks of kidney disease, kidney injury, kidney failure, and acute interstitial nephritis caused by its proton pump inhibitor, Protonix.

• In 2013, Pfizer set aside $288 million to settle claims by 2,700 people that its drug, Chantix, caused suicidal thoughts and severe psychological disorders. The FDA determined that Chantix is probably associated with a higher risk of a heart attack.

• In 2014, Pfizer paid $35 million to settle a lawsuit accusing its subsidiary of promoting the kidney transplant drug Rapamune for unapproved uses, including bribing doctors to prescribe it to patients. According to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who led the probe, Wyeth got doctors to push the drug for unapproved uses, relying on “misleading presentations of data.”

• In 2016, Pfizer was fined a record £84.2 million for overcharging the NHS for its anti-epilepsy drug, Phenytoin, by 2,600 percent (from £2.83 to £67.50 a capsule), increasing the cost to UK taxpayers from £2 million in 2012 to about £50 million in 2013.

This is only a partial list of the fraud, corruption, and criminality of Pfizer. There are other examples of Pfizer unethically testing pharmaceutical products in the world’s poorest nations and participating in other criminal actions.

Whistleblowers Expose Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine Trials

While Pfizer’s CEO believes that it is criminal to question the integrity of his pharmaceutical company, multiple whistleblowers have already come forward, exposing the lack of integrity of Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine trials.

Leading medical journal, The BMJ published a report exposing faked data, blind trial failures, poorly trained vaccinators, and a slow follow-up on adverse reactions in the phase-three trial of Pfizer’s gene therapy shots.

When the whistleblower reported her concerns to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), she was fired later the same day because she was “not a good fit.” The FDA never inspected the clinical trial site of the whistleblower complaint.

Another whistleblower named Maddie de Garay volunteered for the Pfizer trial for 12 to 15-year-olds. 24 hours after her second dose, she was in an emergency room.

She is now in a wheelchair, requires a feeding tube through her nose, and is still suffering 9 months later. Maddie was 1 of 1,131 children in Pfizer’s clinical trial for children aged 12-15.

Pfizer officially recorded Maddie’s adverse event as “abdominal pain” when reporting clinical trial results to the FDA. If we know Maddie’s devastating, life-altering injury is recorded as “abdominal pain” in the clinical trials: what other serious adverse events have been hidden by Pfizer and ignored by the FDA?

Attorney Aaron Siri and a group of more than 30 scientists, medical professionals, and journalists asked the FDA for “all data and information for the Pfizer vaccine,” including safety and effectiveness data, adverse reaction reports, and a list of active and inactive ingredients.

The FDA managed to consider all 329,000 pages of data and grant emergency approval of the Pfizer vaccine within just 108 days but is now asking for 75 years to fully release that information to the public.

Siri wrote on his Substack, “So, let’s get this straight. The federal government shields Pfizer from liability. Gives it billions of dollars. Makes Americans take its product. But won’t let you see the data supporting its product’s safety and efficacy. Who does the government work for?”

The Pharmaceutical Regulatory Revolving Door

In a December 2021 interview, World Bank President, David Malpass, said that Pfizer will not give mRNA shots to countries where they face legal liabilities for side effects.

Malpass shared, “Pfizer has been hesitant to go into some of the countries because of the liability problems, they don’t have a liability shield.” This clearly shows that Pfizer is not operating from some moral high road for the betterment of society. This is about profit, and the people of the world have every right to question the integrity of Pfizer based on its criminal history and current actions.

As I have written in previous articles, this is still a pandemic of the untreated because captured regulatory agencies refuse to provide early treatment protocols featuring cheap and effective off-patent medications.

How much of this refusal to treat patients is due to Big Pharma’s leverage over captured regulatory agencies?

And, by all accounts, the covid mRNA gene therapy shots are failing to stop the spread worldwide. Still, Pfizer expects to bring in $33.5 billion in vaccine revenue in 2021 and expects even more profits in 2022 if it can continue to convince the world that its pharmaceutical products are the savior of humanity.

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The policymaking apparatus behind the AUKUS security pact was shoddy from the start. It has raised questions about the extent US power will subordinate Australia further in future conflicts; it has brought into question Australia’s own sovereignty; and it has also raised the spectre of regional nuclear proliferation via the use of otherwise closely guarded propulsion technology.

The other feature of this whole enterprise, as it always is regarding the procurement of submarines, is their rate of production.  The US Navy’s fast attack submarine program, the Virginia-class, is under pressure.  A mere 1.2 vessels have been delivered, on average, per year over the last five years.

The corollary of that problem is whether Australia would simply buy a US nuclear powered submarine, the classic off-the-shelf approach to defence procurement that thrills some while aggravating others.  This, according to a number of voices in Congress, is a fanciful prospect to be stomped upon.  “That’s not going to happen,” Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va) of the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower committee bluntly told Breaking Defense in December.  “I just don’t see how we’re going to build a submarine and sell it to Australia during that time.”

Washington’s less than humble servant in Canberra, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, echoes the line of their masters.  “The US doesn’t have spare submarines it can sell to Australia,” confirms Marcus Hellyer, “and it won’t have them anytime soon.”  To give Australia submarines needed by the US Navy “particularly when its own numbers are flat-lining, is just not an option that the US political leadership will consider.”

The dreaded alternative is one that entails an Australian built SSN, which sounds rather close to another white elephant candidate awaiting its spot in the museum of failed defence ventures.  Wittman, still smelling a buck for US national interests, suggested that Australian submariners or shipbuilders spend time in the US “for a full build cycle” to understand the process.  The next Virginia class submarine that is built could then be designated to the Australian AOR [area of responsibility], be operated by a dual US-Australian crew, with a dual command function.  “So it’ll be a submarine that operates in their AOR like an Australian submarine.”

Wittman’s observations lit a fire of scepticism.  In a letter of concern to US President Joe Biden, Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and James Inhofe (R-Okla) dated December 21 last year, the lawmakers are clear that “current conditions require a sober assessment of the facts to avoid stressing the US submarine industrial base to the breaking point.”

It must come as something of a supreme irony that Congress is concerned that the US will suffer its own challenges to sovereignty by committing Virginia-class vessels to Australia under the AUKUS agreement.  This, from a country that has clearly, unequivocally and seamlessly taken control over Australian military and operational independence in any functional sense.  “AUKUS options that would have the US transfer or sell Virginia-class submarines prior to meeting [the Chief of Naval Operations] requirements would make the US Navy less capable of meeting sovereign wartime and peacetime requirements.”

The lawmakers then go on to show that characteristic candour absent in Canberra’s provincial and ferociously reticent circles.  “Make no mistake, we recognize the strategic value of having one of our closest allies operating a world-class nuclear navy could provide in managing long-term competition with an increasingly militaristic China.”

The Australian government, taken aback by these rumbles, has released a number of statements that do little to scotch growing doubts.  Defence Minister Richard Marles ponders Australia’s own contribution to the agreement, believing it to be worthwhile and able.  “We have said we will build the capacity in Adelaide to build nuclear-powered submarines.”

Details as to how this will be done are woefully skimpy.  It is simply not clear whether Marles has any concept about the complexity of the project, observing that nuclear technology experts from universities across the country will be co-opted as part of the enterprise.  “This is a really exciting opportunity for Australia.”  He will have to do somewhat better than that to convince the likes of Reed and Imhofe.

The result of such concerns has turned Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese into an energetic lobbyist deserving a corner office on The Hill.  One report from The Australian noted how he was “lobbying members of US congress to hold the line in supporting the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal as it comes under criticism in America, calling the pact essential in strengthening Australia’s defence capabilities.”

His statements of late, despite their bold confidence, do little to suggest that the nuclear submarine idea is not sinking.  “We’re very confident that it’s in the interests of Australia, but also in the interest of the United States and the interests of the United Kingdom.”  He has spoken about the “optimal pathway”, which was “not just the issue of what is built, but how it is built, as well as the optimal pathway in building a capacity of skills in the Australian workforce.”

Such statements do little to arrest the hard nosed sceptics in Congress, who see little merit in splashing out in such endeavours if there is no safe, assured return for US military and business interests.  The issue of improving Australian skills in the area is a distant, secondary consideration.  It seems that the nuclear submarine aspect of AUKUS may sink before it gets off the assembly line.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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As we enter the new year, America has passed far beyond the threshold when the public needs to put ideological beliefs and partisan politics aside and honestly reevaluate how our culture has become a toxic stew of maladaptive groupthink.

How is it that identity politics, critical race theory and the bizarre fusion of Wokeism’s ideology with pop culture has gone beyond mere indifferent toleration and become infused into our institutions and legal system?

For the rest of the non-Western world, which now refuses to idolize the US’s faux democracy as a paragon of an enlightened civilization, our nation has morphed into a self-inflicted insane asylum that would qualify the Marquis de Sade as its chief psychiatrist.

Our liberal intelligentsia self-flagellates itself and cowers to the absurd demands of Wokeism’s aggressive degenerate thinking. The collateral damage has been the demolition of whatever remains of a former national moral structure that once upheld universal humanitarian and spiritual values. In this convoluted ethos, the anti-fascists become the most rabid fascists. Anti-racists are the exemplars of a new modernist racism. Ideological avarice either infects or intimidates those who are perhaps the most connected with reality to remain silent for fear of being labeled heretics and cancelled. Those who are most wise, humane and truly progressive are condemned as fools. 

Of course, social media has now revolutionized the public commons for dialogue and debate.

Social media has also reinvented how people relate to and interact with each other. Now we observe this is having irreversible consequences.

Rather than creating new forums and venues for diverse groups to resolve differences amicably to discover common ground, social media platforms have further shredded the prospects for a future cohesive society that respects humanity’s enormous diversity and differences in political persuasions, social and religious beliefs and worldviews.

This new liberal commons has enabled the paltriest minded and emotionally fragile voices to rise to influence regardless of any merit or achievements people may have earned during their lifetime. Virtual liberalism, or as one Indian critic calls “the western memeplex,” has contributed greatly to the proliferation of Wokeism’s creed.

Curiously, Wokeism is undoubtedly the product of Western civilization’s social consciousness. It is unimaginable that a militant cancel culture could spontaneously arise from more traditional civilizations such as China, Latin America, Africa or Russia.

One argument is that Wokeism can only arise in a society that places a high premium on hyper-individualism at the expense of social cooperation and tranquility.

If we agree that Wokeism is a distorted and mentally disturbed mutation of Western culture, then there is certainly something centrally unhealthy in the Anglo-American collective self-awareness. Wokeism praises victimhood, whether authentic or counterfeit; therefore, the woke demand our perfunctory compassion and empathy, despite their violent behavior.  Forensic experts repeatedly confirm that dehumanization and desensitization gives rise to cruel and hysterical behavior. The very idea that everyone deserves compassion and sympathy is counterintuitive to Wokeism’s hatred and its strategy to marginalize its detractors, especially White people, heterosexuals and men. Consequently the woke fragility’s contrived victimhood is nothing more than attention-seeking narcissism. 

A serious question arises that even most critics of Wokeism refuse to ask. Are those who are the most woke living in a prison of an imbalanced and deluded mind that is not only a danger to themselves but also to others?  This is not an especially comfortable line of inquiry because of the consequences if reason brings us to an affirmative conclusion.

However, consider for a moment how mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, compulsive behavior and irrational fears have become normalized. Moreover, these mental diagnoses are increasing exponentially with no indication of a likely decline. Worse, it is being romanticized. In the Woke universe, being depressed or having one’s personal feelings hurt are viable reasons to affirm one’s self-righteousness and give license to be unforgiving, vicious and callous. 

Wokeism weaponizes resentment. Therefore, is it too preposterous to suppose that Wokeism is unwillingly constructing a nationwide mental asylum as its most ambitious and fervent followers undeservingly land coveted professorships, privileged government employment and higher administrative jobs?  In positions of authority, Wokeism is steadily trickled down through the brainwashing of mandatory employee training, critical race workshops and seminars and the sexualization of children in grammar schools.   

It is fair to say that those who relish their wokeness entertain a weird personal romance with adverse and unhealthy psychological conditions. The walls of Plato’s bleak cave are replaced with self-entitlement, gender dysphoria, mobile phones, pornography, Facebook, TikTok and other social media with its cancel culture mobs. The woke mob bars itself from courageously discovering a healthy relationship with the natural world. Its fascist elements fuel a system of intolerance.

The relative nature of Wokeism’s sentiments is believed to be absolutely true. On social media, everyone’s language must be policed. A person’s righteous pride is rewarded by likes and emojis depending upon how successful the opposition is castigated, reviled and demeaned to a subhuman level.

And not unlike the frenzy of a Super Bowl match or World Cup final, this bottom-up wave of the feeble minded surges and proliferates to a point where any potential universal values, which have been championed by the world’s greatest civil rights activists and peacemakers, has been eradicated in a unified self-loathing towards a shared humanity. Righteous indignation turns into depravity, violence and tyranny, and these are signs of a larger degeneracy of the psyche. The woke mob’s tyranny, as we have observed, welcomes social media censorship, pandemic lockdowns, vaccination mandates, firing of professors, and supports the government usurping greater control in order to police people’s thoughts and beliefs. Wokeism’s tyranny even demands the destruction of the nuclear family and traditional parent-child relationships. Aberrant behavior, such as pedophilia that can traumatize a minor for life, is being rebranded as “minor-attracted persons” to gloss over its negative social stigma. And our intellectual class rapidly falls into lock step cooperation with this tyranny. As Plato warned in his criticisms against Athens’s anemic philosophical intelligentsia, they are “swamped by the flood of popular praise and blame, and carried away with the stream till he finds himself agreeing with popular ideas of what is admirable and disgraceful, behaving like the crowd and becoming one of them.” And this snowflake insanity is sweeping the nation’s opinion makers, who are then obliged to surrender to the bullying demands of the woke mob, which then create the narratives for education, journalism, mainstream media, entertainment and popular culture. 

Minus the presence of charismatic, magnetic personalities promising personal liberation from the neoliberal suppression that pervades the US, the new woke culture shares many characteristics common with religious cults.

The authoritarian figure in traditional cults has been replaced by a collective groupthink fueled by a strange, perverted reward system that reinforces an individual’s worst mental and emotional afflictions and vulnerabilities. For example, in her best selling book White Fragility, author Robin DiAngelo instructs her sleepwalking followers that it is impossible to overcome their inherent and complicit racism, despite there being no empirical and quantifiable evidence that racism is biological or that racism is fundamentally inherent at birth.

For DiAngelo and her followers, racism is absolute. If you are White, you are racist and there is unconditionally no cure other than to accept this delusional charade and then try your hardest to suppress hidden, invisible racist traits by default. In this Kafkaesque world, there are two types of racists: racists who accept they are racist and racists who deny their racism. And at various levels this includes everybody without exception, but especially Whites dominant White. Similar to every fundamentalist cult, woke critical race theory exploits people’s compulsive weaknesses in an attempt to self-define itself and its constructive role in society.

This includes making sense of the contradictions in people’s lives and their relationships with others. Despite the faulty logic in modern critical theory’s analysis and understanding about race and socio-biological diversity, it is rapidly gaining a large number of followers, especially among younger generations who struggle with an existential angst compounded by our culture where all meaning has been reduced to materialistic and biological impulses. In our overtly science-driven society, morals and deeper ethical values, which otherwise nurture new, harmonious relationships between people of diverse races, ethnicities and nationalities, have no foundational basis. There is nothing ethically imprinted in our brains, our biology, or genetic inheritance. Nor are there any emotional responses that determine whether we will act in one way or another at any given moment. The very idea that racism is in some mysterious way intrinsic to the circumstances each of us are born into is not only ludicrous but outrageously dangerous. It is anti-science, anti-psychology and anti-spiritual throughout.

Another cult-like component of the emerging woke culture is that it promises a future, idealistic utopia. However, this future society would be inevitably populated by extraordinarily dysfunctional people. The rule of order upon which such a society would be based would equally be cruel and authoritarian. All cults have some type of utopian vision used to indoctrinate its followers as a mission and goal to strive for. This provides purpose and meaning in a society where anxiety and depression has become the norm. Thus we find the most vocal persons in woke culture, undeterred by the tiny minority of the actual percentage of the population they represent, admonishing a radical activism that is intent on condemning anyone who opposes its dogma. For example, in early 2022, a large Gallup survey reported that transgenders and persons self-identifying as non-binary only make up a tiny minority of 0.7 percent of the entire population however we also should be sensitive to any minority groups rights ; nevertheless, the attention the mainstream media and government institutions grant them would have us believe that a critical percentage of the American population deserves more attention than other minority groups. This utopian ideal reduces an individual’s uniqueness and gifts to a level playing field whereby nobody can prosper by pursuing excellence. 

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause,” wrote Aldous Huxley, “is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone.” Repeatedly we read about professors, celebrities, and prominent people being unduly ridiculed and cancelled by any means available in order to destroy careers and remove them from public life. No doubt Western civilization has evolved with many prejudices. Many of the biases that cause division have been institutionalized, have been consolidated into unwarranted power, and need to be surgically excised. Nietzsche declared, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” Yet today, we witness the woke mentality being adopted into social mandates and even laws at some of the highest levels of government. For Huxley, such despicable behavior is “righteous indignation.” Now we are experiencing this pseudo-righteous revenge being collectively carried out across the US by the new liberal Left. The Democrat party’s woke caucus, spearheaded by the Squad, utters disdain for people’s fundamental Constitutional rights. This has been on full display through the recent revelations of widespread censorship and propaganda of misinformation and lies on Twitter. Cancel culture has entered foreign policy. The rise in national Russophobia is another manifestation of the woke mind and is nearing the threshold of hatred that the Nazis directed towards Jews, Gypsies, communists, and other minorities. 

Contrary to critical theory’s very name — to critically understand the social consequences of power structures — its followers demand there be a superficial public mass consumption of Wokeism’s incongruences, contradictions, and irrational claims.

We are expected to leave self-examination aside because, as in Kafka’s The Trial, you have no willful choice. You are guilty if you do and guilty if you don’t. Wokeism creates social gulags with no viable escape portal aside from becoming a public outcast to preserve your self dignity.

The more people read the writings of DiAngelo, and others, the more indoctrinated into the woke cult they become. Rather than advocating for a genuine class struggle based upon the economic unfairness in the distribution of wealth benefitting the elite and lowering the living standards of everyone else, the woke mob would prefer a new caste system founded upon social-group identity. And all of this cutting, splicing, partitioning, and labeling is playing nicely into the forthcoming social-credit scoring that will divide the socially acceptable from the unacceptable.

Any deviance against woke’s dogma and its self-gratifying rules of behavior is judged evil, vile and a threat to a new society founded upon totalitarian principles to assure a highly controlled social order. Such a structure was being strategically erected on Twitter by the deep state and its demands for censorship by  Adam Schiff before Elon Musk took control to bust apart the platform’s woke agenda. We are also witnessing woke psychology breaking up families over pandemic policies, whether or not a person is vaccinated, and whether you swallowed a red or blue pill. This is a very common symptom of religious cult dynamics that encourages followers to dissociate themselves from and renounce family members, friends, colleagues and associates who don’t embrace their newly adopted social gospel. Today the most vicious domestic war is being waged between Wokeism’s dehumanized world and a higher moral society that values inclusiveness and tolerance.

Finally, it should be stated that critical theory, which has been the groundwork for Wokeism’s intelligentsia, pretends to be objective and to follow a scientific methodology. If we accept this claim, then critical race theory is thoroughly junk science. Junk science did not begin with the pandemic, nor will end when the rogues who orchestrated this monster come to justice. Instead junk science has been permeating throughout all disciplines, even disciplines that are not properly scientific such as critical race theory, gender studies, history and even psychology. Wokeism is just one more cancer that has manifested from the scourge of metaphysical realism that masquerades as being objectively rational and methodological observation. But with all the Orwellian double-think bombarding us through the halls of Washington, mainstream media networks and educational classrooms, this is a complete sham, a product of outrageous delusional flights of imagination to confirm entrenched biases and prejudices.  

So as we begin the new year, and if you identify as a member of the nation’s overwhelming majority of persons deeply worried about America’s spiraling ethical and spiritual bankruptcy, just say no and walk away. But do so with the courage to speak truth to childish ignorance and the despotic demands of deranged personalities and especially those in positions of power and authority who have every intention to exploit Wokeism’s energy, enthusiasm and religious-like zeal. And, also feel compassion towards the woke because once they serve their purpose, they too will be ostracized, marginalized and tossed to the side after the deep state decides Wokeism’s naivety is no longer useful to its tyrannical goals. 

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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***

Shadows are falling
And I’ve been here all day
It’s too hot to sleep
And time is running away
Feel like my soul
has turned into steel
I’ve still got the scars
That the sun didn’t heal
There’s not even room enough
To be anywhere
Lord it’s not dark yet,
but it’s getting there.

— Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet

Lights! Action! Reset!

The World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Davos Freak Show is back in business on Monday.

The mainstream media of the collective West, in unison, will be spinning non-stop, for a week, all the “news” that are fit to print to extol new declinations of The Great Reset, re-baptized The Great Narrative, but actually framed as a benign offer by “stakeholder capitalism”. These are the main planks of the shady platform of a shady NGO registered in Cologny, a tony Geneva suburb.

