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Starting January 2023, Harvard University is requiring all on-campus students to be vaccinated with the bivalent COVID-19 booster. 

In September statement, Harvard warned that

“[s]tudents must be compliant with all vaccine requirements in order to register for the spring term. This includes the annual flu shot as well as the bivalent Omicron-specific COVID-19 booster.”

In an October update to the university’s COVID-19 plan, the same policy was reiterated, this time with an instructional YouTube video featuring Suzanne Spreadbury, Dean of Academic Programs.

“Because I care about your health,” Spreadbury begins, holding her hands to her heart, “I want to walk you through the process for uploading your COVID-19 vaccination documentation if you plan to be on campus this upcoming semester.”

She continues,

“If you’re coming to campus, we are so excited to see you…Here is what you need to do within seven days of registering for a course with an on-campus presence. I know it’s fast, but you can do it.”

Once uploaded documentation is reviewed by a health services professional, it will be marked “as green, compliant, or red, not compliant,” Spreadbury emphasizes.

According to the CDC, the new booster is called “bivalent” because it “protect[s] against both the original virus that causes COVID-19 and the Omicron variant BA.4 and BA.5.”

“Previous boosters are called ‘monovalent’ because they were designed to protect against the original virus that causes COVID-19. They also provide some protection against Omicron, but not as much as the updated (bivalent) boosters,” it continues.

Harvard isn’t the only university imposing strict vaccine mandates on their students.

Campus Reform began reporting on which universities were mandating booster shots in late 2021, and has continued to follow school policies on the issue of vaccinations since.

This September, for example, Campus Reform reported on Susquehanna University’s double-standard for student and employee vaccination: While returning students were mandated to take the vaccine, it was only “strongly encouraged” for employees.

Campus Reform reached out to the Harvard University Health Services, Harvard’s media relations department, and Suzanne Spreadbury for comment. The article will update accordingly.

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Ava Sherwood Erculiani is a sophomore studying Biology and Political Science at Slippery Rock University. Where she is a student Senator as well as the president and founder of the American Conservation Coalition at Slippery Rock, a conservative environmentalist group.

Featured image is from Campus Reform

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Austria’s government is looking to ban the use of new fossil fuel heaters as of next year and replace very old oil and coal heaters with climate-friendly options by 2025, Euractiv reports.

Austria, like the other EU countries, aims to cut its reliance on Russian gas as soon as possible. The government says that abandoning Russian gas should happen simultaneously with adopting renewable heat options.

Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Austria received around 80% of the natural gas it consumed from Russia. As of August, this high dependence on Russian gas flows had dropped to below 50%, the government said.

The ban on new fossil fuel heaters, however, would need the approval of at least two-thirds of the Austrian Parliament because the draft bill would require amendments to the constitution, Euractiv’s Nikolaus Kurmayer notes.

“The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has shown how vulnerable our energy supply is. The answer to that can only be ‘get rid of Russian gas’,” Austria’s Energy and Climate Minister Leonore Gewessler said on Wednesday.

With the Renewable Heat Act (EWG), Austria is now taking another big step on this path, Gewessler added.

Under the new act, gas heaters cannot be installed in new buildings as of 2023, the minister said, adding that by 2040, Austria would switch all heaters in the country to climate-friendly alternatives, getting rid of oil and gas boilers, and moving to use heat pumps, district heating, or pellets.

Austria will support the proposed heaters switch program by making available around $1.95 billion (2 billion euros) by 2026, the minister said.

The Renewable Heat Act (Erneuerbaren-Wärme-Gesetz, EWG) says that fossil-fuel heating such as coal, oil, and gas heating should be phased out in Austria by 2040.

Presenting the initial draft of the bill, minister Gewessler said earlier this year that heating currently accounts for around one-quarter of Austria’s gas consumption.

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Michael Kern is a newswriter and editor at Safehaven.com and Oilprice.com.

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

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The United Nations General Assembly has voted for the 30th year to condemn the US blockade and in support for Cuba’s resolution calling for an end to the US governments unilateral sanctions against the country which have been in place for over 60 years.

The vote was 185:2 in favour of the Cuban motion with the US and Israel voting against and Brazil and Ukraine abstaining.

Speaker after speaker addressed the UNGA to condemn the US sanctions, Cuba’s continued inclusion on the US ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism List’, and to praise the island’s internationalism.

Permanent Representative of Saint Kitts and Nevis to the United Nations, Nerys Dockery, said that as her country’s youngest and first female representative says she owes her ability to deliver her speech to Cuba. Only five months ago she was facing losing her right eye, she said, but it was saved by a Cuban optician. She asked

“what justifies Cuba, a small Caribbean nation, which has such a disproportionately positive impact on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, and whose internationalism and humanitarianism has saved, impacted and empowered so many human lives. What justifies it continuing to be burdened and limited by an outdated embargo.”

The Peruvian representative said,

“Any measure that leads to adverse humanitarian consequences on the population by any state must be suspended immediately. The blockade violates the right to life and health of all the Cuban people.”

Closing his speech the Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez appealed:

“Let Cuba live in peace. Cuba would be better off without the blockade. Every Cuban family would be better off without the blockade. The US would be better off without the blockade.”

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Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia. Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances. This global fracture promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a unipolar U.S.-centered dollarized economy, or a multipolar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public/private economies.

President Biden has characterized this split as being between democracies and autocracies. The terminology is typical Orwellian double-speak. By “democracies” he means the U.S. and allied Western financial oligarchies. Their aim is to shift economic planning out of the hands of elected governments to Wall Street and other financial centers under U.S. control. U.S. diplomats use the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to demand privatization of the world’s infrastructure and dependency on U.S. technology, oil and food exports.

By “autocracy,” Biden means countries resisting this financialization and privatization takeover. In practice, U.S. rhetoric means promoting its own economic growth and living standards, keeping finance and banking as public utilities. What basically is a issue is whether economies will be planned by banking centers to create financial wealth – by privatizing basic infrastructure, public utilities and social services such as health care into monopolies – or by raising living standards and prosperity by keeping banking and money creation, public health, education, transportation and communications in public hands.

The country suffering the most “collateral damage” in this global fracture is Germany. As Europe’s most advanced industrial economy, Germany steel, chemicals, machinery, automotives and other consumer goods are the most highly dependent on imports of Russian gas, oil and metals from aluminum to titanium and palladium. Yet despite two Nord Stream pipelines built to provide Germany with low-priced energy, Germany has been told to cut itself off from Russian gas and de-industrialize. This means the end of its economic preeminence. The key to GDP growth in Germany, as in other countries, is energy consumption per worker.

Image is from PressTV

These anti-Russian sanctions make today’s New Cold War inherently anti-German. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that Germany should replace low-priced Russian pipeline gas with high-priced U.S. LNG gas. To import this gas, Germany will have to spend over $5 billion quickly to build port capacity to handle LNG tankers. The effect will be to make German industry uncompetitive. Bankruptcies will spread, employment will decline, and Germany’s pro-NATO leaders will impose a chronic depression and falling living standards.

Most political theory assumes that nations will act in their own self-interest. Otherwise they are satellite countries, not in control of their own fate. Germany is subordinating its industry and living standards to the dictates of U.S. diplomacy and the self-interest of America’s oil and gas sector. It is doing this voluntarily – not because of military force but out of an ideological belief that the world economy should be run by U.S. Cold War planners.

Sometimes it is easier to understand today’s dynamics by stepping away from one’s own immediate situation to look at historical examples of the kind of political diplomacy that one sees splitting today’s world. The closest parallel that I can find is medieval Europe’s fight by the Roman papacy against German kings – the Holy Roman Emperors – in the 13^th century. That conflict split Europe along lines much like those of today. A series of popes excommunicated Frederick II and other German kings and mobilized allies to fight against Germany and its control of southern Italy and Sicily.

Western antagonism against the East was incited by the Crusades (1095-1291), just as today’s Cold War is a crusade against economies threatening U.S. dominance of the world. The medieval war against Germany was over who should control Christian Europe: the papacy, with the popes becoming worldly emperors, or secular rulers of individual kingdoms by claiming the power to morally legitimize and accept them.

Medieval Europe’s analogue to America’s New Cold War against China and Russia was the Great Schism in 1054. Demanding unipolar control over Christendom, Leo IX excommunicated the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and the entire Christian population that belonged to it. A single bishopric, Rome, cut itself off from the entire Christian world of the time, including the ancient Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem.

This break-away created a political problem for Roman diplomacy: How to hold all the Western European kingdoms under its control and claim the right for financial subsidy from them. That aim required subordinating secular kings to papal religious authority. In 1074, Gregory VII, Hildebrand, announced 27 Papal Dictates outlining the administrative strategy for Rome to lock in its power over Europe.

These papal demands are strikingly parallel to today’s U.S. diplomacy. In both cases military and worldly interests require a sublimation in the form of an ideological crusading spirit to cement the sense of solidarity that any system of imperial domination requires. The logic is timeless and universal.

The Papal Dictates were radical in two major ways. First of all, they elevated the bishop of Rome above all other bishoprics, creating the modern papacy. Clause 3 ruled that the pope alone had the power of investiture to appoint bishops or to depose or reinstate them. Reinforcing this, Clause 25 gave the right of appointing (or deposing) bishops to the pope, not to local rulers. And Clause 12 gave the pope the right to depose emperors, following Clause 9, obliging “all princes to kiss the feet of the Pope alone” in order to be deemed legitimate rulers.

Likewise today, U.S. diplomats claim the right to name who should be recognized as a nation’s head of state. In 1953 they overthrew Iran’s elected leader and replaced him with the Shah’s military dictatorship. That principle gives U.S. diplomats the right to sponsor “color revolutions” for regime-change, such as their sponsorship of Latin American military dictatorships creating client oligarchies to serve U.S. corporate and financial interests. The 2014 coup in Ukraine and selection is just the latest exercise of this U.S. right to appoint and depose leaders.

Image is from Club Orlov

More recently, U.S. diplomats have appointed Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s head of state instead of its elected president, and turned over that country’s gold reserves to him. President Biden has insisted that Russia must remove Putin and put a more pro-U.S. leader in his place. This “right” to select heads of state has been a constant in U.S. policy spanning its long history of political meddling in European political affairs since World War II.

The second radical feature of the Papal Dictates was their exclusion of all ideology and policy that diverged from papal authority. Clause 2 stated that only the Pope could be called “Universal.” Any disagreement was, by definition, heretical. Clause 17 stated that no chapter or book could be considered canonical without papal authority.

A similar demand as is being made by today’s U.S.-sponsored ideology of financialized and privatized “free markets,” meaning deregulation of government power to shape economies in interests other than those of U.S.-centered financial and corporate elites.

The demand for universality in today’s New Cold War is cloaked in the language of “democracy.” But the definition of democracy in today’s New Cold War is simply “pro-U.S.,” and specifically neoliberal privatization as the U.S.-sponsored new economic religion. This ethic is deemed to be “science,” as in the quasi-Nobel Memorial Prize in the Economic Sciences. That is the modern euphemism for neoliberal Chicago-School junk economics, IMF austerity programs and tax favoritism for the wealthy.

The Papal Dictates spelt out a strategy for locking in unipolar control over secular realms. They asserted papal precedence over worldly kings, above all over Germany’s Holy Roman Emperors. Clause 26 gave popes authority to excommunicate whomever was “not at peace with the Roman Church.” That principle implied the concluding Claus 27, enabling the pope to “absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.” This encouraged the medieval version of “color revolutions” to bring about regime change.

What united countries in this solidarity was an antagonism to societies not subject to centralized papal control – the Moslem Infidels who held Jerusalem, and also the French Cathars and anyone else deemed to be a heretic. Above all there was hostility toward regions strong enough to resist papal demands for financial tribute.

Today’s counterpart to such ideological power to excommunicate heretics resisting demands for obedience and tribute would be the World Trade Organization, World Bank and IMF dictating economic practices and setting “conditionalities” for all member governments to follow, on pain of U.S. sanctions – the modern version of excommunication of countries not accepting U.S. suzerainty. Clause 19 of the Dictates ruled that the pope could be judged by no one – just as today, the United States refuses to subject its actions to rulings by the World Court. Likewise today, U.S. dictates via NATO and other arms (such as the IMF and World Bank) are expected to be followed by U.S. satellites without question. As Margaret Thatcher said of her neoliberal privatization that destroyed Britain’s public sector, There Is No Alternative (TINA).

My point is to emphasize the analogy with today’s U.S. sanctions against all countries not following its own diplomatic demands. Trade sanctions are a form of excommunication. They reverse the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia’s principle that made each country and its rulers independent from foreign meddling. President Biden characterizes U.S. interference as ensuring his new antithesis between “democracy” and “autocracy.” By democracy he means a client oligarchy under U.S. control, creating financial wealth by reducing living standards for labor, as opposed to mixed public/private economies aiming at promoting living standards and social solidarity.

As I have mentioned, by excommunicating the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and its Christian population, the Great Schism created the fateful religious dividing line that has split “the West” from the East for the past millennium. That split was so important that Vladimir Putin cited it as part of his September 30, 2022 speech describing today’s break away from the U.S. and NATO centered Western economies.

The 12^th and 13^th centuries saw Norman conquerors of England, France and other countries, along with German kings, protest repeatedly, be excommunicated repeatedly, yet ultimately succumb to papal demands. It took until the 16^th century for Martin Luther, Zwingli and Henry VIII finally to create a Protestant alternative to Rome, making Western Christianity multi-polar.

Why did it take so long? The answer is that the Crusades provided an organizing ideological gravity. That was the medieval analogy to today’s New Cold War between East and West. The Crusades created a spiritual focus of “moral reform” by mobilizing hatred against “the other” – the Moslem East, and increasingly Jews and European Christian dissenters from Roman control. That was the medieval analogy to today’s neoliberal “free market” doctrines of America’s financial oligarchy and its hostility to China, Russia and other nations not following that ideology. In today’s New Cold War, the West’s neoliberal ideology is mobilizing fear and hatred of “the other,” demonizing nations that follow an independent path as “autocratic regimes.” Outright racism is fostered toward entire peoples, as evident in the Russophobia and Cancel Culture currently sweeping the West.

Just as Western Christianity’s multi-polar transition required the 16^th century’s Protestant alternative, the Eurasian heartland’s break from the bank-centered NATO West must be consolidated by an alternative ideology regarding how to organize mixed public/private economies and their financial infrastructure.

Medieval churches in the West were drained of their alms and endowments to contribute Peter’s Pence and other subsidy to the papacy for the wars it was fighting against rulers who resisted papal demands. England played the role of major victim that Germany plays today. Enormous English taxes were levied ostensibly to finance the Crusades were diverted to fight Frederick II, Conrad and Manfred in Sicily. That diversion was financed by papal bankers from northern Italy (Lombards and Cahorsins), and became royal debts passed down throughout the economy. England’s barons waged a civil war against Henry II in the 1260s, ending his complicity in sacrificing the economy to papal demands.

What ended the papacy’s power over other countries was the ending of its war against the East. When the Crusaders lost Acre, the capital of Jerusalem in 1291, the papacy lost its control over Christendom. There was no more “evil” to fight, and the “good” had lost its center of gravity and coherence. In 1307, France’s Philip IV (“the Fair”) seized the Church’s great military banking order’s wealth, that of the Templars in the Paris Temple. Other rulers also nationalized the Templars, and monetary systems were taken out of the hands of the Church. Without a common enemy defined and mobilized by Rome, the papacy lost its unipolar ideological power over Western Europe.

The modern equivalent to the rejection of the Templars and papal finance would be for countries to withdraw from America’s New Cold War. They would reject the dollar standard and the U.S. banking and financial system. that is happening as more and more countries see Russia and China not as adversaries but as presenting great opportunities for mutual economic advantage.

The broken promise of mutual gain between Germany and Russia

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 promised an end to the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was disbanded, Germany was reunified, and American diplomats promised an end to NATO, because a Soviet military threat no longer existed. Russian leaders indulged in the hope that, as President Putin expressed it, a new pan-European economy would be created from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Germany in particular was expected to take the lead in investing in Russia and restructuring its industry along more efficient lines. Russia would pay for this technology transfer by supplying gas and oil, along with nickel, aluminum, titanium and palladium.

There was no anticipation that NATO would be expanded to threaten a New Cold War, much less that it would back Ukraine, recognized as the most corrupt kleptocracy in Europe, into being led by extremist parties identifying themselves by German Nazi insignia.

How do we explain why the seemingly logical potential of mutual gain between Western Europe and the former Soviet economies turned into a sponsorship of oligarchic kleptocracies. The Nord Stream pipeline’s destruction capsulizes the dynamics in a nutshell. For almost a decade a constant U.S. demand has been for Germany to reject its reliance on Russian energy. These demands were opposed by Gerhardt Schroeder, Angela Merkel and German business leaders. They pointed to the obvious economic logic of mutual trade of German manufactures for Russian raw materials.

Image is from InfoBrics

The U.S. problem was how to stop Germany from approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Victoria Nuland, President Biden and other U.S. diplomats demonstrated that the way to do that was to incite a hatred of Russia. The New Cold War was framed as a new Crusade. That was how George W. Bush had described America’s attack on Iraq to seize its oil wells. The U.S.-sponsored 2014 coup created a puppet Ukrainian regime that has spent eight years bombing of the Russian-speaking Eastern provinces. NATO thus incited a Russian military response. The incitement was successful, and the desired Russian response was duly labeled an unprovoked atrocity. Its protection of civilians was depicted in the NATO-sponsored media as being so offensive as to deserve the trade and investment sanctions that have been imposed since February. That is what a Crusade means.

The result is that the world is splitting in two camps: the U.S.-centered NATO, and the emerging Eurasian coalition. One byproduct of this dynamic has been to leave Germany unable to pursue the economic policy of mutually advantageous trade and investment relations with Russia (and perhaps also China). German Chancellor Olaf Sholz is going to China this week to demand that it dismantle is public sector and stops subsidizing its economy, or else Germany and Europe will impose sanctions on trade with China. There is no way that China could meet this ridiculous demand, any more than the United States or any other industrial economy would stop subsidizing their own computer-chip and other key sectors.¹ The German Council on Foreign Relations is a neoliberal “libertarian” arm of NATO demanding German de-industrialization and dependency on the United States for its trade, not China, Russia or their allies. This promises to be the final nail in Germany’s economic coffin.

Another byproduct o America’s New Cold War has been to end any international plan to stem global warming. A keystone of U.S. economic diplomacy is for its oil companies and those of its NATO allies to control the world’s oil and gas supply – that is, to reduce dependence on carbon-based fuels. That is what the NATO war in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine was about. It is not as abstract as “Democracies vs. Autocracies.” It is about the U.S. ability to harm other countries by disrupting their access to energy and other basic needs.

Without the New Cold War’s “good vs. evil” narrative, U.S. sanctions will lose their raison d’etre in this U.S. attack on environmental protection, and on mutual trade between Western Europe and Russia and China. That is the context for today’s fight in Ukraine, which is to be merely the first step in the anticipated 20 year fight by the US to prevent the world from becoming multipolar. This process, will lock Germany and Europe into dependence on the U.S. supplies of LNG.

The trick is to try and convince Germany that it is dependent on the United States for its military security. What Germany really needs protection from is the U.S. war against China and Russia that is marginalizing and “Ukrainianizing” Europe.

There have been no calls by Western governments for a negotiated end to this war, because no war has been declared in Ukraine. The United States does not declare war anywhere, because that would require a Congressional declaration under the U.S. Constitution. So U.S. and NATO armies bomb, organize color revolutions, meddle in domestic politics (rendering the 1648 Westphalia agreements obsolete), and impose the sanctions that are tearing Germany and its European neighbors apart.

How can negotiations “end” a war that either has no declaration of war, and is a long-term strategy of total unipolar world domination?

The answer is that no ending can come until an alternative to the present U.S.-centered set of international institutions is replaced. That requires the creation of new institutions reflecting an alternative to the neoliberal bank-centered view that economies should be privatized with central planning by financial centers. Rosa Luxemburg characterized the choice as being between socialism and barbarism. I have sketched out the political dynamics of an alternative in my recent book, The Destiny of Civilization.

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Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the author of Killing the Host (published in e-format by CounterPunch Books and in print by Islet). His new book is J is For Junk Economics.

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One hundred years ago, in October 1922, Benito Mussolini’s paramilitary blackshirts marched on the Italian capital to demand the dissolution of the government of Prime Minister Luigi Facta. The March on Rome is the foundational myth of fascist power. Through this daring act, so the story goes, the strongman Mussolini installed himself as head of the Italian government.

Yet the march itself was a farce. Mussolini’s fascist forces numbered only a few thousand and, armed mostly with sticks, were scattered and bogged down in mud and rain. They were vastly outnumbered and outgunned by government troops in the capital. And Mussolini, the “man on horseback” himself, hid in a barricaded office near the Swiss border.

Despite the obvious weakness of the fascists, the government mounted only symbolic resistance to the coup. “Everybody knew perfectly well that the troops would refuse to take any forcible action whatever against the Fascisti, with whom they were in sympathy”, the British ambassador observed. Less than 24 hours later, King Victor Emanuele appointed Mussolini prime minister. When the new dictator’s troops finally reached Rome, they entered in a victory parade.

For all the theatrics of the March on Rome, Mussolini didn’t take power against the will of the ruling class, but with its blessing. The fascists’ road to power was paved by tolerance, the outright collaboration of the police and politicians, and lavish financial backing from industrialists. The Italian ruling class welcomed Mussolini because its members viewed the fascists as a solution to several years of crisis and class struggle that had put in question their own rule.

The First World War had turned the country into a tinderbox. Nearly 6 million Italians had been drafted, 600,000 killed and 700,000 permanently disabled. Peasant conscripts returned from the fronts radicalised. Factory workers chafed against the establishment of martial law in their workplaces. The 1917 Russian Revolution provided radicalising workers with a practical example to follow: topple the capitalist system to end the barbarity of war. During the movement’s height, the Biennio Rosso (Two Red Years) of 1919-20, workers launched a decisive struggle to wrest control over Italy from the ruling class. At the same time, peasants seized the land and began forcing massive concessions from large landowners. Civil war seemed imminent.

The social crisis also produced the right-wing radicalisation that gave birth to fascism. Benito Mussolini, a prominent figure in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), shocked his comrades by declaring in favour of the country’s entry into the war. A meeting of PSI members drove Mussolini out, spitting on him and calling him a traitor.

In November 1914, Mussolini founded a new right-wing daily newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia (The People of Italy), with the backing of Italian industrialists and French imperialism. In these pages, his new ideas took form. Il Popolo trumpeted support for the war and hostility to all forces, such as the socialist movement, that had the potential to disrupt it. Mussolini quickly began drawing the conclusion that democracy itself was holding the country back from achieving its destiny—he would eventually describe fascism as “supreme anti-democracy”.

The movement was a new form of reactionary politics. Instead of relying on sections of the ruling class and state, Mussolini created a mass popular movement in defence of the capitalist order. Fascism’s method was political violence; its ultimate objective was, as Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky described, “to smash the working class, destroy its organisations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery”. Mussolini brought together different disaffected layers of society to this end: bitter war-hardened veterans, middle-class youth who revelled in political violence and the despairing long-term unemployed. The project won him support from British government agents, who sponsored the fascist movement after Mussolini explained: “I will mobilise the mutilati [disabled ex-soldiers] in Milan, and they will break the heads of any pacifists who try to hold anti-war meetings in the streets”.

In April 1919, the fascists launched their first major attack on the left, burning down the headquarters of the Socialist daily newspaper Avanti! (Forward!). Police stood aside as the fascist gang murdered three socialists. But while the workers’ and peasants’ movements were still on the offensive, and Italy was caught in “strike frenzy”, the fascists were hesitant to confront the workers’ movement in its metropolitan centres of power in the industrial north. They instead built their base in rural areas, such as the Po Valley, where landowners hired them to terrorise peasant organisations.

The wave of struggle reached its peak in September 1920, when half a million armed workers in the industrial north occupied their factories. Many workers saw this as the final struggle to expropriate their bosses and begin the construction of a socialist society. Speaking at a workers’ occupation of FIAT (the Italian Automobiles Factory of Turin), Antonio Gramsci, a revolutionary Marxist, underlined the historic nature of the events: “Social hierarchies have been smashed and historical values turned upside down”. The head of FIAT was so despondent that he offered to hand his factories over to the workers.

But the Italian Socialist Party blinked at the opportunity to lead a struggle for power. Its leadership was paralysed by divisions between revolutionaries who wanted to topple the capitalist system and reformists who wanted a share of power within it. In the end, they compromised with the bosses, extracting a few concessions and agreeing to end the occupations.

While the September factory struggles formally ended in a stalemate, the capitalists immediately sought revenge on the workers’ movement. As the French anarchist Daniel Guérin wrote, they “felt the chill of expropriation pass over them” and wasted no time re-establishing their dominance. In early 1921, unemployment rose dramatically and the strike rate plummeted. Capitalists banded together in new industrial and agricultural federations to coordinate their assault. They also started to give serious backing to the fascist movement. In spring, Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti endorsed fascist candidates as part of a national bloc, helping 30 of them get elected. Large amounts of money began flowing to Mussolini’s organisation.

The fascists were carrying out an orgy of violence against the left. In six months, they ransacked 119 trades council branches, 107 cooperatives, 100 workers’ cultural centres and 28 union branches. Dozens of left-wing militants were murdered. The state rapidly ceded power to the blackshirts—as they marched through town after town, military arsenals were handed to them.

Given the profound threat that fascist violence posed to the organisations of the workers’ movement, it is remarkable that neither of the main left parties waged a consistent fight against Mussolini’s gangs.

The Italian Communist Party (PCI) was formed at the beginning of 1921 by activists repulsed by the Socialist Party’s repeated betrayals. The undisputed head of the PCI was Amadeo Bordiga, an energetic and charismatic revolutionary who had organised the opposition to the Socialist Party’s reformist leadership. Bordiga rightly condemned the electoral obsession of the Socialist Party, which subordinated workers’ struggle to winning seats in parliament. But he went too far, dismissing any distinction between capitalist democracy and fascist dictatorship, and systematically underplaying the threat fascists posed to democratic rights, arguing that they would be no different to any other capitalist government:

“Fascism incorporates the counter-revolutionary struggle of all the allied bourgeois forces, and, for this reason, it is by no means necessarily compelled to destroy the democratic institutions. From our Marxist point of view, this situation is by no means paradoxical, because we know that the democratic system is only a collection of deceptive guarantees, behind which the ruling class conducts its battle against the working class.”

At other times, he implied that the victory of fascist dictatorship would actually be an advance for the workers’ movement because it would destroy illusions in capitalist democracy. “So the fascists want to burn down the parliamentary circus? We’d love to see the day”, he wrote in July 1922, just months before Mussolini’s victory. “The main danger is, and remains, that everyone agrees that the apple cart isn’t overturned, and that a legal and parliamentary solution is found.” This perspective ignored the fact that democratic rights are vital for the workers’ movement. The right to form unions and political organisations, which are the basis for developing workers’ social power, was precisely what the fascists wanted to destroy.

The response of the Socialist Party, which still commanded the loyalty of most organised workers, was equally dismal. It was still divided between “maximalists” who mouthed revolutionary rhetoric, and reformist parliamentarians and union leaders. The reformists set the tone of the party’s response to fascism, arguing that the institutions of the capitalist state would defend democracy and protect the working class from fascist attacks. Reformist leader Giacomo Matteotti spoke in parliament urging passivity: “Stay home! Do not respond to provocations. Even silence, even cowardice, are sometimes heroic”.

There was, however, one popular organisation that understood the need to unite masses of people in practical resistance to the physical threat of fascism: the Arditi del Popolo (The People’s Daring Ones). This organisation arose out of associations of the war veterans, who had returned to Italy from the front deeply politically polarised. While some joined the fascists, many turned to the left, and pledged to use their military experience to obstruct the advance of the blackshirts.

In July 1921, the organisation held its first national rally in Rome. Three thousand armed Arditi led a march of 50,000 striking workers from different political and union organisations. The demonstration called for the disarming of the fascists. In August 1922, they repelled an armed attack by 20,000 fascists on the left-wing stronghold of Parma. As an Arditi leader later recalled:

“Working-class people took to the streets—as bold as the waters of a river which is bursting its banks. With their shovels, pick-axes, iron bars and all sorts of tools, they helped the Arditi del Popolo to dig up the cobblestones and tram tracks, to dig trenches, and to erect barricades using carts, benches, timber, iron girders and anything else they could get their hands on. Men, women, old people, young people from all parties and from no party at all were all there, united in a single iron will: resist and fight.”

Just ten weeks after his forces were defeated in Parma, however, Mussolini was in power. He later admitted that, had the tactics used by the left in Parma been replicated across the country, the success of his movement would have been thrown into question.

Despite its initial strength, the Arditi del Popolo was quickly isolated. This was primarily because the main workers’ parties disgracefully abandoned it. While many rank-and-file Communist Party members naturally understood the importance of defending democratic rights, and gravitated toward the Arditi, the party leaders around Bordiga had other ideas. They declared: “We can only deplore the fact that Communists have been in contact with the people in Rome who initiated the Arditi del Popolo, offering to work with them and follow their instructions. If such actions are repeated, the most severe measures will be taken”.

Bordiga had a sterile and sectarian approach to revolutionary politics. Rather than attempting to convince masses of workers of the necessity of revolution by fighting alongside them, he believed it was necessary to build a party of the “pure and hard” that strictly separated itself from every other institution and waited patiently for the masses to come and join it.

The PSI, on the other hand, clung to the idea that appealing to “legality” would save it, and signed a disgusting “peace pact” with Mussolini. This meant disavowing any support for the actions of the Arditi. Ultimately, the tragedy of Mussolini’s rise is not only that the working class was defeated, but that it was beaten without a real fight. There was no lack of will to confront the barbarity of the fascists, but workers were misled and disoriented by the leaders of their organisations.

The ruling class thought that it could use the fascists as a battering ram against the workers’ movement, and then incorporate them into the political system. The Liberal prime minister believed that, in power, Mussolini would behave like any other conservative politician. But Mussolini’s project radicalised as he consolidated control over the state. Political assassinations of socialists and other dissenters increased. Within three years, Mussolini had banned all political opposition, dissolved the trade unions and consolidated the world’s first fascist regime.

A century on from the March on Rome, new fascist and far-right forces are assembling. Again, the global ruling classes are showing that they are perfectly willing to deal with them as long as it’s good for business. The red carpet has been rolled out for Giorgia Meloni, a fascist Mussolini admirer, to form a new government in Italy. Far-right regimes have been normalised from India to Brazil.

The experience of Mussolini’s rise holds important lessons for socialists. Perhaps the greatest lesson, obscured by most conventional accounts of the March on Rome, is that Mussolini could have been stopped. Had the workers’ movement been united to confront the fascists, as it did in Parma, one of the darkest and most brutal chapters of European history might have been avoided.

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***

The Russian-American summit meetings have a history of calibrated foreplay. As the G20 summit in Bali on November 15-16 draws closer, the big question is still hanging in the air: Will there be a meeting between the US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the event? 

From the look of it, a meeting cannot be ruled out. It increasingly seems that the scheduling of such a meeting may even be  under discussion between Washington and Moscow.   

On Wednesday afternoon, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow that Putin had a call with Indonesian President Joko Widodo (who is hosting the G20 summit.) 

Parrying questions, Peskov cryptically added that “we are currently working on a statement” and declined to answer if Putin and Widodo had discussed the Russian president’s possible participation in the G20 summit. Instead, he simply told reporters to wait for an official statement on the phone call. 

The Russian-American meetings at the highest level are customarily announced simultaneously in the two capitals. The delay in the release of the statement that Peskov referred to can only be taken to mean that consultations are still going on. 

A readout drafted by a Kremlin official would have served the purpose in the normal course on the phone conversation between Putin and Widodo, but in this case, there has been an undue delay while a statement is still under preparation. Given the state of relations between the US and Russia, a unilateral announcement of a Biden-Putin meeting by either side is simply inconceivable. 

Then there are discernible signs that both sides are striving to lower the tensions as much as they can so as to create a “cordial” enough atmosphere. Thus, from the American side, the White House spokesman John Kirby went on record yesterday to categorically state that the US does not see any signs that Russia is making preparations to use nuclear weapons. 

From the Russian side too, it is apparent that Moscow has virtually ignored the media leaks in the US that American military personnel are on Ukrainian soil on a mission to audit the weaponry given to Kiev to fight the war with the Russian forces. The US has a record of staying put in foreign countries and Moscow is in all likelihood conscious of that. Yet, it is keeping mum. 

Again, on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Ministry issued an important statement proposing out of the blue that the atomic powers should “demonstrate in practice” their own commitment to the principle that a nuclear war can never be won and should never be fought as well as “abandon dangerous attempts to infringe on each other’s vital interests, balancing on the brink of direct armed conflict and encouraging provocations with WMD, which can lead to catastrophic consequences.” 

The statement reaffirmed categorically that “Use of nuclear weapons by Russia is hypothetically allowed only in response to aggression carried out with the use of WMDs, or aggression with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is threatened.” 

Interestingly, the IAEA inspectors on a mission to Ukraine have given a clean chit to Kiev on Wednesday regrading the latter’s “undeclared nuclear activities and materials.” This followed Moscow’s recent allegation that Kiev was working on a “dirty bomb.” 

Clearly, there will be no need now for Biden and Putin to squander away their time discussing the spectre of Armageddon if they meet in Bali.

Today, again, Moscow and Kiev conducted a second major prisoner swap in under a week. 

Meanwhile, Russia has returned to the UN-brokered grain deal to facilitate the transportation of Ukraine’s produce to the world market. Of course, this followed written guarantee from Kiev that the humanitarian corridor will not be used for military purposes. Foreign Minister Lavrov, in turn, expressed appreciation that such an assurance has been held out by Kiev. 

Neither Moscow nor Washington has shown any inclination to dial up tensions over the Russian allegation regarding the involvement of British intelligence in the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and the drone attack on the Russian naval base at Sevastopol. 

Curiously, Washington has been somewhat indifferent washing its hands off the entire unsavoury episode involving Britain, while the Russian demarche with the UK ambassador today suggested good behaviour by the British intelligence in future and hinted at a desire to move on. Indeed, Russia is not contemplating any retaliation against the UK. 

Quite obviously, if a Biden-Putin meeting indeed takes place, the discussion will be largely devoted to the Ukraine situation. Significantly, the deputy head of the Russian presidential administration Magomedsalam Magomedov said today at a public function in Moscow that Putin’s decision to launch the special military operation in Ukraine was not an easy one but he had no other choice given existing dangers.  

That said, if a meeting between Biden and Putin were to take place, that would create a piquant situation insofar as the stated American position all along has been that the US will not discuss Ukraine with Russia without President Zelensky’s participation. 

However, on his part, Zelensky said today that Ukraine will not participate in the upcoming G20 summit if Putin also attends the event. He sounded wary of being left out. One possible way out of the labyrinth would be that Putin also meets Zelensky at Bali. Perhaps, that is precisely what the wily TV actor himself has in mind.  

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The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has voted down a Russian proposal to establish a commission to investigate claims of a joint US-Ukraine “military biological” program.

Going back to at least March, Moscow has alleged Ukrainian biolabs have been studying and stockpiling deadly pathogens like anthrax and cholera at US-sponsored labs, saying further this is a violation of the 1972 international convention on biological weapons.

At Wednesday’s security council vote, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the United States and its ally the Ukrainian government have been “through Russia’s allegations in Geneva, point by point, and debunked every single one.”

US, Britain, and France voted against Russia’s proposal – but crucially China backed it, while ten rotating council members abstained, among the 15-nation body.

“The United States does not have a biological weapons program. There are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States,” Thomas-Greenfield countered.

Instead of military biolabs, Washington has presented the following narrative on its program in Ukraine:

During a series of U.N. meetings prompted by the Russian allegations, the U.S. has described the non-military biological labs it has supported in Ukraine since the 1990’s, including one called the “Biological Threat Reduction Program” that was created to disassemble the former Soviet Union’s programs, to “reduce legacy threats from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons left in the Soviet Union’s successor states.”

One key facility that Russian allegations have long focused on remains the Virology Reference Laboratory in Kiev. The lab says they get regularly inspected by a World Health Organization team, and further that after the Russian invasion started, and bombs started falling, they destroyed “particularly dangerous biological strains they had in storage,” according to the lab’s director as quoted in CBS.

Russia and China have pointed out that Congressional testimony from earlier in the war by US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland was particularly damning and is confirmation that US-backed research into deadly pathogens at Ukrainian facilities was happening.

Daily reminder that yes, Victoria Nuland actually said all these things about biolabs pic.twitter.com/5Otnh90vPa

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) March 22, 2022

As for China, during the same month that Nuland gave her testimony (in March), Beijing demanded that the Biden administration “give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification.”

In response, the US has consistently rejected the allegations as a “conspiracy theory” with US officials meeting with Chinese counterparts in Rome at a previous bilateral meeting being “shocked” at the assertions.

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***

Whichever of these three courses of action they choose to go through with, there’s no denying that the strategic inertia is decisively against The Establishment’s elite echelons, who already lost their Hybrid War/Fifth Generational War (5GW) against the Pakistani people. They can either go with the flow by finally allowing the masses to democratically choose their leader, or temporarily delay this inevitability by continuing to conspire against them or even literally risking a civil conflict by directly attacking them.

State-Sponsored Threats

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was ousted through a US-orchestrated post-modern coup in early spring as punishment for his independent foreign policy, narrowly survived an assassination attempt on Thursday. He was leading his promised Long March from Lahore to Islamabad along with thousands of his supporters to demand free and fair elections as early as possible. Prior to the former premier setting off, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah threatened to “hang him upside down.”

Defaming The Former Premier

It’s little wonder then that the most popular political figure in Pakistan, whose party continues to sweep every by-election that they’ve participated in since April, blamed Sanaullah, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and Chief of ISI’s Counter-Intelligence Major General Faisal Naseer for trying to kill him. The first already telegraphed his intentions in the prior example and others, the second has an obvious stake in stopping his opponent, and the third was evidently ordered to carry out this dirty deed.

Outside observers might wonder why the head of the country’s counter-intelligence would be tasked with this but it actually makes sense from the perspective through which The Establishment – which is Pakistani parlance for this state’s powerful military-intelligence services – regards the former premier. The weaponized information warfare narrative that its elite echelons have encouraged their media and political proxies to gaslight the public into believing over the past half-year is that he’s a “terrorist”.

After all, Imran Khan was ridiculously charged under the country’s “Anti-Terrorism Act” after announcing his intent to file court cases against those officials who he alleged had abused one of his top aides in custody. The Establishment’s elite echelons have attempted to frame the former premier as a so-called “anti-state extremist” who’s allegedly conspiring to “incite mutiny” and is “defaming” state institutions. These lies were invented simply because he’s actively seeks to reverse this spring’s regime change.

From Fake News To A Failed Assassination

To be absolutely clear, Imran Khan envisages doing this through purely peaceful and political means connected to his country’s constitutional processes, not through violence, terrorism, or disinformation. All that he and his tens of millions of patriotic supporters demand is free and fair elections as early as possible so that the Pakistani people themselves can directly decide who they want to lead them. This noble goal perfectly aligns with the purest democratic principles, yet that’s precisely why he’s a “threat”.

Those domestic collaborators who colluded with the US to overthrow the former premier know fully well how unpopular their post-modern coup is, which is why they’ve had to resort to increasingly despotic, dictatorial, and ultimately dystopian means to cling to power. Free and fair elections as early as possible would reverse the regime change against Imran Khan, after which the conspirators would likely be out of a job at best or prosecuted at worst if they don’t flee abroad first.

After having lost complete control of the country’s socio-political (soft security) dynamics as a result of the post-modern coup that they helped carry out and everything that unfolded afterwards, The Establishment’s elite echelons panicked and thus decided to eliminate Imran Khan. They could have presumably sought to cut some sort of deal with him for ensuring their early retirement with amnesty in exchange for holding free and fair elections as early as possible but probably feared the US’ reaction.

Martial Law Motives

It shouldn’t be forgotten that those who were responsible for this regime change, which includes The Establishment’s elite echelons who infamously remained “neutral” and thus “passively facilitated” it, are politically (and possibly economically) indebted to the US. Complying with the former premier’s demand without first receiving the US’ approval – which could in theory have been granted if it decided to cut its losses with early elections instead of risk Pakistan’s destabilization – might be very dangerous.

That’s not to excuse their attempt to assassinate him but simply to explain their likely thought process. In any case, the decision was made to eliminate Imran Khan once he commenced his promised Long March since The Establishment’s elite echelons expected that the only other way to stop it would be to order the use of lethal force against those thousands of peaceful protesters once they entered the capital. The resultant bloodshed would have prompted martial law and led to international isolation.

Of course, the obvious recourse would simply have been to have their political proxies organize free and fair elections as early as possible as the most responsible pressure valve, but this wasn’t ever seriously considered for the earlier mentioned reasons. Moving along, The Establishment’s elite echelons expected that the former premier would be successfully assassinated, after which his supporters would predictably riot and thus create the pretext for imposing martial law without international isolation.

In other words, the decision was already made to formally reimpose military rule over Pakistan in order to prevent free and fair elections from being held as early as possible, though The Establishment’s elite echelons needed to craft a so-called “publicly plausible” pretext first. Absent that, and especially in the event that the Long March reached the capital and thus resulted in them ordering the use of lethal force against peaceful protesters, there’d be international isolation and possibly even sanctions.

The Three Most Likely Scenarios

The “solution” was to organize the former premier’s assassination, blame it on a “lone wolf” patsy, impose martial law in response to his supporters predictably rioting afterwards, and then possibly even outlaw his party on the false basis that they’re supposedly “anti-state extremists”. This plot failed by a stroke of luck, which now places The Establishment’s elite echelon in a dilemma since they lost their only chance at manufacturing the pretext for imposing martial law without international consequences.

Their dirty game was exposed and the entire world now suspects that something foul is afoot since the sequence of events that everyone expected to transpire in the event that this assassination plot succeeded is obvious to all objective observers. Since Imran Khan survived and promised that his Long March to Islamabad will continue no matter what, The Establishment’s elite echelons are now forced into a zugzwang, which refers to a situation in chess where all possible moves are disadvantageous.

They can either finally do the politically right thing by having their proxies organize free and fair elections as early as possible (though at the expense of their self-interests as was previously explained); try to concoct another clearly manufactured pretext for imposing martial law (though this time possibly with international consequences since everyone is now aware of their intentions); or just outright “go rogue” by using lethal force against the peaceful protesters after no longer giving a damn what happens.

The Establishment’s Elite Echelons Already Lost (Even If They Don’t Know It Yet)

Whichever of these three courses of action they choose to go through with, there’s no denying that the strategic inertia is decisively against The Establishment’s elite echelons, who already lost their Hybrid War/Fifth Generational War (5GW) against the Pakistani people. They can either go with the flow by finally allowing the masses to democratically choose their leader, or temporarily delay this inevitability by continuing to conspire against them or even literally risking a civil conflict by directly attacking them.

In any case, The Establishment’s elite echelons have lost all legitimacy after their unsuccessful assassination plot against Imran Khan. The battle for hearts and minds is over after having been decisively won by the former premier and his supporters, who pushed their foreign-backed institutional opponents into the corner through their peaceful political protests and thus caused them to overreact by practically declaring war on the same 220+ million people who they’re supposed to represent.

The best-case scenario is that those among The Establishment’s elite echelons who are responsible for this egregious violation of the people’s trust, which indisputably crossed the latter’s red line, accept their defeat by allowing democracy to prevail without continuing to try to dangerously obstruct it in vain. No sincerely patriotic member of The Establishment would risk throwing Pakistan into pandemonium by continuing to conspire against its people, let alone seriously countenance waging war against them.

Concluding Thoughts

Pakistan is literally in the throes of a peaceful political revolution led by grassroots patriots who want to liberate their beloved country from the foreign yoke that’s been imposed upon it since the US-orchestrated post-modern coup. Those elite members of The Establishment who are responsible for that regime change and all that came afterwards, especially the attempted assassination of Imran Khan, need to do the right thing in order to save the same country that they dedicated their lives to serving.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

An Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) is the formal procedure for negotiating amendments to the founding treaties of the EU. Under the treaties, an IGC is called into being by the European Council and is composed of representatives of the Member States, with the European Commission, and to a lesser degree the European Parliament which as well is having participants.[i]

However, the functioning of the IGC has long been provided by a real leader of the EU which is a Franco-German axis although its strength has historically varied and its nature seems to be changing. This did not differ much in the case of the 2002 Convention on the Future of Europe, partly because it did not replace the IGC as an institution and, in fact, it took place in the shadow of the following IGC, i.e., the veto power of the Member States.

It is, therefore, no surprise that the bargaining space, i.e., the set of settlements potentially acceptable to the Convention on the Future of Europe, was bounded by the positions and bottom lines of the most powerful Member States and that the very salient issues were firmly kept under their control. Once concrete issues were put on the table, the representatives of the national Governments loyally defended their interests – as did most of the national MPs nominated by the Governments. By the autumn of 2002, they started to build coalitions and invoke their veto in the pending IGC. The other members, anticipating the IGC, adapted their behavior to this constraint.

Not only did the Member States take the lead, but at the same time, the MPs were largely ineffective. The political parties were unable to develop coherent visions and positions, except in a few specific instances, for example, related to symbolic ideological gains (ex. the “social market economy” for the socialists). But the big parties only had a superficial unity and on most issues were unable to overcome their divisions and build coalitions beyond the status quo. For most representatives, the party’s political or component identity was not the primary determinant of their positions in the Convention on the Future of Europe. They saw the role of the party’s groups as channels to exchange information rather than forums to coordinate positions.

Thus, the Convention on the Future of Europe was overall – particularly in institutional and policy issues – not radically different from the IGC and much of its end-game was dominated by the kind of hegemonic compromises that have characterized EU politics since its inception.

The Franco-German “Dual EU’s Presidency”

The Franco-German compromise was put forward by the two countries on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of their bilateral friendship (Élysée) treaty in January 2003. Shortly before presenting their joint institutional proposals, in October 2002, France and Germany replaced their Government representatives with their Foreign Ministers increasing their political weight in the Convention on the Future of Europe. Germany did not defend the rotating Presidency but sought to strengthen the power of the European Commission. Although the Franco-German compromise was not formally put on the agenda of the Convention on the Future of Europe it generated widespread opposition and immediately became a focal point for subsequent debates. The contribution included the controversial creation of what became referred to as a “Dual EU’s Presidency” with a permanent European Council, the President elected from amongst its members, and a directly elected Commission President by the EP. The permanent Chairs would also be created for Foreign Affairs, Ecofin, the Eurogroup, and Justice and Home Affairs (the JHA).