The list of Davos attendees was duly leaked. Proverbially, it’s an Anglo-American Exceptionalist fun fest, complete with intel honchos such as the US Director of National Intelligence, Avril “Madam Torture” Haines; the head of MI6 Richard Moore; and FBI director Christopher Wray.

Remixed Diderot and D’Alembert Encyclopedias could be written about the Davos pathology – where a hefty list of multibillionaires, heads of state and corporate darlings (owned by BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and co.) “engage” in selling Demented Dystopia packages to the unsuspecting masses.

But let’s cut to the chase and focus on a few panels next week – which could easily be mistaken for Straight to Hell sessions.
The Tuesday, January 17 list is particularly engaging. It features a “De-Globalization or Re-Globalization?” panel with speakers Ian Bremmer, Adam Tooze, Neil Ferguson, Péter Szijjártó and Ngaire Woods. Three Atlanticists/Exceptionalists stand out, especially the ultra-toxic Ferguson.

After “In Defense of Europe”, featuring a bunch of nullities including Poland’s Andrjez Duda, attendees will be greeted with a Special Season in Hell (sorry, Rimbaud) featuring none other than EC dominatrix Ursula von der Leyen, known by a vast majority of Germans as Ursula von der Leichen (“Ursula of Cadavers”) in a tag team with WEF mastermind, Third Reich emulator Klaus “Nosferatu” Schwab.

Rumors are that Lucifer, in his privileged underground abode, is green with envy.

There’s also “Ukraine: What Next?” with another bunch of nullities, and “War in Europe: Year 2” featuring Moldova woke chick Maia Sandu and Finnish party girl Sanna Marin.

In the War Criminal section, pride of place goes to “A Conversation with Henry Kissinger: Historical Perspectives on War”, where Dr. K. will sell all his trademark Divide and Rule permutations. Added sulphur will be provided by Thucydides strangler Graham Allison.

In his Special Address, “Liver Sausage” Chancellor Olaf Scholz will be side by side with Nosferatu, hoping he won’t be – literally – grilled.

Then, on Wednesday, January 18, comes the apotheosis: “Restoring Security and Peace” with speakers Fareed Zakaria – the US establishment’s pet brown man; NATO’s Jens “War is Peace” Stoltenberg; Andrzej Duda – again; and Canadian warmonger Chrystia Freeland – widely rumored to become the next NATO Secretary-General.

And it gets juicier: the coke comedian posing as warlord may join via zoom from Kiev.

The notion that this panel is entitled to emit judgments about “peace” deserves nothing less than its own Nobel Peace Prize.Cynics of all persuasions may be excused for lamenting Mr. Zircon – currently on oceanic patrol encompassing the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and of course “Mare Nostrum” Mediterranean – won’t be presenting his business card at Davos.

Analyst Peter Koenig has developed a convincing thesis that the WEF, the WHO and NATO may be running some sort of sophisticated death cult. The Great Reset does mingle merrily with NATO’s agenda as agent provocateur, financer and weaponizer of the proxy Empire vs. Russia war in black hole Ukraine. NAKO – an  acronym for North Atlantic Killing Organization – would be more appropriate in this case.

As Koenig summarizes it,

“NATO enters any territory where the ‘conventional’ media lie-machine, and social engineering are failing or not completing their people-ordaining goals fast enough.”

In parallel, very few people are aware that on June 13, 2019 in New York, a secret deal was clinched between the UN, the WEF, an array of oligarch-weaponized NGOs – with the WHO in the front line – and last but not least, the world’s top corporations, which are all owned by an interlinked maze with Vanguard and BlackRock at the center.

The practical result of the deal is the UN Agenda 2030.

Virtually every government in the NATOstan area and the “Western Hemisphere” (US establishment definition) has been hijacked by Agenda 2030 – which translates, essentially, as hoarding, privatizing and financializing all the earth’s assets, under the pretext of “protecting” them.

Translation: the marketization and monetization of the entire natural world (see, for instance, here, here and here.)

Davos superstar shills such as insufferable bore Neil Ferguson are just well rewarded vassals: western intellectuals of the Harvard, Yale and Princeton mould that would never dare bite the hand that feeds them.

Ferguson just wrote a column on Bloomberg titled “All is Not Quiet on the Eastern Front” – basically to peddle the risk of WWIII, on behalf of his masters, blaming of course “China as the arsenal of autocracy”.

Among serial high-handed inanities, this one stands out. Ferguson writes, “There are two obvious problems with US strategy (…) The first is that if algorithmic weapons systems are the equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons, Putin may eventually be driven to using the latter, as he clearly lacks the former.”

Cluelessness here is a euphemism. Ferguson clearly has no idea “algorithmic weapons” mean; if he’s referring to electronic warfare, the US may have been able to maintain superiority for a while in Ukraine, but that’s over.

Well, that’s typical Ferguson – who wrote a whole Rothschild hagiography just like his column, drinking from the Rothschild archives that appeared to have been sanitized as he knows next to nothing meaningful about their history.

Ferguson has “deduced” that Russia is weak and China is strong. Nonsense. Both are strong – and Russia is more advanced technologically than China in their advanced offensive and defensive missile development, and can beat the US in a nuclear war as Russian air space is sealed by layered defenses such as the S-400 all the way to the already tested S-500s and designed S-600s.

As far as semiconductor chips, the advantage that Taiwan has in chip manufacture is in mass production of the most advanced chips; but China and Russia can fabricate the chips necessary for military use, though not engage in mass commercial production. The US has an important advantage here commercially with Taiwan, but that’s not a military advantage.

Ferguson gives away his game when he carps about the need to “deter a nascent Axis-like combination of Russia, Iran and China from risking simultaneous conflict in three theaters: Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.”

Here we have trademark Atlanticist demonization of the top three vectors of Eurasia integration mixed with a toxic cocktail of ignorance and arrogance: it’s NATO that is stoking “conflict” in Eastern Europe; and it’s the Empire that is being expelled from the “Far East” (oh, that’s so colonial) and soon from the Middle East (actually West Asia).

An AMGOT tale

Nobody with an IQ over room temperature will expect Davos next week to discuss any aspect of the NATO vs. Eurasia existential war seriously – not to mention propose diplomacy. So I’ll leave you with yet another typical tawdry story about how the Empire – who rules over Davos – deals in practice with its vassals.

While in Sicily earlier this year I learned that an ultra high-value Pentagon asset had landed in Rome, in haste, as part of an unscheduled visit. A few days later the reason for the visit was printed in La Repubblica, one of the papers of the toxic Agnelli clan.

That was a Mafia scam: a face-to-face “suggestion” for the Meloni government to imperatively provide Kiev, as soon as possible, with the costly anti-Samp-T missile system, developed by an European consortium, Eurosam, uniting MBDA Italy, MBDA France and Thales.

Italy possesses only 5 batteries of this system, not exactly brilliant against ballistic missiles but efficient against cruise missiles.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had already called Palazzo Chigi to announce the “offer you can’t refuse”. Apparently that was not enough, thus the hasty envoy trip.  Rome will have to toe the line. Or else. After all, never forget the terminology employed by US generals to designate Sicily, and Italy as a whole: AMGOT.

American government occupied territory.

Have fun with the Davos freak show.

*

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Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Passing out or losing consciousness is called “syncope” and in general has three causes: cardiac, neurological, or other category. The most serious cause is a cardiac arrest which commonly starts with an arrhythmia from from the ventricles called ventricular tachycardia. The rhythm is sufficiently fast where the heart does not have time to fill with blood and so blood pressure drops precipitously and as a result the patient loses consciousness. In adolescents this could be hard to distinguish from a simple fainting spell (vasodepressor syncope) as a result of getting a needle in the arm or a blood draw. Han and coworkers report on a 17 year old girl who passed out after her first injection of the ineffective Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

She was hospitalized and found to have COVID-19 vaccine induced myocarditis (with left ventricular dysfunction) and during observation, ventricular tachycardia occurred that self-terminated (non-sustained). She spent over a month in the hospital. If that arrhythmia would have been prolonged a cardiac arrest would have ensued similar to that of so many of the athletes we have seen collapse on the playing field. This is an important paper since myocarditis is not mild nor transient and under direct observation can be manifest as a lethal arrhythmia.

So if someone you know has had palpitations or passed out in conjunction with ill-advised COVID-19 vaccination, be sure to suggest a cardiovascular evaluation. There should be no athletic activity until myocarditis is ruled out.

If you find “Courageous Discourse” enjoyable and useful to your endeavors, please subscribe as a paying or founder member to support our efforts in helping you engage in these discussions with family, friends, and your extended circles.

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Source

Han J, Lee J, Choi S, Lee H, Song YH. Case report: Myocarditis with nonsustained ventricular tachycardia following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination in a female adolescent. Front Pediatr. 2022 Nov 21;10:995167. doi: 10.3389/fped.2022.995167. PMID: 36479288; PMCID: PMC9720276.

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***

In 1969, Golda Meir, the first woman to become the Prime Minister of Israel who oversaw a major conflict in the Yum Kippur War of 1973 once proclaimed that

“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, it is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country.  They didn’t exist.” 

Today, many Israelis believe what Golda Meir had said, including Israel’s top cabinet member Itamar Ben-Gvir, a known far-right extremist who basically wants to annex the rest of what was once known as Palestine and expel the remaining Palestinians once and for all.  It should not be a surprise that the new government of Benjamin Netanyahu is provoking another war against the Palestinian people when he allowed his Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir to pay a visit to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount which has created increased tensions with the real possibility that a Third Intifada can be initiated by the Palestinian resistance including Hamas, Fatah and others because this provocation has not only angered the Palestinians, but it has angered all Muslims from around the world.    

According to a Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) article based on comments made by Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah titled, ‘Hezbollah chief: Middle East could ‘explode,’ it reported that Nasrallah said that

“The desecration of the Muslim and Christian sanctities in Palestine will not only explode the situation…but could actually cause an explosion in the whole region,” and that “Our people will not accept such a violation.”

He also called on Western countries to stop “crazy extremist Israelis” if they do not want another war in the region.” Nasrallah continued “We are awake, alert, and ready. We will not allow any change to the rules of deterrence in Lebanon.” Haaretz published ‘Hamas Retaliation for Ben-Gvir’s Al-Aqsa Visit ‘Will Be the Last War,’ Far-right MK Vows’ on the disturbing comment by a far-right Israeli lawmaker by the name of Zvika Fogel who said that “Israel would “respond as I think we should, and yes it would be worth it because this will be the last war and after that we can sit and raise doves and all the other beautiful birds that exist.”  Hamas has called Itamar Ben-Gvirs provocations a “crime” and that Jerusalem’s Temple Mount “will remain Palestinian, Arab, Islamic.” On January 3^rd, 2023, Hamas Spokesperson Hazem Qassem said the following:

The extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyard this morning is a crime that comes in the context of the occupation’s continued aggression against the city of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque with the aim of Judaizing it.  This provocative behavior by the right-wing government will open the door wide for real waves of escalation, all of which will have repercussions for the entire region because Al-Aqsa Mosque has its place among the Arab and Islamic peoples, our Palestinian people and the resistance behind it will continue to defend the sanctities and will never allow the occupation to pass the plan to Judaize Jerusalem or the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque

Israeli far-right extremists have called for a Jewish Temple to be built to replace the Al-Aqsa Mosque which would no doubt, anger the Muslim world who has over 1 billion people which would lead to a bloody war against the self-declared Jewish state.  Even Jordan’s King Abdullah II has warned Israel’s new government not to cross “Red Lines” and that Jordan will be ready to enter a conflict with Israel if the status of Jerusalem’s Holy sites were to change in any way.

On September 28^th, 2000, then Prime minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon visited the holy site and angered the Palestinians and the Arab world which ignited the Second intifada or the Al-Aqsa Intifada.  The next day, the Palestinians held rallies protesting Sharon’s visit, but Israeli forces opened fire on the protesters killing several people.

What really escalated the war occurred on September 30^th when a 12-year-old boy by the name of Muhammad Al-Durrah who was shot dead by the Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip angered many around the world.  The Palestinians and its resistance groups took up arms resulting in the deaths of more than 3,300 Palestinians and more than 1,000 Israelis and numerous injuries on both sides.

On February 8^th, 2005, after more than 5 years of war, the Israelis and Palestinians agreed to a cease fire, but the Israeli government decided to expand checkpoints and settlements across Palestinian territories thus creating an apartheid state.  This time is different, in fact it will be more dangerous for Israel since they will no doubt face every possible resistance from all over the Middle East, including from ordinary Palestinians to resistance groups in the West Bank and Gaza, Hezbollah fighters, the countries of Jordan and even Syria might get into the conflict and that’s just the beginning.  I do agree with Zvika Fogel who said that this will be the last war because once the Muslim world unites (which it will) against Israel’s actions on one of their holiest sites, the “Jewish State” will have to fight for its existence, so there is no doubt that it will be devasting war, many lives will be lost whether they will be Jewish, Muslim, or Christian.

As always, the United States supports Israel no matter what the situation is because every US President has said at one time or another that the US and its relationship with Israel is unbreakable.

US President and self-proclaimed Zionist Joe Biden and his corrupt cabinet members all obey Israel’s demands had released a Press Statement on Israel’s new far-right government basically congratulating their old friend, Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu

“Today, Israel’s Knesset voted to ratify a new Israeli government under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I look forward to working with Prime minister Netanyahu, who has been my friend for decades, to jointly address the many challenges and opportunities facing Israel and the Middle East region, including threats from Iran.” 

The Biden regime then spoke about the necessity of creating a two-state solution which will never happen since the US government and Tel Aviv has been talking about this idea for decades and no peace deal ever came out of it, “From the start of my Administration, we have worked with partners to promote this more hopeful vision of a region at peace, including between Israelis and Palestinians.”  The Statement did not mention working with the leadership with Palestinian Authority instead they mention one of the most fascistic Zionists the Israelis had as their leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to the White House Press Release “We aim to continue this important work with Israel’s new government under Prime Minister Netanyahu’s leadership.  And as we have throughout my Administration, the United States will continue to support the two-state solution and to oppose policies that endanger its viability or contradict our mutual interests and values.” It’s obvious that Biden’s plan for a two-state solution will go nowhere as usual, especially under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu who is a long-time friend to Joe Biden.  Both Democrats and Republicans support Israel, so the possibility of a war in the Middle East is guaranteed to happen under Israel’s new radical government.

World War III will be global, every human being on earth will be affected by this coming war including those on the Asian continent with tensions brewing between China and Taiwan, the ongoing war against Russia with the US-NATO support of Ukraine, and now the Middle East with Israel’s new far-right extremist government.

Lastly, at some point, this new global war will eventually reach the North American continent in some form or another, hopefully it won’t be a nuclear missile hitting a major US city, but the war will be felt across the empire of chaos, it’s inevitable.  The political establishment, bankers, the Military-Industrial Complex, and corporate powers based in the US and Europe will be the only ones who will benefit from the war.  However, many people in the US who are propagandized by the mainstream media and Hollywood usually support the US war machine that destroys countries from all around the world might actually get a taste of what a real war is like on American soil.

A world war is upon us, so everyone should prepare themselves for difficult times ahead, the future is uncertain.

War is here, a resistance against Western hegemony is growing by the day in the global south, especially in the Middle East.

Regarding to what is happening in the Middle East, one important quote that holds true today when it comes to the Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation was by US President John F. Kennedy who said that 

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

A new war is inevitable, so peace will remain elusive, a powder keg is about to explode. All we can do now is hope and pray that a peaceful resolution takes place, but from what history tells us, that will not happen anytime soon.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

On this Martin Luther King day, as a proxy war rages in Ukraine, as regular people are divided against each other along antiquated racial lines, and as the world wakes up from the nightmare of “lockdowns” and other egregious violations of our civil and human rights, let’s honor the man who risked and lost his life to defy “the greatest purveyor of violence on earth”: our own government.

King knew that the “evil triplets of racism, militarism, and extreme materialism” were the lifeblood of establishment power, which would fall apart without its manufactured enemies, its disposable economy, and the organized division of its subject peoples.

Back then, King fought the vestiges of Jim Crow and the unofficial, if no less virulent, racism of the north. Today, he would fight state-corporate sponsored “intersectionality,” the weaponized “critical race theory” that masquerades as radicalism but, in reality, divides in order to conquer.

Back then, King defied much of the civil rights community, not to mention the federal government, to call the war in Vietnam the criminal occupation that it was.

Today, he would call out the US role in provoking the conflict in Ukraine, and note how the war further extends the goals of the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset”: more scarcity, more surveillance and control, more money concentrated in fewer hands.

Back then, King planned to gather Americans of all races in Washington DC to demand an end to poverty in America.

Detroit 2011

Today, he would have railed against the effort to destabilize the working class and dehumanize immigration by means of an open border; he would have wondered at the science behind health dictates that closed small businesses, but left open giant monopolies; he would have been aghast at worldwide mandates that violated our most basic civil rights—the choices we make with our own bodies—in order to keep a job or get an education. Back then, King organized lunch counter sit-ins and bus boycotts to fight the evil of segregation; today, he would have sat-in at restaurants demanding vaccine passports and boycotted countries that required an experimental injection to enter their borders.

Like many of us, King might have been bewildered and disheartened by the world he found today. But not for long. Just as he broadened his vision to see how “the bombs in Vietnam explode at home, making the poor, both white and Negro, bear the heaviest burden,” so too would he see how the world has been denied its very humanity under the banner of “public health,” how globalization has finally robbed us of all sovereignty, and how those who wield advanced technology have both canceled our speech and privatized our immune systems.

Let’s remember the forgotten King of yesterday, the anti-war, anti-poverty activist who knew working people had to reach across racial lines to overcome oppression. Let’s also imagine the King of today, who would have wept to see his children so broken in spirit, and so bereft of wisdom, that we would let our schools and places of worship be shuttered even as the liquor stores were mandated “essential.”

Today’s King would force us to confront the new power that has settled over the globe, that hideous strength that makes nothing true and every transgression permissible. He would make us ashamed of how low we’ve become.  And he would command us to stand.

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John Kirby is the director of FOUR DIED TRYING, a feature documentary series about the extraordinary lives and calamitous deaths of President John F. Kennedy, Malcom X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.  The series will premiere in November of 2023.  

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***

Peru’s President Pedro Castillo, a socialist of the “Peru Libre” (“Free Peru”) party, was elected in Peru’s general elections on 11 April 2021. He won the elections with a margin of less than 1%; and was officially designated as president-elect of Peru only on 19 July 2021, only a week before he was to be inaugurated.

In fact, Castillo won with 50.13% of the vote, a lead of 44,263 over his right-wing opponent Keiko Fujimori. Hardly a landslide, and no wonder the opposition disputed the election results. In many cases, if not in most, such a narrow margin would require a new ballot, or at least a recount. Was the narrow result manipulated in one way or the other – difficult to prove.

However, intense calls for a recount were thrashed and eventually overruled by the Organization of American States (OAS), in which the US has a 60% stake.

Similar “narrow” election results are prevalent in recent years all through Latin America. In Brazil’s runoff elections on 30 October 2022, Luiz Ignácio Lula – Lula for short – a so-called “leftwinger”, won with 50.8%, less than 1%, against incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. But suspiciously narrow election results occur also in other parts of the world.

Today the narrow result in Peru is irrelevant, except for the question, who benefitted from this election and who may have been behind it?

Maybe the same people, organization(s), who are responsible for Castillo’s ouster on 7 December 2022. An internal coup, with foreign assistance. For more than a year of his Presidency, Castillo was unable to govern the country. Opposition, not just party opposition, like a cabal, would interfere with all his proposals. There is no doubt, like all his predecessor governments, he run a corrupt government. But that is not the reason for his ouster.

In the morning of 7 December, 2022, Castillo apparently wanted to close Congress. It is not clear whether the purpose was to call for new elections or to become a dictator, à la former President Alberto Fujimori in April 1992. Fujimori’s basically one-man rule lasted until the year 2000. In November 2000 Fujimori fled the country in the midst of a scandal involving corruption and human rights abuse. He later faxed his resignation letter from Japan.

Back to the present. Instead of Castillo shutting down Congress, the very Congress impeached him. As if planned, Castillo’s Vice-President Dina Boluarte, same “Peru Libre” leftwing party, immediately launched an impeachment procedure during which Castillo was ousted on the same day, arrested and immediately put in prison for 18 months without a trial.

Madame Dina Boluarte immediately assumed the Presidency. She wrongly expected she could keep the Presidency until the next official elections in 2026. Violent protests began immediately to beset the country, especially the Andean Regions, Cusco, Puno, Ayacucho, Arequipa and other towns, mainly in the southern part of Peru. They wanted their President back.

Peru’s Constitution prescribes under this circumstance new elections within 3 to 6 months.  The Constitutional Court eventually compromised for early elections in April 2024. That gives Boluarte enough time to reshape Peru according to the UN Agenda 2030, i.e. the Great Reset.

She has already started. With an iron fist, Boluarte immediately cracked down on protesters, precisely those who voted for the Castillo-Boluarte ticket – the Peruvian poor and left – with deadly police and military repression. TeleSur reports on 11 January that the Peruvian Congress in a vote of Confidence supports Boluarte’s repressive measures.

So far, they have affected mostly the Andean highlands. Violent oppression of protests has until now, left close to 50 dead – and there is no end in sight. As a result of international calls for moderation, Boluarte requested more police restraint. It may be too late.