From the outset, France and Germany relied upon a number of resources that were instrumental in turning their proposal into the focal point. First and most importantly, they found a crucial ally in Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (the President of France in 1974−1981) who reacted favorably calling their compromise “a positive proposal [that is] going in the right direction (…) guaranteeing the stability of EU’s institutions”. He was personally much closer to the Franco-German compromise than to the Benelux proposals and sensitive to the British position which – while supporting the permanent European Council Presidency – was initially skeptical about the election of the European Commission President.

His detractors recalled the fact that he had become the Chair of the Convention on the Future of Europe on the insistence of J. Chirac, T. Blair, and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. In addition, he “created” the European Council in 1974 and would, therefore, naturally want to make it the apex of the European system. They pointed out, furthermore, that this dual presidency set-up resembled the peculiar French political system in which the President is the “leader of the nation” and the “ultimate arbitrator of the national interest”, while the Prime Minister heads the Government. Finally, they argued that his two foremost goals have been to support the claims of big countries and to weaken the European Commission. His defenders, in turn, retort that this only appeared to be the case because he tried to ensure that “his” Constitution would not be radically altered by the IGC, and therefore the most powerful Member States. Whatever the motivation, at some point before the official tabling of the draft articles on institutions, he chose to take sides and support the idea of a permanent European Council Presidency.

V. Giscard’s and the Presidium’s support were crucial because its composition, functions, procedural control, and operating style gave it the necessary legitimacy and influence to shape the outcome of the Convention on the Future of Europe. V. Giscard had ample room for maneuvering. During the first three months, the members were invited to present their views on the EU and listen to civil society associations. On this basis, V. Giscard presented what he called an issue-specific “synthesis” reducing the scope of the discussion, and set up working groups on controversial topics to study the subject in-depth. Finally, after the reports of the working groups had been discussed in plenary sessions, the Presidium presented actual draft articles to the Convention on the Future of Europe which was supposed to mirror the substance of working group reports and reactions of the plenary sessions. Members then suggested amendments leading to revised proposals by the Presidium. But, crucially, while the Convention on the Future of Europe was supposed to remain sovereign in this process, the Presidium acted as the interpreter of the dominant view and was the sole drafter of the actual text presented to the floor. V. Giscard fully exploited his formal and informal powers assuming the major directing and leadership role. As D. Allen finds, he

“monopolized reporting of the work of the Convention to both Member States and the public”, “it was usually Giscard’s or Kerr’s summary of proceedings that formed the ongoing basis for further negotiation”, and he cleverly “created controversies (…) or negotiating positions that were designed to be conceded in return for consensus on more important items”.[ii]

In fact, it was V. Giscard who determined that no voting would take place in the Convention on the Future of Europe, that a single text would be agreed upon rather than options proposed, how consensus and the majority were to be defined, and when a consensus existed. This gave him much leverage to steer the result toward his most preferred option. Crucially, as his definition of consensus rested essentially on the Member States’ population size rather than the number of the Member States, the Franco-German compromise guaranteed a dominant position in the drafting process.

Support of a permanent European Council President

The UK’s and Spain’s support of a permanent European Council President (they advocated an even stronger President than the Franco-German compromise did) was a second key resource. In addition, Italy supported a strong “Mr. Europe”.[iii] Once onboard, the countries which supported the idea of a permanent Presidency represented the largest part of the European population – as V. Giscard pointed out in various interviews. Before the plenary, he argued that the EU now comprised three categories of states:

1. The four largest ones, with a population of more than forty million inhabitants each, together, amount to 74% of the EU population.
2. Eight medium-sized countries, with a population between 8 and 16 million people each, represent 19% of the population.
3. 11 small states, together, only include 7% of the population.

Some weeks later, at the Athens European Council, he explicitly drew the consequences of this analysis: since those who reject the idea of a permanent President for the European Council only represent a quarter of the EU’s total population, they should not be allowed to prevent the formation of a consensus (which in V. Giscard’s mind seemed to mean a very large majority). With such an argument, V. Giscard contradicted the principle of equality among conventioneers he had supported so far.[iv]

It is also noteworthy that Spain was amongst the Presidium’s three Government representatives. So was Denmark, which was the only country not to join the small country camp in their defense of the rotating Presidency. In addition, it proved difficult for the small to split the big country coalition promoting the permanent Presidency. Thus, the big country camp remained strong – the only wedge appeared on the European Commission’s composition when Spain and Poland, joined quietly by some new members, started waging a “give Nice a chance” campaign towards the end. This position later explained the difficulties of the IGC and the failure of the December 2003 Brussels Summit.

A third resource on which the Franco-German axis could rely was its past reputation and legitimacy. As F. Cameron argues, the EU as a whole has usually reaped beneficial results from the Franco-German initiatives – a prominent example being the European Monetary Union (the EMU).[v] Particularly, Germany had in the past frequently defended small state interests and the legitimacy of the Franco-German compromise was enhanced as – apart from the Presidency – it contained important elements that were in line with small state suggestions. The election of the European Commission President by the European Parliament, for example, reflected Benelux’s suggestions and had broad support in the Convention on the Future of Europe. Crucially, the British position evolved in this regard. Apparently, its traditional opposition to replacing the European Commission’s President chosen by the Member States with an elected one could be traded off against the “strategic prize” of a stronger leader representing EU’s Governments on the world stage. As Peter Hain, the British Government’s representative put it to his Parliament:

“in the end, there will have to be an agreement and a necessary process of adjustment by all parties. We have, for example, been willing to look at, with certain very big safeguards, electing the Commission President through some method, provided that does not involve being hostage to a particular political faction and provided that the outcome is one that the Council can accept. So it is not something we sought and we remain deeply skeptical about it, but if, as part of the end game, getting an elected President of the Council, which is very much a priority for us, involves doing something with the Commission President with those very important safeguards that I mentioned, then that is something that we might have to adjust to”.[vi]

Moreover, a consensus had emerged on the double-hatted Foreign Affairs Minister as included in the Franco-German proposal and supported in the autumn by a narrow majority in plenary even if the precise division of tasks (in particular in terms of external representation) between the European Council’s President and the proposed European Foreign Minister in charge of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy were unclear under the Franco-German plan and remained so in the Convention on the Future of Europe’s draft treaty.

Conclusion

To sum up, the strategy on which France and Germany relied was fourfold:

1. Uniting their resources to provide direction in the Convention over the EU’s future institutional set-up.
2. Fully exploiting its positional resources such as access to and support by the Convention’s Chairman and its Presidium in order to move its proposal into the dominant position.
3. Bringing the UK and Spain on their side.
4. Inducing the smalls to make concessions on the permanent Presidency in return for an elected European Commission President and the Minister of European Foreign Affairs.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a Former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[i] Wikipedia.

[ii] D. Allen, “The Convention and the Draft Constitutional Treaty”, F. Cameron (ed.), The Future of Europe, London: Routledge, 2004.

[iii] The Guardian, January 24^th, 2003.

[iv] About the general issue of the European politics, see more in [Maria Green Cowles, Michael Smith, The State of the European Union, 2000].

[v] F. Cameron (ed.), The Future of Europe, London: Routledge, 2004, 12.

[vi] Peter Hain, Interview in the European Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, March 25^th, 2003.

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Hospitals around the U.S. are suddenly struggling to keep up with surging rates of respiratory infections among children, such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), COVID, rhinoviruses and influenza

Moderna is working on an mRNA jab for RSV, which is scheduled for release in 2023. They’re also working on a combination mRNA jab for COVID, RSV and the flu

Censored scientists and doctors have long warned that the mRNA COVID jabs are destroying people’s immune systems, and that we’re going to see an avalanche of infections as immune system failure sets in

The COVID jab causes innate immune suppression, which makes you more susceptible to all kinds of infections and chronic diseases. Suppression of Type 1 interferon signaling appears to be one of the primary mechanisms by which the shot destroys immune competence, and repeated booster shots can reliably be anticipated to amplify adverse effects

The more shots you get, the more likely you are to die from COVID. While only 34% of Canadians have received three or four doses of the COVID jab, triple and quadruple jabbed made up 81% of all COVID deaths in June 2022. Excess mortality among young children, teens and young adults is also skyrocketing

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Hospitals around the U.S. are suddenly struggling to keep up with surging rates of respiratory infections among children, such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV),¹ COVID, rhinoviruses and influenza.² Hospital staff feign confusion, saying they have no idea what’s going on.

Meanwhile, censored scientists and doctors have long warned that the mRNA COVID jabs are destroying people’s immune systems, and that we’re going to see an avalanche of infections as immune system failure sets in.

Many Hospitals at or Near Capacity

As of the third week of October 2022, several children’s hospitals in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Connecticut and Virginia reported being at or near capacity.³ To expand capacity, officials in Hartford, Connecticut, are seeking help from the National Guard and FEMA.

According to Dr. Margaret R. Moon, co-director of Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, the hospital “is experiencing a surge of patients due to an increase in cases of RSV, as well as other reasons, and many surrounding hospitals are facing the same.”⁴

RSV typically causes mild cold-like symptoms that last for a week or two. While harmless in adults, in infants the virus can cause more severe infections such as bronchiolitis (inflammation of the smaller branches of the bronchial airways) and pneumonia.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data,⁵ 58,000 children under age 5 are hospitalized for RSV each year, and the CDC’s RSV dashboard⁶ (screenshot below) does show that RSV is acting unseasonably. Could this out-of-season emergence of RSV have something to do with the fact that the Food and Drug Administration authorized the COVID shot for children under 5 in June 2022?⁷

Maybe, maybe not. It’s not a clear parallel, as RSV also rose out of season during the summer of 2021, when young children did not yet have access to the COVID shot. Parents and older siblings, however, were eligible, and there are still many open questions surrounding the issue of shedding. It’s possible that spike protein shedding from the shots were affecting younger children, suppressing their immune systems.

mRNA RSV Jab in the Works

Considering hospitalization rates for RSV are actually lower than historical seasonal highs, one also wonders whether the media’s attention on RSV might be related to the fact that Moderna is working on an mRNA jab for RSV, which is scheduled for release in 2023.⁸

They’re also working on a combination mRNA jab for COVID, RSV and the flu. Ultimately, Moderna wants to create an annual mRNA shot that covers all of the top 10 viruses that result in hospitalizations each year.⁹ If the COVID shot is any indication, such an injection could be catastrophic.

COVID Jab Causes Innate Immune Suppression

There’s now ample evidence showing the COVID jab causes innate immune suppression, which makes you more susceptible to all kinds of infection, not just COVID, as well as any number of chronic diseases.

In June 2022, Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., Dr. Greg Nigh, Dr. Anthony Kyriakopoulos and Dr. Peter McCullough published a paper¹⁰ in Food and Chemical Toxicology, reviewing the mechanisms by which the shots suppress immune function and trigger disease. As noted in the abstract:¹¹

“The utilization of mRNA vaccines in the context of infectious disease has no precedent. The many alterations in the vaccine mRNA hide the mRNA from cellular defenses and promote a longer biological half-life and high production of spike protein. However, the immune response to the vaccine is very different from that to a SARS-CoV-2 infection.

In this paper, we present evidence that vaccination induces a profound impairment in type I interferon signaling, which has diverse adverse consequences to human health.

Immune cells that have taken up the vaccine nanoparticles release into circulation large numbers of exosomes containing spike protein along with critical microRNAs that induce a signaling response in recipient cells at distant sites.

We also identify potential profound disturbances in regulatory control of protein synthesis and cancer surveillance. These disturbances potentially have a causal link to neurodegenerative disease, myocarditis, immune thrombocytopenia, Bell’s palsy, liver disease, impaired adaptive immunity, impaired DNA damage response and tumorigenesis.”

Suppression of Type 1 interferon signaling appears to be one of the primary mechanisms by which the shot suppresses and destroys immune competence, and repeated booster shots can reliably be anticipated to amplify any and all adverse effects.

Type 1 Interferon Suppression Is a Recipe for Ill Health

Type 1 interferon plays an important role in the immune response to viral infections, cancer and autoimmune diseases. So, the fact that we’re now seeing significant increases in all of these conditions is not surprising.

When a cell is invaded by a virus, it releases Type 1 interferon alpha and Type 1 interferon beta. They act as signaling molecules that tell the cell that it’s been infected. That, in turn, launches the immune response and gets it going early in the viral infection. It’s been shown that people who end up with severe SARS-CoV-2 infection have a compromised Type 1 interferon response. Those who get the jab have an even more suppressed response.

Importantly, the antibody response you get from the COVID shot is exponentially higher than what you get from natural infection, and the level of antibody response rises with disease severity. So, the shot basically mimics severe infection, and this is why boosters can spell disaster.

If your Type 1 interferon response is already deficient, your immune cells are not very capable at stopping the spread of a virus in your body. Hence, the more shots you get, and the more your Type 1 interferon response is impaired, the more likely you become to develop severe infections, be it COVID or any other infection. This also means that you’re more likely to die, and rising excess mortality statistics, which I’ll review in a moment, confirm this.

Type 1 interferon also keeps latent viruses like herpes and varicella (which causes shingles) viruses in check, and when your interferon pathway is suppressed, these latent viruses can also start to emerge. And, indeed, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database reveals many who have been jabbed do report these kinds of infections.

Don’t Be Fooled by ‘Reframing’ Efforts

Disturbingly, researchers and mainstream media are still pushing the idea that COVID shot side effects are a sign that the shot is working well. As reported by CNN October 24, 2022:¹²

“People who reported experiencing side effects to the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines such as fever, chills or muscle pain tended to have a greater antibody response following vaccination, according to new research.

Having such symptoms after vaccination is associated with greater antibody responses compared with having only pain or rash at the injection site or no symptoms at all, suggests the paper published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open.¹³

‘In conclusion, these findings support reframing postvaccination symptoms as signals of vaccine effectiveness and reinforce guidelines for vaccine boosters in older adults,’ the researchers … wrote in their paper.”

To be clear, feeling terrible after your COVID shot is not to be taken as evidence that the shot is providing you with protection. What you’re experiencing is akin to having severe COVID. The shot is suppressing your Type 1 interferon, and continuing with additional jabs is a recipe for ill health. It’s just that simple.

As suggested in that JAMA article, they really want to “reframe postvaccination symptoms” to stop people from reconsidering the wisdom of taking subsequent jabs, but don’t fall for it. You’re feeling terrible because your body is being harmed.

The More Shots You Get, the More Likely You’ll Die of COVID

As noted by Dr. Charles Hoffe in a September 15, 2022, interview with Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, “The more shots you get, the more likely you will die from COVID-19.” An excerpt from the interview is included above. You can find the full interview on Bitchute.¹⁴

According to the latest data from Canada, summarized by Hoffe, 85% of Canadians have received at least two COVID shots, and in June 2022, 92% of all COVID deaths were in fully jabbed individuals. And, while only 34% of Canadians had received three or four doses, they made up 81% of all COVID deaths in the month of June.

“This is the clearest evidence that the more shots you have, the more likely you will die of COVID,” Hoffe said. “These [shots] are severely damaging the immune system. And so, the discrimination against those who have chosen to be vaxx free is absolutely absurd because those are the people who are going to survive.”

Youths Are Dying at Frightening Rates

In the video above, nurse educator John Campbell, Ph.D., reviews the latest U.K. and U.S. data on excess deaths in the young. The U.K. is now seeing 20 to 30 excess deaths per week in the age group of birth to 24.

Excess deaths are also statistically higher in the U.S. than expected. For the age group of birth to 24, cumulative all-cause excess deaths was 16,747 as of week 35. The screenshot below, from USmortality.com,¹⁵ illustrates how the cumulative excess deaths among our children, teens and young adults have skyrocketed since June 2020.

Recall the FDA authorized the first COVID shot December 11, 2020, for individuals aged 16 years and older.¹⁶ If the excess deaths from June through December were related to COVID, the shots certainly have NOT improved the situation or made youths less likely to die. Quite the contrary.

Excess deaths among all age groups follows a similar but more step-like rise.

Medical Abuse of Women and Children Is Rampant

The medical system has mistreated and abused infants for decades, forcing a number of completely useless and harmful interventions on them. Antibiotic eye treatment¹⁷ and the hepatitis B vaccine,¹⁸ both administered on the day of birth, are but two examples. The fact that U.S. child mortality ranks¹⁹ worst among the 20 wealthiest nations speaks to the effects of all this medial mistreatment and overtreatment of infants.

The U.S. also has the highest maternal death rate in the developed world,²⁰ and according to medial investigators, 84% of all these maternal deaths are preventable.²¹ Clearly, we’re doing a lot of things wrong.

CDC Takes Child Abuse to a Whole New Level

With its decision to add COVID shots to the U.S. childhood, adolescent and adult vaccine schedules,²² the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is taking the abuse of infants and pregnant women to a whole new level. As reported by The Defender:²³

“Commenting on [the CDC’s unanimous] vote, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman of the board and chief legal counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said:

‘This reckless action is final proof of the cynicism, corruption and capture of a once exemplary public health agency. ACIP members have again demonstrated that fealty to their pharma overlords eclipses any residual concerns they may harbor for child welfare or public health. This is an act of child abuse on a massive scale’ …

[A]dding the COVID-19 vaccines means 18 more shots — one per year between the ages of 6 months and 18 years — will be added to the schedule, according to Toby Rogers, Ph.D.

‘So overnight the childhood schedule would go from 54 injections (72 antigens because of combined shots like MMR) to 72 injections (90 antigens),’ Rogers said. ‘This has absolutely nothing to do with health — it’s all about profit and power’ …

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., told The Defender, ‘Given the high risk of vaccine injury for a product that provides little or no benefit to children, this represents a criminal enterprise solely to ensure a revenue stream for COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers’ …

As of Oct. 7 [2022], the VAERS data for 6-month-olds to 5-year-olds who received a COVID-19 vaccine showed reports of 4,279 adverse events, including 182 cases rated as serious and 7 reported deaths. For 5- to 11-year-olds, there were 14,622 reports of adverse events, including 692 rated as serious and 29 reported deaths.”

Can Children Survive This Many mRNA Shots?

The following COVID-19 jab recommendations will go into effect in 2023:

• Age 6 months to 4 years — a two-dose primary series for Moderna, or a three-dose primary series for Pfizer, plus an annual booster
• Age 5 to 11 years — a two-dose series of either Moderna or Pfizer plus an annual booster
• Age 12 to 18 years — a two-dose series for Moderna, Novavax or Pfizer plus an annual booster

For children with moderately or severely compromised immune systems, the recommended primary series is increased from a two-dose series to a three-dose series, which is madness heaped upon insanity. I really don’t see how young children will get through their primary education alive if they have to take annual boosters on top of a primary series.

Rules Upended for Vaccine Injury Compensation

Adding insult to injury, while the COVID jab makers get a permanent liability shield through the addition of the jabs to the childhood vaccination schedule, those injured by these mRNA shots will not get compensation through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which covers nearly every other vaccine on the schedule. The Defender explains:²⁴

“Vaccine makers are not liable for injuries or deaths associated with EUA [emergency use authorized] vaccines but can be held liable for injuries caused by a fully licensed vaccine — unless that vaccine is added to the CDC’s childhood vaccination schedule.

Parents of children injured by vaccines listed on the childhood schedule typically can seek compensation through the taxpayer-funded National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a no-fault alternative to the traditional legal system for resolving vaccine injury claims.

However, the revisions voted on today by the committee explicitly state²⁵ (slide 24) that the newly added … COVID-19 vaccines are not covered under the VICP.

Instead, the COVID-19 vaccines added to the childhood schedule will remain covered by the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). To date, only six claims filed with the CICP have been approved for compensation.”

In closing, if you care about your children, do not allow them to be injected with these immune-destroying shots. If you’re still on the fence, please read the cited paper by Seneff, Nigh, Kyriakopoulos and McCullough,²⁶ to get an understanding of how these shots can utterly decimate your child’s health.

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Notes

¹ NPR October 24, 2022

² Axios October 21, 2022

^3, 4 DCist October 20, 2022

⁵ CDC RSV Trends

⁶ CDC RSV Interactive Dashboard, Screenshot grabbed October 26, 2022

⁷ CNN June 20, 2022

⁸ World Economic Forum, COVID-19: What’s Next? January 17, 2022, 6:25

⁹ CNBC January 10, 2022

^10, 11, 26 Food and Chemical Toxicology June 2022; 164: 113008

¹² CNN October 24, 2022

¹³ JAMA Network Open October 21, 2022; 5(10): e2237908

¹⁴ Bitchute Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson September 15, 2022

¹⁵ US Mortality Weekly All-Cause Excess Deaths, Cumulative

¹⁶ Immunize.org Historical Vaccine Timeline

¹⁷ CBC March 20, 2015

¹⁸ Medical News Today March 28, 2022

¹⁹ CNN January 8, 2018

²⁰ NPR May 12, 2017

²¹ NPR October 21, 2022

²² Rumble October 20, 2022

^23, 24 The Defender October 20, 2022

²⁵ CDC ACIP Meeting October 20, 2022

Featured image is from Xavier Donat

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Russia’s ambassador insists he has evidence of UK aiding a Ukrainian drone attack on Putin’s fleet in Black Sea

Diplomat Andrei Kelin has said Britain is involved ‘too deep’ in the Ukraine War and warns of consequences

Russia said it lodged a ‘strong protest’ over Nord Stream and Black Sea attacks which it accuses UK of aiding 

Britain denies direct attacks on Russia as ‘false claims on an epic scale’ but is open about support for Ukraine

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The UK is ‘too deep’ in the Ukraine war, Russia‘s ambassador warned – while insisting that Putin will not use nuclear weapons in an attack despite a series of thinly veiled threats.

Diplomat Andrei Kelin alleges he has evidence of UK special forces’ participation in a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet, which he claims to have passed on to his UK counterpart.

Speaking to Sky News‘ Mark Austin, Mr Kelin said:

‘We perfectly know about the participation of British specialists in [the] training, preparation and execution of violence against the Russian infrastructure and the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. We know that it has been done.’

Mr Kelin told media that the evidence will be made public ‘pretty soon’.

He said:

‘It is dangerous because it escalates the situation. It can bring us up to the line of… I won’t say “no return”, because return is always possible. But anyway, we should avoid escalation.

‘And this is a warning actually that Britain is too deep in this conflict. It means the situation is becoming more and more dangerous.’

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Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich, a mother and grandmother from Medicine Hat, explained why she got involved in the protest movement during her Nov. 3 testimony at the public inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act to end convoy protests earlier this year.

“I was growing increasingly alarmed with the mandates and the harm that I was seeing the mandates inflict,” said Lich, who got emotional several times during her testimony. “I heard from families that were living in their vehicles because they’d lost their jobs. I heard from people that had lost their jobs and lost everything. I have the tears of thousands of Canadians on my shoulder, who everyday told me that we were bringing them hope.”

Lich said she saw families torn apart due to COVID-19 policies.

“The suicides in my hometown were so numerous that they stopped reporting them,” she said. “Elderly people were dying by themselves in long-term care facilities and saying goodbye over iPads.”

Lich explained how the policies impacted herself and her family members as well. She said both herself and her husband lost their jobs due to COVID-19 policies, and her parents, who run a trucking business, could no longer cross the border.

Lich added that vaccine passports restricted many Canadians who decided against getting COVID-19 shots from entering any non-essential business, which meant she “didn’t go out.”

A protester holds a sign on Wellington St. during the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Noé Chartier/The Epoch Times)

She said her 94-year-old grandmother was “locked” in her apartment by herself for two years, and by the time lockdowns were lifted her grandmother “wasn’t healthy enough” to do things. She also said that her father, who lives in a small town in Saskatchewan, used to go to a local restaurant for coffee every day to see his friends, but “was asked to leave,” presumably referring to vaccine mandates that barred unvaccinated Canadians from non-essential business.

Lich said she didn’t want her children and grandchildren to live in a world like this.

“I listened to my prime minister call me a racist, and say that [people like me] shouldn’t be tolerated. I found his rhetoric to be incredibly divisive,” she said. “I’m a believer, that if you’re a leader of a country, you have to lead all of your people, even if you don’t agree with them.”

Freedom Convoy

The Freedom Convoy protest started as a demonstration against COVID-19 vaccine mandates for truckers travelling across the Canada-U.S. border. But it grew to a larger movement as people against COVID-19 mandates and restrictions joined the cause.

Lich said in her testimony that as the convoy travelled across Canada, many people offered them support.

“They said don’t stop until we are free. Don’t stop until the mandates are lifted,” she said.

When their GoFundMe campaign raised the first $1 million, Lich said she was “exhilarated.” She said she never expected that level of support, but with it, came responsibility that caused her overwhelming anxiety.

She told the commission—to some chuckles from the room—that her previous fundraising experience consisted of “selling chocolate-covered almonds.”

The convoy’s fundraising campaign on GoFundMe gathered over $10 million before it was shut down by the platform. The group raised the same amount of funds on GiveSendGo, but the funds were frozen by a court order.

Protesters stand on the back of a truck during the Freedom Convoy demonstrations against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and other restrictions on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Jan. 29, 2022. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

Lich, who was formerly part of the Maverick Party which calls for Western autonomy, says she didn’t want to be part of the movement anymore after bonding with people from different parts of Canada during the protest in Ottawa.

She said one day while in Ottawa, as she was talking with some protest organizers from Quebec through Google Translate, she realized “that they’re the same as us.”

“This division has all been a lie,” she said. “I knew that I didn’t want to see Canada divided at that point.”

Arrest

The Public Order Emergency Commission has been set up as required by law to evaluate if the use of the Emergencies Act to clear convoy protests was justified.

The act was invoked by the federal government on Feb. 14, and revoked on Feb. 23 after the protest in Ottawa was cleared.

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At this point, where Gallup Pakistan is reporting more than a 90% popularity rating for Imran Khan in the country, both the traditional mafioso-style corrupt dynastic political parties as well as significant sections of the military high command see Khan’s assassination as the only solution.

There is no doubt in people’s minds that Gen. Bajwa, the Chief of Army Staff, and his highly unusual visit to Washington weeks before his retirement gives every indication that the US has also put pressure on Islamabad to get rid of the one irritant in Washington’s ‘New Cold War’ against both China and Russia, but also the Global South more generally – that irritant in Eurasia being Imran Khan.

Sadly, this may only be the first assassination attempt in a series to come. But the sense on the ground is that Khan supporters and/or those who thoroughly despise the traditional ruling civilian and military elites, those who have been out in the streets in the tens of millions for the past few weeks protesting alongside Khan, feel both intense anger and renewed vigor to carry on the struggle. 

–Junaid S. Ahmad, November 4, 2022

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Here is an excerpt from the Reuters’ report, Ousted Pakistan PM Imran Khan shot in shin in what aides call assassination attempt:

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was shot in the shin on Thursday when his anti-government protest convoy came under attack in the east of the country in what his aides said was a clear assassination attempt by his rivals.

Khan, ousted as prime minister in a parliamentary confidence vote in April, was six days into a protest procession bound for Islamabad, standing and waving to thousands of cheering supporters from the roof of a container truck, when the shots rang out.

Several in his convoy were wounded in the attack in Wazirabad, nearly 200 km (120 miles) from the capital. Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said a suspect had been arrested.

“It was a clear assassination attempt. Khan was hit but he’s stable. There was a lot of bleeding,” Fawad Chaudhry, a spokesperson for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, told Reuters.

“If the shooter had not been stopped by people there, the entire PTI leadership would have been wiped out.”

Click here to continue reading.

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No doubt, as president, one of Donald Trump’s more bold steps that thoroughly outraged the medical industrial complex was to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO). One of Trump’s reasons was due to his disgust with the WHO’s lack of competence in its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The intention to remove itself from the WHO was filed in July 2020; however WHO rules require a year for a nation’s withdrawal to become effective. Sadly, under Joe Biden, the US remains party to and a leader funder of the undemocratically elected global organization.

Earlier in 2022, the proposal for a WHO international Pandemic Treaty has raised alarms over the organization’s usurping the individual sovereignty of nations. The Treaty, which is scheduled to be finalized by May 2024, is largely a result of the WHO’s numerous inconsistencies, inadequacies and failures during the Covid-19 pandemic. If we call a spade a spade, the WHO has proven itself inept in handling any pandemic. Therefore, for the hardened globalists such Bill Gates and the leaders of the US and EU who wholly support the WHO, it makes perfect sense that the bumbling bureaucracy should be given more authority and control over global health.

The Pandemic Treaty would authorize the WHO complete control over both governments’ and civil societies’ internal preparedness over actions and policies to tackle future pandemics. During the Ukraine crisis, we frequently hear Western leaders speak about a “rules based order” in international relations. However, such rules are defined by and primarily serve the interests of those nations at the top of the food chain (i.e. the US, UK and EU).  What the Treaty offers is a new rules based order completely determined by an international organization with a horrible track record of conflicts of interests with the pharmaceutical industry and hegemonic governments and billionaires.

Image is from Dr. Rath Health Foundation

The Treaty would hold every WHO member nation accountable for following the organization’s dictates. On a global scale, all power over dictating the rules for pandemic preparedness would be centralized in the organization. If a nation fails to do so, it can face potential sanctions. The WHO would also be the final arbiter and judge over medical related misinformation that it solely believes undermines public health. As we have witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic, the WHO was repeatedly wrong about the benefits of face masks and lockdowns, the benefit-risk ratio of the mRNA vaccines — which are now causing more injuries and deaths than the virus — and safe and effective treatments.

No doubt with Bill Gates’ assistance and the US’s and its allies’ intelligence apparatus, the WHO will be responsible for countermeasures against social media critics.  In other words, the organization will be responsible for censorship. It would also have he authority to regulate both domestic and international travel, coordinate vaccination passports, and oversee the digitalization of populations’ health forms and documentation.  In brief, the WHO Pandemic Treaty is the harbinger of a medical dictatorship.

A uniform approach to prevention and treatment of diseases, especially a pandemic, is unquestionably attractive and desirable. This was the original intention of the emergence of “evidence based medicine” (EBM) in the mid 1990s. However, EBM has yet to be proven to be a practical goal. Worse, the rhetoric of EBM has turned into politicalized weapon to silence alternative medical views that challenge the medical authorities that control the narrative.  Consequently during the past decade the EBM theory has come under increasing criticism. Empowering the WHO to be the architect of a single, uniform global structure for administering pandemic responses is a deeply distrubing proposition. There are simply too many glaring reasons and examples for not trusting the WHO to have any control over our lives.  On this account, Donald Trump was precisely correct to remove the US’s membership.

The WHO has become the ultimate international authority for infectious diseases. Due to its widespread acceptance by the world’s national governments, it has assumed the helm to monitor regional and global infectious diseases and dictate medical intervention policies to international health agencies. The organization has become the final word to rule whether the spread of a serious pathogen is a pandemic or not. For the majority of the medical community, the media and the average person, the WHO is the front line command post for medical prevention (i.e., vaccination) and treatment.  Consequently its rulings are often regarded as the gold standard.  On matters of global health, the WHO holds dominance.

Image is from Children’s Health Defense

Prior to mass vaccination campaigns, the WHO propagated the belief that the first line of defense for curtailing the COVID-19 pandemic was lockdowns, self-isolation and distancing. Although it approved Ivermectin as a cost-effective treatment against SARS-CoV-2 infections, it disapproved hydroxychloroquine in favor of Gilead Bioscience’s and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease’s (NIAID) Anthony Fauci’s novel and costly drug Remdesivir.  Seemingly, much of its funding efforts had been reserved for promoting the new generation of experimental vaccines. Throughout the pandemic, the WHO was deeply allied with the US’s and UK’s national health systems, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and his Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) initiative.

Most people assume wrongly that the WHO acts independently from national and private commercial interests for the welfare of the world’s population. However, its real mission is dubious. The organization has frequently been accused of conflicts of interests with private pharmaceutical companies and mega-philanthropic organizations such as the Gates’ Foundation. It is riddled with political alliances, ideologies, and profiteering motives. Despite the WHO’s infrequent public ridicule of the pharmaceutical industry’s corruption, it is at the same time fully immersed if not actually controlled by those same forces of corruption.  For example, the WHO has stated:

“Corruption in the pharmaceutical sector occurs throughout all stages of the medicine chain, from research and development to dispensing and promotion…. A lack of transparency and accountability within the medicines chain can also contribute to unethical practices and corruption.”

However, these are similar charges that have been leveled against the WHO. An article in the National Review called the WHO “scandal plagued” with “wasteful spending, utter disregard for transparency, pervasive incompetence, and failure to adhere to even basic democratic standards.” In his book, Immunization: How Vaccines Became Controversial, University of Amsterdam professor emeritus Dr. Stuart Blume raises the serious problem of the WHO’s most influential advisors on emergency health conditions, such as the current Covid-19 pandemic and earlier the 2009 H1N1 swine flu scare that never was, serve as consultants for the vaccine industry. During times of global emergencies and crises, the WHO confers with a separate group of advisors outside its formal sitting Strategic Advisory Group of Experts or SAGE; the names of this group’s members are not made public.

The WHO’s level of incompetence has resulted in serious misinformation about pandemics, medical risks of vaccines and other health-threatening chemicals.  For example, during the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, the organization reported it could not find any evidence of human transmission. However, the WHO also repeatedly kowtowed to China’s demands and unscrupulously accepted whatever statistics and statements the Chinese Communist Party health ministry provided. Responding to a petition signed by over 700,000 signatories demanding the resignation of the current WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom, Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso told the Japanese parliament that the organization “should be renamed the Chinese Health Organization” for favoring China’s policy to stall and obstruct international investigations and for lauding unsubstantiated praise on the country’s transparency and handling of the pandemic.

Writing for The Hill, University of Texas at San Antonio professor Bradley Thayer wrote, “Tedros apparently turned a blind eye to what happened in Wuhan and the rest of China and… has helped play down the severity, prevalence and scope of the Covid-19 outbreak.”

Thayer concludes, “Tedros is not fit to lead the WHO.”

He has no formal medical training as a physician or any international management experience in global health. Many others have voiced similar criticisms pointing out Tedro’s unsuitable background.  Moreover, the Director General’s conflicts of interest with China abound. Immediately before and after his tenure as the Health Minister for Ethiopia’s ruling Communist party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, China had donated an estimated $60 million to the terrorist government and its social programs. In 2017, the Washington Post noted the fundamental problem:

“[China] worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help Tedros defeat the United Kingdom candidate for the WHO job, David Nabarro. Tedros’s victory was also a victory for Beijing, whose leader Xi Jinping has made public his goal of flexing China’s muscle in the world.”

Upon assuming his new position at the WHO, Tedros left Ethiopia’s healthcare system in ruin.  As one young healthcare worker reported, there was no “bare necessities of a health care office…. Sterile gloves, paper exam gowns and covers, cotton swabs, gauze, tongue depressors, alcohol prep pads, chemical test strips, suturing equipment, syringes, stethoscopes… were non-existent. This is a fact in most health care centers in Ethiopia.”

During the more recent re-investigation of SARS-2 origins, the Chinese authorities refused to provide raw case data and created repressive conditions to curtail reliable analysis and disclosure. The WHO’s final report concluded that the virus had an animal origin and did not escape Wuhan’s high security pathogen laboratory. But there are viable reasons to discredit the report as untrustworthy at best and perhaps intentionally deceptive.

First, the entire agenda of the investigation was staged theater rather than a deep investigation to uncover empirical evidence. The team simply inspected seafood and open-air markets. Consequently, the WHO team returned empty handed and without laboratory records for a proper forensic examination. To call the entire WHO effort gross incompetence is an understatement. Based upon the evidence, a large number of professional medical voices called the entire investigation a farce.

Most problematic is the appointment of Peter Daszak on the WHO’s group to carry out the investigation. Daszak is the founding president of the shadowy non-profit organization EcoHealth Alliance. With the intention to divert attention away from an escaped laboratory virus, Daszak stated on a Going Viral podcast there was no evidential reason to visit and inspect the Wuhan laboratory. According to Independent Science News, despite Daszak’s denial of a lab origin, “EcoHealth Alliance funded bat coronavirus research, including virus collection, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and thus could themselves be directly implicated in the outbreak.” The research at the Wuhan lab included ‘gain of function” efforts on coronaviruses, and received funds directly approved by Anthony Fauci. Newsweek reported the NIH had given a total of $7.4 million to the Chinese lab for the research. The organization has received over $100 million from a variety of sources, including the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, the NIH and undisclosed amounts from the Chinese government. Daszak himself has authored 25 studiesfunded by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, think tanks, universities, military institutions, and ministries directly connected with the Chinese Communist Party.

Vaccine Promotional Misconduct

For many years the WHO’s recommendations for certain vaccines were kept secret. Writing in a 2006 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Marc Girard uncovered “scientific incompetence, misconduct or even criminal malfeasance” over the intentional inflation of vaccines’ benefits while undermining toxicity and adverse effects. Dr. Girard testified as a medical expert before a French court in a criminal trial against the WHO after French health officials obliged the organization to launch its universal Hepatitis B vaccine campaign. The campaign resulted in the deaths of French children. Girard gained access to confidential WHO documents. He noted that the WHO’s “French figures about chronic liver diseases were simply extrapolated from the U.S. reports.” He further accused the WHO serving “merely as a screen for commercial promotion, in particular via the Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board (VHPB), which was created, sponsored, and infiltrated by the manufacturers.”

Now during the Covid-19 pandemic, as early as July 2020, the WHO approved of China’s first vaccine for emergency use, long before it had undergone proper clinical trials and much earlier than Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines’ approval.

Orchestration of Pandemic Panics

Before the current COVID-19 pandemic, there was the H1N1 swine flu scare in 2009. The WHO’s declaration of a pandemic was solely based more on fear mongering than empirical evidence.  The fabrications are believed to have originated from the WHO’s senior consultant on viral outbreaks who happens to carry the reputation of being one of the world’s leading pandemic alarmists: Dr. Albert Osterhaus, nicknamed “Dr. Flu.” At the time, Osterhaus was head of the Department of Virology at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. When the swine flu scare appeared, he was also the president of the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI), an organization funded by the major vaccine manufacturers including Baxter, MedImmune, Glaxo, Sanofi Pasteur and others. Osterhaus was responsible for transforming an otherwise potentially bad flu season into a global pandemic. The British Medical Journal reported that the WHO failed to report conflicts of interests within its H1N1 advisory group. The journal’s Editor-in-Chief Fiona Godlee wrote, “WHO must act now to restore its credibility, and Europe should legislate.” The former head of the prestigious Cochrane Database Collaboration’s vaccine studies, Dr. Tom Jefferson, told a Der Spiegel interviewer, “the WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies… built this machine around the impending [H1N1] pandemic. And there’s a lot of money involved, and influence and careers, and entire institutions.” According to a financial forecast published by JP Morgan, the collaboration between the WHO and Osterhaus’s ESWI to orchestrate the pandemic would have profited the pharmaceutical industry up to $10 billion.

In 2010, the EU’s Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe launched an investigation into the evidence that the WHO had created “a fake pandemic” in order to financially benefit the pharmaceutical giants’ vaccine market and to strengthen the influence private drug interests have over the health organization. The Assembly’s chairperson Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg charged the WHO’s fake pandemic as “one of the greatest medical scandals of the century that resulted in “millions being needlessly vaccinated.”

Epidemic of Conflict of Interests

According to former World Bank geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig, about half of the WHO’s budget is derived from private sources — primarily pharmaceutical companies but also other corporate sectors including the telecommunication and agro-chemical industries. It also receives large donations from large philanthropic organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and GAVI. Twelve years ago, Gates had committed $10 billion to the WHO; after the US, his Foundation is its second largest donor providing 10 percent of its funding.  His financial commitment aligned with his global ambition to “make this the decade of vaccines.” Koenig also believes that Tedros’s appointment was due to Gates’ influence. In fact, Tedros is a former Chair of GAVI’s Vaccine Alliance.

Vaccine Adverse Effects Monitoring System Needs Overhaul

The WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety is responsible for administering vaccine programs in poorer, developing countries. It is also responsible for gathering data on incidents of vaccine injuries. Any deaths following vaccination campaigns are ignored and ruled as coincidental. This policy is based on an erroneous assumption that if no one died during a vaccine’s clinical trials, then the vaccine should be regarded as automatically safe and unrelated to any deaths that might occur later. Consequently, the WHO’s monitoring system is seriously flawed and requires a major overhaul.

One of the more controversial incidences was the WHO’s collaboration with the Bill Gates’ GAVI campaign to launch the Pentavalent vaccine (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, HIP and Hepatitis B) in Africa and later in South and Southeast Asia. In India, health officials recorded upwards to 8,190 additional infant deaths annually following GAVI’s Pentavalent campaign.  The WHO’s response was to reclassify its adverse event reporting system to disregard “infant” deaths altogether. Dr. Jacob Puliyel, a member of India’s  National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization concluded,

“deaths and other serious adverse events following vaccination in the third world, that use WHO-AEFI classification are not recorded in any database for pharmaco-vigilance. It is as if the deaths of children in low (and middle) income countries are of no consequence.”

WHO’s Double Standards of Vaccine Safety

During the WHO’s Global Vaccine Safety Summit convened in December 2019, a scandal erupted.  Days before the summit, one of the WHO’s medical directors for vaccination, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, who is now its chief science officer, appeared in a public advertisement touting the unquestionable safety of vaccines and ridiculing parents who speak out against vaccination. She assured viewers that the WHO was in control of matters and monitored any potential adverse risks carefully. However, during the Summit, Dr. Swaminathan acknowledged vaccine health risks and stated, “We really don’t have very good safety monitoring systems.” Another Summit participant, Dr. Heidi Larson stated,

“We have a very wobbly ‘health professional frontline’ that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. When the frontline professionals are starting to question or they don’t feel like they have enough confidence about the safety to stand up to the person asking the questions. I mean most medical school curriculums, even nursing curriculums, I mean in medical school you are lucky if you have half a day on vaccines.”

Later in September 2021, the Indian Bar Association sued Dr. Swaminathan for misleading the Indian government about Ivermectin to treat SARS-2 infections. The Association accused her of leading a disinformation campaign that resulted in “mass murder.” Covid-19 deaths exploded ten-fold due to Swaminathan’s claims that the drug was ineffective.

WHO’s Depopulation Efforts with Vaccines

Without doubt, the most nefarious activity conducted by the WHO is its alleged support and distribution of vaccines to poorer developing countries that may have been intentionally designed to decrease population rates.  Back in 1989, the WHO sponsored a symposium at its Geneva headquarters on “Antifertility Vaccines and Contraceptive Vaccines.” The symposium presented proposals for vaccines that were later discovered to have been laced with the sterilizing hormones HCG and estradiol; the former prevents pregnancy and triggers spontaneous abortions and miscarriages, and the latter can turn men infertile.

In 2015, the Kenyan Conference of Catholic Bishops reported its discovery of a polio vaccine laced with estradiol that was manufactured in India and distributed by the WHO. A year earlier, Dr. Wahome Ngare from the Kenyan Catholic Doctors Association uncovered a tetanus vaccine specifically being administered to women, also distributed by the WHO, that contained the HCG hormone. All of the polio vaccine samples tested contained HCG, estrogen-related compounds, follicle stimulating and luteinizing hormones, which will damage sperm formation in the testes. Even more disturbing, this vaccine was going to be administered to children under five years of age.

This was not the first time the WHO made efforts to use vaccination campaigns for depopulation.  A decade earlier, in 2004, the WHO, UNICIF and CDC launched a vaccination campaign to immunize 74 million African children during a polio outbreak. The initiative encountered a serious obstacle. In Nigeria, laboratory tests on the WHO’s vaccine samples resulted in the presence of estrogen and other female hormones. And in the mid-1990s, a tetanus vaccine being administered to Nicaraguan and Filipino girls and women in their child-bearing years was discovered to contain HCG, which accounted for a large number of spontaneous abortions that were reported by Catholic health workers.

Illegal Vaccine Experiments

In 2014, The Economic Times of India published a report that provided details of a joint venture between the WHO and the Gates Foundation to test an experimental Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine on approximately 16,000 tribal girls between the ages of 9 and 15 unwittingly. The experiment was conducted in 2008; many of the girls, the report states, became ill and some died. This was Merck’s Gardasil vaccine.

The following year the WHO and Gates Foundation conducted a similar experiment on 14,000 girls with Glaxo’s HPV vaccine Cervarix. Again “scores of teenage girls were hospitalized.”  Investigations led by Indian health officials uncovered gross violations in India’s laws regarding medical safety. In numerous cases there was no consent and the children had no idea what they were being vaccinated for. The Indian Supreme Court has taken up a case against the duo for criminal charges.

Over the years the WHO has been engaged in many other questionable and nefarious activities. The above examples argue the case that, at least within the upper echelons of the WHO, global health does not stand in high priority.  The organization employs over 7,000 people around the world and most are dedicated to improving the lives of populations in poor and developing nations. On the other hand, the WHO’s leaders exist solely to benefit the powers of Washington, London, Bill Gates and the pharmaceutical industry by advancing their agendas.

Corruption is systemic throughout global health and national health agencies.  In a 2021 article appearing in The Lancet, Dr. Patricia Garcia wrote,

“Corruption is embedded in health systems. Throughout my life—as a researcher, public health worker, and a Minister of Health—I have been able to see entrenched dishonesty and fraud. But despite being one of the most important barriers to implementing universal health coverage around the world, corruption is rarely openly discussed.”

Bear in mind, the WHO, along with Bill Gates and his Foundation, and Anthony Fauci at the NAIAD, led the effort to get the COVID-19 vaccine administered as quickly as possible. Gates Foundation has given $1.75 billion for developing and distributing these vaccines. Can we trust the WHO’s judgment and intentions to serve global health and the well-being of the world’s citizens.

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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.

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They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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A collective of medical doctors and scientific professionals in cooperation with a Réinfo Covid Québec have sent an open letter addressed to the Quebec college of physicians, the public health director, and the Quebec association of pediatricians raising numerous concerns surrounding the mRNA injections for children.

The open letter is specifically addressed to Dr. Luc Boileau (public health director), Dr. Mauril Gaudreault (President of the Quebec college of physicians), and Dr. Marie-Claude Roy (President of the Quebec association of pediatricians) and was signed by 19 medical doctors, researchers and pharmacists.

The letter was produced in collaboration with Réinfo Covid Québec, an arm of an international collective of 4,000 doctors and 80,000 members.