This article by Zoe Alexandra says it all: “They Shot them down like animals”: Massacre at Peru’s Ayacucho.

Remember Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF) Academy for Young Global Leaders (YGL)? It looks like Dina Boluarte is one of Professor Schwab’s YGL academy graduates. And she knows her role. Not long ago, with regard to the YGL program, Schwab said, “We are proud having been able to infiltrate governments around the world with our YGLs.” See photo (origin ´Del Peruano’). Is Ms. Boluarte one of the infiltrees?

See also this.

There are other signs of foreign intervention. Shortly before the “internal coup”, US Ambassador to Peru, who previously worked for almost a decade for the Agency, met with the Peruvian Defense Minister. Just a few days after the Coup, she met with Ms. Boluarte and proclaimed US support for her. Therefore, it may not be far-fetched to understand why Boluarte acts which such violent repression against her own citizens – and especially the protesters, who elected the Castillo-Boluarte team.  See this.

Change in Peru towards the neoliberal “New Left”, as is apparent all throughout Latin America, is now triggered and attempted implementation is on the way through WEF mechanisms, alias Ms. Dina Boluarte.

In the meantime, protestors not only call for reinstation of President Castillo, but even more so for the immediate resignation of Dina Boluarte. On 15 January a Presidential Supreme Decree declared Puno, Cusco, Andahuaylas and Lima as in a State of Emergency.

This reminds of a similar event to which Peru is almost a carbon copy. Almost exactly three years ago, Bolivia on 10 November 2019, after 21 days of civil protests following the disputed 2019 Bolivian general election in which incumbent President Evo Morales was initially declared the winner, a coup was orchestrated and on 12 November 2019, opposition Senate Vice-President Jeanine Áñez assumed the role of Bolivia’s President. Evo Morales and his family fled to Mexico and Argentina.

On 8 November 2020, Ms. Añez was arrested, and later condemned to 10 years in prison. New elections installed a “new left” Government.

Interestingly, in the last two to three years, almost all of Latin American countries were turned to the “left” – the apparent left – which looks suspiciously like WEF / CIA-orchestrated elections or coups. These are the countries, having gradually turned neo-left: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Brazil, most of Central America, and now Peru. Many of the new leaders (sic) are scholars of the WEF’s YGL program.

Coincidence? Hardly. In today’s social-engineered politics – à la Tavistock Insitute – there are no “accidents”. Most of these “new left” leaders are graduates from the WEF’s Academy for YGLs.

*

In the meantime, Evo Morales is back on a special mission. He recently came to Puno, Peru, the heartland of the Peruvian Aymaras. He called for a secession of the Aymara tribe from Peru and to form an independent Aymara country together with Bolivia’s and Chile’s Aymaras. The old “divide to conquer”.

Has Evo become a WEF / CIA agent? Boluarte has requested him to immediately leave Peru and warned him not to return, lest he would be instantly arrested.

The Cabal’s idea is to create an Aymara nation, splitting Peru into north and south. The south is of particular interest to the ruling class, because that’s where most of Peru’s wealth of natural resources are located. In addition to some 15 trillion cubic ft (Tcf) of natural gas reserves (worth more than US$ 2.0 trillion at end 2022 prices), the south of Peru also contains about 2.5 million tons of lithium, 60 million tons of uranium, the latter two minerals of a total estimated value of 30 billion dollars.

It is said that Evo Morales helped fund Pedro Castillo’s Presidential campaign. But who is behind Evo?

*

At this point, there is no end in sight for Peru’s upheavals.

It fits exactly into the theme of the WEF’s 53^rd Davos circus (16-20 January 2023): “Cooperation in a Fractured World”; continue “fracturing” for better ruling and control.

*

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Featured image is from Kurt Nimmo

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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***

In recent months the world is hearing unusual terms to describe extreme weather events. Now terms like Bomb Cyclone or Atmospheric Rivers are used in the daily TV weather reports to describe dumping of record volumes of rain or snow in regions of the world in an extremely destructive way. The Green Mafia claims, without a shred of factual proof, that it is all because of man’s too-large “carbon footprint.” They use it as an excuse to double down on phasing out oil, gas, coal as well as nuclear energy in favor of unworkable, taxpayer-subsidized “green energy”– unreliable wind or solar. Could it be that these freak weather calamities are indeed “manmade,” but not from CO2 emissions? 

Since late December, especially the United States has undergone severe weather events from the Bomb Cyclone storm that buried much of the East Coast in record snow from Buffalo down as far as Florida. At the same time the US West Coast from Washington State down the coast of California has undergone extreme flooding from wave after wave of so-called Oceanic Rivers carrying huge volumes of water from the Pacific causing severe flooding. Without presenting any scientific proof, green ideologues have claimed it is all due to manmade global warming– now called “climate change” to confuse the original issue– and argue for accelerated transition to a dystopian carbon free world.

A serious case can be made that it could well be manmade. But not because of too much CO2 or other manmade greenhouse gas emissions. It could be due to deliberate and malicious manipulation of our major weather patterns.

Geoengineering?

Weather manipulation technology is one of the areas that is highly secret and has been kept from open debate since the end of World War II. It is often called geoengineering or more recently the less ominous-sounding “climate intervention.” Whatever name, it involves man messing with the complexities of Earth weather, with potentially catastrophic results. What do we know about the possibilities?

Following the 2015 Paris Climate Conference and subsequent Paris Agreement, Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, along with other leading global warming scientists, began an open call for geoengineering to “solve” the alleged climate crisis and prevent global warming above 1.5 ‘ C above pre-industrial levels, an utterly arbitrary target. What the post-Paris scientists claim is that, “Our backs are against the wall and we must now start the process of preparing for geo-engineering. We must do this in the knowledge that its chances of success are small and the risks of implementation are great.“ [1] What they do not say is that geo-engineering weather manipulation has been developed in secrecy by the military and intelligence agencies of the USA for decades.

‘Owning the Weather in 2025’

In June 1996 the US Air Force published a report with the provocative title, “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025.” The report outlined the possibilities of manmade geoengineering to, among other things, enhance precipitation or storms, deny precipitation (induce droughts), eliminate cloud cover of an enemy, and other events. It was produced, “to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future.”  The report noted at the onset, “weather-modification can be divided into two major categories: suppression and intensification of weather patterns. In extreme cases, it might involve the creation of completely new weather patterns, attenuation or control of severe storms, or even alteration of global climate on a far-reaching and/or long-lasting scale.” (emphasis added).[2]

 The Air Force document  also states,

“…the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own peril… appropriate application of weather-modification can provide battlespace dominance to a degree never before imagined… The technology is there, waiting for us to pull it all together.” By 2025 it claimed, “we can Own the Weather.” The report notes that way back in the Eisenhower era, “In 1957, the President’s Advisory Committee on Weather Control explicitly recognized the military potential of weather modification, warning in their report that it could become a more important weapon than the atom bomb.” [3] That was almost seven decades ago.

Consult the original document. US Air Force document entitled “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025“

Screen Shot from the Report submitted to Air Force 2025, click to access full report

Image is a screenshot from a Ripley’s Believe It or Not video

Going back to the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the CIA authorized a top secret geoengineering, code-named Operation PopEye, from Thailand over Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Using military WC-130 planes and RF-4 jets, the US forces sprayed silver iodide and lead iodide into seasonal monsoon storm clouds to turn the North Vietnamese supply roads into impassable mud sinks. The mission was to create enough year-round rain to keep the Ho Chi Minh trails blocked. [4] The secret geoengineering operation was made public by award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in 1972, resulting in Congressional hearings, but little more. A few years later in 1976 a toothless law was passed “requiring” any actors to report annually to the government NOAA any weather modification undertaken. Tell that to the CIA or Pentagon. [5]

Ionospheric Heaters and atmospheric resonance technology

Since the 1970s the work on manmade geoengineering has gotten more sophisticated and also much more secret.  The traditional method of “rainmaking”, cloud seeding by planes dispersing, typically, particles of silver iodide onto clouds containing water droplets to induce rainfall has been used since the 1940s. However, since the 1990s, around the time the US Air Force published Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025, significant new methods were developed with far greater reach and effect, and well before 2025.

Notably, that US Air Force 1996 report stated, “…modification of the ionosphere is an area rich with potential applications and there are also likely spin-off applications that have yet to be envisioned.” [6]

Much international attention and concern has been given to a US Air Force and Office of Naval Research ionospheric research project, HAARP– High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program– in Gakona, Alaska. In January 1999, the European Union called the project a “global concern” and passed a resolution calling for more information on its health and environmental risks. Washington ignored the call. Most of HAARP research data has been classified for reasons of “national security,” leading to wide speculation of sinister activity.

In 1985 while working for ARCO Oil Company on a grant from the Pentagon’s DARPA, a brilliant physicist, Dr. Bernard J. Eastlund, filed a patent  (US #4,686,605), for a “Method and Apparatus for Altering A Region In the Earth’s Atmosphere, Ionosphere, And Or Magnetosphere.” The patent description claimed that a specific beaming of powerful radio waves into the ionosphere could cause heating and “elevate” the Earth’s ionosphere. It  could be used to control weather, altering jet streams, changing tornadoes or creating or denying rainfall. ARCO was approached by the US military and sold them the patent rights from their then-employee Eastlund.

The US military then reportedly turned the patent rights over to top military contractor, Raytheon. Raytheon is reportedly also involved in construction of every major ionosphere heating radar arrays globally. [7]  Coincidence? A HAARP spokesman  denied it used the patent of Eastlund in HAARP. They did not mention any of the other sites, however.  [8]

HAARP antenna array (Licensed under the Public Domain)

HAARP is a highly powerful phased array of radar antennas aimed at the ionosphere. It is sometimes referred to as an ionic heater. The ionosphere is a high-altitude layer of the atmosphere with particles which are highly charged with energy. If radiation is projected into the ionosphere, huge amounts of energy can be generated and used to annihilate a given region. Initially its own website, now deleted, stated HAARP was “a scientific endeavor aimed at studying the properties and behavior of the ionosphere… for both civilian and defense purposes.” [9]

HAARP at Gakona was officially shuttered by the US military in 2013. In 2015 officially they transferred operation of HAARP to their civilian partner, The University of Alaska at Fairbanks. The closure provided the excuse to stop the live broadcasting of HAARP’s signals on a public website, which had given strong evidence of links between HAARP activities and major weather catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina or the 2008 China Chengdu earthquake. Operation of the facility was transferred to the University of Alaska in 2015.

Some researchers have speculated that the Gakona HAARP is a sly diversion, an innocent site open to academic scrutiny, while serious military ionospheric manipulation takes place at other top secret sites. [10]

By 2015  the US military and government agencies such as NOAA had moved well beyond the capacities of HAARP. They oversaw construction of far more powerful phased array ionospheric radar heat arrays around the world. This included a more powerful HIPAS – a 70 megawatt facility east of Fairbanks. It also included Arecibo Observatory, formerly known as the Arecibo Ionosphere Observatory – 2 megawatt facility in Puerto Rico;  Mu Radar – 1 megawatt facility in Japan. And the mother of all atmospheric heating radar arrays, EISCAT – a 1 gigawatt facility in Tromsø, Northern Norway. HAARP is only a mere 3.6 megawatt facility. Many other phased array ionospheric heater sites are either classified secret  or give little information. It is believed one such is at Vandenberg Air Force base in Southern California. Another in Millstone Hill, Massachusetts, another in Taiwan and in the Marshall  Islands. Because the Pentagon and other relevant US Government agencies choose to say little or nothing about their inter-connectedness and use in climate alteration, we are left to speculate. [11]

The military contractor Raytheon, who got the Eastlund patents from ARCO, reportedly is involved in many such sites globally.

China As Well?

Because the US Government work on geoengineering has been classified and kept from an open public discussion, it is not possible to prove in a court of law that events like the East Coast Bomb Tornadoes or the September 2022 Florida Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US, or the January 2023 record floods from repeated waves of Atmospheric River storms lashing California after extraordinary drought, are simply natural freaks. There is no scientific evidence it is due to a surplus of CO2 in the atmosphere.  But as the above suggests, there is a huge body of evidence pointing to malicious actors with powers of the state, using geoengineering not to benefit, even if manmade geoengineering could benefit.

In 2018 Chinese media reported that the state’s Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology was launching a vast geoengineering project, Tianhe which translates as “Sky River.” The project, which reportedly will be based on the high Tibetan Plateau, source of some of the world’s largest rivers, is intended to shift huge volumes of water from the rain-abundant South into the arid north. It was to have begun operation in 2020 but no details have since been published. [12]

Recent discussion of Bill Gates’ project with Harvard physicist David Keith to release calcium carbonate particles high above the earth to mimic the effects of volcanic ash blocking out the sun, or the recent experiments of Make Sunsets to launch weather balloons from Baja Mexico of Sulphur dioxide to block the sun, are clearly meant as diversions to hide how advanced real geoengineering of our weather is.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

[1] Derrick Broze, Leading Climate Scientists, Say Paris Conference Failed  Call for Geoengineering, January 15, 2016, https://www.activistpost.com/2016/01/leading-climate-scientists-say-paris-conference-failed-call-for-geoengineering.html.

[2] Col Tamzy J. House, et al,  Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025,

https://web.archive.org/web/20170909014905/http://csat.au.af.mil/2025/volume3/vol3ch15.pdf

[3] Ibid.

[4] Seymour Hersh, “Rainmaking Is Used As Weapon by U.S.” The New York Times, July 3, 1972,

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/03/archives/rainmaking-is-used-as-weapon-by-us-cloudseeding-in-indochina-is.html

[5] US Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Report: Prohibiting Environmental Modification as a Weapon of War, Report no. 93-270. Washington, DC: OS Govt. Printing Office, 27 June 1973.

[6] Col Tamzy, Op Cit.

[7] Gary Vey (Dan Eden),  The Never Ending, 2010, http://www.viewzone.com/never/TNE0440.pdf

[8] Mark Farmer, Mystery in Alaska,  Popular Science, September 1995, https://books.google.de/books?id=nSeBEQ2wGlUC&pg=PA79&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

[9] HAARP website, Program Purpose, http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/gen.html

[10] Gary Vey, Op cit.

[11] Jim Lee, HAARP and Ionospheric Heaters Worldwide, http://climateviewer.org/pollution-and-privacy/atmospheric-sensors-and-emf-sites/maps/haarp-ionospheric-heaters-worldwide/

[12] China’s Tianhe Project satellite to debut at Airshow China 2018, People’s Daily, November 06, 2018,

http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/1106/c90000-9515300.html

Featured image is licensed under the Public Domain

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-2-3

Year: 2007

Product Type: PDF File

Price: $9.50

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

Click here to purchase.

“Orders to Kill” Dr. Martin Luther King: The Government that Honors MLK with a National Holiday Killed Him

By Edward Curtin, January 16, 2023

Very few Americans are aware of the truth behind the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Few books have been written about it, unlike other significant assassinations, especially JFK’s. For almost fifty years there has been a media blackout supported by government deception to hide the truth.

Did J. Edgar Hoover Order the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr?

By Jeremy Kuzmarov, January 16, 2023

After King had given a speech denouncing the Vietnam War at New York’s Riverside Church one year before his assassination, U.S. Army spies recorded Black radical Stokely Carmichael warning him: “The man don’t care you call ghettos concentration camps, but when you tell him his war machine is nothing but hired killers, you got trouble.”

NY Healthcare Workers Fired for Declining COVID Shot Win in Court!

By Michael Kane, January 16, 2023

Today Judge Gerard J. Neri ruled the covid vaccine mandate for New York healthcare workers implemented by Governor Kathy Hochul is arbitrary, capricious, null & void, and cannot be enforced. This means the Healthcare workers should be reinstated to their jobs!

Rampant Speculation: Uranium, Dirty Bombs and Heathrow

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, January 16, 2023

The dirty bomb and its purportedly famed radiation dispersal attributes has an undeserved mythology.  It serves to bloat budgets and confer grants on specious theories propounded by specious theorists. It is all rather easy to make a security threat up, and a celluloid, Hollywood scenario of a dirty bomb going off in the middle of a metropolis killing thousands is just one of those instances.

Declassified Intelligence Files Expose Inconvenient Truths of Bosnian War

By Kit Klarenberg and Tom Secker, January 16, 2023

A trove of intelligence files sent by Canadian peacekeepers expose CIA black ops, illegal weapon shipments, imported jihadist fighters, potential false flags, and stage-managed atrocities.

Massive Clot Burden Days after Taking Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine

By Dr. Peter McCullough, January 16, 2023

Throughout the disastrous COVID-19 injection campaign, desperate patients have often asked me which is the safest vaccine? It is odd that two years into mass vaccination there is no declared “best in class” vaccine. Entities that mandate the vaccine don’t care which vaccine is administered, only that a student, athlete, employee, or soldier has been marked by one of them any time in the past—often without any regard to its six month efficacy window.

Beyond Vietnam to Ukraine

By Rick Sterling, January 16, 2023

In April 1967,  Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an eloquent and stirring denunciation of the Vietnam war and US militarism. The speech titled “Beyond Vietnam” is relevant to today’s war in Ukraine.

UK Support of the Illegal Annexation of Palestinian Lands

By Hans Stehling, January 15, 2023

There are more than 270,000 Jews in U.K., the majority of whom are members of their local synagogue. Every year, on the eve of the Yom Kippur festival, a majority donates a sum of money to be sent to Israel or the Israeli government – although it is unclear for what these many millions of tax exempt pounds are used:  this information not being available through the Charities Commission website.

“Imagining Palestine”: A Strongly Presented ‘Ideation’ of Palestine

By Jim Miles, January 15, 2023

In her recent work, “Imagining Palestine”, Tahrir Hamdi has made an intriguing, thought provoking, and challenging discussion on the idea and reality of Palestine. Imagining Palestine is the ongoing process of remembering and living the ongoing tragedies of the nakba – and keeping alive the culture, geography, and ideals of the Palestinian people.  There are two main themes that stand out throughout the ‘imagining’ process: the ideas of exile and the necessity of violent resistance.

The World Economic Forum & the World Health Organization Are Elevating Themselves Above the World’s Governments

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, January 15, 2023

Globalists who speak in the name of the world have already pulled a fast one on us by appropriating a name that suggests that two private organizations speak for the world.  Both of these organizations are in the process of acquiring this private authority over humanity.

January 6 Riot LIVE! Helping to Propel the War on Domestic Terrorism and More

By Michael Welch, Joachim Hagopian, Jonathan D. Simon, and Ryan Cristian, January 14, 2023

With a similar looking eruption of (righteous) outrage taking place in Brazil with Bolsonaro supporters ransacking buildings in Brasilia, including the Supreme Court, Congress, and the presidential palace, the January 6 event in the United States potentially has international as well as domestic repercussions. That’s why this week on the Global Research News Hour, we will examine the riot and its spillover with greater attention.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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***

At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was struck in the face by a bullet as he was leaning over the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

An hour later he was declared dead at nearby St. Joseph’s Hospital.

King had come to Memphis as part of his poor people’s campaign to support a sanitation workers strike. The civil rights leader was increasingly promoting socialist views, had become more outspoken in criticizing the war in Vietnam and had been running for president on an anti-war ticket with Benjamin Spock.^[1]

After King had given a speech denouncing the Vietnam War at New York’s Riverside Church one year before his assassination, U.S. Army spies recorded Black radical Stokely Carmichael warning him: “The man don’t care you call ghettos concentration camps, but when you tell him his war machine is nothing but hired killers, you got trouble.”

Carmichael, unfortunately, was right.

Lone Assassin?

Police authorities fingered James Earl Ray—a career criminal from Alton, Illinois, who had escaped from the Jefferson City, Missouri, penitentiary in April 1967—as the lone assassin.^[2]

On May 6, 1968, syndicated columnist Drew Pearson wrote that the FBI was conducting “perhaps the most painstaking, exhaustive manhunt ever before undertaken in the United States. Its G-men have checked every bar ever patronized by James Earl Ray, every flop house he ever stopped at, every cantina in Mexico, he ever visited. It has collected an amazing array of evidence, all linking Ray with the murder.”^[3]

Ray was supposedly motivated by race hate. He allegedly began stalking Dr. King on the weekend of March 17 in Los Angeles, arriving in Memphis on April 3 with the murder weapon and booking into a seedy rooming house owned by Bessie Brewer above Jim’s Grill right across from the Lorraine Motel.^[4]

Photo of rooming house above Jim’s Grill. [Source: tpaak.com]

Just before 6:00 p.m., Ray barricaded himself in a communal bathroom from where he pointed his rifle outside the window and shot King.

Afterwards in haste, Ray neglected to eject the spent cartridge. Back in his room, he wrapped his rifle along with an overnight bag in a bedspread and ran outside.

Ray was then spotted by another tenant in the rooming house, Charles Quitman Stephens—the state’s chief prosecution witness—who said that he saw Ray running out.

When Ray saw a stream of police cars rushing to the scene, he panicked, and dropped the bedspread with the rifle in the doorway of the Canipe Amusement Company on South Main Street.

Bedspread with rifle dropped by Ray allegedly in panic outside the Canipe Amusement Company. [Source: tpaak.com]

He then fled in a white Mustang, making his way first to Atlanta, where he ditched the car, and then to Toronto, where he hid for a month, and then to Portugal and England, where he was apprehended two months later by authorities trying to board a flight to Brussels.