The group describes itself as a collective of caregivers, doctors and citizens gathered around an idea: the need for a fair and proportionate health policy in Quebec and elsewhere in the world.

In short, the Quebec chapter of the collective aims to provide a unified voice for doctors, health care professionals, and citizens to express their concerns and views regarding the Covid-19 pandemic health measures adopted in the province and its consequences – many of which they feel aren’t being equally shared and honestly discussed by traditional media and health authorities.

Though the open letter is quite lengthy and detailed, here are some of the principal contentions held therein [Google translated from French]:

“The principles underlying this text are those found in the Civil Code of Quebec, articles 10 and 11 and of Canada as well as the code of ethics of Quebec physicians. Some fall under the Nuremberg Code.”

“The physician’s personal and unavoidable duty, enshrined in his code of ethics, and from which he cannot escape, requires him to ensure that free and informed consent is obtained from the patient.”

“Free means without threat or constraint and, in the case of an investigational pharmaceutical product, without any promotion.”

“Informed means that the patient receives truthful, factual, complete and clearly expressed information.”

“An experimental product of gene manipulation was presented as a “vaccine like any other”. This product has been presented as a “safe and effective vaccine”.

“If we seek the support of the institutions that are the Public Health Department and the College of Physicians of Quebec (CMQ), it is in order to allow parents in Quebec to make free and informed decisions; decisions which, it should be mentioned, are irreversible.”

“Complete information, which includes all the dangers of a pharmaceutical product, is an unavoidable ethical obligation. What we have found as information communicated to parents in the context of anti-covid vaccines is ethically and scientifically insufficient, hence this text, which aims to better inform them.”

“Censorship that deprives parents of information essential to informed decision-making is unacceptable.”

“This text will also be sent to the media. Journalists or “decryptors” may want to comment on this information. They are free to do so. However, we ask them to disclose their sources and their possible conflicts of interest and to demand the same from all specialists they call to speak publicly as required by the journalistic code of ethics. Nothing less than the lives and health of children in Quebec are at stake.”

“Obligation to inform, Informed consent: Before prescribing or giving a treatment or a drug, the doctor, the government or Public Health, in this case, has an ethical and legal obligation to provide the person with all the information relating to the product concerned. This is an unavoidable duty of physicians and it is also a legal obligation enshrined in the Civil Code of Quebec, articles 10 to 25. This obligation is inspired by the principle of “inviolability of the person” and his “right to the truth”.

“Freedom of choice: The person must have complete freedom to accept or refuse any pharmaceutical product without being rewarded or penalized for their choice. This is true for both adults and children.[1] As the gene vaccine against COVID-19 is an unlicensed experimental product authorized under the guise of public health emergency and which, moreover, has not been adequately tested in animals, there should be no promotion of this product, and, above all, there should be no adverse consequences for anyone who refuses. No pressure should be exerted on the person.[2] (See section 9).”

“Informed choice: no information should be hidden: For the choice to be informed, all available information (potential advantages and disadvantages, risks, uncertainties) must be provided and transmitted in understandable language. However, the highest authorities (Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC) have affirmed that the information on the gene vaccine cannot all be disclosed. In addition, the manufacturers of mRNA injections still refuse, even if their products are deployed on a global scale, to reveal the exact composition alleging that it is a trade secret. The authorities concerned, the World Health Organization, Public Health of Quebec, Health Canada, the College of Physicians of Quebec (CMQ), our governments (federal and provincial) have not required pharmaceutical companies to disclose the exact composition of their products. Consequently, it is impossible to obtain truly informed consent, which contravenes the fundamental principles of the CMQ.”

“Parent Consent and Responsibilities: Never has an experimental product been administered to human beings without full animal testing since the tragic drugs thalidomide[3] and DES[4] administered to pregnant women.”

“Children are not able to understand the information transmitted for consent to be considered truly “informed”. Thus, the parent who gives his authorization on behalf of his child must understand

1. that it is an irreversible intervention whose short and medium term consequences are unknown and often underestimated, and whose long term repercussions (including the risk of infertility) are unknown due to the absence of hindsight;

2. that he makes a decision on behalf of his child, considered incapable of deciding for himself, and that this is a long-term responsibility;

3. that this mRNA injection is a product that has never been used on a large scale in humans and is totally different from all the vaccines we have been used to. It is false to claim that this injection is a “vaccine like the others”.

“Risk/benefit balance: One must always ask whether the product has more advantages or more disadvantages (risks). We must also take into account the age and particularities of the child concerned. The studies carried out in children by the manufacturers did not meet the minimum criteria of validity (necessity, efficacy and safety). These studies are scientifically insufficient and unsatisfactory. They have nevertheless been accepted by the FDA and by Health Canada. First of all, you have to know that the vast majority of children have already acquired a natural immunity against COVID-19 and then that children are very rarely seriously affected by the disease. In addition, it is now recognized by the CDC, since August 6, 2021, that this vaccination does not prevent either contracting the disease or transmitting it.”

“The benefits of this product for our children have not been satisfactorily explained, let alone demonstrated, by Public Health or the Government of Quebec. There are therefore unproven benefits, but the risks are indisputable and sometimes irremediable, thus subjecting children to unnecessary and unjustified danger.”

“Product not tested on animals? For a drug product to be approved, it must first have been tested in animals (mice, rats, and rabbits of both sexes and pregnant animals). In the climate of urgency surrounding this pandemic and in the rush to manufacture a “vaccine”, the manufacturer considerably shortened the crucial stage of animal testing, which would have taken several years for all phases are completed. Complete studies of bio-distribution and toxicity normally required have also been neglected. The disastrous examples above of Thalidomide and DES causing fetal malformations, infertility and vaginal cancers should have prompted us to be more cautious. It is important to mention that novel, experimental and mRNA vaccines, whose risk/benefit profile is unfavorable for young people and children in good health, benefit from a marketing authorization under a decree of emergency, even though there has never been an emergency in the pediatric population.”

“Is it a “safe and effective” product? A safe product? No, since Pfizer has identified 1,291 side effects that may result from its product. The VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) which is a self-reporting system of side effects by the American population, whose data everyone can consult, mentions, as of September 16, 2022, 1,418,220 reports of side effects in all age groups, including over 31,000 fatalities and nearly 260,000 serious injuries. Moreover, it is considered, according to an analysis commissioned by the FDA, that the actual frequency should be multiplied by 10 or 100.”

“Efficient? Currently the authorities cannot explain certain official statistics including the many deaths by COVID in doubly or triply vaccinated people, sudden deaths in athletes as well as excess mortality statistics; this raises legitimate questions. Has the effectiveness of “vaccines” in healthy people really been demonstrated? [8]”

“Ethics: vaccinating children to protect adults??? The INSPQ affirms in its report intended for the Quebec government that it can be ethical to vaccinate children to protect the elderly and vulnerable. This logic of the INSPQ is all the more questionable as:

(1) It is not children who transmit COVID to the elderly, but adults who transmit it to children.

(2) “Vaccination” does not prevent either contracting the disease or transmitting it, and does so with the same intensity.”

“As a conclusion: We have attached ourselves to the obligation of truth and to the nature and extent of the information which must be transmitted to parents and which is essential for an informed decision-making concerning the inoculation of their child with an experimental product based on messenger RNA.”

“On the other hand, we believe that the Collège des médecins du Québec and the Direction de la santé publique could facilitate more informed decision-making by producing a document that is neither promotional nor propagandistic and which would include the information contained in the current.”

“In short, we, the signatories, are asking our indispensable regulatory institutions, the Direction de la santé publique and the Collège des médecins du Québec, to put science back on the agenda regarding the vaccination of children.”

“This also constitutes a formal notice in compliance with article 39 of the code of ethics of physicians concerning the reporting of a situation that endangers the population, in this case the children of Quebec. If the above is consistent, a complete and immediate ban on the vaccination of children in Quebec against COVID-19 is necessary, if only by virtue of the precautionary principle (“First, do no harm” ).”

Verifying some claims made by the group

While it would be too lengthy to verify all of the claims found in the contentions enumerated above, some are worth checking.

Firstly, the group claims that the vaccines should not be promoted since they were not fully tested on animals.

If we look at the information on the Quebec Health website, we can notice the following in the section Safety of the vaccines:

Previous versions (such as that of Oct. 29, 2021) somewhat varied and used to include a hyperlink pointing to the page that describes all the steps in the vaccine development process, including conducting preclinical studies in animals.

While it remains unclear why Quebec Health removed the link to the Vaccine development process page, the current page does state that they “have gone through all the necessary steps prior to approval” which remains disputable, given insufficient testing on animals.

As for the legality in promoting the vaccines, the group cited Section 9 of the Canadian Food and Drugs Act which states:

“9 (1) No person shall label, package, treat, process, sell or advertise any drug in a manner that is false, misleading or deceptive or is likely to create an erroneous impression regarding its character, value, quantity, composition, merit or safety.”

Advertising the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine in a manner that suggests it has met “the same quality and safety standards as any other vaccine used in Canada” is highly questionable since it was not fully tested on animals, it was hurriedly released and administered under an emergency directive, and was as an experimental product of gene manipulation very different from conventional vaccines.

One of the other key contentions of the group was that the health authorities do not meet required ethical standards specifically with regards to the completeness of information communicated to parents, that they fail in their obligation to provide informed consent, and that the public health authority, the INSPQ, had asserted it an ethical justification to vaccinate children in order to protect the elderly and vulnerable.

Moreover, they stress that complete information should include the dangers and risks of the vaccine, but parents are not informed of all of these due to censorship. And consequently, it deprives them of making an informed decision.

Informed consent is a complex concept with many norms and standards to follow as well as relevant laws which are well beyond the scope of this article. Notwithstanding, the claim that the health authority advocated to the Quebec government the advantages of vaccinating children to protect more vulnerable groups is easily verifiable.

In this regard, the group makes reference to the INSPQ’s publication entitled Vaccination contre la COVID-19 chez les enfants âgés de 6 mois à 4 ans au Québec (English: Vaccination against COVID-19 in children aged 6 months to 4 years in Quebec) for the allegation. The document in question does state the following:

English translation (via Google Translate):

“9 Ethical Considerations

Vaccination of children raises certain questions ethics that have been discussed in detail in the notice for vaccination against COVID-19 of children aged 5 to 11 years(6).

Specifically for young children, remember the issues related to non-maleficence: given that the anticipated benefits of youth vaccination children are less than for other groups age, the individual risks must be low and the vaccination must have an excellent safety profile.

The possible negative impacts of vaccination against COVID-19 on the offer and acceptability of others routine vaccines should also be minimized, in order to respect the principle of non-maleficence.

Moreover, from a utilitarian point of view, the principle of solidarity can make it possible to ethically justify the vaccination of young children in the context of a uncertain benefit/risk ratio at the individual level, especially if the vaccination of young children offers societal benefits (for example, if vaccination protects other people more vulnerable). It could also allow parents who identify their child at risk of developing complications as a result of an infection to SARS-CoV-2 to benefit from this strategy preventative, should it become offered or recommended.”

They key passage here is

“Moreover, from a utilitarian point of view, the principle of solidarity can make it possible to ethically justify the vaccination of young children in the context of a uncertain benefit/risk ratio at the individual level, especially if the vaccination of young children offers societal benefits (for example, if vaccination protects other people more vulnerable)”.

It is clearly stated that the health authority, the INSPQ, is indeed suggesting vaccinating children in order to protect more vulnerable groups of society.

While the group has raised many important questions surrounding the numerous and contentious issues raised in their open letter, it remains to be seen if any of the targeted health authorities will reply, as they seldom do.

The author of this article has contacted Réinfo Covid Québec to inquire as to whether they have received any response from any of the three health authorities to whom they have addressed the letter, but has not received a reply as of publication time. Should they respond, a note will be added in the comments section for this article.

At the very least, the group of doctors and health care professionals who penned this open letter have provided the public in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada with a lot to contemplate.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Dan Fournier’s Writings.

Dan Fournier is a Freelance/Independent Investigative Journalist.

Featured image: A young girl receives a Covid-19 vaccination. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

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***

What did you think would happen? What was the Zionist left, which sank into a coma after the Oslo Accords, thinking? That it was possible to return to power out of a coma? Empty-handed? Without an alternative and without leadership? Solely on the basis of hatred for Netanyahu? Aside from that, it had nothing to offer.

No one should be surprised by what happened. It could not have been otherwise. It began with the occupation – pardon the annoying and clichéd mention of that – but that is where it really began, and it had to culminate in a government of racism and transfer. Fifty years of incitement against the Palestinians and scare tactics about them cannot culminate in a government of peace.

Fifty years of almost wall-to-wall Israeli support, from the Zionist left and right, for the occupation, could not end any other way than with Ben-Gvir as the popular hero. A never-ending occupation could only lead to the Benjamin Netanyahu-Itamar Ben-Gvir government. For if you’re going to have an occupation, then you need to embrace its genuine version, the one that is not the least bit abashed about it – the Ben-Gvir version.

It was simply impossible to continue with the illusions – Jewish and democratic, an enlightened occupation, a temporary occupation – and that whole tired repertoire of phrases. The time for truth had arrived, and that is what Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are going to tell us.

There is no point in pursuing a blame campaign now – Yair Lapid siphoned off Labor votes, Labor didn’t merge with Meretz, Balad didn’t go with the Joint List. These things would have amounted to temporary pain relievers for a terminal illness. Even if all that would not have happened, nothing about the overall picture would have been different: The society that has arisen here is partly religious and largely racist, with hatred of Arabs being its main fuel, and there was no one to stand against that.

What happened two days ago did not begin two days ago. Maybe Golda Meir started it, maybe Shimon Peres, but in any event, none of their successors tried to go another way to stem the tide. Did you really think that Yair Lapid, a moderate and hollow rightist, filled with good intentions, was capable of offering an alternative to Ben-Gvir? What alternative? To kill gently? To embrace Emmanuel Macron? Now Israel has decided it prefers not to be gentle when it comes to killing. The next government will at least avoid the self-preening.

For years, a rudderless left and center that lacks leadership and lacks courage has desperately attempted to grovel to and look like the right. It just had to end with Ben-Gvir and with the nationalist Shas. There was no other possible outcome.

For years, Israelis have been about the Chosen People, about the Holocaust after which anything is permitted, about the Arabs who want to throw us into the sea, about our right to the land because of the biblical stories, about the IDF as the world’s most moral army, about David versus Goliath, about Israeli Arabs as a fifth column, about the whole world being against us and that anyone who criticizes us is an antisemite. What did we think would arise out of all that? Ben-Gvir actually took his time. He could well have made his big splash a long time ago. That’s what happens when you have a Bolsonaro and no Lula facing him. That’s what happens when cries of “Death to the Arabs,” which will now be drilled at morning assembly in schools, were not met with a single cry of “Freedom for the Arabs.” That is where it began, this is where it ends.

*

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The Narrative Around the Safety of COVID Shots Is Cracking

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What to Expect from COP27 in Egypt’s Police State: An Interview with Sharif Abdel Kouddous

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The global climate meeting called COP27 (the 27th Conference of Parties) will be held in the remote Egyptian desert resort of Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt from November 6-18. Given the extremely repressive nature of the Egyptian government, this gathering will likely be different from others, where there have been large, raucous protests led by civil society groups.

Twelve Lessons to be Learned from the Ethiopian Conflict

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Former President Lula Declared Winner in Brazil

By Abayomi Azikiwe, November 03, 2022

A runoff election which pitted the right-wing and neo-fascist President Jair Bolsonaro against former Workers’ Party President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has resulted in a narrow victory which illustrates the sharp political divisions in the South American state of the Republic of Brazil.

COVID-19: A Universe of Questions in a Time of Universal Deceit

By Michael Bryant, November 03, 2022

The original Covid Story narrated by health ‘experts’ and government officials told of a particularly virulent pathogen which besieged the planet in 2020 and spread like wildfire– terrorizing, infecting, and killing people en masse. It was the story of a “pandemic level event” in which people were told to stay indoors, entire sectors of society were forced to shut down and humans were told to do everything possible to avoid contact with one another.

UK Government “War Gamed” Emergency Plans for Multi-Day Power Blackouts; Leaked Docs Reveal

By Zero Hedge, November 03, 2022

Documents are not for public consumption, warn a “reasonable worst-case scenario” power blackout would roil all segments of the economy. Transport, food, water supply, communications, and energy would grind to a halt. In such a scenario, the government will provide citizens with food, water, and shelter if power blackouts last more than several days.

Donbass Self-Determination: Referenda and the Rights of Minorities. Analysis by UN Expert

By Alfred de Zayas and Arnaud Develay, November 03, 2022

The Russian population in Donbass certainly had reason to feel threatened in the light of the virulence of the anti-Russian rhetoric by the leaders of the Maidan coup and the anti-Russian legislation adopted by the putsch-Parliament.

Full-blooded Psychopaths: Engineered Global Genocide in the Guise of a Global Pandemic

By Dr. Emanuel Garcia, November 03, 2022

How may one describe the nature of those psychopaths who have deviously and with supreme cleverness engineered a global genocide in the guise of a global pandemic, and who have so befuddled and seduced the masses that their acts of evil have been welcomed as acts of greater good?

Canada Prepares War Bonds for Nazi-infested Ukrainian Government

By Daniel Xie, November 03, 2022

On October 28 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a plan to raise further money for Ukraine as the eight year NATO-led proxy war against Russia rages on. This plan involves Canada selling a government backed 5-year bond for Ukraine, NATO’s primary means used to target Russia. Canada calls it a “Ukrainian Sovereignty Bond”.

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***

They are falling like ninepins, and the Tories have now given the weary people of Britain yet another prime minister.  And what a catch: stupendously wealthy, youthful – the youngest in two centuries – and a lawbreaker.  As Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government of Boris Johnson, he was fined for breaches during the partygate scandal, despite telling the Commons that he had attended no illegal gatherings.

The statement released in response to the fine was ice cool, belying the fact that he had become the first Chancellor ever charged with an offence while in office.  “I understand that for figures in public office, the rules must be applied stringently in order to maintain public confidence.”  He respected “the decision that has been made and have paid the fine.”  The outcome was always likely: not paying could have landed him in an even stickier situation.

Being sly with regulations is obviously something that runs in the family.  Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, ran into some trouble earlier this year when attention was brought to her non-domiciled (non-dom) status in the UK.  She owns a jaw dropping £700 million in shares in the Indian IT giant Infosys, from which she received £11.6 million in dividend income last year.

Declaring one’s domicile to be in another country can be a fine money saver: in this case, £2.1 million a year.  But Murty wanted to be generous and gracious – at least for her husband’s political ambitions.  “I understand and appreciate the British sense of fairness and I do not wish my tax status to be a distraction for my husband or to affect my family.”

The new prime minister’s coming to power is a perfect statement of the leader estranged and continentally distant from voters, a person evidently bored by his time as a banker and keen to make a showing in parliament.  “In his technocratic aloofness,” George Eaton suggests, “Sunak resembles an IMF official poised to impose a ‘structural adjustment programme’ on a stricken developing world economy.”  The analogy is not out of place, given what Trussonomics has done to Britain in a matter of weeks.

While Sunak distanced himself from his predecessor’s loopy variant of steroid-fed Reaganomics, the inner Thatcherite’s heart continued to beat to the rhythm of nostalgia.  As Thatcher’s own Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, said of Sunak, he was “the only candidate who understands Thatcherite economics.”

He is, to illustrate the point, very much in favour of fiscal tightening and keeping public spending thin, and, like the Iron Lady he so adores, happy to tout tax rises if needed.  Thatcher, it should be remembered, raised the Value Added Tax (VAT) from 8 per cent to 15 per cent and imposed the infamous poll tax otherwise advertised as a “Community Charge”.

Sunak’s belief in redistribution is of that rather distasteful variety.  As Labour had, in his ill-chosen words of a leaked video, “shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas”, it was incumbent on the Tories to undo it.  “I managed to start changing the funding formulas to make sure areas like this are getting the funding they deserved.”  The area in question was the rather well-heeled town of Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

During Sunak’s tenure and the “levelling up” programme of Johnson, the wealthiest parts of Britain received amounts of money up to 10 times more per capita than the poorest, showing how Tories can be socialistic to the class of their own choosing.  Sajid Javid’s wealthy constituency of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire was earmarked to receive £15 million, or £148 a head.  Eight local authorities counted as some of the poorest in Britain received less than £10 a head from levelling up funds.

His economic embrace of Brexit was filled with hubristic assessments, some of this evident in a report authored for the Centre for Policy Studies in 2016.  “Brexit will provide the UK with new economic freedom, and the Government should take the opportunity to create Free ports across the nation.”  Such ports would “increase manufacturing output, create employment regionally where it is most needed, and promote trade.”

The report obsesses over the presence of 3,500 Free Trade Zones spread across the globe, with the US deserving a special mention: 250 FTZs “which employ 420,000 people and handle £750bn of merchandise.”  Airy predictions about what free ports would do to the unshackled British economy are offered, including 86,000 jobs “if they were as successful as the US Foreign Trade Zone programme.”

Such a rarefied market world says little about civic duties and citizenship.  It speaks volumes that Sunak expressed scepticism about lockdowns and has preferred to take climate change less seriously than others, even within his own party.  The issue of whether planning permission is going to be given to opening the UK’s first coal mine in a generation – in Cumbria – has been dismissed by the new PM as a “local issue”.

Sunak even had to be persuaded to change his mind attending the upcoming COP27 conference to be held in Egypt.  On Twitter, he rationalised his about face, characterised by Green MP Caroline Lucas as a “screeching U-turn” on the climate change conference: “There is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change.  There is no energy security without investing in renewables.”

The change of heart suggested a weakness to the Labour opposition.  “The prime minister,” according to the party’s climate policy spokesperson Ed Miliband, “has been shamed into going to COP27 by the torrent of disbelief that he would fail to turn up.”  The only reason for putting in an appearance was “to avoid embarrassment not to provide leadership.”  There is still much time for the markets, and everybody else, to be spooked.

*

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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: Sunak introducing the 2021 autumn budget (Photo by HM Treasury and The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP, licensed under OGL 3)

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***

The global climate meeting called COP27 (the 27th Conference of Parties) will be held in the remote Egyptian desert resort of Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt from November 6-18. Given the extremely repressive nature of the Egyptian government, this gathering will likely be different from others, where there have been large, raucous protests led by civil society groups.

So as tens of thousands of delegates – from world leaders to climate activists and journalists – descend on Sharm el-Sheik from all over the world, we asked Egyptian Journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous to give us his thoughts about the state of Egypt today, including the situation of political prisoners, and how he expects the Egyptian government will act with the eyes of the world upon it.

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Medea Benjamin: For those who don’t know or have forgotten, can you give us a quick overview of the nature of the present government in Egypt today?

Sharif Abdel Kouddous: The 2011 revolution against Hosni Mubarak, an uprising that was part of what has been called the Arab Spring, was very inspiring and had reverberations around the world, from the Occupy Movement in the United States to the Indignados in Spain. But that revolution was crushed in a very brutal way in 2013 by the military, led by General Abdel Fattah al Sisi–who later became president.

Right now, Egypt is ruled by a very tight and closed clique of military and intelligence officers, a circle that is completely opaque. Its decision-making process does not allow for any political participation and it does not brook any kind of dissent or opposition. It seems that the government’s answer to any problems with its citizens is to put them in prison.

There are literally tens of thousands of political prisoners in Egypt right now. We don’t know the exact number because there are no official statistics and this forces lawyers and the very harassed human rights groups to try to painstakingly tabulate the thousands of people who are trapped behind bars.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen Egypt build several new prisons. Just last year Sisi oversaw the opening of the Wadi al-Natrun prison complex. It’s not called a prison complex, it’s called a “rehabilitation center.” This is one of seven or eight new prisons that Sisi himself has dubbed “American-style prisons.”

These prison complexes include within them the courts and judicial buildings, so it makes a conveyor belt from the courthouse to the prison more efficient.

MB: What is the status of this massive group of political prisoners?

SAK: The majority of political prisoners in Egypt are held in what is called “pre-trial detention.” Under Egypt’s penal code, you can be held in prison for two years without ever being convicted of a crime. Nearly everyone held in pre-trial detention faces two identical charges: one is spreading false information and the other is belonging to a terrorist organization or an outlawed organization.

The prison conditions are very dire. If you get sick, you are in big trouble. There have been a lot of deaths from medical negligence, with prisoners dying in custody. Torture and other forms of abuse by security forces is widespread.

We’ve also seen the number of death sentences and executions skyrocket. Under the former President Mubarak, in his final decade in office, there was a de facto moratorium on executions. There were death sentences handed down but people were not being put to death. Now Egypt ranks third in the world in the number of executions.

MB: What about other freedoms, such as freedom of assembly and freedom of the press?

SAK: Basically, the regime sees its citizens as a nuisance or a threat. All forms of protest or public assembly are banned.

Alleged violations carry very stiff prison sentences. We’ve seen mass arrests sweeps happen whenever there’s any kind of public demonstration and we’ve also seen an unprecedented crackdown on civil society, with human rights organizations and economic justice organizations being forced to scale back their operations or basically operate underground.The people who work for them are subject to intimidation and harassment and travel bans and arrests.

We’ve also seen a massive crackdown on press freedom, a nearly complete takeover of the media landscape. Under Mubarak’s government, there was at least some opposition press, including some opposition newspapers and TV stations. But now the government very tightly controls the press through censorship and also through acquisition. The General Intelligence Services, which is the intelligence apparatus of the military, has become the largest media owner of the country. They own newspapers and TV channels. Independent media, such as the one I work for called Mada Masr, operate on the margins in a very, very hostile environment.

Egypt is the third largest jailer of journalists in the world and imprisons more journalists on charges of spreading false news than any other country in the world.

MB: Can you talk about the case of Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who is probably Egypt’s most famous political prisoner?

SAK: Alaa has been behind bars for much of the last decade. He is in prison ostensibly for the crime of “spreading false news,” but he is really in prison for these ideas, for being an icon and a symbol of the 2011 revolution. For the regime, imprisoning him was a way to set an example for everyone else. That’s why there has been so much campaigning to get him out.

He has been in prison under very, very difficult conditions. For two years he wasn’t allowed out of his cell and didn’t even have a mattress to sleep on. He was completely deprived of everything, including books or reading materials of any kind. For the first time, he started expressing suicidal thoughts.

But on April 2 he decided to go on a hunger strike as an act of resistance against his imprisonment. He has been on a hunger strike for seven months now. He started with just water and salt, which is a kind of hunger strike that Egyptians learned from Palestinians. Then in May, he decided to go on a Gandhi-style strike and ingest 100 calories a day–which is a spoonful of honey in some tea. An average adult needs 2,000 calories a day, so it’s very meager.

But he just sent a letter to his family saying that he was going back to a full hunger strike and on November 6, on the eve of the COP meeting, he’s going to stop drinking water. This is extremely serious because the body cannot last without water for more than a few days.

So he is calling on all of us on the outside to organize, because either he will die in prison or he will be released. What he is doing is incredibly brave. He is using his body, the only thing he has agency over, to organize and to push us on the outside to do more.

MB: How do these repressed civil society leaders view the fact that Egypt is playing host to COP27?

SAK: It was very disheartening for a lot of people in Egypt who work for human rights and justice and democracy when Egypt was granted the right to host the conference. But Egyptian civil society has not called on the international community to boycott the COP meeting; they have called for the plight of political prisoners and the lack of human rights to be linked to the climate discussions and not ignored.

They want a spotlight to be placed on the thousands of political prisoners like Alaa, like Abdel Moneim Aboul Foitouh, a former presidential candidate, like Mohamed Oxygen, a blogger, like Marwa Arafa, who is an activist from Alexandria.

Unfortunately, hosting this meeting has given the government a great opportunity to remake its image. It has allowed the government to try to position itself as the voice for the Global South and the negotiator trying to unlock billions of dollars a year in climate financing from the Global North.

Of course the issue of climate reparations to the Global South is very important. It needs to be discussed and taken seriously. But how can you give climate reparations to a country like Egypt when you know the money will mostly be spent on bolstering this repressive, polluting state? As Naomi Klein said in her great article Greenwashing a Police State, the summit is going beyond greenwashing a polluting state to greenwashing a police state.

MB: So what do you think we can expect to see in Sharm el-Sheikh? Will the usual protests that happen at every COP, both inside and outside the official halls, be allowed?

SAK: I think what we are going to see in Sharm el-Sheik is a carefully managed theater. We all know the problems with the UN Climate Summits. There are a lot of negotiations and climate diplomacy, but rarely do they amount to anything concrete and binding. But they do serve as an important place for networking and convergence for different groups in the climate justice movement, an opportunity for them to come together to organize. It has also been a time for these groups to show their opposition to the inaction by those in power, with creative, vigorous protests both inside and outside the conference.

This will not be the case this year. Sharm El-Sheikh is a resort in Sinai that literally has a wall around it. It can and will be very tightly controlled. From what we understand, there is a special space that has been designated for protests that has been built out near a highway, far away from the conference center and any signs of life. So how effective will it be to hold protests there?

This is why people like Greta Thunberg are not going. Many activists have problems with the structure of the COP itself but it is even worse in Egypt where the ability to use it as a convergence space for dissent will be effectively shut down.

But more importantly, the members of Egyptian civil society, including the allies and environmental groups that are critical of the government, will not be allowed to attend. In a departure from UN rules, those groups that manage to participate will have been vetted and approved by the government and will have to be very careful about how they operate. Other Egyptians who should be there are unfortunately in prison or are subject to various forms of repression and harassment.

MB: Should foreigners also worry about the Egyptian government surveilling them?

SAK: The entire conference will be very highly surveilled. The government created this app that you can download to use as a guide for the conference. But to do that, you have to put in your full name, phone number, email address, passport number and nationality, and you have to enable location tracking. Amnesty International technology specialists have reviewed the app and flagged all these concerns about surveillance and how the app can use the camera and microphone and location data and bluetooth.

MB: What environmental issues related to Egypt will the government allow to be discussed, and what will be off limits?

SAK: Environmental issues that will be allowed are issues such as trash collection, recycling, renewable energy and climate finance, which is a big issue for Egypt and for the Global South.

Environmental issues that implicate the government and military will not be tolerated. Take the issue of coal–something the environmental community is very critical of. That will be off limits because coal imports, much of it coming from the United States, have risen over the past several years, driven by the strong demand from the cement sector. Egypt’s largest importer of coal is also the largest cement producer, and that’s the El-Arish Cement Company that was built in 2016 by none other than the Egyptian military.

We’ve seen massive amounts of cement poured into Egypt’s natural environment over the past several years. The government has built nearly 1,000 bridges and tunnels, destroying acres and acres of green space and cutting down thousands of trees. They have gone on a crazy construction spree, building a slew of new neighborhoods and cities, including a new administrative capital in the desert just outside of Cairo. But no criticism of these projects has been or will be tolerated.

Then there is dirty energy production. Egypt, Africa’s second largest gas producer, is scaling up its oil and gas production and exports, which will mean further profits for the military and intelligence sectors involved in this. These projects that are harmful to the environment but profitable for the military will be off the agenda.

The Egyptian military is entrenched in every part of the Egyptian state. Military owned enterprises produce everything from fertilizers to baby food to cement. They operate hotels; they are the largest owner of land in Egypt. So any kind of industrial pollution or environmental harm from areas such as construction, tourism, development and agribusiness will not be tolerated at COP.

MB: We have heard that the crackdown on Egyptians in anticipation of this global gathering has already begun. Is that true?

SAK: Yes, we’ve already seen an intensified crackdown and a massive arrest sweep in the run-up to the climate summit. There are arbitrary stop and searches, and random security checkpoints. They open your facebook and whatsapp and they look through it. If they find content that they find problematic, they arrest you.

Hundreds of people have been arrested, by some counts 500-600. They have been arrested from their homes, off the streets, from their workplaces.

And these searches and arrests are not restricted just to Egyptians. The other day there was an Indian climate activist, Ajit Rajagopal, was arrested shortly after setting off on an 8-day walk from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh as part of a global campaign to raise awareness about the climate crisis.

He was detained in Cairo, questioned for hours and held overnight. He called an Egyptian lawyer friend, who came to the police station to help him. They detained the lawyer as well, and held him overnight.

There have been calls for protests on November 11, or 11/11. Do you think people in Egypt will come out on the streets?

It is unclear where these protest calls started but I think it was started by people outside Egypt. I would be surprised if people come out on the streets given the level of repression we’ve been seeing these days but you never know.

The security apparatus was very surprised in September 2019 when a former military contractor turned whistleblower exposed videos showing army corruption. These videos went viral. The whistleblower called for protests but he was outside Egypt in self-imposed exile in Spain.

There were some protests, not very big but significant. And what was the government response? Massive arrests, the most massive sweep since Sisi came to power with over 4,000 people detained. They arrested all kinds of people–everyone who had been arrested before and a lot of other people. With that kind of repression, it’s hard to say if mobilizing people to go to the streets is the right thing to do.

The government is also particularly paranoid because the economic situation is so bad. The Egyptian currency has lost 30 percent of its value since the beginning of the year, precipitated by a variety of factors, including the war in Ukraine, since Egypt was getting so much of its wheat from Ukraine. Inflation is out of control. People are getting poorer and poorer. So that, combined with these calls for protests, have prompted the preemptive crackdown.

So I don’t know if people will defy the government and go out into the streets. But I gave up trying to predict anything in Egypt a long time ago. You just never know what is going to happen.

*

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Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

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***

The global systemic transition within which the New Cold War is being waged played a major role in catalyzing the Ethiopian Conflict due to the Golden Billion’s self-interested geostrategic reasons in provoking what could have been the greatest African tragedy since the Congo Wars. All of Africa is expected to become a similar proxy battleground in this struggle over the direction of that aforesaid transition, but the example of Ethiopia’s victory might help avert some of the worst upcoming crises.

The Ethiopian Conflict finally ended with a peace agreement on 2 November between the Government of Ethiopia (GOE) and the TPLF, which had been fighting one another for almost exactly two years up until that point. Everything that transpired across that time taught the world some very important things that can hopefully be put to use for preemptively averting or decisively reacting to future such conflicts. Here are the twelve most important lessons to be learned from the Ethiopian Conflict:

1. Deeply Embedded Elite Become Embittered Whenever Their Privileges Are Threatened

The TPLF had deeply embedded itself into the very fabric of the post-Civil War Ethiopian state and thus became embittered when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmedattempted to reduce their privileges as part of his far-reaching reforms. He envisaged restoring meritocracy in order to give his multimillennial nation’s historically diverse people true equality within their federal system, yet this was vehemently opposed by the former ruling party, so much so that they decided to go to war to protect their privileges.

2. Ethnic Federalism Can Be Exploited For Separatist Ends

The Ethiopian Constitution’s clause enshrining the right to secession for every nation, nationality, and people was included in the law of the land partly for the purpose of emphasizing the voluntary unity of these diverse elements, each of which could leave if their rights weren’t respected. The TPLF exploited this clause together with the federal system’s creation of the Tigray Region to promote their self-interested separatist cause, which was illegitimate since the Tigrayans’ rights weren’t ever threatened.

3. Information Warfare Fuels The Flames Of Ethno-Separatism

The only way in which the TPLF stood any chance of “justifying” their self-interested separatist cause to the same Tigrayans who they claimed to represent was to manipulate their perceptions through information warfare aimed at making them fear that their rights were at risk of being threatened. To that end, they also relied on their extensive network of foreign civil society, media, and state supporters, each of which had ulterior motives for contributing to this campaign.

4. External Actors Exploit Domestic Tensions To Promote Their Interests In The New Cold War

The US-led West’s Golden Billion saw an irresistible opportunity to exploit the TPLF’s self-interested separatist cause for the purpose of promoting their interests in the New Cold War. In the Ethiopian context, they sought to punish that country for its policy of principled neutrality in refusing to take their side over China’s, which at that time was their top opponent in the jointly BRICS– and SCO-led Global South prior to the latestphase of the Ukrainian Conflict that made Russia their number one enemy.

5. Humanitarian Imperialism Is The Latest Form Of Hybrid Warfare

The weaponization of humanitarian issues – whether objectively existing, completely fabricated, or a combination thereof – for advancing political goals at another country’s expense via economic (sanctions) and/or military (“Responsibility to Protect”) means/threats can be described as humanitarian imperialism. This latest form of Hybrid Warfare came to characterize the Ethiopian Conflict more than anything else and will thus be studied very closely by scholars across the coming years.

6. Grassroots Movements Organically Rise To Confront Fake News & Neo-Imperialism

Activists at home and abroad organically came together to create the #NoMore grassroots movement in response to the fake news that was spewed to facilitate the neo-imperialist agenda of those foreign forces meddling in the Ethiopian Conflict. Their common anti-imperialist cause is inclusive enough to involve anyone in the world with similar principles, which thus resulted in revitalizing these hitherto dormant movements and therefore bringing hope other oppressed people across the Global South.

7. Existential Threats Posed By Foreign Divide-And-Rule Plots Can Strengthen National Unity

Identity-driven tensions predate the Ethiopian Conflict, but their exacerbation and subsequent exploitation by foreign forces served to bring Ethiopia’s diverse people closer together than ever before. This unexpected outcome was due to the #NoMore movement making everyone aware of how their preexisting problems were being manipulated to threaten their state’s existence. That prompted all previously feuding but sincerely patriotic forces to unite in defending their beloved country.

8. Strong Synergy Between Civil Society & The Security Services Preserves Domestic Stability

The only reason that Ethiopia remained domestically stable outside of its conflict-afflicted regions is because of the strong synergy between civil society and the security services, without which this historically diverse country would certainly have been “Balkanized” by now. People of all identities from all walks of life rallied behind the ENDF as their shield for protecting the existence of the Ethiopian state that all sincerely patriotic forces have a stake in preserving.

9. National Crises Provide Clarity About A Country’s True Friends & Foes

Ethiopia discovered who its friends and foes truly were during the last two years of its national crisis. Those Western states that previously claimed to support democracy and human rights ended up being the ones violating Ethiopia’s national model of democracy and its people’s human rights by proxy, while states across the Global South like Russia, China, Iran, and Turkiye united in supporting their victimized peer. Reconciliation with the first category is possible, but no one will ever forget what happened.

10. Well-Intended Regional Mediation Efforts Can Lead To Unexpected Breakthroughs

The African Union-mediated peace process that culminated in South Africa led to unexpected breakthroughs precisely because those involved in it had positive intentions instead of ulterior motives like those Western countries that sought to meddle in these talks. “African Solutions to African Problems” is now more than just a slogan since it just achieved its most important deliverable, peace in Ethiopia, which will in turn provide a practical framework for resolving other African crises.

11. Difficult Compromises Are Required For Peace, Stability, and Unity

The 12-point joint statement released by the GOE and the TPLF contains what can objectively be described as some difficult compromises by both parties on sensitive issues involving administrative, informational, judicial, political, and security affairs. These were required though in order to achieve peace, return stability to the country, and thus preserve national unity. It’s impossible to please everyone on both sides, yet they should all appreciate the difficult decisions made for the greater good.

12. The Ethiopian Conflict Is A Lesson For All Of Africa

Ethiopia’s victory over the neo-imperialist forces that waged their Hybrid War of Terror against it as punishment for this country’s pragmatic policy of principled neutrality in the New Cold War will inspire other African states to follow its lead instead of deterring them like its defeat would have done. Furthermore, those disgruntled domestic forces similar in spirit to the TPLF will be deterred from destabilizing their country in collusion with foreign forces instead of being inspired had the TPLF won.

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The global systemic transition within which the New Cold War is being waged played a major role in catalyzing the Ethiopian Conflict due to the Golden Billion’s self-interested geostrategic reasons in provoking what could have been the greatest African tragedy since the Congo Wars. All of Africa is expected to become a similar proxy battleground in this struggle over the direction of that aforesaid transition, but the example of Ethiopia’s victory might help avert some of the worst upcoming crises.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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After over two decades of keeping Serbia in a semi-colonial state, the European Union seems to finally admit that it sees the Southeast European country precisely as such – a semi-colony. For approximately 20 years, Brussels played the carrot and stick cards with Belgrade, forcing it to renounce important segments of its sovereignty in return for access to EU funds and markets.

The neoliberal economic framework that the EU insisted on devastated the country’s hybrid market socialist economy and ruined domestic economic power, paving the way for the dominance of foreign investors and turning the country into yet another source of cheap labor for Western corporate interests. However, even while implementing such policies, disastrous for any country’s economic (or any other form of) sovereignty, it created an image of growth.

And yet, the waning economic power of Brussels, resulting primarily from its suicidal subservience to Washington DC’s Barbarossa-like push against Russia, is starting to affect the “carrot” portion of the EU’s policy toward Serbia. Frustrated by the country’s refusal to conform with the political West’s clinically Russophobic frenzy, the bureaucratic empire is now resorting to using the “stick”. With little to nothing left to offer, the EU is now threatening to scale back the benefits it gave Serbia in the last two decades to punish the country for its non-compliance in regards to the bloc’s anti-Russian sanctions and policies. To make matters worse, Brussels insists that Belgrade should still continue renouncing parts of its sovereignty while the EU is rolling back the apparent benefits it previously gave in return.

What does Serbia get from all this? A geopolitically worthless shoulder tap that will not help the country in any conceivable way. On the contrary, it may very well ruin its centuries-old relationship with Russia, a country exerting no pressure on Serbia while helping it preserve what’s left of its sovereignty and territorial integrity. For the political West, now effectively operating under a “you’re either with us or against us” foreign policy framework, Serbia’s neutrality is seen as nothing short of hostile. Belgrade is forced to beg to stay neutral in the Ukraine crisis, but to no avail, it seems. Anything less than full compliance is unacceptable to the imperialist power pole. To show just how much, the EU now considers Serbia’s membership ambitions effectively dead, as the negotiations to join the bloc have become a mere formality, having been stalled for years.

Brussels now thinks Serbia should not be conditioned by the termination of accession negotiations, since “joining the EU is as realistic as going to Mars,” as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung put it. The analogy is quite indicative of how the bloc sees Serbia’s future and should serve as an eye-opener in Belgrade. Coupled with recent allegations that Serbia is “trying to destabilize the EU at the behest of Russia”, it’s clear that despite how much sovereignty it renounces, how far it’s ready to go against its national interests, the country will never be good enough to join the bloc. The question remains then, what’s the point? Why would Serbia even want to join the EU? It seems the Serbian populace is well aware of this and it’s not so keen on joining either.

The EU now realizes that stopping membership negotiations would effectively mean nothing to the Serbian people. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung thinks that “the warnings about the possible freezing of accession negotiations are a blunt sword against Belgrade,” as the negotiations have been stagnant for years. “Their termination would not leave an impression on the Serbian population, which is critical of the EU anyway. In addition, even among the advocates of the EU in Belgrade, almost no one believes that joining the EU is realistic. Equally, Serbia could be threatened with a ban on access to Mars,” the report states.

However, it’s a different story when it comes to abolishing visa-free travel for Serbian citizens, a topic first mentioned by the European Commissioner for Internal Affairs Ylva Johansson. “It would greatly affect the Serbian economy, as well as the predominantly urban population that travels, as well as the authorities. It is the most lethal weapon in Brussels’ arsenal,” the German paper commented. “If visas were introduced again, that sense of isolation would be like a nightmare again, which first ended when the visas were abolished in 2009. Anger due to a return to the dark times would certainly be directed against the Serbian government,” the report adds.

The previously veiled threats by Brussels seem to have become quite direct at this point, since the EU isn’t just planning to get the “carrot” out of the equation (it effectively did already), but will also not hesitate using the “stick” now. What’s more, the move is openly aimed against Serbia’s political stability, as the EU expects to cause widespread discontent which, in turn, would result in exerting additional pressure on the Serbian government. Belgrade certainly could comply and start distancing itself from Moscow. It might even feign this while coordinating with Russia by implementing policies that would affect quite literally nothing.

For instance, it could impose sanctions on Russian sea shipping (Serbia is landlocked) or ban access to Russian airline companies, which can’t reach Serbia anyway, as the country is surrounded by EU members which already did that. But the question remains, where does it stop? Will the political West ever be content enough to stop blackmailing and threatening the country? It might be politically unwise for the Serbian government to answer that (rhetorical) question, but it certainly isn’t for the Serbian people.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

First published on October 28, 2021

 

Read Part I:

History of World War II: 80 Years Ago, The Battle of Moscow

By Shane Quinn, October 21, 2021

 

As the Battle of Moscow began eight decades ago on 2 October 1941, the weeks directly preceding and following this date did not seem to augur well for the Soviet Army. Kiev, the USSR’s third largest city, fell two weeks before on 19 September to a vast German pincers movement, and the Red Army lost a staggering 665,000 troops in the process.

Titled Operation Typhoon, the German plan for the capture of Moscow called for a two-stage battle. In the first phase German Army Group Centre, comprising of almost two million men (1), would execute a three-pronged attack; with the German 9th Army and Panzer Group 3 advancing to the north between the towns of Vyazma and Rzhev, both 140 miles west of Moscow.

The German 4th Army, and Panzer Group 4, would drive forward along the Roslavl-Moscow road in the centre; and Heinz Guderian’s Panzer Group 2, now called the 2nd Panzer Army, would attack to the south between Bryansk and Orel to the city of Tula, 110 miles southward of Moscow. Operation Typhoon’s second phase envisaged the final advance on the Russian capital, conducted by two armoured encircling thrusts from the north-west and the south-east.

The weather and terrain suited the Wehrmacht, for the time being. In the first three weeks of October 1941, the Germans captured another 663,000 Soviet soldiers and destroyed 1,200 tanks. Including casualties and prisoners taken, total Red Army losses in the opening stage of October amounted to a million troops (2). In a four week period from 19 September 1941, the Soviets had altogether lost more than 1.6 million men.

Even these terrible reverses did not prove insurmountable to a state whose populace, in 1941, amounted to around 193 million (3), as opposed to a population in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe of about 110 million.

On 15 October 1941, Joseph Stalin ordered the majority of Soviet government officials to leave Moscow. They relocated 560 miles further east to the city of Kuibyshev on the Volga river. This indicates that the Soviet leadership was not confident that Moscow could be held. Stalin gloomily informed Harry Hopkins, president Franklin Roosevelt’s personal emissary, that if Moscow was lost “all of Russia west of the Volga would have to be abandoned” (4). Nevertheless, Stalin remained in Moscow, believing that his continued presence there would maintain morale and prevent widespread unrest among Muscovites, clearly the correct decision.

While the Wehrmacht closed on Moscow, the Red Army’s resistance appeared to be weakening. On 19 October 1941 the Germans took the abandoned town of Mozhaysk, 65 miles west of Moscow. The following day, Stalin declared martial law as the capital was placed under full military control.

Red Army ski troops in Moscow. Still from documentary Moscow Strikes Back, 1942 (Licensed under CC0)

On 23 October 1941 the Germans crossed the Narva river, and were only 40 miles from Moscow (5). During the next day, however, the famous Russian rainfall (rasputitsa) arrived almost providentially. The Germans were expecting rains to come but the ferocity of it was a shock to them. The unpaved roads and paths quickly turned into rivers of thick, congealed mud. This meant that no wheeled vehicle could move for consecutive days, and the larger panzers advanced at a snail’s pace. The wider-tracked Russian T-34 tanks were more suited to such conditions.

British scholar Evan Mawdsley wrote,

“The defence of Moscow was certainly helped by changes in the weather” and “Unlike the Germans, the Russians had a working railway system behind their front line. Soviet planes were operating from prepared airfields, while the Luftwaffe now had to make do with improvised muddy landing strips”. (6)

By 24 October 1941 as the rains came, the German invasion was four months old (17 weeks) and in serious difficulty. Adolf Hitler had previously expected to conquer the Soviet Union in less than half of that time (8 weeks). When France collapsed the Nazi leader told his military advisers Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl that “a campaign against Russia would be child’s play” (7). Field Marshal Keitel, often accused of being a lackey, disagreed and he was opposed to attacking the USSR.

The German High Command (OKH) predicted in mid-December 1940 that “the Soviet Union would be defeated in a campaign not exceeding 8-10 weeks”. Such views were strongly shared by the American and British authorities. Why did these predictions prove so wrong?

We can get to the heart of the matter, by briefly examining German blunders regarding grand strategy and, with it, the most important reason: Hitler’s directive of 21 August 1941, that led to a crucial six week postponement in the march on Moscow (21 August-2 October). This came against the wishes of the Wehrmacht’s leadership, who desperately wanted the advance towards Moscow to continue. By the last week of August, Army Group Centre was 185 miles from Moscow, not a great distance by any means. (8)

The capital city was the USSR’s most important metropolis, its power centre and communications line (9). Had it fallen in the autumn of 1941, the repercussions would most probably have been fatal for the Soviets.

English historian Andrew Roberts observed, “Moscow was the nodal point of Russia’s north–south transport hub, was the administrative and political capital, was vital for Russian morale and was an important industrial centre in its own right” (10). As a transportation and administrative hub, Moscow performed a central role in the Red Army’s ability to supply other parts of its front. On 21 August 1941 at his Wolfsschanze headquarters in the East Prussian forests, Hitler put aside one critical objective (Moscow), and substituted it with five targets of lesser importance.

Hitler expounded that they would instead pursue “the capture of the Crimea” and “the industrial and coal mining area of the Donets” along with “the cutting off of Russian oil supplies from the Caucasus” and “the investment of Leningrad and the linking up with the Finns”. When on 22 August Hitler’s orders were forwarded to Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, commanding Army Group Centre and a very experienced officer, he telephoned General Franz Halder and said it was “unfortunate, above all because it placed the attack to the east in question… I want to smash the enemy army and the bulk of this army is opposite my front!” (11)

Von Bock, a monarchist who did not like the Nazis, continued that diverting forces away from the attack on Moscow “will jeopardize the execution of the main operation, namely the destruction of the Russian armed forces before winter”. Halder, a key planner in Operation Barbarossa’s original design, agreed with him. Two days later on 24 August 1941 von Bock reiterated, “They apparently do not wish to exploit under any circumstances the opportunity decisively to defeat the Russians before winter!” (12)

One can note the normally dour von Bock’s use of exclamation marks, as he believes the chance for victory has been taken away from him. Insult was added to injury, as von Bock was compelled to release four of his five panzer corps, and three infantry corps, for the southward and northwards assaults on the Ukraine and Leningrad. Halder felt that Hitler’s directive of 21 August “was decisive to the outcome of this campaign”. (13)

For reasons of megalomania, Hitler had overruled his military commanders on a pivotal military issue. American historians Samuel W. Mitcham and Gene Mueller summarised that Hitler’s 21 August directive “was one of the greatest mistakes of the war” (14). It came on top of the opening strategic errors of 22 June 1941, when the Wehrmacht attacked all of the western USSR simultaneously, ultimately weakening the Nazi blow. Fortunately, the Third Reich’s leadership was strategically inept.

In late August 1941, the German Armed Forces High Command (OKW) were contemplating that the war in the east would drag on until 1942 (15). An early knockout strike had not materialised, and the Soviet Army was fighting with tenacity; while the Russians possessed military hardware of a high standard, like the Katyusha rocket launcher (Stalin’s Organ) and the T-34 tank, which came as a real surprise to the Germans. (16)

An OKW memorandum from 27 August ran, “if it proves impossible to realise this objective completely [the USSR’s destruction] during 1941, the continuation of the eastern campaign has top priority for 1942” (17). Hitler approved the memo, which suggests that he was starting to think the invasion may not be successfully concluded in 1941. Hitler certainly believed this by November of that year.

The Soviet cause was given a major lift when, on 10 October 1941, Stalin officially granted General Georgy Zhukov the leadership over the majority of Red Army divisions (the Western Front and Reserve Front) for the capital’s defence. The 44-year-old Zhukov was an extremely able, energetic, self-confident and ruthless commander, just the sort of man that was needed.

Zhukov pursued a policy of initiating incessant counterattacks, and then withdrawing at the final moment. These tactics succeeded in wearing down the belated German march on Moscow (18). More than any other soldier in the war, Zhukov would play a leading part in the Nazis’ demise. Andrei Gromyko, a prominent Soviet diplomat, wrote that Zhukov was “the jewel in the crown of the Soviet people’s greatest victory”. (19)

At the beginning of November 1941 victory was not yet assured, for the rains disappeared and frost set in. The ground had hardened enough for the panzers to begin rolling again. These colder temperatures were uncomfortable for the German troops, who incredibly were still not supplied with sufficient winter clothing, but the temperature hovered around zero for now and was not unbearable.

In preceding weeks, the Kremlin received intelligence reports from their spy in Tokyo, Dr. Richard Sorge, and also from Soviet agencies, which stated that Imperial Japan was not preparing an immediate attack on the eastern USSR. This time Stalin believed the intelligence accounts and, in the first fortnight of November 1941, he transferred 21 fresh divisions from Siberia and Central Asia to the Moscow front. (20)

The Germans had no such reserve of men to call upon. On the night of 11 November 1941, the temperature dropped suddenly to minus 20 degrees Celsius. Frostbite cases were becoming common among German soldiers, but the Wehrmacht resumed advancing from 15 November. A week later, on 22 November the medieval town of Klin fell, 52 miles north-west of Moscow. (21)

The following day, Panzer Group 4 took Solnechnogorsk, 38 miles from Moscow. On 27 November the 7th Panzer Division established a bridgehead across the Moscow-Volga Canal. Also during 27 November, the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich captured the town of Istra, just 31 miles west of Moscow.

German professor Jörg Ganzenmüller wrote that Hitler now formulated “a special order”, which was sent to SS major Otto Skorzeny of the Das Reich division. Hitler demanded that Skorzeny and his men occupy the locks of the reservoir on the Moscow-Volga canal, and then open the locks so as to “drown” Moscow by turning it into a massive artificial lake (22). These orders were obviously never carried out, due to Skorzeny’s unit being unable to advance much further.

In late November 1941, it was apparent that the German offensive would likely fail. As of 26 November, the Germans had lost 743,112 men on the Eastern front (23). This number does not include frostbite casualties and other soldiers absent due to illness.

Because of ongoing Russian resistance and their fresh resources – which in both cases had been much greater than the Germans anticipated – General Guderian’s panzers had failed to reach the city of Tula, just over 100 miles south of Moscow. Panzer Group 3, which captured the line of the Moscow-Volga Canal on 28 November, could attack no further; and while a division from Panzer Group 4 had proceeded to within 18 miles of Moscow, continued progress for them proved impossible.

On 2 December 1941, a motorcycle reconnaissance unit of the 2nd Panzer Division reached the suburb of Khimki, five miles from Moscow and nine miles from the Kremlin. Isolated, it did not remain for long in this forward position (24). That was as close as the Germans ever got to the spires of Moscow.

On the night of 4 December, the temperature plummeted again to minus 31 degrees Celsius. Twenty four hours later, it sank to minus 36 degrees (25). It was clear that Operation Barbarossa had failed and worse was in store for the Germans. If they could not accomplish the USSR’s overthrow in 1941, they could hardly expect to do so in a weaker condition in 1942.

The writing was on the wall on 5 December 1941, as the Soviet Army counterattacked the static and precariously positioned Germans, by striking Panzer Group 3 near the Moscow-Volga Canal, along with the German 9th Army at the city of Kalinin. The next day, 6 December, General Zhukov’s divisions launched an assault on the 2nd Panzer Army south of Moscow, with both sides suffering serious losses. Yet Zhukov prevailed by forcing the 2nd Panzer Army to retreat over 50 miles.

Field Marshal von Bock, irate at these setbacks, wrote in his diary, “Last August, the road to Moscow was open; we could have entered the Bolshevik capital in triumph and in summery weather. The high military leadership of the Fatherland made a terrible mistake, when it forced my Army Group to adopt a position of defence last August. Now all of us are paying for that mistake”. (26)

In winter weather, the Soviets were a superior fighting force in comparison to the enemy. Soviet divisions were better equipped and had much more experience of adverse conditions. Stalin said shortly after the Red Army subdued Finland in March 1940, “It is not true that the army’s fighting capacity decreases in wintertime. All the Russian Army’s major victories were won in wintertime… We are a northern country”. (27)

With the Soviets continually counterattacking, one must give the Germans substantial credit for managing somehow to avoid a total collapse, which is what had befallen Napoleon’s army in Russia in late 1812. Hitler refused to allow a general retreat, as he ordered on 16 December 1941 that each German soldier display “fanatical resistance”.

By the end of December 1941, the Russians had advanced 100 to 150 miles across a broad front (28). The Red Army did not achieve a truly decisive breakthrough and the fighting would continue into 1942, and indeed well beyond that.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 (Hodder Arnold, 23 Feb. 2007) p. 97

2 Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953 (Yale University Press; 1st Edition, 14 Nov. 2006) p. 107

3 S. P. Turin, Some Observations on the Population of Soviet Russia at the Census of January 17th, 1939, published by Wiley for the Royal Statistical Society, p. 1 of 3, Jstor

4 Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 2nd edition, 3 April 1985) p. 399

5 Ibid., p. 400

6 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, pp. 108-109

7 Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis (Penguin, 1st edition, 25 Oct. 2001) Chapter 7, Zenith of Power

8 Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., Gene Mueller, Hitler’s Commanders: Officers of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine and the Waffen-SS (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2nd Edition, 15 Oct. 2012) p. 37

9 Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 395

10 Andrew Roberts, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (Harper, 17 May 2011) p. 168

11 Ibid., p. 169

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., p. 168

14 Mitcham, Mueller, Hitler’s Commanders, p. 37

15 Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels, “Hitler’s Failed Blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union. The ‘Battle of Moscow’, Turning Point of World War II”, Global Research, 12 December 2018

16 Ibid.

17 Kershaw, Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis, Chapter 9, Showdown

18 Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov (Icon Books, 2 May 2013) p. 138

19 Andrei Gromyko, Memories: From Stalin to Gorbachev (Arrow Books Limited, 1 Jan. 1989) p. 216

20 Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 400

21 Richard Kirchubel, Peter Dennis (Illustrator), Operation Barbarossa (3): Army Group Center (Osprey Publishing, Illustrated edition, 21 Aug. 2007) p. 85 

22 Jörg Ganzenmüller, “Hunger as a weapon”, Zeit Online, 24 May 2011

23 Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 401

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Jonathan Trigg, Death on the Don: The Destruction of Germany’s Allies in the Eastern Front, 1941-1944 (Spellmount, 1 Jan. 2014) Chapter 4, The death of the Ostheer, Winter 1941-42

27 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, pp. 107-108

28 Roberts, Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov, p. 145

Featured image: Barricades in a Moscow street, October 1941 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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The days following Lula’s victory are being marked by protests across Brazil. People took to the streets to express disapproval against the election of the leftist candidate and demand intervention by the military. Boycotts to the national economy are being operated by groups linked to agribusiness, such as truck drivers involved in the transport of agricultural goods. Bolsonaro’s supporters believe the elections were manipulated and expect the process to be entirely annulled.

Political tensions in Brazil are increasing day by day. The reaction of Bolsonaro voters quickly escaped the control of the authorities. Truck drivers began to occupy the country’s key highways, preventing the supply of large cities. Then, the main capitals began to have their streets filled with crowds wearing shirts with the colors of the Brazilian flag, who, singing the national anthem and making patriotic salutes, demand that Lula’s election be revoked.

On November 2, the situation began to get even more tense. Due to the fact that it is a national holiday, an even greater number of people attended the protests. The focus became the concentration of masses in front of the main military units of the country. Protesters are calling for intervention by the armed forces to reverse the election result or take control over the government.

In fact, the demonstrations were favored by Bolsonaro’s inertia in the face of his defeat. The incumbent president ignored the Brazilian tradition according to which the defeated presidential candidate must call the winner immediately after the announcement of the result, to congratulate him. Bolsonaro not only remained silent for two days, but he also went public on November 1 to say that he would not congratulate Lula, which further exacerbated political polarization among voters.

Faced with the pro-Bolsonaro escalation and the absence of effective actions by the authorities to regain control over the multitudes, social life began to be affected. The main universities in the country suspended their activities, as well as several institutions located in rural areas, which are the most affected by the occupation of roads promoted by truck drivers. In response, social movements linked to Lula’s Party, such as the MTST (an organization of homeless workers), began a call for their militants to “liberate” the roads, acting as true parallel militias.

Mutual violence began to take on worrying contours after an attack by a pro-Lula driver in the city of Mirassol, São Paulo state. The motorist intentionally drove his car running over at least sixteen pro-Bolsonaro protesters, injuring even women and children. Other acts of violence have been reported in many regions, pointing to a pre-civil conflict scenario in Brazil.

Due to the chaos, Brazil took the news around the world, becoming a trending topic on social networks. Unsubstantiated rumors about possible military moves to annul the elections or operate a coup d’état began to circulate on the internet, generating even more collective anxiety and friction among Brazilian citizens. Bolsonaro went public again on November 2 to ask truck drivers to liberate the roads, in order to guarantee supply to the cities. However, he stressed the importance of continuing the protests peacefully.

Indeed, the problem of political polarization in Brazil is not something new. Experts have commented on this topic for a long time and warned of serious consequences if social pacification is not achieved quickly. During the electoral campaign there were several episodes of explicit violence, including murders, on both sides. This type of scenario intensifies the ideological tendencies of the population and prevents any kind of rational analysis of the country’s political status quo.

In fact, for decades Brazil has had its domestic arena dominated by wings that correspond to the interests of foreign elites. On the one hand, liberal conservatives, pro-Republicans and radical Zionists; on the other, progressives, environmentalists and pro-Democrats. Bolsonaro represents the first group – not by chance, having received support from Trump and Netanyahu in 2018 -, while Lula represents the second one – which is why he is now endorsed by the EU, Soros-backed NGOs, and Biden’s administration.

Both sides serve external interests and do not present concrete proposals for Brazil. Polarization, in this sense, serves precisely to keep the people ideologically inflamed and prevent candidates with projects focused on national development, and not on external alignment, from gaining popularity.

Regardless of what happens with the protests, the polarization will not end now. Certainly, the disruptive hatred among Brazilian voters will continue to intensify in the coming years, as will the popular yearning for the end of regular institutions and for a coup d’état. The Brazilian military seems committed to democracy and ignores calls for intervention made by the rightists. However, if the crisis of legitimacy reaches a point of no return and leads Brazil to absolute chaos, it is possible that a more interventionist political thought will actually begin to penetrate the military circles in the near future.

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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.

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A runoff election which pitted the right-wing and neo-fascist President Jair Bolsonaro against former Workers’ Party President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has resulted in a narrow victory which illustrates the sharp political divisions in the South American state of the Republic of Brazil.

Lula won the election with just over one percent of the vote while people throughout entire Latin America region, North America and the world paid close attention to the campaign.

Source: Abayomi Azikiwe

The president-elect is a former metal worker and trade unionist. He was a co-founder of the Workers’ Party that grew out of the mass movement which arose against the military dictatorship in Brazil during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Prior to being elected as president in 2002, Lula had been a candidate for head-of-state on several occasions while serving in the capacity as a member of parliament. He was re-elected in 2006 and served out his term.

During his tenure in office, Lula ushered in a series of reforms which were aimed at ending extreme poverty inside the country. These measures provided direct monetary assistance to low-income households while increasing the number of young people attending schools and receiving vaccinations against preventable childhood diseases.

After serving his second term, he was succeeded by his chief of staff Dilma Rousseff. Lula remained active in politics giving lectures inside and outside of the country. When President Rousseff attempted to make Lula her chief of staff in 2016, the appointment was blocked by the Brazil Supreme Court under the guise of a so-called “clean slate act.”

The following year in 2017, after being charged with corruption, he was convicted of a series of crimes which many felt were politically motivated. He exhausted his appeal in 2018 and was sentenced to serve ten years in prison.  The federal judge in the case, Sergio Moro, would later be appointed as Minister of Justice and Public Security in Jair Bolsonaro’s government.

During 2016, President Rousseff in her second term of office was impeached by the Brazilian Senate on charges of alleged corruption related to the social welfare programs designed to aid the impoverished and to empower African and Indigenous peoples. These developments were a reflection of the political struggles carried out by the right-wing against the Workers’ Party.

Lula was eventually released from prison after serving over a year-and-a-half behind bars. His conviction had been overturned by the Brazilian Supreme Court.

Right-wing Calls for a Military Coup Against Lula

In response to the declaration of victory by the Electoral Commission, hundreds of truck drivers and thousands of pedestrians staged demonstrations in support of Bolsonaro, a former army officer prior to entering electoral politics. In a similar fashion to the November 2020 elections in the U.S. when defeated President Donald Trump had spent months fostering unsubstantiated claims of “voter fraud”, Bolsonaro, an ally of the former Republican president, had questioned the viability of the electoral system in Brazil.

Brazil right-wing truckers block roads to protest Lula victory (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Bolsonaro’s supporters during their protest actions blocked major roads and thoroughfares calling for the Brazilian military to stage a coup in order to prevent Lula from taking office. The right-wing protesters echoed allegations that the elections were rigged and that only a right-wing putsch led by the armed forces could prevent the installation of the new president.

According to a report on the aftermath of the results being made public, Reuters press agency emphasized that:

“Bolsonaro’s supporters in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro led festive rallies on Wednesday (Nov. 2), carrying Brazil’s yellow-and-green flag draped over their shoulders, blowing horns and chanting anti-Lula slogans. ‘We hope the army will intervene in this situation, we know that those elections were fraudulent,’ said Reinaldo da Silva, 65, a retired government worker at a rally at the entrance to a Sao Paulo army barracks. ‘I came today because I want Brazil to be free, socialism does not work with the Brazilian nation.’ Similar rallies were held in 24 of Brazil’s 26 states, as well as the capital Brasilia, according to Brazilian online media portal G1. In response to a request for comment, Brazil’s defense ministry said peaceful demonstrations were part of free expression under Brazilian law, adding that ‘the Defense Ministry is guided by the Federal Constitution.’ Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has cultivated strong ties to the military since his 2018 election, winning over the political sympathies of some of the top brass.”

Bolsonaro on November 1 held a press conference two days after the results had been announced. Although there was much anticipation surrounding his remarks, the outgoing president refused to concede defeat while praising his supporters throughout the country.

Nonetheless, there were indications that members of his administration had authorized a transfer of power to the incoming Lula administration. There were reports that the Supreme Court refused to meet with Bolsonaro in the immediate aftermath of the run-off elections in late October.

A Long-Protracted Struggle for Democracy and Representative Government

Brazil is one of the most populated countries in the world with more than 216 million people living in urban and rural areas. The Amazon forests extend through large swaths of territory inside the country which have become a major source of political debates between the indigenous communities, environmentalists and the Bolsonaro administration.

Lula is scheduled to be inaugurated on January 1, 2023 as the 39th president for Brazil, a country which has undergone profound shifts in its historical development over the centuries. The indigenous people of Brazil were conquered beginning in the 16th century by the Portuguese colonialists, opening the path for the kidnapping and importation of millions of Africans as enslaved persons.

Even after the country gained independence from Lisbon in the early 19th century, African enslavement did not officially end until 1888, some 13 years after the Civil War in the United States. Since the time of independence and the collapse of the slave system, the country has remained sharply divided along lines of race and class.

The 1964 military coup against an elected government in Brazil was backed by the U.S. under the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson. A similar situation occurred in the Dominican Republic in 1965 when the U.S. deployed troops to the country based upon the false notion that communist groupings were attempting to take control of the state which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Republic of Haiti, where the Pentagon has intervened on numerous occasions over the last century or more.

During the early months of 1965 as well, the Johnson administration ordered hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops into South Vietnam utilizing the now discredited “domino theory”, which suggested that if a national liberation movement with a socialist orientation took power in one geo-political region it would represent a threat to Washington and Wall Street as the communists would continue to spread their doctrine and social system to other areas.

Today there is a renewed cold war with the ongoing blockade against the Republic of Cuba and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The U.S. was behind the overthrow of Evo Morales as president of Bolivia in 2019. Successive administrations whether Democratic or Republican remain staunchly against genuine national liberation movements and socialist construction throughout Latin America and the world.

Progressive and anti-imperialist forces in the western imperialist states must uphold the right of South American, Caribbean and Central American peoples to self-determination and non-capitalist development. The working class and nationally oppressed in the U.S. should be the natural allies of the revolutionary forces in Latin America and throughout the world.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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This outstanding documentary is in German.

We hope to publish a version with English subtitles shortly.

***

Eine umfangreiche im Original spanische Dokumentation über die gesamte andauernde “Pandemiesituation” . Von den Machern aus thebigreset.com/W Studio , in Zusammenarbeit mit El Investigador.org und OVALmedia. Diese Doku lief in einigen ausgewählten spanischen Kinos.

In diesem großen Machwerk kommen viele Experten aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen zu Wort. Ob es ein Nobelpreisträger für Medizin ist, Mathematiker oder Analysten, alle kommen auf dasselbe Ergebnis, dass die angebliche Pandemie, nicht mehr als ein Täuschungsmanöver war, für ganz andere politische Interessen.

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***

It’s becoming ever more clear that the major, most influential health authorities around the world are now blatantly lying to the public, given the current status of scientific and medical information.

Why do I say this?

The answer is simple: because the most influential health authorities are communicating to the public, both in words and in actions, the view that covid-19 ‘vaccines’ are “safe and effective” when the totality of available evidence suggests otherwise.

Let me explain.

Shouting from the webpage of what is the world’s largest ‘health system’, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), is the following statement, in bold text, declaring the safety and effectiveness of covid-19 ‘vaccines’.

The following screengrab was taken today:

Screen grab from here [accessed 27 Oct 2022]. Red oval highlight added for emphasis.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), like so many others, parrots the same information, using bold text for emphasis in the new, lockstep tradition.

The following screen grab was also taken today:

Screen grab [accessed 27 Oct 2022] Red oval highlight added for emphasis.

It is widely acknowledged that the proportion of proven cases of injury from covid-19 vaccines is currently very small compared with the total number of doses administered. But this metric is not sufficient to declare a product as safe. After all, society seems quite happy to deem a children’s toy unsafe even if there is just a theoretical risk of injury – let alone a demonstrated one that has led to death or permanent injury.

The Oxford Dictionary tells us that a product that is safe is one that is “free from hurt or damage”. The Cambridge Dictionary offers a similar meaning: “not in danger or likely to be harmed.”  Obviously there are some harms that are inevitable and would be readily accepted by most who were being offered an injectable medicine, even saline. These minor harms include common reactions caused by the breach of the skin by the hypodermic needle or even the risk of fainting from “needle phobia”. Then there are nocebo responses that might include headache or fatigue.

But that’s not what we’re talking about here. What’s much more relevant is the rapidly building evidence base that shows substantial differences in severe reactions between injecting a placebo and the real thing. Sadly and to confuse the wider picture – quite probably deliberately – some of the clinical trials have not been conducted with saline controls, but rather with other vaccines or with mixtures of adjuvants.

This aside, let’s look at two pieces of relatively recent evidence from available data that any court would likely find hard to ignore, that demonstrate the covid-19 ‘vaccines’ should not and cannot be regarded as safe based on clear-cut differences between treatment and placebo arm results.

Study 1: Haas et al, JAMA (January 2022)

The first is a comprehensive meta-analysis of 12 clinical trials published in January this year in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The study was led by Julia Haas from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and among the 8 author-strong team was senior author, Ted Kaptchuk, from Harvard Medical School. This is not a marginalised journal, nor a marginalised or discredited authorship.

The findings show a clear and pronounced, statistically significant elevation in severity and number of adverse events in those receiving the covid-19 vaccines (mRNA, adenoviral vector and protein subunit types), compared with those receiving controls – especially after the second of two doses included in the trials. That’s it – it should be GAME OVER for any claim that the covid-19 vaccines are “safe”.

A second study in a major high-impact journal should make it not just GAME OVER but a SLAM DUNK. Turns out there is at least one. In fact there are many more; I have simply been selective in providing two composite studies (meta-analyses) that in turn include many other studies.

Study 2: Fraiman et al, Vaccine (September 2022)

The authorship of the second study I’ve selected is equally star studded, including leading researchers from UCLA, Stanford and the University of Maryland, the latter including as its senior (last) author, Peter Doshi, also a senior editor at The BMJ. What these authors did was painfully tease apart available data from the phase 3 trials that Pfizer and Moderna used to gain their emergency use authorisations (EAUs).

The authors found a consistent trend for significantly greater risks for serious adverse events in the covid ‘vaccine’ arms compared with placebos, the risk ratios being between 1.36 and 1.57 times greater in the ‘vaccine’ arms for those adverse events defined as being of “special interest”. These include criteria developed specifically for covid-19 vaccines by the Brighton Collaboration, and have been agreed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The common clotting and heart health issues we see around us today were actually concealed in the the data reviewed by the likes of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) at time the EUAs were issued. They were just ignored by the regulators. That includes the coagulation disorders, acute cardiac injuries and the myocarditis/pericarditis issues that all jumped off the journal pages.

Joseph Fraiman and colleagues, the authors of the study, had difficulty getting to the bottom of the data in these trials given that both Pfizer and Moderna kept protocols secret and failed to make public individual participant data. They decided to publish the letter they sent to Albert Bourla and Stéphane Bancel, the respective CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna, in a Rapid Response to The BMJ in August, raising their concerns over non-transparency. We drew attention to this major problem in 2020, here and here.

Damning stuff – yet not even a squeak from the vaccine confidence brigade. Punch in (as I just have) ‘Doshi’ in the search bar of the Vaccine Confidence Project and you’ll find zero hits. Then follow this by plugging in ‘Offit’, as in Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, also a long-term vaccine protagonist, albeit one who has been voicing caution over covid-19 vaccines to healthy youngsters. You’ll find multiple pages of hits when you use Offit’s name. Have they not worked out that it’s this kind of illogic and imbalance that adds to our lack of confidence?

What was concealed from view in the Phase 3 trials, is the disturbing picture of the spectrum of neurological injurythat we are now witnessing from real world, population-wide roll-out that appear to be linked to covid-19 vaccines, albeit not commonly, but predictably uncommonly. Then there are suggestions of increasing cancer incidence, this inevitably clouded by cancer cases among those who didn’t receive standard care during the lockdowns as well as emerging evidence of natural killer and T cell exhaustion following repeat covid-19 ‘vaccination’.

Even more challenging will be deconstruction of the long-term complications caused by this new technology that will inevitably be delayed in time post-vaccination and become ever more difficult to unwrap as people get exposed to more shots while the virus continues to circulate and infect people. High on the watch list are fertility, autoimmune conditions and the smorgasbord of chronic, degenerative diseases associated with ageing populations, especially in industrialised countries.

Are COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ unavoidably unsafe?

US courts established some 40 years ago (e.g. here and here) that traditional vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe”. The precedent set the scene for vaccine makers to seek indemnity from governments, which would then make the vaccine makers immune from prosecution in the event of no-fault (i.e. non-negligent) injury. Compensation would then be available in cases where causation of vaccine injury could be proven. That was the theory.

Those of us who have been aware of these issues for many years know just how difficult it is to prove causation. But those who know it even better are the vaccine injured themselves as they often spend years, at huge personal cost, attempting to work their way on behalf of loved ones through the compensation schemes in different countries. More often than not they’re spat out of the process and left to contend with life-changing injuries without any state support.

Disturbingly, given that so many of us have now been exposed to the virus, it’s also easy for authorities to try disguising covid ‘vaccine’ harms under the general heading of ‘long covid’. In the UK alone, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that as of 3 September 2022, 2.3 million people are “living in private households who are experiencing self-reported long COVID symptoms”.

Aside from the issue of conflating ‘vaccine’ and virus induced harms, the current data reported even by official sources are pointing to an emerging problem of an unprecedented scale. Official data associated with covid-19 shots in the USA, as reported by the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), as summarised on OpenVAERS.com, currently reveals:

• 59,127 permanently disabled
• 34,492 life threatening injuries
• 31,569 deaths
• 53,302 reported cases of myocarditis/pericarditis
• 180,915 hospitalisations

Let’s get some perspective on these figures using another very commonly and widely utilised technology: the motor car. The number of people who died in the USA from motor vehicle accidents, 40,698 in 2018, is in the same order as the VAERS figure for covid-19 vaccines. However, the VAERS figure is widely considered to be an underestimate of the real figure, with Pantazatos and Seligmann (2021) suggesting the reported number of adverse events might just represent 5% of the total.

But even if we stick to the official numbers, how can we consider covid ‘vaccines’ to be safe? We, as in society generally, do not consider motor vehicles to be intrinsically safe. They are intrinsically, or unavoidably, unsafe. That’s why society has seen fit to instigate a bunch of processes that aim to make them safer, from the design of the vehicles, to the licensing of drivers, to the creation of safer cars and roads, and of course the creation of laws, supported by human and robotic enforcement, that attempt to ensure safer (but not entirely safe) driving and road use.

The shots on the other hand are administered by people who say the products they are administering are safe, with no hint that they might lead to death or permanent injury, despite this being a real, albeit it low probability, consequence. There is no admittance that the manufacturers, like car manufacturers, should be pressured into making safer covid vaccines. It seems we’re meant to blindly accept what they’ve produced at breakneck speed – and just lump it (that means accepting and paying for injuries, given we, the taxpayers, fund the government indemnity programs).

It’s not just the relentless use of the word “safe” by authorities and so-called ‘health systems’ – it’s also their actions.

Right up there has to be the fact that they are deemed safe enough to administer to our most vulnerable, including babies as young as 6 months and pregnant women. Which pregnant woman or new mother gets to sign a consent form that asks her to accept possible harms or future fertility impacts on her unborn child or baby? None, it seems.

The effectiveness claim used in the mantra “safe and effective” is also dubious. But it’s tougher to argue against given the health authorities could say, as they have done, that they have elsewhere qualified what they mean. This would include suggesting that effectiveness is measured only over short durations such as 6 months or less, and it now refers to the protection against severe disease and death, not to the ability of the product to stop transmission from human to human (the usual intended purpose of vaccines). Accordingly, let’s not open this can of worms right now.

Cracks in the narrative

Amidst the bleak background of covid ‘vaccine’-induced harms is some light; light that’s breaking through the cracks in the narrative. The sands are now definitely shifting, with increasing numbers who were previously steadfast advocates of the unquestionable safety of covid-19 ‘vaccines’ doing U-turns. That’s mainly a function of the available science and the fact so many have either directly experienced adverse effects or know people close to them who have.

I sense that the authorities as well as the media and tech companies that are trying to control the message and side line dissent through censorship and manipulation of messaging using behavioural science, have underestimated the power of experience.

Let me give you a four important areas where these cracks are appearing.

The first is the science – and I’ve given you earlier in this article examples of two big studies in big journals by authors from big name institutions. That’s a far cry from early-mid 2021 when these signals could only be found in studies on preprint servers and occasionally in minor journals.

For good measure, an article in Science – one of the most influential scientific journals in the world – caught my eye when it was published some 10 days ago. It’s not a study but it’s an insight piece that provides a perspective on the elevated risk of myocarditis following covid-19 vaccination based on widely published data (i.e. it will inevitably underestimate risks). Included in the article are quotes from mainstream experts, including Paul Offit, who do not recommend boosters to children or healthy people under 65.

Also, the notion of previously undescribed post-vaccination syndrome linked specifically to covid-19 vaccines, asexplained by Josef Finsterer from the Neurology and Neurophysiology Center in Vienna, Austria, is entering the mainstream medical community. Mainstream doctors often won’t have any idea of how to treat it having no pre-set pathway established by their health systems. But they’ve often seen too many cases that have been temporally associated with vaccination to continue to deny what they are observing.

The second area where cracks are appearing are among politicians. Take the latest All Party Parliamentary Group (AAPG) on Covid-19 Vaccine Damage that we have reported on separately today. And a stunning change in view is that of Danielle Smith, the 19th premier of Alberta, Canada, who only took office on 11 October.

Responding to a question from a journalist at Rebel News, Ms Smith replied, “I’m deeply sorry for anyone who was inappropriately subjected to discrimination as a result of their vaccination status. I am deeply sorry for any government employee who was fired from their job because of their vaccine status. I’d welcome them back if they wanted to come back.”

That’s a full 360 degree turnaround on premier Smith’s predecessor. You can see her full response at a press conference here.

A government data leak in Australia reported yesterday by Sky News Australia revealed the Australian government is budgeting for an 80-fold increase in covid-19 vaccine injury payments, to nearly $77 million for 2023. That will be mana to some politicians, no doubt.

A fourth area is the recognition of a corrupt or broken system by mainstream players. Take what America’s top litigator for vaccine injury cases has said about the prospects for covid-19 vaccine injury claims. In June 2021, Maglio told Reuters, not some local rag or even the Epoch Times, that “…the current system for handling COVID-related claims is different [from previous systems] – and not in a good way.”

There’s a statement on the website of Maglio’s law firm, Maglio Christopher & Toale, that is likely deeply disheartening to many victims of covid-19 ‘vaccine’ injury, “We have concluded that there is nothing our attorneys can do to help you in filing a claim in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program”.

When both the top law firm dealing with the US ‘vaccine court’ and Reuters agree there is a ‘black hole’ for covid-19 vaccine injury claims, to use Reuters’ own words, that means the main players, not just those dishevelled conspiracy theorist types, recognise the system has been manipulated to work against the public interest. More to the point, to favour a protected class – the people who profit from making these new ‘vaccine’ technologies that are being trialled on humans as if they were experimental guinea pigs. While making it ever harder for those injured to be compensated for the damage that can be guaranteed to occur.

As disgusting as that is, it’s also just the stuff that causes people to say, you know what; I’m going to stop buying into the stuff those health authorities are feeding us, including the fact they’re claiming that covid-19 vaccines are safe. They wonder why we distrust governments and why politics in many countries has become something of a circus.

Last word – let’s go legal, but we need your support

Our sense is that the data are now more than strong enough to challenge the safety claims health authorities continue to make. I’ve discussed a limited number of studies in this article – but there is a battery of other data that could be brought to bear to further support the case against the misleading and deceitful safety claim made by health authorities.

Let’s remind ourselves that it has been the European requirement, supported by the European people and Parliament, to mandate the labelling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that has largely stopped GMO’s entering the human food chain in Europe. That contrasts with the US, where some 80% of processed foods sold by retailers are estimated to contain GMOs.

I’d argue that it’s the continued pronouncement by health authorities that covid-19 vaccines are safe that causes so many to continue to roll up their sleeves, in the mistaken belief that what they’re told must be true.

Preventing health authorities from doing this could save many lives going forward. We have been talking with various players in the UK and USA about a joint action either side of the Atlantic that aims to challenge this.

The only thing in the way of progressing this legal initiative is funding. We would dearly like to speak to anyone who might be able to provide significant funding towards a consortium of lawyers and scientists of which we are part, to take on this challenge. The first stage will be to identify the most appropriate, top-tier barristers, before going on to work with them to map out the grounds of challenge and gain an opinion.  We’re targeting an initial fundraise of £10,000 to achieve this first step.

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Rob Verkerk PhD, founder, executive & scientific director, ANH-Intl

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“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – Attributed to George Orwell but unsourced

As we approach the third year of the ‘Covid Crisis’, the once unassailable Covid Story – reported and repeated by politicians, public health mandarins and all mainstream media – has been replaced by contradictions and inconsistencies.

The original Covid Story narrated by health ‘experts’ and government officials told of a particularly virulent pathogen which besieged the planet in 2020 and spread like wildfire– terrorizing, infecting, and killing people en masse.

It was the story of a “pandemic level event” in which people were told to stay indoors, entire sectors of society were forced to shut down and humans were told to do everything possible to avoid contact with one another.

It was a story of closed down schools, closed down businesses, closed down churches and soon-to-be overwhelmed hospitals.

In later chapters the Covid Story morphed from ironclad truths, “Follow the science”, to ever changing definitions, “The science evolves.” Countless aspects of the “official” narrative changed overnight. Gradually the tale became fraught with pages of questionable statistics and ever shifting storylines.

What was one to make of all of these contradictions and ministerial mutations?

Did today’s story make sense with yesterday’s? Will tomorrow’s make sense with today’s?

Soon the only certainty within the Covid narrative became its uncertainty– the moment the Covid story “you thought you knew” was on solid footing the sands shifted yet again.

Attempting to make sense of the Covid conundrum soon required navigating a complex labyrinth of deceits, manipulations, obfuscations and concealments. Separating fact from fiction became more challenging each day.

While most persisted with the media storyline and government edicts, some began to take notice of the numerous anomalies and started asking questions.

The most glaring question was simply: “Why was no one allowed to ask questions?” Once this Pandora’s Box opened, a stream of questions came tumbling out.

Why wasn’t the media asking any questions? How were they all operating in lockstep?

Were we alerted to this “pandemic-level event” by our direct observations and experiences?

Were we surrounded by sick people, in our homes, neighborhoods and workplaces who were succumbing to a quick-spreading and dangerous virus?

If we were truly in a pandemic of biblical proportions would there be so much discussion of the epidemiological minutiae?

Bit by bit as most of the accepted narrative began to unravel, questioning the “official story” became more than a revolutionary act it became an obligation.

If you have to be persuaded, reminded, pressured, lied to, incentivized, coerced, bullied, socially shamed, guilt-tripped, threatened, punished and criminalized. If all of this is considered necessary to gain your compliance — you can be absolutely certain that what is being promoted is not in your best interest. Ian Watson

To sell the Covid Story a mass marketing campaign rife with its own nomenclature was launched. The constant drumbeat of the Covid battle cry became inescapable resembling  military grade propaganda rather than public health messaging.

• Were these Covid watch words and rallying cries intended to serve public health or were they designed merely to be obeyed? Where did these ideas and phrases come from? 
• Why did the media and government relentlessly stoke public fear and anxiety?
• Why were millions spent on behavioral management teams?
• How did the phrase “the new normal” emerge within the first weeks of the pandemic?
• Was sustained psychological manipulation utilized to create fear and coerce the public?
• Were Covid symptoms genuinely unique or were we being conditioned to believe there was a new disease?
• Were statistics about Covid deaths being manipulated to create the perception of a crisis?
• Were lockdowns about protection or social control?
• Did lockdowns reduce deaths or cause increasedmortality?
• Was there ever any evidence for ”asymptomatic spread”  or was this overstated to frighten the public?
• How did we go from “two weeks to flatten the curve” to permanent emergency “laws?

Hospitals and doctors are getting rich off a sickened mass population. — Steven Magee, Hypoxia, Mental Illness & Chronic Fatigue 

One of the earliest Covid Campaign methods used to alert the public to the coming storm of dire illness centered on the belief that hospitals were going to be overwhelmed by a cascade of the Covid infected.

“Two weeks to flatten the curve” became a national rallying cry. The public was flooded with stories of overflowing hospital corridors and swamped ICU’s. Makeshift hospitals were swiftly constructed to take in the excess casualties. The unquestioning media amplified these stories creating a climate of widespread panic and hysteria.

Was any of this true?

• Were US hospitals really overwhelmed? What does the data say?
• Were NYC hospitals overwhelmed in Spring 2020?
• Was Elmhurst hospital, the ‘epicenter of the epicenter’, overflowing in Spring 2020?
• Were ICUs flooded with patients?
• Were US hospitals busier in 2020 than they were in 2019?
• Are hospitals regularly overrun during cold and flu season?

Fear is a market. To instill fear in people also has advantages. Not only in terms of drug use. Anxiety-driven people are easier to rule. —Gerd Gogerenzer, Director Emeritus, Max Planck Institute for Educational Research

As the pandemic picked up speed, the “Covid death toll” became a daily marker hammered home by media bullhorns and mortality scoreboards.

Ghastly tales of the “first wave” of Covid fatalities were plastered all over media channels in lockstep. Harrowing tales of overflowing morgues and refrigerated trucks filled with Covid cadavers saturated the evening news. While a simpler explanation for these trucks was readily available, a compliant and complicit media plugged its ears and continued to manufacture mass hysteria.

Again all questions that might sow seeds of skepticism were kept away from public discussion.

But was this advertised death march verifiable or was this yet another feature of the Covid fear campaign?

• Were Covid death counts and death certificatesaccurate or were Covid deaths artificially inflated?
• What was the average age of Covid deaths and how did that compare with normal life expectancy?
• What percentage of Covid deaths were from people who already had multiple comorbidities?
• Were the photos of coffins from Bergamo, Italy, in March 2020, used to terrify the world, authentic?
• Why did CNN report that a 7-year-old Georgia boy died from Covid when he drowned in a bathtub after a seizure.
• How many Covid deaths due to “intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning and other adverse events” were placed in the CDC COVID death count?
• Why were 14,369 injury deaths, 1,265 deaths due to falls,  drowning deaths and suicides listed in the Covid-19 death count?
• Why did the CDC change recording methods exclusively for Covid deaths and did this inflateCovid fatality numbers?

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. —Carl Sagan

As the purported wreckage of the “first wave” subsided and the body count failed to add up to the predicted totals, the narrative abruptly shifted.

“The Covid Death” was replaced by “The Covid Case” as the main vector of fear. What defined a “Covid Case” generally seemed up for grabs. “Case” definitions ranged from anyone “suspected of having Covid” to those who were ‘positive’ as established through PCR testing.

Nowhere in the media could one find an inquiring reporter who would question what it meant to be a “probable case.” Even as the PCR became a regular feature of daily life never was the soundness of its usage as a diagnostic tool examined by any mainstream source.

Were these case counts and the methods used situated on solid scientific ground?

• Was Covid-19 a novel virus?
• How did the peer-review process of the critical publication about the Covid PCR tests only take one day? 
• Were Covid PCR test results accurate?
• Were Covid case counts and diagnoses accurate?
• Were PCR tests used deceptively to invent Covid “cases?”
• Why was the definition of a Covid “case” altered?

Big Pharma needs sick people to prosper. Patients, not healthy people, are their customers. If everybody was cured of a particular illness or disease, pharmaceutical companies would lose 100% of their profits on the products they sell for that ailment. What all this means is because modern medicine is so heavily intertwined with the financial profits culture, it’s a sickness industry more than it is a health industry. —James Morcan 

Once it was firmly established in the public’s mind that a pathogenic menace was lurking just outside their door a non-stop barrage of messaging, gaslighting and coercion kicked in from all angles.

The entire world was repeatedly informed that the only salvation for the human species was a genetically engineered experimental medical product concocted at “Warp Speed” by giant Pharmaceutical companies. This and only this medication could save humanity from catastrophe.

Like many other facets of the Covid Story, the tale of Big Pharma and their magical potions unraveled upon further scrutiny. Multiple questions arose:

• If Big Pharma is truly in the business of public health what is their historical record towards safeguarding public health?
• What is Pfizer’s previous track record of fraud and corruption?
• Has Big Pharma captured the FDA and the political and regulatory processes?
• Does Big Pharma control the CDC?
• Does Big Pharma influence clinical trials?
• Were Pfizer’s clinical trials for Covid vaccinesproperly run  trials?
• Why did the FDA try to conceal Covid vaccine trial data for 75 years? What did the trial data reveal?
• Why has the FDA refused to make its vaccine safety monitoring public?
• How did the CDC decide the Pfizer clinical trials proved a ‘safe and effective’ vaccine?

I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole. —Malcolm X

When the mass rollout of the experimental Covid vaccines was launched, a compulsory campaign silencing all voices who dare question the vaccine imperative was set in motion. Even so, some voices of apprehension slipped through the cracks. Many of these voices were some of the most renowned medical practitioners in their field.

Why were their voices not allowed into the mainstream conversations?

• Why were thousands of dissenting physicians censored and silenced?
• Why were doctors who spoke out about early treatment vilified and censored?
• Were the Covid vaccines necessary, effective or safe?
• Would the Covid Vaccines stop hospitalizations or deaths?
• Was evidence of harm and serious adverse eventsfrom the clinical trials covered up?
• Why did the media maintain silence about potential dangers of the Covid vaccine?
• Were people given proper informed consent for the Covid vaccines?
• What did multiple studies as early as 2020 say about the Covid vaccines and microvascular injury?
• Why weren’t independent scientists allowed to examine the mRNA vaccine vials?
• Was there a connection between heart inflammation and the Covid vaccines?
• Why were kids targeted for vaccination when it was known they were at zero risk from the disease in question?
• Were there doctors calling for a halt to the Covid vaccine program?

Ultimately a comprehensive and complete reckoning with the ‘Covid Story’ is not possible without a thorough examination of the policies which unfolded in hospitals and nursing homes and the catastrophic consequences.

While hospital workers were feted as heroes, reports began to leak out hinting that what actually occurred inside these medical institutions was contrary to the sustained media narrative. As more stories surfaced, suspicions escalated that this too was part of the Covid mythology.

Questions concerning treatments in hospitals and nursing homes emerged and allegations about monied interests materialized.

• Were hospitals incentivized to manufacture Covid patients?
• What were the Covid hospital treatment protocols?
• Were hospitals incentivized to put Covid patients onventilators and to use Remdesivir?
• Did these incentives and protocols endanger people?