Ray’s fingerprints had been found on the gun that allegedly killed King, scope, binoculars, beer can, and a copy of the Memphis Commercial Appeal dropped in the bundle.

At his trial, Ray pled guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

House Select Committee on Assassinations and 1999 Civil Trial

The 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA)—which was convened to investigate the King and Kennedy assassinations—alleged that Ray carried out the killing to collect a bounty from two St. Louis racists, both dead at the time.

House Select Committee on Assassinations. [Source: wikiwand.com]

In 2012, G. Robert Blakey, staff director to the HSCA, said, however, that he had been deceived by the CIA—which had failed to inform him that a government liaison to the HSCA, George Joannides, had a CIA background. Blakey told the Jackson, Mississippi,Clarion-Ledger that “thoughtful people today, not just nuts, think that more people than James Earl Ray were involved [in King’s killing].”^[5]

In 1999, a mixed-race jury presiding over a wrongful death civil suit by the King family in Memphis reached a unanimous verdict that King was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy involving the U.S. government.

King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, said afterwards that “there is abundant evidence of a major, high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband.” The jury found that the mafia and various local, state, and federal government agencies “were deeply involved in the assassination…. Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.”^[6]

Case Not Closed

Three days after his sentencing, Ray fired his mob-connected attorney, Percy Foreman, and said that he was pressured into pleading guilty and had been set up as a patsy.^[7] Foreman was given 60% royalty rights on a book about Ray by William Bradford Huie, which would not have sold if it were about a non-assassin.^[8]

The FBI was never able to match the bullet that killed King with the rifle allegedly left by Ray on the steps of the Canipe Amusement Company.

Remington rifle that allegedly killed King; the bullets, however, were never matched to the fatal one that killed King. [Source: gunsamerica.com]

Ray’s fingerprints were also never identified in the room he had rented at the rooming house.

A well-known crime scene investigator determined that the shot from the rooming house bathroom could not have struck King unless Ray had hung out the window or smashed a ten-inch-deep hole in the wall for his rifle to fit into—the angles were all wrong.^[9]

Memphis police officer Vernon Dollahite said that he arrived on Main Street within one minute and fifty seconds of King’s shooting and did not see a fleeing Mustang or hear screeching tires, raising doubt that Ray could have gathered his stuff, dropped it in front of the Canipe Amusement Company—a detour from his car—and gotten away to escape notice by Dollahite.^[10]

Ray’s decision to drop the bedsheet supposedly resulted from his panic at seeing a parked police car after exiting the boarding house. However, the car would have been blocked by a hedge which was cut down the day after King’s death.^[11]

According to Guy Canipe, the bedsheet was dropped on the steps of Canipe Amusement Company approximately two to five minutes before King was shot. Canipe described the person dropping the bundle as having a “chunky build”—which did not match Ray.^[12]

Ray’s old prison radio—which could be seen outside the bundle—supposedly fell out when the bundle was tossed in the doorway; however, it was not on its side, visibly cracked or broken.^[13]

The rifle was also packed tightly—which a panicked killer in a hurry to get away could not have done.^[14]

The prosecution’s main witness, Charles Quitman Stephens, had been arrested 155 times mostly for alcoholism and was dead drunk at the time of the shooting, according to his wife, landlady, a homicide detective who interviewed him (Tommy Smith) and a cab driver who picked him up.^[15]

He was looking to obtain a $100,000 reward for identifying the slayer of King. Later, when shown a photo of Ray by a CBS journalist, Stephens said that he was not the man he had observed running out of the boarding house.^[16]

Charles Quitman Stephens, center, before Ray’s trial. [Source: outlet.historicalimages.com]

Stephens’s cab driver, James McCraw, said the hall bathroom was open and bathroom empty as he approached and left Stephens’s room—indicating that the shots did not come from there.^[17]

Stephens’s common-law wife, Grace Walden, also said that she heard the shot come from outside her window in the rooming house, which opened onto the bushy area between the rooming house and motel.^[18] The only man she saw coming out of the rooming house was short with “salt and pepper hair,” wearing an open army jacket and plaid sports shirt—which did not fit Ray.^[19]

Two Mustangs and Ray’s Alibi

When he was picking up Stephens, James McCraw said he noticed a delivery van and two white Mustangs parked within 50 yards of each other, one in front of Jim’s Grill, the other just south of the Canipe Amusement Company.^[20]

Another witness, Charles Hurley, told Ray attorney William Pepper that, after arriving to pick up his wife at the rooming house at 4:45 p.m., he pulled up behind a Mustang with Arkansas plates parked in front of the rooming house and south of the Canipe amusement store.

Ray’s Mustang had Alabama plates and was parked north of the Canipe store.^[21]

Ray said that he got into the car between 5:45 and 5:50 p.m. and went to a local service station to have a spare tire repaired—meaning that he was not at the rooming house when King was killed.

However, his brother, John Larry Ray, said that James lied and was waiting in his Mustang for his handler Raoul at the time King was shot, believing he was to be the getaway driver for some job.

Shortly after he heard the shot that killed King, Raoul jumped into the backseat of his vehicle and put a sheet over his head, and Ray drove off. After a few blocks, Raoul jumped out of the car and fled and Ray drove all night to Atlanta.^[22]

After making his way to Canada, Ray was assisted financially by a mysterious “fat man,”who provided him with money in Toronto. Researcher Peter Dale Scott suggests that it was planned for Ray to be apprehended after Robert Kennedy’s assassination to enable a restoration of confidence in the government in the wake of such a tragic event and the rioting that had followed King’s killing.

An Unlikely Assassin

Ray did not have a clear motive for killing King apart from a possible financial one. He could never have survived on the lam after his prison escape and in the two months after the King assassination without outside support. Ray had received money not only for travel and lodging, but also for fake identities, plastic surgery, and even dance and bartending classes and hypnosis.

A strong anti-communist who was otherwise apolitical, Ray was painted in the media as a racist. However, people close to him said he had had a Black girlfriend, and that evidence was planted by police to make him appear to be a racist when he was not.^[23]

Most significantly, Ray had no expertise in firearms. During a stint in the Army, he was trained with an M-1 and obtained only the lowest level of ability.^[24] The salesman who sold him the alleged murder weapon in Birmingham—which he had been told to buy by the mysterious Raoul (discussed below)—said that Ray “did not seem to know anything at all about firearms, I mean nothing.”^[25]

Shot from the Bushes

King’s chauffeur Solomon Jones and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) attorney Chauncey Eskridge, who were both looking at King when he died, said they saw King’s body lurch upwards when he was shot—and not downward—indicating that the shot could not have come from the rooming house bathroom.

Instead, it must have come from the bushes behind Jim’s Grill and between the rooming house and motel.

View from Lorraine Motel balcony that shows brush area from where witnesses claimed the shots were fired. [Source: tpaak.com]

Ray’s first lawyer, Arthur Hanes, Sr., noticed tree branches that would have been a formidable obstacle to shooting King from the rooming house bathroom—though these branches were cut down the next day by police to try to cover this up.^[26]

Several eyewitnesses reported seeing a man crouching in the bushes and running away afterward, and a sound like a firecracker coming from the bushes.^[27]

Harold “Cornbread” Carter, who was drinking wine in the bushes, told investigators that he saw a man wearing a high-necked white sweater run away after with a long gun in his handafter he had heard a loud bang from the bushes.^[28]

Olivia Catling said that she saw a fireman standing near the wall below the bushes yelling at the police that the shot came from the clump of bushes above the area where he was standing—but the police ignored him.^[29]

[Source: muckrock.com]

Reverend James Orange said that he saw smoke “rise from the bushes right by the fire station” seconds after the shot.^[30] The smoke was most likely sonic dust rising from the bushes caused by the firing of a high-powered rifle in the heavily vegetated area.^[31]

Orange and a reporter, Kay Black, also alleged that the brush area was cut and cleared back the morning after the shooting, along with the inconveniently placed tree branch that blocked a clear shot from the rooming house.

The pre-dawn clean-up request, according to Maynard Stiles, deputy director of the Memphis City Public Works Department in 1968, came from the Memphis Police Department early on the morning of April 5.^[32]

Suspicious Happenings

The night before King’s killing, the only two Black firemen in the Memphis Fire Department (MFD), Norvell E. Wallace and Floyd E. Newsum, were ordered not to report the next day to their posts at Fire Station No. 2 overlooking the Lorraine Motel.^[33]

The Memphis Police Department (MPD) failed to form the usual security squad of black detectives for Dr. King and withdrew other key police security units to a position five blocks away from the Lorraine Motel on April 4—a key factor that enabled the assassin(s) to get away.^[34]

Black detective Ed Redditt was removed from his surveillance post about an hour before King’s shooting and placed in home confinement after the FBI had warned MPD of an assassination attempt directed against him—by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party—which proved to be phony and served as a diversion.^[35]

Just before King was shot, someone else called in a hoax from downtown that drew police attention to the northeastern side of the city.^[36]

This hoax indicated an organized plot and that Ray could not have been a lone assassin.

Loyd Jowers and Jim’s Grill.

Taxi driver James McCraw told William Pepper that, on the morning after the shooting, Loyd Jowers, the owner of Jim’s Grill, showed him a rifle in a box on a shelf under the counter, which he said he had “found out back after the killing.”

This account was corroborated by Betty Spates, a young Black waitress at Jim’s Grill who implicated Jowers, her former lover, in the murder.

Spates said that, after hearing what sounded like a shot, she saw him run into the kitchen from the brush carrying a rifle. His hair was in disarray, and the knees of his trousers were wet and muddy as though he had been kneeling in the soggy grass or brush areas.^[37]

Jowers then wrapped his rifle in a tablecloth, put it under his apron, and slipped into the café behind the counter where he discreetly placed the rifle under a shelf and then asked customer Harold Parker, a taxi driver, if he heard anything.

The shooting had only happened one minute earlier. Subsequently, a sheriff’s deputy came in and ordered Jowers to lock Jim’s Grill and keep everyone inside.

[Source: historicalblindness.com]

Jowers later admitted to Willie Akins, his right-hand man, that he was the figure in the bushes—though he said someone else was the shooter.^[38] Akins said that his job was to kill this shooter who ran off to Florida before he could “pop him.”^[39]

Jowers had been a Memphis police officer from 1946 to 1948 who went into business running clubs and then bars and restaurants.

Bill Hamblin, James McCraw’s roommate, testified at the 1999 civil trial that McCraw had told him that Jowers had not only showed him the rifle that killed King but told him to get rid of it. McCraw in turn said that he drove on to the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge and threw it off.^[40]

Frank Liberto and Carlos Marcello

In an ABC television interview in 1993, Jowers said he had received $100,000 from Frank Liberto, president of the Liberto, Liberto and Latch Produce Company in Memphis, to arrange Dr. King’s murder.

John McFerren, a civil rights leader in 1968, told William Pepper how he heard Frank Liberto from the back of his store before King’s death say, “I told you not to call me here. Shoot the son of a bitch when he comes on the balcony.”^[41]

Liberto—a member of the Carlos Marcello crime family—told the caller he should collect his money—$5,000 was mentioned—from Liberto’s brother in New Orleans.

Frank Holt, a Black produce truck unloader whom Jowers had falsely tried to blame at one point for the murder, heard Liberto say to one of the “big-wheels” at the M.E. Carter Produce Company during the sanitation strike that “King is a trouble-maker and he should be killed. If he is killed, then he will cause no more trouble.”^[42]

Lavada Whitlock Addison, the manager of a pizza parlor near Liberto’s home, said that, one day between 1976 and 1982, Liberto leaned forward and told her, “I had Dr. Martin Luther King killed.”^[43]

Earl Clark and Marrell McCollough

Jowers identified the assassin as Memphis Police Lieutenant Earl Clark—who was regarded as the best shot on the MPD and was close to Liberto.^[44] Afterwards, Clark allegedly scaled down a wall adjacent to the Lorraine Motel before jumping into an escape vehicle.^[45]

Clark was involved in planning sessions at Jim’s Grill to prepare for the assassination with five other men, only two of whom Jowers could identify.

One of the men, unbeknownst to Jowers, was an undercover police officer and agent provocateur, Marrell McCollough, who was assigned to the MPD from the 11^th Military Intelligence Group.

Born in Mississippi, McCollough had served in the military police in Vietnam and went on to work for the CIA in Central or South America. At the time of King’s slaying, McCollough was posing as a member of the Invaders, a militant Black political group, which gave him access to King and his circle. He was identified as the mysterious figure kneeling over Dr. King after he was shot.^[46]

Frank Strausser and Mozes Maschkivitzan

In April 2003, Lenny Curtis, a custodian at the MPD shooting range, identified King’s killer to William Pepper as MPD patrolman Frank Strausser. Curtis said that about four or five months before King’s death, he heard Strausser—a Vietnam veteran with a reputation for beating up Black people—say in the lounge of the rifle range that “somebody was going to blow [King’s] motherfucking brains out.”

Curtis identified Strausser as being in the gun range firing a rifle all day the day before and day of King’s assassination. At around 2:30 p.m., Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb (D), MPD Chief Frank Holloman (discussed below) and a number of MPD officers including Earl Clark—whom Curtis identified as the spotter in King’s shooting—went into a meeting in a room in the rifle range. Strausser then left around 3:30 p.m. wearing a white shirt and pair of sunglasses carrying the assassination rifle in a red Chevrolet convertible.^[47]

After the killing, investigators identified a size 13 shoe print in the bush behind the Lorraine Motel. In October 2013, Pepper interviewed Strausser and got him to admit that he wore a size 13 shoe.^[48]

Mozes Maschkivitzan, whose likeness had been rendered in a police artists drawing, could have alternatively been the shooter in the bushes.

Maschkivitzan was a Russian emigré who’d been a double agent in World War II who testified at the trial of Nazi quisling Marshall Philippe Pétain.

After the war, he got into drug smuggling in Belgium, was recruited as a Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) informant and became a CIA contract killer identified by author Richard Mahoney, the son of a CIA Agent, as being part of the 1961 assassination plot against Congo’s nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba.

Ray’s Intelligence Background

Ray’s brother John Larry believes that his brother’s role as a patsy in the King killing had been planned for many years and originated with his Army service at the end of World War II.

After enlisting in 1946 at the age of 17, Ray served in the 7892^nd Infantry Regiment and as a military policeman with the 382^nd Military Police Battalion in Nuremburg, Germany. Subsequently, Ray was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He told John Larry that, “when you join the OSS, it’s like joining the Mafia, you never leave.”^[49]

Researcher Lyndon Barsten was told by an intelligence officer that four-digit Army units like the 7892^nd Infantry Regiment were “often used for cover.”^[50] The unit was based in Frankfurt, Germany—the European headquarters of the CIA, housed in the old I.G. Farben building which had been spared during the Allied bombing. Ray was given two serial numbers—which further indicated he was involved in something secret.^[51]

According to John Larry, James was haunted by an incident when he was in the military police when he shot a Black soldier named Washington who was accused of beating up Jews and raping an officer’s family member—which was not true. James had been given lumbar punctures (or spinal taps) by Army doctors which can be used to administer drugs.

Gaps in Ray’s military record further lead to suspicion that he was an unwitting victim of mind-control drug experiments carried out under the CIA’s MK-ULTRA—which may have caused him to shoot the Black soldier.

FBI documents show that Ray saw two hypnotists in Los Angeles after his Army service was completed, one of whom, Xavier von Koss, had been an Army intelligence officer and was likely brought over under Operation Paperclip (which brought Nazi scientists to the U.S.).^[52]

James had told his family that the Feds were “messing with his mind,” and his father felt that he had been drugged.^[53]

Between 1949 and 1952, James served as an undercover operator for FBI investigations into communists in Chicago, earning him the nickname “the Mole.”^[54]

When Ray was arrested after committing a robbery, an intelligence operative was spotted in the rooming house where he was staying. There is a possibility that he was there because the government wanted Ray locked up so they could use him in a later operation—knowing he was a controllable personality.^[55]

Jeff City Escape

There is no better patsy than an escaped prisoner because he cannot go to the police for assistance and is dependent on his contacts for survival.

On April 23, 1967, Ray escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City, where he was serving a 20-year sentence, by hiding in a breadbox in the back of a bakery truck.

The director of the Missouri State Prison system at the time, Fred T. Wilkinson, was a U.S. intelligence operative who handled the famous May 1960 spy exchange between U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, whose plane had been shot down over the Soviet Union, and a Soviet Colonel, Rudolf Abel, who had been imprisoned for setting up a spy network in the U.S.^[56]

The warden at Jeff City, Harold Swenson, also had an intelligence background. His predecessor, E.V. Nash, was said to have committed suicide—though the gun that killed him was found in a separate room in his house than his body.^[57]

After a failed escape attempt, Ray was seen by Dr. Donald B. Peterson, head of psychiatry for the Army’s Far East Command during the Korean War, the height of the brainwashing era. Peterson prescribed Ray with Librium, a drug listed in government documents as one used to strengthen narco-hypnosis.^[58]

Gene Barnes, a former inmate at Jeff City, signed an affidavit in the late 1970s which said that he had been told by Warden Donald Wyrick that Wyrick, Wilkinson and Swenson had allowed James to escape Jeff City so that the feds could later use him as the fall guy in King’s assassination.^[59]

The fingerprints the prison sent out after James’s escape were not his; they had been switched by Wilkinson and Swenson with another man’s—meaning that if Ray had been captured, the police would have had to set him free.

When Wilkinson retired, the inmate who talked Ray into escaping, Ronnie Westberg, committed “suicide” by hanging himself, though he was discovered with broken arms and legs, pointing to foul play.^[60]

The Mystery of Raoul

After James’s escape, he came in contact with a mysterious figure named Raoul, who provided Ray with phony documents in Montreal, Canada, after the two met at the Neptune Bar.

In exchange for the documents, Raoul had Ray assist him in smuggling contraband across the border and then sent Ray to Birmingham, Alabama, where he purchased a 1966 white Mustang and a telescopic rifle that appears to have served as the fake murder weapon.^[61]

In Montreal, Ray was given the identity of Eric St. Vincent Galt—who happened to be a highly placed Canadian operative of U.S. Army intelligence.^[62]

Galt ran a warehouse for Union Carbide which housed a top-secret munitions project funded by the CIA, the U.S. Naval Surface Weapons Center, and the Army Electronics Research and Development Command.^[63]

At 3 p.m. on April 4, Ray met Raoul at Jim’s Grill where he was told to go to the rooming house next to the Lorraine Motel. He then waited for him after the shooting and helped him flee from the scene, before Raoul jumped out of the car and abandoned him to his fate.^[64]

Raoul’s real name may have been J.C. Harden, a man Ray had been in contact with and was believed to be an FBI snitch, or Raoul Coelho, a Portuguese immigrant identified by Glenda Grabow, or Raoul Esquivel whose number Ray called.

Esquivel was tracked by a Los Angeles Times reporter to a Louisiana State police barracks in the New Orleans-Baton Rouge area, a well-known staging ground for CIA-sponsored guerrilla operations against Fidel Castro.^[65]

Jules Ricco Kimble, a convicted killer who worked for organized crime, the Klu Klux Klan and CIA in the French separatist struggle in Quebec, told investigators that he flew Ray to Montreal and brought him to a CIA identities specialist who provided Ray with his aliases.

A retired CIA agent later said that the CIA identities specialist in Montreal was named Raoul Miora.^[66]

Ewen Cameron and MK-ULTRA

While serving as Ray’s handler in Montreal, Kimble said that the two were ordered to go to McGill University’s Memorial Institute to undergo hypnosis.^[67]

The Memorial Institute was the home of subproject 68 of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA brainwashing program run by Dr. Ewen Cameron—the lead CIA mind-control expert in Canada.^[68]

An Inside Job

Kimble said that the assassination was carried out by a team of covert intelligence operatives who had an unmarked van with sophisticated electronic radio equipment that could oversee the crime scene and monitor and broadcast on police radio channels.

Two snipers with the team used rifles identical to Ray’s, while other members obtained Memphis Police Department uniforms. The two snipers concealed themselves in the bushes behind the boarding house; one was a backup, the other shot King. The rifles were then concealed in a prearranged hiding place behind the boarding house where they were retrieved by other operatives.

The two snipers afterwards jumped down onto the sidewalk from the bushes and mingled with the other uniformed officers who were rushing about. A voucher had been established for the police imposters. If anyone asked who they were, they were told to call a certain police captain who would vouch for the “new men on the force.”^[69]

Secret Army Intelligence Team

The 902^nd Military Intelligence Group under the command of Colonel John W. Downie—LBJ’s CIA Vietnam briefer—had been deployed to Memphis at the time of King’s visit with orders to shoot to kill him and aide Andrew Young [later mayor of Atlanta] on command.^[70] King was considered “a Negro who repeatedly preached the message of Hanoi and Peking.”