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In the early chapters of the Covid Story, perhaps no other storyline trapped our imaginations and pulled on our heartstrings quite like the “Saving Grandma” shibboleth. We were told that “Covid-19” targeted the old and the sick and multiple reports from across the globe revealed a consistent pattern of how ghastly situations in long-term care facilities unfolded.

As more information on this piece of the sordid Covid puzzle surfaced more questions came to light.

Did thousands of elderly die because of Covid or was the management of their end-of-life treatment withdrawn actively putting them in a situation that ensured their death?

• What did they mean when they said “taking care of the elderly?”
• How did they “take care of the elderly in Canada?” In the UK? In France? In Maryland? In Massachusetts? In Washington DC? In Mississippi? In NewYork? In New Jersey? In Minnesota? In Indiana? In Louisiana? In Michigan? In Rhode Island?
• Were conditions for high death rates at Care Homes created on purpose?

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. —C.S. Lewis 

All intricate stories require a cast of characters and the Covid Chronicle was no different. Neil Ferguson and Christian Drosten played significant supporting roles behind the scenes while others, like Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates, took center stage. As we moved through the Covid narrative we “came to know” these personalities through the portraits painted by a uniformly deferential media.

Were these images of our Covid cast of characters accurate depictions? How much about them did we really know?

• What did Neil Ferguson’s original computer models predict about Covid deaths and what was his well documented track record?
• How did his calamitous and inaccurate predictions play such a central role in determining government policy?
• Who is Christian Drosten and how did he develop the now famous Covid PCR test? 
• Who is The Real Anthony Fauci?
• What role did Anthony Fauci play in the HIV/AIDS crisis?
• Given that Bill Gates has no medical training, why did he play such a central role in determining government policy?
• How did Bill Gates  know in 2019  that vaccines would be “one of the best buys” in 2020?
• How did Bill Gates use medical investments to turn $10 billion into $200 billion?
• Why did the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invest $55 million in the shares of BioNTech in August of 2019?

They failed to see that globalisation was merely a tactic to prise power from nation states towards international conglomerates. Once the power was siphoned from the people and democratic control was circumvented, the ability to assert global governance without any democratic restraint was available. —James Tunney

Finally, to understand the totality of the Covid Story it’s necessary to understand how the public health industry is inextricably linked to global financial markets and operates based on the demands of those financial conglomerates. Manufactured pandemics are now considered one of the biggest investment opportunities to increase the wealth of billionaires and consolidate their power.

The medical industry is no longer a system whose primary focus is to serve the health and well-being of the public. It is a system whose primary function is as a financial instrument for investors. The present-day policies that define the medical industry are designed to serve socioeconomic and political agendas which benefit these same financial elites.

Was the entire ‘Covid Crisis’ a genuine health emergency or was it an agenda rooted in fear to enrich the pockets of Big Pharma and their monied investors.

Here again the mainstream media remain dutifully silent, refusing to ask the most basic of questions:

• Who owns Big Pharma?
• Is it a coincidence that the Covid Public Health Emergency created over 500 new billionaires and coincided with one of the largest upwards transfers of wealth in human history?
• Why were Big Banks being bailed out during the Covid era while small businesses were being pushed out?
• How did workers around the world lose $3.7 trillion in the pandemic while billionaires around the world gained $3.9 trillion in the pandemic?
• Is it possible to “follow the science” if the science iscontrolled by money?
• What did the Head of the IMF say about the fate of the world’s economy and vaccines?
• What is the “Great Reset?”
• What is the Great Reset?
• What are Central Bank Digital Currencies?

After a deeper dive into the Covid Hall of Mirrors one wonders if even a single strand of the story withstands scrutiny. Three years on and the wreckage from the fusillade of Covid policies continue to pile up. With every passing day more holes appear in the official narrative and more admissions come to light as officials scurry to avoid accountability.

As the dust settles in the aftermath of the Covid carnage we are left asking one final question:

“Was the entirety of the Covid Story a lie?”

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Michael Bryant is a freelance journalist/activist and researcher who presently focuses primarily on issues surrounding health freedom. His work has appeared on HealthFreedomDefense.org

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The world’s largest nickel miner, Indonesia, is considering the idea of forming a cartel to manage the supply of nickel and some other key battery metals, similar to what OPEC does for oil.  As demand for battery metals such as nickel, lithium, copper, and cobalt is expected to soar in the coming decades to meet the surge in battery demand for electric vehicles and energy storage, the idea that some resource-rich countries would take advantage of their mineral deposits and look to control part of the future market doesn’t sound outrageous. 

“I do see the merit of creating Opec to manage the governance of oil trade to ensure predictability for potential investors and consumers,” Indonesia’s Investment Minister Bahlil Lahadalia told the Financial Times in an interview published this week.

“Indonesia is studying the possibility to form a similar governance structure with regard to the minerals we have, including nickel, cobalt and manganese,” Lahadalia added.

Indonesia has not yet contacted other nickel-producing countries to discuss the idea of a cartel, the investment ministry told FT, adding it was still working on a governance structure of a future alliance that it could propose to other producers.

Easier Said Than Done 

Yet, replicating an OPEC-like cartel for the so-called energy transition metals is easier said than done. Unlike the oil resources of OPEC’s producers, the mining operations in Indonesia and other major nickel producers are controlled by various private companies or Chinese entities. Moreover, the biggest producers and holders of nickel deposits are a diverse group of countries with very different political and market conditions and unlikely to have common ground and interests in forming a cartel. Apart from Indonesia, producers of nickel include Russia, Canada, Australia, and the United States, although the U.S. doesn’t have a lot of resources or output compared to Indonesia, the Philippines, Russia, or Australia.

Indonesia and Australia hold the world’s largest nickel reserves, each with around 21 million tons, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Indonesia, however, is the top nickel producer, followed by the Philippines and Russia.

But Russia accounts for almost 20% of the global supply of Class 1 nickel, which is the grade needed for batteries, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Nickel is found primarily in two types of deposits – sulphide and laterite. Sulphide deposits – mainly located in Russia, Canada, and Australia – typically contain higher-grade nickel which is more easily processed into Class 1 battery-grade nickel. Indonesia, as well as the Philippines, have the laterite deposits of nickel, which is lower-grade and requires additional energy-intensive processing to become battery-grade nickel, the IEA said in a July 2022 report, Global Supply Chains of EV Batteries.

“Although Indonesia produces around 40% of total nickel, little of this is currently used in the EV battery supply chain. The largest Class 1 battery grade nickel producers are Russia, Canada and Australia,” the IEA said.

Indonesia aims to develop its downstream nickel industry and banned exports of nickel ore in 2020. This move prompted an EU complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against Indonesia’s decision to ban exports of raw materials used in the production of stainless steel.

Imagine what reaction an Indonesia-led cartel for battery metals would receive in the EU, the U.S., Canada, and Australia, for example.

The Indonesian ban has also prompted Chinese firms to invest in Indonesia’s nickel supply chain. Chinese companies have invested and committed some $30 billion in the Indonesian nickel supply chain, with Tsingshan’s investments in the Morowali and Weda Bay industrial parks being the most prominent examples, the IEA said in a report on the role of critical minerals in the energy transition.

Unlike OPEC producers, it’s not one state-owned entity in Indonesia that controls the production of nickel. Tsingshan of China and Brazil’s Vale are major producers of nickel in Indonesia.

Moreover, a unit of China’s battery giant CATL signed earlier this year a $6 billion agreement with Indonesian firms to cooperate on the Indonesia EV Battery Integration Project, which includes nickel mining and processing, EV battery materials, EV battery manufacturing, and battery recycling.

Environmental Concerns

Indonesia and its policies will be pivotal for the quality and quantity challenges in nickel supply, according to the IEA.

Most of the nickel production growth in the coming years is set to come from the regions with vast amounts of laterite resources, such as Indonesia and the Philippines, according to the IEA. These resources need more energy and emission-intensive processed to produce battery-grade nickel. High Pressure Acid Leach (HPAL) is gaining traction as a way to produce Class 1 products from laterite resources, and several such projects are being developed in Indonesia. But such projects have track records of large cost overruns and delays and require additional costs for acid production facilities.

There are also concerns about the environmental impact of HPAL as it often uses coal or oil-fired boilers for heat, thus emitting up to three times more greenhouse gas emissions than production from sulphide deposits, the IEA says.

Due to concerns over the environmental impact of the nickel industry in Indonesia, dozens of U.S. and Indonesian environmental organizations sent in July an open letter to Elon Musk and the shareholders of Tesla, urging them to “Terminate Tesla’s planned investment plan in Indonesia’s nickel industry due to potentially devastating impacts on the environment and the lives of Indonesian people.”

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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

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***

The vast majority of countries on Earth voted in the United Nations General Assembly to condemn the Israeli apartheid regime for having nuclear weapons, in flagrant violation of international law.

Israel is the only country in West Asia that has nukes. Tel Aviv has not officially acknowledged its possession of the planet-destroying weapons, but experts estimate it has at least 90 nuclear warheads, and perhaps hundreds.

On October 28, a staggering 152 countries (79% of all UN member states) adopted a resolution that called on Israel to give up its atomic bombs, join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to supervise its nuclear facilities.

Just five countries voted against the measure: the United States and Canada, the small island nations of Palau and Micronesia, and apartheid Israel itself.

Another 24 countries abstained, mostly members of the European Union, NATO allies, and India.

The October 28, 2022 UN General Assembly vote telling Israel to get rid of its illegal nuclear weapons

The resolution, document A/C.1/77/L.2, was titled “The risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.”

It demands that Israel abide by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and put “all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.”

The document likewise says Israel must commit “not to develop, produce, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce possession of nuclear weapons and to place all its unsafeguarded nuclear facilities under fullscope Agency safeguards as an important confidence-building measure among all States of the region and as a step towards enhancing peace and security.”

The resolution had been introduced by Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt (on behalf of the Arab League), Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and the UN-recognized state of Palestine.

It was adopted in the 25th plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly’s First Committee, which is focused on disarmament and international security.

Back in 2019, the United States and apartheid Israel were the only countries on Earth that voted against UN General Assembly draft resolutions calling for establishing a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, preventing an arms race in outer space, and ending Washington’s illegal six-decade blockade of Cuba.

Important breakthroughs have arrived at the UN seeking to prevent an arms race in outer space and create a nuclear weapons-free Middle East. There are just two main obstacles: the US and #Israel.@WomenMarch4Paz @Blacks4Peacehttps://t.co/BZbNaauNPn

— Popular Resistance (@PopResistance) November 13, 2019

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Featured image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran’s nuclear programme at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv on 30 April 2018 (Source: Middle East Eye)

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The Wall Street Journal has an interesting video that describes How Russian Crude Avoids Sanctions and Ends Up in the US.

With an upfront ad, that is a free WSJ video link.

The Lukoil Connection

Image composite from WSJ video

Sanction Avoidance Process 

• US sanctions are on crude oil, not refined products.
• Lukoil, Russia’s second largest oil and gas company was not sanctioned by the US.
• Lukoil’s refinery in Sicily is the second largest in Italy and fifth largest in Europe.
• A Lukoil refinery in Italy once processed crude from multiple countries. Now it inputs are 93 percent from Russia.
• After refining, the country of origin is Italy, not Russia. This is due to longstanding practice of changing the country of origin to where oil is refined.
• The refined product then makes its way Exxon and Lukoil plants in New Jersey and Texas.
• Lukoil still has a gas station presence in the US and it distributes products to eleven states.

Lukoil Stations in 11 US States

Note: Most of the 230 Lukoil gas stations in the US are owned by individual American franchisees, not the oil giant itself.

Understanding the Process

• The US has sanction exclusions for oil “substantially transformed into a foreign-made product.”
• US refiners cannot process Russian crude, but Italian refiners can, then distribute the product here.
• In return, US can send its refined products to the EU, completing the round trip!

Lukoil is 6th largest refiner in Europe. It went from processing 30% Russian oil to 93%. That’s a pretty big sieve even if amounts to US are small.

Conveniently timed for the US election, European bans on Lukoil do not come into play until December 5.

Unless the EU backs down, this could lead to another surge in the price of gasoline in December.

Meanwhile, In eleven US states, people are filling up their tanks in part with Russian oil products via the above convoluted means.

The US Treasury department refused to comment on this process. Gee, I wonder why.

Biden says this is all Putin’s fault, while traipsing the globe begging Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for more oil.

Finally, after Biden told both OPEC and the US oil industry of its intent to kill the industry, the president now threatens both the US and Saudi produces with tax hikes and unspecified consequences.

For discussion, please see Biden Threatens Saudi Arabia With Unspecified Consequences for Slashing Oil Production

Consequences

“There will be consequences,” says president Biden. “It’s time to rethink our relationship with Saudi Arabia.”

Yeah, there will be consequences.

The one on the immediate horizon is an election blowout on Tuesday, November 8.

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The Guardian has obtained documents marked “official sensitive,” which show the government has “war-gamed” emergency plans for power blackouts lasting up to a week. 

Documents are not for public consumption, warn a “reasonable worst-case scenario” power blackout would roil all segments of the economy. Transport, food, water supply, communications, and energy would grind to a halt.

In such a scenario, the government will provide citizens with food, water, and shelter if power blackouts last more than several days.

Earlier this week, UK’s Met Office published a three-month outlook for winter. Despite warm weather today, temperatures are expected to be colder than average as the heating season begins shortly:

“The likelihood of a colder three-month period overall is slightly greater than normal,” the forecasts said.

Preparing for the inevitable crisis has already begun. Whitehall officials’ secret plan, dubbed “Programme Yarrow,” has held a number of exercises with government departments and councils across the country in recent weeks to stress test collaboration efforts.

We first caught wind of increasing power blackout risks across the UK in early October when the British National Grid warned there might not be enough natural gas and electric imports from other parts of Europe later in the cold season.

“We’re heading into winter in an unprecedented situation. Even during the cold war, the Soviet Union kept the gas flowing so it’s very unpredictable,” said one senior industry source.

The Guardian said government insiders have admitted to planning exercises and preparing for the inevitable as an energy crisis is unavoidable this winter.

“All governments do contingency planning for worst-case scenarios but the truth is that we are vulnerable as a country as a direct consequence of a decade of failed Conservative energy policy.

“Banning onshore wind, slashing investment in energy efficiency, stalling nuclear and closing gas storage have led to higher bills and reliance on gas imports, leaving us more exposed to the impact of Putin’s use of energy as a geopolitical weapon,” Ed Miliband, the shadow climate secretary, said.

Last month, The Guardian revealed secret scripts prepared for BBC news anchors to read on air if rolling blackouts strike the country. The purpose of the talking points is to calm the public during a “major loss of power” event.

Only analog FM radio stations will broadcast messages to the population during a national emergency because power grid failures would cripple communication networks.

One source made it clear that Brits aren’t supposed to know about Programme Yarrow:

“The government doesn’t want any publicity on Yarrow, as they don’t want it to be seen as linked to Ukraine, energy supply and the cost of living. But we need to think about how we can help people in advance. The fact they’re talking about it now means they have a real concern it could happen.”

The good news so far is that weather has been on the warm side across the UK for October but is set to slide from here as the heating season begins.

How many cold snaps will it take for the UK to stumble into a situation where it might have to ration power?

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During the Second World War, the Canadian government appealed for Canadians to buy war bonds to fight fascism in Europe. This came only after Hitler came into conflict with Britain before the Soviet Union, with Canada’s government previously being an enthusiastic supporter of fascism in the 1930s. Canada would almost instantly go back to working with fascists after the end of World War II, importing many from Europe. In 2022, the Canadian government has once again reintroduced war bonds, this time for a Nazi-infested Ukrainian government used by NATO to wages a proxy war against Russia.

Appeals for war bonds during the Second World War manifested through calls for Canadians to buy “Victory loans” funding Canada’s war effort. From 1941 to 1945, there were nine victory loans with total cash sales totaling almost $12 billion. The Canadian Encyclopedia notes that “about 52% of these bonds were bought by corporations and the rest by individuals.”

On October 28 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a plan to raise further money for Ukraine as the eight year NATO-led proxy war against Russia rages on. This plan involves Canada selling a government backed 5-year bond for Ukraine, NATO’s primary means used to target Russia. Canada calls it a “Ukrainian Sovereignty Bond”. Trudeau’s plan would also in turn make Canada the first country to provide war bonds to Ukraine.

This time around, the war bonds are meant to help the Ukrainian government “continue operations”, while targets of this money would include “providing essential services to Ukrainians, like pensions, and purchasing fuel before winter.” The Canada Files reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to ask: “Can you guarantee that none of the funds raised from these bonds will go to the Ukrainian military or police?” We have not received a response. Regardless, a Canadian government bond has been created to support a Nazi-infested government in Ukraine.

In a meeting with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Trudeau discussed how Canadians can now “go to major banks to purchase their sovereignty bonds which will mature after five years with interest”. These bonds will support the government of Ukraine in fighting NATO’s proxy war against Russia and allow it to continue further operations targeting the Russian Special Military Operation in the Donbass.

In addition to a war bonds for the Ukrainian government, the Canadian government also announced a new round of sanctions targeting various senior Russian officials. These senior Russian officials were tied to the Russian energy sector, including Gazprom and its subsidiaries. Furthermore, Canada plans to impose even further sanctions on Russian justice and security sectors building off of the sanctions for Gazprom. Canada’s announcement of these sanctions signifies further commitment to NATO’s strategy of economically strangling Russia by isolating Russia from the global market. This is to be carried regardless of the effectiveness of these sanctions or the imminent consequences for Europe as the winter commences.

A Very Canadian history of working with Ukrainian Nazi Collaborators

Canada’s preparation of war bonds for the Nazi-Infested Ukrainian government is yet another instance of Canada’s collaboration with pro-fascist elements of the Ukrainian diaspora in establishing an anti-Russian foreign policy. This collaboration with fascist elements of the Ukrainian diaspora goes back to the end of the Second World War. Following the end of the Second World War and the start of the Cold War, Canada provided refuge to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators fleeing the Soviet Union. These Nazi collaborators belong to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, specifically the OUN-B faction of the movement. The OUN-B, headed by Stephan Bandera, sought to create an ‘ethnically pure’ Ukraine, purged of all Jews, Russians, and Poles. During the Second World War, they enthusiastically collaborated with the Nazis to exterminate both Communists along with Ukraine’s Jewish, Polish, and Slavic populations. Some members of the OUN collaborated with the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier division. The 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier division was responsible for the massacre of more than 1,000 Polish civilians in Huta Peniatska in 1944.

These fascist groups would find a new home in Canada as anti-Communism became an integral part of Canadian foreign policy in the Cold War. According to investigative historian Peter Vronsky, US-financed groups such as the Canadian Christian Council for the Resettlement of Refugees lobbied the Canadian government to take in former SS collaborators in the war against Communism.

The Canadian government would admit more than 2,000 members of the Galician Waffen SS Division in order to crush the left wing of the Ukrainian-Canadian diaspora. In many cases, simply showing an SS tattoo to officials was enough to be admitted in Canada. These Nazi collaborators worked with the Canadian government and Canadian corporations to suppress leftist movements in Canada. The RCMP paid suspected war criminals such as Radislav Grujicic to provide intelligence reports on left-wing immigrants. Canadian mining companies such as INCO would use Ukrainian Nazi collaborators to purge unions of leftist militants.

The Ukrainian Nazi collaborators settling in Canada would set up various organizations to spread their ideology. These organizations included the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) and the League of Ukranian Canadians (LUC), both of which glorify Nazi collaborators such as Bandera and his right-hand man, Yaroslav Stetsko. The UCC would even go as far to consider Bandera one of Ukraine’s national heroes. In addition to setting up organizations promoting Ukrainian ultranationalism, the ultranationalist elements of the Ukrainian diaspora wouldalso erect memorials to various Nazi collaborators. These memorials include a monument commemorating the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division in Oakville, as well as a statue of Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevych in Edmonton.

Trudeau continues Canada’s history anti-Russia collaboration with Ukrainian Ultranationalists

The Canadian government’s collaboration with the Ukrainian-Canadian far right would continue under Justin Trudeau. As prime minister, Trudeau would appoint Ukrainian ultranationalist Chrystia Freeland as foreign minister and later as deputy prime minister and minister of finance. Freeland was the granddaughter of Michael Chomiak, who ran a Nazi propaganda newspaper in Ukraine. Freeland has both defended the US-instigated Maidan coup and whitewashed her grandfather’s willing complicity in the Holocaust, along with his efforts to spread far-right ideas within the Canadian Ukrainian diaspora.

In addition to the appointment of Freeland, the Trudeau government both permitted the sale of light arms to Ukraine and continued Operation UNIFIER. Operation UNIFIER was the Canadian Armed Forces’ mission providing military training for the Neo Nazi-infiltrated Ukrainian army as they waged war on the Russian population of Ukraine. While Operation UNIFIER was started under the Harper government, it would be extended twice by the Trudeau government. The first extension of Operation UNIFIER occurred in March 2019, when it was extended to March 2022, and the second extension occurred in January of 2022, when the mission was extended to March of 2025. As tensions worsened between Russia and Ukraine, the Trudeau government prepared the further expansion of sanctions in February of 2022 targeting Russia.

With the commencing of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine, the Canadian government would push for immediate escalation of the conflict. On March 3, 2022 the Canadian government would place sanctions on Russian companies Rosneft and Gazprom. This would be followed by the removal of Russia and Belarus from favored nation status, thereby imposing a mandatory 35 per cent tariff on all imports from the two countries. In addition to increasing sanctions, Canada would provide artillery and light armored vehicles for Ukraine. On April 7, 2022, the Canadian parliament would also echo trumped-up claims from the Ukrainian government that Russian actions in Ukraine constituted an act of genocide.

Canada’s attempts to escalate the Ukrainian conflict drives world closer to Nuclear War

The Canadian government’s decision to provide war bonds for Ukraine is yet another indication of its willingness to work with Ukrainian ultra-nationalists in fermenting an anti-Russia foreign policy. For decades since they were offered refuge in Canada, pro-Nazi elements of the Ukrainian diaspora have worked with the Canadian government and Canadian corporations against first the Canadian left and the USSR, and now the Russian government. In the years following the Maidan coup, Canada has escalated tensions further with both sanctions on Russia and military support for Ukraine both before and after the Russian Special Military operation.

As the NATO-instigated proxy war in Ukraine against Russia drives the world closer to nuclear war, an anti-imperialist movement in Canada is needed more than ever to oppose further escalation of the war in Ukraine by the Canadian government.

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Daniel Xie is a firm anti-imperialist, who writes about the need for an anti-imperialist and independent Canadian foreign policy. He serves as the Associate Editor of The Canada Files.

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***

On October 29, Moscow suspended its adherence to the July agreement allowing both Ukraine and Russia to freely export their grain and other agricultural products, including fertiliser. Moscow justified its stand by saying the move is in retaliation for Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian fleet based at the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Consequently, Russia said it cannot guarantee the safety of commercial shipping carrying grain from the Black Sea ports to Turkey and beyond. The deal is set to be renewed on November 19.

Although the UN and Turkey have pledged to continue shipping Ukrainian grain from the Black Sea ports, a few well-aimed armed drones or missiles would put a stop to commercial voyages. Ukraine will be the main loser as the sale of grain provides urgently needed hard currency while grain prices are certain to rise across the globe.

Following Russia’s suspension, Reuters cited Singapore traders who said, “Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wheat booked for delivery to Africa and the Middle East are at risk following Russia’s withdrawal, while Ukrainian corn exports to Europe will get knocked low.” Chicago wheat futures jumped a few points for fear that supplies will be tight.

Before Russia’s suspension, the UN trade and development organisation had reported that 8 million metric tonnes of Ukrainian grain were exported under the deal. “The UN-led initiative has helped to stabillise and subsequently lower global food prices and move precious grain from one of the world’s breadbaskets to the tables of those in need,” the UN claimed despite what has actually happened.

Russia has expressed dissatisfaction with the UN-brokered deal because the primary beneficiaries have not been poor countries dependent on wheat, barley and corn from Ukraine. Indeed, The Financial Times cited UN data which “shows that [under the deal] rich countries received more than half of the shipment volumes, led by Spain [due to drought]. Middle-income countries including Turkey and China accounted for about a quarter of the total, while lower and lower-middle income countries such as Egypt and Ethiopia received just over a fifth”.

Therefore, 80 per cent of the exports under the UN deal have not gone to reduce hunger in poor countries but to replace shortages in Europe and other moderately wealthy countries and bring down prices in these countries.

Al Jazeera has revealed just how dramatic the shift direction of grain exports has been under the July deal. During 2021-early 2022 Turkey was the largest importer of Russian and Ukrainian wheat; Egypt which was usually first, came second, followed by Bangladesh. Next in line were Nigeria, Yemen, Azerbaijan, Sudan, Senegal, Vietnam, Indonesia, Tunisia, Thailand, Morocco, the Philippines, the UAE, South Korea, Spain and Israel. Turkey and the last five countries on this list are not afflicted by widespread hunger.

The true reason for Russia’s suspension, which was predicted before the attack on its fleet, was discriminatory implementation of the deal. Shortly after the deal was agreed, the volume of Ukrainian grain exports was about 50 per cent of pre-war levels and climbing. However, the same was not true for Russian grain exports which fell by 22 per cent in July and August.

Sanctions are responsible. While sanctions are not meant to hinder the delivery by targeted countries of essential food and medicine, bankers and insurance companies are reluctant to do business with Russia, ship owners do not want their vessels to carry Russian cargoes and port handlers boycott Russian arrivals. This is true also for Russian exports of potassium fertilisers, which have fallen by 25-30 per cent this year.

Since Russian exports are being shunned and Moscow demonised while a huge hullabaloo is being made over potential cuts in Ukrainian grain exports, Moscow is all too clearly not keen on maintaining the deal. Nevertheless, Russia did not stop a dozen grain laden ships setting sail from Ukrainian ports on Monday, the first day after Russia’s withdrawal.

Russia may also be frustrated by the spin the world media has adopted. Newspapers and broadcasters have argued that the absence of Ukrainian grain alone is a major disaster for the poor and a driver of inflation. This has been refuted by the UN data cited by the Financial Times and is pure propaganda.

Russia is the world’s top exporter of wheat, followed by the US, Canada and France. Ukraine comes fifth. Russia exports 37.3 million tonnes (18 per cent of the world’s wheat supply) compared with 18 million exported by Ukraine (7 per cent). Together they export 25 per cent of global wheat supplies.

The imposition on countries other than Russia of sanctions on both exports and imports have had the same material and political impact as on Russia. For example, Washington provides a waiver to permit heavily sanctioned Iran, which exports natural gas and machinery to Iraq. On Iranian imports, companies producing food, medicine and other essential goods, which are meant to be exempt from sanctions, do not sell to Tehran because they fear US secondary sanctions. Banks, shipping companies, insurers and potential investors shun Iran. As a result, Iranians have been subjected for decades to collective punishment which is illegal under international humanitarian law.

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***

In the wake of the controversies and heated debate generated in the wake of the referenda held last September in the regions of  Donbass, it became necessary to get some clarity on the legal issues surrounding this event.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Dr. Alfred de Zayas served as the first UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council (2012-18). He worked with the United Nations from 1981 to 2003 as a senior lawyer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee, and the Chief of Petitions.

Arnaud Develay: What is your analysis of the predicament facing Russian-speaking minorities living in the Donbass regions in the wake of the events of the Maidan? Could the actions of the Ukrainian government these past eight years be constitutive of an attempt to commit genocide on these populations?

Alfred de Zayas: The Russian population in Donbass certainly had reason to feel threatened in the light of the virulence of the anti-Russian rhetoric by the leaders of the Maidan coup and the anti-Russian legislation adopted by the putsch-Parliament.

The level of hatred expressed by politicians and media certainly constituted “hate speech” and violated article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which prohibits both propaganda for war and incitement to hatred and discrimination.

The shelling of population centers in Donbas 2014-2022 entailed war crimes and crimes against humanity, but did not amount to genocide for purposes of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

While Art. 2 of 1948 of the Genocide Convention has 5 categories, it does not include cultural genocide. It is wiser to avoid hyperbole. War crimes and crimes against humanity under articles 7 and 8 of the Statute of Rome are bad enough.

The right to speak one’s language is protected in articles 2 and 27 of the ICCPR. It is also protected in articles 2 and 15 of the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and numerous UN resolutions. Moreover, it constitutes a legitimate exercise of the right of freedom of expression under article 19 ICCPR.

Ukraine is certainly in violation of articles 19 and 27 ICCPR.

Moreover, Ukraine is in violation of common article 1 of the ICCPR and ICESCR, which stipulates the right of self-determination of ALL peoples, necessarily including the Russian populations of Crimea and Donbas.  Art. 1 reads as follows:

“1. All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

2. All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.
3. The States Parties to the present Covenant, including those having responsibility for the administration of Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall promote the realization of the right of self-determination, and shall respect that right, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.”

Arnaud Develay: Did the Russian Federation act in the spirit of the UN Charter as it sought to engage in diplomacy rather than succumb to the calls of those advocating for immediate military intervention as early as 2014-15?

Alfred de Zayas: The Russian Federation spent three decades articulating its political will to pursue international cooperation and friendly relations with all countries, as envisaged in General Assembly Resolution 2625. It made valid overtures and concrete proposals for cooperation and building a joint European house based on sovereign equality and comprehensive national security. It is a great loss for all of humanity that Gorbachev’s peace initiatives were not taken up by the US and NATO and that promises made in 1989-91 by US Secretary of State James Baker and others were not kept. The one chance to agree on nuclear disarmament as foreseen in article 6 of the Non Proliferation Treaty, the one chance to implement conventional disarmament and  reorient the world toward development and peace, was thrown away by President Bill Clinton when he approved the eastern expansion of NATO, a grave breach of trust, a needless provocation, and a violation of article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits not only the use of force, but also the threat of the use of force.

After the Maidan coup d’état and the Ukrainian bombardment of the Donbas, the Russian Federation spent 8 years trying to solve the dispute by peaceful means as required under art. 2(3) of the UN Charter. The Minsk agreements were valid and moderate and would have led to durable peace, if implemented by Ukraine. The continued shelling of Donbass by Ukraine, as documented by OSCE[1], constituted repeated violations by Ukraine of Art. 2(4) of the Charter.  It is the ultima irratio to wage war on a hapless civilian population to prevent the exercise of their right of self-determination.  All Russian attempts at peaceful negotiation in the context of OSCE and the Normandy Format were ignored. As late as December 2021 Russia put on the table the drafts of two treaties that would have been the basis of a fruitful dialogue pursuant to article 2(3) of the UN Charter. Again the US and NATO rejected these peaceful overtures.

Arnaud Develay: How does the argument of self-determination behind the recent referenda reconcile itself with the outcome in the case of Catalonia?

Alfred de Zayas: Art. 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is clear – ALL peoples have the right of self determination – not only formerly colonial peoples.  This includes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Croatia, Kosovo.  It also includes the Catalans, the Crimeans, the Donbass population, the peoples of Nagorno Karabakh, Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia.  Rights holders of self-determination are PEOPLES – duty-bearers are States, which do NOT have a prerogative to grant or deny self-determination.  Of course self-determination is not co-terminous with secession.  According to the doctrine of internal self-determination, a people has a right to exercise it through internal self-determination in the form of autonomous status (as envisaged in the Minsk agreements). Ideally self-determination should be preceded by reliable referenda, organized and monitored by the United Nations, as was the case in Timor Leste, Sudan and Ethiopia/Eritrea.  The UN failed the Ukrainian and Russian peoples when it failed to organize referenda in 1991, when Ukraine unilaterally seceded from the Soviet Union, or at the latest following the unconstitutional coup d’état against the democratically elected President of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych.

Arnaud Develay: Did the ICJ open a pandora box with its 2010 decision bearing on the legality of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence?

Alfred de Zayas: I would NOT call it a Pandora’s box at all. It represents a reaffirmation of Article 1 ICCPR. In the post-UN Charter age, decolonization of Africa and Asia was mandated – self-determination being one of the pillars of the UN Charter, and incorporated in numerous Security Council and General Assembly Resolutions.  The gradual exercise of self-government was foreseen in Chapter XI of the Charter.  The ICJ advisory opinion[2] is very clear in stating that the principle of territorial integrity is only for external use and cannot be invoked to deny the people’s right of self-determination.  See para. 80.  The advisory opinion did create an international law precedent, as did the de facto and de jure emergence of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, etc. by virtue of unilateral declarations of independence at the expense of the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

Arnaud Develay: What should be the criteria retained to evaluate whether the right of self-determination should overcome the territorial and administrative integrity/cohesion of an already established State?

Alfred de Zayas:  Neither right is absolute.  Both are important international law principles that can and do coexist in the context of the one “rules based international order” we know – the UN Charter.  Some international lawyers have invented the concept of “remedial secession”, which I reject as an artificial “doctrine”, because it is impossible to set an objective threshold.

A better approach is to apply the over-arching principle of sustainable peace, which is at the heart of the UN Charter.  It is NOT the exercise of self-determination that causes wars, but the unjust denial thereof.  Indeed, the denial of self-determination has led to armed conflict in countless cases since 1945.  It is the function of the UN and the Security Council to prevent threats to and breaches of the peace for purposes of article 39 UN Charter. Hence, it is the function of the UN to ensure the realization of the right of self-determination as a conflict-prevention strategy.[3]

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Arnaud Develay is an international lawyer. He participated to the defense of former President Saddam Hussein along with Former US Attorney General Ramsey CLARK; he has documented the illegal sanction regime imposed on Syria while living in Damascus in the wake of the Caesar Act and is now based in Moscow.

Notes

[1] https://www.osce.org/special-monitoring-mission-to-ukraine/512683. Alfred de Zayas, Countering Mainstream Narratives, Clarity Press, Atlanta, 2022, p. 80.  https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/07/22/prolonging-war-is-a-crime-against-peace-and-a-crime-against-humanity/

[2] https://www.icj-cij.org/public/files/case-related/141/141-20100722-ADV-01-00-EN.pdf

[3] See chapters 3 and 5 of A. de Zayas, “Building a Just World Order”, Clarity Press, Atlanta, 2021.

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***

How may one describe the nature of those psychopaths who have deviously and with supreme cleverness engineered a global genocide in the guise of a global pandemic, and who have so befuddled and seduced the masses that their acts of evil have been welcomed as acts of greater good?

How many more people will have to die from an unnecessary inoculation? How many more people will come down with the illness which this inoculation was supposed to prevent?

How many more people will sacrifice their precious and unalienable rights under the illusion of saving their skins?

How many more people will follow the Siren song of convenience into the lair of Total Surveillance?

How many more people will be convinced that online ‘meetings’ are just as good as gathering in the flesh?

How many more doctors who have dared to criticize the Covidians will have their licences taken away by corrupt medical boards under the aegis of a shadowy private entity in the pay of Big Pharma? How many more people will lose their jobs, how many more will have bank accounts frozen if they chirp up against those who are taking away their livelihoods?

And so it goes, on and on.

Just this week I learned about a fifteen year-old girl who had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor – these things happen of course from time to time.

And last weekend I saw two young kayakers in Wellington harbour pulled from a race by medics for reasons unknown but which looked to my eye as exertional, which is a bit unusual perhaps in gung-ho outdoorsy New Zealand.  I am certain all three people had been jabbed. My local dentist tells me that he has run out of sympathy cards for family members of patients in his practice who have died over the past six months.

These are, however, anecdotal asides.

There is plenty of real hard honest-to-goodness evidence that people are dying in greater numbers overall,  that the adverse event rate for the Covid inoculation has surpassed all vaccines in history, that ordinary people are poorer and less free while a globalist faction enriches itself beyond imagination. Waiting in the wings are a phoney Climate Crisis and an ‘even more lethal’ pandemic to be used as pretexts for the efficient and virtually total enslavement of the masses.

What kind of people would do this? Are the powerbrokers bloodless keyboard apparatchiks motivated by abstract transhumanist dreams of immortality, or are they full-blooded psychopaths who lust for the pleasures of murder and who thirst to transgress the greatest taboos?

Criminals, psychopaths, mass-murderers – they have punctuated human history throughout.

But I believe that the development of digital technology has created a hybrid monster. Digitization creates distance, it removes one from personal interaction, it allows wide-scale measures to be set into action with an ever greater ease of detachment. At the same time those who appropriate these digital measures in their quest for omnipotence and immortality are also driven by passions, and the union of sexual and destructive drives becomes an elixir that is nonpareil.

This may perhaps make it easier to understand how a Bill Gates or an Anthony Fauci or a Klaus Schwab (and those behind them) may be convulsed with the desire to thrust a phallic needle into the body of every human being on Earth. Make no mistake, they are full-blooded psychopaths, even if their blood runs cold or hot as the occasion demands.

And against such psychopathy there is only one path: not to let the fear of death trump all.

Without freedom everything we regard as quintessentially valuable in human life will be lost. Physical death is a blessing to a human being who has been enslaved to the point where all but the most basic needs of survival are met.  These past three years, consumed as they have been by all things Covid, have laid bare the best and worst of us, and have thrown into starkest relief the crux upon which our battle for the future rests.

Laboring under the perceived shadow of death, billions allowed themselves to be locked down and away;

billions allowed their critical faculties to dissolve and forget everything once accepted as rational about the nature of illness;

billions allowed themselves to forego every sensible precaution about a novel medical intervention – the so-called vaccine – for the promise of protection; and, perhaps most ominously, these billions participated in the imposition of an apartheid system that separated human beings by inoculation status.

It is high time for us to recognize that only when we are unafraid will we be victorious.

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wanted to use the Emergencies Act (EA) to stop the Freedom Convoy days before he invoked the extreme measures, secret notes reveal.

The Public Order Emergency Commission hearings into Trudeau’s unprecedented use of the EA began October 13 and are expected to last six weeks while hearing from at least 65 witnesses, including Trudeau and many in his cabinet.

According to Blacklock’s Reporter, confidential minutes from cabinet meetings show Trudeau had set up “the conversation to discuss two possible tracks” that were “1) actions that could be taken under existing authorities and 2) the process of invoking the Emergencies Act.”

The minutes are dated February 10 and come from an Incident Response Group cabinet meeting that lasted about two hours. At the meeting were 45 people, including Attorney General David Lametti and Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Brenda Lucki.

Before the EA was enacted, however, top members of Trudeau’s cabinet such as Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said that extreme emergency measures were not needed, noting that Canada’s Highway Traffic Act was enough to deal with the Freedom Convoy.

Indeed, Trudeau noted February 11 that the police should use “step by step measures to put an end to it.”

Despite this, Trudeau put in place the EA on February 14 to stop the Freedom Convoy.

As per Blacklock’s Reporter, the first time the use of the EA was mentioned in a known document came in a 10-page confidential cabinet meeting minutes that were marked “secret.”

More revealing is that the minutes show that Trudeau was told as many as 95% of protesters were looking to go home because they had tired of the then-three-week-long protest.

Cabinet minutes claim that the lead negotiator from the Ontario Provincial Police said as many as 80% of protesters had weak connections to the Freedom Convoy’s cause.

“The negotiator suggested the leaders of the protest could potentially be encouraged to leave and denounce the blockade in exchange for a commitment to register their message with the government,” the minutes noted.

The minutes also show that “other disincentives” were discussed, but details of those were censored.

The Freedom Convoy gathered in Ottawa to call for an end to all COVID mandates and resulted in some provincial governments, such as Alberta, ultimately dropping vaccine passport programs in place.

During the Freedom Convoy protests, Trudeau said those opposing his measures were of a “small, fringe minority” who hold “unacceptable views.”

While Trudeau ultimately revoked the EA on February 23, many Canadians who supported the Freedom Convoy were targeted by the federal government and even had bank accounts frozen without a court order. Federal police physically removed protesters as well.

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***

The Atlantic has come under fire for suggesting that all the terrible pandemic-era decisions over lockdowns, school closures, masking, and punishing an entire class of people who questioned the efficacy and wisdom of taking a rushed, experimental vaccine – for a virus with a 99% survival rate in most, should all be water under the bridge.

“We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID,” writes Brown Professor Emily Oster – a huge lockdown proponent, who now pleads from mercy from the once-shunned.

“Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward,” she continues.

Except, they weren’t “in the dark” about Covid.  There were numerous sources pointing out the actual science that ran contrary to the mandate claims, and they were deliberately silenced by a vast media campaign.  Evidence suggests that media platforms worked in tandem with Big Tech, the CDC and the Biden Administration.  It was not a simple matter of overreaction, there was collusion to remove all counter-information.  

Nice try, Emily.

As the Daily Sceptic‘s Michael P. Senger puts it: “There’s a lot wrong here. First, no, you don’t get to advocate policies that do extraordinary harm to others, against their wishes, then say, “We didn’t know any better at the time!”Ignorance doesn’t work as an excuse when the policies involved abrogating your fellow citizens’ rights under an indefinite state of emergency, while censoring and cancelling those who weren’t as ignorant. The inevitable result would be a society in which ignorance and obedience to the opinion of the mob would be the only safe position.”

And look at that ratio:

In one epic Twitter thread, Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Matthew J. Peterson (@docMJP) excoriates Oster’s entire premise;

Hey—sorry you lost your job b/c of the vax that doesn’t work and your grandmother died alone and you couldn’t have a funeral and your brother’s business was needlessly destroyed and your kids have weird heart problems—but let’s just admit we were all wrong and call a truce, eh?

It’s too bad we shut the entire economy down & took on tyrannical powers that have never been used before in this country—looking back, you should have been able to go to church and use public parks while we let people riot in the streets—but it was a confusing time for everyone.

Hey I’m sorry we scared the hell out of you & lied for years & persecuted & censored anyone who disagreed but there was an election going on & we really wanted to beat Donald Trump so it was important to radically politicize the science even if it destroyed your children’s lives.

OK, yes we said unvaccinated people should die & not get healthcare while never questioning Big Pharma once but we are compassionate people which is why even though we shut down the entire economy we also bankrupted the nation & caused inflation. You’re welcome! Let’s be friends.

As QTR’s Fringe Finance notes, Oster’s plea for the decency that her ilk failed to offer up to most Americans during the throws of the pandemic comes at a point where the Covid narrative has been all but lost by the Democrats and the mainstream media.

There have been several recent large wins for the unvaccinated who had the constitution and backbone to stand up for themselves throughout a year of being constantly berated and ferociously scorned as second class citizens.

A majority of the media and Democrats had demanded that these people be removed from society and generally subject to scorn and ridicule. Now, in a moment that many of us knew would eventually be coming, apologies are being made around the world for how the unvaccinated were treated.

As Fox News wrote last week:

“The premier of Alberta, Canada, said she is working on a plan to pardon residents who were fined or arrested over breaking coronavirus protocols, and apologized to unvaccinated Canadians who faced ‘discrimination.’“

In New York, a Supreme Court judge recently reinstated all employees who were fired from their jobs for being unvaccinated:

The court found Monday that “being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting COVID-19.” New York City Mayor Eric Adams claimed earlier this year that his administration would not rehire employees who had been fired over their vaccination status.

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The problem was not people’s ignorance of the facts, it was the organized antagonism and censorship against anyone presenting data that was contradictory to the mandate agenda. This is setting aside proclamations like those from the LA Times, which argued that mocking the deaths of “anti-vaxxers” might be necessary and justified.  After two years of this type of arrogant nonsense it’s hard to imagine people will be willing to pretend as if all is well.

The active effort to shut down any opposing data is the root crime, though, and no, it can never be forgotten or forgiven.

People are livid…

They were tossing terminally Ill people off of organ transplant lists and now call for mercy https://t.co/yRBRo5POVW

— F. Billy McMorris (@FBillMcMorris) November 1, 2022

Arizona Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) wants investigations.

.@KariLake: "I want to have a commission to investigate Covid and how it was handled in this state. And hand up any civil, or criminal charges that need to be made. Because we're not just got to forget what happened when our lives were turned upside down." pic.twitter.com/mzsFZn6Nv6

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) October 31, 2022

This is where I spent the last 7 months with my mother before she died alone on December 3rd, 2020. You murderous hypocrites have nothing but my undying contempt. Rot in Hell. pic.twitter.com/ZcZ9qoaDwZ

— Rollo Tomassi (@RationalMale) October 31, 2022

Resharing this. Because "let's forgive", right? Nope.pic.twitter.com/XVTLErPNd2

— Dr. Sydney Watson (@SydneyLWatson) October 31, 2022

As QTR further notes, many Americans whipped themselves up into such a terrified hypnotic frenzy that they found themselves clinging to big government to impose their will, advocating for the same draconian and fascist-sounding policies they always claim to be fighting against.

For example, Ramussen reported in January 2022 that Democratic voters supported the following Covid policy ideas (my annotations in bold, Rasmussen in normal text):

• Fines for the unvaccinated: Fifty-eight percent (58%) of voters would oppose a proposal for federal or state governments to fine Americans who choose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
• House arrest: Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
• Imprisonment for questioning the vaccine: Nearly half (48%) of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.
• Forced quarantine: Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
• Stripping people of their children: Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Democratic voters would support temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s much more than twice the level of support in the rest of the electorate – seven percent (7%) of Republicans and 11% of unaffiliated voters – for such a policy.

Emily Oster: let's just forget this happened. pic.twitter.com/fL8BhvQTVp

— John Haar (@john_at_swan) October 31, 2022

Unsurprisingly, American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten, who ‘flunked the pandemic‘ by pushing for school shutdowns as long as she possibly could before parents revolted, is a big fan of amnesty.

"I've decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works" pic.twitter.com/pNXoHk1d39

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) October 31, 2022

One cannot help but notice that the timing of the Atlantic’s appeal for passive forgetfulness coincides with the swiftly approaching midterm elections, in which polls suggest a much greater chance of a conservative upset than Democrats previously expected.  Though the Atlantic doesn’t admit it, there is a growing political backlash to the last two years of meaningless lockdowns and mandates, and Democrats were instrumental in the implementation of both.  A large swath of the population sees one party as the cause of much of their covid era strife.

Perhaps the mainstream media is suddenly realizing that they may have to face some payback for their covid zealotry?  “We didn’t know! We were just following orders!”  It all sounds rather familiar.

*

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***

Organized crime is on the rise in Finland, and there’s a high demand for weapons. Criminal networks have already established weapon smuggling routes between Finland and Poland.

Europol, the European police cooperation organization, is reported to have warned in the summer that armed criminal groups could soon start smuggling weapons from Ukraine to EU member states.

According to Christer Ahlgren, superintendent of the Organized Crime Intelligence Unit of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (Keskusrikospoliisi, KRP), Europol’s prediction has already become a reality in Finland:

“We are seeing signs that these weapons are already in Finland, (…) and we have already seen signs that weapons delivered to Ukraine have been found in Finland,” Ahlgren says.

The Finnish law enforcement official said this mostly means handguns and heavier weapons used by the military, such as machine guns. However, they know from their foreign colleagues that there is also great demand for explosive grenades and military drones, and “in other parts of Europe, we have also found anti-tank missiles from Ukraine.”

There are fears that the Javelin anti-tank missile could also make its way into the hands of Europe’s criminals. The missile was one of the keys to the Ukrainians’ successful defense in the early stages of the war, and the U.S. and Britain have been supplying Ukraine with countless quantities of this easy-to-handle weapon, which is highly effective against tanks. The missile reportedly appeared on the dark web for sale this summer, but there is no documented case of it being used in any attack outside of Ukraine.

Rifles, handguns and other weapons from Ukraine are not only landing in Finland, but have also turned up in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands

The smuggling routes are set

Ahlgren says that “the routes, processes and connections for the illegal smuggling of weapons from Ukraine to Finland are already in place.” The arms are mostly transported via the country’s international ports, which are considerably less protected than airports, and the smugglers are criminal gangs, such as the big international motorcycle gangs. One of them, Bandidos MC Ahlgren, which is also active in Finland, has branches in all major Ukrainian cities.

Yle reported on Sunday that Europol is already expecting criminal gangs to set up arms depots near Ukraine’s borders; it also knows of Ukrainian refugees who have paid for transportation to the border with weapons rather than money.

According to Ahlgren, the amount of weapons in question is much greater than during the Yugoslav war, when gangs in Sweden stockpiled weapons. Now, as a result of illegal migration, “we have clans based on blood ties and ethnicity that are engaged in criminal activity.”

Ahlgren said he believes that while supplying weapons to Ukraine is the right thing to do, it has consequences.

“Ukraine has received a tremendous amount of arms, and that’s a good thing, but we will be dealing with these weapons for decades, and we are paying the price here,” he said. “The decision-makers have forgotten that the war in Ukraine has also increased the workload of the police.”

*

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Featured image: A Ukrainian soldier holding a Javelin missile system. (Image via the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine)

Arterial Shower of Blood Clots for “Neon Deion”

By Dr. Peter McCullough and John Leake, November 02, 2022

When a blood clot lets loose on the arterial side of the circulation and lands in a vascular bed servicing an organ, a process called ischemia sets where the organ or a region of tissue is deprived of oxygen and vital nutrients.  There is very little time before injury and then often permanent damage occurs.  This is best exemplified by an embolic stroke.

Sharing Russia’s Multipolar Interest: Through “Youth Education” in Sub-Saharan Africa

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, November 03, 2022

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin continues lambasting the United States and its Western and European allies, wholeheartedly predicted the end of the unipolar system and bristled at the idea of creating a new global order that might change living standards of impoverished millions around the world.

Necropolitics of the End Times

By Konrad Rękas, November 03, 2022

During the pandemic we observed direct racial-sanitary segregation in the developed Western countries and now racist attitude is the base for biopolitics implemented within the geopolitical confrontation manifested in form of the energy crisis and war in Ukraine.

Laundering with Immunity: The Control Framework

By Corey Lynn, November 03, 2022

A band of criminals got together a century ago and decided they were going to own the world, hold all of the power, create and hoard all of the money, and keep everyone on a constant spin cycle to fool them.

Former CIA Boss Petraeus Demands US Forces Enter the Fight in Ukraine

By Kurt Nimmo, November 03, 2022

If this editorial by retired Col. Douglas Macgregor doesn’t scare the hell out of you, I don’t know what will. Macgregor cites an interview with former Gen. David Petraeus by France’s L’Express weekly. During the interview, Petraeus, the former director of the CIA, said it is time for the USG to directly confront Russia on the ground in Ukraine to prevent the fall of Zelenskyy and his government.

No Pain, No Grain: Putin’s Black Sea Comeback

By Pepe Escobar, November 03, 2022

So, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan picks up the phone and calls his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin: let’s talk about the “grain deal.” Putin, cool, calm and collected, explains the facts to the Sultan: First, the reason why Russia withdrew from the export grain deal. Second, how Moscow seeks a serious investigation into the – terrorist – attack on the Black Sea fleet, which for all practical purposes seems to have violated the deal. And third, how Kiev must guarantee it will uphold the deal, brokered by Turkey and the UN.

The Bond Vigilantes Get Busy

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, November 03, 2022

While the levels of schadenfreude will be going through the roof given the unfolding farce in British politics, the resignation of Liz Truss as UK Prime Minister was troubling in one vital respect.  True, her juvenile salad understanding of economics, which involved spending billions on tax cuts and energy subsidies, was lamentable.  To cope with the beast of aggressive inflation, she was advocating a policy that would feed it.

Progressive Caucus Reversal Shows U.S. Congress Allows No Antiwar Voice

By Sara Flounders, November 03, 2022

The cynicism of “Congressional Progressive Caucus” Democrats was exposed in their humiliating retraction this week of a letter sent to President Joe Biden calling on him to engage in direct diplomacy with the Russian government.

Ukraine on Fire: The Real Story. Full Documentary by Oliver Stone (Original English Version)

By Oliver Stone, November 03, 2022

Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Massacre helped oust President Yanukovych with Russia painted as the perpetrator.  Oliver Stone interviews Russian President Vladimir Putin, Yanukovych and others exposing the role the U.S. played in destabilizing the region.

Bringing People Back to Nature. Paul Thiry d’Holbach

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, November 02, 2022

While people in the Middle Ages still lived in a magical world in which natural processes were apparently subject to supernatural powers, a decisive change in European life and thought began with the dawn of the modern age: people became aware of themselves and began to recognise and shape their position in the world as a whole.

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***

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin continues lambasting the United States and its Western and European allies, wholeheartedly predicted the end of the unipolar system and bristled at the idea of creating a new global order that might change living standards of impoverished millions around the world.

But Russia largely lacks far behind with a well-structured public outreach diplomacy with its supposed “friends” in the developing world. It has fragmented relations with public institutions that engage the millions of youth, the future leaders who need to be reoriented toward emerging model of economic growth and political governance in the new global order.

Putin spoke at the final plenary session of the 19th meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club held October 27. Under the theme – “A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone” – the four day-long interactive meeting that gathered academic experts and researchers, politicians, diplomats and economists from Russia and 40 foreign countries, fewer than previous years.

In a clear and concise but tense language, he expressed optimism that Russia would become stronger than before, taking advantage of emerging opportunities and new initiatives to build a better country. With Russia under wide sanctions after sending troops into Ukraine, Putin spoke at length acknowledging the economic difficulties Russia faces as it tries to promote itself to international businesses, the evolutionary processes in the new global configuration.

“The so-called cancel culture and in reality – as we said many times – the real cancellation of culture is eradicating everything that is alive and creative and stifles free thought in all areas, be it economics, politics or culture. Today, liberal ideology itself has changed beyond recognition. It has reached the absurd point where any alternative opinion is declared subversive propaganda and a threat to democracy,” Putin told the gathering.

“When we fight for our interests and do so openly, honestly and, let’s face it, courageously, this fact in itself is highly contagious and attractive for billions of people on the planet. You can see Russian flags in many African countries, in some of those countries. The same is happening in Latin America and Asia. We have many friends. We do not need to impose anything on anyone,” Putin added along the line during his discussion.

Arguably there are interpretations and divergent views to the above position. In a stark contrast, the United States and Europe rather relate very “friendly” with Africa, attach importance to long-term investment especially in the youth. Russia allegedly allows its own “cancel culture” by the United States and western allies. In practical terms, creating a multipolar system deals largely with cultural and social orientation, it deals with openness and friendliness. Comparatively for now, Russia is only chanting slogans without demonstrating practical attractive actions in multicultural ways.

In the post-hegemonic world, what role Africa can play, what could be the expectations and how Russia can contribute in order to realize these expectations through the use of public diplomacy. At this a new historical reawakening stage, Russia has to focus on building relations, both with substance and approach, and strategically engage with African institutions.

Still analyzing the processes of creating and sustaining the new global order, it is necessary to invest in the youth. Obviously we are talking about educating the youth, we are talking about knowledge and technology transfer, and educational exchanges. And understandably, Russia lacks far behind the United States and its western and European allies. In addition to this, Russia does little with public outreach policies that could help form good perception and build image among the youth and the middle-class that form the bulk of Africa’s 1.3 billion population.

With the youth’s education, experts are still critical. Gordey Yastrebov, a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the Institute for Sociology and Social Psychology at the University of Cologne (Germany), argues in an email interview discussion that “education can be a tool for geopolitical influence in general, and for changing perceptions specifically, and Russia (just like any other country) could use it for that same purpose. However, Russia isn’t doing anything substantial on this front, at least there is no consistent effort with obvious outcomes that would make me think so. There are no large-scale investment programmes in education focusing on this.”

He explains that Russian education can become appealing these days, but given that Russia can no longer boast any significant scientific and technological achievements. Western educational and scientific paradigm embraces cooperation and critical independent thinking, whereas this is not the case with the Russian paradigm, which is becoming more isolationist and authoritarian. Obviously by now, Africa should look up to more successful examples elsewhere, perhaps in the United States and Europe.

Series of reports from University World News explicitly show that Asian countries have become the second most popular destination for African students studying abroad with China being number one followed by the likes of India, Japan, Korea, and Israel, among others. For instance, India has also taken steps aim at building a more practical partnership in a number of spheres in the continent. New Delhi has a new set of opportunities in human resources development, information technology and education.

But, number one priority region for studies is still the United States and European countries. As the world focuses on Africa, it quite clear that United States and Europe offer many academic fellowships and internship opportunities for young Africans, both regions have the traditional annual training programmes in various universities and institutes in the United States and Europe.

United States and European countries are investing in the youth. These European and Western countries, which Russians often criticized, train thousands yearly, ranging from short-term courses to long-term academic disciplines. The United States and Europe show consistent commitment to ramping up interesting programmes and activities targeting vibrant young people from Africa.

Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a widely circulated Russian daily newspaper, in article reported that Russia has to focus on young population from developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. It has to target the elite and middle class in these markets for the export of education which has great potential. The Gazeta concluded that Africa’s fast-growing population as a huge potential market for knowledge transfer and export education.

Russia claims to have substantial influence in the education sphere. Quite interesting for the coming years, Russia still needs a model template of social policy for Africa. With the emerging new world order which invariably incorporates in its fold education and cultural influence – the importance of soft power – for making alliances and inroads, networking and collaborating with institutions, in Africa.

Nevertheless, there is a rare need to develop Russian education export opportunities, take progressive measures to raise interest in Russian education among foreigners including Africans. This would raise the collaboration between Russia and Africa to a qualitatively new level and ultimately contribute to the building of the dreamy sustainable relations between Africa and Russia.

It is certainly true, to a considerable extent, that western and European system classically appeal more to Africans. If Russia’s ultimate interest is to lead a fairer multipolar system, then it is necessary to share this through educational sphere in sub-Saharan Africa. Beyond summits and official meetings, Russia and Africa can map out broad initiatives in the sphere of education and culture. As Russia charts multipolar system, this has to reflect in its current foreign policy and approach especially toward the developing world, in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

*

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***

Characteristically, when defining biopower as the ability to divide people into survivors and chosen to die, Foucault (2003, p. 62) used the term ‘racism’ to describe achieved level of ‘social normalisation’.  During the pandemic we observed direct racial-sanitary segregation in the developed Western countries and now racist attitude is the base for biopolitics implemented within the geopolitical confrontation manifested in form of the energy crisis and war in Ukraine.  It should convince us to deeper reflection on the thoughts of Giorgio Agamben, Achille Mbembe and Judith Buttler, which could be consider kind of prophecies for today and especially for tomorrow.

Thinkers developing Foucault’s concept focused primarily on death as a result of state decisions, necessarily referring to their most evident example, wars, but also slavery and the Holocaust.

Therefore, questions have been asked not so much about Bio- but rather Necropolitcs / Thanatopolitics as its ultimate emanation (Mbembe, 2019, p. 71).  Inevitably, a reflection of this type concerned the basics of classifying those ‘not worth living’.  It is an absolutely crucial issue for the further development (?) of humanity.

“Homo sacer”

On the one hand, the pandemic situation seemed to remind us of the role of the state as a rescuer, but when it needed to be recalled, it was clearly not so obvious.  And since saving of life was so special, it might suggest that not everyone could benefit equally, or even that not all equally deserve on it (Robertson and Travaglia, 2020).  Noticeably, this question returned in the context of the West-Russian war (possibly also a global one soon), and moreover, homo sacer can be expected to be revealed again as part of the further classification of life, which can be taken away, but not sacrificed in the context of the climate crisis or the energy transformation.  Announced at least 40% reduction in energy consumption sounds like the declaration of switching off not only unnecessary light bulbs, but also electricity and gas consumers themselves, considered unworthy to live and unnecessary, exactly as it was in the case of not rescuing the really ill and elderlies during the COVID-19 period.

Biopower applied

It is no coincidence that the original meaning of the term crisis, the Greek ‘Krisis’ meant the moment when Hippocrates had to decide whether the patient’s condition justified making further attempts to save him.

In Christian eschatology the same concept was used to define the final decision regarding eternal life or death on the day of the Last Judgment (Agamben, 2021, p. 53).  In March 2020, English doctors were instructed to explicitly suggest families of disabled people, e.g. autistic adults, to sign Do Not Resuscitate declarations (Mezzadri, 2022, p. 390).

During the first lockdown some kind of inverted ‘triage’ was introduced in the English and Scottish care homes.  Residents were divided by age, comorbidities and prognosis.  In case of the SARS-CoV infection that was the sequence of their rescue.  Author confirmed that by interviews with care workers (Sokol et al., personal communication by conversation, 20 May 2022).  The oldest patients and those suffering from certain comorbidities were not allowed to get not only any medicines, but even a glass of water if they have been tested positive for COVID-19.

It was also an excellent opportunity to calculate the cost of saving single human being, e.g. by inquiring whether it is worth, for £500,000 per head, to extend the lives of sick and old people by an average of one and a half years (Young, 2020).  The alternative seemed to be most acceptable from the point of view of the privileged classes: that was a pity, that the old and poor had to die, but the ones, who survive thanks to it, were for sure a bit sad (D’Eramo, 2020).  It was then practical manifestation of the Necropolitics and a call to take advantage of the biopower.  Pre-existed inequalities, reinforced as a result of the neoliberal agenda and austerity, seemed to be perfect as a criterion of life and death deciding (Lee, 2020).  The list of applied biopolitics methods was supplemented with blowing up gas pipelines and bombing power plants.

Racism

The systemic racism, especially of Anglo-Saxon systems, was and is naturally associated with Necropolitics, organising labour, housing and social context of living for racial and ethnic minorities.  It was even further exacerbated in the realities of the pandemic crisis (Sandset, 2021, pp. 1417-1418).  Taking a broader perspective, including peripheral areas (e.g. Central Europe) and accepting intersectional approach, while adjusting this experience with gender, class, age and immigrant status factors, we obtain the COVID-19 Necropolis pattern, which allowed to eliminate the bare life, excluded from politics, and then subjected to secondary politicisation as a result of basing sovereignty on biopolitics.

We have to remember that only the one who decide about the exceptions is the sovereign (Schmitt, 2005, p.5).  In the cases discussed here: about exceptions to the right to life, previously treated as a social construct more even abstract than other principles, and increasingly filled with real, terrifying content.  Thus, biopower returned to its basics, those noticed by Foucault (2000, p. 121) in the 18th Century epidemiology and understood as “right to take life or let live”.  These are the features of the dominant COVID government strategies, evidently based on the implementation of the Agamben’s (2021, p. 84) permanent state of emergency, in which survival required not only self-realisation of one’s own Buttlerian grievablity, i.e. experiencing a life that was really lived, (Buttler, 2016, pp. 21-22) but, moreover, it became necessary to prove the authenticity of that state.

Permanent state of emergency

The COVID-19 crisis was a crisis of the capitalist way of life, which is now partially restored.  Albeit the energy crisis and the Ukrainian war clearly indicate the persistence of the state of exception.  ‘The new normality’ is then not exactly as had been expected by those believing in some ‘new impulse’ coming from the COVID-19 stasis.

Instead of the optimistically assumed crisis of hegemony (Mohandesi and Teitelman, 2017, p. 66), we are faced with a crisis of sovereignty confronted with the globally expanded Necropolitics (Mbembe, 2003, p. 68; Lee, 2020).   Of course, during the pandemic, it was contrasted with the collective and communal effort of almost all classes, groups and individuals which even if not aware, then at least felt that their lives are grievable, worth living, and liveable (Butler, 2020, pp. 22, 28-31).  Thus, not quite consciously, but there was also some resistance to the lockdown policy, initially rather weak but more noticeable with time.  Unfortunately, as might be expected, one justification for a permanent state of emergency has been smoothly replaced by another, and just as the exception constitutes a rule, it eventually becomes the rule itself.

For as it was decided about access to saving lives, so today it is decided about the duration of direct exposure to death as a result of the war sustained by all forces.  And soon, decisions will be made similar to those about turning off  ventilators, as whoever decides to reduce the life-giving energy, with that act will take life, although not sacrificing it, because it was condemned from the very beginning, bare and biopolitical.

Todeslager

It is not affiliation, but exclusion (no matter: pandemic, military, energy, climate one, etc.) that has been confirmed as an element constituting a community.  The final biopolitical paradigm of the West is directed more and more clearly at achieving a state of normalisation which is nothing other than a KZ, Todeslager, the highest emanation of Necropolitics so far (Agamben, 1998, pp. 181, 187).  A centre where exclusion and belonging are the one, the boundaries between law and exception, between fact and setting the principle are finally blurred.  Systemic euthanasia, which in fact was the essence of the COVID’s policy (COVID Sozialer Mord), endless war, deciding about life not worth living with one energy switch: all are the symptoms of the same process, sensed for the last several decades. Politics is over, biopower is winning.

This is the time of Necropolitics.

*

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Konrad Rękas is a renowned geopolitical analyst and a regular contributor to Global Research.

Sources

Agamben, G. (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Agamben, G. (2021) Where Are We Now? The Epidemic as Politics, 2nd edn., London: Rowman & Littlefield.

Butler, J. (2016) Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? 3rd edn. London: Verso.

D’Eramo, M. (2020) ‘The Philosophers Epidemic’, New Left Review, 122. Available at: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii122/articles/marco-d-eramo-the-philosopher-s-epidemic (Accessed 12th July 2022).

Foucault, M. (2003) Society Must be Defended: Lecture Series at the Collège de France, 1975-76, New York, NY: Picador.

Foucault, M. (2000), Historia seksualności, tom 1. Translated from French by B. Banasiak, T. Komendant, K. Matuszewski. Warszawa: Czytelnik (Original work published 1976).

Lee, C. J. (2020) ‘The Necropolitics of COVID-19’, Africa Is a Country. Available at: https://africasacountry.com/2020/04/the-necropolitics-of-covid-19 (Accessed 10 May 2022).

Mbembe, A. (2019) Necropolitics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Mezzadri, A. (2022) ‘Social Reproduction and Pandemic Neoliberalism: Planetary Crises and the Reorganisation of Life, Work and Death’, Organization, 29(3), pp. 379–400.

Mohandesi, S. and Teitelman, E. (2017) ‘Without Reserves’, in: Bhattacharya, T. (ed.) Social Reproduction Theory: Remaping Class, Recentering Oppression. London: Pluto Press, pp. 37-67.

Sandset, T. (2021) ‘The Necropolitics of COVID-19: Race, Class and Slow Death in an Ongoing Pandemic’, Global Public Health, 16(8-9), pp. 1411-1423. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2021.1906927 (Accessed 12th May 2022).

Schmitt, C. (2005) Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Translated from German by G. Schwab Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press (Original work published 1922).

Featured image is from Alt-Market.us

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***

 

A band of criminals got together a century ago and decided they were going to own the world, hold all of the power, create and hoard all of the money, and keep everyone on a constant spin cycle to fool them.

Not only were they going to construct it as they saw fit, but they were going to build the most elaborate enslavement system this world has ever seen – one that gives them full immunity, allows them to operate outside the law entirely, and they were going to do it without anyone realizing it until it was too late.

These self-imposed “rulers” believe themselves to be untouchable, have created documents stating as much, and are laughing at humanity as people move about their lives unaware of this elaborate scheme.

This is the story that needs to be shared with the world and with every state legislator who should move immediately to create independence from the Federal Reserve system and Central Banks, and enforce our Constitution and financial management laws to protect sovereignty at the state and local level. This should include steps to recapture monies illegally stolen, to prevent current and future illegal expenditure of our tax monies and to end sovereign immunity privileges that have been used to engage in systematic criminal activities and racketeering.

• 76 International organizations and banks enjoy immunities, privileges, and tax exemptions
• GAVI, Big Pharma, and CERN enjoy similar immunities
• The Bank for International Settlements has sovereign immunity and some of these immunities extend to its members, being 63 central banks and the Federal Reserve System, while other immunities extend to “systemically important institutions”
• Trillions of taxpayer dollars and printed money has moved through these organizations and banks with no transparency or accountability as they continue to build a global enslavement system
• Hundreds, if not thousands, of NGOs and corporations work with and through these organizations and banks, some of whom have agreements, NDAs, and/or immunity by extension

They do not operate above the law, they operate entirely outside of the law.

The Control Framework

This dualistic world they have created goes far beyond what most have imagined. It’s not so much that these individuals and organizations are “above the law,” as it is that they are operating entirely outside of the law, and have granted themselves permission to do so by executive orders, treaties, and the creation of BIS.

The structure they have created is much like a pyramid scheme in a sense. At the top of the ivory tower, sit BIS, the Bank for International Settlements, with sovereign immunity. When carrying out specific activities under BIS, this immunity extends to its members, which is made up of 63 global central banks and monetary authorities, the Federal Reserve System, plus insurers, and payment systems through their subsidiary, that BIS deems “systemically important institutions.”

As if that’s not bad enough, it gets worse. The U.S. has given 76 public international organizations immunities, privileges, and tax exemptions dating back to 1946, just 10 years after BIS expanded its immunities with The Hague Convention of 1936. In addition, some of these organizations have added immunities through treaties.

Underneath that layer, there are hundreds of NGOs, corporations, and universities that operate with and through these international organizations who hold immunities and privileges – some of whom have signed agreements and NDAs, others have been given immunity by extension.

The process is quite simple. The money essentially gets laundered through the organizations and banks which have little level of transparency or accountability, and spread across multiple countries, making it that much easier to achieve.

But it doesn’t end there. In addition to immunities enjoyed by these banks and organizations, Bill Gates’ GAVI also enjoys immunities and privileges. Of course, the World Bank serves on the board, manages their finances, and is the trustee, who enjoys an extensive amount of immunities and privileges to all five arms of the World Bank Group. Couple that with the release of liability to big pharma when it comes to vaccines, and this is a recipe for disaster. Even CERN holds international immunity status, separately from the lists provided in this report.

At the bottom of this pyramid are civilians who pay in taxes, abide by a set of laws that the others never have to concern themselves with, and who have naively believed that these organizations and banks are operating in their best interest, while they squander away trillions of dollars to build a human enslavement system, and big Gov funnels them taxpayer dollars. This is how they’ve managed to do it for so long, without fear or conscience.

What’s important to recognize about these specific organizations, is the fact that they cover nearly every industry. In other words – those behind these organizations and banks are the future rulers of the world if they are not stopped. Their framework is already in place. What must be done to stop this band of criminal characters who masterminded how to create special privileges for themselves, outside of the system, signed some pieces of paper, and declared they have immunity to steal people’s hard-earned money?

International Organizations Immunities Act (IOIA) of December 29, 1945

Almost immediately after World War II, Congress passed the International Organizations Immunities Act, which was signed into law on December 29, 1945. This established immunities, privileges, and tax exemptions for international organizations that might not be considered international organizations under the rules of international laws, such as the Global Fund, for example.

What defines a qualifying “international organization”? The IOIA states:

“For the purposes of this title, the term “international organization” means a public international organization in which the United States participates pursuant to any treaty or under the authority of any Act of Congress authorizing such participation or making an appropriation for such participation…”

Once the IOIA was passed, it was by the authorization of the President(s) to grant these privileges to international organizations by executive order. The President also has the authority to condition, limit, or revoke the designation. Whereas, there have been a few that received limited privileges, there does not seem to be any that have been revoked, with exception of organizations that dissolved. However, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan extended additional immunities from lawsuits and prosecution to Interpol, and in 2009, President Barack Obama granted additional benefits.

The IOIA states that

“International organizations … shall enjoy the same immunity from suit and every form of judicial process as is enjoyed by foreign governments, except to the extent that such organizations may expressly waive their immunity.”

This gave them absolute immunity. In 1976, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act was passed which created some restrictions on immunities, but the IOIA seemed to have remained vague on the matter.

When it comes to immunities and privileges, there are countries who grant them to international organizations under their own criteria and rules, there are headquarters agreements that provide additional immunities and privileges, and there are international treaties that also grant immunities and privileges. A single organization could have one, two, or all three at the same time. As an example, the Global Fund has privileges by the U.S., and international treaties with multiple countries, while having additional immunities in Switzerland, including a headquarters agreement. In other words, they are protected to the hilt.

Immunities, Privileges, and Tax Exemptions Enjoyed by IOIA Status

Note that in this Act, as well as treaties, they often say, “unless immunity is waived,” and what they mean by that is that the internal heads of the organization determine whether they wish to waive immunity so that a particular legal case may see the light of day in court, outside of the organization using its internal council for any such debates or legal action. Unless something so outrageous happened, such as an employee murdering another employee, it would be unlikely that any organization would waive their immunity rights to settle disputes on their own.

This is a cliff note summary of their ability to operate outside the law. The full version of the IOIA can be reviewed in detail via the original Act signed into law, Yale Law School, or for more background visit Wikipedia.

• International organizations, their property and their assets, wherever located, and by whomsoever held, shall enjoy the same immunity from suit and every form of judicial process as is enjoyed by foreign governments, unless the organization waives their immunity
• Immunity from search and seizure of property and assets, wherever located, and by whomsoever held
• Archives are inviolable
• Exemption from property taxes, internal revenue taxes, communication taxes, taxes on transportation of persons or property, customs duties and taxes
• Admission of officers and employees, and their family members, without checks from customs
• Officers and employees are exempt from legal suits or any other legal action in regards to activities related to work
• Employees are exempt from income tax, if they are not U.S. citizens, or are both a U.S. citizen and a citizen of the Commonwealth of the Philippines
• Officers and employees of the international organization, and members of their immediate families, other than nationals of the United States, require no alien registration or fingerprinting, or registration of foreign agents
• If the Secretary of State determines that the continued presence of a person from an international organization, in the United States, is no longer desirable, or if the Secretary of State wishes to withdraw the privileges, exemptions, and immunities of the international organization itself, they have the power to do so

76 International Organizations Given Immunities and Privileges

This is a comprehensive list that includes the organization, date it was founded, headquarters, the dates they were given immunity and by whom, and the executive order numbers that correspond, which have been rigorously checked. Also note that some of these organizations also have treaties that give them additional immunities and privileges, such as the UN. This will be covered further in part 2.

The list below is in the order in which the immunities were first given to these organizations. As anyone can see, Truman was instrumental in kicking this off with 20 designations, and Bill Clinton holds second place. Since President Truman, every president thereafter issued immunities to various organizations, with the exception of President Trump, and thus far, Biden.

Organization of American States (formerly the Pan American Union)
Founded: 1890 (the charter was officially created on April 30, 1948)
Headquarters: Washington D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 9698 on February 19, 1946 by Harry S. Truman and EO 10533 on June 3, 1954 by Dwight D. Eisenhower

International Labor Organization (founded under League of Nations, now part of UN)
Founded: October, 1919
Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 9698 on February 19, 1946 – Harry S. Truman

Food and Agriculture Organization of The United Nations
Founded: October 16, 1945
Headquarters: Rome, Italy
IOIA Status: EO 9698 on February 19, 1946 – Harry S. Truman

United Nations
Founded: October 24, 1945
Headquarters: New York
IOIA Status: EO 9698 on February 19, 1946 – Harry S. Truman

Pan American Health Organization (previously Pan American Sanitary Bureau)
Founded: December 2, 1902
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 9751 on July 11, 1946, and EO 10025 on December 30, 1948 by Harry S. Truman, and EO 10864 on February 18, 1960 by Dwight D. Eisenhower

Inter-American Statistical Institute
Founded: May 12, 1940
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 9751 on July 11, 1946, and EO 10025 on December 30, 1948 by Harry S. Truman, and EO 10864 on February 18, 1960 by Dwight D. Eisenhower

Inter-American Institute for Cooperation for Agriculture (formerly the Inter-American Institute for Agricultural Sciences)
Founded: 1942
Headquarters: San Jose, Costa Rica
IOIA Status: EO 9751 on July 11, 1946 – Harry S. Truman

International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank)
Founded: July, 1944 (opened their door on June 25, 1946)
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 9751 on July 11, 1946 – Harry S. Truman

International Monetary Fund (UN)
Founded: July, 1944
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 9751 on July 11, 1946 – Harry S. Truman

International Wheat Advisory Committee (International Wheat Council)
Founded: 1933
Headquarters: London, England
IOIA Status: EO 9823 on January 24, 1947 – Harry S. Truman

International Telecommunication Union (est as International Telegraph Union, now under UN)
Founded: May 17, 1865
Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 9863 on May 31, 1947 – Harry S. Truman

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) – UN
Founded: November 16, 1945
Headquarters: Paris, France
IOIA Status: EO 9863 on May 31, 1947 – Harry S. Truman

International Civil Aviation Organization (UN)
Founded: April 4, 1947
Headquarters: Montreal, Canada
IOIA Status: EO 9863 on May 31, 1947 – Harry S. Truman

International Cotton Advisory Committee
Founded: 1939
Headquarters: Washington DC
IOIA Status: EO 9911 on December 19, 1947 – Harry S. Truman

International Joint Commission – United States & Canada
Founded: 1909
Headquarters: Ottawa, ON and Washington, D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 9972 on June 25, 1948 – Harry S. Truman

World Health Organization (UN)
Founded: April 7, 1948
Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 10025 on December 30, 1948 – Harry S. Truman

Pacific Community (formerly the South Pacific Commission)
Founded: 1947
Headquarters: Noumea, New Caledonia
IOIA Status: EO 10086 on November 25, 1949 – Harry S. Truman

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – (formerly the Organization for European Economic Cooperation)
Founded: April 16, 1948 (changed to OECD on September 30, 1961)
Headquarters: Paris, France
IOIA Status: EO 10133 on June 27, 1950 – Harry S. Truman

Inter-American Defense Board
Founded: January, 1942
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 10228 on March 26, 1951 – Harry S. Truman

International Organization for Migration (formerly Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants for Europe and Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration)
Founded: December 6, 1951
Headquarters: Grand-Saconnex, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 10335 on March 28, 1952 – Harry S. Truman

International Finance Corporation (under World Bank)
Founded: July 20, 1956
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 10680 on October 2, 1956 – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Universal Postal Union (established by Treaty of Bern, now under UN)
Founded: October 9, 1874
Headquarters: Bern, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 10727 on August 31, 1957 – Dwight D. Eisenhower

International Atomic Energy Agency (UN)
Founded: July 29, 1957
Headquarters: Vienna, Austria
IOIA Status: 10727 on August 31, 1957 – Dwight D. Eisenhower

International Hydrographic Bureau
Founded: June 21, 1921
Headquarters: Monte Carlo, Monaco
IOIA Status: EO 10769 on May 29, 1958 – Dwight D. Eisenhower

International Maritime Organization (formerly the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization – UN)
Founded: March 17, 1958
Headquarters: London, United Kingdom
IOIA Status: EO 10795 on December 13, 1958 – Dwight D. Eisenhower

World Meteorological Organization (UN)
Founded: March 23, 1950
Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 10676 on September 1, 1959 – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Inter-American Development Bank
Founded: April 8, 1959
Headquarters: Washington, DC
IOIA Status: EO 10873 on April 8, 1960 by Dwight D. Eisenhower and EO 11019 on April 27, 1962 by John F. Kennedy

International Pacific Halibut Commission
Founded: 1923
Headquarters: Seattle, WA
IOIA Status: EO 11059 on October 23, 1962 – John F. Kennedy

Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission
Founded: 1949
Headquarters: San Diego, CA
IOIA Status: EO 11059 on October 23, 1962 – John F. Kennedy

Great Lakes Fishery Commission
Founded: 1955
Headquarters: Ann Arbor, MI
IOIA Status: EO 11059 on October 23, 1962 – John F. Kennedy

International Coffee Organization (setup under the auspices of the UN)
Founded: 1963
Headquarters: London, UK
IOIA Status: EO 11225 on May 22, 1965 and EO 11449 by Lyndon B. Johnson

Asian Development Bank
Founded: December 19, 1966
Headquarters: Mandaluyong, Philippines
IOIA Status: EO 11269 on February 14, 1966 and EO 11334 on March 7, 1967 by Lyndon B. Johnson

Inter-American Investment Corporation
Founded: 1985
Headquarters: Washington, DC
IOIA Status: EO 11269 on February 14, 1966 by Lyndon B. Johnson and EO 12567 on October 2, 1986 by Ronald Reagan

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Founded: 1991
Headquarters: London, UK
IOIA Status: EO 11269 on February 14, 1966 by Lyndon B. Johnson and EO 12766 on June 18, 1991 by George H.W. Bush

European Space Agency (formerly the European Space Research Organization)
Founded: 1964
Headquarters: Paris France
IOIA Status: EO 11318 on December 5, 1966 and EO 11351 on May 22, 1067 by by Lyndon B. Johnson, EO 11760 on January 17, 1974 by Richard Nixon, and EO 12766 on June 18, 1991 by George H.W. Bush

International Secretariat for Volunteer Service (formerly the International Peace Corps Secretariat)
Founded: January, 1963
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 11363 on July 20, 1967 – Lyndon B. Johnson

United International Bureau for the Protection of Intellectual Property (BIPRI)
Founded: 1893
Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 11484 on September 29, 1969 – Richard Nixon

World Customs Organization (formerly the Customs Cooperation Council)
Founded: January 26, 1952
Headquarters: Brussels, Belgium
IOIA Status: EO 11596 on June 5, 1971 – Richard Nixon

African Union (formerly the Organization of African Unity)
Founded: May 25, 1963
Headquarters: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
IOIA Status: EO 11767 on February 19, 1974 by Richard Nixon and EO 13377 on April 13, 2005 by George W. Bush

World Intellectual Property Organization (UN)
Founded: July 14, 1967
Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 11866 on June 18, 1975 – Gerald Ford

International Development Association (under World Bank)
Founded: September 24, 1960
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 11966 on January 19, 1977 – Gerald Ford

International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (under World Bank)
Founded: October 4, 1966
Headquarters: Washington D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 11966 on January 19, 1977 – Gerald Ford

International Fertilizer Development Center
Founded: October, 1974
Headquarters: Muscle Shoals, AL
IOIA Status: EO 11977 on March 14, 1977 – Jimmy Carter

International Mobile Satellite Organization
Founded: July 16, 1979
Headquarters: London, United Kingdom
IOIA Status: EO 12238 on September 12, 1980 – Jimmy Carter

Multinational Force and Observers
Founded: August 3, 1981
Headquarters: Rome
IOIA Status: EO 12359 on April 12, 1982 – Ronald Reagan

International Food Policy Research Institute – limited privileges
Founded: March 5, 1975
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 12359 on April 22, 1982 – Ronald Reagan

African Development Bank
Founded: September 10, 1964
Headquarters: Abidjan, Cote d’lvoire
IOIA Status: EO 12403 on February 8, 1983 – Ronald Reagan

International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) – limited privileges
Founded: September 7, 1923
Headquarters: Lyon, France
IOIA Status: EO 12425 on June 16, 1983 by Ronald Reagan, EO 12971 on September 15, 1995 by William J. Clinton, and EO 13524 on December 16, 2009 by Barack Obama

International Boundary and Water Commission – the United States & Mexico
Founded: March 1, 1889
Headquarters: El Paso, TX
IOIA Status: EO 12467 on March 2, 1984 – Ronald Reagan

World Tourism Organization (UN)
Founded: 1975
Headquarters: Madrid, Spain
IOIA Status: EO 12508 on March 22, 1985 – Ronald Reagan

Pacific Salmon Commission
Founded: 1937
Headquarters: Vancouver, Canada
IOIA Status: EO 12567 on October 2, 1986 – Ronald Reagan

United Nations Industrial Development Organization
Founded: November 17, 1966
Headquarters: Vienna, Austria
IOIA Status: EO 12628 on March 8, 1988 – Ronald Reagan

International Committee of the Red Cross
Founded: February 17, 1863
Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 12643 on June 23, 1988 – Ronald Reagan

Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (under World Bank)
Founded: 1988
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
IOIA Status: EO 12467 on August 22, 1988 – Ronald Reagan

Organization for Eastern Caribbean States
Founded: 1981
Headquarters: Castries, Saint Lucia
IOIA Status: EO 12669 on February 20, 1989 – George H.W. Bush

International Fund for Agriculture Development (UN)
Founded: December, 1977
Headquarters: Rome, Lazio, Italy
IOIA Status: EO 12732 on October 31, 1990 – George H.W. Bush

International Development Law Organization
Founded: January 1, 1983
Headquarters: Rome, Italy
IOIA Status: EO 12842 on March 29, 1993 – William J. Clinton

North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission
Founded: February 11, 1992
Headquarters: Vancouver, BC, Canada
IOIA Status: EO 12895 on January 26, 1994 – William J. Clinton

North Pacific Marine Science Organization
Founded: March 24, 1992
Headquarters: Sidney, Canada
IOIA Status: EO 12894 on January 26, 1994 – William J. Clinton

Border Environmental Cooperation Commission
Founded: 1994
Headquarters: Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
IOIA Status: EO 12904 on March 16, 1994 – William J. Clinton

Commission for Environmental Cooperation
Founded: 1994
Headquarters: Montreal, Canada
IOIA Status: EO 12904 on March 16, 1994 – William J. Clinton

North American Development Bank
Founded: 1994
Headquarters: San Antonio, TX
IOIA Status: EO 12904 on March 16, 1994 – William J. Clinton

Israel-United States Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation
Founded: 1977
Headquarters: Israel
IOIA Status: EO 12956 on March 13, 1995 – William J. Clinton

International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources – limited privileges
Founded: October 5, 1948
Headquarters: Gland, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 12986 on January 18, 1996 – William J. Clinton

World Trade Organization
Founded: January 1, 1995
Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 13042 on April 9, 1997 – William J. Clinton

Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
Founded: April 29, 1997
Headquarters: The Hague, Netherlands
IOIA Status: EO 13049 on June 11, 1997 – William J. Clinton

Hong Kong Economic and Trades Offices
Founded: 1986
Headquarters: Beijing / New York
IOIA Status: EO 13052 on June 30, 1997 – William J. Clinton

Inter Parliamentary Union
Founded: 1889
Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 13097 on August 7, 1998 – William J. Clinton

GRECO (Council of Europe in Respect of the Group of States Against Corruption)
Founded: 1999
Headquarters: Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France
IOIA Status: EO 13240 on December 18, 2001 – George W. Bush

European Central Bank
Founded: June 1, 1998
Headquarters: Frankfurt, Germany
IOIA Status: EO 13307 on May 29, 2003 – George W. Bush

African Development Fund
Founded: September 10, 1964
Headquarters: Tunis, Tunisia
IOIA Status: EO 13377 on April 13, 2005 – George W. Bush

Global Fund (Bill & Melinda Gates, Jeffrey Sachs, Kofi Annan, Amir Attaran )
Founded: January 28, 2002
Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
IOIA Status: EO 13395 on January 13, 2006 – George W. Bush

ITER International Fusion Energy Organization
Founded: October 24, 2007
Headquarters: Saint-Paul-les-Durance, France
IOIA Status: EO 13451 on November 19, 2007 – George W. Bush

Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the International Civilian Office in Kosovo
Founded: 1995
Headquarters: Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
IOIA Status: EO 13568 on March 8, 2011 – Barack Obama

International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)
Founded: January 26, 2009
Headquarters: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
IOIA Status: EO 13705 on September 3, 2015 – Barack Obama

World Organization for Animal Health (formerly the Office International des Epizooties (OIE))
Founded: January 25, 1924
Headquarters: Paris, France
IOIA Status: EO 13759 on January 12, 2017 – Barack Obama

Since Truman, every President has given immunities to a number of international organizations, except President Trump, and thus far, Biden.

Part 2 dives deep into connections that unveil a larger group pulling many strings that seems to have received little to no exposure, and shows just how far this extends and the true power they hold – where laws and the constitution don’t seem to exist for them.

Additional Organizations with Immunity By Treaties and/or No Liability Laws

GAVI The Vaccine Alliance

GAVI, founded in 2000 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with UNICEF, the World Bank Group, and WHO listed as partners, was originally hosted by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), meaning it was granted immunities and privileges through this hosting relationship. When UNICEF no longer hosted GAVI, it became a foundation and an international institution under Swiss law, and was given privileges and immunities in Switzerland on January 1, 2009, that equate to those the UN enjoys. In fact, GAVI was the first international institution to receive recognition under the new Host State Act in Switzerland.

Yes, this is the same GAVI that has contracted with most of the world to help rollout Covid jabs, and the same GAVI who has received billions in funding from the U.S. government over the past two decades. As an added bonus, the U.S. decided to create the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) in 2019 to finance the private sector in healthcare, energy, telecommunications, and critical infrastructure. Just this May, GAVI and DFC partnered to create the COVAX Rapid Financing Facility, providing up to $1 billion to unleash more Covid jabs.

The World Bank, whose branches all receive outrageous immunities and privileges, is coincidentally GAVI’s trustee, manages their finances, and holds several seats on the board.

The Global Fund was founded in 2000 by Bill & Melinda Gates, Kofi Annan, Amir Attaran, and Jeffrey Sachs, and was launched in 2002. They ran a similar scheme. They established as a foundation under Swiss Law as well. In an agreement with the WHO providing a Secretariat for the Global Fund, it extended the WHO’s immunities and privileges to the Global Fund. At the same time GAVI received privileges and immunities in Switzerland, the Global Fund ended their agreement with the WHO on the same day. That said, as seen in the list above, the Global Fund was already receiving immunities and privileges by the U.S. and had already obtained them from Switzerland as well. It didn’t take long for them to convince other jurisdictions to grant them similar immunities.

They are not the only ones who have benefited from extended immunities. Much more on this coming up in part 2.

Big Pharma

As reported in Corey’s Digs report on Measles, Masterminds, and Millions, big pharma was granted full immunity from lawsuits for injuries and deaths resulting from vaccines, back in 1986 when the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was created.

Just to be clear, all big pharma, GAVI, WHO, all five World Bank arms, and the Global Fundall hold immunities. Does anyone believe they are concerned about over 1.6 million cases of jab injuries and deaths reported to VAERS since 1986, when none of them would be held accountable, and taxpayer dollars will pay out anyone who receives minimal compensation? Remember, most of them have these immunities on an international scale. And people wonder why they walk around fearless, while expanding on “population control” goals.

CERN: The European Organization for Nuclear Research

Formed in 1954, and headquartered in Canton of Geneva, Switzerland, CERN scientists want to figure out “what the universe is made of and how it works.” While they fire up their 17-mile long Hadron Collider to study particles and probe dark matter and celebrate with incredibly bizarre satanic ritual ceremonies, they too enjoy immunity and privileges.

“The Protocol recognizes … the organization’s capacity to contract, to acquire and to dispose of movable and immovable property and to participate in legal proceedings … Among other things, the new recognition means that our pension fund – which is an integral part of CERN without a legal status of its own – can now enter into investment operations in markets that were previously hard to access.” – Eva-Maria Groniger-Voss, CERN Legal Counsel

As of March, 2004, CERN gets to enjoy additional immunities, operating outside of its host states of Switzerland and France, to the other member states of their organization.

CERN operates with 23 member states, with additional states holding observer status, and a large number of non-member states with international cooperation agreements with CERN. Observer status and non-member status of the Russian Federation was removed on March 8, 2022.

The Protocol also grants them immunity from jurisdiction of the national courts. Of course, personnel who have claims against the organization need to submit them to the International Labour Organization, who also holds international immunity status. Immunity from jurisdiction is also extended to personnel, and exempts them and their family members from income tax and immigration restrictions. CERN has over 9,000 scientists.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS): Immunity and Beyond

In the agreement between the Swiss Federal Council and BIS, a few of the immunities breakdown as follows:

Article 12-15, 18: Immunity for members of the board of directors, officers, bank staff, representatives of (non-)member banks and ‘experts’, including inviolability of all documentation.

Article 24: Immunity of premises.

Essentially, what this means, is that there is absolutely no transparency, traceability, or accountability for where funds are being moved.

The fact that some of these immunities extend to members and appear to extend to “systemically important institutions” by BIS, comes as no surprise. Separately, as seen in the list above on International Organizations with immunity, we know that the following 13 financial institutions do have immunities under the International Organizations Immunities Act:

• African Development Bank
• African Development Fund
• Asian Development Bank
• European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
• European Central Bank (also listed on BIS under 63 member banks)
• Inter-American Development Bank
• International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank)
• International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (part of the World Bank Group)
• International Development Association (part of the World Bank Group)
• International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank Group)
• International Monetary Fund (UN)
• Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (part of the World Bank Group)
• North American Development Bank

In 2005, Bill H.R. 3269 was introduced by Congress to amend the International Organization Immunities Act to include the Bank for International Settlements under the Act. Whereas, it passed the House, it never made it out of the Senate.

Catherine Austin Fitts of The Solari Report, Patrick Wood, and John Titus, have all covered the immunities with BIS and Central Banks and their findings thus far, so rather than regurgitate their solid work on this, it is all linked below. That said, there are a few additional points that need to be made in regard to some key timing elements.

A Few Key Timeline Points for Reference:

• December 23, 1913
  The Federal Reserve was created
• January 20, 1930
  The Bank for International Settlements was founded
• 1936
  The Hague Convention expanded BIS’ immunities
• July, 1944
  The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) was founded
• December 27, 1945
  Eleven European countries signed the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) Articles of Agreement

The Bank for International Settlements was established in Basel, Switzerland in 1930. It is an international financial institution owned by central banks and serves as a bank for central banks, in addition to acting as an agent or trustee with international financial transactions. It’s made up of members of central banks and monetary authorities, including the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. BIS is governed by a Board of Directors. In fact, Jerome H. Powell serves on the Board. BIS operates with sovereign immunity, and according to their website, some of these immunities not only extend to BIS members under specific activities, but also extend to “systemically important institutions,” which is likely the insurers, and payment systems. There are currently 63 member banks and monetary authorities, plus their subsidiary members under the International Association of Deposit Insurers (IADI). They also have innovation hubs for CBDCs.