The 902^nd Military Intelligence Group had been involved in gun-running with mobster Carlos Marcello; weapons stolen from Army bases were delivered to Marcello and the proceeds were used to help fund black operations.^[71] According to two sources, the 902^ndincluded “Klan guys who hated niggers.” A Green Beret said that nobody in it had “any hesitancy about killing the two sacks of shit [King and Young].”^[72]

Another Green Beret who participated in a clandestine training course in riot control and surveillance identified a CIA/NSA agent whom he had recognized from his time in Vietnam climbing down a wall behind the Lorraine Motel just after King was shot.^[73]

A contact in the CIA had given Downie’s team a detailed area of operations map, pictures of cars used by the King group and Memphis police radio frequencies. It carried camera equipment and took up positions overlooking the Lorraine Motel and monitored King’s telephone conversations from Room 306 and other communications. They obtained pictures that caught the shooter as he was lowering his rifle and Jowers running back toward the rooming house. These were given to Colonel Downie and never revealed publicly.^[74] The secret agent who snapped the photos said that the shooter was not Ray.^[75]

Ties to Dallas ’63?

In the days after King’s killing, FBI agent Don Wilson came across a 1966 Mustang with Alabama plates in Atlanta and opened the car door. An envelope and some papers fell out, which he kept hidden for the next 29 years.

One piece came from a 1963 Dallas telephone directory. The telephone numbers on the page included those of the family of H.L. Hunt and had the name Raul, the letter J, and a Dallas telephone number, which turned out to be the number of the Vegas Club which, at the time, was run by Jack Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald.

The second paper was a payoff list and included Raul’s name and a date for payment. A third piece of paper had a telephone number and extension of the Atlanta FBI field office.^[76]

FBI’s War Against King

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg swore in an affidavit that, during a 1978 conversation with Brady Tyson, then an aide to UN Ambassador Andrew Young, Tyson said that a group of off-duty and retired FBI officers, including a sharpshooter, working under the personal direction of J. Edgar Hoover, killed King and then covered it up.^[77]

According to Ron Adkins, Hoover’s right-hand man, Clyde Tolson—who allegedly was routinely given money by Hoover to perform criminal deeds including local contract killings—planned King’s assassination beginning in May 1964 on a cruise to Southampton, England, with Russell Adkins, Sr., Ron’s father and a Memphis city engineer, Klansman, and fixer for the Dixie mafia.^[78]

Part of the plot involved Tolson’s providing envelopes of money to be paid to informants and $25,000 to the warden of the Missouri state prison, Harold Swenson, to arrange for Ray’s escape.^[79]

Hoover had considered King an enemy of the state. In December 1963, less than a month after the assassination of President Kennedy, FBI officials had met in Washington to explore ways of “neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader.”^[80]

Hidden microphones were placed in Dr. King’s hotel rooms in an attempt to pick up evidence of extramarital sexual activity, break up his marriage, or blackmail him.

The Bureau also engaged in surreptitious activities and burglaries against Dr. King and SCLC.^[81] In a letter sent to King in 1964 calling King a “colossal fraud,” the FBI even encouraged him to commit suicide.

Continue reading here…

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

See notes from the original source of this article.

Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Featured image: Left: MLK as target. [Source: biography.com] Right: J. Edgar Hoover firing a rifle. [Source: theguardian.com] Artwork courtesy of Steve Brown.

Originally published by Washington’s Blog and Global Research in January 2013.

Martin Luther King was assassinated more than 50 Years Ago, April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tenn.

*      *      *

 Very few Americans are aware of this historical 1999 civil law suit of the King Family against the US Government. (Shelby County Court), Tennessee

Coretta Scott King: “We have done what we can to reveal the truth, and we now urge you as members of the media, and we call upon elected officials, and other persons of influence to do what they can to share the revelation of this case to the widest possible audience.”

– King Family Press Conference, Dec. 9, 1999.

From the King Center on the family’s civil trial that found the US government guilty in Martin’s assassination:

View Full Trial Transcript

View Transcript of King Family Press Conference on the Verdict

Screenshot of Court Document

After four weeks of testimony and over 70 witnesses in a civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee, twelve jurors reached a unanimous verdict on December 8, 1999 after about an hour of deliberations that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. In a press statement held the following day in Atlanta, Mrs. Coretta Scott King welcomed the verdict, saying ,

“There is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. And the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief. I wholeheartedly applaud the verdict of the jury and I feel that justice has been well served in their deliberations. This verdict is not only a great victory for my family, but also a great victory for America. It is a great victory for truth itself. It is important to know that this was a SWIFT verdict, delivered after about an hour of jury deliberation.

The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame. I want to make it clear that my family has no interest in retribution. Instead, our sole concern has been that the full truth of the assassination has been revealed and adjudicated in a court of law… My husband once said, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” To-day, almost 32 years after my husband and the father of my four children was assassinated, I feel that the jury’s verdict clearly affirms this principle. With this faith, we can begin the 21st century and the new millennium with a new spirit of hope and healing.”

TRANSCRIPTS

View Full Trial Transcript

View Transcript of King Family Press Conference on the Verdict

KING FAMILY STATEMENT ON MEDIA REQUESTS REGARDING THE MEMPHIS VERDICT

The King family stands firmly behind the civil trial verdict reached by twelve jurors in the Memphis, Tennessee courtroom on December 8, 1999.

An excerpt from remarks made by Mr. Dexter Scott King, Chairman, President, and CEO of The King Center, during the December 9, 1999 press conference regarding the verdict that may be used in support of this family decision:

“We can say that because of the evidence and information obtained in Memphis we believe that this case is over. This is a period in the chapter. We constantly hear reports, which trouble me, that this verdict creates more questions than answers. That is totally false. Anyone who sat in on almost four weeks of testimony, with over seventy witnesses, credible witnesses I might add, from several judges to other very credible witnesses, would know that the truth is here.”

“The question now is, “What will you do with that?” We as a family have done our part. We have carried this mantle for as long as we can carry it. We know what happened. It is on public record. The transcripts will be available; we will make them available on the Web at some point. Any serious researcher who wants to know what happened can find out.”

The King family feels that the jury’s verdict, the transcripts of the conspiracy trial, and the transcripts of the King family’s press conference following the trial — all of which can be found on The King Center’s website — include everything that that family members have to say about the assassination.

Therefore, the King family shares the conviction that there is nothing more to add to their comments on record and will respectfully decline all further requests for comment.

Related Downloads

View Full Trial Transcript

View Transcript of King Family

(Verdict form passed to the Court.)

THE COURT: I have authorized
this gentleman here to take one picture of
you which I’m going to have developed and
make copies and send to you as I promised.
Okay. All right, ladies and
gentlemen. Let me ask you, do all of you
agree with this verdict?
THE JURY: Yes (In unison).
THE COURT: In answer to the
question did Loyd Jowers participate in a
conspiracy to do harm to Dr. Martin Luther
King, your answer is yes. Do you also find
that others, including governmental agencies,
were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by
the defendant? Your answer to that one is
also yes. And the total amount of damages
you find for the plaintiffs entitled to is
one hundred dollars. Is that your verdict?
THE JURY: Yes (In unison).
THE COURT: All right. I want
to thank you ladies and gentlemen for your
participation. It lasted a lot longer than
we had originally predicted. In spite of
that, you hung in there and you took your
notes and you were alert all during the
trial. And we appreciate it. We want you to
note that our courts cannot function if we
don’t have jurors who accept their
responsibility such as you have.
I hope it has been a pleasant
experience for you and that when you go back
home you’ll tend tell your friends and
neighbors when they get that letter saying
they’ve been summoned for jury duty, don’t
try to think of up those little old lies,
just come on down and it is not so bad after
all.
I know how much you regret the fact
that you won’t be able to come back for the
next ten years. I don’t know, I may or may
not recognize you if I see you on the street
some day, but if you would see me and
recognize me, I sure would appreciate you
coming up and reminding me of your service
here.
To remind you of your service, we
have some certificates that we have prepared
for you. They look real good in a frame.
Not only will they remind you of your service
here, but they will remind you also of that
wonderful judge who presided over this. We
do thank you very much on behalf of everyone
who has participated in this trial.
You were directed not to discuss the
case when you were first sworn. Now that
your verdict has been reached, I’m going to
relieve you of that oath, meaning that you
may or may not discuss it. It is up to you.

No one can force you to. And if you discuss
it, it will only be because you decide that
you wanted to.
I guess that’s about all except that
I want to come around there and personally
shake your hand. You are what I would call
Trojans.
Having said that, as soon as I get
around there and get a chance to shake your
hands, you’ll be dismissed.
(Judge Swearengen left the bench
to shake the jurors hands.)
THE COURT: Those of you who
would like to retain your notes, you may do
so if you want to.
I guess that’s about it. So
consider yourselves dismissed and we thank
you again.
Ladies and gentlemen, Court is
adjourned.
(The proceedings were concluded
at 3:10 p.m. on December 8th, 1999.)

DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2287
COURT REPORTERS’ CERTIFICATE
STATE OF TENNESSEE:
COUNTY OF SHELBY:
We, BRIAN F. DOMINSKI, MARGIE
DAUSTER, SARA ROGAN, KRISTEN PETERSON and
SHERYL WEATHERFORD, Reporters and Notaries
Public, Shelby County, Tennessee, CERTIFY:
1. The foregoing proceedings were
taken before us at the time and place stated
in the foregoing styled cause with the
appearances as noted;
2. Being Court Reporters, we then
reported the proceedings in Stenotype to the
best of our skill and ability, and the
foregoing pages contain a full, true and
correct transcript of our said Stenotype
notes then and there taken;
3. We am not in the employ of and
are not related to any of the parties or
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On Martin Luther King Day, January 16, 2023, we bring to your attention this important article by Edward Curtin first published on Global Research in January 2017.

**

Very few Americans are aware of the truth behind the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Few books have been written about it, unlike other significant assassinations, especially JFK’s. For almost fifty years there has been a media blackout supported by government deception to hide the truth. 

And few people, in a massive act of self-deception, have chosen to question the absurd official explanation, choosing, rather, to embrace a mythic fabrication intended to sugarcoat the bitter fruit that has resulted from the murder of the one man capable of leading a mass movement for revolutionary change in the United States.  Today we are eating the fruit of our denial.

In order to comprehend the significance of this extraordinary book, it is first necessary to dispel a widely accepted falsehood about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. William Pepper does that on the first page.

To understand his death, it is essential to realize that although he is popularly depicted and perceived as a civil rights leader, he was much more than that.  A non-violent revolutionary, he personified the most powerful force for the long-overdue social, political, and economic reconstruction of the nation.

In other words, Martin Luther King was a transmitter of a non-violent spiritual and political energy so plenipotent that his very existence was a threat to an established order based on violence, racism, and economic exploitation.  He was a very dangerous man.

Revolutionaries are, of course, anathema to the power elites who, with all their might, resist such rebels’ efforts to transform society.  If they can’t buy them off, they knock them off.  Forty-eight years after King’s assassination, the causes he fought for – civil rights, the end to U.S. wars of aggression , and economic justice for all – remain not only unfulfilled, but have worsened in so many respects.  And King’s message has been enervated by the sly trick of giving him a national holiday and urging Americans to make it “a day of service.”  Needless to say, such service does not include non-violent war resistance or protesting a decadent system of economic injustice.

Because MLK repeatedly called the United States the “greatest purveyor of violence on earth,” he was universally condemned by the mass media and government that later – once he was long and safely dead – praised him to the heavens.  This has continued to the present day of historical amnesia.

But William Pepper resurrects the revolutionary MLK, and in doing so shows in striking detail why elements within the U.S. government executed him.  After reading this book, no fair-minded reader can reach any other conclusion.

The Plot to Kill King, the culminating volume of a trilogy that Pepper has written on the assassination, consists of slightly less text than supporting documentation in its appendices, which include numerous depositions and interviews that buttress Pepper’s thesis on the why and how of this horrible murder.  It demands a close reading that should put to rest any pseudo-debates about the essentials of the case.

Pepper, an attorney who represented the King family in the 1999 trial that found U.S. officials of the federal (in particular, the FBI and Army Intelligence), state, and local governments responsible for King’s assassination, has worked on the King case since 1977.

He met MLK in 1967, after King had read his Ramparts’ magazine article, “The Children of Vietnam,” that exposed the hideous effects of U.S. napalm and white phosphorous bombing on young and old Vietnamese innocents.

The text and photos of that article reduced King to tears and were instrumental in his increased opposition to the war against Vietnam as articulated in his dramatic Riverside Church speech (“Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”) on April 4, 1967, one year to the day before his execution in Memphis.  That speech, in which King so powerfully and publically linked the war with racism and economic exploitation, foretold his death at the hands of the perpetrators of those abominations.

Devastated by King’s death, and assuming the alleged assassin James Earl Ray was responsible, Pepper retreated from the fray until a 1977 conversation with the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, King’s associate, who raised the specter of Ray’s innocence.  After a five hour interrogation of the imprisoned Ray in 1978, Pepper was convinced that Ray did not shoot King and set out on a forty year quest to uncover the truth.

Before examining the essentials of Pepper’s discovery, it is important to point out that MLK, Jr, his father, Rev. M. L. King, Sr, and his maternal grandfather, Rev. A.D. Williams, all pastors of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, were spied on by Army Intelligence and the FBI since 1917.  All were considered communist sympathizers and dangerous to the reigning hegemony because of their espousal of racial and economic equality.  When MLK, Jr. forcefully denounced unjust and immoral war-making as well, and announced his Poor People’s Campaign and intent to lead a massive peaceful encampment of hundreds of thousands in Washington, D.C., he set off panic in the bowels of government spies and their masters.  Seventy-five years of spying on black religious leaders here found its ultimate “justification.”  As Stokely Carmichael, co-chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, said to King in a conversation secretly recorded by Army Intelligence, “The man don’t care you call ghettos concentration camps, but when you tell him his war machine is nothing but hired killers, you got trouble.”

It is against this “trouble” that Pepper’s investigation must be set, as that “trouble” is also the background for the linked assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, and RFK.  Understanding the forces behind the military, the spies, and the gunmen who, while operating in the shadows, are actually the second layer of the onion skin, is essential.  The government and mainstream corporate media form the outer layer with their collusion in disinformation, lying, and truth suppression, but Pepper correctly identifies the core as follows.

Bombastic, chauvinistic, corporate propaganda aside, where the slaughter of innocents is, and always was, justified in the name of patriotism and national security, it has always and ever been about money.  Corporate and financial leaders trusted with the keys to the Republic’s treasure moved from boardrooms to senior government positions and back again.  Construction, oil and gas, defense industry, and pharmaceutical corporations, their bankers, brokers, and executives thrive in a war economy.  Fortunes are made and dynasties created and perpetuated and a cooperating elite permeates an entire society and ultimately contaminates the world in its drive for national resources wherever they are ….Vietnam was his [King’s] Rubicon …. Here, as never before, would he seriously challenge the interests of the power elite.

MLK was assassinated on April 4, 1968 at 6:01 PM as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. 

He was shot in the lower right side of his face by one rifle bullet that shattered his jaw, damaged his upper spine, and came to rest below his left shoulder blade.  The U.S. government claimed the assassin was a racist loner named James Earl Ray, who had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary on April 23, 1967.  Ray was alleged to have fired the fatal shot from a second-floor bathroom window of a rooming house above the rear of Jim’s Grill across the street.  Running to his rented room, Ray allegedly gathered  his belongings, including the rifle, in a bedspread-wrapped bundle, rushed out the front door onto the adjoining street, and in a panic dropped the bundle in the doorway of the Canipe Amusement Company a few doors down.  He was then said to have jumped into his white Mustang and driven to Atlanta where he abandoned the car.  From there he fled to Canada and then to England where he was eventually arrested at Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968 and extradited to the U.S.  The state claims that the money Ray needed to purchase the car and for all his travel was secured through various robberies and a bank heist. Ray’s alleged motive was racism and that he was a bitter and dangerous loner.

When Ray, under extraordinary pressure, coercion, and a payoff from his lawyer to take a plea, pleaded guilty (only a few days later to request a trial that was denied) and was sentenced to 99 years in prison, the case seemed to be closed, and was dismissed from public consciousness.  Another hate-filled lone assassin, shades of Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan, had committed a despicable deed.

In the years leading up to Pepper’s 1978 involvement, only a few lonely voices expressed doubts about the government’s case – Harold Weisberg in 1971 and Mark Lane and Dick Gregory in 1977.  The rest of the country put themselves and the case to sleep.  They are still sleeping, but Pepper is trying with this last book to wake them up.  Meanwhile, the disinformation specialists continue with their lies.

While a review is not the place to go into every detail of Pepper’s rebuttal of the government’s shabby claims, let me say at the outset that he emphatically does so, and adds in the process some tentative claims of which he is not certain but which, if true, are stunning.

As with the assassinations of President Kennedy and his brother, Robert (two months after MLK), all evidence points to the construction of patsies to take the blame for government executions.  Ray, Oswald, and Sirhan all bear striking resemblances in the ways they were chosen and moved as pawns over long periods of time into positions where their only reactions could be stunned surprise when they were accused of the murders.

It took Pepper many years to piece together the essential truths, once he and Abernathy interviewed Ray in prison in 1978.  The first giveaway that something was seriously amiss came with the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations’ report on the King assassination.  Led by Robert Blakey, suspect in his conduct of the other assassination inquiries, who had replaced Richard Sprague, who was deemed to be too independent, “this multi-million dollar investigation ignored or denied all evidence that raised the possibility that James Earl Ray was innocent,” and that government forces might be involved.  Pepper lists over twenty such omissions that rival the absurdities of the magical thinking of the Warren Commission. The HSCA report became the template “for all subsequent disinformation in print and visual examinations of this case” for the past thirty-seven years.

Pepper’s decades-long investigation, not only refutes the government’s case against James Earl Ray, but definitively proves that King was killed by a government conspiracy led by the FBI, Army Intelligence, and Memphis Police, assisted by southern Mafia figures. He is right to assert that “we have probably acquired more detailed knowledge about this political assassination than we have ever had about any previous historical event.”  This makes the silence around this case even more shocking.  This shock is accentuated when one is reminded (or told for the first time) that in 1999 a Memphis jury, after a thirty day trial and over seventy witnesses, found the U.S. government guilty in the killing of MLK.  The King family had brought the suit and William Pepper represented them.  They were grateful that the truth was confirmed, but saddened by the way the findings were buried once again by a media in cahoots with the government.

The civil trial was the King family’s last resort to get a public hearing to disclose the truth of the assassination.  They and Pepper knew that Ray was an innocent pawn, but Ray had died in prison in 1998 after trying for thirty years to get a trial and prove his innocence (shades of Sirhan Sirhan who still languishes in prison). 

During all those years, Ray had maintained that he had been manipulated by a shadowy figure named Raul, who supplied him with money and his white Mustang and coordinated all his complicated travels, including having him buy a rifle and come to Jim’s Grill and the boarding house on the day of the assassination.  The government has always denied that Raul existed.

Blocked at every turn by the authorities and unable to get Ray a trial, Pepper arranged an unscripted, mock TV trial that aired on April 4, 1993, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the assassination.  Jurors were selected from a pool of U.S. citizens, a former U.S. Attorney and a federal judge served as prosecutor and judge, with Pepper serving as defense attorney.  He presented extensive evidence clearly showing that authorities had withdrawn all security for King; that the state’s chief witness was falling down drunk; that the alleged bathroom sniper’s nest was empty right before the shot was fired; that three eyewitnesses, including the NY Times Earl Caldwell, said that the shot came from the bushes behind the rooming house; and that two eyewitnesses saw Ray drive away in his white Mustang before the shooting, etc.  The prosecution’s feeble case was rejected by the jury that found Ray not guilty.

As with all Pepper’s work on the case (including book reviews), the mainstream media responded with silence.  And though this was only a TV trial, increasing evidence emerged that the owner of Jim’s Grill, Loyd Jowers, was deeply involved in the assassination.  Pepper dug deeper, and on December 16, 1993, Loyd Jowers appeared on ABC’s Primetime Live that aired nationwide.  Pepper writes,

“Loyd Jowers cleared James Earl Ray, saying that he did not shoot MLK but that he, Jowers, had hired a shooter after he was approached by Memphis produce man Frank Liberto and paid $1,000,000 to facilitate the assassination.  He also said that he had been visited by a man names Raul who delivered a rifle and asked him to hold it until arrangements were finalized …. The morning after the Primetime Live broadcast there was no coverage of the previous night’s program, not even on ABC …. Here was a confession, on prime time television, to involvement in one of the most heinous crimes in the history of the Republic, and virtually no American mass-media coverage.”

In the twenty-three years since that confession, Pepper has worked tirelessly on the case and has uncovered a plethora of additional evidence that refutes the government’s claims and indicts it and the media for a continuing cover-up.  The evidence he has gathered, detailed and documented in The Plot to Kill King, proves that Martin Luther King was killed by a conspiracy masterminded by the U.S. government.  Much of his evidence was presented at the 1999 trial, while other was subsequently discovered.  Since the names and details involved make clear that, as with the murders of JFK and RFK, the conspiracy was very sophisticated with many moving parts organized at the highest level, I will just highlight a few of his findings in what follows.  A reader should read the book to understand the full scope of the plot, its execution, and the cover-up.

• Pepper refutes the government and proves, through multiple witnesses, telephonic, and photographic evidence, that Raul existed; that his full name is Raul Coelho; and that he was James Earl Ray’s intelligence handler, who provided him with money and instructions from their first meeting in the Neptune Bar in Montreal, where Ray had fled in 1967 after his prison escape, until the day of the assassination.  It was Raul who instructed Ray to return to the U.S. (an act that makes no sense for an escaped prisoner who had fled the country), gave him money for the white Mustang, helped him attain travel documents, and moved him around the country like a pawn on a chess board. The parallels to Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan are startling.
• He presents the case of Donald Wilson, a former FBI agent working out of the Atlanta office in 1968, who went with a senior colleague to check out an abandoned white Mustang with Alabama plates (Ray’s car, to which Raul had a set of keys) and opened the passenger door to find that an envelope and some papers fell out onto the ground.  Thinking he may have disturbed a crime scene, the nervous Wilson pocketed them.  Later, when he read them, their explosive content intuitively told him that if he gave them to his superiors they would be destroyed.  One piece was a torn out page from a 1963 Dallas telephone directory with the name Raul written at the top, and the letter “J” with a Dallas telephone number for a club run by Jack Ruby, Oswald’s killer. The page was for the letter H and had numerous phone numbers for H. L. Hunt, Dallas oil billionaire and a friend of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.  Both men hated MLK. The second sheet contained Raul’s name and a list of names and sums and dates for payment.  On the third sheet was written the telephone number and extension for the Atlanta FBI office. (Read Jim Douglass’s important interview with Donald Wilson in The Assassinations, pp.479-491.)
• Pepper interviewed four other witnesses who confirmed that they had seen Raul with Jack Ruby in Dallas in 1963 and that they were associated.
• Pepper shows that the alias Ray was given and used from July 1967 until April 4, 1968 – Eric Galt – was the name of a Toronto operative of U.S. Army Intelligence, Eric St. Vincent Galt, who worked for Union Carbide with Top Secret clearance.  The warehouse at the Canadian Union Carbide Plant in Toronto that Galt supervised “housed a top secret munitions project funded jointly by the CIA, the U.S. Naval Surface Weapons Center, and the Army Electronics Research and Development Command …. In August 1967, Galt met with Major Robert M. Collins, a top aide to the head of the 902^nd Military Intelligence Group (MIG) Colonel John Downie.”  Downie selected four members for an Alpha 184 Sniper Unit that was sent to Memphis to back up the primary assassin of MLK.  Meanwhile, Ray, set up as the patsy, was able to move about freely since he was protected by the pseudonymous NSA clearance for Eric Galt.
• To refute the government’s claim that Ray and his brother robbed the Alton, Illinois Bank to finance his travels and car purchase (therefore no Raul existed), Pepper “called the sheriff in Alton and the president of the bank; they gave the same statement.  The Ray brothers had nothing to do with the robbery.  No one from the HSCA, the FBI, or The New York Times had sought their opinion.”  CNN later reiterated the media falsehood that became part of the official false story.
• Pepper proves that the fatal shot came from the bushes behind Jim’s Grill and the rooming house, not from the bathroom window.  He presents overwhelming evidence for this, showing that the government’s claim, based on the testimony on a severely drunk Charlie Stephens, was absurd.  His evidence includes the testimony of numerous eyewitnesses and that of Loyd Jowers, the owner of Jim’s Grill, who said he took the rifle from the shooter in the bushes and brought it into the bar where he hid it.  Thus, Ray was not the assassin.
• He presents conclusive evidence that the bushes were cut down the morning after the assassination in an attempt to corrupt the crime scene.  The order to do so came from Memphis Police Department Inspector Sam Evans to Maynard Stiles, a senior administrator of the Memphis Department of Public Works.
• He shows how King’s room was moved from a safe interior room, 201, to balcony room, 306, on the upper floor; how King was conveniently positioned alone on the balcony by members of his own entourage for the easy mortal head shot from the bushes across the street.  (Many people only remember the iconic photograph taken after-the-fact with Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, et al., standing over the fallen King and pointing across the street.)  Pepper implicates that Reverends Billy Kyles, Jesse Jackson, and, to a lesser extent, Ralph Abernathy were involved in these machinations.  He uncovers of the role of black military intelligence agent Marrell McCollough, attached to the 111^th MIG, within the entourage.  McCollough can be seen kneeling over the fallen King, checking to see if he’s dead.
• Pepper confirms that all of this, including the assassin in the bushes, was dutifully photographed by Army Intelligence agents situated on the nearby Fire House roof.
• He presents evidence that all security for Dr. King was withdrawn from the area by the Memphis Police Department, including a special security unit of black officers, and four tactical police units. A black detective at the nearby fire station, Ed Redditt, was withdrawn from his post on the afternoon of April 4th, allegedly because of a death threat against him. And the only two black firemen at Fire Station No.2 were transferred to another station.
• He names and confirms the presence of Alpha 184 snipers at locations high above the Lorraine Motel balcony.
• He explains the use of two white mustangs in the operation to frame Ray.
• He proves that Ray had driven off before the shooting; that Loyd Jowers took the rifle from the shooter who was in the bushes; that the Memphis police were working in close collaboration with the FBI, Army Intelligence, and the “Dixie Mafia,” particularly local produce dealer Frank Liberto and his New Orleans associate Carlos Marcello; and that every aspect of the government’s case was filled with holes that any person familiar with the details and possessing elementary logical abilities could refute.
• So importantly, Pepper shows how the mainstream media and government flacks have spent years covering up the truth of MLK’s murder through lies and disinformation, just as they have done with the Kennedy and Malcom X assassinations that are of a piece with this one.

But since this is a book review and not a book, I will stop listing Pepper’s very detailed and convincing findings.  While he may not have answered every aspects of the case, and may be mistaken in some small details, he has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt the basic fact that James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King, but that this great and dangerous leader was killed by a conspiracy organized at the highest levels of government.

The Plot to Kill King will mesmerize any reader seeking the truth about MLK’s assassination.  Even when Pepper, towards the end of the book, offers circumstantial and non-corroborated testimony from witnesses Ronnie Lee Adkins and Johnton Shelby, the reader can’t help but be intrigued and to consider their stories highly plausible given all that Pepper has proven.  Adkins claims that his father, a friend of Clyde Tolson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s deputy, and then he himself, were part of the plot to kill King.  This involved politicians, the FBI, MPD, and mafia, including the aforementioned produce dealer Frank Liberto and others, making payoffs with FBI money to various people, including Jesse Jackson (whom Adkins, Jr. claims was a paid FBI informer) and working closely on the details of the assassination.  Johton Shelby’s story as recounted in his deposition (2014) to Pepper (reproduced, together with Adkins’ (2009), as appendices in the book), is that his mother, who was working as an emergency room aide at St. Joseph’s Hospital when King was brought there, inadvertently witnessed men spitting on Dr. King as he lay in the emergency room and a doctor putting a pillow over his head and suffocating him to death.  Pepper tends to accept these accounts, but says he isn’t completely convinced of all aspects of them.  The reader is offered plenty of food for thought concerning these claims.

Besides clearly proving the government’s part in killing Martin Luther King, this book is very important for the way Pepper links the case to those of JFK and RFK, who was murdered two months after King.  At the center of all these murders is a trinity of men who were devoted to the ending the Vietnam War and all wars, restoring economic justice for all Americans, and eliminating racial inequality.  That their goals were the same provides a motive for their murders by forces opposed to these lofty objectives. That their murders clearly involved highly sophisticated operations and cover-ups that could never have been pulled off by “crazed lone assassins” points to powerful forces with those means at their disposal. And when it comes to opportunity, when did the shadowy forces of the deep state ever lack for that?

The ramifications of the MLK assassination profoundly inform our current condition. For anyone who truly cares about peace, love, and justice, The Plot to Kill King is essential reading.  William Pepper should be saluted.  He has carried on Martin King’s noble legacy.

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Over the past two years (2021 and 2022), more than 1,650 professional and amateur athletes have collapsed due to cardiac events and 1,148 of them proved fatal

Damar Hamlin, a 24-year-old Buffalo Bills football player went into cardiac arrest on live television after being tackled during a January 2, 2023, game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Team trainers and emergency medical staff performed CPR for more than nine minutes, which saved his life

Whether the COVID jab played a role in what happened to Hamlin is impossible to know for sure, but Dr. Peter McCullough suspects it may have played a role — provided he actually got the shot

A condition called commotio cordis is known to occur in baseball when a player is hit hard on the breastbone, thereby causing cardiac arrest. There are approximately 20 to 30 such cases each year, but never in pro football. In McCullough’s view, commotio cordis can likely be ruled out. The more likely cause for Hamlin’s cardiac arrest, he believes, is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), or abnormal thickening of the heart muscle, which is the primary cause for athletes suffering cardiac arrest

During exercise, adrenaline is pumping, and when the heart is damaged this adrenaline rush is what triggers the cardiac arrest. This helps explain not only the death of athletes on the field, or people dying while jogging, but also why so many are dying in their sleep, because adrenaline is released between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., as your body readies to wake up

*

Click here to watch the video.

With every passing day, the list of people suffering tragic consequences from the COVID mRNA shots grows longer. As of December 23, 2022, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) had received 33,334 reports of post-jab deaths, 26,045 cases of myocarditis and 15,970 heart attacks.¹

Many of these people and their stories have remained hidden from public view as social media have universally censored these stories. As a result, people who only read mainstream media are largely unaware of the damage being done. However, there is a population of people whose injuries and deaths have been far more public.

Over the past two years (2021 through 2022), more than 1,650^2,3,4,5,6,7 professional and amateur athletes have collapsed due to cardiac events and 1,148⁸ of them proved fatal. In his book “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022,”⁹ Edward Dowd writes extensively about the anomalous number of deaths now occurring among athletes, which, despite “fact checkers” best efforts to dismiss it as “normal,”^10,11 is anything but.

What Happened to Damar Hamlin?

More than likely, you’ve heard that Damar Hamlin, a 24-year-old Buffalo Bills football player went into cardiac arrest on live television after being tackled during a January 2, 2023, game against the Cincinnati Bengals.^12,13 Team trainers and emergency medical staff performed CPR for more than nine minutes, which saved his life. After initially being placed in a medically-induced coma, Hamlin was reportedly on the mend within a week.¹⁴

Whether the COVID jab played a role in what happened to Hamlin is impossible to know for sure. Looking at the replays, it’s clear he took a very severe hit right to the chest right before his collapse, and this certainly could have caused the heart attack. At bare minimum, it’s not unheard of. Former Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker had a similar incident in 2017, as did hockey legend Chris Pronger in 1998.¹⁵

On the other hand, it’s also not inconceivable that the COVID jab — if Hamlin was in fact “vaxxed” — could have affected his heart, thereby playing a contributing role. We now know the COVID shot is associated with a significantly elevated risk of myocarditis, which in turn raises the risk of sudden cardiac death in contact sports.¹⁶

While the NFL enforced strict COVID jab rules for employees who have contact with players, the players and coaches were not subject to mandates.^17,18 That said, 95% of players did get the shot, according to the NFL league.¹⁹

Cardiologist Offers His View

In a January 4, 2023, Children’s Health Defense interview, Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist and internist, reviewed what could have happened in Hamlin’s case. As noted by McCullough, a condition called commotio cordis (Latin for “agitation of the heart”) is known to occur in baseball when a player is hit hard on the breastbone, thereby causing cardiac arrest. There are approximately 20 to 30 such cases each year.

However, no such case has ever occurred in 100 years of pro football. Football players have padding that protects the breastbone, so in McCullough’s view, commotio cordis can likely be ruled out. The more likely cause for Hamlin’s cardiac arrest, he believes, is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), or abnormal thickening of the heart muscle, which is the primary cause for athletes suffering cardiac arrest.

The reason why HCM is the No. 1 cause of cardiac arrest in professional athletes is because it causes few if any symptoms and often goes undiagnosed. Professional athletes undergo extensive medical evaluation and cardiovascular screening²⁰ before being given the green-light to play, and they also constitute the healthiest segment of society in general,²¹ so most heart problems are ruled out before they ever enter the field.

“The elephant in the room,” however, according to McCullough, is the COVID jab. Before these shots were rolled out, the average number of cardiac arrests in all European soccer and football leagues combined was 29 per year. Since the advent of the COVID shots, 1,598 European pro athletes have suffered cardiac arrest, giving us a comparative annual tally of nearly 800. Of those 1,598 cardiac arrests, 1,101 were fatal.

McCullough detailed these and other stats in a December 17, 2022, letter to the editor of the Journal of Scandinavian Immunology. The paper was co-authored by Panagis Polykretis, Ph.D., a researcher at the Institute of Applied Physics, which is part of the Italian National Research Council.²² McCullough and Polykretis have been, and still are, calling for a proper investigation of these deaths.

McCullough Suspects COVID Jab-Induced Myocarditis

McCullough and Polykretis suspect COVID jab-induced myocarditis is the explanation for this otherwise inconceivable increase in cardiac arrests among athletes, and McCullough believes it also tops the list of potential reasons for Hamlin’s cardiac arrest, considering 95% of NFL players had received the jab as of March 2022.²³

McCullough cites research showing about 2.5% of COVID jab recipients sustain heart damage, 90% of them being men. And, in about half of all jab-related myocarditis cases, there are no symptoms to alert you there might be a problem. As explained by McCullough, myocarditis causes scarring on the heart, and it is this scarring that causes an abnormal electrical rhythm (ventricular tachycardia) and sudden adult death syndrome.

There are now more than 200 scientific papers on jab-related myocarditis. A January 2023 study²⁴in the European Journal of Pediatrics found high levels of circulating spike protein in 16 male high school students hospitalized with myocarditis induced by the shots, which again suggests the spike protein your body produces is a key pathogenic factor.

McCullough explains in greater detail how the shot may have triggered Hamlin’s cardiac arrest: During play, adrenaline is pumping, and when the heart is damaged this adrenaline rush is what triggers the cardiac arrest.

This helps explain not only the death of athletes on the field, or people dying while jogging, but also why so many are dying in their sleep, because adrenaline is released between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., as your body readies to wake up.

1,696% Increase in Sudden Death Among Athletes

Whatever caused Hamlin’s cardiac arrest — and hopefully a careful medical investigation after his recovery will clarify what happened — there’s no doubt that athletes in general are dying in far greater numbers now than ever before.

In related news, a November 2022 report²⁵ by The Exposé showed the number of athletes who “died suddenly” between January 2021 and April 2022 was 1,696% above the historical monthly norm²⁶between 1966 and 2004 — 42 per month compared to just 2.35 per month.

The following graph illustrates the rise in recorded athlete collapses and deaths between January 2021, the month the COVID shots started to roll out, and April 2022.

As noted by The Exposé:²⁷

“In all between Jan 21 and April 22, a total number of 673 athletes were known to have died. This number could, however, be much higher. So that’s 428 less than the number to have died between 1966 and 2004. The difference here though is that the 1,101 deaths occurred over 39 years, whereas 673 recent deaths occurred over 16 months …

The yearly average number of deaths between 1966 and 2004 equates to 28. January 2022 saw three times as many athlete deaths than this previous annual average, as did March 2022. So this is obviously highly indicative of a problem.

The 2021 total equates to 394 deaths, 14x higher than the 1966 to 2004 annual average. The Jan to April 2022 total, a period of 4 months, equates to 279 deaths, 9.96x higher than the annual average between 1966 and 2004.

However, if we divide the 66 to 04 annual average by 3 to make it equivalent to the first four months’ worth of deaths in 2022, we get 9.3 deaths. So in effect, by April 2022, deaths among athletes were 10x higher than the expected rate …

[B]etween 1966 and 2004. the monthly average number of deaths equates to 2.35. But between January 2021 and April 2022, the monthly average equates to 42. This is an increase of 1,696%.”

Risk of Cardiovascular Damage Soars After Second Shot

A nearly 1,700% increase in sudden cardiac-related death among athletes is inexplicable unless you take the experimental COVID jabs into account. Research²⁸ published in November 2021 found inflammatory markers — signs of cardiovascular damage — rose dramatically after the second COVID shot, and the risk of heart attacks and other heart-related problems more than doubled in the months following these injections.

Pre-jab, patients had an 11% five-year risk of heart attack. Post-jab, that risk rose to 25%, a 227% increase in risk. As reported by The Exposé, other statistics also reveal heart damage has become ubiquitous among those who got one or more mRNA jabs:²⁹

“Acute cardiac failure rates are now 475 times the normal baseline rate in VAERS. Tachycardia rates are 7,973 times the baseline rate. Acute myocardial infarction is 412 times the baseline rate.

The rates of internal hemorrhage, peripheral artery thrombosis, and coronary artery occlusion are all over 300 times the baseline rate … It doesn’t take a genius to work out that COVID-19 vaccination is the reason the monthly average number of athlete deaths was 1,700% higher than the expected rate by April 2022.”

Sudden Death: The No. 1 Cause of Death for Under 65s in 2021

In late December 2022, Steve Kirsch also published data showing the shots are a public health disaster.³⁰ According to the results of a survey Kirsch conducted, “sudden death” was the No. 1 cause of death in 2021 and 2022 among Americans under 65 who had received the COVID shot.

The second and third causes of death in this group were cardiac-related death and cancer respectively. Importantly, the incidence of turbo-charged cancer among the jabbed was also significant, and myocarditis killed more than COVID-19.

Among the unjabbed, the primary cause of death for people 65 and younger in 2021 and 2022 was hospital treatment for COVID. Incidences of sudden death, pulmonary embolism and turbo-charged cancers were all low, and there were no unknown causes of death, nor any myocarditis deaths. Kirsch summarized the three most stunning differences between the jabbed and unjabbed as follows:³¹

1. “Sudden death rates are off the charts for the vaccinated cf. unvaccinated for those <65 … It’s the #1 cause of death for this age group …
2. Myocarditis as a cause of death is registering now for both age ranges but only for the vaccinated …
3. Cardiac issues as a cause of death in vaccinated young people (<65) are significantly elevated vs. their unvaxxed peers.”

Learn CPR, It Saves Lives

While we cannot make any definitive statements about what caused Hamlin’s cardiac arrest, one thing that is not in doubt is that immediate and ongoing CPR is what saved his life. Nine minutes is a long time to give CPR, and most people will simply give up after two or three minutes. Hamlin’s case is proof positive that sometimes you need to give CPR for an extended period of time.

As many who got the experimental COVID shots will have some level of heart damage that raises their risk of cardiac arrest and sudden death, the need for CPR know-how is only going to grow. So, please, learn CPR. It could be the difference between life and death of someone you love. Also, consider investing in an automated external defibrillator (AED) for your home and/or office.

These machines are lightweight and battery operated. Sticky pads with sensors are attached to the chest and those electrodes send information to the computer inside the machine.

The AED computer will analyze the heart rhythm to determine if electric shock is needed. If required, the machine uses voice prompts to tell you what to do and when to do it. AED machines are safe to use and there are no reports of them harming bystanders or users or, of delivering inappropriate shocks.³²

When an individual suffers a cardiac arrest, the heart immediately stops beating. This means there is no blood being pumped to the body or brain. At this time it is critical for bystanders to:

1. Call emergency services (dial 911 in the U.S.)
2. Begin CPR
3. Apply the nearest automated external defibrillator (AED)

If you don’t have formal training, 911 dispatchers can give you specific instructions on using an AED and performing CPR until paramedics arrive. While you may hesitate, being afraid you could hurt the victim, at this time the person is clinically dead and can’t get any worse. Bystander CPR and AED can only help.

For cardiac arrest, CPR and treatment with an AED as needed (while awaiting emergency services) significantly increase the potential for survival and, importantly, lower the risk of permanent disability. It is now believed Hamlin has a good chance of neurological recovery, which would not have been possible had it not been for the fact that he received CPR for more than nine minutes.

*

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Notes

¹ OpenVAERS as of December 23, 2022

^2, 22 Journal of Scandinavian Immunology Letter to the Editor December 17, 2022

³ Twitter Liz Wheeler January 3, 2023

⁴ Twitter Liz Wheeler January 3, 2023, Archived

⁵ The Expose List of Athlete Deaths, April 2022

⁶ Epoch Times January 4, 2023 (Archived)

^7, 8 Good Sciencing Athlete Deaths List

⁹ Amazon.com Cause Unknown by Ed Dowd

¹⁰ Poynter January 9, 2023

¹¹ Washington Post January 3, 2023

¹² CNN January 3, 2023

¹³ Fox News January 3, 2023

¹⁴ Yahoo! Sports Hamlin Updates

¹⁵ Clutchpoints January 3, 2023

¹⁶ European Heart Journal Case Reports March 2021; 5(3): ytab054

¹⁷ USA Today November 4, 2021

¹⁸ NBC Sports August 3, 2022

^19, 23 AP March 3, 2022

²⁰ Heart July 2007; 93(7): 875-879

²¹ Circulation August 15, 1996; 94: 850-856

²⁴ European Journal of Pediatrics January 5, 2023

^25, 27, 29 The Expose November 23, 2022

²⁶ Eur J Cardiovasc Prev Rehabil December 2006; 13(6): 859-875

²⁸ Circulation November 8, 2021; 144: A10712

^30, 31 Steve Kirsch Substack December 27, 2022

³² National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Automated External Defibrillator

Featured image is from The Expose

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***

So, it begins. The WarRoom/DailyClout Pfizer Documents Research Volunteers have produced 51 stunning reports, compiling all of their findings from their months-long review and analysis of the Pfizer documents, and we at DailyClout have published them as an ebook.

The primary source documents, of course, on which these reports are based, were released as a result of a successful lawsuit by attorney Aaron Siri and his firm. [See this]

This publication of the 51 reports is the culmination of immense labor from the WarRoom/DailyClout Pfizer Documents Research Volunteers: 3500 medical and scientific experts, ranging from biostatisticians to RNs to medical fraud investigators, anesthesiologists and pathologists and lab clinicians, to research scientists and sports medicine physicians and cardiologists; all of whom worked together under the killer-angel leadership of the incomparable Project Director/DailyClout COO Amy Kelly.

These heroes, both named and anonymous, have produced hundreds of pages of devastating truths about the crimes inflicted on the human species, via mRNA vaccination; catastrophic facts that both Pfizer and the FDA wished to keep hidden for 75 years.

It is a record of crimes astonishing in their scale and detail.

This publication means that the whole world can see, compiled now in one place, torrents of primary source evidence and analysis of what appears now to be the greatest attack on humanity since World War Two.

That publication happened on Tuesday the 10th of January, 2023.

By Wednesday, Jan 11, 2023, my reputation, and DailyClout’s, perhaps predictably, was once again being subjected to a full-out digital assault, from multiple directions. Luckily I’ve been here before and there is little that these attacks can do to me – to us, indeed — at this point.

Nonetheless, watching this process unfold yet again is ugly and sad.

Friends told me that journalist Alex Berenson was again attacking me. This is a writer who, as I was deplatformed in 2021 for accurately identifying menstrual harms as a side effect of mRNA vaccination, called me, out of the blue, “batshit crazy and counterfactual” — though I was in fact completely right.

He wrote at that time — on Twitter, where I could not respond — that he gave “@jack credit” after the Twitter CEO had silenced and deplatformed me following this warning of harms to women, a warning that documents show the CDC had discussed with social media platforms.

These two influential men, happily together, with one congratulating the other, closed down a conversation of vital importance to women and girls, to babies born and unborn, around the world.

Due to the suppression of speech celebrated by Mr Berenson’s nasty little swipes at my prescient concern at menstrual harms — at eyewitness testimony about women ranging from postmenopausal elders down to eleven year old girls bleeding their insides out onto hospital sheets — millions of women and young girls tragically sustained life-altering damage. Millions of babies may never be brought alive into the world at full term.

Nice job there, fellas. High fives all around.

Thus these two men, these dudes, who don’t bleed or conceive or carry or bear or nurse babies, and who thus presumably have no idea how hard all of that can be without adding the risk or reality of major damage to one’s entire reproductive system — decided, with no evidence whatsoever, that a woman such as I am is “batshit crazy” for worrying publicly and accurately about whether or not women, and girls who would become women, would ever be able to conceive, carry and give birth to living children.

The misogyny evident in Mr Berenson’s — and “@Jack’s” — dismissing such serious health concerns was, in 2021, nauseating:

I have to give @Twitter @jack credit. They have let me post basically untouched. And though I don’t think they should have suspended Naomi Wolf on pure free-speech grounds, let’s be honest – much of what she said was counterfactual (and batshit crazy). https://t.co/qyS6OvH28s

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) June 26, 2021

I try not to engage with personal attacks, but I do wish at last to put my objection to Mr Berenson’s — and “@Jack’s” — treatment of women’s concerns, and dismissal of their very real suffering, in 2021, on the record.

This time, I didn’t even bother to look around under any rocks, for whatever Mr Berenson may or may not have said about me.

He has his own reckoning to do with history, and with my gender. I’ll leave him to it.

The attacks are coming in from other directions too, thick and fast — NewsGuard, a hack-like “Fact-Check” platform, whose mission is to delegitimize any of us who challenge “the narrative” – came after DailyClout, to execute a gaslighting hit job. They did this on the very day that the Pfizer Documents Reports e-book was published on DailyClout.io’s website.

Well my goodness gracious, who funds Newsguard?

“NewsGuard received much of its startup funds from Publicis Groupe, a giant global communications group with divisions that brand imaging, design of digital business platforms, media relations and health care.

Publicis Groupe’s health subsidiary, Publicis Health, names Lilly, Abbot, Roche, Amgen, Genentech, Celgene, Gilead, Biogen, Astra Zeneca, Sanofi, Bayer and other Big Pharma giants as clients, which gives you an idea of where its loyalties lie.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has also awarded Publicis Media a healthy piece of business, and the communications group responded by creating a custom “platformGSK” to run the drug giant’s media business.

GSK Adds $400 Million to $1.5 Billion Publicis Collaboration”

[See this]

But of all of these attacks — which surely represent just the beginning — the one that makes me saddest, but also the most certain that we are over the target, is a morally repellent attack on Telegram, effected in a very 21st century way, by creating a false me and a false someone else.

There is a fake “Naomirwolf” on Telegram, and that entity has 38,000 followers, all of whom probably believe that they are following me.

This fake identity online is a source of torment to me because of her (or his? Or their?) unspeakable prose style, and his/her/their use of little blue arrows pointing this way and that sensationally; a mannerism that grates like nails on a chalkboard.

But the faux Naomi Wolf also gives me the creeped-out feeling of having a literary stalker, because when I post something she/he/they immediately post/s something along the same lines, but badly written.

It’s like having a tacky, blowsy, overdressed, grammatically-intolerable doppelganger.

My advisors and I have tried everything possible to get rid of this catfisher who is misusing my name and image: legal cease-and-desist letters, complaints to Telegram — which company seems to exist in the ether somewhere — and plaintive calls to action on social media.

Nothing has worked.

She/he/it just keeps growing stronger, and more prolix, like the succubus leaping out of the chests of its victims in the movie “Alien.”

But this time she/he/they went too far. Because now people about whom I care are sending me a breathless screed by the “Naomirwolf” on Telegram, who is declaring that there would be a livestream regarding “JFK JR”.

JFK Jr is, of course, no longer with us.

“BREAKING! JFK JR JUST WENT LIVE. +6000 people are already accepted and watching the stream as you can see! We are working on approving new members. WATCH HERE [awful little blue arrow]”.

And there, the stuff of nightmares, is an image of a face that has been “aged” so that it looks, purportedly, the way JFK Jr would look today if he had lived.

The optics and goal of such a gross, deranged-sounding announcement are obvious. If you want to undermine hundreds of pages of expose of a great crime, pages that are scrupulously hyperlinked, written by highly credentialed people, who are using primary source documents created by Pfizer itself and signed off on by the FDA — all you can really do is try to make the person who convened the project, look like a lunatic. (“Batshit crazy,” Berenson. “The Madness of Naomi Wolf”, The New Republic — which ran that headline even while it was still syndicating my work [See this]).

But worse things happened, via my nebulous doppelganger, than the duping of 38,000 people into thinking that I had lost my mind.

Because I am not the only person attacked by this disgusting technique.

When I saw this image, a wave of personal grief went through me.

You see, “JFK Jr” is not just an internet meme to play with using visual effects.

He was a real person.

JFK Jr was my editor.

I knew him, professionally.

He mattered to us. For real. IRL. Not in pixels or memes or in UX and UI.

For real.

I did not ever know him as a friend or even as a social acquaintance. I knew him only as my editor and publisher. I admired him greatly at a warm distance, the way any writer loves a really good, committed editor and publisher.

He changed my life, for the better, in ways I will never forget.

He also brought a very important thing into the world.

I had been aware of JFK Jr, of course, via the media, in the mid to late 1990s, as people of my generation were. When he started his magazine George, I was alert to the fact that its premise was a really great idea. It was centered on JFK Jr’s insight that politics and celebrity and popular culture were merging, and that a publication had to chronicle and analyze this phenomenon.

He saw — at a time when politicians were stuffy older white men in suits, for the most part, who tried to be very serious, and when celebrities inhabited another world altogether — that these worlds would soon intermingle.

And yet news coverage of this gifted young man and his startup seemed always to stop just grudgingly short of giving him credit for his own talent, hard work, and originality of thought.

But I understood the Zeitgeist. I had been close to the Clinton world, as a White House spouse. I understood what a fantastic idea JFK Jr had.

I credited him.

Because I respected him from afar, I was pleased when his office reached out to hire me, a young feminist then with just one book to my name, as a columnist for the new magazine. This would also be my first opinion column.

JFK Jr showed courage in tasking me; it was not that common then for women to be political columnists; it was still more rare for women to be given national platforms as cultural critics. “Write about anything that interests you,” he said, and he meant it; politics, personalities, popular culture, high culture, gender, sexuality. Today, when serious analysts of all of these preoccupations are a dime a dozen, this wide casting of a net may not seem that radical. At the time, though, JFK Jr was staking out a groundbreaking, risky space, with all of his columnists, not just with me, and with his subject matter in general.

He was the kind of publisher who brings new currents of thought into American life and discourse. They don’t come by that often in the history of American ideas.

Meeting JFK Jr at that time in the George offices was like meeting someone radiant with the intuition of what America was about to become. The future vibrated around him.

He was certainly charismatic. But what is charisma? He had that shimmer around him of someone who was already unfolding, in terms of his great potential.

He was also just incredibly nice to all the people around him, as far as I could see, from the “least” to the “most” important. He always seemed to remember their concerns, their illnesses, to ask about their kids.

He appeared to me to do this consistently, both in the way that someone burdened and blessed with a famous and highly-destiny-entwined name must be careful with others’ sensibilities; but also simply from what felt organically like the kind, respectful instincts of his own decent heart.

I did not know him well, apart from our work interactions.

But he was a good man.

Like all of us in our little world at that time, as in the great world, I was stunned and horrified when I learned that he and his bride had passed away untimely.

The point of all of this being: he was a real person.

He was cherished.

His memory, which is a blessing still to those who knew him better than I did, not to mention to his family — just as it is something that I value myself, knowing him so much more distantly — does not deserve this offensive instrumentalization and weaponization.

For what it is worth, I oppose it, it is wrong.

I object.

*

What do all of these stories have to do with one another?

The point is that our civilization and civilized norms, as well as truth and justice, must be defended, unless we are to sink to the level of animals.

We now live in a world in which random journalists — perhaps with undisclosed settlement agreements — can take baseless swipes at their peers, without accountability. So, upholding the journalistic ethics in which I was trained, I say to Mr Berenson, be a real journalist, if you please, and debate me face to face if you have an issue with my work.

We now live in a world in which billion-dollar-pharma-funded “fact checkers” can go after critics of pharma, while posing as authoritative neutral parties. There is nothing I can do there except to call my readers’ attention to this and urge everyone to buy the Pfizer documents ebook to assess for themselves why the pharmaceutical companies are putting such vast resources into seeking to undermine its debut.

Worst of all, we live now in a world in which digital shadows are deployed to misuse and abuse the memories of real people who have tragically passed away; and in which identities are cloned by unanswerable entities to savage the reputations of living people who are actually trying to serve humanity.

To that, all I can do is resist by reasserting here my own humanity, my real-ness, and my intentions; and to speak in respectful memory of my former boss, a person whom I greatly admired, whose passing was tragic for all of us but most of all of course for his very real loved ones.

All I can do is invoke and put forth in public my appreciation for this real person whose image and legacy are so appallingly being mishandled and traduced by shadowy entities whom I can scarcely locate, even to confront.

I for one am putting this all on the record because I don’t consent to any of it.

I don’t condone this disgusting behavior on all of these fronts, or the grotesque incivility all of these choices and actions represent.

I don’t condone a world that behaves in this way. It’s all not okay.

And lastly, I am putting any future assailants on notice, as we roll out this publication:

You will not prevail.

*

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***

“What they [regular people] need, and what they feel they need, is a quality of mind that will help them use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and what may be happening within themselves….what may be called the sociological imagination.” – C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination

In what follows, I offer some conclusions I have arrived at and am skipping all the steps taken to arrive there.  Everyone needs to follow their own path to the end.

I know Mills was right when he penned those words long ago.  Arguments don’t go too far to convince others; only self-directed investigations do.  It is a question of the moral will-to-truth and the desire to be free, plus the imagination to connect the dots using reason that lead to conclusions that make sense.  There are many explanations for every public issue and personal problem under the sun that tell us why this or that is true or false.  But since we live in an age of non-stop lies and propaganda, determination and the willingness to do our homework is essential.  The following summations are the results of my study over many years, and this is a partial list.

There comes a time to state them outright and as clearly and concisely as possible, when silence is betrayal, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said so passionately in his speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence,” from the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was murdered by U.S. government forces.  He said:

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

I feel bound by that deeper loyalty and offer these summations in that spirit.

• The United States is now, and has long been, as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. It is led by leaders possessed by a demonic spirit leading the world toward nuclear conflagration by initiating and waging war against Russia via Ukraine.  It cares not a bit for all the dead and suffering victims of its policies there and around the world.

• Because he so passionately denounced the warmakers and fought for racial and economic justice, MLK, Jr. was murdered by the same government that later gave him a national holiday to hide its guilt.
• Most people in the U.S.A. do not care that this is true but wish to live their small-world lives, not thinking about it. Indifference reigns.  Another holiday means more shopping at the sale counters.
• Anyone who reminds them of this is considered a pain in the ass or worse.
• The violence of the U.S. state is directed not just against people in other countries but against those who live in the United States. This has long been true as the CIA and the FBI have conspired assiduously for decades to control the population while the Pentagon slaughters people all over the world.  Mind control is necessary to achieve this goal.
• To accept this reality is anathema to most people, for it means their own government is their enemy and that they are its targets, this being contrary to the myth of democracy.
• This targeting of Americans by their government is not new but has reached new heights in recent years as the national-security state and its organs of propaganda in the media have gone on steroids.
• The corporate mass media, and elements of the “alternative media,” are the key organs of this propaganda and are completely infiltrated by the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI, etc.
• Agents of these agencies, while enemies of regular people, are often seen as friends because their deviousness is profound. They smile a lot with their fake white teeth.  “One may smile and smile and still be a villain,” wrote the Bard.
• All the wars known and unknown waged by the U.S. warfare state are based on lies and propaganda that’s been developed over a century and more. Actually since the founding of the country and its extermination of native peoples.
• Not some foreign country or its secrets agents, but the U.S. National security state led by the CIA and FBI has assassinated all anti-war, racial and economic justice leaders who have tried to change things: JFK, Malcom X, MLK, Jr., Robert Kennedy, et al., and anyone who tries to distract from this fact by ambiguity and slick words is serving the national security state. Many of these people are assets or agents of the intelligence services and there are far more of them than one can imagine.
• The events of September 11, 2001 and the anthrax attacks were carried out by elements within the U.S. national-security state and not by foreign terrorists under the leadership of Osama bin Laden. That their own government would kill thousands of innocent people is beyond the imagination of so many Americans because they have bought the myth of U.S. innocence and on a personal level have come to think of themselves as victims also.
• Such thinking is self-destructive. While it is very true that everyone has been subject to vast and never-ending government propaganda campaigns, the only remedy is to fight back by assuming all official pronouncements are false until proven otherwise, and to do one’s homework.
• This sense of victimhood is the result of decades-long propaganda that has been promulgated by all institutions that have taught and reaffirmed a materialistic philosophy that there is no free will but only biological and social forces that make people who they are. Key to this is the promotion and use of drugs for all problems.
• The War on Drugs has always been the War on us, a deep fake intended to distract and control the population. This includes all the happy “pills” and drugs used to silence thought and the connection between the social and the personal, like anti-depressants, etc.
• The War on Terror was a war to kill as many foreigners, mainly Muslims, as possible, and to kill the conscience of decent people by appealing to their worst prejudices and fears. It was used to institute the Patriot Act and tighten the stranglehold of unfreedom on the population.
• Yet this “war on terror” that has led to the wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, China, Russia, etc., was long preceded by decades long wars against Cuba, Vietnam, Iran, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Iraq, Yugoslavia, throughout Africa, etc. – endless open and secret wars all over the world.
• The promotion of fear has been the prime propaganda tactic of the Deep State. Fear to immobilize the population to do as the propagandists tell us.  It’s all about control. The root of all fears is the fear of death, thus the power to assassinate dissidents, wage war, and kill through “medicine” are all employed by the power elites.
• Reality, by any simple definition, or news as the communication of reality, has been replaced by entertainment. Everything is now a spectacle geared to a crowd of naïve children who sit on the edge of their seats enjoying the disasters that are continuously promoted to induce fear and passivity.
• The War of Drugs used against the population, while having been waged for many decades, has since March and April 2020 been internationalized and coordinated as a global coup d’état against humanity with the Covid-19 propaganda program with its lock-downs, deadly “vaccines,” and push for the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset.” Corporate media led (and leads) this propaganda pandemic narrative that has abrogated human and constitutional rights in the service of corporate capital interests, resulting in the enrichment of the richest few and the impoverishment, injury, and death of the many.  It is the vastest propaganda campaign in history and continues unceasingly even as all its claims have been shown to be false.
• Central to all the efforts of the international gang of political and financial gangsters responsible for so many crimes against humanity is their deep-seated nihilism and their antagonism to the religious spirit of love and non-violence that informs the great religions of the world. Demonic is the best word to describe their evil deeds.
• The digital revolution is more accurately described as the digital propaganda program with the cell phone being the key to its enactment. It is an effort to coax people into loving their machines more than the human touch and to think of themselves as extensions of their machines.  Clicking numbers, statistical analysis, the mathematical mindset, etc. have all been used to indoctrinate people into a world of artificial intelligence and robotic thinking in which flesh and blood become abstractions and nature something to be conquered and controlled.
• This so-called “digital revolution” with its computer technology dominating people’s lives has allowed the ruling elites to penetrate deep into the population’s psyches without them knowing it. It has allowed propaganda to infiltrate every moment of every day as people click the buttons on the machines they think are their lifelines to reality.  All becomes a miasma of manufactured illusions and spectacles in the service of the “third industrial revolution.”
• All of this is part of a “spiritual” machine revolution in which the human spirit and its connections to God, nature, and our common humanity is slowly extinguished, everything that MLK said was necessary for our salvation.
• Martin Luther King was a transmitter of a radical non-violent spiritual and political energy so plenipotent that his very existence was a threat to an established order based on institutionalized violence, racism, and economic exploitation.  He was a very dangerous man to the U.S. government and all the institutional and deep state forces armed against him. So they killed him.
• The best “service” we can offer on Martin Luther King Day is recognize that fact and oppose the evil and violent forces directing the American nightmare.
• And to do our homework connecting the dots that run down the years.

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

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***

In today’s global energy crisis, Algeria, being the largest natural gas exporter, is trying to make the most. Amid the BRICS expansion, and following other Arab League members Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Algeria applied to join the group in November 2022. The country is a member of OPEC, and the African Continental Free Trade Area, as well as the Arab Trade Zone. It enjoys good relations with India, China, and Russia – thus it is well positioned to grow as an emerging energy power, but faces many regional challenges pertaining to its tensions with Morocco and it’s been the target of Washington pressures to cut ties with Moscow.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Algeria in May 2022, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, in turn, during his visit to Saudi Arabia, met with Algerian Prime Minister Aymen Benabderrahmane, and both vowed to enhance their bilateral relations.

Algiers has indeed maintained very close relations with both Moscow and Beijing: the former held joint military exercises with the North-African country near the Moroccan border in November 2022. Moreover, Moscow provides about 80% of Algeria’s weapons. Algiers in fact is Russia’s third-largest arms importer, after India and China. As for China, it has been Algeria’s main exporter since at least 2013. More recently, in November 2022, Algeria and China signed a second five-year strategic cooperation pact. This is one of the reasons why the two Eurasian powers have welcomed the country’s application to the BRICS group.

Algeria’s windfall profits from its energy exports exceeded $50 billion in 2022, up from $34 billion in 2021 and merely $20 billion in 2020.  The country intends to double gas exports, thus reaching 100 billion cubic meters per year. Moreover, on December 22, Berlin and Algiers signed a memorandum of understanding for constructing the first green hydrogen plant in the North African country. The deal involves German gas company VNG and Algeria’s state-owned oil company Sonatrach. The plant is expected to have a 50 MW production capacity. In addition, Algeria plans to sell its spare electricity capacity to Europe.

As the EU-27 seeks to disconnect energy from Russia, the EU is willing to strengthen its gas trade with Algeria, and this explains much of the diplomatic work going on. A sign of that is the fact that EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson visited Algiers in October 2022, while the French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne met her Algerian counterpart Aimene Benabderrahame there.

Navigating the boom in energy exporting, Algiers also aspires to increase its diplomatic power. As mentioned, tensions with neighboring Morocco are still a problem, however. For instance, the latter was recently forced to cancel its participation in the soccer African Nations Championship (CHAN) because Algeria has closed its airspace to all Moroccan flights – borders in turn have been closed since 1994. In October 2021, I wrote that a large part of the international community at that time did not find this conflict to be a hard-pressing issue but this should change, as the situation escalates, with economic impacts in Europe. The current conflict in Ukraine might end up contributing to placing the Moroccan-Algerian dispute into the spotlight.

French President Emmanuel Macron in an interview with LePointed said he does not believe in the possibility of a war erupting between the two neighbors, however some experts believe that this is a real risk.

According to the World Bank forecast for 2023, due to Algerian inflation, Moroccan economic growth will be much higher than Algeria’s one – while Egypt remains the fastest growing economy in North Africa. In an increasingly geopoliticized world, the two Maghreb countries’ economic and territory dispute might also translate into political consequences abroad.

One should keep in mind that Washington has been working with its European allies to find further non-Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) supplies from Africa and other regions, and the US has asked North African countries to increase gas production to supply Europe, while pressuring traditional Russian partners to distance themselves from Moscow. Once again, one can see how, in today’s world, it is becoming hard and harder  to insulate industries from geopolitical disputes. Algeria has strong links with Russia, and even Morrocos (traditionally a Western ally), seeks to maintain “positive neutrality” with regards to Moscow.

In any case, both Morocco and Algeria compete for European markets and also for diplomatic influence. Algeria aspires to become Europe’s main exporter of green hydrogen, while Morocco so far has taken a lead in this sector.

The hard fact, though, is that the North African region at the moment cannot solve Europe’s energy problems. European plans, as well as their North African partners’ ones, often get entangled in local political conflicts. For instance, the Nigeria-Morocco pipeline is planned to have its drop-off point in the disputed Western Sahara area. Former US President Donald Trump’s own recognition of Morocco’s claim over the region, which is controlled by the Algerian-backed Polisario Front, was  a kind of “quid pro quo” after the Moroccan authorities in Rabat normalized the country’s relations with Israel. This American diplomatic decision however greatly increased tensions in the region, with potential bad outcomes for Europe, as the specter of a war over Western Sahara still haunts both continents.

In any case, to sum it up, it would not be too realistic to expect a very robust energy supply from North African pipelines, and Europe’s economic, industrial and energy crisis remains deadlocked.

*

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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

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***

Sweden’s refusal to share information about the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines is “puzzling,” and withholding the results of the investigation means that “Swedish authorities are hiding something,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

Traces of explosives were found near the sites of the explosions at the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, Sweden said in November, noting that the incident is “gross sabotage.”

Gas leaks in each of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were discovered at the end of September from the infrastructure just outside Swedish and Danish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea.

An investigation launched by the Swedish authorities concluded that the leaks were the result of detonations, likely the result of “serious sabotage”.

Sweden, Denmark, and Germany are also jointly investigating the incident with the gas pipelines built to carry Russian gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea.

Nord Stream 2 was never put into operation after Germany axed the certification process following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia, for its part, shut down Nord Stream 1 indefinitely in early September, claiming an inability to repair gas turbines because of the Western sanctions.

Today, Russia criticized Sweden’s refusal to share information about the findings of the investigation with Russia, and Zakharova said that “Russian experts in the course of an objective investigation may come to uncomfortable conclusions and, finally, reveal to the public the ugly truth about who committed these acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks,” as carried by Russian news agency TASS.

“The hiding of facts is evidence of the obvious: the Swedish authorities are hiding something,” Zakharova added.

Last year, Russia accused the UK Navy of being involved in the explosions that put the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines out of commission.

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Michael Kern is a news writer and editor at Safehaven.com and Oilprice.com.

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***

Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in central Tel Aviv on Saturday to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new far-right coalition government.

Police in Tel Aviv said around 80,000 protesters had gathered at and around Habima square. Protests were also taking place in Jerusalem, Haifa and other cities, as centre and left-wing parties, including the Hadash-Taal alliance – a joint list of two Arab-majority political parties – called on Israelis to reject new government policies.

The demonstrations were organised under the call of  “saving democracy”, in criticism of some hardline stances the ultra-conservative government has adopted, including planned reforms to the country’s justice system.

A main concern of opposition groups is a recently-proposed reform that would allow parliament to override decisions made by the Supreme Court. Analysts have warned that such a programme could potentially allow lawmakers to uphold any annulment of the corruption charges Netanyahu is being tried on.

An open letter published on Thursday by 11 former prosecutors said the reforms threaten to destroy Israel’s judiciary.

Retired Supreme Court President Ayala Procaccia addressed those on the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday, warning that “a country in which judges go out to protest is a country where all lines were crossed”, Haaretz reported.

‘Fascists in the Knesset’

Itai Niger, a 37-year-old from Tel Aviv, told Middle East Eye that he had attended the protest because he hoped to help send a message against “the regime and fascism”.

“I can’t stay at home and do nothing anymore,” Niger said. “I decided to take part against what is happening now because this government is really dangerous and has the potential to change things for the worse in terms of rights.

In Israel, there is already a big problem of inequality, and there will be more abuse of power and corruption now. If there is a way to stand against that, then I will be there.”

“I really, really hope that this marks some kind of awakening in this country,” he continued.

In addition to court reforms, opposition protesters rallied against the new government’s intentions to pursue a policy of settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and social reforms that have worried members and supporters of the LGBTQ+ community.

Signs written in Hebrew and Arabic held up by the demonstrators gathered in Habima Square on Saturday reflected the diversity of demands: “The time has come to bring down the dictator”; “government of shame”; “There is no democracy with the occupation “; “Bibi does not want democracy, we do not need fascists in the Knesset”; “Iran is here”; and “You will love the other as yourself”.

Rain started early Saturday evening, raising worries that the weather could affect attendance, but opposition leaders called on protesters to come out despite the wet conditions.

“Everyone should take an Israel flag in one hand, an umbrella in the second and come to defend democracy and the law in Israel,” former Defence Minister Benny Gantz said on Twitter on Saturday ahead of his arrival at Habima square.

Many did just that, as images show blocks of demonstrators carrying overlapping umbrellas, creating a cover that obscured the people huddled beneath them.

Netanyahu is the first sitting Israeli prime minister indicted while in office. He denies the charges against him of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He took office late last month following his 1 November election win, heading a coalition that includes a politician who last year admitted tax evasion and a clutch of far-right personalities, including one who once kept a portrait in his home of a man who massacred scores of Palestinian worshippers.

Last week, the new national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, ordered the state’s police commissioner to enforce a directive to remove Palestinian flags from public spaces a day after one was waved at a previous anti-government protest in Tel Aviv.

Despite the order, several Palestinian flags were spotted during Saturday’s demonstration in the coastal city.

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Featured image: Israeli protesters demonstrate in Tel Aviv against the country’s new hard-right government – JACK GUEZ via Al-Monitor

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***

The UK has planned or executed over 40 attempts to remove foreign governments in 27 countries since the end of the Second World War, involving the intelligence agencies, covert and overt military interventions and assassinations, Declassified has found.

Probably the most well-known coup staged by British intelligence since 1945 was the overthrow of Iran’s democratically-elected government in 1953 – an operation planned with the CIA. But the UK has been involved in at least 41 other attempts to overthrow governments since the end of the Second World War.

These have ranged from intelligence-led to military-led operations, both overt and covert, with some being successful from Whitehall’s standpoint, while many have failed to achieve their objectives.

Many remain little known, while others are shrouded in secrecy, with only a few details having emerged.

The year 1953 was in fact a busy one for Whitehall planners since, as well as removing Mohammed Mossadeq in Iran, they sent a gunboat to overthrow the democratically-elected government in British Guiana, led by the popular nationalist Cheddi Jagan.

At the same time, they were promoting anti-government propaganda operations in another Latin American state, Guatemala. That British campaign prepared the ground for the 1954 CIA-engineered overthrow of another nationalist, and elected government, under Jacobo Arbenz.

As if this wasn’t enough, UK covert operatives were also busy at the time planning the removal and assassination of Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser, in various schemes after Nasser took power in a 1952 nationalist revolution.

Nasser’s assumption to power challenged Britain’s position in the Middle East and the stability of the repressive, conservative monarchies – many of them near-medieval in nature – that Whitehall, then and now, was propping up, especially in the Gulf region.

Indeed, it was such nationalist forces that were the UK’s main enemies in the so-called ‘third world’ after 1945, even as mainstream journalists and academics endlessly wrote about the Soviet threat and the Cold War.

Click here to view the interactive map

Relentless planning

In the 1950s, British regime change planning was relentless, with further known operations drawn up to promote uprisings against nationalist governments in Syria in 1956 and in 1957, neither of which were fully implemented.

One plan that was put into effect, however, was the covert war instigated with the US in Indonesia – intended to stimulate an uprising against President Sukarno, beginning in the country’s myriad outer islands. It remains one of the UK’s least known covert operations, and eventually failed.

Sukarno was overthrown a decade later, however, in one of the 20th century’s worst bloodbaths, enacted by the Indonesian military under General Suharto. The declassified files show the UK backed the 1965/66 slaughters of communists, leftists and ordinary villagers, which killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The UK conducted media operations to counter Sukarno and delivered covert messages to the Generals assuring them of the UK’s acquiescence in their takeover. Suharto ruled Indonesia, often resorting to sheer brutality, for three decades.

Ruling the world?

Throughout the 1960s there was little let-up in Whitehall officials’ belief they could put in power whoever they wanted, at least in certain countries.

In 1961, evidence suggests that they had a hand in the murder of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically-elected leader who was subject to a vicious MI6 and CIA campaign to overthrow him before he was captured and tortured.

Media operations by the Foreign Office’s notorious Information Research Department – a propaganda unit set up in 1948 – also helped overthrow Brazil’s João Goulart in 1964. His programme of ambitious land reform and extending the vote to Brazil’s illiterate population incensed the country’s political, military, and business elite – and the CIA which eventually helped remove him.

By now, Britain was making sure that Cheddi Jagan – who had made a comeback after being removed ten years earlier – could not consolidate his power in British Guiana, as officials rigged the system in a constitutional coup to ensure he could not be elected again.

The mid-1960s was also an era of palace coups in the UK’s client states in the Gulf region.

In 1964, British military officers based in Saudi Arabia, who were advising the Saudi National Guard, helped Prince Faisal remove his older brother, King Saud. The following year, the British sponsored the removal of the ruler of the emirate of Sharjah – Saqr bin Sultan al-Qasimi – in favour of another – Khalid bin Mohammed Al Kasimi.

Then in the following year, they conducted a similar exercise in another emirate, Abu Dhabi, again replacing its ruler with his brother – Zayed bin Sultan Al Nayhan, the father of the current president of the United Arab Emirates.

In 1970 came a coup in another closely-controlled British puppet state – Oman – that was organised by British officers. It put in power Sultan Qaboos, who ruled with an iron fist for a further 50 years until his death in 2020.

Click here to read the entire list

Assassinating Gaddafi – and a few others

Almost as soon as Muammar Gaddafi seized power in a military coup in Libya in 1969, nationalising British oil operations, Britain tried to remove him. First came a planneduprising and coup in 1970-71, which was not, however, carried out.

Over a decade later, the UK offered its air bases to US warplanes conducting airstrikes on Tripoli, Libya’s capital, that targeted Gaddafi’s compound, killing a few dozen people but not him.

Britain tried again 10 years later, in 1996, when MI6 secretly funded Islamist militants to assassinate Gaddafi in the city of Sirte, an operation that again killed bystanders but not the Libyan ruler.

In 2011, Britain got him, launching a major air campaign and covert support to Islamist militants on the ground to finally overthrow the regime, with Gaddafi being killed in October of that year.

However, it wasn’t only Gaddafi, Nasser and Lumumba who are believed to have been targeted for assassination, according to evidence that has emerged. Former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson alleged that MI6 drew up plans to kill Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in 1992.

Then there is Uganda. In 1969, it has been contended that the UK planned the assassination of President Milton Obote – who Britain confronted because of his nationalist economic policies and his opposition to apartheid South Africa.

In the mid-1970s, prime minister Harold Wilson proposed assassinating the murderous Idi Amin, Obote’s successor. By the late 1970s, foreign secretary David Owen said that he also proposed assassinating Amin, who eventually lived out his days in exile in Saudi Arabia.

More coups

Throughout the decades of trying to liquidate Gaddafi and others, Britain instigated other operations to remove governments, about most of which little information has emerged and which remain murky.

While Africa, Asia and Latin America were the main chessboard for British planners, Europe was not off the agenda. In 1976, evidence points to British involvement in a coup plot to topple the government in Italy, at a time when the Italian Communist Party (PCI) looked as if it might win or influence the next government.

Reports also suggest MI6 was involved in two coups in Azerbaijan, in 1992 and 1993, to promote British – specifically BP’s – oil interests in the country. Few details are known about these episodes. One of the later media reports detailing the operations was pulled, presumably the impact of a government D-Notice, and little has emerged since.

In the past decade, UK covert operatives have remained active in attempting to remove governments. Bashar Assad of Syria has been the target of a years-long British operation to train and support the armed opposition, and to promote media and aid operations in support of regime change.

In Latin America, Declassified has revealed that the British ambassador supported the right wing coup against President Evo Morales in 2019, and that the UK’s interests in securing access to lithium played a key role.

In Venezuela, the UK, along with several other Western countries, recognised an alternative government to Nicolas Maduro in 2019, backing Juan Guaido as ‘interim president’. Britain has also recently promoted media and NGO projects to back the Venezuelan opposition.

This has joined the ranks of failed UK regime change operations, since in early 2023, Guaido was forced to quit when Venezuela’s Congress dissolved his ‘government’.

Welcoming overthrows

This list of coups and overthrows is an emerging one – further examples and details will no doubt trickle out in the future. What this list does not include are those coups that the UK welcomed but did not play a direct part in, as far as is known.

For example, the declassified files show the British government strongly welcomed the bloody coup led by General Augusto Pinochet that overthrew Chile’s democratically-elected Salvador Allende in 1973.

British officials also gave strong support to Idi Amin when he seized power in Uganda in 1971, and may have had a hand in his takeover, after long wanting to oust his predecessor, Obote.

The following decade, Margaret Thatcher’s government strongly supported the US invasion of Panama in 1989, intended to overthrow Manuel Noriega. She also – reluctantly at first – publicly backed Washington’s intervention in Grenada in 1983, which removed the government of Maurice Bishop, who was subsequently executed.

Malign, benign

Some of the British interventions have been against repressive, malign forces. In the early postwar years, the covert operations in Ukraine and the Baltic states were intended to promote uprisings against Stalin’s brutal emerging rule.

Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, another consistent British target from the 1990s, was a monster. But he began being a monster in the 1980s when the UK armed and traded with him to fight Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran in the Iran-Iraq war.

Libya’s Gaddafi was hardly benign but his tyranny, which brought development to many in Libya, might seem positive compared to the terrorism, anarchy and ongoing war following the British intervention in 2011.

But many British coups have specifically targeted progressive, popular forces – deliberately to remove them in favour of governments promoting British and Western economic interests.

Mossadeq’s nascent democracy was overthrown for the benefit of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Corporation, a forerunner of BP. Cheddi Jagan’s government was removed because his economic policies, that benefitted Guyana’s poor, threatened British sugar and bauxite interests.

Lumumba, Arbenz and Goulart were others that presented a leftist development model as an alternative to pro-corporate policies promoted in London and Washington, that offered positive prospects for the millions of poor people in the developing world.

It was largely for this reason that they became victims of British, and American, power.

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Mark Curtis is the editor of Declassified UK, and the author of five books and many articles on UK foreign policy.

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***

Today Judge Gerard J. Neri ruled the covid vaccine mandate for New York healthcare workers implemented by Governor Kathy Hochul is arbitrary, capricious, null & void, and cannot be enforced.

This means the Healthcare workers should be reinstated to their jobs!

However we can be pretty sure that Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Tish James will be appealing this decision which may pause the ruling from taking effect until the appeal was decided.

Judge Neri repeatedly states that the covid vaccine does not prevent transmission and therefore does not serve the purpose put forth by the state. Attorney Sujata Gibson is also my attorney, and the lead attorney in Kane v. de Blasio as well as New Yorkers for Religious Liberty (NYFRL) v. NYC. All of these cases are backed by Children’s Health Defense.

This victory is a very good sign for teachers and educators who have been fired for declining covid vaccination, as it is also a good sign for all fired frontline workers as well.

Read Judge Neri’s decision here:

Click here to read the full document.

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Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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***

The dirty bomb and its purportedly famed radiation dispersal attributes has an undeserved mythology.  It serves to bloat budgets and confer grants on specious theories propounded by specious theorists. It is all rather easy to make a security threat up, and a celluloid, Hollywood scenario of a dirty bomb going off in the middle of a metropolis killing thousands is just one of those instances.  Scaring people is child’s play and often the work of the unscrupulous.

This month, it was announced that staff at London’s Heathrow airport, where the appearance of snowflakes is enough to cancel flights, encountered what was alleged to be cargo contaminated by uranium on December 29.  The Sun was the first paper to scream from the rooftops about a “Deadly shipment of uranium seized at Heathrow en route to Iranians based in UK”.  The paper went on to suggest that the material in question “can be used in a dirty bomb.”  In the narrative, all the appropriate countries were mentioned: dark origins in Pakistan; arrival on a flight from Oman; destination: UK-based nationals from Iran.

The relevant authorities were also involved.  Border Force agents “swooped and isolated the unregistered shipment in a dedicated radioactive room.”  Counter-terrorism police “were alerted and a security probe launched into who sent the cargo.” An unnamed source excitedly told The Sun that relevant security bosses “are treating this with the seriousness it deserves.  Protocol was not followed and this is now an anti-terror operation.”

The Met Police issued a statement on January 10 confirming that “officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command were contacted by Border Force colleagues at Heathrow after a very small amount of contaminated material was identified after routine screening within a package incoming to the UK on December 29.”

The Daily Mail went so far as to describe the quantity as being all uranium, running into “several kilos”.  An unspecified source told the paper that, “The package contained kilos of uranium – but it was not weapons-grade.”  Never one to be troubled by the irritations of evidence, the Mail ignored the Met Police’s own description of the seized cargo as being contaminated material of a “very small amount”. The Guardian was more conservative in its assessment: the shipment consisted of “metal bars embedded with uranium.”

That such minute quantities were involved was also confirmed by the head of the Met’s SO15 counter-terror branch, Commander Richard Smith: “I want to reassure the public that the amount of contaminated material was extremely small and has been assessed by experts as posing no threat to the public.”

Commander Smith, to his credit, was not keen to nourish the tabloid fear machine.  “Although our investigation remains ongoing, from our inquiries so far, it does not appear to be linked to any direct threat.  As the public would expect, we will continue to follow up on all available lines of enquiry to ensure this is definitely the case.”

The security experts were immediately called in to sing for their ill-deserved supper. Will Geddes suggested that this was a “dry-run” operation, despite admitting that it was “speculation” on his part.  “If you are trying to move contraband through an environment like a drug dealer would, you may courier it through certain channels to see which ones work before moving larger amounts.”

Further speculation from Geddes followed.  “If the uranium is unrefined, it would be used in a nuclear facility, if it is refined it would be more likely to be used in a dirty bomb.  If it is refined, that would indicate a malicious device of some sort.”

Former commander of the UK’s nuclear defence regiment Hamish De Bretton-Gordon was troubled.  “For the uranium to turn up on a commercial airliner from Pakistan to an Iranian address in the UK is very suspect.”  He proceeded to add fuel to the fire.  “The nuclear threat has never been higher.  Higher than it has ever been in the Cold War.”

From the corridors of speculation, The Sun managed to pinch another opinion worthy of celebration by the jingoes, this time from an unnamed “former army chief”, who claimed that the “deadly shipment could have been used for a Litvinenko-style assassination plot.”

Despite the growing compendium of concerns, a more sensible undercurrent of opinion did suggest that the uranium in question was, in all likelihood, too bulky and ineffectual to be used in the making of a bomb device.  Bahram Ghiassee of the Henry Jackson Society, a neoconservative outfit not always known for its moderate stance, was critical of the news coverage suggesting that the bomb scenario was even plausible.  “For dirty bombs, you need highly radioactive material … and uranium is not suitable at all.”

It should have been also clear to the alarmists that detecting undeclared radioactive material at transport hubs and ports of entry are not infrequent occurrences, the UK being no exception.

Since the revelation, a man in his 60s has been arrested under section 9 of the Terrorism Act of 2006, which criminalises the possession of radioactive materials with the intent of using them for terrorism purposes.  He has been released on bail pending a hearing in April.  While such legal wheels turn, the yellow press merchants will continue to do their worst, inflating unnecessary threats, while ignoring others.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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***

The Shanghai “COVID Zero Tolerance Mandate”. Engineered Depression of China’s Economy?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 14, 2022

请将本文转发给中国读者。

***

首次发布于 2022 年 7 月 12 日

从 2022 年 3 月下旬开始，中国政府下令对拥有 2600 万人口的上海实施新冠疫情清零封锁：

“上海市政府发布的官方通告得到了中央政府的默许，但因其过于极端而招致许多批评的声音。从2022年3月28日起，针对新冠肺炎这种根本不存在的虚假疾病的疫情清零封锁首先在黄浦江东侧开始实施，随后在4月1日扩展到整个城市，所有公民都将接受新冠检测。据媒体报道，当时上海仅发现了 26087 例新增新冠肺炎病例，其中只有914例病例出现了症状……  （伊曼纽尔·帕斯特里奇）

 基于清零政策，上海开始实施封锁（几乎所有劳动力被限制在原地）：“为了对抗奥密克戎变异株……来自中国各地的至少38000名医务人员被派往上海支援医疗工作……”（环球时报）

奥密克戎成为流行语：奥密克戎变异株及其 BA.5 亚分支

中国卫生当局已确认“核酸（即 PCR）检测是其战略的核心”。中国国家卫生健康委员会主持成立了以梁万年博士为首的 Covid-19疫情应对处置工作领导小组。清零政策试图实现“中国击败奥密克戎变异株”的目标，其措施包括使用完全没有效力的核酸检测，这种测试并不能区分新冠肺炎和季节性流感。2021 年 12 月 31 日起，核酸检测被美国疾病控制与预防中心认定为完全无效。