• December 29, 1945
  The U.S. signed the International Organizations Immunities Act into law
• February 19, 1946
  President Harry S. Truman began dishing out immunities to international organizations, which included the World Bank Group’s five branches, as well as other banks listed above
• September, 1994
  The first BIS Board meeting after the Federal Reserve finally purchased shares in the BIS system, kicked off the central bank system on a global scale, with BIS at the helm
• October 1, 1997
  Money began going missing from the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the US Federal Government, in large amounts, totaling $21 trillion by fiscal 2015
• September 10, 2000
  BIS sent a note to its registered shareholders informing them of BIS’ decision to the new restriction on the right to hold shares in the BIS exclusively to central banks, which included details about the mandatory repurchase of all shares, and the amendments of BIS’ statutes that were to be adopted by the Extraordinary General Meeting held on January 8, 2001. Note on BIS’ site.
• May, 2002
  BIS created a subsidiary called the International Association of Deposit Insurers (IADI), whereby the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is a member, along with 91 other deposit insurers. The U.S. Treasury, International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank are a few of the partners of IADI.
• August 22, 2019
  BlackRock’s white paper on “Going Direct” reveals that the central bank is moving funds directly into the hands of public and private sector spenders (meaning equity investors), in a laundering scheme. The plan injected more than $5 trillion into the U.S. financial system. The following month, the U.S. Federal Reserve began a repo loan bailout program by “Going Direct” to the trading houses on Wall Street, and in March 2020, hired BlackRock to help implement the “Going Direct” plan.

Members of BIS: 63 Central Banks, Monetary Authorities and The Federal Reserve System:

This does not include the insurers and payment systems companies

• Bank of Algeria
• Central Bank of Argentina
• Reserve Bank of Australia
• Central Bank of the Republic of Austria
• National Bank of Belgium
• Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Central Bank of Brazil
• Bulgarian National Bank
• Bank of Canada
• Central Bank of Chile
• People’s Bank of China
• Central Bank of Colombia
• Croatian National Bank
• Czech National Bank
• Danmarks National bank (Denmark)
• Bank of Estonia
• European Central Bank
• Bank of Finland
• Bank of France
• Deutsche Bundesbank (Germany)
• Bank of Greece
• Hong Kong Monetary Authority
• Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Hungary)
• Central Bank of Iceland
• Reserve Bank of India
• Bank Indonesia
• Central Bank of Ireland
• Bank of Israel
• Bank of Italy
• Bank of Japan
• Bank of Korea
• Central Bank of Kuwait
• Bank of Latvia
• Bank of Lithuania
• Central Bank of Luxembourg
• Central Bank of Malaysia
• Bank of Mexico
• Bank Al-Maghrib (Central Bank of Morocco)
• Netherlands Bank
• Reserve Bank of New Zealand
• Central Bank of Norway
• National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia
• Central Reserve Bank of Peru
• Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Philippines)
• Narodowy Bank Polski (Poland)
• Banco de Portugal
• National Bank of Romania
• Central Bank of the Russian Federation
• Saudi Central Bank
• National Bank of Serbia
• Monetary Authority of Singapore
• National Bank of Slovakia
• Bank of Slovenia
• South African Reserve Bank
• Bank of Spain
• Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden)
• Swiss National Bank
• Bank of Thailand
• Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye
• Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates
• Bank of England
• Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (United States)
• State Bank of Vietnam

It’s Time To Close The Laundromat

Now that the ah ha moment has taken effect, contemplate how many thousands of NGOs and corporations have operated with and through this vast field of immunity, this untraceable and unaccountable land that knows no boundaries. There is no red tape within this realm – only dystopian fantasies they wish to fulfill as they pick off the feeders to serve their future dreamworld. Just imagine walking through life knowing that you are untouchable, and consider the euphoria these power-hungry individuals steep in. Seduced by darkness and void of conscience, they continue to roll forward with their agendas, as everyone sits by praying for a miracle.

These are groups of men and women who masterminded a plan to take global control of the world’s money and weaponize it against everyone. The plotting began a century ago, and it’s far past time to foil their plan.

The John Birch Society recently published a couple of brilliant ideas as one way to combat this tyranny. They explain that state governments have an obligation to make all unconstitutional federal actions unenforceable, or null and void, and lay out two ways of accomplishing this when it comes to federal spending.

1) Enact an Escrow Law

They suggest that state legislatures should enact a “State Sovereignty and Federal Tax Funds Act,” known as an “escrow” law. Federal taxes would be required to go into a special fund controlled by the state government. Once they calculate the actual constitutional federal spending, the state would only send that percentage of funds to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Remaining funds would go toward state expenditures that were reliant on federal funding, or be returned to taxpayers.

They point out that this would save taxpayers a considerable amount of hard-earned money because they estimate that 80% of federal spending is unconstitutional. This would protect the state and the people, while putting the federal government in check. They also point out that this bill has been introduced in five states in previous years, but has yet to be enacted into law, which is critical right now in order to gain the upper hand.

2) Nullify the Federal Reserve

Here, they argue that the Federal Reserve is unconstitutional and has created a monopoly on currency. They illustrate how 42 states have enacted legislation to abolish or curtail sales taxes on precious metals, which is a big step toward treating them as legal tender. Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming are leading the pack by reaffirming the validity of gold and silver as legal tender to compete against Federal Reserve Notes. Texas opened a state precious-metals depository, and Tennessee has enacted legislation to study creating its own depository.

These are great steps in the right direction, but as the John Birch Society points out, state governments must enforce the Constitution’s Gold and Silver Clause (Article I, Section 10), which declares that “No State shall … make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”

The bottom line is that states had better stop taking federal financial assistance which locks them into the rules and stipulations the government attaches to those funds, and they had better start holding them accountable, severing ties, and fulfilling their obligations to the people of their state, or these thieves will continue to thrive until they bleed everyone dry.

People, on the other hand, had better start paying attention to who they are doing business with, where they are banking and investing, why cash is so important to stay out of their system, and why everyone must get this information in the hands of their legislators immediately. Trillions of dollars have moved from the people, through the IRS and big Gov, and straight into their hands. This spin cycle needs to come to an end. The Sound Money Defense League is a good source for information on state laws with precious metals and up-to-date news and insights on the financial moves being made.

This is a call to action, and people need to work together to strategize, make moves, and confront this enslavement scheme everyone has fallen prey to. It’s time to close the doors on this laundromat for good.

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This report was sponsored by The Solari Report.

Special thanks to The Sharp Edge for assistance with validating executive orders for the organizations, and to Robert Dupper for inspiring the laundromat graphic theme, from the Solari Spacs report.

Corey Lynn is an investigative journalist, co-host of the weekly Dig It! podcast, and co-host of The Solution Series. Follow her at coreysdigs.com, on Gab, Truth, Rumble, and Telegram. Support her work by becoming a Patron or making a donation.

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***

Over the past day, the situation on the fronts in Ukraine has not changed. Amid the ongoing battles, Russian missiles and UAVs continue to strike at military and energy infrastructure facilities throughout the country.

Last night, an air alert sounded in all regions in southern and eastern Ukraine.

Russian forces hit the facilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Cherkasy region. Among the targets there was a fuel depot located near the town of Smela.

At night, Russian Geranium-2 UAVs struck several Ukrainian military facilities in the city of Kremenchug in the Poltava region. Local residents reported numerous explosions and a large fire.

Russian kamikaze drones also struck targets in Dnepropetrovsk. In the morning, the Odessa region was also targeted by Russian forces.

In their turn, Ukrainian units shelled Antonovsky Bridge in Kherson, and also struck at civilian infrastructure and residential buildings in Novaya Kakhovka. Most of the shells were intercepted by air defense systems. The cities of Donbass remain under fire of Ukrainian artillery.

Ukrainian services cannot restore the supply of water and electricity to dozens of cities. The head of the Kiev region said that the capital may be left without electricity for two weeks due to the needed repairs. There will be no water in some districts for that time either. In the capital, about a third of all generating capacities have already been damaged, and it is unknown whether the Ukrainian authorities will be able to cope with this. They are already justifying the delays by the fact that there is allegedly lack of repairmen and necessary materials.

Meanwhile, the countries involved in the grain deal are trying to decide its fate. President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow’s return to the deal is possible only after a detailed investigation of the recent attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet and guarantees from Kiev that it will not use the grain corridor for military purposes.

Despite the Russia’s decision to suspend its participation in negotiations, Turkey and the UN have resumed inspections of the cargos. On October 31, at least 12 ships moved along the corridor from Odessa to Turkey.

Nevertheless, on November 2, representatives of Ukraine, the UN and Turkey, suspended the movement of ships with Ukrainian grain for an unknown reason. The UN plans to restore supplies on November 3.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation informed that the movement of dry cargoes along the corridor of the “grain deal” is unacceptable. No security guarantees are valid for dry cargoes passing through it any more.

It is unlikely that Moscow will directly attack civilian vessels but it is possible that the area will be mined in order to hamper or prevent further passage of ships through this corridor.

The current frightening situation may become a trigger for launching a war on communication lines at least in the Black Sea.

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***

If this editorial by retired Col. Douglas Macgregor doesn’t scare the hell out of you, I don’t know what will. Macgregor cites an interview with former Gen. David Petraeus by France’s L’Express weekly. During the interview, Petraeus, the former director of the CIA, said it is time for the USG to directly confront Russia on the ground in Ukraine to prevent the fall of Zelenskyy and his government.

Macgregor writes:

Admittedly, the whole business seems weird, but Petraeus’s suggestion should not be dismissed. Not because Petraeus’s military expertise warrants consideration—it doesn’t. Rather it merits attention because Petraeus would never make such a recommendation unless he was urged to do so by powerful figures in Washington and on Wall Street. And as Jeffrey Sachs tells Americans, globalist and neocon elites clearly want a direct armed confrontation with Russia.

Petraeus, according to Macgregor, “rose through the ranks by checking with everyone in a position of authority above him before doing anything,” making sure not to offend or challenge his superiors, and thus carving out a path to promotion.

Recall Iraq and Petraeus’ “coalition of the willing” that steamrolled over the sanctions-destroyed nation with little trouble. This is the mindset Petraeus is locked in. “Ukraine is not Iraq nor is the Russian Army an Iraqi-like force,” Macgregor warns.

As winter begins, it is becoming painfully obvious a broken-down and defection-ridden Ukrainian military will not be capable of fending off the Russians. “The series of Ukrainian counterattacks over the last 60 to 90 days have cost Ukraine tens of thousands of lives, human capital in uniform that Kiev cannot replace,” Macgregor writes.

According to Macgregor, it is the 11th hour in Ukraine.

“The Russian sledgehammer scheduled to fall on the Zelensky regime in the November or December timeframe, or whenever the ground freezes, will crush whatever remains of Ukrainian forces.”

It is now November and the fields of Ukraine, notoriously muddy during the rain of autumn, will soon freeze over and the Russians will move to put an end to the Zelenskyy regime and its ultranationalist, neo-Nazi regiments, now embedded in the regular Ukrainian armed forces.

Petraeus considers the timeframe crucial. It is now or never to save Zelenskyy and his regime peppered with “patriots” paying tribute to the genocidal mass murderer, Stepan Bandera (who collaborated with real Nazis during WWII and massacred hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, Roma, and other “subhumans”).

The usual war hawks in the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, and on the Hill probably assume that a quiescent American electorate will buy the argument that the commitment of U.S. forces in Ukraine without a declaration of war could facilitate a face-saving deal with Moscow.

Macgregor believes it is “dangerous and stupid to think so, and Americans should reject this notion, but it’s not unreasonable to assume this deluded thinking is prevalent inside the beltway.”

The American public is presently distracted by a number of issues, most dealing with inflation and a deteriorating economy, and while they may feel sympathy for the Ukrainians (largely unknowing of their history and the threat the neo-Nazis pose to ethnic Russians in Ukraine), but direct military intervention is certainly not high on the list of things they want the government to address.

In Washington’s halls of power, the “going in” assumption always presupposes certain conditions: a subservient Congress that will ignore its responsibility to invoke the War Powers Act, unconstrained financial resources for military action, and senior military leaders ready to comply with whatever dumb idea the politicians in charge advocate. For Petraeus and his peers there is also the high probability that some tangible reward is promised in the form of future appointments or financial gain.

In short, a direct confrontation with a nation possessing the largest number of nuclear weapons on the planet is a distinct and growing possibility, that is considering the leadership at the helm of the national security state. “The intellectual and professional caliber of America’s senior military leaders is deplorable,” Macgregor concludes.

Indeed, that has been apparent since the Vietnam War, the first major war lost by the once powerful United States military. It is now a shadow of its former self and replete with self-serving careerists like David Petraeus.

It is not hysterical to warn we are standing on the edge of the abyss as dumbed-down and politicized military leaders, neocons, and no shortage of members of Congress ponder how to save the Zelenskyy regime, heirs of an illegal coup orchestrated by the USG and mendacious neocons, such as Victoria Nuland, in the state department.

The Biden administration is replete with “humanitarian interventionists” and neocons. If Douglas Macgregor is correct, and his experience should definitely be taken into consideration, we are now perilously close to descending into an abyss of no return. After the missiles leave their berths, there will be no turning back. The possibility of the extinction of life on planet Earth grows by the day.

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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.

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---

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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***

Israeli Election: The lives of Palestinians are more in danger now than ever before. Netanyahu is back and the most racist, violent thugs, the RZP, were extremely successful. That gives license for the most violent settlers to terrorize people like @Issaamro even more.

Netanyahu’s coalition the Religious Zionist Party. RZP is led by Smotrich and ben Gvir and includes Otsma Yehudit – Jewish power – Ben Gvir’s kahanist movement. They got 14 seats in the Knesset which is unprecedented.

The victory of the Ben Gvir kahane movement means hunting season on Palestinians. It’s a license for the most violent settlers to terrorize even more than they have been. Which brings us back to @Issaamro sitting alone in a house with Ben Gvir’s people & soldiers all around him.

There is so much talk about securing the safety of Israelis. Palestinians need to be guaranteed safety! Palestinians are the ones in danger. Please share this thread and call or tag your members of Congress. Write an oped to your paper, join an activist group. Get involved.

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Miko Peled, an Israeli activist and son of an Israeli General who served in the 1967 war

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***

While the levels of schadenfreude will be going through the roof given the unfolding farce in British politics, the resignation of Liz Truss as UK Prime Minister was troubling in one vital respect.  True, her juvenile salad understanding of economics, which involved spending billions on tax cuts and energy subsidies, was lamentable.  To cope with the beast of aggressive inflation, she was advocating a policy that would feed it.

Then came the not-very-invisible hand of the market, which decided to throttle her government and its policies with petulance. While the vigilantes of the market have, depending on the occasion, burst into song at the announcement of tax cuts, thereby stimulating growth, the reaction was far different this time.  Trussonomics had the effect of sending a spike in bond yields so serious it threatened the British pension system.  The pound also received a mighty battering.

In one vital respect, this was yet another savaging blow for democratic, or at least representative control vis-à-vis the market.  Never mind what those silly politicians do, the buccaneers in London City and Wall Street and other such engine rooms of finance know better.  They, not the world’s treasuries, can dictate policy for the commonweal by driving up borrowing costs.  Central banks the world over are also complying, implementing monetary policy aligned with the bond market.

With the sacking of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and his replacement in the resurrected form of Jeremy Hunt, the task of appeasing the bond vigilantes, a term minted by economist Ed Yardeni in the 1980s, gathered pace.  Hunt even went so far as to announce a few Economic Advisory Council consisting of Rupert Harrison, former chief of staff of ex-Chancellor George Osborne; former Bank of England members Sushil Wadhwani and Gertjan Vlieghe; and JPMorgan strategist Karen Ward.

As Yardeni puts it, the bond vigilantes, active in the 1980s and early 1990s, went into something of a hibernation, largely because of subdued rates of inflation, negative interest rate policies and quantitative easing.  They terrorised such figures as President Bill Clinton into throwing out a promise of tax cuts and cheered the arrival of Robert Rubin from Goldman Sachs who insisted that budgetary restraint was needed to keep interest rates on US government bonds low.

It was such threatening conduct that inspired Clinton’s political advisor James Carville to revise his assessment on what he would like to return as were reincarnation possible.  Initially, he had thought of returning as president, the Pope, or a .400 baseball hitter.  “But now I want to come back as the bond market.  You can intimidate everybody.”

Along with others, Yardeni remarks that the stimulative fiscal and monetary policies implemented in response to the pandemic saw inflation “roaring back in 2021 and 2022 forcing central banks to tighten their monetary policies, while fiscal policies continued to run amok.”

In truth, the bond vigilantes were already poking around at the first stirrings of the Global Financial Crisis in 2007, taking issue with the way countries were handling the debt crisis.  Those keen on austerity and severe budgets, Ireland being notable among them, were given different treatment to those governments needing to raise funds to prop up much needed stimulus programs.

The tragicomic irony of Truss’s demise was how it proved to be the logical outcome of the ideological script she and her colleagues had contemplated in the previous decade.  Along with her friend, colleague and ultimately sacked Chancellor Kwarteng, the animal virtues of rampant market freedom were qualities to be praised.  In Britannia Unchained, a 2012 tract that never ceases in its oddness and inaccuracies, the image is one of freedom from bureaucracy and the swiping freedom of markets.  They urge the invigorating “frontier spirit” to fight the “risk-averse society” that had come to shackle Britain.  They praise the risk-taking venture capitalists as ingenious libertarians.

At the core of such a misreading is the steadfast refusal to accept that the market is a set of relationships and decisions, many linked through public and private investments and ventures.  Far from being an expansive, unaccountable force to be worshipped, the market is the sum set of policies that involves, rather than rejects, the role of government.

Such capitalist phenomena as Silicon Valley and the Big Tech Wonderland arose precisely because of government support through contracts and state-funded research, with much of the impetus coming from the US military.  The venture capitalist tends to wait for the seed to take root before swooping in.  Jacob Soll of the University of Southern California also remarks that even such a “self-styled libertarian” figure as Tesla CEO Elon Musk received an enormous government hand to the value of US$6 billion worth in contracts, with another US$6 billion in electric-vehicle rebates.  This is not to mention billions more in terms of grants, loans and $US60 million in subsidies from the state of Texas.

Unfortunately for Truss, her own neoliberal nonsense, ill-informed and historically inaccurate, ended up hoisting her.  Her belief in the correcting market, as opposed to a correcting government policy, was so profound it destroyed her brief premiership.  In a very true sense, she got her just desserts.  Democracy, however, did not.

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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 cynicism of “Congressional Progressive Caucus” Democrats was exposed in their humiliating retraction this week of a letter sent to President Joe Biden calling on him to engage in direct diplomacy with the Russian government. 

After the backlash from Congressional Democrats, including some signers of the statement, in less than 24 hours, the mild statement signed by 30 of the 101 CPC members was replaced by a more hawkish message calling for “victory” in NATO’s war in Ukraine.

The Progressive Caucus are representatives from the largest urban centers, elected on promises to fight for reduced military spending and promote Medicare for All, a living wage, cancellation of student debt, a Green New Deal and an end to mass incarceration.

Their retraction clarifies, once again, that no antiwar message, even with a polite, nonthreatening voice, is permitted in the established two-party system. War funding consistently sails through Congress with almost unanimous votes. Essential social programs are symbolically proposed, then left in the dust.

The initial publicized letter from the Progressive Caucus to President Biden was no antiwar statement. The letter opened by praising Biden: “We write with appreciation for your commitment to Ukraine’s legitimate struggle against Russia’s war of aggression.” (See this)

The Progressive Caucus Democrats reaffirmed enduring support for the “military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine,” adding, “Your administration’s policy was critical to enable the Ukrainian people, through their courageous fighting and heroic sacrifices, to deal a historic military defeat to Russia . . .”

Then the Caucus politely encouraged a “proactive diplomatic push.”

Even this timid suggestion of direct talks with Russia was attacked and labeled as a “dramatic shift” in an Oct. 24 Washington Post tweet and full article. (See this and this)

The Caucus stated Oct. 25: “The Congressional Progressive Caucus hereby withdraws its recent letter to the White House regarding Ukraine.”

This second statement hastens to clarify that Democrats “have strongly and unanimously supported and voted for every package of military, strategic and economic assistance to the Ukrainian people.” The Caucus claims the previous day’s statement was “released by staff without vetting.”

They want to make it especially clear that they are not “somehow aligned with Republicans, who seek to pull the plug on [U.S.] American support for President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian forces.”

Republican Party statements raising questions on war funding are just as duplicitous as the statements of Democrats. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy hastened to clarify a day later that Republicans weren’t “planning to abandon Ukraine aid and were just calling for greater oversight of any federal dollars.” This means they want a seat at the table when billions of dollars are being distributed. (See this)

Loyal to corporate profits 

This is the traditional, well-scripted role played by the two-party system in U.S. politics. Both Republicans and Democrats again and again pledge their loyalty to U.S. imperialism and its relentless wars. When the White House is held by a Republican, Democrats will raise “concerns and challenges.” The roles are reversed when a Democrat is in the White House — then Republicans challenge some aspects of whatever current war is underway.

Both imperialist political parties routinely vote for the full Pentagon budget, a budget larger than the combined military budgets of the next nine largest military spenders combined. Even after the annual U.S. military budgets sail through with increases averaging 4% each year over the last five years, there are additional legislative packages providing tens of billions of dollars in supplemental military funding.

All House Democrats — including all members of the Progressive Caucus, despite years of vehement denunciations of war expenditures — voted without apology or explanation for the largest military aid package in two decades.

Members of the Progressive Caucus, which includes all members of “The Squad,” were elected based on promises to change direction and fund essential programs that are desperately needed by working people. Its members routinely criticize the bloated military budget that is the largest government program. Yet Progressive Caucus Democrats, other Democrats and Republicans cynically and routinely accept campaign donations from the largest military profiteers.

There is no mention in either CPC statement of the 30 years of NATO expansion eastward nor any reference to NATO’s efforts to militarily surround and dismember Russia. There is not even a muted criticism of the regime in Ukraine that came to power in a U.S.-backed coup with fascist support.

A regime that bans trade unions and political parties is hardly a free and independent government. The Kiev regime is a U.S. and NATO creation that is totally dependent on the U.S. and NATO for military advisors, trainers, contractors and an endless supply of weapons.

At the same time as the packages of over $60 billion in funding to Ukraine each passed on a day’s notice, without debate or scrutiny, the promises of student loan relief were shaved, cut and legally challenged. The student loan cancellation would cost about $24 billion per year.

None of the promised programs of these “progressives” have passed successfully, despite Democratic Party control of both Houses of Congress and the White House.

As the capitalist economy totters on the edge of total collapse, the only bailout under discussion in Congress is endless war and billions to military contractors. Even the most basic gains are blocked; U.S. imperialism is unable to make concessions to the working class in the U.S. or to any countries resisting U.S. domination.

The social democrats and the traditional liberal Democrats of the Progressive Caucus, despite their campaign promises, will betray the workers, who elected them with great hope. The only way to fight imperialist war is by strengthening the movement in the streets.

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This article was originally published on Workers World.

Sara Flounders is an American political writer active in progressive and anti-war organizing since the 1960s. She is a member of the Secretariat of Workers World Party, as well as a principal leader of the International Action Center. Sara can be reached at [email protected].

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Antiwar protest, the Bronx, New York City, Oct. 15. (WW Photo: Brenda Sandburg via Workers World)

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***

From the very beginning, the United Kingdom has been the most involved in the Ukrainian war from all Western countries.  Analysing the reasons we should note not only the great changes on the global geopolitical chessboard, but also some important details, less obvious motives of London’s pro-Kiev attitude.  Just like the government-funded public places of worship for the 14th Waffen-SS Division Galizien, located in Lockerbie, on the Scottish English border.

SS-men in an idyllic landscape

Lockerbie stara tablica

Dumfries and Galloway is unanimously considered to be one of the UK’s most friendly counties. From the mountains to the sea, with numerous castles and attractions, such as the famous wedding venue for fleeing English teenagers, Gretna Green, it is somewhat of a miniature Scotland, also inhabited by English people and (which is admitted slightly less often) by a significant minority of Ukrainian roots.

Lockerbie is small, bur relatively widely known town there, remembered from tragic Pan Am Flight 103 crash in December 1988, which the Libyan government was accused for, what much later became one of the excuses of the Western invasion against Libya.  The town itself, however charming, is off the main tourist routes, but offers another (next to the monument to the victims of Pan Am Flight 103)  dramatic attraction:

a chapel erected by the hands of Ukrainian immigrants, former Waffen-SS soldiers who were allowed to live in the UK after WW2.

Britons used them in the military and intelligence tasks of NATO forces against the Eastern Bloc, preparing WW3. Now it seems  these attempts have resumed.

Volunteer workers of World War 3

The first large Ukrainian group admitted to the British Isles yet in 1946 were soldiers recommended by the 2nd Corps of the auxiliary Polish Armed Forces, still stationed in Italy at the time.  Before 1944, there were no more than 850 Ukrainians within this unit.

However, along with the increase in the size of the Polish forces in Italy and the admission of the released Polish prisoners of war from German camps, the number of Ukrainians also increased.  In this way, 176 soldiers of the collaborative with Nazis Ukrainian National Army (i.e. the rebranded Waffen-SS Galizien) were recruited into service in the Polish Armed Forces by a personal decision of General Władysław Anders (made at the express request of the British).

Anyway, there were still no more than 1,000 people declaring Ukrainian nationality or ethnic origin within the 2nd Corps in the spring of 1946, but yet, as part of the gradual relocation of Polish units to the UK, as many as 5,000 Ukrainians, mainly former SS-men, reached there with the IDs of the  Polish Armed Forces.

The next ones, in May and June 1947, arrived openly and under their own signs.  8,500 Ukrainian Nazis were deployed in several camps (not POW, but training ones!) in England and Scotland, as Hampton (Norfolk) – 1,682, Mildenhall (Suffolk) – 1,401, Allington (Lincolnshire) – 1,319, Moorby (Lincolnshire) – 1,264, Botsdale (Suffolk) – 1,010, Dalkeith (Scotland) – 958, other areas (including hospitals in which the disabled were staying) – 300, and Lockerbie (Scotland) – 463.

They officially received the status of Volunteer European Workers (VER) to undertake work, mainly physical, in British industry and agriculture.

However, the former SS-men were in fact still under British military command.  Over the next three years, the number of these Ukrainian “workers” prepared for the anticipated World War 3 in the UK exceeded 21,000, making it the largest group of the 91,000 Volunteers.  It was not until 1951 that the VER was gradually disbanded, and its members gained the full right to continue their work and service for the Empire.

„Always with Batko Bandera!”

Mike Ostapko who cares of the chapel and Waffen-SS monument in Lockerbie is one of such distinguished British veterans and descendent of Ukrainian Nazi immigrants.  Today, 70-year-old, Mike willingly talks about his service in the Royal Scots Greys, i.e. the famous The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, as well as participation in The British Commanders’-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany, BRIXIMIS in East Berlin, where he served for MI6.

Mike modestly recognises that his own gainings pale in comparison to the achievements of his father, Mykhailo, who in July 1944, while fighting in the ranks of the 14th Ukrainian Waffen-SS Division Galizien (German Centre Army Group), was wounded at the Battle of Brody against the Red Army. – My father was also part of a group that set up the first Ukrainian building in Munich where they were working with Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera – Ostapko emphasises, speaking about the HQ of Zakordonni Czastyny OUN, Anglo-Saxon controlled operational centre of former Hitler’s collaborators.  Thanks to the merits of such people, thousands of Ukrainian Nazis could not only live in the UK, but also acquire citizenship and the possibility of gradual merging with British society, primarily as part of military service while providing other tasks within the public administration.

Ukrainian Nazi centres in Canada and the UK

Of the total group of approximately 250,000 Ukrainians, German collaborators who remained in the West after World War 2, nearly half decided to emigrate to Canada, where today they create a thriving centre of jingoist propaganda, exerting a strong influence on the government in Ottawa.

The rest of the diaspora has gradually and often only seemingly integrated into the societies of the host countries, often gaining prominent positions in the local media or politics.  At the same time, however, it was not in the interest of the Anglo-Saxons to let Ukrainians to be fully assimilated, but on the contrary, it was important to keep their ties with the country of origin and the prospect of using them for further actions in the East.

Therefore one of the most significant units of The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (AUGB) is the Association of Ukrainian Former Combatants in Great Britain, proudly cultivating the tradition of the Waffen-SS Galizien, but also the UPA, the Ukrainian Legion and other Nazi-collaborative formations.  Nazi cult sites, seemingly forgotten and decaying, could thus be easily re-opened and honoured when London saw an interest in it again.  In July 2022, the British Heritage Minister, Nigel Huddleston, officially marked the status of Grade II listing of a cross erected in 1948 by former SS-men in Mylor Bridge, Cornwall.  In the ceremony attended by the Ukrainian vice-ambassador Taras Krykun, the representative of His Majesty’s Government neatly linked the contemporary British Government’s support for the Ukrainian war with Russia with the historical experience of “refugees from Russian communism” arriving to UK.

Mylor Bridge  (Source: augb.co.uk)

In Lockerbie support for the Nazi cult took on even more tangible expression.  In May 2022 the South of Scotland Enterprise donated £50,000 for the renovation of the chapel and the Interestingly, although the works were to be completed in the summer, and the chapel itself was recommended as a humanitarian help collection centre for Kiev, when I arrived there at the beginning of October 2022, the area was still something between a scrap yard and a parking and the building was stripped of religious elements, with no signs of renovation work.

Anglo-Saxon Recreation of Ukrainian Nazism

So, we are dealing with the quintessence of the Western attitude to the Ukrainian crisis.  The Nazi Ukrainian tradition is being accustomed at an accelerated pace.  It is revealed that all the time this tendency has existed, hidden, but for the last several decades kept under the protection of the Anglo-Saxon powers.  This is proved by such places of Nazi worship as the Scottish Lockerbie, the Cornish Mylor Bridge or the Canadian Oakville. And the same time, the public money put into that  undertaking disappear somewhere imperceptibly…

Mylor Bridge

Nazi entryism

Altars and monuments for SS-men and Banderites are symptoms of an even more serious problem. Entryism and mimicry have been recognised as the basic and main strategy of Ukrainian Nazi circles around the world.   In addition to sustaining nationalist agitation among Ukrainians, the key method of chauvinists’ conduct is infiltration and influencing the political class of chosen states, considered hostile (such as Poland and the Soviet Union, and then Russia) and those potentially useful ones (the Third Reich, UK , USA, Canada).

Towards the “occupants”, the infiltration technique was used primarily for intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, protecting its own structures, but also for directly influencing politics and culture in directions considered beneficial to the Greater Ukraine.  On the other hand, lobbying among the allies made it possible to diversify the message: once Ukrainians acted as an influential group of voters (Canada, locally the USA), sometimes as an effective external agent, with a broad base in the area of a common enemy, and sometimes simply as … normal citizens, with grandparents somewhere in Eastern Europe, what could not affect the fact that someone is a good subject of the Crown or a valued employee of the American or Canadian administration.  Without conspiracy theories, we can see today how the OUN’s, Ukrainian Nazis’ line adopted 75 years ago is bearing fruit, perfectly fitting into one of the main global geopolitical clashes of modernity.

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Konrad Rękas is a renowned geopolitical analyst and a regular contributor to Global Research.

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How do you bury responsibility for a decision inspired by a pilfered idea?  Blame someone else, especially if that person came up with the idea to begin with.  This tried method of distraction was used with invidious gusto by US President John F. Kennedy, who recast his role in reaching an agreement with the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

The stationing of Soviet nuclear capable missiles in Cuba, and the response of the Kennedy administration, took the world to the precipice of nuclear conflict.  Its avoidance, as things transpired, involved dissimulation, deception and good, old-fashioned defamation.

In a crucial meeting on October 27 between Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, the first intimations were made that a quid pro quo arrangement could be reached.  If the Soviets were to pull out their missiles in Cuba, the US would return the favour regarding their missiles in Turkey.  That part of the agreement would, however, remain secret.  RFK, as the administration’s emissary, informed Dobrynin that his brother “is ready to come to agree on that question with N.S. Khrushchev.”  For the withdrawal to take place, however, some four to five months had to elapse.  “However, the president can’t say anything public in this regard about Turkey.”

Time was pressing.  A U-2 spy plane had been shot down over Cuba that day; the hawks in the administration were baying for blood, demanding US military retaliation.  “A real war will begin,” warned RFK, “in which millions of Americans and Russians will die.  We want to avoid that any way we can, I’m sure that the government of the USSR has the same wish.”

In his subsequent account of the meeting with the Soviet ambassador, documented in a report to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, RFK ducks and weaves.  Recalling the urgency with which he impressed upon Dobrynin on removing the Soviet missiles, he also offered a slanted reading.  When the ambassador had asked about the US missiles in Turkey, “I replied there could be no quid pro quo – no deal of this kind could be made.”  Mention is made to the elapse of four to five months, by which time “these matters could be resolved satisfactorily.”  (In the draft version, that reference is scrawled out by RFK.)

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s response on October 28 to President Kennedy did acknowledge, in an uncharacteristically subtle way, “the delicacy involved for you in an open consideration of the issue of eliminating the US missile bases in Turkey.”  He appreciated the “complexity” involved and thought it right that it should not be discussed publicly.  Any mention of the quid pro quo agreement would be kept secret, to be only communicated via RFK.  The Soviet Premier then made intimations about “advancing the cause of relaxation of international tensions and the tensions between our two powers”.

Within hours of Khrushchev’s announcement that he would be ordering the dismantling and withdrawal of the missiles in Cuba, Kennedy made a call to former president Herbert Hoover.  The message is distinctly, to use that immortal phrase from the charmingly slippery Alan Clark, economical with the actualité.  Moscow had supposedly gone back “to their more reasonable position” in accepting a pledge that Cuba would not be invaded in return for the withdrawal of the missiles.

The train of fibbing continued chugging in another call made that same day to former president Harry Truman.  To Truman, Kennedy suggests, falsely, that his administration had “rejected” trading the Jupiter missiles in Turkey for the Soviet withdrawal of their missiles in Cuba.

On October 30^th, Robert Kennedy returned the quid pro quo letter to Ambassador Dobrynin instead of conveying it to his brother.  Brother Jack had not been “prepared to formulate such an understanding [regarding the missiles in Turkey] in the form of letters, even the most confidential letters, between the President and the head of the Soviet government, when it concerns such a highly delicate issue.”

Such an attitude could hardly be explained as noble or even reasoned; the Kennedys were concerned that any moves seen as conciliatory towards Moscow could ruin their electoral fortunes and those of the Democratic Party.

Dobrynin’s own summary reveals a political animal contemplating his future prospects.  RFK was against transmitting “this sort of letter, since who knows where and when such letters can surface or be somehow published”.  The reasons had little to do with averting nuclear catastrophe or preserving the human species.  Such a document, were it to appear, “could cause irreparable harm to my political career in the future.  This is why we request that you take this letter back.”

With such manoeuvrings achieved, the Kennedys went to work on covering their tracks and scrubbing the fingerprints. On December 6, 1962, Stevenson received a letter from JFK about a story soon to be published by the Saturday Evening Post titled “In Time of Crisis”.  The article, authored by Stewart Alsop and Charles Bartlett, promised an insider’s overview of how Kennedy and his circle resolved the Cuban missile crisis.  In the true tradition of insiders, the overview was utterly compromised.

The decorative account came with the baubles and splendour of Camelot, depicting the president as calm and collected in the face of crisis.  He only ever “lost his temper on minor matters” but never his nerve.  “This,” the authors remark, “must be counted a huge intangible plus.”

The very tangible plus, for the Kennedys, came in the form of former Democratic presidential candidate and US ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson.  Stevenson had, according to a “non admiring official” – later identified as National Security Council staffer Michael Forrestal – “wanted a Munich.”  His heretical proposal entailed trading Turkish, Italian and British missile bases for Soviet missiles in Cuba.  Forrestal had himself been urged by the Kennedys to feed that version to Bartlett and Alsop, despite their embrace of the idea.

Alsop’s brother, Joseph, went so far as to argue in a column that this revealed a president keen on finding some basis to fire Stevenson.  Special aide McGeorge Bundy, on being made aware of the article in advance, had talked him out of doing so.

As things transpired, the origins of the “Munich” slur against Stevenson came from the president himself.  As historian Gregg Herken noted in his book, The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington, “The president had pencilled in the ‘Munich’ line when he annotated the typescript of the draft article”.  Alsop’s son, Joseph Wright Alsop VI, also claimed that his father had told him “that it had actually been JFK who added the phrase ‘Adlai wanted a Munich’ in his own handwriting.”

In Alsop’s correspondence with his editor at the Saturday Evening Post, Clay Blair Jr., there is a pungent warning: the president’s role was to remain concealed and had to “remain Top Secret, Eyes Only, Burn After Reading, and so on.”  If Alsop “so much as hinted that JFK was in any way involved, I’d be run out of town.”

In his delightful, if severe dissertation on presidential mendacity, Eric Alterman makes the admirably radical suggestion that the US commander in chief should not lie.  Doing so triggers “a series of reactions in the political system that builds on itself and can easily spiral out of control.”  One lie becomes many; the drop becomes an ocean.  And Kennedy showed, not only a willingness to be mendacious, but a certain aptitude for it.

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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: White House: head shots of Amb. Adlai Stevenson (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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When a blood clot lets loose on the arterial side of the circulation and lands in a vascular bed servicing an organ, a process called ischemia sets where the organ or a region of tissue is deprived of oxygen and vital nutrients.  There is very little time before injury and then often permanent damage occurs.  This is best exemplified by an embolic stroke. 

In top hospitals there are “stroke teams” that rush in and try to make decisions based on rapid tests and apply interventional procedures and or clot busting medications within minutes.  The speed at which medical response teams act is similar to trauma surgery.   Because the mRNA and adenoviral DNA COVID-19 vaccines install the genetic code for the coronavirus Spike protein, which causes blood clots, doctors are fielding a new variety of arterial embolic syndromes in addition to stroke.

One of the first COVID-19 vaccine induced deaths that I reported to the Vaccine Event Reporting System (VAERS) was a 64-year-old woman who had only baseline emphysema in her medical history.  In the spring of 2021, she took the two-dose series of Moderna (100 mcg of mRNA).  Within a few days of the second injection, she developed an arterial embolic syndrome where a shower of blood clots went to her legs requiring hospitalization and blood thinners.  This left her debilitated and we later discovered blood clots in her venous system as well.  I was called by the Dallas County Coroners Office about 90 days later when she was found dead at home.  The vaccine injury requiring hospitalization was the only new medical problem, so I concluded that she had died of this thromboembolic syndrome despite the use of blood thinners.   I requested an autopsy but the coroner’s office declined.

This case was important as I heard about former football star Deion Sanders.  Sanders’s webpage is an understated synopsis of his football greatness:  “More of that spectacular play continued throughout his 14-season, 188-game career. Sanders who spent time with five different NFL teams scored a total of six touchdowns on punt returns, three TDs on kickoff returns, and returned nine interceptions for scores. The multi-faceted athlete also returned one fumble for TD and had 60 receptions for 784 yards and 3 TDs during his career with the Falcons (1989-1993), San Francisco 49ers (1994), Dallas Cowboys (1995-99), Washington Redskins (2000) and Baltimore Ravens (2004-05). In all, he recorded 53 career interceptions including five with the Ravens when he returned to the field after a three-year retirement.

Despite his electrifying talents as a return man, Sanders was more widely regarded as a “shutdown corner” during his career. He was named first-team All-Pro nine times at cornerback in addition to receiving All-NFL acclaim by some media outlets as a kick returner in 1992 and as a punt returner in 1998. He was also elected to eight Pro Bowls during his career.

Sanders retired second all-time in interception return yardage (1,331) and tied for second for most interceptions returned for a touchdown in a career (9) and a season (3). His career-high 303 yards gained on interception returns with the 49ers in 1994 was third best ever in the NFL at the time of his retirement. He also returned three picks for touchdowns (74, 93, 90 yards) that season to become the first player ever to have two 90-yard interception returns for touchdowns in the same season. He was named the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year.

Sanders won two Super Bowls during his career. He started at right cornerback for the 49ers in their 49-26 victory over the San Diego Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX and at left cornerback in the Cowboys 27-17 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XXX.” Sanders was also a baseball outfielder for nine seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) with the New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, and San Francisco Giants. He won two Super Bowl titles and made one World Series appearance in 1992, making him the only athlete to play in both a Super Bowl and a World Series.

Sanders is also the only athlete to suit up for two sports in the same day, suiting up for both the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Falcons. Sanders in retirement has been very active with Deion’s Family Playbook which is the fun-filled and compelling real-life story of Deion Sanders, the only pro athlete to ever play in both a Super Bowl and a World Series. The show explores Deion as a single father raising five kids of his own, while also helping to raise five other children who live with him.

Following the conclusion of his athletic career, Sanders became an analyst for CBS Sports, NFL Network, and Barstool Sports. Sanders also founded the Prime Prep Academy charter school in 2012, where he coached until the school closed in 2015.   He later served as the offensive coordinator for the football team at Trinity Christian School – Cedar Hill, which his sons attended, from 2017 until 2020 when he was hired by Jackson State as Head Football Coach.

Sanders storied life came to crash with news he pushed others to do what he did—that is “get vaccinated.”  In 2021 Sanders made the case for everyone to get vaccinated because “I want to preserve life.”[i]   Additionally he thought the vaccines would give his team an edge “I want to dominate.”[ii]   He criticized Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers for declining the vaccine because of known allergies.  “The Jackson State Tigers’ coach said as the leader of the team, Rodgers should have gotten vaccinated.”[iii]   He did not appreciate what Rodgers understood, that is, no vaccine is safe in everyone.

Montage of press articles of Deion Sanders encouraging and shaming others into COVID-19 vaccination.

Sanders’s enthusiasm was grounded hope but not science.  No randomized trial has ever demonstrated reductions in hospitalizations and deaths as a primary or secondary outcome.   Because it was early in 2021, Sanders could not have known that the vaccines incapacitate ~25% of recipients for a few days and send 7-8% to the hospital acutely sick as shown in 2022 from the CDC V-safe data forced into public view by legal action.[iv]  Vaccinated players are not “dominating” rather the vaccine takes down even our strongest athletes and coaches.  It is a fair conclusion that Sanders was multiply vaccinated by the time he developed arterial blood clots in the large arteries in his upper legs which then shot to his toes requiring several amputations.   Sanders later revealed the ordeal almost cost him his leg.  In 2022, he made a docuseries on the eight surgeries within three weeks and his personal struggle to be on the field coaching.[v]

Deion Sanders reveals how blood clots led to toe amputation during 2021 season in docuseries The Jackson State coach underwent eight surgeries in three weeks during the season, in part to save his leg. Courtesy Jean-Jacques Taylor @JJT_Journalist

I infer from a press statement he has an inherited tendency towards blood clotting:  “He had three blood clots in the arteries of his left leg from the back of his calf to his ankle, cutting off blood flow to his foot. He discovered that two uncles, one of whom died, and his mother had problems with blood clots.”  Pictures of the sidelines showed Sanders had lost weight and was in a scooter–undoubtedly on the long road to recovery learning to walk and hopefully run again with his surgically saved feet.   At age 55 being healthy and fit, the only smoking thrombogenic gun is the multiple doses of COVID-19 vaccines plus his lifelong proclivity to clotting.  I wonder if Sanders, his doctors, or docuseries producers ever read any papers, substacks, or tweets about blood clots after vaccination.   Why did he not come out and admit he was wrong, and recognize the injections had changed his life forever?   Like so many, Sanders became quiet about vaccination with no more virtue signaling or public enthusiasm.  Psychologists will be studying and writing about what is going on in the mind of someone who had unbridled enthusiasm for an experimental government vaccine and then gets burned with an obvious complication—all in public view.  “Neon Deion” could help so many more now by teaming up with doctor(s) and telling the world what vaccination did to him or how it played a role with his genetics to create a shower of blood clots to his toes.  Hopefully it’s a matter of time for him to make this honest and humble run for his players and fans.

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Notes

[i] Jackson State coach Deion Sanders promotes COVID-19 vaccine: ‘It ain’t no excuse’ Rashad Milligan, Mississippi Clarion Ledger August 21, 2021

[ii] SPORTS COWBOYS Deion Sanders gives his take on COVID-19 vaccine: ‘I want a chance to dominate’ Sanders also said that he has been vaccinated for “quite a long time.” Dallas Morning News. August 20, 2021

[iii] Deion Sanders criticizes Aaron Rodgers for jeopardizing Green Bay Packers: I’m a team guy Trisha Easto, Mississippi Clarion Ledger November 16, 2021

[iv] BREAKING NEWS: ICAN OBTAINS CDC V-SAFE DATA. After 2 lawsuits and months of litigation, ICAN’S legal team, headed by Aaron Siri, has obtained over 144 million rows of health entry data from approximately 10 million users of the CDC’s v-safe app. The public is encouraged to review this data by going to ICAN’s new v-safe Dashboard, available at icandecide.org/v-safe.

[v] Deion Sanders reveals how blood clots led to toe amputation during 2021 season in docuseries The Jackson State coach underwent eight surgeries in three weeks during the season, in part to save his leg. By Jean-Jacques Taylor @JJT_Journalist March 8, 2022

Featured image: Sanders as an NFL Network analyst in 2008. (Photo by Michael De Jesus, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

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American soldiers are now in Ukraine. Allegedly, they are there only to monitor what is happening to the arms deliveries from the US and NATO countries.

As previously reported, not all of the vast amount of heavy weapons sent by the West end up on the battlefield. Instead, some find their way into the weapons market where they are sold to who for who’s profit? The same with the money, much of which ends up in unintended pockets.

The US State Department’s explanation is that the US troops are in Ukraine, not to fight, but to “assist the government of Ukraine with handling US security assistance.” In other words, to identify and stop the theft of resources meant for war against Russia.

But why is this the job of uniformed troops?

Is this a way to sneak US uniformed soldiers into Ukraine and maneuver them into combat?

Only people my age, students at the time, remember how the CIA maneuvered the Kennedy White House into involving the US in war in Vietnam. President Kennedy caught on and intended to withdraw, but the CIA killed him before he could.

President Johnson, realizing that the South Vietnamese government was losing the war, used the alleged firing on two US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin to escalate the war. On August 7, 1964, a stupid Congress railroaded by patriotic fervor passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This authorized President Johnson to take whatever measures he thought were necessary to promote peace and security in southeast Asia. This mindless resolution gave Johnson the legal basis for the US war in Vietnam, the total opposite of “peace and security.”

Considering the extraordinary number of Washington implemented false flag attacks, should we expect another one in Ukraine that involves the US in war against Russia?   Are the 30,000 US/Nato soldiers positioned on Ukraine’s border there in anticipation of a false flag? See this.

Putin, being a liberal in his outlook, is incapable of comprehending the evil that he faces. He still thinks it is just a misunderstanding that can be resolved diplomatically. Consequently, he doesn’t use the force at his disposal to end the conflict, as he thinks that a demonstration of Russian force would prevent a diplomatic solution. By refusing to bring the conflict to an end in a military victory, Putin provides Washington the time it needs to further expand the war and bases surrounding Russia. The limited go-slow war has proven to be a strategic blunder for the Kremlin.  If wider war breaks out, the Kremlin’s limited mobilization will leave Russia with insufficient troops to protect the country’s borders, thus forcing the use of nuclear weapons.  It seems Russia’s “limited military operation” was undertaken without thought of its consequences.

As Washington seems more determined to prevail over Russia (and China) than to avoid nuclear war, the outlook is dismal.

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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An extreme Right-wing government is now poised to take over in Israel, headed by Binyamin Netanyahu who is currently awaiting trial on charges of corruption.  This new government is committed to illegally annexing huge swathes of Arab land in complete contempt of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 of December 2016.

What does this mean for the United Kingdom which has so unwisely allowed the Israeli state to be a close collaborator in Britain’s military and civil defence?

The first imperative of any government is to protect the state i.e. in the case of the UK, that is 68.7m British citizens from any threat, yet this Conservative government has allowed an extremist Right wing, Middle East state – that is not even a NATO member – to be intimately involved in our national security.

To allow any foreign power to be so involved is dangerous but to allow a non-NATO, non European state, situated in the Middle East, such involvement is a dereliction of duty.

Israel is the only undeclared nuclear weapon state in the world and is estimated by American scientists to have secretly built between 100-400 nuclear warheads, that are stored in underground bunkers and silos in the Negev desert.  In addition, the Israeli state has a fleet of nuclear armed, Dolphin-Class, German-built submarines that could blow Britain out of the water, at any time.  They are assumed to be covertly patrolling the Mediterranean and other seas around both the Gulf and Europe.

Furthermore, and tellingly, the state of Israel is not a party to the IAEA, nor the OPCW and, unlike the rest of the free world, is free to manufacture and store nuclear, chemical and biological weapons – in gross contradiction of international treaties and agreements..

Israeli intelligence has been given access to Britain’s military defence secrets but we have little knowledge of theirs. In addition, representatives of Israeli military and  espionage suppliers sit openly as Peers of the Realm in the House of Lords.  What kind of national defence is this? Who is responsible for this abdication of national security?

What is Britain going to do about this dangerous abdication of the nation’s defence?

Are we to continue to meekly submit to the demands of the lobby at Westminster?

It is a national scandal that could well bring down the government in view of its abdication of security that is so important to the state.  This was definitely not that for which so many millions gave their lives in two world wars.

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Hans Stehling (a pen name) is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

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„Der Mensch ist nur darum unglücklich, weil er die Natur verkennt. Sein Geist ist durch Vorurteile derart verseucht, dass man glauben könnte, er sei für immer zum Irrtum verdammt: er ist mit dem Schleier der Anschauungen, den man von Kindheit an über ihn breitet, so fest verwachsen, dass er nur mit der größten Mühe daraus gelöst werden kann.“(1)

Dies schrieb vor rund 250 Jahren der französische Aufklärer und Enzyklopädist Baron Paul-Henry Thiry d’Holbach im Vorwort seines vom französischen Klerus als „gotteslästerlich und aufrührerisch“ diskreditieren Buches „System der Natur oder von den Gesetzen der physischen und der moralischen Welt“. Am Vorabend der Französischen Revolution im Jahre 1789 starb d‘Holbach.

Lebten die Menschen im Mittelalter noch in einer magischen Welt, in der die Naturvorgänge scheinbar übernatürlichen Gewalten unterworfen waren, so hat sich mit Anbruch der Neuzeit im europäischen Leben und Denken eine entscheidende Wandlung angebahnt: Die Menschen besannen sich auf sich selbst und begannen, ihre Stellung im Weltganzen zu erkennen und zu gestalten. Die Autorität der Bibel – bis anhin die einzige Quelle der Weisheit – trat mehr und mehr in den Hintergrund und die Forscher begannen, die Natur selber zu befragen, im großen Buche der Natur zu lesen.

Zunächst waren es kühne Einzelne, die der Forschung den Weg bahnten und die Selbständigkeit ihres Denkens manchmal mit ihrem Leben bezahlten. Deshalb erschienen auch d‘Holbachs Bücher „System der Natur“ (1770) und „Der gesunde Menschenverstand oder das religiöse Testament des Pfarrers Meslier aus Étrépigny“ („LE BONS SENS DU CURE MESLIER“) (1772) unter fingierter Autorenschaft (2).

Mit seinen Werken will d’Holbach nach eigener Aussage den Menschen zur Natur zurückführen, ihm Achtung vor der Vernunft und Ehrfurcht vor der Tugend wiedergeben und die Schatten vertreiben, die ihm den einzigen Weg verbergen, der ihn sicher zu jener Glückseligkeit führen kann, die er erstrebt. Er verfolge damit keine andere Absicht als das Glück seiner Mitmenschen. Aus Ehrgeiz will er auch den Beifall „der kleinen Zahl von Parteigängern der Wahrheit“ und von „rechtschaffenen Menschen, die sie aufrichtig suchen“. (3)

Der Mensch ist nur darum unglücklich, weil er die Natur verkennt

Im Vorwort des 1770 erschienenen Schlüsselwerks der militant-bürgerlichen Aufklärung „System der Natur“ schreibt d’Holbach:

„Der Mensch missachtete das Studium der Natur, um Phantomen nachzulaufen, die ihn wie die Irrlichter, die der Wanderer des Nachts erblickt, erschreckten, ihn blendeten und ihn vom einfachen Wege des Wahren abbrachten, ohne den er nicht zum Glück gelangen kann.

Es ist also wichtig, dass man sich bemüht, die Blendwerke zu zerstören, die nur geeignet sind, uns irrezuführen. Es ist an der Zeit, gegen die Übel, welche die Schwärmerei über uns gebracht hat, Heilmittel aus der Natur zu schöpfen: die von der Erfahrung geleitete Vernunft muss endlich die Vorurteile, denen das Menschengeschlecht so lange verfallen ist, an der Wurzel packen. Es ist an der Zeit, dass die ungerechtfertigterweise herabgesetzte Vernunft den kleinmütigen Ton aufgibt, der sie zum Mitschuldigen der Lüge und des Irrsinns macht.

Es gibt nur eine Wahrheit: sie ist für den Menschen notwendig, sie kann ihm niemals schaden, ihre unbesiegbare Macht wird sich früher oder später offenbaren. Daher muss sie dem menschlichen Geschlecht enthüllt werden; ihre Reize müssen ihm gezeigt werden, (…).

Versuchen wir also, die Nebel zu verscheuchen, die den Menschen daran hindern, mit sicherem Schritt auf seinem Lebensweg voranzuschreiten, flößen wir ihm Mut und Achtung vor seiner Vernunft ein; er lerne sein Wesen und seine legitimen Recht erkennen; er frage die Erfahrung um Rat und verzichte auf die Vorurteile seiner Kindheit; er gründe seine Moral auf seine Natur, seine Bedürfnisse, seine wirklichen Vorteile, welche die Gesellschaft ihm gewährt; er wage es, sich selbst zu lieben, er arbeite für sein eigenes Glück, indem er dasjenige der anderen fördert; mit einem Wort: er sei vernünftig und tugendhaft, um hier auf dieser Erde glücklich zu sein, und beschäftige sich nicht mit gefährlichen und unnützen Träumereien!

Wenn er Hirngespinste braucht, so erlaube er wenigstens den anderen, dass sie sich eigene zusammenspinnen, die sich von den seinigen unterscheiden; er überzeuge sich schließlich davon, dass es für die Bewohner dieser Erde sehr wichtig ist, gerecht, wohltätig und friedliebend zu sein, und dass nichts belangloser ist, als über Dinge nachzudenken, die der Vernunft unzugänglich sind.“ (4)

Den Menschen die Wahrheit zeigen 

In seinem zwei Jahre später – im Jahr 1772 – erschienenen Buch „Der gesunde Menschenverstand des Pfarrers Meslier“ schreibt d’Holbach bereits in der Einleitung (Orthographie, Interpunktion und Satzstellung wurden unverändert übernommen):

„Es ist vergebene Mühe, die Menschen von ihren Lastern heilen zu wollen, wenn man nicht mit der Heilung ihrer Vorurtheile beginnt. Man muss ihnen die Wahrheit zeigen, damit sie ihre theuersten Interessen kennen lernen, und die wahren Motive, welche sie der Tugend und ihrem wahren Glück zuführen.

Die Volkslehrer haben lange genug ihre Augen zu dem Himmel erhoben; möchten sie endlich sie der Erde zuwenden ! Gebeugt durch die unbegreifliche Theologie, durch lächerliche Fabeln, durch undurchdringliche Mysterien, durch kindliche Ceremonien, möchte der Mensch doch endlich sich mit natürlichen Dingen, mit verständlichen Gegenständen, mit sichtbaren Wahrheiten, mit nützlichen Kenntnissen befassen ! Man beseitige die eitlen Chimären, welche die Menschen in Fesseln halten; und die vernünftigen Gedanken werden gleichsam von selbst in den Köpfen Wurzel fassen, von denen man glaubte, sie seine für ewigen Irrthum bestimmt.

(…)

Um die wahren Prinzipien der Moral zu entdecken, bedarf der Mensch weder der Theologie, noch einer Offenbarung, noch eines Gottes; er bedarf bloss eines gesunden Verstandes; er braucht nur in sich selbst zu blicken, seine eigene Natur zu erforschen, seine Vortheile zu berücksichtigen, den Zweck der Gesellschaft und aller ihrer Mitglieder zu betrachten, und er wird leicht zur Einsicht kommen, dass die Tugend glücklich und das Laster unglücklich macht.

Sagen wir den Menschen, dass sie gerecht sein sollen, wohltätig, mäßig und gesellig, nicht weil es ihre Götter verlangen, sondern weil man seinen Nebenmenschen zu gefallen suchen muss; sagen wir ihnen, dass sie sich der Sünde und des Lasters enthalten sollen, nicht weil man in einer andern Welt gestraft wird, sondern weil sich das Böse schon in diesem Leben bestraft. (…).

Die Wahrheit ist einfach; der Irrthum ist compliziert, unsicher in seinem Gange und von Abwegen umgeben. Die Stimme der Natur ist verständlich; die der Lüge ist zweideutig, räthselhaft, mysteriös. Der Weg der Wahrheit ist gerade, jener des Betruges ist krumm und finster. Diese Wahrheit ist allen Menschen nothwendig, und wird von allen Gerechten gefühlt. Die Lehren der Vernunft sind für alle Jene, die redlichen Gemütes sind. Die Menschen sind unglücklich, weil sie unwissend sind; sie sind unwissend, weil sich alles gegen ihre Aufklärung verschwört, und bloss darum schlecht, weil ihre Denkkräfte nicht hinreichend entwickelt.“ (5)

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Lehrer (Rektor a. D.), Doktor der Pädagogik (Dr. paed.) und Diplom-Psychologe (Dipl.-Psych.). Viele Jahrzehnte unterrichtete er und bildete Fachkräfte fort. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und pädagogisch-psychologischen Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zum Gemeinsinn und zum Frieden. Sein Lebensmotto (nach Albert Camus): Geben, wenn man kann. Und nicht hassen, wenn das möglich ist.

Noten

(1) d’Holbach, P.-H.T. (1978). System der Natur oder von den Gesetzen der physischen und der moralischen Welt. Frankfurt am Main, S. 11

(2) d‘ Holbach, P.-H. T. (1976). Der gesunde Menschenverstand des Pfarrers Meslier. Kritische Gedanken über die Religion und ihre Auswirkung auf die kulturelle Entwicklung. Vita Nova Verlag. Zürich

(3) d’Holbach, P.-H.T. (1978). System der Natur oder von den Gesetzen der physischen und der moralischen Welt. Frankfurt am Main, S. 13

(4) A. a. O., S. 11 ff.

(5) d‘ Holbach, P.-H. T. (1976). Der gesunde Menschenverstand des Pfarrers Meslier. Kritische Gedanken über die Religion und ihre Auswirkung auf die kulturelle Entwicklung. Vita Nova Verlag. Zürich, S. 4 ff. 

Featured image: Paul Heinrich Dietrich Baron d’Holbach (Photo by Alexander Roslin, licensed under the Public Domain)

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“Man is unhappy only because he misjudges nature. His mind is so contaminated by prejudices that one could believe he is condemned to error forever: he is so firmly grown together with the veil of views which is spread over him from childhood that he can only be released from it with the greatest difficulty.” (1)

This was written some 250 years ago by the French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopaedist Baron Paul-Henry Thiry d’Holbach in the preface to his book System of Nature or of the Laws of the Physical and Moral World, which was discredited by the French clergy as “blasphemous and seditious”. D’Holbach died on the eve of the French Revolution in 1789.

While people in the Middle Ages still lived in a magical world in which natural processes were apparently subject to supernatural powers, a decisive change in European life and thought began with the dawn of the modern age: people became aware of themselves and began to recognise and shape their position in the world as a whole. The authority of the Bible – until then the only source of wisdom – receded more and more into the background and researchers began to question nature itself, to read the great book of nature.

At first, it was bold individuals who paved the way for research and sometimes paid for the independence of their thinking with their lives. This is why d’Holbach’s books “System of Nature” (1770) and “Common Sense or the Religious Testament of Father Meslier from Étrépigny” (“LE BONS SENS DU CURE MESLIER”) (1772) were published under fictitious authorship (2).

With his works, d’Holbach says he wants to lead man back to nature, to restore respect for reason and reverence for virtue, and to dispel the shadows that hide the only path that can lead him safely to the happiness he seeks. He pursues no other intention than the happiness of his fellow men. Out of ambition he also wants the applause of “the small number of partisans of the truth” and of “righteous people who sincerely seek it”. (3)

Man is only unhappy because he misjudges nature

In the preface to the key work of the militant-bourgeois Enlightenment, System of Nature, published in 1770, d’Holbach writes:

“Man disregarded the study of nature in order to run after phantoms which, like the will-o’-the-wisps which the wanderer sees at night, frightened him, dazzled him, and led him away from the simple path of truth, without which he cannot attain happiness.

It is therefore important to endeavour to destroy the dazzling works which are only capable of misleading us. It is time to draw remedies from nature against the evils that enthusiasm has brought upon us: reason, guided by experience, must finally get to the root of the prejudices to which the human race has so long fallen prey. It is time for reason, which has been unjustly disparaged, to abandon the pusillanimous tone that makes it complicit in lies and madness.

There is only one truth: it is necessary for man, it can never harm him, its invincible power will reveal itself sooner or later. Therefore, it must be revealed to the human race; its charms must be shown to it, (…).

Let us try, then, to dispel the mists which prevent man from advancing with a sure step on his path of life, let us instil in him courage and respect for his reason; let him learn to recognise his nature and his legitimate right; let him ask the advice of experience and renounce the prejudices of his childhood; let him base his morality on his nature, his needs, his real advantages which society affords him; let him dare to love himself, let him work for his own happiness by promoting that of others; in a word: let him be sensible and virtuous in order to be happy here on this earth, and do not occupy himself with dangerous and useless reveries!

If he needs fantasies, let him at least allow others to spin up their own, which are different from his own; finally, let him convince himself that it is very important for the inhabitants of this earth to be just, charitable, and peace-loving, and that nothing is more trivial than to think about things inaccessible to reason.” (4)

Showing people the truth

In his book “The Common Sense of the Reverend Meslier”, published two years later – in 1772 – d’Holbach already writes in the introduction (orthography, punctuation and sentence order have been adopted unchanged):

“It is a vain effort to try to cure people of their vices if one does not begin by curing their prejudices. They must be shown the truth, so that they learn to know their dearest interests and the true motives that lead them to virtue and their true happiness.

The teachers of the people have long enough raised their eyes to heaven; would they at last turn them to earth! Bowed down by incomprehensible theology, by ridiculous fables, by impenetrable mysteries, by childish ceremonies, let man at last concern himself with natural things, with intelligible objects, with visible truths, with useful knowledge ! Remove the vain chimeras which hold men in bondage; and sensible thoughts will, as it were, take root of their own accord in the minds of which one believed they were destined for eternal error.

(…)

To discover the true principles of morality, man needs neither theology, nor revelation, nor God; he needs only a sound mind; he has only to look within himself, to investigate his own nature, to consider his advantages, to consider the purpose of society and of all its members, and he will easily come to the conclusion that virtue makes happy and vice makes unhappy.

Let us tell men to be just, charitable, temperate, and sociable, not because their gods demand it, but because one must seek to please one’s fellow men; let us tell them to abstain from sin and vice, not because one will be punished in another world, but because evil already punishes itself in this life. (…).

Truth is simple; error is complicated, uncertain in its course and surrounded by deviations. The voice of nature is intelligible; that of falsehood is ambiguous, enigmatic, mysterious. The path of truth is straight, that of deceit is crooked and dark. This truth is necessary to all men, and is felt by all the righteous. The teachings of reason are for all those who are of an honest mind. Men are unhappy because they are ignorant; they are ignorant because everything conspires against their enlightenment, and are bad merely because their powers of thought are not sufficiently developed.” (5)

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a teacher (retired rector), doctor of education (Dr. paed.) and graduate psychologist (Dipl.-Psych.). He taught and trained professionals for many decades. As a retiree, he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and educational-psychological articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral values education as well as an education for public spirit and peace. His motto in life (after Albert Camus): Give when you can. And not to hate, if that is possible.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) d’Holbach, P.-H.T. (1978). System der Natur oder von den Gesetzen der physischen und der moralischen Welt. Frankfurt am Main, p. 11

(2) d’ Holbach, P.-H. T. (1976). The common sense of the priest Meslier. Critical thoughts on religion and its effect on cultural development. Vita Nova Publishers. Zurich

(3) d’Holbach, P.-H.T. (1978). System of Nature or of the Laws of the Physical and Moral World. Frankfurt am Main, p. 13

(4) op. cit., p. 11 ff.

(5) d’ Holbach, P.-H. T. (1976). The common sense of the priest Meslier. Critical thoughts on religion and its impact on cultural development. Vita Nova Publishers. Zurich, p. 4 ff.

Featured image: Paul Heinrich Dietrich Baron d’Holbach (Photo by Alexander Roslin, licensed under the Public Domain)

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America’s outstanding public philosopher and occasional baseball personality, Yogi Berra (not to be confused with the equally prominent cartoon character Yogi Bear) was in the habit of sharing an amazing thought that only a genius of his calibre could devise: “It’s not over till it’s over.” Readers should ponder it.

The general consensus of exegetes is that the basic thrust of Yogi’s illuminating insight is that the final outcome cannot be assumed or determined until a given situation or event is completely finished.

That fits to a “T” the current crisis in Bosnia, more precisely its constituent entity Republic of Srpska. Completely finished it is not.

On the level of appearances, the commotion that erupted in the Republic of Srpska after the November 2 elections could be pronounced over, having ended with a resounding victory for Republic of Srpska leader Milorad Dodik.

The vote recount demanded by the Western-supported and financed opposition backfired completely on those who asked for it. Contrary to their earnest expectations, the recount turned into a complete vindication of the electoral process, confirming Dodik’s victory over his foreign-backed opposition candidate in the race for president of the Republic of Srpska.

The Bosnian government electoral commission, to which the opposition had turned to resolve alleged vote fraud issues, ultimately was obliged to recognize that there were no significant irregularities and to admit the legitimacy of Dodik’s election. It should be borne in mind that the recount was conducted with strong encouragement to the Electoral Commission from a wide array of domestic and foreign actors to find irregularities sufficient to nullify the election.

The goal was to improvise a rationale to order a new vote under the supervision of the “international community” that would have been finagled to secure victory for the opposition. In the end, however, nothing came of it. Dodik’s win was apparently so massive that even the willing Commission was hard put to credibly manipulate the numbers to make it disappear. That having been said, champagne bottles should not be popped to celebrate, not just yet. Here is why.

On the surface, of course, the outcome of the Republic of Srpska electoral drama should be a good reason to cheer. Caution, however, is the wiser course. In the Republic of Srpska, it should be recalled, there was an orange revolution attempt, and again it fizzled out. Following the failure of the “soft” approach to ensure Dodik’s ouster and eliminate the obstructionist inclinations of the Serb entity in Bosnia, political logic now dictates the application of much sterner measures.

If our analysis is correct not only is it not “over,” but the messiest part may be yet to come. Dodik is now entering the most physically dangerous segment of his political career. It is reasonable to postulate that the democratic West will not give up but will simply double down and proceed to the next option in its standard toolkit, which is to assassinate him.

This is not idle speculation. A trial balloon was launched on 30 October by Bosnian television personality Senad Hadzifejzovic when he openly pondered while on air whether killing Dodik might be the solution. International watchdog organisations and foreign embassies, always quick to comment about trifles, have been silent about this thinly veiled call for the murder of a prominent political figure.

Western interests, of course, have ample reasons to be upset at the performance of the incompetent pawns on their payroll in the Republic of Srpska who failed to pull off the color revolution they were tasked with for the third time in a row.

But the reasons for the collective West’s unforgiving fury at Milorad Dodik go much deeper. By invoking Republic of Srpska’s veto power under the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, Dodik has challenged, directly and brazenly, the collective West’s core agenda on three fundamental issues: imposition of Bosnian sanctions on Russia, NATO membership for Bosnia, and recognition by Bosnia of the bogus “state” of Kosovo. These defiant transgressions, particularly in light of the current confrontation, can neither be overlooked nor forgiven. Tanzanian President John Magufuli’s lethal demise was engineered for far less.

There is also another and more personal score that the collective West must be eager to settle with Dodik. In the late 1990s, when local helpers were being recruited to break up Serb nationalist resistance to the post-war evisceration of the Republic of Srpska, Dodik was anointed as the West’s trusted man to manage that project. In 1998, lavish hopes were invested in him. His Western patrons finessed things that year to make him Republic of Srpska’s prime minister although his party held only two seats out of 83 in the Serb entity’s National Assembly. When later, for reasons still largely obscure, he decided to defect from their camp, their disappointment must have been as hugely extravagant as their initial hopes.

Alert readers will not fail to notice that Dodik’s political trajectory closely matches that of one of his closest current allies, Soros’ ex-golden boy in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

There clearly exist sound geopolitical reasons to deal with Dodik in the customary ruthless manner and, following three consecutive failures to arrange his civilised departure, it should not surprise anyone if democratic gloves should finally be taken off. The more so since the predominantly geopolitical motives for eliminating him are reinforced by the psychological hostility of Dodik’s former promoters, to whom he indisputably owes his initial rise to political prominence but who now must take strong umbrage at his disloyalty.

The application of special measures, if that option is indeed selected, will be greatly facilitated by the presence of NATO’s “peacekeeping” contingent and related structures throughout the territory of Bosnia. The Republic of Srpska has nothing with which to even symbolically defend itself because it was precisely servile elements of the current opposition who, when they were in power, upon the orders of the “international community” disbanded its military forces in 2005.

Dodik’s credentials are not impeccable and in the style of Balkan politicians his public record is full of zig zags and inconsistencies, not only if taken as a whole but even if focus is narrowed to the last dozen or so years, which is said to be the period of his “Serb nationalist, Moscow friendly” incarnation. In politics, however, one seeks in vain to find protagonists with an ideal profile just as in poker one is ill advised to constantly expect a flush set of cards. One must work with the material at hand.

For the multipolar world coalition as well as his Serb constituency, with all his flaws Dodik is preferable and vastly more useful than the utterly vile bought and paid for local competitors seeking to replace him.

As much as for the hegemonic bloc he has turned into an unbearable irritant, he should continue to be treated by the emerging forces striving for more equitable global solutions as a valued associate. He deserves as much pragmatic support as can be mustered and brought to bear on his behalf to ensure the unobstructed continuation of his largely beneficial policies, whatever one may think privately of the man himself.

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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image: Milorad Dodik (Photo by Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0)

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At a moment the US says it is nearing its longtime goal of closing the Guantanamo Bay prison facility which once held hundreds of suspected terrorists during the so-called Global War on Terror, the White House is mulling to expand the Migrant Operations Center located at the same US Naval base off Cuba.

In particular, the administration is looking at housing fleeing Haitians at Guantanamo Bay amid spiraling unrest on the Caribbean island-nation – part of a broader plan the US has been pushing for UN military intervention to stabilize the country as its government faces collapse at the hands of armed gangs.

The migrant facility is separate from the notorious prison for terror suspects and has been in operation for over three decades. It typically houses migrants intercepted by the US Coast Guard in regional waters and off the southern US coast.

But now it could serve as a crucial hub for US efforts to help stabilize the security situation in Haiti, as NBC describes:

The White House National Security Council is asking the Department of Homeland Security what number of Haitian migrants would require the U.S. to designate a third country, known as a “lily pad,” to hold and process Haitian migrants who are intercepted at sea and what number would overwhelm a lily pad country and require Haitians to be taken to Guantánamo, according to the document.

A series of National Security Council meetings have reportedly been held to focus on the emerging crisis over the last several days, as a new flood of Haitian migrants and refugees are expected along the southern US border.

It was actually mostly Haitian migrants present among the large caravan of some 12,000 which camped under an international bridge in Del Rio, Texas in September 2021.

We previously reviewed the chaotic and unpredictable situation in Haiti as follows:

Armed groups have sized control of several key trade and distribution hubs in Haiti, creating dire shortages in basic necessities, such as water, and even forcing a significant number of hospitals, businesses and other institutions to close their doors.

Haiti’s descent into chaos accelerated in July 2021 after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. In the weeks following his death, then-acting PM Claude Joseph briefly took over as president, but was soon forced from power under international pressure after a bloc of countries led by the United States declared their support for Henry. The new leader reportedly has close ties to a suspect in Moise’s assassination, and even continued contact with him after the murder.

NBC says the Biden administration is bracing for the moment there’s a mass exodus from the island as the chaos spreads and resources dwindle, and as people grow more desperate.

Haitians are protesting their government's request to bring U.S. troops into Haiti.

Haiti has been subject to foreign intervention at least three times. The last intervention brought a UN peacekeeping mission, which has since faced multiple allegations of abuse. pic.twitter.com/KSRPhRLxm3

— AJ+ (@ajplus) October 21, 2022

“The Biden administration predicts that when the fuel is no longer blocked and migrants are able to buy gas to power boats, there could be a mass exodus of Haitians trying to make the dangerous journey to the U.S. by sea, the U.S. officials said,” according to NBC.

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MintPress study has found that hundreds of former agents of the notorious Israeli spying organization, Unit 8200, have attained positions of influence in many of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon.

The Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) Unit 8200 is infamous for surveilling the indigenous Palestinian population, amassing kompromat on individuals for the purposes of blackmail and extortion. Spying on the world’s rich and famous, Unit 8200 hit the headlines last year, after the Pegasus scandal broke. Former Unit 8200 officers designed and implemented software that spied on tens of thousands of politicians and likely aided in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Google

According to employment website LinkedIn, there are currently at least 99 former Unit 8200 veterans currently working for Google. This number almost certainly underestimates the scale of the collaboration between the two organizations, however. For one, this does not count former Google employees. Nor does it include those without a public LinkedIn account, or those who do have an account, but have not disclosed their previous affiliations with the high-tech Israeli surveillance unit. This is likely to be a considerable number, as agents are expressly prohibited from ever revealing their affiliation to Unit 8200. Thus, the figure of 99 only represents the number of current (or extremely recent) Google employees who are brazenly flouting Israeli military law by including the organization in their profiles.

Among these include:

Gavriel Goidel: Between 2010 and 2016, Goidel served in Unit 8200, rising to become Head of Learning at the organization, leading a large team of operatives who sifted through intelligence data to “understand patterns of hostile activists”, in his own words, transmitting that information to superiors. Whether this included any of the over 1000 Gazan civilians Israel killed during their 2014 bombardment of Gaza is unknown. Goidel was recently appointed Head of Strategy and Operations at Google.

Jonathan Cohen: Cohen was a team leader during his time in Unit 8200 (2000-2003). He has since spent more than 13 years working for Google in various senior positions, and is currently Head of Insights, Data and Measurement.

Ori Daniel: Between 2003 and 2006, Daniel was a technical operations specialist with Unit 8200. After a stint with Palantir, he joined Google in 2018, rising to become Head of Global Self-Service for Google Waze.

Ben Bariach: For nearly five years between 2007 and 2011, Bariach served as a cyber intelligence officer, where he “commanded strategic teams of elite officers and professionals.”Since 2016, he has worked for Google. Between 2018 and 2020, he concentrated on tackling “controversial content, disinformation and cyber-security”. Today, he is a product partnership manager for Google in London.

Notably, Google appears to not only accept former Unit 8200 agents with open arms, but to actively recruit current members of the controversial organization. For example, in October 2020, Gai Gutherz left his job as a project leader at Unit 8200 and walked into a full time job at Google as a software engineer. In 2018, Lior Liberman appears to have done the same thing, taking a position as a program manager at Google after 4 years in military intelligence. Earlier this year, she left Google and now works at Microsoft.

Spying on Palestinians

Some might contend that all Israelis are compelled to complete military service, and so, therefore, what is the problem with young people using the tech skills they learned in the IDF in civilian life. In short, why is this Unit 8200-to-Silicon-Valley-pipeline a problem?

To begin with, Unit 8200 is not a run-of-the-mill regiment. Described as “Israel’s NSA” and located on a gigantic base near Beer Sheva in the Negev desert, Unit 8200 is the IDF’s largest unit – and one of its most exclusive. The brightest young minds in the country compete to be sent to serve at this Israeli Harvard. Although military service is compulsory for Jewish Israelis, Arab citizens are strongly discouraged from joining the military and are effectively blocked from Unit 8200. Indeed, they are the prime targets of the apartheid state’s surveillance operations.

The Financial Times called Unit 8200 “Israel at its best and worst” – the centerpiece of both its burgeoning high-tech industry and of its repressive state apparatus. Unit 8200 veterans have gone on to produce many of the world’s most downloaded apps, including maps service Waze, and communications app Viber. But in 2014, 43 reservists, including several officers, sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, informing him they would no longer serve in its ranks due to its involvement in the political persecution of Palestinians.

This consisted of using big data to compile dossiers on huge numbers of the indigenous domestic population, including their medical history, sex lives, and search histories, in order that it could be used for extortion later. If a certain individual needed to travel across checkpoints for crucial medical treatment, permission could be suspended until they complied. Information, such as if a person was cheating on their spouse or was homosexual, is also used as bait for blackmail. One former Unit 8200 man said that as part of his training, he was assigned to memorize different Arabic words for “gay” so that he could listen out for them in conversations.

An award handed out to the IDF’s Unit 8200 for clandestine operations, June 24, 2020. Photo | IDF

Perhaps most importantly, the dissenters noted, Palestinians as a whole are considered enemies of the state. “There’s no distinction between Palestinians who are, and are not, involved in violence,” the letter read. It also claims that much intelligence was gathered not in service of Israel, but for powerful local politicians, who used it as they saw fit.

The letter, despite being intentionally vague and not naming anyone, was considered such a threat that Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon announced that those who signed it would be “treated as criminals.”

In short, then, Unit 8200 is partially a spying and extortion organization that uses its access to data to blackmail and extort opponents of the apartheid state. That this organization has so many operatives (literally hundreds) in key positions in big tech companies that the world trusts with our most sensitive data (medical, financial, etc.) should be of serious concern. This is especially true as they do not appear to distinguish between “bad guys” and the rest of us. To Unit 8200, it seems, anyone is fair game.

Project Nimbus

Google already has a close relationship with the Israeli government. Last year, along with Amazon, it signed a $1.2 billion contract with Israel to provide military surveillance tech services – technology that will allow the IDF to further unlawfully spy on Palestinians, destroy their homes and expand illegal settlements.

The deal led to a staff revolt at both companies, with some 400 employees signing an open letter refusing to cooperate. Google forced one Jewish employee, Ariel Koren, out of the door for her part in resisting the deal. Koren later told MintPress that,

“Google systematically silences Palestinian, Jewish, Arab, and Muslim voices concerned about Google’s complicity in violations of Palestinian human rights – to the point of formally retaliating against workers and creating an environment of fear…in my experience, silencing dialogue and dissent in this way has helped Google protect its business interest with the Israeli military and government.”

Another link between Google and the Israeli security state comes in the form of cybersecurity group Team8, a collaboration between former Google CEO and chairman Eric Schmidt, and three ex-Unit 8200 officers, including its former leader, Nadav Zafrir. Team8’s mission, according to a press release, is, “To leverage the offensive and defensive skills of veterans of Israel’s cyberwar efforts to build new security startups.”

Meta

Meta – the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – has also recruited heavily from the ranks of Unit 8200.

Undoubtedly, one of the most influential people at Meta is Emi Palmor. Palmor is one of 23 individuals who sit on Facebook’s Oversight Board. Described by Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook’s “Supreme Court”, the Oversight Board collectively decides what content to accept and promote on the platform, and what should be censored, deleted, and suppressed.

Palmor is a Unit 8200 veteran and later went on to become General Director of the Israeli Ministry of Justice. In this role, she directly oversaw the stripping away of Palestinian rights and created a so-called “Internet Referral Unit” which would find and aggressively push Facebook to delete Palestinian content on its platform that the Israeli government objected to.

Other ex-Unit 8200 hold influential positions. For instance, Eyal Klein, the head of data science for Facebook Messenger since 2020, served for fully six years as a captain in the controversial Israeli military unit. Today, he is tasked with handling privacy issues for billions of users of Meta’s platforms.

Another former Unit 8200 leader now working in big tech in America is Eli Zeitlin. Two years after leaving Unit 8200, Zeitlin was employed by Microsoft and rose to become the corporation’s senior development lead, becoming, in his own words, the “go to person in file processing and cloud protection” for the company. For the last six years, however, he has worked for Meta, where he leads the company in “prevent[ing] data misuse by third parties” – exactly the sort of operation that current Unit 8200 officers likely continue to carry out.

Other Unit 8200 veterans working in influential roles for Facebook include Tom Chet, head of activations and production for North American small business; Gilad Turbahn, a manager for Meta; engineering manager Ranen Goren; software engineers Gil Osher and Yoav Goldstein; security engineering manager Dana Baril; and software developer Omer Goldberg. Meanwhile, according to Yonatan Ramot’s LinkedIn biography, earlier this year, he was simultaneously working for Meta while still an active duty manager in Unit 8200.

Spying on the World

Why is having former Unit 8200 officers in charge of security, development and software design at some of the world’s most important communications companies a problem? To start with, one of the military unit’s primary functions is to use their tech know how to carry out spying operations across the world. As Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted in an investigation, “Israel has become a leading exporter of tools for spying on civilians,” selling invasive surveillance software to dozens of governments, many of them among the world’s worst human rights abusers. In Indonesia, for instance, the software was used to create a database of gay people.

Unit 8200 also spies on Americans. Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA regularly passes on the data and communications of U.S. citizens to the Israeli group. “I think that’s amazing…It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen,” Snowden said.

The most well-known example of Israeli spyware is Pegasus, a creation of NSO Group, a technically private company staffed primarily by Unit 8200 veterans. The software was used to eavesdrop on more than 50,000 prominent people around the world. This included dozens of human rights defenders, nearly 200 journalists, several Arab royals, and over 600 politicians, including French president Emmanuel Macron, Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan and Iraqi President Barham Salih.

Meanwhile, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi used the software to dig up dirt on his personal opponents. Other members of his government hacked the phone of a woman accusing the Chief Justice of India of raping her.

Pegasus was also found installed on murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, implying that NSO was collaborating with the Saudi government, aiding them to silence dissent and criticism.

Pegasus works by sending a text message to a targeted device. If a user clicks on the link provided, it will automatically download the spyware. Once infected, it is possible to track an individual’s location and movements, take screenshots, turn on the phone’s camera and microphone, retrieve messages and steal passwords.

But while the NSO’s Pegasus made worldwide news, another firm, more worrying and dangerous, has flown under the radar. That firm is Toka, established by former Israeli defense minister and prime minister, Ehud Barak, with the help of a number of Unit 8200 officers. Toka can infiltrate any device connected to the internet, including Amazon echoes, televisions, fridges and other home appliances. Last year, Journalist Whitney Webb told MintPress that the company effectively acts as a front group for the Israeli government’s spying operations.

A third private spy firm filled with Unit 8200 graduates is Candiru. The Tel Aviv-based company barely exists, officially. It does not have a website. And if you go to its headquarters, there is no indication that you are in the right place. Nevertheless, it is widely believed that Candiru was behind malware attacks observed in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Qatar and Uzbekistan.

The company is named after a parasitic Amazonian fish that is said (apocryphally) to swim up human urine streams and enter the body via the urethra. It is an apt analogy for a firm that spends its time finding security flaws in Android and iOS operating systems and browsers like Chrome, Firefox and Safari, using this knowledge to spy on unsuspecting targets.

The utility of these technically private Israeli spy groups filled to the brim with ex-military intelligence figures is that it allows the government some measure of plausible deniability when carrying out attacks against foreign nations. As Haaretz explained, “Who owns [these spying companies] isn’t clear, but their employees aren’t soldiers. Consequently, they may solve the army’s problem, even if the solution they provide is imperfect.”

Microsoft

Data from LinkedIn suggests that there are at least 166 former Unit 8200 members who went on to work for Microsoft. In addition to those already mentioned, others include Ayelet Steinitz, Microsoft’s former Head of Global Strategic Alliances, Senior Software Engineer Tomer Lev, and Senior Product Managers, Maayan Mazig, Or Serok-Jeppa and Yuval Derman.

Notably, the Seattle-based giant also heavily leans on ex-Unit 8200 professionals to design and upkeep its global security apparatus. Examples of this phenomenon include Security Researchers Lia Yeshoua, Yogev Shitrit, Guni Merom, Meitar Pinto and Yaniv Carmel, Threat Protection Software Engineer Gilron Tsabkevich, Data Scientist Danielle Poleg, Threat Intelligence Officer Itai Grady and Security Product Manager Liat Lisha. In Merom, Carmel and Pinto’s cases, they went straight from Unit 8200 into Microsoft’s team, again suggesting that Microsoft is actively recruiting from the regiment.

Other Microsoft security products such as Microsoft Defender Antivirus and Microsoft Azure secure cloud computing are also designed and maintained by ex-Unit 8200 individuals. These include former Senior Architect Michael Bargury, Principal Software Engineering Manager Shlomi Haba, Senior Software Engineering Managers Yaniv Yehuda, Assaf Israel and Michal Ben Yaacov, Senior Product Manager Tal Rosler, Software Engineer Adi Griever, and Product Manager Yael Genut.

This is notable, as it was reported that malware likely produced by Unit 8200 was used to attack Microsoft products, such as its Windows operating system. It reportedly exploited loopholes it found to attack control systems, delete hard drives, and shut down key systems, such as the energy infrastructure of Iran.

Big Tech, Big Governments

None of this means that all or even any of the individuals are moles – or even anything but model employees today. But the sheer amount of people graduating from an organization such as Unit 8200 and going on to influence the world’s largest communications companies certainly causes concern.

Unit 8200 certainly has a reputation for excellence in its field. The trouble is that their craft includes spying, extortion, gross violations of personal rights, and the hacking of exactly the tech companies that are now hiring them en masse. This does not appear to be a poacher-turned-gamekeeper scenario, however; there is no indication Silicon Valley is hiring whistleblowers.

Of course, Israel is far from the only country that attempts to spy on foes or manipulate the public. However, former spies from adversary countries such as Russia, Venezuela or Iran are not being hired in their hundreds to design, maintain and oversee the largest channels of public communication. In fact, this study could find no examples of ex-FSB (Russia) ex-SEBIN (Venezuela) or former agents from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence working at Silicon Valley corporations.

MintPress has previously documented how, in recent years, big tech companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, TikTok and Reddit have hired hundreds of spooks from the CIA, NSA, FBI, Secret Service, NATO, and other intelligence agencies. The fact that Unit 8200 is also a recruitment reserve underlines how strong an ally Israel is considered in the West.

However, it also highlights the increasing intersection between Silicon Valley and big government and further undermines any pretense that big tech companies are on our side in the fight to secure and maintain privacy online.

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Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

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United States and European countries have created an anti-Russia military alliance—NATO–since 1949. Now all of them have ganged up against Russia. In near future, all of them will gang up against China when China finally tries to take over Taiwan. Basically, NATO has always been a willing partner with America in most of America’s aggressions against other countries—Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine to name a few. NATO wants to dictate to the world that they are the big boss and bully on the street. Now, with immoral Ukraine war which could easily have been avoided by the United States and its vassal states of Europe, the whole world knows the criminal behavior of NATO nations led by the United States.

United States and other NATO countries claim that NATO is a ‘Defensive Alliance’. This is a lie. NATO was fully involved in the illegal war against Yugoslavia in 1999, and the SAS soldiers reportedly murdering people in Afghanistan in cold blood. During the immoral and illegal Iraq War started by President George Bush and his neocon advisors, five other NATO countries namely UK, Italy, Australia, Spain, and Poland were involved conducting and handling the military operations. The war on Libya in 2011 that resulted in the killing of its leader Muammar Qaddafi and the destruction of Libya leading to the suffering and refugee crisis that we see today were took place under NATO auspices.  Currant unfortunate Ukraine War is the result of unjust NATO policy of expansion led by the United States because the litany of Russian grievances, fear about NATO expansion was not irrational. Record shows that promises given to the Soviet Government at the end of the cold war were shamelessly broken as NATO kept expanding towards Russia ever since.

Also, it is a myth that NATO was and is an alliance of democracies. The Salzar dictatorship in Portugal was a founding member. Even today, NATO members such as authoritarian Polish and Hungarian governments as well as Erdogan’s Turkey, are hardly called ‘a Democracy’.

Given its role in the Afghan War in central Asia and the expansion of the US, French and British military presence in the China seas, its status as a ‘north Atlantic’ organization is looking dubious. Ultimately, what NATO is, is an extension of US power. It is designed to project that power globally at a time, when by many other measures, America is losing ground diplomatically as well as economically. NATO led by the US has been creating conflicts…arbitrarily launching wars and killing civilians while talking about the “rules-based international order” and that means, their own right to dictate to others while ignoring international law themselves whenever convenient.

At the start of the Ukraine war in February, China disagreed with the US narrative and sided with Russia condemning NATO expansion while India, another major power stayed neutral, and did not agree with the US-NATO narrative. And most of the countries of the world in Africa, Asia and Latin America stayed neutral. Even several countries like Argentina, Iran and others now want to join the BRICS countries to get away from US-NATO and dollar global dominance. The BRICS could well eclipse the G7 in economic clout by the end of the decade. The handwriting is on the wall. The US led, NATO created proxy war in Ukraine is to restore and maintain the status of the United States as the number one and solo superpower.

So, what stops Russia and China from creating a military alliance of their own? After creating this alliance, they could invite all those countries who have been victims of America and NATO aggressions of the past. Many nations who have suffered America’s criminal aggression will be very happy and eager to join this alliance.

Some or most of these countries—Vietnam, North Korea, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Granada, Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, Iran, Belarus, Libya, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Panama, Somalia, Yemen, Angola, Bosnia, Sudan, Congo, Yugoslavia-Serbia, Albania, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Algeria, Honduras, Palestine,  etc. etc. will likely join this alliance if invited. All these countries have suffered terribly at the hands of the United States and some European nations such as UK, France, and Netherland.

This military alliance could have following clauses:

• The sole purpose of this alliance would be the peaceful coexistence for the citizens of this world.
• The purpose of this alliance is to preserve world peace and not allow any nation, including NATO members to bully and wage wars against any member of this alliance.
• Attack on one member country will be taken as attack on all the members of the alliance.
• Attack on any member of the alliance by any NATO member will be defended by all the members of the alliance by every means.
• To show that their sole purpose is to thwart NATO created wars and aggressions on other weak nations, this new alliance will be dissolved shortly as soon as NATO is dissolved. Then the world will be a peaceful place to live in.
• Not to antagonize non-NATO nations like India, Brazil or South Africa, this alliance will not get involved in any conflict where one member of the conflict is a non-NATO member. In other words, this alliance is only against any aggression or conflict where a NATO member is involved with a member of this alliance. For example, if there is a war between India and China, this alliance will not get involved with either side in that war because India is not a member of NATO.
• This alliance will help–without getting directly involved militarily in the conflict–any nation who becomes a victim of a coup, regime change, military aggression by invasion or bombing, illegal sanctions, or by any other means or any other kind of outside interference in their internal affairs by any NATO member country.

There are some obstacles for forming this alliance. One of them is, China has huge business exporting to the United States as well as to some European countries. But by the same token, these countries too benefit a lot with cheap goods from China. So, it is a loss to both the sides if that business is adversely affected. Hence every nation would think twice before breaking these business ties with China. For the future, China will have a powerful ally in Russia in case of a war with the United States if it decides to take over Taiwan. This war is imminent in next few years.

Russia has nothing to lose and everything to gain by this alliance.

If Russia and China decide to get involved in this alliance, most of the nations of the world will not mind—if this alliance is formed to maintain peaceful co-existence in the world– as this alliance is mainly aimed at the illegal dominance by the United States and its NATO members.

By their criminal policies towards Russia since 1945 and especially since 1989-91 after U.S. S.R. collapse, and constantly projecting China as an enemy now by the United States in particular, and by their provoking Russia to have this proxy war, it will not be a surprise if Russia-China military alliance does materialize in near future.

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Chaitanya Davé is a Chemist and a Chemical Engineer and a businessman. He has authored three books: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: A Shocking Record of US Crimes since 1776-2007, COLLAPSE: Civilization of the Brink-2010, Capitalism’s March of Destruction. Author of many articles on politics, history, and environment Founder/President of a non-profit charity foundation helping the poor villagers of India, Nepal, Haiti, USA-homeless, environmental NGOs, and other poor countries. He can be contacted at [email protected]. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation