Donate to Azov Nazi Psychopaths via your Credit Card

October 28th, 2022 by Kurt Nimmo

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In September, the Azov Nazis came to America in search of loot to finance their ongoing effort to murder and ethnically cleanse any hint of Russian ethnicity in Ukraine.

For the Azov Nazis, the Russian “special operation” to disarm and get rid of them is a fine way to manipulate the emotions of clueless, headline-skimming Americans and convince them to donate money under the pretense of fighting against Russian tyranny.

For details on this under-reported Nazi tour, see “‘Now, All of You Are Azov’: Ukrainian ‘Neo-Nazis’ Tour U.S.” by Moss Robeson, posted in early October on his Ukes, Kooks & Spooks blog.

Robeson writes the Ukronazi “delegation” is not only hunting for cash in America but also attempting to sanitize the Azov Battalion image.

Nazi thugs are apparently popular with at least some of America’s “representatives” in Congress.

It is now safe to support Nazis—who we are told are not Nazis—or the Uke version of nazism based on the same principles as their mentors in fascist Germany in the 1930s and 40s: disappearance, murder, ethnic cleansing of subhumans, and good old fashion lebensraum in eastern Ukraine.

If you use a corporate search engine, you will discover this Uke Nazi thing is a figment of Russian propaganda and delusional thinking. Consider the following brief examples:

According to the corporate war propaganda media (all of the above are members in good standing), the real Nazi is Vladimir Putin and, as we are told in the last “news story,” Russian “Nazi” mercenaries are fighting alongside defenders of Donbas.

Never mind many of these propaganda outlets, reading from USG scripts, denounced the “far-right” supposedly ascendant in much of Europe, especially Ukraine, prior to Russia’s “invasion,” are now de-ranked, the internet version of Orwell’s memory hole.

Suppose you write or speak historical truth at odds with USG war propaganda—or a number of other topics considered “conspiracy theories”—and you utilize PayPal for donations or commercial transactions. In that case, you may not only lose access to its banking microcosm but also have your money stolen.

However, if you financially support the Azov Nazis, you may proceed unhindered, as the screen capture above reveals.

This includes donating war materiel to the Nazis.

Note the Azov logo with its Norse runic Wolfsangel symbol, a favorite of the Wehrmacht, Das Reich, and the Sturmabteilung (SA Brownshirts, and later the SS).

But never mind. Millions of Americans have no idea this is a Nazi symbol and that the Azov Battalion is responsible for torturing, raping, disappearing, bombarding, and murdering thousands of ethnic Russians that have lived in what was, before “annexation” (voting to leave the Nazi-infested Ukraine), Novorossiya (New Russia, beginning in 1764 and ending in 1917 when the region was incorporated in the Ukrainian People’s Republic).

In the ongoing effort to demonize and undermine Russia, the USG and its media are pulling out all the stops, and are fully engaged in a brazen attempt to revise history and memory-hole reality.

Such idiocy may eventually play a role in the thermonuclear extinction of life on planet Earth.

Finally, as to the role played by banks and Wall Street in financing nazism, see Antony Sutton, “Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler.” Banker support for Hitler and the Nazis began in 1924 with the Dawes Plan.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics

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***

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has presented the White House with a geopolitical crisis that it played a critical role in creating. In February 2014, Victoria Nuland, a current senior State Department official and former Dick Cheney advisor, was caught on tape plotting the installation of a new Ukrainian government – a plan, she stressed, that would involve Biden and his then-top aide, and current National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan. Weeks later, the democratically elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted and replaced by Washington-backed leaders – including a prime minister selected by Nuland.

The regime change in Kiev made Biden the most influential US political figure in Ukraine, as underscored by the lucrative Burisma board seat gifted to his son Hunter. While the Biden family and other well-connected players profited, Ukraine fell into civil war.

In the eastern Donbas region, Kremlin-backed Ukrainian rebels took up arms against a fascist-infused coup government that cracked down on Russian culture and countenanced murderous assaults on dissidents. Rather than promote the 2015 Minsk II accords — the agreed-upon formula for ending the Donbas conflict – the US fueled the fight with a weapons and training program that turned Ukraine into a NATO proxy. Influential US politicians left no doubt about their intentions. As the Donbas war raged, lawmakers declared that they were using Ukraine to “fight Russia over there” (Adam Schiff) and vowed to “make Russia pay a heavier price,” (John McCain). In February of this year, Russia invaded to bring the eight-year fight to an end, leaving Ukraine to pay the heaviest price of all.

The Biden administration shunned multiple opportunities to prevent the Russian assault. When Russia submitted draft peace treaties in December 2021, the White House refused to even discuss the Kremlin’s core demands: a pledge of neutrality for Ukraine, and the rollback of NATO military forces in post-1997 member states that neighbor Russia. At the final round of talks on implementing Minsk II in early February, the “key obstacle,” the Washington Post reported, “was Kyiv’s opposition to negotiating with the pro-Russian separatists.” Siding with Ukraine’s far-right, which had threatened to overthrow Volodymyr Zelensky if he signed a peace deal, the US made no effort to encourage diplomacy. Emboldened to escalate its war on the Donbas, the Ukrainian government then massively increased shelling on rebel-held areas in the days immediately preceding Russa’s February 24th invasion.

Looking back at the pre-invasion period, Jack Matlock, the US ambassador to the Soviet Union under Bush I, now concludes that “if Ukraine had been willing to abide by the Minsk agreement, recognize the Donbas as an autonomous entity within Ukraine, avoid NATO military advisors, and pledge not to enter NATO,” then Russia’s war “probably would have been prevented.”

For Washington, preventing the war would have interfered with longstanding objectives. As US policymakers have openly recognized, Ukraine’s historical, geographical, and cultural links to Russia could be used as a tool to achieve regime change in Moscow, or, at minimum, leave it “weakened.”

As Ukraine enters another winter of war, this time facing an intensified Russian assault, the Biden administration is apparently in no mood to end a crisis that it helped start.

In an interview with CNN, President Biden declared that he has “no intention” of meeting with Vladimir Putin at the upcoming G20 summit. “I’m not about to, nor is anyone else prepared to negotiate with Russia,” Biden said.

A recent account in the Washington Post details the White House’s prevailing mindset:

Privately, U.S. officials say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright, but they have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table. They say they do not know what the end of the war looks like, or how it might end or when, insisting that is up to Kyiv.

“That’s a decision for the Ukrainians to make,” a senior State Department official said. “Our job now is to help them be in absolutely the best position militarily on the battlefield … for that day when they do choose to go to the diplomatic table.”

If the US knows that its ally Ukraine is not “capable of winning the war”, why would it choose to prolong it? The stated aim to put Kiev “in absolutely the best position militarily on the battlefield,” has been offered for months. Yet during this time Russia has held on to about 20% of Ukrainian territory and positioned itself for a major escalation. The Russian army is preparing to deploy some 300,000 reservists, and has recently conducted its most ferocious missile barrages to date, causing serious damage to Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, as US officials had predicted.

While Ukraine has scored some battlefield successes, there is no indication that its strategic position has significantly improved. The counter-offensive in Kharkiv reportedly came at the cost of high Ukrainian casualties, a type of victory that is unsustainable. The Russian pullback, a Western official told Reuters, was more likely a “withdrawal, ordered and sanctioned by the general staff, rather than an outright collapse… the Russians have made some good decisions in terms of shortening their lines and making them more defensible, and sacrificing territory in order to do so.” The most audacious of Ukraine’s counter-attacks – the bombing of the Kerch bridge – “did not appear to have done permanent damage to the bridge — or to Russia’s war effort,” the New York Times reported. Instead, it only triggered a far more destructive Russian retaliation.

The stated White House position of treating diplomacy as “a decision for the Ukrainians to make” is also based on a false premise. For one, when Ukraine previously did “choose to go to the diplomatic table,” with Russia and even made significant progress, its Western backers in London and Washington sabotaged it, according to multiple accounts.

And whether Ukraine wants to negotiate, the US is not obligated to supply the weaponry and intelligence that sustains the fight. The US role as a co-belligerent in the US conflict is a political choice, not a law of nature. And given that US officials privately admit that Ukraine is not “capable of winning the war,” that would seemingly obligate them all the more to use their considerable leverage to bring this un-winnable war to a speedy end.

Yet another imperative for resolving the conflict is the nuclear threat that it continues to fuel. According to Leon Panetta, the former CIA director and defense secretary, “intelligence analysts now believe that the probability of the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine has risen from 1-5 percent at the start of the war to 20-25 percent today.” In this “proxy war between Washington and Moscow,” former State Department official Jeremy Shapiro warns, both sides “are locked in an escalatory cycle that, along current trends, will eventually bring them into direct conflict and then go nuclear, killing millions of people and destroying much of the world.” Even if these warnings are overblown, the very fact that they are even being articulated by well-placed former US officials should obligate all parties to demonstrate an effort for peace.

In both the US and Russia, the only apparent response to the threat of terminal conflict is to fuel it. This week, NATO has kicked off its annual nuclear exercises, featuring a fleet of aircraft including U.S. long-range B-52 bombers. Russia is slated to hold its own maneuvers as well.

Meanwhile, rather than negotiating, the US and its partners are devoted to global arms dealing. To procure the Russian-style weapons that Ukrainian soldiers are trained to use, “the United States and other allies have been scouring the globe,” the New York Times reports. Relieved of any need to attempt diplomacy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has visited Asia, Africa, and Latin America “in a painstaking, behind-the-scenes diplomatic campaign to countries that have demonstrated support for Ukraine but are still reluctant to supply lethal aid.” Over the long-term, a senior NATO official told Politico, the Western goal is “to get Ukraine fully interoperable with NATO.”

Lost in this “painstaking” scramble to find weapons for the Ukraine proxy war is the question of whether there will be any of Ukraine left behind. “[T]he longer the war continues,” Matlock, the former US ambassador to the USSR, writes, “the harder it is going to be to avoid the utter destruction of Ukraine.” A prolonged war also threatens a “winter of de-industrialization” in Europe, along with increased hunger and impoverishment around the globe.

Despite his experience as a US diplomat who helped negotiate an end to the Cold War, Matlock’s opposition to the current cold war has left him banished from establishment US media outlets. In this militaristic climate, it is only on rare occasions that voices of restraint can break the sound barrier.

Speaking recently to ABC News, retired Admiral Mike Mullen, the nation’s top military officer under both Bush II and Obama, urged the White House to find an off-ramp. Of Biden’s warning of a nuclear “Armageddon,” Mullen said: “I think we need to back off that a little bit and do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing… The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.”

The Biden administration has taken the inverse position: for their proxy war against Russia, the longer the better, no matter how many more lives in Ukraine are sacrificed by policies designed in Washington.

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Featured image is from Al Mayadeen English


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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Post-jab Prion Disease Case History in Sunnyvale, CA

October 28th, 2022 by Steve Kirsch

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All the Stanford doctors who looked at the case, which started a week after Moderna vaccination, are clueless as to the potential cause of this deadly disease. In this video, we hear the case history.

Executive summary

Prion diseases, which are always fatal, have been associated in the scientific literature with the COVID vaccination.

For example, see Studies Link Incurable Prion Disease With COVID-19 Vaccines points out:

The French study identified 26 cases across Europe and the United States. Twenty of the individuals had already died by the time the study was written, with death occurring, on average, 4.76 months after being vaccinated. Among the 20 deaths, eight of the individuals experienced sudden death, in an average time period of 2 1/2 months after vaccination.

I’ve written about prion diseases before in PROOF: COVID vaccines cause prion diseases and, most recently, in this article: Twitter made a huge mistake. I was right about prion diseases. They were wrong. Surprised?

Professor Byram Bridle speculated in May 2021 that the COVID vaccines would cause prion diseases.

In this video, I interview the husband and mother of Tammy Pottorff about what happened to Tammy after she got the shot. Within a week, the signs of prion disease were present.

To this day, the doctors at Stanford act completely clueless as to what might have caused Tammy’s brain to fail.

All the doctors refuse to consider it could have been the vaccine despite overwhelming evidence that these vaccines cause prion diseases.

It simply couldn’t be the vaccine but they won’t say how they can rule this out.

Richard Pottorff’s wife came down with CJD, a fatal prion disease, a week after getting the shot

CJD is extremely rare… 1 case per million people per year. There are many reports of this happening shortly after COVID vaccination. Here’s a case history in Sunnyvale, CA of this happening. It looks like it won’t be written up in the medical literature since nobody wants to talk about it.

The doctors cannot figure out the cause or an effective treatment. It took 6 months for them to get an appointment because the neurologists are so overbooked due to a flood of neurological cases… they don’t know why.

None of the 10 doctors who looked at this case think there is any possibility it is the vaccine despite the medical literature showing dozens of such cases immediately starting right after the patient took the COVID vaccine.

I wish I could interview these doctors on camera but you know what the chances of that happening are… zero.

In this video interview, you’ll hear from Tammy’s husband and mother what they think about what happened to Tammy.

Because of what happened to Tammy, about 10% of Tammy’s friends won’t be getting any further shots. The other 90% are not deterred by the story and want to be protected (even though there is no evidence that booster shots add protection).

The one doctor who is aware of what is going on and told the family not to take the vaccine is not speaking out publicly because he doesn’t want to have his medical license taken away.

Since the doctors aren’t going to write up this case history for the medical journal, the responsibility for surfacing these stories falls upon misinformation spreaders such as myself.

Poll

This poll should be shocking to everyone. Consider this:

So that means if the average person knows 1,000 people, we’d expect 1 person in 1000 to know someone with a current prion disease. As you can see, the rate is 100X what we’d expect. How will they explain that one?

Whole lotta CJD happening to vaccinated people

Here’s a recent tragic story and another. These stories are celebrity CJD deaths; non-celebrity deaths wouldn’t generate a story. A celebrity dying of CJD was pretty much unheard of before the COVID vaccines rolled out. This suggests that the rate in the general public is huge.

Note that Mad Cow is not classic CJD. Here’s the CDC page on CJD.

So don’t make that mistake. But other than that, this is a good post:

Summary

We knew prion diseases were a risk factor from these vaccines since May 2021. When Professor Byram Bridle got the biodistribution data from Pfizer, he voiced his concern publicly at the time. I was on the call. He was right.

What happened to Tammy is tragic. What’s worse is that the medical community is taking a blind eye to what has happened. Not only will they not acknowledge the cause or speak out publicly about what has happened, they won’t even document these cases in the medical literature. So these deaths will keep happening and most people will be none the wiser. And “that’s just the way it goes” as Dr. Eric Rubin might have said.

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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 

Purchase directly from the Global Research Online Store

You may also purchase directly at DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page(NOTE: User-friendly)

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According to Newsweek, on October 26th, “Finland Will Allow NATO to Place Nuclear Weapons on Border With Russia”. They cite Finnish media reports. Allegedly, a condition that NATO had placed on Finland to join NATO was to allow America’s nuclear missiles to be positioned on Finland’s Russian border, which is closer to Moscow than any other except Ukraine’s. Whereas Ukraine’s would be 5 minutes from blitz-nuking Moscow so as to preemptively decapitate Russia’s retaliatory command, Finland’s would be 7 minutes — only around 120 seconds longer for Russia to be able to launch its retaliatory strikes.

Finland now is to vote on the bill joining NATO, on that basis (i.e., to become America’s spearhead to defeat Russia in WW III). Obviously (assuming that NATO had, indeed, given Finland’s leaders to believe that saying yes to this would increase NATO’s likelihood of expediting Finland’s application to join), NATO is set upon checkmating Russia into capitulation if Finland does join.

Newsweek reports also that

“The U.S. already has around 100 nuclear weapons in Europe, positioned in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey according to the Federation of American Scientists. Britain and France, both NATO members, also maintain their own independent nuclear arsenals.”

None of those countries borders Russia. They’re all much farther away.

During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK refused to allow the Soviet Union to place its missiles only 1,131 miles away from Washington DC and warned that the U.S. would launch WW III if they did; so, the Soviet Union decided not to.

The Finnish border reaches as close as 507 miles away from Moscow, at the Finnish city of Kotka. The Ukrainian border reaches significantly closer: 317 miles from Shostka to Moscow, and 353 miles from Sumy to Moscow — as being the Russia-bordering nation that would pose the biggestdanger to Russia if added to NATO. Finland is #2 — only Ukraine is even worse in a Russian view.

Russia invaded Ukraine in order to be able to move that potential 317 miles back to at least the 1,131 miles that everyone in 1962 agreed would be too close to Washington DC and therefore justification for America to launch WW III to prevent.

The reason why the difference between 317 miles versus 507 miles is only around two minutes, is that the slowest part of the flight is the earliest, while accelerating. Practically speaking, for Washington to position its nuclear-warheaded missiles 507 miles from The Kremlin is virtually the same as to position them at the nearest point on Ukraine’s border. One can already see that Russia actively resists this.

In 1962, missiles were far slower than they are today. So, in order for there to be an equivalency between the 1,131 miles from Cuba in 1962, Russia would need to keep U.S. missiles about 2,000 miles from America’s closest land-based nuclear missiles today. The present situation is considerably more dangerous to Russia than the Cuban Missile Crisis was to America in 1962.

According to leading American scientists who specialize in evaluating such matters, America’s recent nuclear-weapons policy “creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.”

Newsweek’s disclosure on October 26th suggests that this is, indeed, what the U.S. Government has been, and is, planning for: “to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.” (That meta-strategy is called “Nuclear Primacy,” and in America it replaced the “M.A.D.” or Mutually Assured Destruction meta-strategy in around 2006.)

During WW II, Finland was on the Nazi side and participated with the Germans in their “Operation Barbarossa invasion of the Soviet Union.” If it joins NATO, Finland would be repeating that now, but only against Russia.

All U.S. foreign polices, in both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, are “neocon,” and that means funded by and for U.S.-and-allied billionaires and centi-millionaires not for ANY public — in order to increase yet further the scope of their global empire.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.


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   

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

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

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

President George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda” could be defined as subversion, that is the attempt to undermine the structure of a foreign nation in order to attain regime change or political goals. Propaganda is a core element of subversive actions, and includes the dissemination of largely false material so as to discredit regimes abroad. 

This was the case 20 years ago in the build-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, when Saddam Hussein was wrongly accused of among other things possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Propaganda can be spread readily enough through the corporate media, as seen relating to Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia and so on.

Most useful too in stoking unrest are US organisations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), National Democratic Institute (NDI), USAID, Freedom House, the Open Society groups of George Soros, and of course the CIA.

Many of the above supported and funded the “color revolutions” which occurred in such states as Georgia (2003), the Ukraine (2004) and Kyrgyzstan (2005). These either share a border with Russia or are former Soviet republics, nor is that a coincidence. The color revolutions were, quite plainly, a convenient means for the Bush administration to pursue its encirclement policy of Russia.

For example in February 2005 the Wall Street Journal acknowledged that, in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan, organisations like USAID, the NED and Soros’ Open Society were funding the anti-government opposition there, a key instigator of Kyrgyzstan’s “Tulip revolution”. In the preceding years, USAID alone had dispensed with hundreds of millions of dollars towards such activities. Nations like Kyrgyzstan were identified by president Bush as important not only to contain Russia, but as a launching pad for US military offensives.

From December 2001 the Americans arrived in Kyrgyzstan in force, using the capital Bishkek as a logistics centre to support their invasion of Afghanistan. Washington was also trying to increase its presence in the highly-desired Caspian Sea and Black Sea regions, along with the surrounding areas further contested between Russia and the Western powers.

Regarding the significance of these territories Michel Chossudovsky, a geostrategist and analyst wrote,

“What is at stake is an integrated system of waterways which connects the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea to the Baltic and the Northern Sea Route. In this regard the narrow Kerch Strait in Eastern Crimea is strategic. The 2014 union of Crimea with Russia redefines the geography and the geopolitical chessboard of the Black Sea Basin. Since 2014, the reunion of Crimea to the Russian Federation represented a major setback for US-NATO, whose longstanding objective was to integrate Ukraine into NATO, while extending Western military presence in the Black Sea Basin”.

Moreover, Chossudovsky observed,

“Following the union of Crimea to Russia, The Russian Federation now controls a much larger portion of the Black Sea, which includes the entire coastline of the Crimean peninsula. The Eastern part of Crimea –including the Kerch strait– are under Russia’s jurisdiction. On the Eastern side of the Kerch strait is Russia’s Krasnodar region and extending southwards are the port cities of Novorossiysk and Sochi. Novorossiysk is also strategic. It is Russia’s largest commercial port on the Black Sea, at the cross-roads of major oil and gas pipelines between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea”.

Despite Washington interfering in states like Georgia and the Ukraine, the Americans did not particularly wish to sow instability in the South Caucasus nation of Azerbaijan, another former Soviet republic which borders Georgia to the north. In Azerbaijan the Americans needed a stable environment, because they had interests in oil infrastructure connecting the production fields of Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, into the deep water Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, in southern Turkey, which could receive tankers each carrying over 300,000 tons of oil.

Baku had furnished Soviet Russia with at least 80% of its entire oil during World War II, without which the heavily mechanised Red Army could probably not have won the war against Nazi Germany. Azerbaijan today still contains considerable quantities of oil, and its strategic importance remains clear. Azerbaijan shares an extensive shoreline with the Caspian Sea, while it is an important energy route linking the Caucasus and Central Asia, as Zbigniew Brzezinski had highlighted when he was the US National Security Advisor (1977-81).

Rather than dispatching American soldiers to safeguard Washington’s goals in Azerbaijan, the Pentagon sent mercenaries from private military companies like Blackwater. The aim was to protect the Caspian Sea’s oil and gas deposits, controlled historically by Russia to the largest extent.

The Caspian Sea, the earth’s biggest lake, is extremely rich in natural resources and “is one of the oldest oil-producing areas in the world” and “an increasingly important source of global energy production” according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The EIA estimated in 2012 that the Caspian Sea and its environs contain proven oil quantities of 48 billion barrels, more than is present in either America or China. The US Geological Survey has calculated that the Caspian’s real oil reserves are greater than the proven quantities, containing perhaps another 20 billion barrels of undiscovered oil.

In 2012 the Caspian region produced, on average, 2.6 million barrels of crude oil per day, amounting to about 3.4% of global supply. Much of the oil is extracted near the Caspian shorelines, but further out into its waters are also large amounts of oil. Altogether, the Caspian’s oil output is believed to have surpassed that of the North Sea, and exploratory drilling in the latter body of water dropped from 44 wells in 2008 to only 12 in 2014. Yet there are still 16 billion recoverable barrels of oil off the coast of the Scottish city of Aberdeen and west of the Shetland Islands further north.

The US Energy Information Administration estimated that the Caspian Sea contains “probable reserves” of 292 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The US Geological Survey believes, on top of that, there is another 243 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas in the Caspian, most of which is located in the South Caspian Basin. Russia and its neighbour Kazakhstan have controlled the biggest part of the Caspian.

At the Fourth Caspian Summit convened in Astrakhan, Russia, on 29 September 2014, the five nations that share a coast with the Caspian Sea – Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan – decided unanimously they would uphold the security of the region, and prevent it from being penetrated by outside powers. This agreement sought to protect the heart of Eurasia from the expansionist NATO, in effect meaning the US, whose military presence in recent years has been significantly reduced in Central Asia.

The settlement reached, at the Fourth Caspian Summit, closed off the Caspian Sea to president Barack Obama’s designs. The US would find it difficult to advance in an area where it previously maintained close relations with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan since the 2001 military attack on Afghanistan, which was supported by NATO countries Germany, Britain, Italy and Canada. The US had distorted the role of NATO to become an offensive military instrument with global reach. Among Washington’s ambitions was to secure a permanent presence astride the Hindu Kush and Pamir mountain ranges of Central and South Asia, along with the Caucasus.

In May 2005 president Bush had visited the Georgian capital Tbilisi, and he said that Georgia had become a “beacon of liberty”. Bush viewed control of the South Caucasus and Central Asia as vital to achieving victory in Afghanistan further east. Bush’s White House secured US military bases in Central Asia, such as in southern Uzbekistan, not far from Tajikistan, and Manas Air Base in northern Kyrgyzstan. The strategic objective was not merely to support the “war on terror”, but to ensure US control over the region’s fossil fuel reserves and pipelines while negating Russian influence.

Washington attempted to position its military power in the heartland of Eurasia, particularly in Georgia and Azerbaijan, where NATO troops could be sent on to Afghanistan and Iraq. US military bases in Georgia would serve as a back-up for the Pentagon’s bases in Turkey, a short distance from Georgia; while a US military presence in Azerbaijan would give the Bush administration the option of launching an attack on Iran, something which has long been discussed in Washington. Most American elites have since realised that a military offensive against Iran would be highly risky and unlikely to succeed. The US Armed Forces failed to overcome Iraq, a much smaller and weaker country than Iran.

The successful 2008 Russian military intervention in Georgia reminded the West that the Caucasus, like the surroundings of the Black Sea and Caspian, is in Russia’s sphere of influence. The Kremlin would not allow greater expansion by America. Of all the ex-Soviet republics, Georgia had aligned itself most closely with the US, after the “Rose revolution” in late 2003, which had been supported by the Pentagon and bankrolled by US government-linked groups (NED, Freedom House, etc.) and billionaire Soros’ Open Society.

The unsuccessful 2008 Georgian attack on South Ossetia was planned by the US-backed regime of Mikheil Saakashvili – only after the Bush administration had sanctioned military action – according to Georgia’s former Ambassador to Russia, Erosi Kitsmarishvili, who provided this testimony to the Georgian parliament. US vice-president Dick Cheney also informed the Georgian leader Saakashvili that “We have your back”, in the event of a Russo-Georgian conflict. As it turned out, there was little the Americans could do to prevent a Georgian defeat.

It can be recalled that the Soviet Union had not been beaten militarily by the US. Early this century Russia had 1.2 million troops in its armed forces, and possessed 14,000 nuclear warheads of which 5,192 were operational. The US, on the other hand, possessed 9,962 nuclear warheads in 2006, of which 5,736 were operational, and the US military had 1.3 million active service members. There is not much disparity between these figures.

Russia still possessed more than enough weaponry to compete with America. Political scientist Moniz Bandeira wrote,

“Washington had not heeded the fact that Russia had inherited the huge military firepower of the Soviet Union, and that strategic parity had not come to an end, despite the disintegration of the socialist bloc”.

President Bush, as with his predecessor Bill Clinton, needlessly provoked Russia. Shortly after taking office in 2001, Bush withdrew the US from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) which had been signed in 1972 with the Soviet Union, in order to implement the anti-missile defense system, and thereby reduce the threat of nuclear war.

Bush continued his dangerous moves by establishing missile infrastructure in NATO states Poland and the Czech Republic, and then led NATO to the frontiers of Russia by incorporating the Baltic states into the military organisation in 2004. Bush refused to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1996) along with modifications to the SALT 2 agreement on the reduction of strategic armaments.

However, Russia could not be subdued as Germany has been, because the soil of Russia was never conquered by foreign powers, as German terrain had been from 1945. Unlike Germany too, Russia is a resource-rich state positioned in a pivotal area of Eurasia. Russia has the ability to use its influence, furthermore, to dictate business deals with the European Union relating to important deliveries of oil and gas. The Europeans are much more dependent on the Russians than the other way around.

Russia was growing stronger internally after the upheaval of the 1990s. In 1998 almost 40% of Russians were living below the poverty line; but the number of Russians living in poverty had been reduced to 11% by 2013, a lower figure than in the US where at least 15% of Americans were poverty-stricken in 2014.

Russia has benefited from the high oil and gas prices in the international market, and its industrial growth has risen sharply. Increasing too was Russia’s domestic and foreign investment especially in the automobile industry, which rose by 125%, while the country’s GDP grew by 70% placing Russia among the world’s largest economies.

*

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Sources

U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Oil and natural gas production is growing in Caspian Sea region”, 11 September 2013

Michel Chossudovsky, “The Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov: Black Sea Geopolitics and Russia’s Control of Strategic Waterways”, Global Research, 12 October 2022

Wall Street Journal, “In Putin’s backyard ‘democracy’ stirs – with U.S. help”, 25 February 2005

Guardian, “Bush hails Georgia as ‘beacon of liberty’”, 10 May 2005

Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st ed., 4 Feb. 2019)

Andrew Cockburn, “The Bloom Comes Off the Georgian Rose”, Harper’s Magazine, 31 October 2013

U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Overview of oil and natural gas in the Caspian Sea region”, 26 August 2013

Daily Telegraph, “North Sea oil production rises despite price fall”, 3 August 2015

Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA (Springer; 1st ed., 23 June 2017)

PBS, “Who counts as poor in America?”, 8 January 2014

Featured image is from Adam Garrie


History of the World War II

Operation Barbarossa, the Allied Firebombing of German Cities and Japan’s Early Conquests

By Shane Quinn

The first two chapters focus on German preparations as they geared up to launch their 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, called Operation Barbarossa, which began eight decades ago. It was named after King Frederick Barbarossa, a Prussian emperor who in the 12th century had waged war against the Slavic peoples. Analysed also in the opening two chapters are the Soviet Union’s preparations for a conflict with Nazi Germany.

The remaining chapters focus for the large part on the fighting itself, as the Nazis and their Axis allies, the Romanians and Finns at first, swarmed across Soviet frontiers in the early hours of 22 June 1941. The German-led invasion of the USSR was the largest military offensive in history, consisting of almost four million invading troops. Its outcome would decide whether the post-World War II landscape comprised of an American-German dominated globe, or an American-Soviet dominated globe. The Nazi-Soviet war was, as a consequence, a crucial event in modern history and its result was felt for decades afterward and, indeed, to the present day.

Read the e-reader here.

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Let’s start with what is in fact a tale of Global South trade between two members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). At its heart is the already notorious Shahed-136 drone – or Geranium-2, in its Russian denomination: the AK-47 of postmodern aerial warfare.

The US, in yet another trademark hysteria fit rife with irony, accused Tehran of weaponizing the Russian Armed Forces. For both Tehran and Moscow, the superstar, value-for-money, and terribly efficient drone let loose in the Ukrainian battlefield is a state secret: its deployment prompted a flurry of denials from both sides. Whether these are made in Iran drones, or the design was bought and manufacturing takes place in Russia (the realistic option), is immaterial.

The record shows that the US weaponizes Ukraine to the hilt against Russia. The Empire is a de facto war combatant via an array of “consultants,” advisers, trainers, mercenaries, heavy weapons, munitions, satellite intel, and electronic warfare. And yet imperial functionaries swear they are not part of the war. They are, once again, lying.

Welcome to yet another graphic instance of the “rules-based international order” at work. The Hegemon always decides which rules apply, and when. Anyone opposing it is an enemy of “freedom,” “democracy,” or whatever platitude du jour, and should be – what else – punished by arbitrary sanctions.

In the case of sanctioned-to-oblivion Iran, for decades now, the result has been predictably another round of sanctions. That’s irrelevant. What matters is that, according to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), no less than 22 nations – and counting – are joining the queue because they also want to get into the Shahed groove.

Even Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gleefully joined the fray, commenting on how the Shahed-136 is no photoshop.

The race towards BRICS+

What the new sanctions package against Iran really “accomplished” is to deliver an additional blow to the increasingly problematic signing of the revived nuclear deal in Vienna. More Iranian oil on the market would actually relieve Washington’s predicament after the recent epic snub by OPEC+.

A categorical imperative though remains. Iranophobia – just like Russophobia – always prevails for the Straussians/neo-con war advocates in charge of US foreign policy and their European vassals.

So here we have yet another hostile escalation in both Iran-US and Iran-EU relations, as the unelected junta in Brussels also sanctioned manufacturer Shahed Aviation Industries and three Iranian generals.

Now compare this with the fate of the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone – which unlike the “flowers in the sky” (Russia’s Geraniums) has performed miserably in the battlefield.

Kiev tried to convince the Turks to use a Motor Sich weapons factory in Ukraine or come up with a new company in Transcarpathia/Lviv to build Bayraktars. Motor Sich’s oligarch President Vyacheslav Boguslayev, aged 84, has been charged with treason because of his links to Russia, and may be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners of war.

In the end, the deal fizzled out because of Ankara’s exceptional enthusiasm in working to establish a new gas hub in Turkey – a personal suggestion from Russian President Vladimir Putin to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

And that bring us to the advancing interconnection between BRICS and the 9-member SCO – to which this Russia-Iran instance of military trade is inextricably linked.

The SCO, led by China and Russia, is a pan-Eurasian institution originally focused on counter-terrorism but now increasingly geared towards geoeconomic – and geopolitical – cooperation. BRICS, led by the triad of Russia, India, and China overlaps with the SCO agenda geoeconomically and geopoliticallly, expanding it to Africa, Latin America and beyond: that’s the concept of BRICS+, analyzed in detail in a recent Valdai Club report, and fully embraced by the Russia-China strategic partnership.

The report weighs the pros and cons of three scenarios involving possible, upcoming BRICS+ candidates:

First, nations that were invited by Beijing to be part of the 2017 BRICS summit (Egypt, Kenya, Mexico, Thailand, Tajikistan).

Second, nations that were part of the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in May this year (Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Thailand).

Third, key G20 economies (Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye).

And then there’s Iran, which has already already shown interest in joining BRICS.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has recently confirmed that “several countries” are absolutely dying to join BRICS. Among them, a crucial West Asia player: Saudi Arabia.

What makes it even more astonishing is that only three years ago, under former US President Donald Trump’s administration, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MbS) – the kingdom’s de fact ruler – was dead set on joining a sort of Arab NATO as a privileged imperial ally.

Diplomatic sources confirm that the day after the US pulled out of Afghanistan, MbS’s envoys started seriously negotiating with both Moscow and Beijing.

Assuming BRICS approves Riyadh’s candidacy in 2023 by the necessary consensus, one can barely imagine its earth-shattering consequences for the petrodollar. At the same time, it is important not to underestimate the capacity of US foreign policy controllers to wreak havoc.

The only reason Washington tolerates Riyadh’s regime is the petrodollar. The Saudis cannot be allowed to pursue an independent, truly sovereign foreign policy. If that happens, the geopolitical realignment will concern not only Saudi Arabia but the entire Persian Gulf.

Yet that’s increasingly likely after OPEC+ de facto chose the BRICS/SCO path led by Russia-China – in what can be interpreted as a “soft” preamble for the end of the petrodollar.

The Riyadh-Tehran-Ankara triad

Iran made known its interest to join BRICS even before Saudi Arabia. According to Persian Gulf diplomatic sources, they are already engaged in a somewhat secret channel via Iraq trying to get their act together. Turkey will soon follow – certainly on BRICS and possibly the SCO, where Ankara currently carries the status of extremely interested observer.

Now imagine this triad – Riyadh, Tehran, Ankara – closely joined with Russia, India, China (the actual core of the BRICS), and eventually in the SCO, where Iran is as yet the only West Asian nation to be inducted as a full member.

The strategic blow to the Empire will go off the charts. The discussions leading to BRICS+ are focusing on the challenging path towards a commodity-backed global currency capable of bypassing US dollar primacy.

Several interconnected steps point towards increasing symbiosis between BRICS+ and SCO. The latter’s members states have already agreed on a road map for gradually increasing trade in national currencies in mutual settlements.

The State Bank of India – the nation’s top lender – is opening special rupee accounts for Russia-related trade.

Russian natural gas to Turkey will be paid 25 percent in rubles and Turkish lira, complete with a 25 percent discount Erdogan personally asked of Putin.

Russian bank VTB has launched money transfers to China in yuan, bypassing SWIFT, while Sberbank has started lending out money in yuan. Russian energy behemoth Gazprom agreed with China that gas supply payments should shift to rubles and yuan, split evenly.

Iran and Russia are unifying their banking systems for trade in rubles/rial.

Egypt’s Central Bank is moving to establish an index for the pound – through a group of currencies plus gold – to move the national currency away from the US dollar.

And then there’s the TurkStream saga.

That gas hub gift

Ankara for years has been trying to position itself as a privileged East-West gas hub. After the sabotage of the Nord Streams, Putin has handed it on a plate by offering Turkey the possibility to increase Russian gas supplies to the EU via such a hub. The Turkish Energy Ministry stated that Ankara and Moscow have already reached an agreement in principle.

This will mean in practice Turkey controlling the gas flow to Europe not only from Russia but also Azerbaijan and a great deal of West Asia, perhaps even including Iran, as well as Libya in northeast Africa. LNG terminals in Egypt, Greece and Turkiye itself may complete the network.

Russian gas travels via the TurkStream and Blue Stream pipelines. The total capacity of Russian pipelines is 39 billion cubic meters a year.

Photo Credit: The Cradle

TurkStream was initially projected as a four-strand pipeline, with a nominal capacity of 63 million cubic meters a year. As it stands, only two strands – with a total capacity of 31,5 billion cubic meters – have been built.

So an extension in theory is more than feasible – with all the equipment made in Russia. The problem, once again, is laying the pipes. The necessary vessels belong to the Swiss Allseas Group – and Switzerland is part of the sanctions craze. In the Baltic Sea, Russian vessels were used to finish building Nord Stream 2. But for a TurkStream extension, they would need to operate much deeper in the ocean.

TurkStream would not be able to completely replace Nord Stream; it carries much smaller volumes. The upside for Russia is not being canceled from the EU market. Evidently Gazprom would only tackle the substantial investment on an extension if there are ironclad guarantees about its security. And there’s the additional drawback that the extension would also carry gas from Russia’s competitors.

Whatever happens, the fact remains that the US-UK combo still exerts a lot of influence in Turkey – and BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell, for instance, are actors in virtually every oil extraction project across West Asia. So they would certainly interfere on the way the Turkish gas hub functions, as well on determining the gas price. Moscow has to weigh all these variables before committing to such a project.

NATO, of course, will be livid. But never underestimate hedging bet specialist Sultan Erdogan. His love story with both the BRICS and the SCO is just beginning.

*

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This article was originally published on The Cradle.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Cradle

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***

The U.S. Government Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) was started in 1990 to track injuries and deaths reported after receiving a vaccine. Congress mandated by law that the government maintain this database as part of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is a no-fault alternative to the traditional legal system for resolving vaccine injury petitions.

It was created in the 1980s, after lawsuits against vaccine companies and health care providers threatened to cause vaccine shortages and reduce U.S. vaccination rates, which could have caused a resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases.

Any individual, of any age, who received a covered vaccine and believes he or she was injured as a result, can file a petition. Parents, legal guardians and legal representatives can file on behalf of children, disabled adults, and individuals who are deceased. (Source.)

Since the emergency use authorization of the COVID-19 vaccines in December of 2020, through the latest update of the VAERS database on October 14, 2022, 84% of all deaths reported after vaccination for the past 31+ years have been reported following COVID-19 vaccines. (Source.)

The company that has produced the most vaccines resulting in deaths recorded in VAERS is Pfizer, and they held that top honor even before they partnered with Biontech to produce their mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, when they partnered with Wyeth to produce other various vaccines.

Moderna, which had never produced a vaccine before producing their mRNA COVID vaccine in 2020, now holds the second spot at nearly 24% of all deaths ever recorded following a vaccine injection. (Source.)

As the public becomes more aware of these government statistics in VAERS, there are efforts to downplay their significance. One argument is that since there were so many doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered, the statistics are naturally higher for adverse events following COVID-19 vaccines.

Well, that claim is very easy to debunk using the U.S. Government’s own statistics.

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has published a report that lists the total number of doses administered for all FDA approved vaccines from 2006 through 2021. You can view the .pdf here on the U.S. Government website.

So let’s compare the number of cases filed in VAERS and the number of deaths reported to VAERS for the second most deadly vaccine according to VAERS, which HIB, Haemophilus influenzae, a vaccine that is primarily given to babies and children under the age of 5.

Prior to the COVID-19 EUA vaccines, it was the most deadly vaccine given to children.

Here is what the CDC says about the HIB vaccines:

Why get vaccinated?

Hib vaccine can prevent Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) disease.

Haemophilus influenzae type b can cause many different kinds of infections. These infections usually affect children under 5 years of age but can also affect adults with certain medical conditions. Hib bacteria can cause mild illness, such as ear infections or bronchitis, or they can cause severe illness, such as infections of the blood. Severe Hib infection, also called “invasive Hib disease,” requires treatment in a hospital and can sometimes result in death.

Before Hib vaccine, Hib disease was the leading cause of bacterial meningitis among children under 5 years old in the United States. Meningitis is an infection of the lining of the brain and spinal cord. It can lead to brain damage and deafness.

Hib infection can also cause:

  • Pneumonia
  • Severe swelling in the throat, making it hard to breathe
  • Infections of the blood, joints, bones, and covering of the heart
  • Death

Hib vaccine is usually given in 3 or 4 doses (depending on brand).

Infants will usually get their first dose of Hib vaccine at 2 months of age and will usually complete the series at 12–15 months of age.

Children between 12 months and 5 years of age who have not previously been completely vaccinated against Hib may need 1 or more doses of Hib vaccine.

Children over 5 years old and adults usually do not receive Hib vaccine, but it might be recommended for older children or adults whose spleen is damaged or has been removed, including people with sickle cell disease, before surgery to remove the spleen, or following a bone marrow transplant. Hib vaccine may also be recommended for people 5 through 18 years old with HIV.

Hib vaccine may be given as a stand-alone vaccine, or as part of a combination vaccine (a type of vaccine that combines more than one vaccine together into one shot).

Hib vaccine may be given at the same time as other vaccines. (Source.)

This is the information about HIB vaccines that the CDC provides for doctors to give to parents.

Here is the information that they do NOT give to these parents, which is what is recorded in VAERS for the HIB vaccines:

There have been 5 vaccines approved by the FDA that contain the HIB vaccine, and since they have been on the market, there have been 2,387 recorded deaths, 1,448 recorded permanent disabilities, over 25,000 visits to the ER, and over 14,000 hospitalizations.

And remember, this is on the CDC immunization schedule, and these shots are primarily given to babies and children under the age of 5.

If you are a parent considering giving this vaccine to your child, wouldn’t you want to know these statistics? And how many children under the age of 5 get HIB each year?

It is hard to find current stats because the CDC is famous for providing “estimates” and not raw data on causes of death, but a study published in 2012 looked at data from 1999 through 2008 in 5 states and 5 metropolitan areas representing a population of 27,779,979 in 1999 and 35,559,550 in 2008.

During that 9-year period they identified 4,839 cases of HIB, which included 828 children. That’s less than 100 children per year, and no children between the age of 1 and 17 died, and among the few deaths of children under 3 months of age, half of them were born prematurely.

And yet, the CDC keeps this vaccine in their immunization schedule for children, and every year thousands of cases of adverse reactions are filed in VAERS, and dozens of children die after receiving the vaccine, and those are just the cases filed in VAERS, which is vastly under-reported and only about 1% of all cases. (Source.)

And who are the companies producing these vaccines that keep making money off of them?

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Author’s Note

This article was first published on July 8, 2016

America’s pre-emptive nuclear doctrine was firmly entrenched prior to Donald Trump’s accession to the White House. The use of nukes against North Korea has been on the drawing-board of the Pentagon for more than half a century. 

In June 2016 under the Obama administration, top military brass together with the CEOs of the weapons industry debated the deployment of nuclear weapons against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

The event was intended to sensitize senior decision makers. The focus was on building a consensus (within the Armed Forces, the science labs, the nuclear industry, etc) in favor of pre-emptive nuclear war 

It was a form of “internal propaganda” intended for senior decision makers (Top Officials) within the military as well as the weapons industry. The emphasis was on “building peace” and “global security” through the “pre-emptive” deployment of nukes (Air, Land and Sea) against four designated “rogue” countries, which allegedly are threatening the Western World. 

One of keynote speakers at the Doomsday Forum, USAF Chief of Staff for Nuclear Integration, Gen. Robin Rand, is presently involved under the helm of Secretary of Defense General Mattis in coordinating the deployment of strike capabilities to East Asia. Gen. Robin Rand heads the Air Force’s nuclear forces and bombers. His responsibility consists in “moving ahead with plans to deploy its most advanced weapons to the [East Asian] region…” Recent reports confirm an unfolding consensus within the military establishment:

“Military leaders regularly, and since the change of administration, have listed China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and ISIS as the major areas of concern for the future. From a security standpoint, tensions with North Korea continue to escalate, with reverberations throughout the region. In response to Pyongyang’s nuclear missile program, … the U.S. sped up the deployment of THAAD anti-missile interceptors to South Korea. This may reassure Seoul, and to a lesser extent Tokyo, but it has incensed Beijing.” Defense One, March 17, 2017

The DPRK is a a buffer state, a “stepping stone”. The unspoken truth is that the THAAD missiles stationed in South Korea are not intended for the DPRK, they are also slated to be used against China and Russia.

Michel Chossudovsky, April 28, 2017, revised January 21, 2017, Hiroshima Day, 6 August 2022

*     *     *

On June 21, 2017,  250 top military brass, military planners, corporate military-industrial  “defense” contractors, top officials and scientists from the nuclear weapons laboratories as well as prominent  academics gathered at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico to discuss, debate and promote the Pentagon’s One Trillion Dollar Nuclear Weapons program.

Russia is allegedly “threatening the Western World”. The objective is to develop the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons (i.e. nuclear war as a means of self-defense).

The event organized by “The Strategic Deterrent Coalition” (a non profit organization) was  funded by Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Orbital ATK, BAE Systems  among other generous donors.

Among the main speakers (see program here)  were Adm. Cecil Haney, Commander of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein, Dep. USAF Chief of Staff for Nuclear Integration, Gen. Robin Rand, Commander, Air Force Global Strike Command, Gen. (ret.) Frank Klotz, Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), as well senior officials from America’s top weapons labs including Sandia, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. Representatives from the UK, Canada, Denmark and the Republic of Korea (ROK) were also in attendance.

According to STRATCOM Commander Adm. Cecil D. Haney, (image right) “America is quickly running out of time to ensure the viability of its nuclear deterrence and must invest the funds to upgrade not only its nuclear weapons stockpile, but the missiles, submarines and bombers capable of delivering a strike we hope we never have to make”. (Albuquerque Journal, June 22, 2016)

Adm Haney refers to “deterrence”, a Cold War concept which was officially scrapped in 2002 (under the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review). What is contemplated under America’s nuclear doctrine is the first strike pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against both nuclear as well as non-nuclear states.

The enemies of America were clearly identified. The aggressor nations against which the “preemptive” use (for self-defense) of  advanced nuclear weapons is contemplated were  explicitly mentioned:

Haney presented an overview of the world’s “strategic environment” which he said may be at its most precarious point in history – in large part because of the actions of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and extremist groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida.

Russia poses a threat just by virtue of the size of its nuclear arsenal, which it continues to modernize, but it’s also improving its conventional military forces, maintaining a significant quantity of non-strategic nuclear weapons and aggressively pursuing new war-fighting technologies, he said. (Albuquerque Journal, June 22, 2016)

The event sponsored by the Strategic Deterrent Coalition (SDC) was geared towards the “education of decision-makers on the importance of a “valid nuclear triad” – strategic bombers, land-launched missiles and submarine-launched missiles – according to its board president, Sherman McCorkle.” The notion of Triad “relates to the fact that U.S. strategic nuclear weapons are based in the water, on land and in the air”

Propaganda: Sensitizing “Top Officials”

The SDC’s “educational endeavor” largely consists in building a consensus in favor of pre-emptive nuclear war (within the Armed Forces, the science labs, the nuclear industry, etc). It’s is a form of “internal propaganda” intended for senior decision makers (Top Officials) within the military as well as the weapons industry. The emphasis is “building peace” and “global security” through the “pre-emptive” deployment of nukes (Air, Land and Sea) against four designated “rogue” countries, which allegedly are threatening the Western World.

The debate was coupled with veiled threats pointing to the possible use of nuclear warheads on a first strike basis against Russia, North Korea and Iran:

Coupled with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric and “destabilizing actions in Syria and Ukraine,” Haney cautioned that “Russia must understand that it would be a serious miscalculation to consider nuclear escalation as a viable option.”

North Korea continues to undermine regional stability by conducting nuclear tests and advancing its ballistic missile technology, Haney said.

Iran’s continued involvement in Middle East conflicts and development of ballistic missile programs and cyberspace capabilities require vigilance, particularly if there are any shifts in Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he said. (Albuquerque Journal, June 22, 2016)

Theater of the absurd: the US is intent upon using nuclear weapons as a means of self defense against Al Qaeda and ISIS under the Administration’s counter-terrorism initative:

And the United States is part of an international campaign against violent extremist organizations groups “seeking to destroy our democratic way of life.”

To effectively keep adversaries and potential adversaries in check, America must maintain “a safe, secure, effective and ready nuclear deterrent.”

Lest we forget, Al Qaeda was created by the CIA and the ISIS is supported and funded by two of America’s staunchest allies: Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The One Trillion Dollar Question: “Blow up the Planet”, “Bankrupt  the Country”

“Blowing up the Planet” through the use of “peace-making nuclear bombs” is a money making undertaking, a corporate bonanza  for what Eisenhower called “the military industrial complex”:  “All three legs of the “nuclear triad” must receive considerable investments to ensure their long-term viability” (Adm. Haney, op cit).

The expenditure is for a 30-year program to “modernize” the US nuclear arsenal and production facilities. … This plan, which has received almost no attention by the mass media, includes redesigned nuclear warheads, as well as new nuclear bombers, submarines, land-based missiles, weapons labs and production plants. The estimated cost? $1,000,000,000,000.00 — or, for those readers unfamiliar with such lofty figures, $1 trillion.

Critics charge that the expenditure of this staggering sum will either bankrupt the country or, at the least, require massive cutbacks in funding for other federal government programs. (Prof. Lawrence S. Wittner,  The History News Network)

Hillary Clinton –whose election campaign is also supported by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman et al favors the first strike use of nuclear weapons:

… “the nuclear option should not at all be taken off the table. That has been my position consistently.” (ABC News, December 15, 2015)

I want the Iranians to know that if I’m president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” (ABC “Good Morning America.”, quoted by Reuters, April 22, 2008 during 2008 presidential election campaign)

The World is at a dangerous crossroads. A new arms race has been launched. It’s planning horizon is thirty years. The money allocated by the US federal government to the development of America’s pre-emptive nuclear war arsenal is of the order of one trillion dollars, that is the preliminary estimate, an astronomical amount (which could be increased):

“Today, our stockpile is the oldest it’s ever been, with the average age of a (nuclear) warhead at 27 years and growing,” he said.

The nation’s national security labs – like Sandia, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore – are key to ensuring the viability of the nuclear arsenal.

Despite the challenges, Haney said, “U.S. Strategic Command is a ready force capable of delivering comprehensive war-fighting solutions.”

In  response to this venue, the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG) organized a counter-event symposium on June 20-21. The LASG referred to the  Strategic Deterrent Coalition’s Symposium as the “Doomsday Forum”.

According to Los Alamos Study Group (LASG) director Greg Mello: “This Symposium comes at a time when ambitious US nuclear weapons plans, expected to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years, are coming under withering criticism from recent US senior military and civilian defense officials, independent analysts, members of Congress, and diplomats”.

The nuclear weapons plan constitutes a multibillion dollar bonanza, ironically, for the military industrial contractors which generously financed the Symposium:  “…Air Force nuclear weapons replacements and upgrades are expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Much of that money would go to the sponsors of this symposium.

This important event –which consists in building a consensus in favor of a possible first strike pre-emptive US nuclear attack against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea– has barely been covered by the mainstream media.

Oops….The organizers must have got their countries mixed up: North Korea was on the list of invitees. Canada was not mentioned. (see below)

 

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The Growing Chorus for Peace in Ukraine

October 27th, 2022 by Medea Benjamin

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Ukraine has been wracked by shocking destruction and deadly violence since Russia invaded the country in February. Estimates of the death toll range from a confirmed minimum of 27,577 people, including 6,374 civilians, to over 150,000. The slaughter can only get more horrific as long as all sides, including the United States and its NATO allies, remain committed to war.

In the first weeks of the war, the United States and NATO countries sent weapons to Ukraine to try to prevent Russia from quickly defeating Ukraine’s armed forces and conducting a U.S.-style “regime change” in Kyiv. But since that goal was achieved, the only goals that President Zelenskyy and his Western allies have publicly proclaimed are to recover all of pre-2014 Ukraine and decisively defeat and weaken Russia.

These are aspirational goals at best, which require sacrificing hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Ukrainian lives, regardless of the outcome. Even worse, if they should come close to succeeding, they are likely to trigger a nuclear war, making this the all-time epitome of a “no-win predicament.”

At the end of May, President Biden responded to probing questions about the contradictions in his Ukraine policy from the New York Times Editorial Board, replying that the United States was sending weapons so that Ukraine “can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”

But when Biden wrote that, Ukraine had no position at any negotiating table, thanks mainly to the conditions that Biden and NATO leaders attached to their support. In April, after Ukraine negotiated a15-point peace plan for a ceasefire, a Russian withdrawal and a peaceful future as a neutral country, the United States and United Kingdom refused to provide Ukraine with the security guarantees that were a critical part of the agreement.

As now disgraced British prime minister Boris Johnson told President Zelenskyy in Kyiv on April 9th, the “collective West” was “in it for the long run,” meaning a long war against Russia, but wanted no part in any agreement between Ukraine and Russia.

In May, Russian forces advanced through Donbas, forcing Zelenskyy to admit, by June 2nd, that Russia now controlled 20% of Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory, leaving Ukraine in a weaker, not a stronger position.

Six months after Secretary Austin declared in April that the new goal of the war was to decisively defeat and “weaken” Russia, President Biden is rejecting calls for a new peace initiative. So the United States and United Kingdom had no reservations about intervening to kill peace talks in April, but now that they’ve sold President Zelenskyy on fighting an endless war, Biden insists that he has no say in the matter if Zelenskyy rejects peace negotiations.

But it is axiomatic that wars end at the negotiating table, as Biden acknowledged to the Times. The perennial thorny question for war leaders is “When to negotiate?” The problem is that, when your side seems to be winning, you have little incentive to stop fighting. But when you appear to be losing, there is no incentive to negotiate from a weak position either, as long as you believe that the tide of war will sooner or later shift in your favor and improve your position. That was the hope on which Johnson and Biden convinced Zelenskyy to stake his country’s future in April.

Now Ukraine has launched localized counter-offensives and recovered parts of its territory. Russia has responded by throwing hundreds of thousands of fresh troops into the war and starting to systematically demolish Ukraine’s electricity grid.

The escalating crisis exposes the weakness of Biden’s position. He is gambling with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives, which he has no moral claim over, that Ukraine will somehow be in a stronger military position after a winter of war and power outages, with hundreds of thousands more Russian troops in the areas Russia controls. This is a bet on a much longer war, in which U.S. taxpayers will shell out for thousands of tons of weapons and millions of Ukrainians will die, with no clear endgame short of nuclear war.

Thanks to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the U.S. mass media, most Americans have no inkling of the deceptive way that Biden and his bubble-headed British allies cornered Zelenskyy into a suicidal decision to abandon promising peace negotiations in favor of a long war that will destroy his country.

The horrors of the war, the contradictions in Western policy, the blowback on European energy supplies, the specter of famine stalking the Global South and the rising danger of nuclear war are provoking a worldwide chorus of voices urgently calling for peace in Ukraine.

If you’re on a media diet of the thin gruel that passes for news in America these days, you may not have heard the calls for peace from UN Secretary General Guterres, Pope Francis or the leaders of 66 countries speaking at the UN General Assembly in September, representing the majority of the world’s population.

But there are also Americans calling for peace. From across the political spectrum, from retired military officers and diplomats to journalists and academics, there are “adults in the room” who recognize the dangerous contradictions of U.S. policy on Ukraine, and are joining leaders from around the world in calling for diplomacy and peace.

Image: Jack F Matlock, Jr., U.S. Ambassador to USSR and Czechoslovakia (Licensed under the Public Domain)

Jack F Matlock, Jr.jpg

Jack Matlock served as the last U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, from 1987 to 1991, after a 35-year career as a Soviet specialist in the U.S. Foreign Service. Matlock was at the embassy in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis, where he translated critical messages between Kennedy and Kruschev.

On October 17, 2022, in an article in Responsible Statecraft titled “Why the US must press for a ceasefire in Ukraine,” Ambassador Matlock wrote that as principal arms supplier to Ukraine and the sponsor of the most punitive sanctions on Russia, the United States “is obligated to help find a way out” of this crisis. The article concluded, “Until… the fighting stops, and serious negotiations get underway, the world is headed for an outcome where we all are losers.”

Another veteran U.S. diplomat who has spoken out for diplomacy over Ukraine is Rose Gottemoeller, the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019 after she served as President Obama’s senior adviser on arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. Gottemoeller recently wrote in the Financial Times that she sees no military solution to the crisis in Ukraine, but that “discreet talks” could lead to the kind of “quiet bargain” that resolved the Cuban missile crisis 60 years ago.

On the military side, Admiral Mike Mullen was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011. After President Biden chatted at a fundraising party about the war in Ukraine leading to nuclear “Armageddon,” ABC interviewed Mullen about the danger of nuclear war.

“I think we need to back off that a little bit and do everything we possibly can to get to the table to resolve this thing,” Mullen replied. “It’s got to end, and usually there are negotiations associated with that. The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.”

Economist Jeffrey Sachs was the director of the Earth Institute and now the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He has been a consistent voice for peace in Ukraine ever since the invasion. In a recent article on September 26, titled “The Great Game in Ukraine is Spinning out of Control,” Sachs quoted President Kennedy in June 1963, uttering what Sachs called “the essential truth that can keep us alive today:”

“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war,” said JFK. “To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

Sachs concluded,

“It is urgent to return to the draft peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine of late March, based on the non-enlargement of NATO… The world’s very survival depends on prudence, diplomacy, and compromise by all sides.”

Even Henry Kissinger, whose own war crimes are well documented, has spoken out on the senselessness of current U.S. policy. Kissinger told the Wall Street Journal in August,

“We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.”

In the U.S. Congress, after every single Democrat voted for a virtual blank check for arming Ukraine in May, with no provision for peacemaking, Progressive Caucus leader Pramila Jayapal and 29 other progressive Democratic Representatives recently signed a letter to President Biden, urging him to “make vigorous diplomatic efforts in support of a negotiated settlement and ceasefire, engage in direct talks with Russia, explore prospects for a new European security arrangement acceptable to all parties that will allow for a sovereign and independent Ukraine, and, in coordination with our Ukrainian partners, seek a rapid end to the conflict and reiterate this goal as America’s chief priority.”

Unfortunately, the backlash within their own party was so blistering that within 24 hours they withdrew the letter. Siding with calls for peace and diplomacy from all over the world is still not an idea whose time has come in the halls of power in Washington DC.

This is an extremely dangerous moment in history. Americans are waking up to the reality that this war threatens us with the existential danger of nuclear war, a danger most Americans thought we had survived once and for all at the end of the First Cold War. Even if we manage to avoid nuclear war, the impact of a long, bloody war will destroy Ukraine and kill millions of Ukrainians, cause humanitarian catastrophes across the Global South, and trigger a long-lasting global economic crisis.

That will relegate all humanity’s urgent priorities, from tackling the climate crisis to hunger, poverty and disease, to the back-burner for the foreseeable future.

There is an alternative. We can and must resolve this conflict through peaceful diplomacy and negotiation, to end the killing and destruction and let the people of Ukraine live in peace.

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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

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022. They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image: Biden and Jayapal at a negotiating table in October 2021 (Photo credit: The White House)

India’s GM Mustard and the 30-Year Path to Food Tyranny

October 27th, 2022 by Colin Todhunter

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A public interest litigation is currently before India’s Supreme Court which challenges the drive to commercialise the growing of genetically modified (GM) mustard in India. On 26 October 2022, however, the country’s apex regulatory body – the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee – sanctioned commercialisation of the crop.   

The central government has in the past stated commercialisation will not go ahead prior to the court’s decision, but this remains to be seen.

Approval is a significant moment for the agri biotech industry, not least because GM mustard can be regarded as a pioneering crop that could open the doors to a range of other GM food crops that are in the pipeline.

At this point, only one GM crop is legally cultivated in India, Bt cotton – designed to resist certain pests. Prominent policy makers and lobbyists have been claiming that, due to the success of Bt cotton, it should serve as a template for the introduction of GM food crops.

But this claim is not grounded in reality. Bt cotton has been far from successful and has caused immense hardship for cotton farmers (in fact, it is a template for a monumental catastrophe). This is evidentially supported by Prof Andrew Paul Gutierrez, Dr Hans R Herren and Dr Peter E Kenmore, internationally renowned agricultural researchers.

In India, Bt cotton is a failing technology that has severely negatively impacted many farmers. And before anyone says that farmers in India have consciously opted for GM cotton, they should read what researcher and academic Andrew Flachs says.

Flachs conducted fieldwork on cotton cultivation in the South Indian state of Telangana. His book Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India reveals the ugly reality of ‘choice’ and cotton cultivation on the ground.

Consider too that what is happening also goes against the recommendations of four high-level reports that have advised against the adoption of GM crops in India.

The article Agri Biotech Motivated by Monopoly Control (25 October 2022) lists these reports and describes how – through deception, scientific fraud, technological sleight of hand and regulatory jugglery – GM mustard is designed (once commercialised) to facilitate the process of (chemical-dependent) GM food crop cultivation in India.

The premise behind GM mustard is to increase yields and reduce the import bill for edible oils. However, as the article mentioned above shows, there is actually no trait for yield and this GM mustard does not outperform conventional varieties. Moreover, the increase in edible oil imports is not due to low productivity of India’s indigenous edible oils sector but the political decision to cut tarrifs on imports at the behest of global agri commodity traders.

Official reports have been scathing about India’s regulatory system for GMOs, highlighting its inadequacies and inherent serious conflicts of interest. One can only assume that given there is no need (the key prerequisite for introducing a GM crop) for GM mustard, there are other motives for its promotion.

The GM project is not about the industry’s much-touted PR slogans of ‘feeding the world’ or helping farmers’. For the sake of brevity, readers can consult the online article Challenging the Flawed Premise Behind Pushing GMOs into Indian Agriculture which dismantles these claims.

Regardless of any claimed benefits, GMOs have first and foremost been about value capture and creating market dependency. They are also about securing ownership of seed germplasm developed over centuries by farmers via acquiring intellectual property rights – corporations claim their genetic manipulation (no matter how fruitless the effect) turns a seed into a patentable product. This would restrict farmers’ access to seeds and place the biotech companies in control of cultivation and breeding.

Where India is concerned, the GM project must also be viewed as forming part of a wider dependency paradigm. There has been a three-decades-long plan to restructure the Indian economy and Indian agriculture. The plan stems from the country’s 1991 foreign exchange crisis which was used to impose IMF-World Bank debt-related ‘structural adjustment’ conditionalities.

The details of this plan appear in a 2021 article by the Mumbai-based Research Unit for Political Economy – Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago in Washington DC. Although focusing on now-repealed (due to farmer protests) farm legislation, the article locates agricultural ‘reforms’ within a broader process of Western imperialism’s increasing capture of the Indian economy.

We often hear of the need to embrace technology and ‘modern agriculture’. On the surface, all well and good. But what this really means is acquiescing to the needs of global (GM) seed and agrichemical corporations and commodity traders: fitting into global supply chains that siphon value from the food system into the hands of the billionaires who own these conglomerates (we should not forget that Bt cotton enabled Monsanto to suck hundtreds of millions of dollars from poor cotton farmers).

To achieve this, where India is concerned, it means destroying self-reliant, indigenous systems of production by deliberately making smallholder farming financially non-viable, dismantling public buffer food stocks and state-backed price support mechanisms and distribution systems.

Having cleared the way for corporate interests to control the policy space left open by the retreat of the public sector and to amalgamate farms to entrench industrial-scale agriculture, the Indian government would then be compelled to attract ‘foreign direct investment’ by implementing further neoliberal reforms. This would build up foreign reserves which would then be used to purchase agricultural commodities on the international market.

The type of ‘food security’ demanded by ‘modern agriculture’ means eradicating self-sufficiency and implementing food-import dependency on unscrupulous global conglomerates and volatile markets vulnerable to manipulation and shocks (as we are currently witnessing in 2022).

And that’s not all. Privately owned but taxpayer subsidised ‘modern agriculture’ imposes certain costs, including nutrient-poor food contaminated by GMOs and chemical additives, the use of toxic pesticides, spiralling rates of ill health, the degradation of soil, the pollution of waterways, the eradication of thriving ecosystems and the destruction of rural communities.

The GMO issue ties into the ‘development’ agenda being pushed on India. Powerful interests are being handed India’s agrifood sector on a plate and both farmers and consumers will pick up the tab.

The author is an independent writer. For more in-depth insight into what is described in this article, readers can access the free ebook ‘Food, Dispossession and Dependency: Resisting the New World Order’ by clicking on this link. 

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in Montreal.

Featured image is licensed under Creative Commons


Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agri-food corporations.

Click here to read.

Ukraine War: Climbing the Escalation Ladder to Oblivion

October 27th, 2022 by Prof. Richard Falk

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Ever since the Ukraine War started on 24 Feb 2022, the NATO response, mainly articulated and materially implemented by the U.S., has been to pour vast quantities of oil on the flames of conflict, increasing the scale of violence, the magnitude of human suffering, and dangerously increasing the risk of a disastrous outcome.

Not only did Washington mobilize the world to denounce Russia’s ‘aggression,’ but supplied advanced weaponry in great quantities to the Ukrainians to resist the Russian attack, and did all it could at the UN and elsewhere to build a punitive coalition hostile to Russia but coupled this with a variety of sanctions and the demonization of Putin as a notorious war criminal unfit to govern. This perspective of state propaganda was faithfully conveyed by a self-censoring Western media filter that graphically portrayed on a daily basis the horrors of the war experienced by the Ukrainian civilian population and a newly West-oriented enthusiasm for the ICC gathering as much evidence as possible of Russian war crimes.

Such a posture contradicted its intense past opposition to ICC efforts to gather evidence for an investigation of war crimes by non-signatories in relation to the U.S. role in Afghanistan or Israel’s role in occupied Palestine. To some degree such one-sidedness of presentation was to be expected, but its intensity in relation to Ukraine has been dangerously irresponsible and amateurish with respect to the wider human interests at stake, and in a profound sense, the wellbeing of Ukraine and its people.

Even Stephen Walt, an influential commentator on U.S. foreign policy, who is a prudent critic of the Biden failure to do his best to shift the bloody encounter in Ukraine from the battlefield to diplomatic domains, nevertheless joins the war-mongering chorus by misleadingly asserting without qualification that “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegal, immoral, and unjustifiable.” [Walt, “Why Washington Should Take Russian Nuclear Threats Seriously,” Foreign Policy, May 5, 2022] It is not that such a characterization is incorrect, but unless softened by explanations of context it lends credibility to the war-oriented, self-righteous mentality displayed by the Biden presidency. Perhaps Walt and others of similar persuasion were striking this posture of going along with this public portrayal of the Ukraine Crisis as part of striking a Faustian Bargain to gain a seat at the table so that their message of caution could be effectively delivered.

To be clear, even if it can be argued that Russia/Putin have launched a war that is unlawful, immoral, and unjustified, context is important if peace is to be restored and catastrophe avoided. For one thing, the Russian attack may be all of those things alleged, and yet form part of a geopolitical pattern of established behavior that the U.S. has itself established in a series of wars starting with the Vietnam War, and notably more recently with the Kosovo War, Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War. None of these wars were legal, moral, and justifiable, although each enjoyed a geopolitical rationale that made them persuasive with U.S. foreign policy elites and its closest alliance partners. Of course, two wrongs do not make a right, but in a world where geopolitical actors enjoy a license to pursue their strategic interests, it is not objectively defensible to so self-righteously condemn Russia without taking account of what the U.S. has been doing around the world for several decades.

In a somewhat insightful fit of frustration, George W. Bush after a failure to gain UN Security Council authorization in 2003 for the use of regime-changing force against Iraq, declared that the UN would lose its ‘relevance’ if it failed to go along with the American imperial plan of action, and so it did. The ambiguity as to international law arises from the UN Charter own equivocation, asserting that all non-defensive uses of force are prohibited, a position reinforced by the amended Rome Statute governing the International Criminal Court by declaring ‘aggression’ as a crime against the peace, while conferring a conferring a right of veto.

How can this right of veto be conferred on the five permanent members of the Security Council, which has the effect of precluding any decision that clashes with their strategic interests, be reconciled with the prohibition on aggression.

Such a right of exception is complemented by the experience of international criminal law, which from Nuremberg to the present has exempted from accountability dominant geopolitical actors, even for such incredible acts as dropping atomic bombs on overwhelmingly civilian targets at the end of World War II.

This gray zone separating law from power is further reinforced by the existence of spheres of influence claimed and dominated by geopolitical actors, which if territorially proximate and identified as such, tend to be respected by adversaries. Such compromised sovereignty of these borderland countries is descriptive of the mutual tolerance exhibited during the Cold War of the division of Europe, showing forbearance even in the face of ‘unlawful’ violent interventions. In this sense, Ukraine finds itself in the unenviable position of Mexico. Long ago the great Mexican cultural figure, Octavio Paz, proclaimed the tragedy of his country ‘to be so far from God and so close to the United States.’

These considerations are mentioned here not to defend, much less exonerate Russia, but to show that the world order context of the Ukraine War is deeply problematic in relation to normative authority, especially when invoked in such a partisan manner. In contemporary geopolitical relations, as distinct from normal state-to-state or international relations, precedent takes the place of norms and rule-governed behavior. Antony Blinken has muddied the waters of international discourse by falsely claiming that the U.S., unlike adversaries China and Russia, is as observant of rule-governed behavior as are ‘normal states’ in relation to peace and security.

April 27, 1999, Surdulica, Serbia, in the series of  NATO’s civilian bombing, the house of Milić was hit by projectile and the whole family was killed: Milorad (15 years), Stamenka (65), Aleksandar (35), Miljana (14), Vladimir (11), Vesna (35) and three more neighbours who sheltered in the house were killed as well

In this sense, it is appropriate to look back at NATO’s clearly unlawful war of 1999 that fragmented Serbia by granting Kosovo political independence and territorial sovereignty before uncritically condemning the Russian annexation of four parts of eastern Ukraine after admittedly dubious referenda. Again, it is important to recognize that there may be cases where the fragmentation of existing states is justifiable on humanitarian grounds and others where it is not, but to claim that Russia overstepped the limits of law in a context where power has shaped behavior and political outcomes in similar cases is to prepare the public for a wider war rather than leading it to seek and be pragmatically receptive to a diplomatic compromise.

This contextual understanding of the Ukraine War is in my judgment highly relevant as it makes the current fashion of mounting legal, moral, and political arguments of condemnation distract from following an otherwise rational, prudent, and pragmatic courses of action, which from the beginning strongly supported an all-out effort to encourage an immediate ceasefire followed by negotiations aiming at a durable political arrangement not only between Russia and Ukraine, but also NATO/U.S. and Russia. That the U.S. Government never to this day has indicated any interest, much less a commitment to stopping the killing and encouraging diplomacy, despite the mounting costs and risks of prolonged warfare in Ukraine should be shocking to the conscience of peace-minded persons and patriots of humanity everywhere.

Beyond this, catastrophic costs are presently being borne by many vulnerable societies throughout the world from the spillover effects of anti-Russian sanctions and their impact on food and energy supplies and pricing. Such a deplorable situation, likely to get worse as the war is prolonged and intensified, is now also bringing closer to reality growing risks of the use of nuclear weapons as Putin’s alternatives may be narrowing to acknowledging defeat or personally falling from power. While not relenting a bit on implementing an aggressive approach to gaining Ukraine’s ambitions of victory, Biden himself acknowledges that any use of even a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine would with near certitude lead to Armageddon. This duality of assessment (combining escalating the war and anxiety as to where it might lead) seems like an embrace of geopolitical insanity rather than a recognition of the somber realities at stake.

As always actions speak louder than words. Blinken facing a rising public clamor for negotiations responds with his usual feckless evasions. In this instance, contending that since Ukraine is the victim of Russian aggression it alone has the authority to seek a diplomatic resolution and the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine’s maximal war aims, including even their extension to Crimea, which has been part of Russia since 2014.

Context also matters in relation to the conduct of the war. Its major escalation within the month of the sabotage of Nord Stream gas pipeline to Europe, which Blinken again confounded by calling it ‘a tremendous opportunity’ to make weaken Russia and lead to greater European energy independence. Such an operation initially implausibly attributed to Russia, yet later more or less acknowledges as part of the expansion of the war by reliance on ‘terrorist’ tactics of combat.

Its latest expression is the suicide bombing of the strategic Kerch Bridge on October 7th, connecting Crimea and Russia, a major infrastructure achievement of the Putin period of Russian leadership and supply line for Russian troops in Southern parts of Ukraine. These operations contain the fingerprints of the CIA and seem designed as encouragement to the Ukrainian resolve to go all out for a decisive victory, sending Putin unmistakable signals that the U.S. remains unreceptive to a responsible geopolitics of compromise. The U.S. anger directed at Saudi Arabia for cutting its oil production is one more sign a commitment to a victory scenario in Ukraine as well as a reaction against the Saudi resistance to U.S. hegemonic geopolitics. With such provocations, it is hardly surprising, although highly unlawful and immoral, for Russia to retaliate by unleashing its version of ‘shock and awe’ against the civilian centers of ten Ukrainian cities. Such is the vicious escalation!

Always lurking in the background, and at Ukraine’s and the world’s expense, is Washington’s geopolitical opportunism, that is, seeking to defeat Russia and deter China from daring to challenge the hegemonic unipolarity achieved after the Soviet disintegration in 1992. It this huge investment in its militarist identity as the sole ‘global state’ that alone explains this cowboy approach to nuclear risk-taking and the tens of billions expended to empower Ukraine.

Such a tragic political drama unfolds as the peoples of the world and their governments, along with the United Nations, watch this horrendous spectacle unfold, seemingly helpless witnesses not only to the carnage but to their own national destinies.

*

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Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London,  Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute. He directed the project on Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy at UCSB and formerly served as director the North American group in the World Order Models Project. Between 2008 and 2014, Falk served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine. His book, (Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance (2014), proposes a value-oriented assessment of world order and future trends. His most recent books are Power Shift (2016); Revisiting the Vietnam War (2017); On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and Disarmament (2019); and On Public Imagination: A Political & Ethical Imperative, ed. with Victor Faessel & Michael Curtin (2019). He is the author or coauthor of other books, including Religion and Humane Global Governance (2001), Explorations at the Edge of Time (1993), Revolutionaries and Functionaries (1988), The Promise of World Order (1988), Indefensible Weapons (with Robert Jay Lifton, 1983), A Study of Future Worlds (1975), and This Endangered Planet (1972). His memoir, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim was published in March 2021 and received an award from Global Policy Institute at Loyala Marymount University as ‘the best book of 2021.’ He has been nominated frequently for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2009.

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***

The Wall Street Journal, citing sources close to the Saudi government, reported that Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman commented to his close team on perceived blunders committed by United States President Joe Biden. More interestingly, according to the report, the crown prince was not afraid to insult the elderly US president either.

The relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia seems to be far from reaching a stable point. This is at a time when the West is seeking an agreement that will allow it to stem the rise in energy prices. Relations between the two nations are cooling due to OPEC+’s refusal to boost oil production despite the meeting between Biden and the crown prince in July.

It was hoped that Washington’s request to the Saudi-led OPEC+ would see inflation reduce in the energy market, weeks before the total embargo on Russian gas and oil in Europe is applied, which will likely aggravate prices even more.

In the midst of this tension, The Wall Street Journal revealed that there is a direct mockery of the US president from the Saudi upper echelons as he constantly suffers from memory lapses, confusion and various errors that have called into question his mental clarity. According to the outlet, Mohammed bin Salman has questioned Biden’s mental abilities and said that he prefers former President Donald Trump.

The sources said that “members of the Saudi government have been privately mocking US president Joe Biden and his mental acuity.” The same sources added that the Saudi leader told his advisers that he has not been impressed by Biden since he was vice president during the Obama administration.

For his part, since he took office, Biden refused for over a year to speak with the Saudi crown prince. According to the news report, at their meeting last July, members of the Saudi government felt that Biden did not want to be there.

Geopolitical and economic forces have been driving wedges in the US-Saudi relationship for years, but the feud between Biden and the prince has deepened tensions. According to Aaron David Miller, a veteran US diplomat in the Middle East and current fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, the relationship between Washington and Riyadh has rarely been so acrimonious.

“Rarely has the chain of broken expectations and perceived insults and humiliations been greater than they are now,” Miller was quoted by the WSJ as saying. “There’s almost no trust and absolutely no mutual respect.”

Likewise, the WSJ pointed out that the decision of OPEC+ to reduce its oil production by up to two million barrels per day was a decision that, from the perspective of the Biden government, brought the Saudis closer to Russia. The Saudis, for their part, see an opportunity to assert their own interests in a world in which the US is not the undisputed superpower.

Following the article’s publication, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan denied that the crown prince had ever mocked Biden.

“These allegations made by anonymous sources are entirely false. The kingdom’s leaders have always held the utmost respect for US presidents, based on the kingdom’s belief in the importance of having a relationship based on mutual respect,” said Prince Faisal.

However, it is recalled that in April, a state-owned Saudi TV channel aired a comedy skit of Vice President Kamala Harris having to constantly correct Biden and keep him awake.

Saudi-US ties have been strained since OPEC+ announced a huge oil production cut earlier this month to shore up oil prices despite US pressure. The US president warned Saudi Arabia on October 11 that it would face “consequences” in the wake of production cuts that come as the world struggles to cope with high energy prices due to the war in Ukraine.

The decision by OPEC+ undermines the EU’s plans to impose a cap on the price of Russian oil. The Democratic party are especially annoyed with the production cut as it comes before the crucial midterm elections next month.

Although Saudi Arabia said that the production cut by two million barrels per day was not aimed at driving up prices and was taken to stabilise the oil market, it does not contribute to the alleviation of energy prices in the West and therefore the cost-of-living crisis. These factors will have a negative impact for the Democratic Party in the midterm elections, which makes it the most immediate issue Biden has with the Saudis. And although the Saudis denied mocking Biden, there are very few who would actually believe this.

*

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

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***

FACT: Likud’s far-Right, annexation/settlement policy involves forced occupation by the IDF: the violent razing of Arab houses and villages and the killing of those, mainly young Palestinians,  defending their homes, businesses and families – continuously since 1947. This atrocity is anathema to democracy, justice and morality, as well as a deliberate violation of Resolution 2334 that was passed by 14-0 votes in the Security Council of the United Nations, in December 2016.

FACT:  The state of Israel is the only undeclared nuclear weaponised power in the world and, as such, is not a ratified party to the IAEA, the NPT, the OPCW, the CWC or the BWC* and, therefore, the only UN member state that treats the global community with such complete contempt.

FACT:  It is also the only state in the world that is supported militarily and economically by the American taxpayer to the extent of billions of US dollars every year, upon the authority of the AIPAC, Christian Zionist, lobby-influenced, US Congress.  In effect, Israel is the 51st  State of the Union albeit not subject to US law. Consequently, it has grown to be a constant, belligerent threat to both the indigenous Palestinian Arab, the entire Middle East and the wider world.

FACT:  Equally important is the effect of US-Israeli policies of immigration and illegal settlement in former Palestine upon the worldwide Jewish diaspora, centred in New York, Paris and London – who total in the region of eight million. They are now increasingly subject to antisemitic invective and action in their communities by those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause – both on campus and generally – who are clearly incensed by the obvious injustice against a dispossessed, indigenous people of 5m whose families have lived in Palestine for over a thousand years as the dominant demographic.

FACT:  The acceptance of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, although widely adopted, does nothing to ameliorate this shocking situation and is, sadly, often just a distraction.

FACT: The status quo that has allowed the government of one of the smallest countries in the world, Israel,  to become a secret nuclear power capable of destroying an entire continent with its reportedly uninspected, 100-200 ICBMs / nuclear warheads, in its underground storage silos/ bunkers at the Negev Nuclear Research Centre in Dimona and the Jericho Missile Base at Sdot-Micha, is unconscionable and one of the most potentially dangerous factors that could lead to nuclear, world war (WW3), today.

Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal should be de-weaponised, and its government made to comply with the resolution of the United Nations Security Council, failing which there should be a total trade embargo instituted upon all Israeli exports, both to the EU and worldwide.

When the threat of nuclear WMD is removed, and compliance with the will of the UN Security Council, observed,  then would global trade be resumed and the Israeli state returned to full membership of the international community.

Post script: Israel’s current refusal to send to Ukraine military aid, is likely related to its close political and military arrangement with Putin, both being Russian-speaking, non-members of NATO.  Looking both ways is a not an unusual characteristic of Israeli government policy.

*

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Hans Stehling (a pen name) is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

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***

Watch Christine Anderson speak about COVID-19 at a press conference with other members of the European Parliament.

“It was a gigantic lie what they told us that the vaccines will prevent you from catching the virus or prevent the transmission. … Well none of that is true, as it turns out. And based on that lie, all of the mandates, all of the lockdowns, pharmaceutical measures such as wearing masks, staying-at-home, curfews — all of that were based on that gigantic lie; and yet, they will not acknowledge it.”

*

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 

Purchase directly from the Global Research Online Store

You may also purchase directly at DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page(NOTE: User-friendly)

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Video: Pakistan Coup Regime Bans Imran Khan, Dissidents Killed, as US Eyes China Ties, Israel Normalization

By Junaid S. Ahmad and Ben Norton, October 27, 2022

After Prime Minister Imran Khan was overthrown in a US-backed soft coup, Pakistan’s unelected “imported government” has banned the country’s most popular politician from office, sparking huge protests.

“Oath Keepers”, American Justice and “the Secret ‘American’ Army”

By Brett Redmayne-Titley, October 27, 202

While the destructive monocracy strangely known as the United States House of Representatives continues its evisceration of the US Constitution while criminalizing peaceful public decent and factually derived free speech opposition, it is of no surprise that Americans know little about the Oath Keepers.

Sudanese Continue Demonstrations One Year After the Latest Military Coup

By Abayomi Azikiwe, October 27, 2022

It has been one year since the latest military seizure of power in the Republic of Sudan where a committed movement continues to protest against the suppression of civilian democracy in one of Africa’s most oil-rich states.

How U.S. and Allies Increasingly Rely Upon “Theft and Asset Seizures” to Conquer the Rest of the World

By Eric Zuesse, October 27, 2022

On October 26th, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin spoke the literal truth when he said that Ukraine “has actually lost its sovereignty and is directly controlled by the United States, which uses it as a battering ram against Russia.”

Tactical Nuclear Fantasists

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, October 27, 2022

Bogeyman politics tends to be flatly unimaginative.  The image of the nuclear-mad Russian President, counting his diminishing options, has caught the imagination of press and propaganda outlets across the West.  Will Mad Vlad go the distance and deploy a nuclear weapon in Ukraine?

The European Union as the Modern Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation?

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, October 27, 2022

In 1946, ex-British war PM, Sir Winston Churchill delivered his famous Zurich speech calling for the establishment of the United States of Europe. However, his idea of a united (Western) Europe excluded his native country – the UK. At that time, he envisaged West Europe as composed of independent, free, and sovereign states that would rise from the ashes of WWII and reach for a destiny of unprecedented harmony and democracy.

Moscow Denounces Ukrainian Plan to Use “Dirty Bomb” Against Its Own People

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, October 27, 2022

Once again, Kiev acts in a destabilizing way and tries to escalate the conflict to higher levels of violence. The Russian government recently reported, based on intelligence data, that the Ukrainian forces are planning to use a “dirty bomb” in a false flag operation against Moscow.

Video: China’s President Xi Jinping Secures Third Term – And Earns Western Criticism

By Peter Koenig, Haz Al-Din, and Press TV, October 27, 2022

After closing on 22 October of the 20th Chinese Communist Party (CPC) Congress, President Xi Jinping was reappointed for a third 5-year term as China’s leader. This was expected. Also expected was that he would reassemble the Politburo and his innermost circles with loyalists.

Belgrade Forum’s Appeal to Endorse Dialogue, Diplomacy and Detente as the Only Possible Path for Preventing a Global Conflict that Threatens the Future of Humanity

By Belgrade Forum, October 27, 2022

The Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals expresses its deepest concern regarding the worsening of the global confrontation which is accompanied by a deep-seated economic and social crisis in Europe as well as worldwide. This crisis which is worsening on a daily basis, constitutes a threat to global life, peace and security.

75th Anniversary of the Hollywood Blacklist Takes on Added Significance with Escalation of New Cold War

By Ed Rampell, October 25, 2022

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Hollywood Blacklist. On October 27, 1947, screenwriter John Howard Lawson, the first member of what came to be known as the “Hollywood Ten,” testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC).

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***

“Speaking of contempt of Congress, the real contempt is the existence of the January 6th Committee in the first place. It has been a partisan show trial from the beginning, where the only two “Republican” Members were not chosen by Republicans but by Nancy Pelosi.” – Former US Congressman Ron Paul (TX)

While the destructive monocracy strangely known as the United States House of Representatives continues its evisceration of the US Constitution while criminalizing peaceful public decent and factually derived free speech opposition, it is of no surprise that Americans know little about the Oath Keepers.

Image: Founder Stewart Rhodes (Photo by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Founder and alleged insurrectionist, Stewart Rhodes, is currently on trial charged with Seditious Conspiracy. But Rhodes’ lot as the star of yet another DNC-orchestrated show trial is more a metaphor for the ongoing shrinkage of, at least, the First, Second, Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections. This trial is rigged to silence Rhodes, the Oath Keepers and their important reminder by way of example to a rapidly growing American army: That their Oath of Service is to country and the American people… not the government.

When correctly detailed it is the platform offered by the Oath Keepers that is on trial because that “oath”provides hope, not fear, to a hopeless America struggling under the grinding boot of increasing monocracy.

Those Oath Keepers- as you will read– have already defeated the US government without firing a shot.

Twice.

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Since the DNC picked Merrick Garland as the DOJ’s capo de capo arrests regarding the legitimate Jan 6 protests have resulted in brutal pre-trial incarceration of Americans with opposing factually based viewpoints regarding the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election. This witch hunt has reached Stazi-like proportions.

From the non-violent Jan 6 protesters who did not enter the Capitol building to parents speaking out against their DNC-controlled state forcing its Woke whims on their children’s genitalia, or the FBI’s fabrication of crimes against dissidents (as seen in the ridiculous Gretchen Witmer kidnapping entrapment), Garland has weaponized the American judicial system as another DNC tool used to retain control by crushing the power of First Amendment protest.

Hence, Rhodes and the Oath Keepers, like the US Constitution, are public enemy #1.

Image: Billboard, Pine River, MN, July 2015 (Photo by Myotus, CC0)

But informed Americans would do well to look through this media distortion and censorship at the real motive to this trial, the same ulterior motive of the Kangaroo Court of a Jan. 6 Committee…keeping Donald Trump from being elected again by criminalizing legitimate opposition.

All this, to feed an utterly corrupt DNC and their pet RINOs.

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Who’s On First? What’s On Second?

When a government crushes the First and therefore primal Constitutional Amendment, one scripted from rebellion, that government  forces the need for the Second.

Or, so I was told. By two Oath Keepers.

Elmer Stewart Rhodes III is the founder of the much-maligned national organization, the Oath Keepers. He sits in jail, on trial with four other Oath Keepers; Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, and Thomas Caldwell. All are charged within the archaic Insurrection Act.

In total, eleven Oath Keepers are facing Seditious Conspiracy charges. Oath Keepers Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo are set to go on trial this November.

The Justice Department has so far charged more than 870 people in connection with the Capitol protests. As of last month, about 300 people have pleaded guilty to misdemeanors, and eighty have pleaded guilty to felonies. Approximately 132 people have been sentenced to a period of incarceration, while at least twenty-one of them have been sentenced to prison.

Unlike your average gun-totting liquor store robber or knife-wielding, smash and grab dept. store assailant of colour, there is no bail for these five Americans. Punishment before trial has been routine and outrageous for many who gathered to peacefully protest, on Jan 6, 2021, a very questionable presidential election on the very day the Electoral College was to be certified in favour of Joe, “the Big Guy,” Biden.

As one of the very few reporters who managed to get the factual allegations of this historic election fraud to the public eye- thanks to the courage of his publishers- those in doubt of this fraud would do well to consider parts One thru Five of this series [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] that detailed the multi-pronged attack by the DNC- again– on a presidential election.

The case against Rhodes and the other Oath Keepers amounts to, according to the prosecution, that on Jan. 6, 2021, Oath Keepers were captured on camera storming the Capitol in military-style “stack” formation. Rhodes isn’t accused of going inside the Capitol, but phone records show he was communicating with Oath Keepers who did enter around the time of the riot, and he was seen with members outside afterwards, according to court documents.

The defendants do not deny this portion of the allegations. They are proud of them.

Tear Gas outside United States Capitol (Photo by Tyler Merbler, CC BY 2.0)

 A conviction for seditious conspiracy calls for up to 20 years behind bars. The last time prosecutors secured a seditious conspiracy conviction at trial was in 1995 in the case against Islamic militants who plotted to bomb New York City landmarks.

On behalf of the five defendants, the defence according to their attorneys will show that Rhodes and his four co-defendants were in Washington on Jan. 5 and 6 to do security for events like they’ve done throughout the 12-year history of the Oath Keepers.

For those familiar with the Oath Keepers and their past appearances when needed this defence is quite plausible.

Rhodes did not enter the Capitol and was explicit to the members not to bring weapons to the protest site. The prosecution says all were there to overthrow the government. The defense says that all intended to defend the congress from the DNC’s Antifa and related thuggery. The judge is already in the bag. The prosecution is fabricating evidence. The jury has been rigged.

And, Elmer Stewart Rhodes? He is… absolutely fucked!

Of course, you won’t read that in The Times.

*

A Country Borne of Insurrection

“The Insurrection Act has been there from the beginning, but it really got strengthened up post-Civil War. …it gives the president the plenary authority… for him to determine when there’s an insurrection in effect”- Stewart Rhodes- Founder/ The Oath Keepers.

True.

Attorneys for Rhodes said he hoped Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act in response to widespread rioting, looting, and vandalism that occurred throughout 2020 and the likelihood of Trump using it on Jan 6.

The Insurrection Act traces its earliest roots to 1792 with the Calling Forth Act, which was repealed and replaced by the Militia Act of 1795. The Insurrection Act of 1807 was then enacted by the Ninth Congress. The Suppression of Rebellion Act of 1861 and the Ku Klux Klan (Civil Rights) Act of 1871 are the other two pieces of what collectively is now known as the Insurrection Act.

As reported by Joseph M. Hanneman of The Epoch Times, The Insurrection Act has been legally invoked 30 times by 17 presidents, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York-based law and policy centre.

“The Insurrection Act allows the president to deploy the military inside the United States and use it against Americans, making it one of the executive branch’s most potent emergency powers,” the Brennan Center’s Joseph Nunn and Elizabeth Goitein wrote in the organization’s guide to the Insurrection Act.

Bright told The Epoch Times that the Oath Keepers case involves the intersection of…

 “two vague, broad, centuries-old laws that ironically share similar characteristics. Seditious conspiracy proscribes conspiring to oppose the execution of federal laws, and the Insurrection Act can be used to quell such a conspiracy.

“… But, here, in its theory of prosecution, the government potentially argues, via several filings and various motions, that asking a president to invoke the Insurrection Act to suppress a seditious conspiracy is itself a seditious conspiracy.”[emph. added]

Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act, but Trump had previously threatened to use it during a June 2, 2020 speech outside the White House in the Rose Garden. “The Act does confer broad authority to presidents to use the militia to quell ‘unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages’ or ‘any insurrection, domestic violence … or conspiracy,”  Rhodes attorney James Lee Bright wrote in a memorandum filed with the court.

If this duplicity was being heard by an impartial jury it would play a major role in whether these five Oath Keepers defendants on trial for seditious conspiracy in Washington are convicted of an alleged plot to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6 or acquitted because one can’t conspire to do something that is already legal.

Rhodes’ rationale seems legit when considering that at the 2016 Republican National Convention, the Oath Keepers were used to provide “security” and then to defend shops and citizens from DNC-inspired anti-police violence and BLM protesters in the summer and fall of 2020.

In an interview with two FBI agents on May 3, 2021, Rhodes said his big concern leading up to Jan. 6 was Antifa making good on threats to sack the White House.

“And our big concern was Antifa,” said Rhodes. “My concern was Antifa was gonna go kinetic.”  Rhodes offered to testify live before the House January 6 panel but was refused.

The prosecution will have none of it. However, from personal knowledge and briefly interviewing several more Oath Keeper over the last seven years after- as you will read-  meeting two Oath Keepers by chance in 2015, Rhodes and the Oath Keepers members are not stupid, nor an undisciplined militia wanting a shootout. Examples of their successes on behalf of Americans show this deliberate and metered approach.

The Oath Keepers were founded by Rhodes in 2009. Rhodes is a former Army paratrooper and Yale-educated lawyer, who clerked for Arizona Supreme Court Justice Mike Ryan before becoming a staffer for Texas Libertarian and former Republican Representative Ron Paul. In founding the Oath Keepers, Rhodes’ mission was simple, clear, and effective: To remind and clarify to all Military and Police, both veterans and active duty, the true meaning of their Oath of Serviceand to remind them all that they are increasingly likely to be called on to honour that oath.

Soon.

With the rise of authoritarianism on both sides of the aisle in the US congress Rhodes message- I have been told repeatedly- was an easy sell.

Reportedly, over 200,000  have accepted this epiphany.

Correctly Defining American Justice

This trial is much too important not to be rigged.

In reviewing the judge, Amit Mehta, a 2014 Obama appointee to the DC court, his decisions have already shown his predilection for DNC bootstraps. As prosecutors and defence lawyers worked to narrow down the pool of 120 jurors to the final panel of twelve and  four alternates – who will all remain secret- Mehta, when asked about the jury, stated with a straight face,

“By and large… jurors came to the selection process with no preconceived notions about the Oath Keepers or the defendants.”

Really?

Reportedly, jury selection featured those with a pro-administration bent: An employee at the US Agency for International Development; a defense contractor whose wife works at the Justice Department; and a defense lobbyist. Another potential juror said she was a social acquaintance of Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunne, who publicly testified in July before the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, election protests and an elementary school principal who has a close friend who was close with a police Officer Sicknick, who died of natural causes a day later (which they waited over three months to release).

Mehta defending the impartiality of the selected jury flew in the face of a Reuters report that at least two of the prospective jurors questioned compared the Jan. 6 riot to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks carried out twenty-one years ago by jihadist terrorists.

Mehta also denied the defence’s very prudent Motion for a Change of Venue after  survey results were submitted to the court showing a biased local jury pool within Washington DC with 68% of the respondents holding an “Unfavorable View of the Oath Keepers.”

Next, when defence attorneys arrived at DC District Court on the first Tuesday morning, the prosecution suddenly provided four terabytes of new information and evidence for them to review at the last minute. This is a move right out of the UK Assange extradition trial (article: here) Despite being only days from the trial and the defense filing a Motion for Continuance to properly address this new alleged evidence, Mehta refused.

Next, in what was certainly designed to prejudice the jury, Mehta denied the defense’s motion to bar the introduction of allegations against another Oath Keeper, former Green Beret Jeremy Brown. The FBI, during a raid on his property nine months later somehow found two hand grenades in the RV he drove to DC in preparation for Jan 6.

However, as the defense proved to Mehta, a mixture of DNA was found on the pin of one grenade. Male DNA was also found on the body of the other grenade. Brown was not a match to any of the DNA on the explosives, according to a report from the FBI Laboratory in Huntsville, Ala.

Regardless, Mehta ruled in an omnibus order (pdf) on Sept. 6, that evidence about the grenades was admissible. These allegations and the seemingly planted evidence although unrelated to the five defendants will certainly affect the jury and leave the defence to wipe the fabricated mud from out of their eyes.

Brown has said he believes the September 2021 raid on his property and federal indictments were retaliation for his refusal to become an FBI informant and spy on the Oath Keepers. Agents from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force met with Brown at a Florida restaurant in December 2020, according to a detailed letter (pdf) he sent to The Epoch Times on Dec. 31, 2021.

Brown is scheduled to go on trial separately on Dec. 5 in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

With the judge and jury firmly in the bag, and all video recordings from the Jan 6 event very conveniently missing without credible explanation, the FBI is leaving little more to chance.

The FBI arrested Attorney Kellye Sorelle on the first Thursday morning after she secretly told attorneys for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes that she would testify in defense of Rhodes.

Jonathon Moseley, who previously represented Oath Keepers defendant Kelly Meggs before his law license was revoked, said in an FBI interview that video and testimony from a U.S. Capitol Police officer show the Oath Keepers protected the officer from an angry mob near the Capitol Rotunda on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021.

Conveniently for the prosecution, the FBI had previously obtained a  court order sealing this important evidence from availability to the defense.

“This document—together with a photograph of the moment inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6—proves that the prosecution is lying to the jury,” Moseley said in the statement (pdf). “No one who engages in seditious conspiracy or insurrection stops to come to the aid of the police against the mob.

The FBI document in question is a Form 302 summary of officer Harry Dunn’s interview with two special agents. It was brought to Mehta’s attention on Oct. 6. Prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler informed Mehta that Moseley was “threatening” to release a sealed document. In response, Mehta took the unusual step of suggesting the news media covering the trial to post messages to Moseley on social media saying that he would be jailed if he released the document.

The two FBI agents interviewed Dunn on May 18, 2021, about the incident in the Small House Rotunda. According to video footage from an independent journalist, and portions of the FBI summary of Dunn’s interview reviewed by The Epoch Times, a group of Oath Keepers came upon a volatile standoff in the Small House Rotunda at 2:48 p.m. on January 6. The Oath Keepers “got in between that cop and the Trump supporters and calmed things down and de-escalated the situation,” Rhodes said, “…and protected him.”

Going further, another FBI Special Agent-Justin Eller-admitted he did not see/ hear anything illegal in the Oath Keepers communications before Jan. 6.

Courtroom observers have noticed prosecutors using other outrageous evidence to inflame the jury. They showed weapons taken from defendant Watkins’ Ohio apartment. Watkins is a registered gun owner. There was no evidence showing these weapons were in DC.

The prosecution next highlighted a helmet with a medic cross and a tactical vest with medical supplies. Watkins is trained to serve as a medic and was preparing to assist in the event of an emergency at the rally earlier that day.

*

The Oath Keepers and a Bomb Shell Story…Of Censorship

It was the winter of 2015 and I was in DC on business for a few days. I had heard rumors of a rising underground group, The Oath Keepers. Apparently, Rhodes had quietly reminded active duty and military veterans of their Oath of Service, previously taken, to defend the US Constitution and the American people- from all threats, foreign…and domestic.

Oath Keepers logo

Not surprisingly, many heartedly agreed. More than 200,000 was the legend.

Image: Oath Keepers logo (Licensed under the Public Domain)

As an aficionado of America’s systemic decline at the hands of its own elected representatives, I was interested to hear more.

While at lunch in DC with two former ranking veterans, one an Army Staff Sergeant and the other a Navy aircraft carrier pilot, I casually brought up what I had heard. To my surprise, both admitted membership enthusiastically.

This conversation lead to my on-scene expose, “The Secret ‘American’ Army,” an article that detailed Rhodes and the Oath Keepers, and when published created an unexpected and huge reaction. This disproportionate response and the resultant censorship of the story was the certification of just how worried the American Stazi and its media machine were regarding any accurate public acknowledgement of the Oath Keepers.

And that was in 2015.

The 2015 article, “The Secret ‘American’ Army” was first published during my time as an editor for Op-ed News. At the time there were far fewer news websites, and OEN was, then, a rising quality publication. As an editor for OEN and author of some sixty articles, I could publish directly. The piece went out on a Monday morning. By 10 am it was number one, and the FaceBook and internal metrics showed it going viral. Fast.

At approx 11:45 AM the article vanished.

Having always had a cordial relationship with the publisher of OEN, Rob Kall, I phoned him which was not unusual due to my regular on-scene reporting. His screaming commenced on the second ring.

I was accused of supporting a “pernicious” group of “supremacists.” Kall continued with several more exclamation points of his displeasure at a slightly lower volume.

I, of course, defended my piece as accurate investigative reporting on a controversial topic, ie., damn good copy.

This he did not challenge, only the subject. But he pulled the piece, anyway.

This parable of Gate Keeper censorship by alternative media will be expanded on in a subsequent article, “Shining ‘The Light’ on the Lie of Alternative Media”, however my displeasure with Kall and his censorship was expressed sincerely in my immediate resignation. The fall-out lead to other resignations. Kall had made a serious error in judgment in stoking the ire of investigative journalists working in concert.

Much was revealed about Rob Kall and OEN, to be discussed subsequently, but it was his likely source of funding, revealed by another journalist, that was very possibly the behind-the-scenes reason for him pulling a very popular and factual expose.

As proof of the popularity of the topic, when next writing for Press TV/ Iran, the article ran under the same title. It immediately went viral, again. It remains in the top ten of all my 200-plus published articles.

I live in an area with the largest Marine Corp. base in America, a naval base, two Air Force bases and more than our share of well-armed cops. So, as it was in the opening article, I have kept an eye open for any opportunity to ask, “The Question.”

Since the OEN article was first published I have spoken privately with six Marines, two more Army veterans, a sailor, two Air Force flight deck crew, one policeman and, interestingly, two firefighters. All admitted to membership. Not one of these people, like the two referenced veteran Oath Keepers in the story ( below), struck me as terrorists. Far from it. All were rational and expresses no interest in any of the many underground militias swelling across the country. All expressed love for their country and concern for its decline. They are dedicated professionals with families and strong ties to their community. None were looking for a fight. But all were… prepared.

These many conversations and their firm handshakes of “Good Bye” left a lasting impression.

One might charge the author with presenting his epiphany of sorts regarding a rationale for the Second Amendment. To this, I will reply, “Guilty.”

But like the bullied and lonely school child who prays each night for an unknown Big Brother’s help, in these times of increasing national desperation, the Oath Keepers have already- before Jan 6- proven to be a rising-and effective- form of Guardian Angels… of hope.

With Stewart Rhodes on trial for sedition, an objective mind might want to know, “why?” To do so requires an understanding of the reality of the Oath Keepers. This is hidden from the public by the likes of Rob Kall and Judge Mehta, because of what Rhodes and his Oath Keepers have already accomplished and their invitation.

And what is yet to come.

But more importantly, what is most hidden is the growing need by desperate Americans, day by day, for… A Secret American Army.

*

On October 7, 2022, President Joe Biden’s handlers quietly had him sign an Executive Order supposedly enhancing Safeguards for United States Signals Intelligence Activities. Instead, this edict further demolishes what little is left of Americans’ constitutional protections against increased unauthorized government intrusion into their lives.

So….

Presented for your edification, with no further introduction…

The Secret ’American’ Army (2015)

A new American army is growing. On American soil. They are prepared.

In hushed tones during conversations across the breadth of the heartland of America, there are whispers. Quiet talk. About an army. Of Americans? An army prepared to defend an increasingly oppressed population craving reprieve from their government’s increasingly draconian methods. Oath Keepers?

This army, they say, is growing.

After firm handshakes all around, Dan T. and Gene R., who I had good reason to believe were both retired military, settled into our task at hand. I was in their company for the day on business. During the one-day meeting, Dan and Gene revealed that they were indeed career military. Dan, Army. Gene, retired Navy. I attempted to politely avoid political discussion in the interest of decorum.

So at the first comment on politics from my hosts, I took a long deep breath. My opinions, despite being armed with facts, don’t go over well in conservative America. Much less with ex-military. I sighed. No doubt,  patience would be needed.

Two hours later we clashed the mugs of our third round of beers together in a boisterous toast.

“This country is going to hell!”, I offered just a bit too loudly in the confines of the cramped bar.

“Damn right it is,” agreed Dan. At 6’4″, and a stout 280 pounds, Dan would make a fine nose tackle. “Quite frankly, I’m in favor of ringing America with an expanded Navy to protect us. It’s time our Military went back to protecting our Nation. Leave the world alone. But…the real question right now in America is…,” and now he lowered his voice, giving me a direct stare, “are you prepared?”

Indeed America is going to hell. A sleeping public has no idea of the depth of the plot against them. Those few who are paying attention have good reason to fear the direction of their country and their government. But their military?

The savvy American knows about the FEMA incarceration camps. These camps are intended for them. This is confirmed by a leaked two-hundred-fifty-four page US Army manual “REX 84” showing the designs of the camps, and also defining who is to be culled from that population, and who is to be put to death.

Sound crazy? I have a copy. These same Americans also know that their America has recently purchased 1.5 Billion rounds of hollow point ammunition and 800 million rounds of double-aught shotgun shells. This ammo is designed for one purpose; killing… people. Americans. Police and National Guard are having trouble getting their own ammo, while this massive arsenal is being distributed via the Dept. of Homeland Security to points unknown.

They also know that the FBI formally requested in writing to assassinate with a high-powered rifle the leaders of the Houston Occupy protest camp in 2012.

Now, on Tuesday, April 29, 2014, the US Supreme Court approved this behaviour and a myriad of other authoritarian controls straight from the manuals of Dachau, Auschwitz, or the Gulag. The US Constitution was suspended within 100 miles of any US border thanks to the ill-named Patriot Act.

The informed American should be terrified.

As an activist journalist, I had heard and read rumblings of a ground-swell movement within the American military. This quiet, passionately pro-American, pro-Constitution, pro-democracy army is- I had been told- rapidly growing.

This Army does exist. It has already faced down the US empire twice. Their mission: to save Americans from their Government. They call themselves, “Oath Keepers.

I Do Solemnly Swear That I Will Uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, Against All Enemies, Foreign and DomesticPledging My Life, My Fortune, and My Sacred Honor. So Help Me God.” 

 US Military Oath of Service

Oath Keepers are the predictable historical reaction of a population to its endemic political, financial, and corporate corruption and the systemic destruction of their society.  Realizing a puppet president, malicious congress, and constitutionally irrational court system, to more and more Americans the Oath Keepers are becoming an effective counterweight- a choice- to a tyrannical empire.

Consider. There are approximately 21.5 million military veterans of all ages and ethnic backgrounds in America. Estimates put Oath Keepers membership in excess of 200,000. Within this American army is every military rank from all five branches of the US military. From Gunny Sergeant to Admiral, from Army Chaplain to Naval Captain, Marine Corp. General to PFC, America’s veteran military corp. remains full of a vast wealth of very expensive and thoroughly trained military minds.

Oath Keepers include these active duty service men and women who keep their membership very private. Their numbers are reportedly swelling.

All these men and women were trained to fight. They remember their training. They remember that they are first and foremost Americans, sworn to protect the constitution and the American people. That has not changed. These real American patriots have not forgotten the Oath of Service they swore to so many years before.               

Few, however, thought the day would come when, rather than providing protection from foreign adversaries, they would actually be forced to heed the currently two most important words therein, “… and Domestic.”

By all current reports, Americans hold over 320 million non-military firearms of all makes, models, and calibers. That figure is only for the guns that are accounted for. Actual numbers are higher. With the recent gun buying surge across America, this number is ever-rising. Many of these people are buying these weapons for the same reasons whether they are aware of the Oath Keepers or not, and hold very similar views on their Government’s authoritarian intentions.

Combine all these weapons with the millions of American veterans and you have a highly trained and well-armed militia ready, willing, and waiting to protect Americans from their own government. Was this not the original and foundational wisdom for the inclusion of the US Constitution’s very controversial Second Amendment?

Today, freedom-loving Americans have only two distinct choices. Either use their First Amendment right of assembly and free speech to produce a massive showing of outrage that retrieves the remains of true democracy at the ballot box…

Or…it will be the Second Amendment.

I asked Dan and Gene to comment.

Dan slams his glass down in agreement, since it is empty, looking intently out from under a beat-up, bleached out, somewhat still red-ish baseball cap.

“That’s a good way to put it,” he says while eying me carefully over the foam atop a freshly poured beer. “The question remains…” he says again quietly, “are you prepared?”

In America’s desperate condition, being prepared runs the gambit from eliminating one’s personal debt, eliminating unnecessary possessions,  putting assets into gold or silver, and stocking away a sensible amount of cash, supplies and provisions just in case. It means having the presence of forethought to realize the dire reality of America’s true social and political condition.

It also implies being prepared to protect and defend those possessions, and freedoms, from growing government tyranny. With a gun.

A whole lot of well-trained, well-armed, Americans have seen this day coming.

The Oath Keeper’s motto is, “Not On Our Watch!” Their pro-American, pro-constitutional oath has been sworn to by all Oath Keepers whether active military, veterans, police officers, national guardsmen, TSA officials, firemen, or peace officers. The Oath is defined clearly in ten separate guarantees to Americans:

Oath Keepers will NOT obey any order to:

  • Disarm the American people.
  • Conduct warrant-less searches of the American people,
  • Detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants”
  • Impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.
  • Invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.
  • Blockade American cities, turning them into giant concentration camps.
  • Force American citizens into any form of detention camps.
  • Assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil.
  • Confiscate the property of the American people.
  • Infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

Barely two days ago the Supreme Court of the United States formally gave approval for US Government to reap all of these horrors on all Americans.  On Tuesday, the court in Hedges v. Obama, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 13-758, refused to review the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeal’s (traditionally the president’s pocket court) decision to overturn a lower court decision that did, temporarily, protect Americans from these unconstitutional war crimes of Sect. 1021 of the Obama-inspired National Defense Authorization Act. All ten horrors are, right now, legal across America.

Foolishly I had mistakenly interpreted the oath of the Oath Keepers to mean that those who take the oath would lay down their weapons under such extreme circumstances.

“Wrong!” said Paul immediately, tipping himself,  his bar stool and his beer forward twelve inches and now giving me a  penetrating glance before setting the next empty down. “We’re not laying down our weapons for anyone!”

Gene was also eying me keenly. Quickly forgiving my small indiscretion, he offered support saying, “Yeah. You’re absolutely right about the oath. But if you don’t have your weapons you’re not going to fight back. That’s what the recent increase in gun sales is all about.”

Gene’s a retired Navy aircraft carrier pilot, one of the Navy’s most highly trained servicemen. Of a Bantam weight’s build, and just as feisty, grey-haired and sixty Gene is looking as youthful as his days in the cockpit. He is just as assured and straight talking.

I told them about the FBI study that concluded that American citizens and their massive private, and growing, arsenal could never defeat the US military, should the populous finally fight back.

Gene smiled slyly, then laughed. “They’ve got that one wrong.” Gene is quite likely correct.  Quantifying the totality of a potentially armed pushback by an armed American public, using guerilla tactics the total truly shows the dire consequences befalling America.  It is no wonder that Gene is smiling.

Sadly, that result will be bloodier than the Civil War, just as apocalyptic, and spell the darkest days in the history of America, should it remain a nation when the sands of time have finally cleared the wreckage.

The American Empire has been keeping any news of Oath Keepers out of the media. The regime does not want an example of courage and successful opposition getting to the minds of its subjugated and endemically fearful people. The regime fears the Oath Keepers for a very good reason; this army has already beaten the devil back down below.

Twice.

When the sequestration cuts agreed to by a tepid congress and a flaccid president took effect in late 2013, the Obama administration decided to punish Americans instead for his failure. He proceeded to close the ocean to recreational fishing and boating and closed access to lakes and national parks. His minions in the Forest Service went so far as to ring the famous geyser, “Old Faithful,” a major US tourist attraction, with a twelve-foot high solid plastic fence. This made sure that no one could see and enjoy it. Tourists who went to the third floor of an adjacent hotel to sneak a peek were arrested.

Then the puppet President went too far.

American veterans come from across America to remember their friends and loved ones at the Vietnam and World War II war memorials. During sequestration, Obama closed these too, leaving those who had also travelled hundreds of miles disappointed. This was a call to action for the Oath Keepers.

With the Second Amendment still in force in DC, wearing side arms, and in uniform, the Oath Keepers showed up en-mass. They proceeded to escort arriving visitors past the equally armed Capitol Police and then protected them throughout their visit. To everyone privy to this successful operation, the Oath Keepers were heroes.

They were called again.

Two weeks ago another corrupt US Senator, Harry Reid ( D-NV), tried to use his equally corrupt connections at the Bureau of Land Management to order the US Marshal’s Service to seize Clive Bundy’s Nevada ranch so Reid could lease it to the Chinese. Two hundred-plus people showed up to defend the ranch, with more trying to get there. The siege was turning ugly. Marshalls were tasering peaceful protesters, terrorizing them with dogs and slamming elderly women to the ground in order to elicit a violent reaction by the crowd that would have allowed them a reason to raze the camp. Things were getting very bad. Anyone who left was arrested. Anyone trying to arrive was detained. And more BLM goons were arriving by the hour. We could see the snipers as they zeroed in from their positions on the hill just to the south. Would they shoot? I remembered Houston the whole time.

Then the Oath Keepers arrived.

Armed and ready, several dozen Oath Keepers took up positions and began patrols on Clive Bundy’s property. They directed operations. Defensive perimeters were set up, sandbags stacked and the new terms of engagement established firmly. Everyone helped.

A former Army Colonel walked some three-quarters of a mile down the one-blockaded road towards the US Marshalls along with three other Oath Keepers. All armed, they arrived at the perimeter to speak with whoever was running this operation. While we all stared on through camera lenses and binos a conversation began… our terms… were delivered.

Further violence against protesters would be met with rifle fire. The Bundy Ranch would not be abandoned peacefully. Attempts to breach the perimeter would be resisted as trespassing. No one in the camp wanted violence at any time. It was time to talk.

In reaction, two hours later the BLM forces were multiplying. It was getting worse. But the fuckers were now leaving us alone as a siege commenced.

But then, good journalism, by a good investigative journalist revealed the truth about this stand-off and how BLM had been used for communist purposes.

The standoff in the Nevada desert wasn’t about a desert tortoise or a rancher’s failure to pay grazing fees. It was about the state’s senior senator again enriching himself and his family at public expense.

Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant, and the end, at least temporarily, to the Bureau of Land Management’s armed standoff with Cliven Bundy was due in part to the exposure given to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s role in the attempt to confiscate Bundy’s cattle and shut down his ranch.

“A tortoise isn’t the reason why BLM is harassing a 67-year-old rancher; they want his land,” journalist and blogger Dana Loesch notes. “The tortoise wasn’t of concern when Harry Reid worked with BLM to change the boundaries of the tortoise’s habitat to accommodate the development of his top donor, Harvey Whittemore.”

Last year, Whittemore, 59, who headed a billion-dollar real estate company, was found guilty by a federal jury on three counts tied to nearly $150,000 illegally funnelled to Reid’s re-election campaign in 2007. Unfortunately, Cliven Bundy was not a Reid donor.

The Bureau of Land Management was at the time headed by former longtime Reid aide Neil Kornze, who was confirmed by the Senate as BLM director on April 8, just as federal authorities descended on the cattle ranch. Kornze, 35, worked as a senior policy adviser on land-use issues in Reid’s office from 2003 to 2011 before joining the BLM.

Coincidentally, part of that solar energy expansion included a plan by China’s ENN Energy Group to build what would be America’s largest solar energy complex. The site chosen with the guidance of Reid’s son, Rory, is in Laughlin, Nev. Laughlin is in Clark County, where Bundy’s ranch is, and where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county commission. Rory is currently a lawyer with the firm of Lionel Sawyer & Collins and is representing ENN.

What?!

Reid, who just weeks ago was forced to return campaign money funneled to his granddaughter, has been one of the project’s most prominent advocates, helping recruit the company during a 2011 trip to China and using his political clout on behalf of the project in Nevada.

Knowing that Bundy would not relinquish his land and heritage, the Chinese utilized their congressional asset named Harry Reid, who called BLM and they dutifully trumped up a bunch of reasons to evict Bundy.

With the siege growing in national attention on every major network, and these networks demonizing Bundy and the protesters, when the factual news of the Reid family’s dual national loyalties hit alternative media, legacy media- starting with FOX- splattered duplicitous excrement all over Reid geriatric face and by extension the DNC.

So, two days after Loesch’s revelations hit alternative media and twenty-four hours after Fox picked it up, with interviews, the BLM and its four hundred-plus Federal Marshals went home.

The cheers were deafening and worldwide.

But it can be said, within the meager list of real victories of Americans over their government, that should the Oath Keepers not have furthered their duty- as referenced above- the outcome would have been brutal. Instead, it was victory!

My conversation with Dan and Gene had been enlightening, optimistic, and supportive, but at the same time terrifying. To discover that so many very conservative American active and retired military members are actually of like mind as many passionate pro-American liberal progressives who hold similar radical viewpoints, was surprising and heartening.

Knowing that former members of America’s military had already sworn an oath to protect me, and other Americans, from the very real threat of being shot, or incarcerated without a warrant, by our government was reassuring.

The Oath Keepers will be called to order again soon. Their numbers are legion. Their ranks reportedly growing. Their weapons: many.

With a US government unwilling to change its course straight into a new form of National Socialism, it will not accept a return of freedoms, liberty, or factual discussion.

Many people fear their government. The government does not fear the people. I do not fear the Oath Keeper. I have met them.

Perhaps the reader may now understand why the US government does fear the Oath Keepers.

And, that is terrifying.

*

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Brett Redmayne-Titley has spent the last twelve years documenting the “Sorrows of Empire.” He has authored over 200 articles all of which have been published and often republished and translated by news agencies worldwide. An archive of his published work can be found at watchingromeburn.uk.  He can be contacted at live-on-scene ((@)) gmx.com. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

It has been one year since the latest military seizure of power in the Republic of Sudan where a committed movement continues to protest against the suppression of civilian democracy in one of Africa’s most oil-rich states.

In the Republic of Sudan since December 2018, mass demonstrations and civil unrest has wracked the country which is a gateway between northern, central and east Africa.

During April 2019, due to the uncertainty caused by the mass demonstrations, strikes and rebellions, the former administration of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was overthrown by a group of high-ranking military officers. Just two months later, as thousands of youth and workers occupied Khartoum in the area near the ministry of defense, the protesters were attacked leaving many dead and even more injured.

The most recent military coup grew out of the failure of a African Union (AU) brokered peace agreement to establish a transitional regime which would after more than three years result in the election of a civilian government. On October 25, 2021, the Transitional Military Council (TMC) led by General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo abolished the first Sovereign Council which was ostensibly the transitional ruling body of the country. An interim Prime Minister Abdalla HamdoK was detained by the TMC as people once again engaged in mass demonstrations and civil disobedience.

Several weeks after the October 25 putsch, Hamdok would emerge saying he had reached agreement with the TMC leaders and that the youth should leave the streets and support this undemocratic initiative. Despite all of this, Hamdok would later resign and go into obscurity leaving the Sudanese workers and youth to their own devices in the quest for democratic governance.

Military leaders then created yet another “Sovereign Council” replacing civilian leaders with some of the armed opposition groups inside the country who were based in Darfur and in the southern areas of the country on the border with the Republic of South Sudan. The partitioning of Sudan between the north and south has only resulted in a precipitous decline in the economic and social status of the developing state.

For many years the break-up of Sudan was championed by Washington, London and Tel Aviv in an effort to weaken its oil industry and create further sectional violence which has plagued both governments in Juba (South Sudan capital) and Khartoum.

People Demand Removal of Military Rule

Many indications from the character of the demonstrations in Sudan surrounding the October 25 coup anniversary was the wholesale objection to the United States influenced talks being pushed by the Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The administration of President Joe Biden has maintained the same imperialist foreign policy towards Sudan that was in practice during his predecessors Donald Trump and Barack Obama.

Sudan has been pressured by Washington to maintain a pro-western foreign policy and to politically recognize the State of Israel. Under the Trump administration he had boasted that “sleepy Joe” Biden could not have pulled off a deal in which the interim administration of Hamdok and the TMC acknowledged Tel Aviv.

In fact, this unilateral maneuver by Sudanese technocratic and military leaders aimed at removing the country from the U.S.-contrived “terrorist list” and making the state eligible for IMF loan refinancings during 2020 was a violation of its own Israeli Boycott Act passed by a motion within the parliament in the early years of independence from Britain in 1958. In January 1956, Sudan was one of the first countries to win national liberation from British colonialism. See this.

Al Jazeera noted in regard to the mobilizations that:

“The mass protests also signaled a popular rejection of ongoing US-led talks that aim to broker a new civilian-military partnership between a loose coalition of political parties known as the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) and the military coup leaders. During Tuesday’s (Oct. 25) demonstrations, many people were chanting: ‘No negotiations, no dialogue, no partnership,’ referring to popular demands for a fully civilian government in power without involvement from the military or armed groups. The night before the protests, the Friends of Sudan – a coalition of countries that includes the European Union (EU), the UK and the US – released a statement that reaffirmed their support for a civilian-led government, which they said was needed to stop the country’s economic decline and worsening humanitarian crisis. However, the country’s pro-democracy movement is wary of the phrase ‘civilian-led’, seeing it as a euphemism for a reformed partnership with military figures since that was the same language used to describe the civilian-military government before it was toppled last year.”

Reports from inside the country on October 25 said that some protesters blocked streets and roads with burning tires while the security forces used teargas in efforts to disperse the demonstrations. One person was killed in the twin city of Khartoum, Omdurman, when a police truck ran over a marcher. The Sudanese authorities claimed that they only  fired teargas when the demonstrations became violent without addressing the root causes of the unrest.

This response from the military regime follows a pattern since the beginning of the unrest nearly four years ago. Over the last year the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors, an important organization within the civilian Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), have issued press releases saying that well over 100 people have been killed by the security forces, including the military. During the demonstrations in late October participants said that plainclothes operatives representing the authorities were infiltrating the rallies and demonstrations utilizing violence against activists.

U.S. Seeks to Undermine Revolutionary Movement in Sudan

Mike Hammer the U.S. envoy to the Horn of Africa for the State Department has visited the region on numerous occasions ostensibly to assist in reaching a political settlement. However, Washington has a long history of interference in the internal affairs of Sudan.

Under the presidential tenure of the former President al-Bashir, the U.S. accused the government of committing genocide in the western Darfur region. The government in Khartoum was fighting an armed insurgency which had the support of outside interests including U.S. imperialism.

Several attempts were made to have al-Bashir arrested and sent to the Netherlands to stand trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC). This institution has only targeted African political and rebel leaders while refusing to conduct any serious investigations against the crimes of genocide carried out by the U.S. and its NATO allies against geo-political regions of the Global South as well as oppressed peoples in their own jurisdictions.

In the present crisis of instability, the U.S. under Biden continues the attempts to conceal its true motivations. Secretary of State Blinken said on the anniversary of the coup:

”The U.S. stands ready to use all the tools at its disposal against those who seek to derail progress toward Sudan’s democratic transition, the senior official noted, which was considered a hint that new sanctions may be imposed on whoever obstructs the democratic transition process in the country. ‘As we did a year ago, we continue to reject military rule and stand with the people of Sudan in their demands for freedom, peace, and justice for all Sudanese,’ the statement stressed. State Department spokesman Ned Price also hailed the Sudanese people’s “longstanding struggle to achieve democratic, civilian-led governance. We remain committed to helping the Sudanese people achieve the goals of their revolution, as a country that is stable, prosperous, and at peace with itself and its neighbors,’ Price stated, urging all Sudanese actors to engage constructively in ongoing negotiations toward establishing a civilian-led transition.” See this.

Although these words may sound as if Washington is sincerely concerned with ensuring a democratic transition from military rule, the reality is that the U.S. is only committed to civilian control in Sudan if its realization maintains a subservient posture towards imperialism. What the Biden administration and its ruling class backers fear more than anything is the potential for the ascendancy of a revolutionary democratic dispensation in Sudan which would reestablish its role as a leading force in the anti-imperialist struggle in Africa 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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On October 26th, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin spoke the literal truth when he said that Ukraine “has actually lost its sovereignty and is directly controlled by the United States, which uses it as a battering ram against Russia.”

He meant that the U.S. and its allies are doing this and are carrying out a more sophisticated version of Hitler’s “Operation Barbarossa” against the Soviet Union — a version of grabbing Russia that uses lying lawfare, instead of (as-of yet) direct military invasion, overt warfare.

The next phase of their plan — using their “lawfare” — is to be outright theft. But this technique has a history; and, a hundred years ago, it had been used against Germany by the U.S. and its allies. So, we can see what the results will be if it succeeds.

What’s going on now is the restoration of the type of massive theft from Germans by the Versailles Treaty that ended WW I on 28 June 1919, which Treaty was declared by John Maynard Keynes to have been imposed as a “Carthaginian peace [by theft that’s propagandized as ‘reparations’]”.

No ‘reparations’ were being imposed against Germany’s enemies in that war, but, in historical retrospect, there is general agreement, among historians, that the Allied side, against Germany and Austria, was perhaps equally to blame for that War, though the Versailles Treaty required ALL of the blame for it to go ONLY to Germany (and, so, only German taxpayers were to pay reparations for it, to the victor-nations — the victors).

There were no reparations by the U.S. and its allies after they raped and destroyed Iraq in 2003 on the basis of lies (which continue). The case for reparations by U.S. taxpayers (and the execution of George W. Bush as an international war-criminal) as restitution to the Government of Iraq, is far stronger than the case for the Versailles Treaty was, but nobody in The West states it (except here).

There were no reparations by the U.S. and its allies after they raped and destroyed Syria during 2012-now on the basis of lies (which continue). The U.S. Government refuses ever to restitute Syria, but instead demands Syria’s capitulation (“regime-change”).

However, now, the U.S. and its allies increasingly are demanding reparations by the countries that they still have not yet conquered, such as Russia and others that the U.S.-and-allies impose their illegal sanctions against.

Under U.N. law, sanctions are permissible ONLY if proposed by the Security Council and passed by the General Assembly; but the U.S. gang routinely ignore law, and impose their own sanctions regardless — they commit to sanctions first, and then try to find ways to ‘interpret’ international law that would allow the sanctions that they already are determined to impose regardless.

When these sanctions are asset-seizures, they are theft (even more clearly than the Versailles Treaty was), but, in some instances (such as America’s systematic massive ongoing oil-thefts from Syria), they rely upon the cooperation of their ‘news’-media instead, to so suppress that reality so as to enable the continued passivity and inattention from their voters to continue these thefts by their nation against the one (such as, in that case, Syria) that is targeted ultimately for destruction (“regime-change”). The media are part of the regime that carries-out the regime’s policy for “regime-change,” by the U.S. regime, against (for the conquest of) other countries — further expansion of the U.S. empire.

In February 2014, the U.S. Government seized control over Ukraine’s Government by means of a very bloody coup that was hidden behind public anti-corruption demonstrations that the U.S. had been organizing ever since 2011, and promptly turned that previously Russia-friendly country rabidly against its bordering nation of Russia, and tried to ethnically cleanse it of Russians so as for the U.S. ultimately to become, by ‘democratic’ means, through elections, able to post its missiles in Ukraine only about 300 miles (five minutes of missile-flying time) away from blitz-nuking Moscow so as to be able to dictate to The Kremlin the terms of regime-change there. On 17 December 2021, Russia demanded America and its NATO to promise that this now rabidly anti-Russian Ukraine never be admitted into NATO, but on 7 January 2022 NATO said that whether or not Ukraine becomes a member of NATO is none of Russia’s business. So, the only way for Russia to protect itself would be for Russia to invade Ukraine and take enough land there so that Ukraine’s closest border to Moscow would be moved back at least 1,000 miles (instead of 300 miles) from The Kremlin. On 24 February 2022, Russia launched that invasion; and the U.S.-and-allied nations promptly intensified their illegal sanctions against Russia, for this invasion, that the U.S. and its allies had forced.

On 27 June 2022, the Canadian Broadcasting Company headlined “Canada can now seize, sell off Russian assets. What’s next?”, and reported:

Selling Russian-owned assets to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction may sound like a logical approach to restitution, but as the Canadian government gains new powers to begin this process, questions remain about how it will work, and whether some issues are headed to court.

C-19, the budget implementation bill, received royal assent last Thursday [The Queen in England authorized the thefts.]. …

Canada’s stepped-up sanctions powers were discussed with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during her visit to Toronto last week. [The Queen in America likewise authorized the thefts.]

“We think it’s really important to extend our legal authorities because it’s going to be really, really important to find the money to rebuild Ukraine,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told Canadian and American reporters. “I can think of no more appropriate source of that funding than confiscated Russian assets.” …

That sentiment was shared by Ontario Sen. Ratna Omidvar [Indian-Iranian pro-Shah] who proposed her own Senate legislation to enable similar asset seizures two years ago. …

“Kleptocrats must pay for their crimes, not through simply being sanctioned and their assets being frozen, but by their assets being repurposed and confiscated,” said Omidvar. …

“The question no longer is ‘if we should confiscate,’” the senator said. “The question is: ‘How should we repurpose? … This move by Canada — and potentially other G7 countries meeting in Germany this week — is unprecedented. …

“Operationalizing this is going to be a little bit of a challenge,” said fellow senator and former G7 sherpa Peter Boehm. “This is all very, very new.” … 

Taxpayers in Canada, the U.S. or other countries don’t want to bear the full cost of this war, [Rachel] Ziemba [an adjunct senior fellow with the Centre for a New American Security who advises companies and countries on sanctions policy] said … as governments embark on asset seizures …  

Russia’s central bank is on Canada’s sanctions list. Should these reserves be seized and handed over to Ukraine too?

[U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen’s argued against doing this in the U.S., even though it could provide more funds to rebuild Ukraine.

“That might send a message to other countries that are investing in [international currency and bond] markets,” Ziemba said — think of China’s buying power, for example. “That, I think, is why the [U.S.] treasury department and even the [U.S. federal reserve] are wary of these moves.” …

On 25 October 2022, FORTUNE bannered “Raid Russia’s ‘huge pot of gold’? Europe grapples over confiscating frozen assets to pay for rebuilding Ukraine”, and reported:

Can Brussels raid the tens of billions of euros in Russian assets frozen by the European Union to pay for Ukraine’s recovery? 

This thorny legal question is currently under examination by the EU Commission as the cash-strapped bloc looks for potentially €18 billion ($18 billion) next year to keep Ukraine afloat as it fends off Moscow’s invasion.

Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission’s president, told reporters on Tuesday in Berlin that she had set up a task force to map what assets exist as well as the preconditions that must be met to seize them.

“The will is there, but legally it is not trivial. There is a lot of work still in it to reach that goal,” she said during a press briefing on the sidelines of an international conference of experts for the reconstruction of Ukraine. 

“Always to keep in mind we insist on the rule of law, and therefore we abide by the rule of law, and therefore this process has to be legally sound.” …

Ukraine Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Tuesday … “It’s the biggest investment project on the European continent ever.” …

While Canada has already enacted legislation to seize Russian assets, EU member states are divided as the issue could have repercussions that extend far beyond its borders and affect the future for a long time to come.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

During the final weeks of 2020, hundreds of millions of people worldwide eagerly awaited the opportunity to be vaccinated against the SARS-2 virus. They were given assurance that these vaccines were highly effective for preventing infection and were perfectly safe. Since the new and novel mRNA vaccines are built upon a completely new genetic-based technological platform than older conventional vaccines, they were easily sold to the public as uniquely innovative and more safe. Moreover we were told they are 95 percent effective. They would also prevent transmission, so we were told, and this would ultimately bring an end to the pandemic.  Life would return to normal. Across the medical establishment and media airwaves these new vaccines heralded a miracle of medical science in record-setting time.

It didn’t require much time after the vaccines’ rollout that signs appeared that their promises were at best wishful thinking.  In October 2022, Pfizer’s Chief Executive for Developing Markets testified before a European Parliament special committee on Covid-19 and admitted the vaccine had never been tested for the prevention of viral transmission.

This was shock to many and directly contradicted everything people were being told.  Furthermore reports of serious and life-threatening vaccine-induced injuries and deaths increased exponentially.

Now almost 2 years after the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA therapies were launched, tens of thousands of physicians and clinicians, professors of prestigious medical schools and researchers worldwide are stepping forward to demand an immediate halt to Covid-19 vaccination, particularly for young adults and children. Several national health ministries, including Denmark and Sweden, have stopped vaccinating adolescents and children altogether.

In Israel, health authorities are voicing their concerns. Opinions in the Israel National News reported that Pfizer had used the nation as a staging ground for rolling out its Covid-19 vaccine, the first country to have done so. In effect and without consent, former Israeli President Netanyahu recruited up to seven million citizens to unwittingly participate in a grand experiment.

Israeli citizens were deprived of sufficient information about Pfizer’s vaccine to make a personal risk-benefit analysis.  “What they [Israeli citizens] are being asked to inject is not a vaccine defined by the CDC as a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease,” writes Jerusalem Health Wellness counselor Ilana Rachel Daniel in an oped, “rather it is an experimental and novel technology…. It is in fact a medical device, a physical device that comes in a molecular sized package.”

Today, Pfizer, Moderna and Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes for Allergies and infectious Disease (NIAID) have walked back many of their earlier claims about the benefits of Covid vaccines. They made it abundantly clear that these vaccines are not intended to stop transmission but only to prevent serious illness and death.  But even that is highly questionable after taking into account the high rates of SAARS-2 infections among the vaccinated.

In the US, as of the first week of August 2022, the US’ and European Union’s vaccine injury reporting systems cumulatively recorded 76,880 deaths and 6.1 million injuries serious enough to require special medical assistance or hospitalization. 

US figures (29,800 deaths and 1.4 million injuries) are only those recorded in the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS data is available for public access; however, the system does not include adverse events reported in the separate Data Link reporting system, a privately controlled database that is regarded as more thorough.

For decades before the advent of the novel mRNA gene therapy injections, the mainstream medical and scientific communities have promulgated an unassailable decree that vaccines are safe and effective, whether administered individually or in combination. For more cautious medical professionals there remains an unchallenged belief that vaccines are effective but not always safe. Vaccine-injured children and adults are simply regarded as exceptionally rare cases who unpredictably suffered unfortunate consequences.

Even many parents with two children developing neurological complications after vaccination will continue to follow the recommended vaccine schedule with unwavering blind faith in their physicians and the nation’s medical authorities.

Any medical physician, scientist, nurse, public health advocate, politician, or journalist who questions the myth of vaccine safety and efficacy is often immediately attacked, ridiculed, and designated a conspirator.  The pro-vaccine propaganda machine recruits articulate doctors and university professors, who often sit on federal vaccine oversight boards and committees, to engage in ad hominem personal attacks against vaccine dissenters.

Today the situation is different. During the Covid-19 pandemic the number of medical professionals speaking out against the mRNA vaccines, as well as the adenovirus vector vaccines developed by Astra Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson, has grown exponentially. No longer are those who question vaccine efficacy and safety lone individual voices. Today medical doctors are organizing themselves.  Before the pandemic it would have been unheard of that physicians and professors from prestigious medical schools would organize and convene conferences and seminars to present their scientific findings and research to discredit the official pandemic and vaccine narratives.

The question before us is:  if the captains and generals of our national health system, their medical advisors and pharmaceutical executives who approve and advocate for compulsory vaccination could get the evaluation of the Covd-19 vaccines so wrong, is there any reason to not assume they have been equally incorrect about the efficacy and safety for all conventional vaccines?  What if all of these individuals and their institutions and publications, and their shadow lobbying foundations and think tanks, are wrong? What if the vaccine paradigm itself is gravely flawed? What if vaccines have never been satisfactorily confirmed to be safe and effective? Did the CDC and vaccine manufacturers always know about vaccines’ shortcomings, yet intentionally ignored them?  After several decades of studying the scientific literature regarding vaccines, following the money trails, and interviewing many dozens of toxicologists, immunologists, research physicians, pediatricians, and medical journalists, the vaccine paradigm can now be accurately deconstructed with reliable independent science.

Herd Immunity

At the start of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, Americans were given assurances by the medical authorities that massive vaccination compliance was crucial to reach herd immunity.  We were told that vaccination was absolutely necessary to protect us from the unvaccinated. It was citizens’ patriotic and moral duty to get vaccinated in order to protect the most vulnerable and the immune deficient from serious SARS-2 infections.  If enough of the population gets vaccinated, we were told we would reach herd immunity and bring an end to the pandemic. But is there any strong evidence to give credibility to this viewpoint?

A foundational truth across all scientific research is replication of laboratory experiments and clinical trials with the results being the same as the original findings.  On a monthly basis, even with very high vaccination rates, the target for reaching hypothetical herd immunity continues to change. Even if compliance increases, vaccine-induced immunity and efficacy wanes; hence there is a constant need to administer frequent shots or boosters.  For example, the influenza vaccine is known to be useless for conferring long-term immunity. Annually, flu vaccines must be specially formulated. Developing seasonal flu shots is based upon hypothetical calculations to predict which strains might appear that year. In the past, these predictions have been seriously flawed and have often failed to lessen infection rates.

Image is from Children’s Health Defense

Dr. Fauci was confronted with the question of why the vaccination herd immunity threshold for SARS-2 was changing. Fauci was unable to provide a scientifically sound reply because there isn’t one.

What Fauci and other advocates of the vaccine herd immunity theory categorically ignore is the role of natural immunity within the population.  They also leave out the unknown percent of people who already have very robust immune systems, live a healthy lifestyle and do not have any medical conditions that might seriously compromise their health if they were to catch an infectious disease. Healthy individuals may certainly contract an infectious virus or bacteria; however they are more likely to be asymptomatic and will benefit by strengthening natural immunity.  There is now many studies providing evidence that unvaccinated individuals who have been infected by SARS-2 have longer lasting immunity than that provided by the vaccines.

In the promulgation of herd immunity, neither of the above populations were considered to ascertain a more effective and vigorous preventative strategy to reduce the severity of and successfully treat SARS-2 infections. To the contrary those advocating for the importance of natural immunity were ridiculed and silenced.

The question is why is there such disdain towards anyone who questions the official narrative, even with facts warranting discussion. One problem is that the edifice upon which our modern vaccination regime is built relies on the hypothesis of herd immunity. Absent a belief in the plausibility of herd immunity, there is no sound basis to enforce vaccination mandates. Modern herd immunity theory is largely a dishonest marketing stunt. It follows the old adage of garbage in, garbage out. In order for a vaccine to be truly effective, it must be able to prove that vaccinated persons are unable to transmit a pathogen. A fully vaccinated person may still harbor a pathogen, may be asymptomatic, and still infect others.

For many years, scientists who espouse the vaccine herd immunity argument have claimed that approximately 95% of the population must be vaccinated in order to protect the smaller percentage who are not immunized; by following such a stratagem infectious diseases will eventually be eradicated. But for this theory to have any viability, vaccines must be perfectly effective and provide long-term immunity. None are. Nor should vaccine induced immunity have a termination date; yet no vaccine has been proven with any certainty to confer life-long immunity.

As we have observed during the start of the Covid-19 vaccination campaigns, the NIAID’s 95% compliance target was a fabricated number. Other percentages touted were as low as 70 percent.  This is a fundamental problem for calculating herd immunity thresholds for other vaccines. Such thresholds are based upon algorithmic computer modeling, which never accurately imitates real life scenarios. The Israeli authors in the recent book Turtles All the Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth – a voluminous and heavily cited critique of the CDC’s childhood vaccination schedule – notes that the discrepancy in calculations to determine herd immunity thresholds can diverge as much as 40 percent. This is the case for the measles and diphtheria shots. For rubella, there is a 30 percent discrepancy range. These degrees of inaccuracy alone raise serious doubts about the biological legitimacy of herd immunity.

Periodic and localized measles outbreaks have frequently fueled vaccine hysteria. We can take the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine as an example that shatters the credibility of herd immunity. For the measles vaccine, according to a CDC study, the population at any given time may have less than 70% immunity. This is despite the fact that at one time MMR compliance in the US reached 98 percent. One of the most opportunistic incidences of a measles outbreak took place at Boston University a month after a campus blood drive. As a result, health officials had access to a large selection of students’ blood samples, both infected and measles-free. Laboratory analysis found that eight out of nine students who contracted measles were vaccinated.

China offers another example, which is believed to have the highest vaccination compliance rate in the world. The measles vaccine is mandatory on the Chinese mainland. So, why were there over 700 measles outbreaks in a three-year period between 2009 and 2012 when 99 percent of Chinese were vaccinated for measles? Clearly, the vaccine is incapable of reaching fictitious herd immunity.

Another medical discovery that debunks the MMR herd immunity theory is that live virus vaccines shed; this means that a vaccine’s viral component can be transmitted and infect persons that a vaccinated person comes into contact with. Perhaps the best-documented case occurred in New York City in 2011 when an adult woman received two MMR shots and subsequently infected four others in her workplace. Two of those infected were also immunized with two MMR doses. All cases involved in the incident were confirmed by laboratory testing and government health officials concluded that the outbreak was due to a failure in the MMR vaccine. In other words, the vaccine infected others.  It may also be noted that it is not uncommon in out-patient cancer clinics to provide instructions for persons who are severely immunocompromised to avoid contact with persons who have been recently vaccinated. This is especially true for live viral vaccines.

If a vaccinated person can infect others then this would present a working hypothesis and rationale to argue against vaccination mandates. Vaccine fear porn promotes the idea that an unvaccinated child poses a danger to everyone he or she comes into contact with, especially other children and the elderly who are immunocompromised with serious illnesses such as cancer or an autoimmune disease. Yet this is an untruth. Attorney Kevin Barry calls this propaganda strategy “effective brainwashing.” The facts are quite the opposite. With respect to the MMR and other live virus vaccines, it is the vaccinated person who equally poses a threat to immuno-compromised individuals.

The rollout of the Covid-19 vaccines has taught us another lesson.  During the less than two years since their Emergency Use Authorization, we have witnessed a rapid emergence of new SARS-2 coronavirus strains. There is also growing evidence that those fully vaccinated may be most susceptible for being infected by new strains they were not vaccinated against.  The reason behind this is inconclusive. Some medical experts and physicians are posing the question as to whether vaccination might be contributing to the emergence of these new polymorphic variants.

There are examples of new vaccine-related variants likely associated with over-vaccination. Outbreaks of whooping cough have risen. State and local health authorities investigating and gathering statistics on pertussis outbreaks discovered the highest numbers of infected persons among the vaccinated.  For example, Mississippi, with the highest vaccination rate in the country, had a significant increase in whooping cough cases, with 91 percent of those infected being fully vaccinated. Across the nation, the most highly infected are those who have received three or more pertussis shots and boosters.

Australian researchers at the government’s National Center for Immunization and Research of Vaccine Preventable Diseases found that the pertussis vaccine’s effectiveness was waning far more rapidly than expected, even among vaccinated 3 year olds. Moreover, in 2014, a study confirmed that individuals vaccinated against pertussis can be infectious carriers of the Bordetella bacterium and can likely infect others who either do not respond immunologically to the vaccine or who are unvaccinated.  A conclusion is that pertussis vaccinated individuals may now be endangering the health of the unvaccinated and vaccinated alike.

While health officials launched a media campaign to blame unvaccinated individuals for upsurges in pertussis outbreaks, the CDC publicly announced the contrary. Dr. Anne Schuchat from the CDC stated,

“We know there are places around the country where there are large numbers of people who aren’t vaccinated. However, we don’t think those exemptors are driving this current wave. We think it is a bad thing that people aren’t getting vaccinated or exempting, but we cannot blame this wave on that phenomenon.”

The current DPT vaccines do not protect against the new and more virulent strains of B. pertussis. The first identification of a new virulent strain was made in Australia. Shortly thereafter outbreaks appeared in southern California. Subsequently, Australian immunologists suggested that the emergence of a new vaccine-resistant B. pertussis variant may be due to over vaccination. Similar to what the world has witnessed with antibiotic resistant organisms, due to the overuse and abuse of antibiotic medications, this might also be occurring with viruses targeted by vaccines.  If new pathogenic strains are arising due to over vaccination campaigns, this destroys the possibility of reaching herd immunity through vaccination.

Finally, aside from these contradictory findings that discredit herd immunity, infectious disease outbreaks are financial boons for drug makers. Following the Disneyland measles outbreak, Bloomberg Business News reported that Merck’s quarterly MMR sales increased by 24 percent, proving that fear mongering is a highly profitable enterprise.

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 

Purchase directly from the Global Research Online Store

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***

After Prime Minister Imran Khan was overthrown in a US-backed soft coup, Pakistan’s unelected “imported government” has banned the country’s most popular politician from office, sparking huge protests.

Pakistani scholar Junaid S. Ahmad speaks with Ben Norton about army chief Bajwa’s friendly trip to Washington and US efforts to pressure Pakistan to weaken ties with China, arm Ukraine in its war with Russia, and recognize apartheid Israel. We also address the assassination of prominent dissident journalist Arshad Sharif.

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Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Religion, Law, and Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decoloniality. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Multipolarista

Tactical Nuclear Fantasists

October 27th, 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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Bogeyman politics tends to be flatly unimaginative.  The image of the nuclear-mad Russian President, counting his diminishing options, has caught the imagination of press and propaganda outlets across the West.  Will Mad Vlad go the distance and deploy a nuclear weapon in Ukraine?

Certainly, his rhetoric suggests the possibility.  Vladimir Putin has promised to “make use of all weapon systems available to us” in the event Russia’s territorial integrity is threatened.  Moving Russian doctrine away from using nuclear weapons to defend the state’s existence to defending “territorial integrity” suggests an expeditious revision. But let us not simply focus on the customary trope of the mad Russian who thirsts for violence. The tactical nuclear weapon has always lingered as a viable option for those who have it.

The moment the innocents of Hiroshima were incinerated in August 1945, a weapon of mass lethality became a political option, the means to extract concessions and terrify opponents.  Even more disturbingly, it also created an incentive on the part of powers to prevent others from getting it, thereby creating an exclusive club equipped with special amenities and privileges.

During a number of teeth-chattering moments of the Cold War, the use of nuclear weapons was contemplated.  Historians note Cuba, Berlin and the Middle East.  That they were not actually unleashed was a matter of unalloyed dumb luck and faux theory.  Over time, this spawned an accepted, if nonsensical literature about the merits of having such lethal means. Precisely because of their potency, such weapons would never be used.  Possessing them would be, to use a modern comparison, much like having unconvertible digital currency of huge value, more a matter of impressing your rivals than drawing direct benefit from them.

Having said that, one category of nuclear weapon has continued to mark a grey area, lending a disturbed, even lunatic’s legitimacy to the battlefield deployment of such weapons.  The tactical nuclear weapon is deceptively seductive to military planners. Being of lower yield than their strategic, all-killing counterparts, they are seen as, in the words of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “more militarily useful, and less politically objectionable, and thus more likely to be used.” This does little to dampen the awful reality that such weapons can have yields greater than that of the first atomic weapon ever used.

The nature of such weapons is disturbingly nebulous in the military argot.  In 2018, James Mattis, as US Secretary of Defense, opined to the House Armed Services Committee that there was no “such thing as a ‘tactical nuclear weapon’.  Any nuclear weapon used at any time is a strategic game changer.”

Tactical nuclear weapons can comprise any number of devices with yields ranging from 1 kiloton to 50 kilotons.  Alistair Millar, writing for Arms Control Today, mentions a few, including nuclear landmines, nuclear artillery shells, and missile warheads dropped by air or launched by missiles.

The 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review does away with much of the sentiment of the 2010 NPR in stressing the need to improve capabilities against Russia in various areas, including nonstrategic nuclear options.  Moscow is specifically blamed for embracing a “limited first use” policy involving low-yield weapons that might “provide coercive advantage in crises and at lower levels of conflict.”

Special attention is reserved for Washington’s own nonstrategic nuclear options, with low-yield warheads for submarine launched ballistic missiles and a new submarine launched cruise missile being suggested additions.  As Moscow had heavily invested in such tactical weapons, NATO forces would be caught short with only strategic options at its disposal.  “We do not believe Russia would be expanding their limited resources to modernize and expand their nonstrategic nuclear forces if they had little or no confidence in this strategy,” asserted deputy director for strategic stability, Greg Weaver, one of the authors of the 2018 NPR.

The military and security establishments of such powers has effectively legitimised the potential use of such weapons.  During the Gulf War of 1991, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney chewed over the prospects of using tactical nuclear weapons against Iraqi forces.  He went so far as to commission a study on how many would be needed to, in the words of then President George H.W. Bush, “take out an Iraqi Republican Guard division, if necessary.”  The astonishing answer was 17.

During the administration of George W. Bush, tactical nuclear weapons became an object of serious interest.  The ghoulish spectacle of civilian planes finding their targets against the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington did its fair share of unsettling.  Cheney, for one, continued showing interest in using nonstrategic versions of such weapons in battle.  According to Seymour Hersh, he mulled over using low-yield nuclear weapons such as the bunker-buster B61-11 against Iran’s underground nuclear sites, including the Natanz main centrifuge plant some two hundred miles south of Tehran.

Ambiguity when it comes to a prospective use of nuclear weapons is considered one of the great flaws of military and political planning.  Each party should know what the other proposes to do in certain circumstances, be it in terms of command structure, control and communications.  Who has the authority to launch what weapons and when?  What are the safeguards to cope with error?  As far as Putin’s threats go, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg holds to the traditional view: the Russian leader “knows very well that a nuclear war should never be fought and can never be won.”

Opacity is another factor complicating the whole business of how we cope with nonstrategic nuclear weapons.  Numbers regarding the world’s tactical nuclear stockpiles remain sketchy.  “Greater transparency regarding the size of tactical nuclear stockpiles would be an important first step towards establishing international norms against their modernisation,” proposesBrendan Thomas-Noone.

Paradoxically, even as such measures as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons gather greater popularity, the old members of the nuclear club continue to make mischief, modernising and adjusting their arsenals with little intention of ever abolishing them.  The sheer allure of such weapons is unlikely to dissipate till their political dividends diminish.  In the Ukraine War, such dividends abound.

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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 is from The Unz Review


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   

The European Union as the Modern Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation?

October 27th, 2022 by Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović

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***

In 1946, ex-British war PM, Sir Winston Churchill delivered his famous Zurich speech calling for the establishment of the United States of Europe. However, his idea of a united (Western) Europe excluded his native country – the UK. At that time, he envisaged West Europe as composed of independent, free, and sovereign states that would rise from the ashes of WWII and reach for a destiny of unprecedented harmony and democracy.

Neutral Switzerland, with its centuries-old harmonious co-existence of four languages and cultures (and international money laundering banks), was to be the blueprint for a multilingual and multicultural Europe that would never again see maniac dictators and supra-national demagogues bent on imposing their will on member nations.

Initially, W. Churchill’s vision seemed to be advancing according to the plan. Former Nazi Germany and fascist Italy decentralized political power and became parliamentary democracies. Nazism and fascism became discredited throughout Europe like Communism in its western part.

However, soon, the events took a different turn. The Schuman plan of 1950 proposed the supra-national pooling of the French and German coal and steel industries as a means of forging European economic unity (the 1951 ECSC by the Treaty of Paris). The two economies were interwoven to such an extent that a new war between these traditional enemies became virtually impossible.

The European Economic Union (the EEC), established in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome, brought Italy and the three Benelux countries into the closer union with France and Germany but represented a further step towards a pan-European economy by tying economic development to the city of Rome.[i] Significantly, the Treaty of Rome also gave Europe a sense of supranational religious unity and the Roman Catholic Church protection against the existent threat of the spreading of Communism outside of East-Central Europe.

1962 was the year of the Common Agricultural Policy resulting in the creation of a common market (transformed in 1993 into the European Single Market – the ESM) with price-fixing – a further step towards economic uniformity and, basically towards the command economy which was at the same time so heavily criticized by the Western liberal democracies in the cases of the economies of the so-called real socialism.

Nevertheless, in the same 1962, year, some Western technocrats recognized the EEC as a project that is already much behind simply and economically united Europe with the comments that fascism in Europe is about to be reborn in respectable business attire, and the 1957 Treaty of Rome will finally be implemented to its fullest extent. Some of them shared the opinion that the dream of a medieval Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (962−1806 – the HREGM) is returning to power to dominate and direct the so-called forces of the Christian mankind of the Western world. Simply, such an idea was not dead yet but still stalks through the antechambers of every national capital of continental Western Europe, in the determination of the leaders in the common market to restore the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation with all that means.[ii]

Surely, West Germany, constrained in its international role and influence after 1945, saw European unification as a very convenient international platform to pursue its own foreign policy.

Nevertheless, the word “economic” was ominously dropped from the official title of the community in 1967 in favor of the description of it just as the European Community (the EC) meaning that the integration process is now directed toward political direction what was clearly seen in 1979 when the first direct elections to the European Parliament in Strasbourg have been organized. Even the former European Assembly was renamed into the European Parliament in order to stress a clear direction toward the creation of a supranational political entity–state.

The policy of enlargement continued with Greece joining in 1981, and Spain and Portugal in 1986, when in the same year the Single European Act was signed to prepare the EC for the transformation into the EU – a higher level of economic, financial, social, legal, legislative, and above all political integration with the German leadership. In other words, the Single European Act meant the gradual transfer of executive, legislative, and judicial powers from the Member States to the central authorities of the EC and since 1993 of the EU (the HREGN). Consequently, the EU could make ever-increasing political inroads into the national sovereignty of the Member States and the London-Dublin conspiracy attempted to force the British people of Northern Ireland by stealth and terror towards a united Ireland under European rule, while arrogant and spineless politicians in Westminster continued politely to play the enemy’s game, or, as Dr. Paisley once put it metaphorically, to “feed the brute instead of slaughtering it”.

When the (in)famous Maastricht Treaty on the European (political) Union was signed in February 1992 (to come into force in November 1993) with the ultimate aim of transforming the EC into a federal superstate – now significantly redesigned as the European Union (EU) – many of the politicians elected to Brussels, including those from Great Britain, fell for the confidence trick within the ideological framework of the HREGN. Today, when Great Britany as a focal US colony in Europe left the EU, a real perspective for Berlin and Vatican to transform the EU into a virtual HREGN is on the tangible agenda.

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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] In fact, there were two Treaties of Rome signed on March 25th, 1957: 1) Creating Euratom, to coordinate policy in nuclear energy, the new strategic industry; and 2) Creating the European Economic Community, oriented towards improving trade and investment but as well as towards further political steps in the creation of the European superstate.

[ii] See more in [Professor Arthur Noble, “The Conspiracy Behind the European Union: What Every Christian Should Know”, Lecture delivered at the Annual Autumn Conference of the United Protestant Council in London on Saturday, November 7th, 1998].

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***

Once again, Kiev acts in a destabilizing way and tries to escalate the conflict to higher levels of violence. The Russian government recently reported, based on intelligence data, that the Ukrainian forces are planning to use a “dirty bomb” in a false flag operation against Moscow. The purpose of such a plan would be to accuse the Russians of using prohibited weapons and thus justify greater Western involvement in the conflict.

On October 23, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu issued a statement to American, French, British and Turkish authorities warning about the results of investigations carried out by Moscow’s security forces pointing to the existence of dirty bombs in Ukrainian territory, which would be about to be used by Kiev. As expected, NATO officials ignored the alert and treated the matter as irrelevant or “unproven”. In Kiev, there was no official pronouncement either, remaining the international society silent in the face of this serious threat.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on the case criticizing Western irresponsibility:

“The fact that they do not trust the information which was provided by the Russian side does not mean that the threat of the use of such a dirty bomb ceases to exist. The threat is present. This information was brought to the attention of the [Russian] defense minister’s interlocutors. It’s up to them whether they want to believe it or not”.

The next day, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov publicly commented on the topic, reinforcing the credibility of the information obtained by his country’s security forces and stating that Moscow has even reliable evidence about which exact Ukrainian scientific institutions have the necessary technology to produce such bombs.

“We have specific information about the scientific institutions in Ukraine which have the technology to build a dirty bomb. We have information which we’ve double-checked using the appropriate channels confirming that this is not an empty suspicion, and that there is good reason to believe that such [provocations] can be planned”.

Precise data on whether or not such bombs would have been produced with technology provided by the West have not yet been published, but more detailed information on the matter may be released soon. It is very likely that Ukrainian scientists are using technical apparatus from allied countries to produce this type of material, considering the current precarious circumstances of the Ukrainian military industry and the high level of cooperation between Kiev and NATO. In addition, it must be remembered that Western intelligence is acting in Kiev directly, coordinating joint actions with local troops and cooperating with terrorist attacks, which leads to the conclusion that, if there is a Ukrainian plan to use a dirty bomb, NATO agents certainly already know this, but continue to deny the reality.

The magnitude of the situation is such that Moscow has summoned a meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the matter. The Russian mission to the UN sent a letter to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres providing information on the Ukrainian threat. In the letter it is possible to read:

“The Kiev regime plans to camouflage the explosion of such a ‘dirty bomb’ as an explosion of a Russian low-yield nuclear warhead (…) By this provocation the Kiev regime seeks to intimidate the population, increase the flow of refugees, and accuse the Russian Federation of ‘nuclear terrorism”.

In fact, when such reports arise, it is unacceptable for the international society to remain inactive. Investigations are necessary and if the information is proven, it is needed to act decisively in order to neutralize the risk. The recent history of terrorism represented by Kiev shows that the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime seems to have no ethical or humanitarian limits to follow with its war plans. The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant bombings and Zelensky’s call for NATO to “preemptively” launch nuclear weapons against Russia are examples of how the Ukrainians seem genuinely willing to promote this kind of escalation. And if the West remains silent, it simply shows connivance.

The use of such “dirty” weapons would not even represent a possibility of reversing the military scenario in favor of Kiev. These weapons have low combat impact, their only purpose being to cause terror and contamination. They are called “dirty” because they are non-nuclear weapons that hide extremely contaminating radioactive material inside. The explosions are on a small scale, but the health and environmental damage is catastrophic. If such weapons were used in Ukraine, the civilian population would be the most affected part, which shows the terrorist nature of the Ukrainian plan.

As a result of the current threat, the Russian Federation’s nuclear forces were placed on combat alert. In addition, Russian troops are being prepared to act under radioactive contamination. The escalation is worrying and points to a disastrous course for this conflict that could easily be avoided if the West stopped its interventionism.

*

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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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***

After closing on 22 October of the 20th Chinese Communist Party (CPC) Congress, President Xi Jinping was reappointed for a third 5-year term as China’s leader. This was expected.

Also expected was that he would reassemble the Politburo and his innermost circles with loyalists.

Every president and leader around the world does the same – staffing their cabinets and advisory teams with loyalists.

Just as a parenthesis, Madame Merkel was “elected” for four terms to the German Chancellor’s Office, for a total of 16 years (22 November 2005 – 8 December 2021). That was OK. No bad-mouthing.

But if China or Russia, does it, it’s called tightening the grip on power – what a double standard applied by western bought, yes, corrupted, media.

People ought to just think about it.

So, as also expected, western media could not just concentrate on the substance of the week-long conference and report on their substantive analysis. But they filled the airwaves and print-news with heavy critic on the “appearance” – without any comparison with their own western systems.

PressTV Iran dedicated their Monday evening (24 October) “Spotlight” Interview to the 20th CPC Congress, the key achievements and the western media reaction.

See this 23-min video recording of the interview.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

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People Dying in Their Sleep Linked to Vaccines, Explains Dr. Peter McCullough, Cardiologist

By Dr. Jennifer Margulis, October 25, 2022

At a conference for medical professionals in Sedona, Arizona this past weekend, several speakers–all physicians–commented on a disturbing trend: an increase in otherwise healthy people dying in their sleep.

Scotland: Independence for Peace and the Peace for Justice

By Konrad Rękas, October 25, 2022

If Scots do not want to die for the British jingoism – they have to choose the independence.  Independence means no war for Scottish people and no need to pay for the Tories crisis.  Simple and true slogans can make our future.

The Cult of the Branch Covidian and the Banality of Evil

By David Penner, October 25, 2022

The Branch Covidian putsch is the most heinous crime ever perpetrated in the history of medicine, and some would argue, in the history of the world. Its success is attributable to the strong presence of Nazi bioethics within the ranks of Western physicians, as well as a broad base of support from the ranks of neoliberals.

Israel Escalates Continual Airstrikes in Syria

By Steven Sahiounie, October 25, 2022

Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes across Syria for many years, and the latest was on October 24 in a rare daytime attack in Damascus.  Israel views Iran as their chief national security threat.  Iran supports the resistance movement against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance group.

The Stages of Totalitarianism: America Is Moving from Authoritarian to Totalitarian

By Dr. Mark McDonald, October 25, 2022

I felt much freer in Bosnia this summer than I do now in the United States. In every city I visited there, I found no restrictions on travel, speech, or medical decision-making. Criminality was frowned upon, rather than encouraged. The people I spoke with appeared to be well-informed on issues of importance to their local community. In contrast, Los Angeles, where I live and work, is an authoritarian city. So is the state of California.

Glory to God in the Lowest – Journeys to an Unholy Land

By Jim Miles, October 25, 2022

In “Glory to God in the Lowest” Donald Wagner set out three themes for his memoirs:  his transition from political apathy and social conservatism to activism in the civil rights and anti-war movements;  a theological transition from fundamentalist Christian zionism to progressive and liberation theology; and advocacy for Palestinian political and human rights.

Thirty Progressive House Democrats Urge Biden to Negotiate with Russia

By Dave DeCamp, October 26, 2022

In a letter to Biden signed by 30 House Democrats, the lawmakers said they have supported Biden’s Ukraine policy but that the risk of nuclear war and “catastrophic escalation” means that the US should be pushing for negotiations.

Commission of Inquiry Finds that the Israeli Occupation Is Unlawful Under International Law

By Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, October 26, 2022

There are reasonable grounds to conclude that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is now unlawful under international law due to its permanence and the Israeli Government’s de-facto annexation policies, according to the first report to the General Assembly issued today by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.

Political ‘Justice’ in America

By Daniel McAdams, October 26, 2022

Josef Stalin’s top henchman famously said, “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” What it meant was that Soviet justice was about politics, not the rule of law. First decide who, for political reasons, is to be punished, and then the state will provide the crimes for which he will be charged.

Fauci, Jen Psaki, and Top Biden Officials to be Deposed in Free Speech Case

By Ryan King, October 24, 2022

A court approved a request Friday to depose Dr. Anthony Fauci, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, and a bevy of other Biden administration officials in a free speech case.

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***

A group of progressive House Democrats is urging President Biden to negotiate with Russia and seek a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine.

In a letter to Biden signed by 30 House Democrats, the lawmakers said they have supported Biden’s Ukraine policy but that the risk of nuclear war and “catastrophic escalation” means that the US should be pushing for negotiations.

“We urge you to pair the military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire,” the letter reads.

The letter was led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. In a statement to The Washington Post, she said,

“The longer the war in Ukraine goes on, the greater the risk of escalation — to widespread, devastating effect.”

The Biden administration has shown little interest in diplomacy with Russia despite the president’s recent warning that there is a higher risk of nuclear “armageddon” today than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that US officials have ruled out pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table even though they don’t think Kyiv can win the war “outright.”

The lawmakers said in the letter that they agree with the administration’s position that it’s not the US’s “place” to pressure Ukraine’s government. But they added that “as legislators responsible for the expenditure of tens of billions of US taxpayer dollars in military assistance in the conflict, we believe such involvement in this war also creates a responsibility for the United States to seriously explore all possible avenues.”

One avenue the lawmakers said Biden should explore is direct talks with Russia, and they said a framework for a ceasefire could include “some form of sanctions relief.”

The progressive Democrats concluded the letter by calling on Biden to “make vigorous diplomatic efforts in support of a negotiated settlement and ceasefire, engage in direct talks with Russia explore prospects for a new European security arrangement acceptable to all parties that will allow for a sovereign and independent Ukraine, and, in coordination with our Ukrainian partners, seek a rapid end to the conflict and reiterate this goal as America’s chief priority.”

In response to the letter, the White House rejected the idea of diplomacy with Russia. “It’s clear Mr. Putin is in no mood to negotiate,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. “We’re not going to have conversations with Russian leadership without the Ukrainians being represented.”

Some prominent signatories to the letter include Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA), Ro Khanna (D-CA), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Each signatory voted in favor of spending tens of billions on the war, including the $40 billion Ukraine aid bill that was passed in May, which only faced opposition from a small group of Republicans.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

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Commission of Inquiry Finds that the Israeli Occupation Is Unlawful Under International Law

October 26th, 2022 by Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

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***

There are reasonable grounds to conclude that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is now unlawful under international law due to its permanence and the Israeli Government’s de-facto annexation policies, according to the first report to the General Assembly issued today by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.

Underlining that under international humanitarian law the occupation of territory in wartime is a temporary situation and does not deprive the occupied Power of its statehood nor its sovereignty, the three-person Commission called on the General Assembly to request an urgent Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences of Israel’s continued refusal to end its occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“Recent statements by the Secretary-General and numerous member States have clearly indicated that any attempt at unilateral annexation of a State’s territory by another State is a violation of international law and is null and void; 143 member States including Israel last week voted in favour of a General Assembly resolution reaffirming this”, stated Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission. “Unless universally applied, including to the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, this core principle of the United Nations Charter will become meaningless”, she added.

In reaching its findings, the Commission reviewed the policies and actions employed by the Governments of Israel to maintain the occupation, and annex parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The Commission’s review was based on interviews with experts and stakeholders, and submissions received following a call for submissions issued on 22 September 2021.

The 28-page report focuses on the sustenance and advancement of the settlement enterprise, including statements made by Israeli officials indicating the intent to maintain permanent control over the land in violation of international law. The Commission concludes that by continuing to occupy the territory by force, Israel incurs international responsibilities and remains accountable for violations of the rights of the Palestinians individually and as a people.

“By ignoring international law in establishing or facilitating the establishment of settlements, and directly or indirectly transferring Israeli civilians into these settlements, successive Israel governments have set facts on the ground to ensure permanent Israeli control in the West Bank”, Ms. Pillay stated.

In producing its report, the Commission reviewed Israel’s expropriation and exploitation of land and natural resources, and Israel’s restrictive urban planning and zoning policies in the West Bank, noting that land is often confiscated for military purposes but is then used for settlement construction. The Commission reviewed statements by Israeli officials indicating that Palestinian construction is seen as an impediment to Israeli settlements, requiring action such as confiscation, demolitions and displacement. The Commission also observed similar processes in East Jerusalem where the restrictive planning and zoning regimes, which have obstructed adequate housing, infrastructure and livelihoods, have contributed to shrinking space for Palestinians.

The report also points to Israeli Government policies which have had a serious and multi-faceted impact on all areas of Palestinian life, including access to clean and affordable water, which has impacted the entire Palestinian agricultural sector, limiting opportunities for livelihoods particularly affecting women.

“There is so much ‘silent harm’ and psychological trauma, that may not be immediately apparent, resulting from the erosion of economic, social and cultural rights. These debilitating processes have severe short and long-term consequences and must be urgently addressed”, said Commissioner Miloon Kothari.

The Commission dedicated a significant part of its report to reviewing the impact of Israel’s occupation and de-facto annexation policies on Palestinian human rights, noting the coercive environment intended to force Palestinians to leave their homes and alter the demographic composition of certain areas. To this effect, the Commission reviewed the demolition of homes and destruction of property, the excessive use of force by security forces, mass incarceration, settler violence, restrictions of movement, and limitations on access to livelihoods, basic necessities, services and humanitarian assistance.

The Commission emphasised that this ongoing coercive environment has fragmented Palestinian society and ensured that Palestinians are unable of fulfil their right to self-determination among other rights. The Commission also noted the extremely harmful impact of the air, land and sea blockade of Gaza on Palestinian human rights.

The report outlines a specifically damaging impact on children, who experience constant military presence, arrest and detention, frequent attacks and acts of violence, restrictions on movement, home demolition and destruction of infrastructure and property. The Commission emphasised that the cumulative effects of occupation practices, including restrictions on movement, have had a pervasive discriminatory effect on Palestinian women, noting that they experience gender-based violence during their everyday activities.

The report concludes by saying that some of the policies and actions of the Israeli Government leading to permanent occupation and de-facto annexation may constitute elements of crimes under international criminal law, including the war crime of transferring, directly or indirectly, part of one’s own civilian population into occupied territory, and the crime against humanity of deportation or forcible transfer.

“The actions of Israeli Governments reviewed in our report constitute an illegal occupation and annexation regime that must be addressed”, stated Commissioner Chris Sidoti. “The international system and individual States must act and uphold their obligations under international law. That must begin at this session of the General Assembly with a referral to the International Court of Justice”, he added.

Background

The UN Human Rights Council mandated the Commission on 27 May 2021 to “investigate, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law leading up and since 13 April 2021”. In July 2021, the President of the Human Rights Council announced the appointment of Navanethem Pillay (South Africa), Miloon Kothari (India) and Christopher Sidoti (Australia) to serve as the three members of the Commission and indicated that Ms. Pillay would serve as Chair. Resolution A/HRC/RES/S-30/1 further requested the commission of inquiry to “investigate all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity.” The Commission of Inquiry was mandated to report to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly annually from June 2022 and September 2022, respectively.

The Commissioners will present their report to the General Assembly on 27 October.

The full report in six languages and more information on the work of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, can be found at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-israel/index

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Featured image: Palestine graffiti (Source: Jewish Voice for Labour)

Political ‘Justice’ in America

October 26th, 2022 by Daniel McAdams

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***

Josef Stalin’s top henchman famously said, “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” What it meant was that Soviet justice was about politics, not the rule of law. First decide who, for political reasons, is to be punished, and then the state will provide the crimes for which he will be charged.

This dark era of politicized “justice” has returned with former Trump campaign advisor Steve Bannon’s recent sentence to four months in jail for “contempt of Congress” over his refusal to appear before the House January 6th Committee.

How is it politicized justice for Bannon to be punished for ignoring a subpoena from the US Congress? Because many before him have been charged with contempt of Congress – including Democratic Party luminaries such as Eric Holder, Janet Reno, and Lois Lerner – and were never sentenced to jail time.

Bannon’s sentence is meant to convey a political message to America: if you support Trump you are a criminal and you may find yourself in a cell next to Steve Bannon.

And you do not have to support Trump to understand the danger in this. Everyone should be afraid of political justice. It cuts both ways and there is no guarantee that Republicans if they capture Congress will not also follow this precedent.

Sending your political opponents to jail is what happens in a banana republic. It is un-American. But here we are.

The goal of the January 6th Committee is not to seek justice for the “crime” of trespassing and putting feet on Pelosi’s sacred desk, but to make sure that Donald Trump is never allowed to run for President again. That is the reason hundreds have been unjustly arrested and held in terrible conditions for non-crimes. As they say, if you want to make an omelet you have to break some eggs.

Speaking of contempt of Congress, the real contempt is the existence of the January 6th Committee in the first place. It has been a partisan show trial from the beginning, where the only two “Republican” Members were not chosen by Republicans but by Nancy Pelosi. The purpose of the Committee has been to prop up the false narrative that somehow a few rowdy protesters who broke into the Capitol Building were the equivalent of the storming of the Bastille.

The US Administration is also involved in narrative control in other areas. The media reported last week that Tesla and Space-X chief Elon Musk has come under a “national security review” over, it seems, his on-again-off-again purchase of Twitter and perhaps even his proposing a peace plan for Russia and Ukraine that does not include a nuclear strike on Moscow.

Musk has also come under fire from the “cancel culture” Left over his repeated vows to return Twitter to a free speech platform once he is in charge. As we have seen in so many cases, including with former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson, Twitter has been working closely with the Biden Administration to silence and ban any users who dare challenge the “accepted wisdom” on Covid, Ukraine, and a number of other things.

When justice becomes tangled in politics, freedom and liberty go out the window. We are not so naïve to think this is something that just arrived with the Biden Administration, but there seems little doubt it is spreading like a cancer. We must reject political justice if the Republic is to survive.

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***

Israeli forces killed six Palestinians and wounded at least 20 more after a violent army raid in the northern occupied West Bank on Tuesday. 

A large army force stormed Nablus around midnight local time, equipped with dozens of armoured vehicle and anti-tank guided missiles, and clashed with Palestinian fighters in the city.

Five Palestinians, at least two of them unarmed, were killed during the three-hour raid and a sixth person was fatally shot in Ramallah hours later, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

The names of those who died during the Nablus assault were identified as Hamdi Sobeih Ramzi Qayem, 30; Ali Khaled Omar Antar, 26; Hamdi Muhammad Sabri Hamid Sharaf, 35; Wadi Sabih Houh, 31; Mishaal Zahi Ahmed Baghdadi, 27.

The sixth Palestinian, identified as Qusai Tamimi, 20, was killed in a separate incident in the village of Nabi Saleh in the Ramallah district.

A general strike and a day of mourning were observed across the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, as thousands of angry residents joined the funeral processions in Nablus.

“The situation this morning, the city woke up so sad, they lost five lives. The atmosphere is very sad and there are strikes across the West Bank today,” Zayd al-Azhary, a Nablus-based activist, told Middle East Eye.

The Tuesday operation came amidst a 14-day siege on Nablus by the Israeli army, which has blocked the city’s entrances and crippled people’s movement in and out.

The Israeli army says the measures were enforced to stop attacks against Israeli targets carried out by a newly-formed armed group in the city called the Lions’ Den.

Nablus and neighbouring city Jenin have witnessed a resurgence of armed resistance in recent months. Palestinian fighters have been increasingly attacking army checkpoints and posts, as well as confronting Israeli troops during city raids.

Undercover incursion  

According to Palestinian media, the attack on Nablus began just after midnight on Tuesday when security forces belonging to the Palestinian Authority (PA) pulled over a “suspicious vehicle” next to the Old City.

The vehicle was carrying undercover Israeli special forces, local sources said. When the PA officers confronted the Israeli forces in the vehicle, the Palestinian officers reportedly came under fire from Israeli snipers that were stationed on rooftops in the area.

After the Israeli special forces’ cover was blown, an exchange of fire reportedly took place between the PA forces and Israeli soldiers, resulting in the injury of four PA officers, according to local reports.

The gunfire exchange between the PA officers and Israeli soldiers tipped off armed groups in Nablus’ Old City that an Israeli operation in the city was underway.

Palestinian fighters began exchanging fire with Israeli forces who raided the area, while dozens more Israeli army jeeps began rolling into the city.

One resident said “chaos broke out” after that, as Israeli troops descended on the Old City in large numbers, targeting members of the Lions’ Den group.

The Israeli army confirmed in a statement that the operation targeted a site “used by the main operatives of the Lion’s Den”, describing it as a “headquarters and a workshop for making weapons”. It added that it “responded with live fire toward the armed suspects shooting at them.”

The Lions’ Den group also said in a statement on Telegram that it engaged in shootouts with Israeli troops and confirmed that at least one of its members was killed.

‘War zone’

Local sources said approximately 60 Israeli armoured military vehicles were used in the operation in which the Old City was raided and besieged.

The first two Palestinians that were shot were reportedly bystanders walking through the Old City.

“They were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” al-Azhary told MEE. “They were just walking down the road and of course, the Israelis shot them without asking any questions.”

It remained unclear the identity of the first two Palestinians that were killed, and if they were members of the armed groups who were fighting against the army incursion. Videos published on social media showed Palestinian medics attempting to resuscitate two Palestinians in civilian clothing as they lay on the street, bleeding and unconscious.

At around 1am, as gunfire rang throughout the city of Nablus, Palestinians in the Old City turned to the minarets in mosques to call for backup from residents to support the resistance fighters and civilians stuck inside.

An hour later, Israeli forces reportedly struck a vehicle in the Ras al-Ain area with a missile, killing a man in his car. Another Palestinian, Wadee al-Houh, who Israel was reported to be one of the commanders of the Lion’s Den group, was killed in his house.

The Israeli military released a statement saying that al-Houh was one of the primary targets of the army’s operation in the city. The Lions’ Den group released a statement on Tuesday morning commemorating Houh but did not specify his role in the group.

As Palestinian armed groups continued to clash with Israeli forces into the early hours of the morning, confrontations were reported across the city, including the Balata refugee camp.

Al-Azhary described the scene as a “war zone”.

“More than 9,000 people live in the Old City and all of them were under fire, and in danger – kids, old people, families etc, not just resistance fighters. It is not an easy life or position to be in,” he said.

‘Trying to resist’

Thousands of Palestinians joined the funeral procession of the five people killed in the Israeli raid as protests are expected to take place across the West Bank against growing Israeli violence.

The Tuesday raid took the Palestinian death toll this year to more than 175 people who have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers, including killed 125 in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

More than 44 were killed in the last two months alone.

According to the UN, 2022 is so far “the highest year for Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank, compared to the same period in the previous 16 years”.

Nablus was placed under blockade earlier this month after an Israeli soldier was killed on 11 October at a military post on the outskirts of Nablus city. The Israeli army embarked on a widespread manhunt for the shooter, who reportedly belonged to the Lions’ Den.

On Sunday 23 October, a Palestinian member of the nascent group, Tamir al-Kilani, was killed in a remote explosion in the Old City of Nablus. The group claimed he was assassinated by the Israeli army, though the military did not publicly comment on the killing.

Following the raid on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid told the Kan public broadcaster “Israel will never be deterred from acting for its security,” saying that members of the Lions’ Den “are the people who hurt Ido Baruch,” referring to the soldier who was killed on 11 October.

On Twitter, Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz vowed that the military will continue its crackdown on the Lions’ Den and other armed groups, saying: “There aren’t and won’t be sanctuary cities for terrorists.

“We will continue to act against anyone who tries to harm the citizens of Israel, wherever and whenever necessary,” he said.

In response to the statements, al-Azhary dismissed Israeli claims the Palestinian groups are “terrorists”, saying they were created as a response to the ongoing Israeli mistreatment and occupation of Palestinians.

“Palestinians are trying to resist Israel taking away their rights and dignity as people. They are not terrorists, they are a group of people who have been pushed into a corner,” al-Azhary said.

“What Israel is doing now is trying to make this group into a terrorist group instead of focusing on what we as Palestinians actually need.”

*

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UK increases its own military assets in Ukraine.  Even before the Russian invasion, Britain trained at least 22,000 Ukrainian soldiers (Operation Orbital).  

In early September, the outgoing PM Boris Johnson promised to train another 10,000, probably in Poland. 

Since February, Westminster has transferred £1.3 billion to Kiev, supplied thousands of NLAW anti-tank missiles, rocket launchers and artillery systems, including NATO M109.  Apparently small, but significant symbol of the British influence on Ukrainian affairs is that the final of the Eurovision Song Contest, which was to be hosted by Ukraine next year, will be organised in… the United Kingdom. 

Only people who cannot recognise changes in international politics may still think that the Ukrainian game is being played by (only) Russia and the United States. 

Of course, the American hegemon still keeps general control over entire geopolitics of the Western hemisphere, but it is choking our economies.

The reality is that if the US does not focus on the Chinese question, it will not only lose its (already broken) primacy of the World’s first economy.  America will also be dethroned as the most important centre of global capital, which is already considering whether to change the side supported.  Howbeit Washington dominated and paralysed Europe for so many decades not to leave it without the enlightened Anglo-Saxon leadership now.  History and geopolitics have come full circle, when we are witnessing a bizarre, but absolutely serious attempt to rebuild the British Empire.  Not Americans but jingoist Britons are main Russia opponents in Ukraine.  In fact the Westminster has taken full control over the foreign policy (including energy security) of Poland and the Baltic States.  The phantom menace of the full scall war in that region, with at least partial participation of the NATO members is absolutely real.  And all of that when people in the UK face the most depressing decline of the life conditions since early Thatcher.

And then the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon is coming with a promise of the next year referendum, but not with a single word questioning pro-war and pro-austerity line of the Westminster.  Is it only a tactical mistake or obvious SNP emergency exit to avoid keeping promises?  There is no way to effectively provide pro-independence campaign in the realities of the war scare propaganda.  That would just a gift for the Unionists to let them ague “Only the British Army can protect Scotland!”.  And there will be no proper answer, when under SNP Scotland wants to be first to fight for the Empire again!  What kind of the (former?) leftist would send £65 million to Ukraine not as a humanitarian aid, but for military purposes, just to keep war going?  If Scotland, together with the whole UK, starts to be involved in the full war and support it, there will be absolutely no space for any kind of pro-independence and pro-social campaign at all.  And just opposite, war could and should be strong argument for the Scottish separation, politics of disarming and non-alignment with military pacts, as well as focusing on economic issues and preventing social costs of the financial and energy crisis.  Only there is one condition: we have to be against this imperialist war. Always and despite the circumstances and propaganda.  There is no other choice.

If Scots do not want to die for the British jingoism – they have to choose the independence.  Independence means no war for Scottish people and no need to pay for the Tories crisis.  Simple and true slogans can make our future.  Social and national transformation of Scotland simply has to be pacifist or will fail in the interests of Imperialists only.  There is not only the war menace over Europe.  Even in Scotland, among our old comrades we can recognise symptoms of the “consummated opportunism”, this well-known “fellow traveller” of any liberalism.  So, either we oppose that misdirection, or we can farewell our chance for the social justice in own independent state.

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Konrad Rękas is a renowned geopolitical analyst and a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

“Everyone is the other and no one is himself.” – Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

The Branch Covidian putsch is the most heinous crime ever perpetrated in the history of medicine, and some would argue, in the history of the world. Its success is attributable to the strong presence of Nazi bioethics within the ranks of Western physicians, as well as a broad base of support from the ranks of neoliberals. This inhuman cult dogma, so destructive to the human spirit and antithetical to democracy, is anchored in a contempt for informed consent, and is fueled by careerism, hubris, blind obedience, and an unwavering belief in the infallibility of the public health agencies.

Like any other cult ethos, Branch Covidian dogma operates outside the boundaries of logic and reason. Moreover, all totalitarians are amnesiacs in the sense that they have lost the ability to place political events in their appropriate historical context. Consequently, they can be lied to repeatedly without this leading them to question the veracity of an official narrative mired in pseudoscience and malevolent propaganda.

American doctors have been groomed for the biosecurity putsch for years, as their military-style training is predicated on the notion that their superiors are demigods that must be obeyed unquestioningly. Pronouncements frequently parroted by the legacy media that end up being demonstrably untrue, such as the tale that the mRNA vaccines will take us to herd immunity, fail to break the stranglehold that the cult has over its followers, but rather, as Mattias Desmet has noted, only seem to reinforce it. The claim (reminiscent of Nazi anti-Semitism) that the unvaccinated are spreaders of disease, and that they will have to live with the shame of having murdered their friends and relatives, is still being reiterated even long after it has become apparent that the vaccines do not prevent transmission.

There are dozens of studies that show the ineffectiveness of masks, and dozens that underscore their deleterious health effects when worn incessantly. There are also no less than 140 studies demonstrating that natural immunity to Covid-19 is durable, robust, and long-lasting. The new claim by the apostolic power, that the vaccines diminish virulence, is clearly an attempt on the part of the health care papacy to invent a new narrative following the failure of the “immunization drive.”

“Follow the science” is in fact a euphemism for “Be quiet and do as you’re told.”

The claim that an experimental vaccine can be rigorously tested in under a year and found to be “safe and effective” is absurd, as the process typically takes at least ten years using traditional vaccine technologies. Yet the Branch Covidian isn’t interested in the rule of law, science, morality or even basic common sense. Like the followers of Jack in Lord of the Flies, they are transfixed by the intoxicating power of the death cult.

A few weeks ago I asked one of my doctors how the vaccines could be safe when there were over 30,000 deaths on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), to which he replied, “Well, a lot of people took them.” In other words, this is an acceptable degree of collateral damage. In many ways, this is an even more deranged line of reasoning than that made by Dr. Gerhard Rose, head of the Koch Institute of Tropical Medicine during the Third Reich.

Rose attempted to justify doing typhus vaccine experiments on concentration camp prisoners at the Doctors’ Trial by claiming that it was acceptable to sacrifice a hundred men if tens of thousands of German soldiers could potentially be saved, as the Wehrmacht was being ravaged by typhus. This argument was rejected by the court, and he was incarcerated. Like Fauci, Walensky, and Collins, Rose was also “really smart.”

Yet another one of my physicians recently brought up the issue of Covid and suggested that I might consider getting the mRNA vaccine. His reasoning was as follows: he had a difficult bout with Covid despite being “fully vaccinated.” In other words, instead of concluding, as any rational person would, that the Covid vaccines demonstrate questionable efficacy, he concluded that the vaccine saved his life, that it dramatically reduced virulence, and that without it he might have ended up in an intensive care unit. Both doctors attended prestigious schools, and at least ostensibly, are of sound mind.

When the FDA panel met to discuss whether to go ahead with approving the investigational inoculations for children aged five to eleven, Harvard professor and editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine Dr. Eric Rubin said “We’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it. That’s just the way it goes.” Does one have to be a graduate of an elite medical school to see that this is an utterly depraved argument?

The government of the Third Reich deceived millions of Germans into believing that they had a vast array of enemies, all of which were the spawn of the Nazi propaganda apparatus: Jews, communists, Russians, and Poles to name some of the most prominent. A similar thing has transpired with the Branch Covidians, who have been taught to despise “anti-vaxxers,” “science deniers,” “flat-earthers,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “misinformation spreaders.”

This scapegoating is inextricably linked with efforts to dismantle the First Amendment, as authoritarian regimes cannot abide criticism. In an article in The Federalist by doctors Harvey Risch, Robert Malone, and Byram Bridle, the eminent authors warn of a regime which is increasingly intolerant of dissent:

“Questioning the competence and integrity of government bureaucracies like the FDA doesn’t make someone a bad person or a spreader of disinformation. Government bureaucracies can be wrong, and historically the citizens of democracies have viewed it as not only their right but their duty to scrutinize public officials’ decisions. Dissent is an integral part of the sacred compact between government and governed that underpins a free society, and Americans allow the current regime of censorship to continue at their extreme peril.”

When giving an introduction to Naomi Wolf’s The Bodies of Others at a book event in New York City, Dr. Harvey Risch denounced the devastating effects of the lockdowns, saying that the isolation has turned us into “sub-people.” Chelsea Manning has compared the lockdowns with putting billions of human beings into solitary confinement, saying “people are going to take years to recover from this.”

Blatant lies spewed by the three letter agencies, such as the claim that Hydroxychloroquine can damage the heart, or that Ivermectin is only a veterinary drug when it is on the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines, fail to shake the Branch Covidian belief that the orchestrators of the Covid response are irreproachable. (As Dr. Pierre Kory has done with Ivermectin, an entire book could be written on the war on Hydroxychloroquine).

Calls to halt the disastrous mRNA vaccine program are being ignored, even when they come from distinguished voices such as the World Council for Health and renowned cardiologists Aseem Malhotra and Peter McCullough. Only those who represent the Branch Covidian priesthood – replete with its artful pope, cardinals, and bishops – are ordained to be “the experts.”

The Western elites are acutely aware of the fact that if they can obliterate informed consent they can destroy democracy, as this would render both freedom of speech and habeas corpus obsolete. Having reached the zombie stage of capitalism, the Branch Covidian wallows in a state of unreason, amorality, and an atavistic yearning. Like Adolf Eichmann, they no longer live in a world where good and evil exist. There is only one’s career, the illusion of having overcome an excruciating alienation, and the sense of ecstasy that comes from a newfound sense of belonging to the Covid religion.

For many years the education system has played a key role in fomenting totalitarianization by replacing humanities courses with increasingly specialized vocationally oriented courses, while rewarding ideological subservience and punishing creativity, integrity, honesty and critical thinking. It is not a coincidence that many of the most indoctrinated Americans went to the most competitive schools, as they were invented for this very purpose.

Intertwined with the ongoing weaponization of medicine, medical students and residents are often mentored in a manner where they invariably acquire a derisive attitude towards informed consent. For example, practice pelvic exams done on anesthetized patients, patients arm-twisted into accepting the presence of trainees during their physician office visits, trainees instructed to disregard do-not-resuscitate orders (or its antithesis), trainees immersed in an environment where unnecessary surgeries are regularly performed, pediatric residents inculcated with contempt for parental informed consent, gynecology residents trained to blackmail women into having Pap smears in exchange for birth control; and a willful failure to caution trainees regarding the highly addictive nature of opioids, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and many psychotropic drugs – all are commonplace in American teaching hospitals.

As transpired in Weimar Germany, the West is undergoing a period of cataclysmic destabilization which has led to a growing sense of meaninglessness, alienation, unprecedented levels of atomization, and an unraveling of centuries-old mores and ethical norms. This disintegration of communities, coupled with a growing economic inequality, has brought about the rise of a hyper-careerism where millions of people will do anything to advance their careers. The more coveted the job, the more professional success demands a deep-seated ideological and political conformity. Since there is no perceived benefit in the eyes of the hyper-careerist to being educated regarding the many serious and complex political and socio-economic problems that we face, self-imposed ignorance presents itself as a sensible course of action.

The failure of the Branch Covidian doctor to acknowledge the irrationality behind “the science” (often preposterous even to a layperson), along with their inability to acknowledge the absence of a sound risk-benefit analysis behind any of the official Covid policies, is indicative of their having lost their souls to the cannibalistic machinery of corporate medicine. Every physician, especially in the West, should have been able to immediately ascertain that the lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, forced testing, etc., had nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with authoritarianism due to the utter absence of informed consent. That this didn’t occur, underscores how, with the exception of the handful of courageous doctors that have spoken out, the medical profession has been led into a morass of profound moral degradation.

Undoubtedly, those who have doubts about the official narrative yet remain silent, do so out of fear of losing their job. What they fail to understand, is that this craven silence may eventually lead to a situation where the penalty for speaking out will be a loss of freedom which is total and absolute. Indeed, if informed consent is irrevocably lost, the pathologizing of dissent will be normalized. This is evidenced by the fact that Canadian physician Dr. Mel Bruchet, and for a somewhat shorter duration Swiss cardiologist Dr. Thomas Binder, were committed and handed over to the Cult of Psychiatry for expressing heretical views on Branch Covidian theology, and so the process is already underway. This is the last stage of biofascism.

The penchant for overspecialization (which many doctors are presently hiding behind), ruthless ambition, and an indifference towards the most outrageous forms of regulatory capture has caused the biomedical technocrat to be molded into an insensate automaton of a rapacious oligarchy. How is a Branch Covidian doctor who believes that the psychopathic Covid mandates have been necessary to protect people from a virus any less deluded than an American soldier who is sent to Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan and believes that they are “fighting for democracy?”

Writing in Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt emphasizes the connection between evil and mindlessness:

“Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”

Karl Brandt, Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation and one of the most senior Nazi doctors on trial at Nuremberg, insisted that he was innocent of any wrongdoing when taking the stand at the Doctors’ Trial, despite having been a leading proponent of the Nazi euthanasia program and having been involved in forced medical experimentation on concentration camp inmates. The Nazi medical establishment believed that these ghastly crimes, which were in such incontrovertible violation of the Hippocratic Oath, were acceptable due to the credo of “the greater good” being upheld. Indeed, the Nazi doctor’s sense of utilitarianism regarded German society as one organism, with each person like a cell that collectively comprised this organism. Hence, killing Jews, the mentally ill, along with other Untermenschen, was rationalized in the same way that an oncologist today would regard liquidating cancer cells in an attempt to save a single human life. Today, the Volk is not a race per se, but the Western elites.

This extreme collectivist mentality, which is as intertwined with Branch Covidian doctrine as it was with the Nazi medical ethos, is antithetical to the informed consent ethic and has played a critical role in laying the foundation for a burgeoning health dictatorship.

One must get vaccinated to protect other people. One must wear a mask to protect other people. One must practice social distancing to protect other people. One must get tested to protect other people. The foundational precept of the Nuremberg Code is that medical ethics is rooted in the right to informed consent of the individual.

Dr. Paul Alexander, a pandemic advisor under the Trump administration, who has repeatedly decried the catastrophic harms of the lockdowns, and who possesses more empathy than the overwhelming majority of American doctors put together, has recounted a story about how he asked a senior CDC official where they got the science of the “six feet rule” of social distancing from, to which the official laughed and said it had nothing to do with science – it was about power.

Mindless compliance with policies which are obviously not backed by science, which have an irrational risk-benefit analysis, and which trample on every human being’s inalienable right to bodily autonomy, have brought us to a crossroads where we are hovering over an abyss of a brutal authoritarianism. Nevertheless, it is essential that we continue to intellectually challenge the sleepwalkers.

The Pentagon sacked Iraq; the Romans, Carthage; and the Greeks, Troy. Yet the Branch Covidians have sacked the whole world. Only through the restoration of reason and compassion can humanity cleanse itself from this demonic and fiendish scourge.

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David Penner’s articles on politics and health care have appeared in Dissident Voice, CounterPunch, Global Research, The Saker blog, OffGuardian and KevinMD; while his poetry has been published with Dissident Voice and Mad in America. Also a photographer, he is the author of three books of portraiture: Faces of The New Economy, Faces of Manhattan Island, and Manhattan Pairs. He can be reached at [email protected]

Featured image is from Medical Tyranny

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Israel Escalates Continual Airstrikes in Syria

October 25th, 2022 by Steven Sahiounie

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Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes across Syria for many years, and the latest was on October 24 in a rare daytime attack in Damascus.  Israel views Iran as their chief national security threat.  Iran supports the resistance movement against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance group.  When the US-NATO attack on Syria began for ‘regime change’ both Iran and Hezbollah came to the aid of the Syrian government and fought not only the terrorists following Radical Islam, which were used as foot-soldiers by US President Obama, but much later also fought to defeat ISIS.  Israel has continued an almost weekly schedule of airstrikes against possible Iranian weapons storage facilities across Syria. 

On October 24, Israeli missiles hit targets near the Syrian capital, Damascus, while Syrian air defenses shot down a number of the missiles. The afternoon raid led to the wounding of a soldier and some property damage, according to sources.

Russian deconfliction with Israel and opposition to airstrikes

On May 19, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov explained the working relationship between Israel and Russia, a deconfliction mechanism in Syria. Bogdanov commented while at the KazanSummit 2022, an international conference.

Bogdanov said. “In addition, our military is at work as well. There are military attache offices at the Russian embassy in Tel Aviv and the Israeli embassy in Moscow. So work is going on.” He added that the contacts happen at the highest level, and the mechanism with Israel in Syria continues to work.

On April 28, Russia urged Israel to cease its strikes on Syria, saying the attacks are “categorically unacceptable and inadmissible.”

Some Israeli airstrikes on Syria

On October 21, Israel carried out an airstrike on Damascus and the southern suburbs. Syrian sources reported several missiles fired at military positions near Damascus, and Syrian air defenses shot down most of the missiles, with only material losses.  Residents of the capital heard at least three explosions, with Sham FM radio reporting the attacks were close to the Damascus International Airport.

The October 21 airstrike on Damascus is viewed as a political message from Israel to Syria and its allies. On October 19, Hamas and other Palestinian resistance organizations were in a Damascus meeting.  The October 21 airstrike was the first strike in five weeks and carried a message in response to that meeting two days prior.

On September 17, Israeli airstrikes on Damascus International Airport and the vicinity killed five Syrian soldiers according to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).  The early morning strike was launched from the northeastern side of Lake Tiberias.  Israel has increasingly targeted Syrian airports to disrupt Iran’s supply lines. In June, Israeli airstrikes put Damascus International airport out of service for nearly two weeks for repairs to the lobby and runway.

Israel runs a grave risk of shooting down a commercial airliner full of passengers by targeting airports that are used for international travel, and there is a danger of a mistaken strike that could cause mass casualties.  The Damascus and Aleppo International airports are functioning with flights to Europe, Asia, and the Arab Gulf.

In September 2018, Israel caused a Russian plane to be shot down with the loss of all 15 passengers onboard near Latakia.  This was a military technique Israel used, where the Israeli jet hid behind the Russian plane coming to land, and the Syrian air defenses shot it down while targeting the Israeli jet behind it.  This is called a “shadow” air technique.

On August 31, Israeli airstrikes damaged the Aleppo International airport just as a plane was coming in to land from Iran. When the plane attempted to land in Damascus, Israel also struck there.

On August 25, the Scientific Studies and Research Center at Masyaf was severely damaged after Israel attacked the area between Tartus and Hama. One death and 14 injuries were reported and fires were sparked in the nearby forests. Israel’s attack was launched from over the Mediterranean Sea, and SANA reported the Syrian air defenses shot down most of the missiles.

On December 28, 2021, Israel launched an airstrike on the main port of Latakia on the Mediterranean Sea.  This was the second such attack in one month.  Storage containers were set ablaze.

On December 7, 2021, Israel carried out a massive attack on the port of Latakia.  The resulting fire in the container storage area remained burning for several days.  Residents of the city were sleeping when they were jolted awake by five explosions.

The root cause of all the political turmoil and chaos in the Middle East is the brutal military occupation of Palestine.  Until the Palestinian people are living in freedom, there will always be a resistance movement.  Instead of airstrikes in Syria aimed at Iranian supplies, Israel should be preparing a negotiations table to decide the details of the final two-state solution which has received international support through UN resolutions that lay dormant gathering dust.  Only when the Palestinians have regained their human rights will the surrounding countries be able to live in peace and prosperity.

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Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

I felt much freer in Bosnia this summer than I do now in the United States. In every city I visited there, I found no restrictions on travel, speech, or medical decision-making. Criminality was frowned upon, rather than encouraged. The people I spoke with appeared to be well-informed on issues of importance to their local community. In contrast, Los Angeles, where I live and work, is an authoritarian city. So is the state of California. And so is the United States as a whole. Soon, though, America may progress from an authoritarian nation to a totalitarian state. How did we arrive at this stage?

No governing system becomes totalitarian overnight. It must first pass through a stage of authoritarianism, where freedoms are slowly removed, as overlords issue pronouncements on what their subjects can no longer do. One of the first to go, perhaps the most important, is the freedom to express ourselves without constraint or censorship.

We lost freedom of speech a long time ago. And we allowed it to happen by first ceding control of our language to authoritarians. We agreed to substitute the word “theft” with “equity,” “revenge” with “social justice,” “racism” with “anti-racism,” and “homogeneity, discrimination, and exclusion” with “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Even the most basic of words, “male,” has now been redefined from “of or referring to men or boys” to “having a gender identity that is the opposite of female.” Merriam-Webster made this decision in 2020. He who controls language controls society. The American people no longer control their language. The authoritarians do, and they alone decide what words mean and who can use them.

In addition to seizing control of language, authoritarians also exert control through censorship. I learned this personally in July 2020, when I spoke on the Supreme Court’s steps with America’s Frontline Doctors, condemning the closure of America’s schools and the sacrifice of the nation’s children to assuage the anxiety of frightened adults.

Over 12 million Americans watched and listened to that talk over eight hours—an internet record—before every reference to it was wiped clean by Twitter, Facebook, and Google. A small group of tech authoritarians, working with government, decided this group of physicians did not have the right to share their views, and Americans did not have the right to hear them. Censorship destroys freedom, because it prevents the truth from getting out, interferes with the marketplace of ideas, and allows for the consolidation of power by small groups that do not speak for the larger population.

We are a much less free people than we were even a few years ago. We agreed to give up our right to speak freely, to defend ourselves, to travel, and to criticize the government. We no longer challenge actual racism, we do not fight back when attacked by criminals, and we do not leave our homes when ordered by the local public health department. When we insist on exercising our rights provided by God and enumerated in the Constitution, we now face the loss of employment, financial penalties, arrest, and imprisonment. For the first time in US history, we have political prisoners being held in an underground dungeon in Washington, D.C. for the crime of questioning the government. Several hundred have been charged with felonies, repeatedly tortured and assaulted by racist guards, and denied access to bail hearings after a non-violent protest challenging the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021. Many are still locked up, awaiting trial. Several have committed suicide. But it can always get worse. And it is.

Fact-checkers have now been installed at every level of public and private communication, interfering with and eliminating “misinformation” that threatens the reigning political orthodoxy. Technology, which has largely been a force for good since the Industrial Revolution, has been transformed into a weapon to track the speech, actions, purchases, and movements of individual Americans. Geolocators, biometric identification, and internet eavesdropping (on web browsing, email, and text messages) have led to a degree of information archiving never before possible, destroying any possibility of individual privacy. Soon, technology will be used regularly for forced resource reallocation, as our home thermostat settings will be remotely determined by government-run power companies, and our electric car batteries will be selectively blocked from charging based on our current “green” social credit scores. The former has already happened, in 2021, in the state of Texas. As our currency transforms into a purely digital form centrally controlled by the feds, what we buy and whether we can access our money will be in the hands of government officials in Washington. Better not disobey their orders, or you will be banned from purchasing food. All of it has already been implemented in foreign countries like Canada, Australia, and China.

We are now moving from an authoritarian nation to a totalitarian one. Authoritarians tell you what you cannot do. Totalitarians tell you what you must do. You must wear a mask. You must stay home. You must get tested. You must inject yourself (and your children) with an untested and dangerous drug. You must flee your home when criminals break into it. You must expose your children to pedophiles. You must castrate your children if they feel confused about their gender. You must offer your income, your property, and your body to the government or face exile from society, if not indefinite confinement in a cell.

American society is being transformed at such a rapid pace, during an unending “state of emergency,” that many Americans are finding it difficult to evaluate the changes and decide which are helpful and which are destructive. To assist in the process, I suggest asking one question: Will this change lead to greater dependence or greater independence? If the former, the change is certainly made in the service of a shift toward totalitarianism. Totalitarianism abhors freedom, lusts for absolute control, and demands compliance. If we fail to identify it and push back against it, we will move from an authoritarian to a totalitarian government, and America as we have always known it will be over, perhaps forever.

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Mark McDonald, M.D. is a psychiatrist and author of United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis and Freedom From Fear: A 12 Step Guide to Personal and National Recovery and is a faculty member at IPAK-EDU where he teaches the popular course, “How Not to be Fooled” each Fall Semester, and where he is now planning a course on mental health each Spring semester. You can find his books via DissidentMD.com

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***

 

 

 

 

 

In “Glory to God in the Lowest” Donald Wagner set out three themes for his memoirs:  his transition from political apathy and social conservatism to activism in the civil rights and anti-war movements;  a theological transition from fundamentalist Christian zionism to progressive and liberation theology; and advocacy for Palestinian political and human rights.  He succeeds remarkably well in all three areas.

It is an amazing journey, one that he shared with many fellow travelers, and Wagner describes it in a clear, concise and compelling narrative.  A fourth theme, related to the others, is his ongoing use of the idea of pilgrimage, not as a fixed journey to a definite end, but the journey itself, of humbling oneself before God and others in order to work for the betterment of humanity.

His theme of liberation theology took him from a conservative white evangelistic background, into the realm of the civil rights movement during its main activity in the 1960s and 1970s allied with the anti-war movement against the Vietnam war – and ultimately, all wars.   Working as a pastor in a black church introduced him to what he describes as a community in comparison to the individualistic approach of the white society surrounding him.  That idea became much more strongly emphasized on his travels to the Middle East where he found the community, the hospitality, and friendliness of the people to be a major factor in their societies.

Palestine became the focus of much of his activities as he witnessed, in both the Christian sense and the purely gut wrenching physical sense, the atrocities being committed by Israel against the Palestinians.  He watched the Israeli bombing of Beirut before the Lebanon invasion, and its devastating toll on Palestinian civilians in spite of Israel propaganda that they used only high precision military weapons on Palestinian terrorists.  He was in Beirut again the days after the Sabra and Shatila massacres by the Phalangist militia protected and promoted by the Israeli army and witnessed the devastation of the refugee camps.

On the advice of the people he met in the Middle East, he recognized that his main mission was to tell the people of the United States what their government and their military was doing.  That involved working with different churches who worked against the false ideas of antisemitism that were used for the Israeli narrative.   In turn that was a theological fight against Zionism in all its forms.

Wagner identified two main types of Zionism.   The first, and original, is the fundamentalist evangelical Zionism promoting the ‘end times’ of humanity in which all the Jews are to gather in Israel and either convert or die.  The second form of Zionism is the European/western version that uses the holocaust as the reason for the establishment of a Jewish state on someone else’s land.   This is Herzl’s version of Zionism which Wagner describes in one sentence “Zionism’s goal was to take the land and remove the Palestinians:  a clear case of genocide.”

The latter form could also be described as political Zionism as it derives from the social conditions of Europe during a time when nationalism was a driving force for Europe in general – “a political ideology of Jewish nationalism….The liberal adoption of far-right zionism as the abandonment of human rights and international law.”  Both aspects of zionism come together in the United States: the millennial end times and the nationalist holocaust driven narrative.   Wagner, among many others, sees the United States as the largest supporter of Israel economically, politically, and militarily, each using the other for their own purposes.

Further to the ideas of liberation theology is the idea of a colonial-settler colonialism “a system of power that perpetuates genocide and repression of indigenous peoples and cultures.”  This was, and is, aided by the Papal “Doctrine of Discovery” that essentially said to European empires to go and grab as much of the world’s land as you can for they are only inhabited by savages and lesser beings.   In Palestine, this idea of terra nullius, of empty land to be settled and exploited by Europeans, became a part of the founding mythology within the Israeli narrative.

In his conclusion, Wagner writes, “Glory to God in the Lowest….[may] one day blossom with the fruits of equality, justice, freedom, reconciliation, and peace for every nation.  This is a vision we cannot afford to surrender and it’s worth the sacrificial love and advocacy of every one of us.”

Wagner’s memoir, “Glory to God in the Lowest”,  is a powerfully written work.  It should be a bestseller, it should be on everyone’s shelf who has any interest in the Middle East.  It is an intense work, motivating and compelling, inspirational for both Christians and non-Christians alike.

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Jim Miles is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Independent Scotland Out of NATO – ALBA Party Proposes

October 25th, 2022 by Konrad Rękas

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***

Own defence forces, especially the navy protecting 16,940 miles of the Scottish coast, territorial waters and natural resources of the Scottish North Sea; rebuilding formations once disbanded by the British Government, such as the Royal Scots, The Argyll and the Sutherland Highlanders, and the Black Watch Regiment; as well as the unequivocal support for global disarmament and non-proliferation – these are the basics of the security policy for independent Scotland, proposed by the social-democratic-national ALBA Party, led by the former First Minister Alex Salmond.

The Second National Convention of the ALBA Party (represented in the UK House of Commons by two MPs) strongly opposed the NATO membership, demanded liquidation of the British nuclear submarine base in Faslane near Glasgow, which is part of the TRIDENT system, and the removal of nuclear weapons from the territory of liberated Scottish state.  According to the ALBA Party, the basis for international relations should be the strengthening of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.  Discussion at the Convention emphasised unanimously approved program based on the analysis of many hundreds of years of imperialism (especially English / British), as well as the experience of the current war in Ukraine and NATO involvement in that conflict maintaining.

Red Jackets strike back

Before the 2014 Referendum I had supported belonging of independent Scotland to the NATO.  However the NATO of over a decade ago is not that of today. As an independent country that is a member of NATO, the risk of Scotland being dragged to conflicts we do not support would be real. The increasing seduction of our politicians by NATO forces would inevitably lead to a roll back of the speed at which Scotland removed Trident from the Clyde.  ALBA will not support an Independent Scotland’s membership of NATO. An Independent Scotland’s defence should exist to keep our people safe and to be an ally only of the voices for peace in the world. That is the principals of which we have set out today – argued Chris McEleny, ALBA Party secretary general.

This politician himself, a former Inverclyde councillor, already had the worst experience with the British military complex. In 2017, by the decision of the Ministry of Defence, Mr. McEleny, who works in the DM Beith was suspended from his duties and as a justification there have been pointed his views of independence and opposition to the TRIDENT program.  The Brave Scotsman then won a case before a labour tribunal, but the British Army / RAF / Royal Navy garrisons remain foreign bodies in Scottish territory, like the “Red Jackets” after the Jacobite uprisings.  The situation is even aggravated by the growing presence of the US Army, not only in the formally used RAF Lakenheath base.

Who always wants to invade Scotland?

Scottish independence supporters recall the determination shown by anti-war circles, which for 40 years have maintained a permanent, rotating picket near the Faslane base.  This position of the ALBA Party clearly differs from the inclinations of the ruling Scottish National Party elites.  This once radical independence formation now evidently resembles the British establishment, also about NATO and security questions.  During a visit to Washington in May 2022, Scottish First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon unexpectedly backed Scotland’s NATO membership, although she sustained the announcement of removing elements of the TRIDENT system after independence.  That turnaround sparked some protests, even within the SNP, and a clear activation of anti-war and anti-imperialist circles.

Exactly to such radical tradition referred during the ALBA Party Convention Craig Murray, a former diplomat, former rector of the University of Dundee, Julian Assange’s friend and a recent political prisoner of the British Government, who served four months in prison in 2021 for exposing details of failed attempt of discreditation of the ex-First Minister, Alex Salmond, with false allegations of a sexual nature.  Unbreakable by prison, Mr. Murray called in a stormy applause speech “not to hand over nuclear weapons to the imperialists, only to destroy them!”. He also warned: “If any country wants to attack Scotland, it will not be Russia, but our old neighbour, who has tradition of hundreds of years of imperialism, aggression and racism!”.

Independence or NATO

Scotland’s strategic importance places its independence regaining in a geopolitical context, despite the Scots would prefer to stay outside of the globalist games.  Military bases, relations with military pacts, Scottish security policy after independence – all can be bargaining element for international recognition for a liberated Edinburgh.  However, these elements can also become limiting factors, making the acquired sovereignty purely illusory.  There is considerable and varied debate on this in Scotland.  The Scottish nationalists and the left have no illusions: you cannot remain independent while belonging to NATO, bringing foreign troops into your territory and begging for the location of someone else’s nuclear weapons.

Independence or NATO.

There is no third option.

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Konrad Rękas is a renowned geopolitical analyst and a regular contributor to Global Research.

The ‘War of Terror’ May be About to Hit Europe

October 25th, 2022 by Pepe Escobar

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***

Never underestimate a wounded and decaying Empire collapsing in real time.

Imperial functionaries, even in a “diplomatic” capacity, continue to brazenly declare that their exceptionalist control over the world is mandatory.

If that’s not the case, competitors may emerge and steal the limelight – monopolized by US oligarchies. That, of course, is absolute anathema.

The imperial modus operandi against geopolitical and geoeconomic competitors remains the same: avalanche of sanctions, embargos, economic blockades, protectionist measures, cancel culture, military uptick in neighboring nations, and assorted threats. But most of all, warmongering rhetoric – currently elevated to fever pitch.

The hegemon may be “transparent” at least in this domain because it still controls a massive international network of institutions, financial bodies, politicos, CEOs, propaganda agencies and the pop culture industry. Hence this supposed invulnerability breeding insolence.

Panic in the “garden”

The blowing up of Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) – everybody knows who did it, but the suspect cannot be named – took to the next level the two-pronged imperial project of cutting off cheap Russian energy from Europe and destroying the German economy.

From the imperial perspective, the ideal subplot is the emergence of a US-controlled Intermarium – from the Baltic and the Adriatic to the Black Sea – led by Poland, exercising some sort of new hegemony in Europe, on the heels of the Three Seas Initiative.

But as it stands, that remains a wet dream.

On the dodgy “investigation” of what really happened to NS and NS2, Sweden was cast as The Cleaner, as if this was a sequel of Quentin Tarantino’s crime thriller Pulp Fiction.

That’s why the results of the “investigation” cannot be shared with Russia. The Cleaner was there to erase any incriminating evidence.

As for the Germans, they willingly accepted the role of patsies. Berlin claimed it was sabotage, but would not dare to say by whom.

This is actually as sinister as it gets, because Sweden, Denmark and Germany, and the whole EU, know that if you really confront the Empire, in public, the Empire will strike back, manufacturing a war on European soil. This is about fear – and not fear of Russia.

The Empire simply cannot afford to lose the “garden.” And the “garden” elites with an IQ over room temperature know they are dealing with a psychopathic serial killer entity which simply cannot be appeased.

Meanwhile, the arrival of General Winter in Europe portends a socio-economic descent into a maelstrom of darkness – unimaginable only a few months ago in the supposedly “garden” of humanity, so far away from the rumbles across the “jungle.”

Well, from now on barbarism begins at home. And Europeans should thank the American “ally” for it, skillfully manipulating fearful, vassalized EU elites.

Way more dangerous though is a specter that very few are able to identify: the imminent Syrianization of Europe. That will be a direct consequence of the NATO debacle in Ukraine.

From an imperial perspective, the prospects in the Ukrainian battlefield are gloomy. Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) has seamlessly morphed into a Counter-Terror Operation (CTO): Moscow now openly characterizes Kiev as a terrorist regime.

The pain dial is incrementally going up, with surgical strikes against Ukrainian power/electricity infrastructure about to totally cripple Kiev’s economy and its military. And by December, there’s the arrival on the front lines and in the rear of a properly trained and highly motivated partial mobilization contingent.

The only question concerns the timetable. Moscow is now in the process of slowly but surely decapitating the Kiev proxy, and ultimately smashing NATO “unity.”

The process of torturing the EU economy is relentless. And the real world outside of the collective West – the Global South – is with Russia, from Africa and Latin America to West Asia and even sections of the EU.

It is Moscow – and significantly not Beijing – that is tearing apart the hegemon-coined “rules-based international order,” supported by its natural resources, the provision of food and reliable security.

And in coordination with China, Iran and major Eurasian players, Russia is working to eventually decommission all those US-controlled international organizations – as the Global South becomes virtually immune to the spread of NATO psyops.

The Syrianization of Europe

In the Ukrainian battlefield, NATO’s crusade against Russia is doomed – even as in several nodes as much as 80 percent of the fighting forces feature NATO personnel. Wunderwaffen such as HIMARS are few and far between. And depending on the result of the US mid-term elections, weaponization will dry out in 2023.

Ukraine, by the spring of 2023, may be reduced to no more than an impoverished, rump black hole. The imperial Plan A remains  Afghanization: to operate an army of mercenaries capable of targeted destabilization and or/terrorist incursions into the Russian Federation.

In parallel, Europe is peppered with American military bases.

All those bases may play the role of major terror bases – very much like in Syria, in al-Tanf and the Eastern Euphrates. The US lost the long proxy war in Syria – where it instrumentalized jihadis – but still has not been expelled.

In this process of Syrianization of Europe, US military bases may become ideal centers to regiment and/or “train” squads of Eastern Europe émigrés, whose only job opportunity, apart from the drug business and organ trafficking, will be as – what else – imperial mercenaries, fighting whatever focus of civil disobedience emerges across an impoverished EU.

It goes without saying that this New Model Army will be fully sanctioned by the Brussels EUrocracy – which is merely the public relations arm of NATO.

A de-industrialized EU enmeshed into several layers of toxic intra-war, where NATO plays its time-tested role of Robocop, is the perfect Mad Max scenario juxtaposed to what would be, at least in the reveries of American Straussians/neo-cons, an island of prosperity: the US economy, the ideal destination for Global Capital, including European Capital.

The Empire will “lose” its pet project, Ukraine. But it will never accept losing the European “garden.”

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This article was originally published on PressTV.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The War in Ukraine: Made in Washington Not Moscow

By Mike Whitney, October 24, 2022

Putin does not want Washington’s nuclear missiles parked on his western border in the Ukraine. For security reasons, he cannot allow this. He has made this excruciatingly clear over and over again.

Dictatorship in Disguise: Authoritarian Monsters Wreak Havoc on Our Freedoms

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, October 25, 2022

There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Millions Demonstrate in Support of Ethiopia Against Western Interference

By Abayomi Azikiwe, October 25, 2022

Throughout the Horn of Africa state of Ethiopia millions of people joined government-endorsed demonstrations on October 22 calling for national unity and an end to the United States coordinated destabilization efforts.

Is Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine “Really Worse” Than America’s & UK’s Invasion of Iraq?

By Eric Zuesse, October 25, 2022

America and UK invaded Iraq on 20 March 2003. Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Which was worse? Let’s first examine the invasion of Iraq.

mRNA Gene Transfer Technology: Regression of Humanity, How Big Pharma Is Risking Everything

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, October 25, 2022

In a typical month, there may be one case of this at the hospital, so 13 in 24 hours make it highly unusual. And there’s just one thing which has changed during this timeframe.

Fake News, Fake Putin Nuclear Threat

By Kurt Nimmo, October 25, 2022

If one reads the news with an uncritical eye, he or she would more than likely believe Vladimir Putin intends to nuke Ukraine. Of course, Putin never said he would use nukes in Ukraine, only if his country faces an existential threat, undoubtedly the same policy followed the USG.

“The US-NATO War of Aggression Against Yugoslavia”. Belgrade Children’s Hospital was a “Strategic Target”. Michel Chossudovsky

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, October 25, 2022

The presentation took place against the background of international tensions and the discussion about Serbia’s membership in the EU (and NATO ?) – because the pressure from the USA and the EU on the country is getting stronger.

Create Legislation to Protect People’s Brains and Bodies Against Attacks by Neurotechnologies

By Mojmir Babacek, October 25, 2022

Time is running out. We urge you to take the necessary steps to create legislation that ensures the human rights and freedoms of your country’s citizens.

Nicaragua in Latin America – The Invisible and the Reality

By Stephen Sefton, October 24, 2022

In Nicaragua, the population lives the daily reality of the country’s revolutionary development, the democratization of the economy, the modernization of the health and education systems, the transformation of infrastructure and a dynamic reaffirmation of culture, identity and national dignity.

The Last Temptation of Things

By Edward Curtin, October 24, 2022

Let me tell you a story about a haunted house and all the thoughts it evoked in me. Do we believe we can save ourselves by saving things? Or do our saved possessions come to possess their saviors? Do those who save many things or hoard believe that there are pockets in shrouds?  Or do they collect things as a magical protection against the shroud?

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***

“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.”They Live

We’re living in two worlds.

There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police and federal agents armed to the teeth.

All is not as it seems.

Monsters with human faces walk among us. Many of them work for the U.S. government.

This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live, which was released in November 1988 and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.

Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.

Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.

In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.

In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.

In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.

In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”

And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.

It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.

When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.

Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”

When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.

This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.

A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.

In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”

We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.

Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: what we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.

Through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny, the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, disease, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

We have let the government’s evil-doing and abuses go on for too long.

We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.

Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist, we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.

As the Bearded Man in They Live warns, “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”

We have bought into the illusion and refused to grasp the truth.

From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different.

The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, pandemics, mass shootings, etc.).

They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being.

They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.

Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates as fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.

This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.

When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”

We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Injustice is growing. Inequality is growing. A concern for human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.

Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.

So where does that leave us?

The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight.

Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.

When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hypno-transmitter in They Live, he delivers a wake-up call for freedom. As Nada memorably declares, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”

In other words: we need to get active and take a stand for what’s really important.

Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.

All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight.

Wake up, America.

If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.

*

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image is from Immunization.news

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Throughout the Horn of Africa state of Ethiopia millions of people joined government-endorsed demonstrations on October 22 calling for national unity and an end to the United States coordinated destabilization efforts.

These events took place just two days prior to the scheduled peace talks between the central government led by Prime Minister Ahmed Abiy and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a rebel organization which has been fighting the administration based in the capital of Addis Ababa.

During the nationwide mobilizations on October 22, the marchers could be heard saying “Respect our sovereignty,” “TPLF is a mercenary group,” “TPLF is the cause!,” “End proxy war on Ethiopia,” “People in Tigray are our compatriots ; Junta [TPLF] is our enemy,” and “TPLF should not be given a chance to prepare for the fourth round of attack” are some of the words which echoed among the people while marching to Meskel Square in Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia is the headquarters of the 55-member African Union (AU) whose predecessor, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), hosted the founding summit nearly six decades ago in 1963. The same issues of national independence, sovereignty and continental unity remain on the top of the agenda for the 1.4 billion residents of the continent and its mass organizations, political parties and governments.

Since November 4, 2020, the TPLF has waged a war of regime-change against the now Prosperity Party and its allies within the central government. Ethiopia at the time of the attacks by the TPLF rebels, was poised to make fully operational the Grand Renaissance Dam Project GERD), the largest of such hydro-electric projects among all AU member-states.

On October 22, Ethiopians made a profound statement that they were firmly against the foreign policy of Washington aimed at fragmenting and removing its elected government. Prime Minister Abiy, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is committed to achieving the national unity of Ethiopia along with its program of ending instability and terrorism in the entire Horn of Africa region.

Abiy came into office in April 2018 after a national uprising against the previous government in Ethiopia which was under the political domination of the TPLF. The TPLF-led Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) constituted the administration in the country between May 1991 until the early months of 2018. After taking office, Abiy has normalized relations with neighboring Eritrea which had been at war with the TPLF-EPRDF regime since 1998.

Eritrea, a former Italian colony, had waged a war of independence against Ethiopia since 1961, is now closely allied with the Abiy government. As a result of the collapse of the Workers Party of Ethiopia (WPE) administration under Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, Eritrea declared independence which was recognized by the Organization of African Unity and the United Nations in 1993 after a national referendum. Reports indicate that the military forces of Ethiopia and Eritrea are working in alliance to counter the U.S.-supported TPLF rebels.

Ethiopians demonstrate in support of central government, Oct. 22, 2022 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Since the initial military attacks in Mekelle, the capital of Tigray Province, in early November 2020, the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) has been able to halt the advances of the TPLF. There have been several ceasefires between the Federal government and the rebels since 2021. However, on every occasion, the Abiy administration says that the TPLF has broken each agreement while refusing to negotiate for the conclusion of the conflict in good faith.

The attitude of the United States government under former President Donald Trump and the current administration of President Joe Biden has remained unchanged. Trump and Biden have continued Washington’s hostility towards Ethiopia. High-level officials within the U.S. have repeatedly threatened the Ethiopian government and people to the point of engaging in public histrionics at the United Nations and within the corporate as well as western media outlets.

In an October 23 article published by Borkena.com, it notes that:

“Renewed pressure against Ethiopia in connection with the war against the TPLF rebel groups is on the rise as the TPLF forces are losing ground militarily. The Ethiopian government confirmed earlier this week that the Defense Forces controlled three key towns (Shire, Alamata and Korem) in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Local sources also indicate that the Ethiopian government has already started distributing food aid in the areas recaptured recently. Work to restore power to the aforementioned towns is also underway.”

Negotiations Are Being Held at the Aegis of the AU

The talks which were slated to begin on October 24 are an important challenge in the AU attempts to stabilize the situation in the Horn of Africa. The internal conflicts fueled by imperialist interference coupled with the impact of climate change where disruptions of rainfall, flooding and food deficits have further aggravated the overall social crisis in the region.

One prior attempt earlier in October to convene peace negotiations related to the Ethiopian situation was postponed due to what was said to have been logistical issues. Media reports on October 24 say that the TPLF’s delegation had arrived in South Africa.

Undoubtedly, the Biden administration will be monitoring the talks. Ethiopians in Africa and the U.S. have held mass demonstrations against a proposed bill that would impose sanctions on the government in Addis Ababa. The legislation as of now has been placed on hold. Nonetheless, it is a clear indication of the ongoing neo-colonial foreign policy directed towards Ethiopia and the entire African continent.

As in Ethiopia, the U.S. has continued to engage in military interventions in neighboring Somalia where the Biden administration upon taking office deployed hundreds of Pentagon troops to the country. The U.S. AFRICOM which has a major base in Djibouti, also in the Horn of Africa, at Camp Lemonnier, represents the commitment of Washington to maintain a military and intelligence presence in the Horn of Africa.

The region along with other areas of East Africa has been the source of recent findings of strategic minerals and energy resources. All along the coasts of East Africa there have been enormous discoveries of oil and natural gas.

In Mozambique, the northern Cabo Delgado province has been targeted by insurgents disrupting a massive Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) production project. Military forces from Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have intervened in the struggle to defeat the rebel forces.

Unity and Stability are Key Elements in Securing East Africa’s Future

Any assessment of these internal conflicts in the Horn of Africa cannot be separated from the foreign policy imperatives of the U.S. and their allies in the European Union (EU). Since the late 19th century imperialist states have sought to colonize the territories which today are known as Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya and Sudan.

Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya and Sudan were formally colonized by imperialist governments based in Europe. Ethiopia under the monarchical leadership of Menelik II, defeated the Italian imperialists culminating in the victory at the Battle of Adwa in early March 1896. In 1935, the colonial fascist regime of Benito Mussolini invaded once again the Ethiopian kingdom then under the leadership of His Imperial Majesty (HIM) Haile Selassie I. Although being forced to leave the country amid the Italian onslaught after 1935, Selassie and the Ethiopian people were able to mobilize international assistance from Allied governments and the anti-colonial movements leading to the defeat of Mussolini and the return of Selassie to the country by 1941.

In 1974, the masses rose up against the monarchy leading to a socialist-oriented revolution which attracted the support of the former Soviet Union, the Republic of Cuba and other anti-imperialist forces internationally. Monumental land reforms programs were implemented along with material assistance to the national liberation movements in Southern Africa still fighting for national independence.

 

The ascendancy of the EPRDF-TPLF administration in May 1991 was done under the tutelage of the U.S. administration of then President George W.H. Bush, Sr. In subsequent years during the 1990s through the uprising of 2018, the former government under the TPLF served as a conduit for the implementation of Washington and Wall Street’s foreign policies throughout East Africa.

It has been reported that the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under Bush, Sr., continues to serve as a consultant and promoter of the TPLF. This unwarranted interference into the internal affairs of Ethiopia is unacceptable.

The outcome of the talks must guarantee the territorial sovereignty and social stability of Ethiopia. A sustainable peace agreement in Ethiopia would have positive implications for developments in neighboring Somalia and Sudan.

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

Featured image: Ethiopa mobilizes against US proxy war on Oct. 22, 2022 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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***

On October 22, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) ended in Beijing. The Politburo Standing Committee approved the continuation of the Xi Jinping’s government, reelecting him for a third term as Party leader and President of the People’s Republic of China. The next day, the new members of the Central Committee and Politburo were named, thus announcing the institutional arrangement that will guide China for the next five years.

“China cannot develop without the world, and the world also needs China. After more than 40 years of unwavering efforts towards reform and opening up, we have created two miracles – rapid economic development and long-term social stability”, Xi said commenting on his victory. He also emphasized that the CPC is able to perform “new and greater miracles during a new march into a new era” and urged the party to “strengthen its historical confidence and initiative, as well as fight boldly and achieve victories”.

Although contested in the West, with journalists and pro-US propagandists accusing China of maintaining a dictatorial and anti-democratic political structure, the result in Beijing was applauded by international leaders, especially by the leaders of non-aligned countries.

As expected, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was one of the first to publicly comment on the topic, sending his congratulation to Xi:

“Please accept my warmest congratulations to you on the happy news that the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China has been successful and you have been reelected as General Secretary of the Party Central Committee”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also commended the Chinese Congress’ outcome and made clear his aim to continue current Russian-Chinese comprehensive cooperation:

“I will be glad to continue our constructive dialogue and close joint work on the development of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation between our countries”.

In the same vein, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi congratulated Xi and praised the importance of bilateral cooperation in order to achieve common goals:

“The realization of the goals of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Iran and China creates a model of an all-out expansion of ties based on mutual interests and respect”.

As far as India is concerned, the official government’s press channel published a note on the internet expressing congratulations:

“Chinese President Xi Jinping re-elected as General Secretary of Communist Party of China for a record third five-year term”.

It is important to note that, although both countries have historical rivalries and several frictions have occurred in recent years, the bilateral situation has improved substantially in latest months. China and India have mutually engaged in the construction of a multipolar world and for that they have agreed to alleviate local tensions. Not long ago, both sides demilitarized the border zone as a mutual gesture of diplomatic goodwill. So, the continuity of Xi’s leadership may be a positive sign to India-China relations.

In fact, Xi’s victory was extremely significant because it not only represented a formal presidential reelection, but also a victory for his project for China. The few changes that took place during the Congress were aimed at further strengthening the pro-Xi coalition and isolating the liberal anti-government parliamentarian wing. With this, Xi acquires greater capacity both to deepen existing projects and to initiate new political and economic activities.

Since the economic reopening, there has been a power struggle in China between the national elite and the Party bureaucracy. Xi has gradually managed to isolate lawmakers committed to the interests of the Chinese bourgeoisie, who often diverge from the government’s strategic plans. The current management has strengthened the party bureaucratic formation and reduced the political relevance of the owners of national private companies. With another five years in power, economic projects are expected to advance in this direction, deepening the so-called Chinese “people-centered economy”, which prioritizes projects to combat poverty both domestically and in other emerging nations involved in the Belt and Road Initiative.

In addition to the economy, Chinese foreign policy also seems to continue to grow in the direction of cooperation projects with emerging nations interested in contesting the US unipolar order. Wang Yi remains as the head of foreign affairs, which signals stability for the current projects. Xi made it clear in several speeches that the Chinese objective in international relations is to build an order without any hegemonic power, where states cooperate freely, based exclusively on pragmatism.

With his reelection, the Chinese President becomes one of the strongest and most enduring leaders in the history of his country. Domestically, Xi is expected to continue his project of modernizing China’s political and economic governance. Internationally, his leadership strengthens Beijing’s position as one of the main players in the global transition towards multipolarity.

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

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

Why India Punishes the Afghan Sikhs?

October 25th, 2022 by Sajjad Shaukat

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***

After the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in August, 2021, they had announced general pardon for all Afghans, clarifying that they would not seek revenge and would not harm those who had previously worked for foreign forces in Afghanistan.

Despite it, tens of thousands of people, including more than 100,000 urban Afghans, mostly well-off and educated professionals as well as skilled persons crossed into Pakistan seeking asylum and a resettled status abroad. Several persons also left Afghanistan due to deteriorated economic conditions.

However, the case of Afghan Hindus and especially Sikhs is quite different which shows Indian double game and delusive strategy against them.

Although the Taliban had assured the Sikh community of their right to remain in Afghanistan and to practice their religion, yet Taliban’s return reignited presumed fears of resurgence in violence which could target the community. It was because the propaganda of the US-led some western countries, including New Delhi.

Afghan Sikhs were numbered in the tens of thousands during the 1980s when they ran well-established businesses. But, only a few hundred were left when the Taliban took power last August.

In a Sikh temple (gurdwara) tucked in the narrow lanes of the Indian capital, New Delhi, 60-year Harbans Singh offered a prayer of gratitude. The temple has become his temporary home after he fled Afghanistan, where his family had lived for generations.

He said: “We have left our homes, our shops and come here to save ourselves…We have arrived empty-handed.”

Singh and his other family members were in a group of 55 Afghan Sikhs who arrived in India in late September, 2022.

The latest exodus of the Afghan Sikhs was sparked by a deadly terror attack in June, this year on gurudwara (Sikh temple) in Kabul which killed one worshipper and wounded seven others. The Islamic State group (Also known as ISIL, ISIS or Daesh) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Even before Taliban rule, Sikh’s gurudwaras had been the target of terror assaults by this Sunni Muslim militant outfit, which also accepted responsibility by for those attacks.

ISIS terror group also attacked Shia’s mosques, religious processions—Shia of Hazara community in Afghanistan and Pakistan in order to create sectarian divide and riots. After the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, they not only condemned ISIS, but also started war against their militants.

Before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, New Delhi had well-established it espionage system in that war-torn country led by its secret agency RAW whose agents were penetrated in the ISIS and as part of the double game were behind terrorism-related acts both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

However, Press Trust of India pointed out on June 19, 2022;

“On priority basis…India has given e-visas to over 100 Sikhs and Hindus living in Afghanistan following a deadly terror attack on a gurudwara in Kabul on Sunday…Several blasts tore through Gurdwara Karte Parwan in Kabul’s Bagh-e Bala neighbourhood on Saturday while Afghan security personnel thwarted a bigger tragedy by stopping an explosive-laden vehicle from reaching the place of worship of the minority community…The three attackers were killed by the Taliban forces.”

In this context, like the previous terrorism related assaults, RAW could be behind these terror attacks.

Nevertheless, as part of the dual strategy, the Indian government has facilitated the repatriation of Sikhs, including Hindus fleeing Afghanistan by offering visas, residency permits and organizing evacuation flights—the birthplace of Sikhism, India is home to most of the world’s Sikh population.

Singh, who had never visited India, felt safe in the Sikh temple where they had got refugees. It has long been the first stop for those leaving Afghanistan.

But, fleeing a country they had called home for generations was also hard. In this regard, Harminder Singh who also took asylum in India stated:

“We had our temples there [Afghanistan], our community and we used to organize fairs on special occasions. Leaving our life there makes me feel sad”.

While New Delhi offered safety, the future may not be easy for my family because the wait for citizenship can be long and uncertain, as Singh added.

In a hopeful sign, some Sikhs have returned to Kabul in 2021 from exile in New Delhi, where many faced myriad problems amid a devastating wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

In this respect, Sandeep Singh, 25, told Radio Free Afghanistan:

“We were facing many problems [In India]. We didn’t had access to a doctor or medicines and had to pay our house rent…Finding work was difficult because as refugees we had to obtain visas and were required to register with the police.”

According to Partap Singh,

“They don’t have proper homes, work, or citizenship papers that would facilitate their rehabilitation. Even educating their children is a challenge…They are facing so many hardships. Some are setting up pavement stalls or selling street food to earn a living.”

Singh has returned to the same temple complex, where the Afghan government is now providing him with security and aid to start a new life. For now, he lives off the $80 he can make each month as a shopkeeper.

Gulraj Singh, another young Sikh man, returned to Kabul three weeks ago after spending more than nine months in New Delhi.

Last year, Canadian and US officials had voiced concerns over the plight of Afghan Sikhs as some 200 families from the community moved to India.

In the recent weeks, 50 Afghan Hindus which include a majority of Sikh families have come back to Afghanistan.

Radio Free Afghanistan said that one Afghan Sikh man still living in India stated that the remaining members of their community are likely to return because of the challenges they face in India.

A Sikh remarked:

“It is very difficult to invest in India or set up a business while we are expected to pay for our children in private schools because we are not allowed into state schools…In Afghanistan, I had my own business.”

Reliable sources suggest that Afghan Sikhs and Hindus who were on exile in India met the Taliban who have assured them security, aid, and economic opportunities by the Afghan authorities.

Earlier, taking cognizance their plight the Taliban have urged its minorities–Sikhs and Hindus to come back to Afghanistan, claiming that the security situation has been solved.

In fact, although India’s Modi-led regime has disheartened the Afghan Hindus too, but his main target is Afghan Sikhs.

Notably, four referendums have been held in UK, Geneva, Italy and Canada in which almost 208,000 Sikhs actively participated and favoured an independent state of Khalistan in the Indian Punjab.

Particularly, the huge turnout for the Sikh referendum, organised by the pro-Khalistani advocacy group Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) was held on September 18, this year in Brampton city-in the Canadian province of Ontario, which depicted that the issue of the Sikh independence movement which is becoming a mainstream movement, as more than 110,000 Canadian Sikhs participated in the voting. During the referendum, the Sikh community raised anti-India and pro-Khalistan slogans.

In interaction with media entities, Sikh leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun-General Counsel to SFJ indicated that the voting in Punjab for the Khalistan referendum will start from January 26, 2023, coinciding with India’s 74th Republic Day.

Undoubtedly, the referendum campaign by the SFJ has raised awareness in a global community regarding atrocities committed against Sikhs by New Delhi.

And besides mistreatment with other religious and ethnic minorities by acceleration of violence, and massacre, Sikhs have, continuously, been persecuting in India since extremist Narendra Modi-the leader of the fanatic ruling party BJP became the Indian Prime Minister.

In this connection, in its annual report of 2017, Human Rights Watch which conducted investigative work in 2016 pointed out Indian government’s failure to control growing attacks on Dalits and religious minorities—Sikh community. Some latest reports of rights group have also pointed out violent assaults by the BJP radicals and other Hindu extremists on the various religious minorities, especially Sikhs.

According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s report: “Religious tolerance deteriorated and religious freedom violations increased in India…Minority communities, especially Sikhs experienced numerous incidents of intimidation, harassment, and violence, largely at the hands of Hindu nationalist groups.

It is surprising to note that after hundreds of thousands of farmers of various faiths began protesting against the government’s new farm laws in November 2020, senior BJP leaders, their supporters on social media, and pro-government media, started blaming the Sikhs. They accused Sikhs of having a Khalistan agenda-a reference to a Sikh separatist movement in Punjab in the 1980s and 90s.

Now, Sikhs have understood the shrewd diplomatic tactics of the Modi-led government which is punishing them. Hence, desperate to come to India, they are returning to Afghanistan.

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Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Afghan Sikh, running a shop in Kabul (Photo by koldo hormaza from madrid, españa, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

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***

 

Let’s Hope History Does Not Repeat

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Hollywood Blacklist. On October 27, 1947, screenwriter John Howard Lawson, the first member of what came to be known as the “Hollywood Ten,” testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC).

The contentious, testy testimony before a gavel-banging congressman in Washington launched the Hollywood Blacklist, in which members of the motion picture industry who refused to “cooperate” with HUAC by informing on themselves and others about their leftist politics were forbidden from working in the movies until roughly 1960.

This was when the Hollywood Ten’s Dalton Trumbo received screen credits under his real name (instead of a pseudonym) for writing Spartacus (1960) and Exodus (1960).

The Hollywood Ten served prison time and were fined for refusing to answer questions such as “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” and for declining to rat out others.

This conservative cancel culture, enforced by the movie studios and the U.S. government with the aid of the FBI, prevented about 300 talents from being able to earn a living in the cinema—because of their politics and beliefs.

Photo courtesy of Ed Rampell

The inquisition in Tinseltown in turn paved the way for the larger repressive Red Scare of McCarthyism during the 1950s, which decimated the American left and fostered the rightward shift in American politics away from the New Deal.

A couple of men holding signs Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Reds-under-the-beds zealotry of the Blacklist period. [Source: oscars.org]

Commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the Hollywood Blacklist kick off on October 13, 2022, as Turner Classic Movies launched a film series with the premiere of the excellent short, High Noon on the Waterfront. This compelling 14-minute documentary co-written/co-directed by David C. Roberts and Billy Shebar shows how two artists ensnared in the Blacklist metaphorically expressed their stands regarding the motion picture purge through their films.

Elia Kazan, the quintessential informer who collaborated with HUAC and “named names” of other suspected radicals, directed On the Waterfront (1954), a movie that justified informing.

Source: wikipedia.org

Carl Foreman, who was blacklisted and eventually moved overseas in order to be able to continue making movies, wrote the allegorical Western High Noon (1952), with the frontier town of Hadleyville—where Gary Cooper is forsaken by the townsfolk and must take a stand against evil by himself—symbolizing Hollywood during the Blacklist.

A picture containing text, book Description automatically generated

Source: wikipedia.org

Using the actual written words of the talents, Kazan is voiced by John Turturro, while Ed Norton speaks Foreman’s lines. The short creatively intercuts between scenes of High Noon and On the Waterfront. Here is the TCM schedule:

On October 21 a movie about the production of the Orson Welles-directed 1936 play that came to be known as Voodoo Macbeth opens. In it, Texas Congressman Martin Dies, who co-started what came to be HUAC, is depicted as race-baiting and red-baiting Voodoo Macbeth’s all-Black cast and its crew. About 11 years later, the congressional committee Dies set into motion turned from the stage and set its sights on the screen. The film Voodoo Macbeth is being theatrically released October 21. For more information, see voodoomacbethfim.com.

L.A.’s new Academy Museum, dedicated to film culture and history, is also reportedly planning a Blacklist series in Spring 2023. Oona Chaplin—whose grandfather Charlie directed and starred in 1957’s anti-HUAC A King in New York—is presenting a BBC podcast on the Blacklist in 2023.

Members of the Hollywood community who formed the Committee for the First Amendment flew from L.A. to Washington during the 1947 HUAC hearings to support and defend the Hollywood Ten. At the bottom of the airstair is actress Marsha Hunt, a civil libertarian who was blacklisted even though she was never a Communist Party member. Marsha died in September 2022 at age 104 and is chronicled in the documentary TCM is airing, Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity, on October 13. [Source: Photo courtesy of Ed Rampell]

As book banning, media blacklisting and school board prohibitions on teaching history accelerate, and as a new cold war with Russia is being launched, it is important for Americans to remember when the First Amendment was forgotten in Hollywood.

Stay tuned—and down with censorship!

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Ed Rampell is an L.A.-based film historian and critic who also reviews culture, foreign affairs and current events. Ed can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image: A demonstration to free the Hollywood Ten along with members of the Ten and their supporters. [Source: indiewire.com]

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America and UK invaded Iraq on 20 March 2003. Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Which was worse?

Let’s first examine the invasion of Iraq:

U.S. President George W. Bush seems to have been informed, in advance, about a New York Times article (which was the lead-story in the newspaper on Sunday, 8 September 2002), titled “U.S. SAYS HUSSEIN INTENSIFIES QUEST FOR A-BOMB PARTS”, in which the sources were anonymous “Administration officials.” The story concerned “aluminum tubes” that were “intended as casing for rotors in centrifuges, which are one means of producing highly enriched uranium …  to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today.”

So, on Saturday, September 7th, of 2002, U.S. President Bush said, while standing beside British Prime Minister Tony Blair,

We just heard the Prime Minister talk about the new report. I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied — finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need [in order for Congress to authorize an invasion of Iraq].

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Absolutely right.

Then, as soon as the weekend was over, on Monday 9 September 2002, was issued by the IAEA the following:

Related Coverage: Director General’s statement on Iraq to the IAEA Board of Governors on 9 September 2002 [this being a republication of their notice three days earlier, on 6 Sep.].

Vienna, 06 September, 2002 – With reference to an article published today in the New York Times [which, as usual, stenographically reported the Administration’s false allegations, which the IAEA was trying to correct in a way that would minimally offend the NYT and the U.S. President], the International Atomic Energy Agency would like to state that it has no new information on Iraq’s nuclear programme since December 1998 when its inspectors left Iraq [and verified that no WMD remained there at that time]. Only through a resumption of inspections in accordance with Security Council Resolution 687 and other relevant resolutions can the Agency draw any conclusion with regard to Iraq’s compliance with its obligations under the above resolutions relating to its nuclear activities.

Contact: Mark Gwozdecky, Tel: (+43 1) 2600-21270, e-mail: [email protected].

It even linked to the following statement from the IAEA Director General amplifying it:

Since December 1998 when our inspectors left Iraq, we have no additional information that can be directly linked without inspection to Iraq’s nuclear activities. I should emphasize that it is only through resumption of inspections that the Agency can draw any conclusion or provide any assurance regarding Iraq’s compliance with its obligations under these resolutions.

So, this was proof of the falsehood of Bush’s and Blair’s reference, on September 7th, to the IAEA, in which Bush-Blair were saying that, upon the authority of the IAEA itself, there was “the new report … a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.”

Because of the news-media’s ignoring the IAEA’s denial of the President’s statement, the author of the IAEA’s denial, Mark Gwozdecky, spoke again nearly three weeks later, by phone, with the only journalist who was interested, Joseph Curl of the Washington Times, who headlined on 27 September 2002, “Agency Disavows Report on Iraq Arms” — perhaps that should instead have been “President Lied About ‘Saddam’s WMD’” — and Curl quoted Gwozdecky:

“There’s never been a report like that [which Bush alleged] issued from this agency. … When we left in December ’98 we had concluded that we had neutralized their nuclear-weapons program. We had confiscated their fissile material. We had destroyed all their key buildings and equipment.” Other news-media failed to pick up Curl’s article. And, even in that article, there was no clear statement that the President had, in fact, lied — cooked up an IAEA ‘report’ that never actually existed. Actually, the IAEA hadn’t even so much as been mentioned in that New York Times article.

Bush had simply lied, and Blair seconded it, and the ‘news’-media stenographically accepted it, and broadcasted their lies to the public, and continued to do so, despite the IAEA’s having denied, as early as September 6th, that they had issued any such “new report” at all. (The IAEA had, apparently, somehow known in advance that someone would soon be saying that the IAEA had issued a report alleging that Iraq was resuming its nuclear program.) Virtually all of the alleged news-media (and not only the NYT) entirely ignored the IAEA’s denial (though it was not merely one bullet, but rapidly fired on four separate occasions, into the wilderness of America’s ‘news’-media) that it had issued any such “report.” All of them were actually only propaganda-media: they hid the fact that George W. Bush was simply lying. Both the U.S. Government and its media were frauds.

The day after that 7 September 2002 unquestioned lie by Bush, saying Iraq was only six months from having a nuclear weapon, and citing the IAEA as his source for that, the New York Times ran their article. It included such hair-raisers as

“‘The jewel in the crown is nuclear,’ a senior administration official said. ‘The closer he gets to a nuclear capability, the more credible is his threat to use chemical or biological weapons. Nuclear weapons are his hole card.’”

The fake ‘news’ — stenography from the lying Government and its chosen lying sources (in this case anonymous Administration-officials) — came in an incessant stream, from the U.S. Government and its ‘news’ media (such as happened also later, regarding Honduras 2009, Libya 2011, Yemen 2011-, Syria 2011-, Ukraine 2014, and Yemen 2015-). Do the American people never learn — ever — that their Presidents and ‘news’-media) now lie routinely?

Also on Sunday, September 8th, of 2002, the Bush Administration’s big guns were firing off against Iraq from the Sunday ‘news’ shows; and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice delivered her famous “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” statement, which was clearly building upon the lying Bush allegation of the day before, that the International Atomic Energy Agency had just come up with this ominous “Atomic” “new report.”

Then, President Bush himself, on 12 September 2002, addressed the U.N. General Assembly, seeking authorization to invade:

We will work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions. But the purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced — the just demands of peace and security will be met — or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.

Events can turn in one of two ways: If we fail to act in the face of danger, the people of Iraq will continue to live in brutal submission. The regime will have new power to bully and dominate and conquer its neighbors, condemning the Middle East to more years of bloodshed and fear. The regime will remain unstable — the region will remain unstable, with little hope of freedom, and isolated from the progress of our times. With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors.

Bush (and Blair) failed to win any authorization to invade, but did it anyway. They should be hung for it. They were atop a bi-national and entirely bipartisan (in each of the two countries) public-deception operation, like had occurred in Germany during Hitler’s time. (Hitler was a boon for the nation’s armaments-makers then, just as America’s Presidents now are for America’s armaments-firms.)

And both of America’s political Parties are controlled by their billionaires, who fund the political careers of the politicians whom those mega-donors want to become s‘elected’ by the public to win public offices. For example, whereas George W. Bush lied America into invading and destroying Iraq, Barack Obama and Joe Biden lied America into believing that their coup overthrowing and replacing Ukraine’s democratically elected Government in February 2014 was instead a ‘democratic revolution’ there. It’s so bad that even the progressive Democratic Party site, David Sirota’s “The Daily Poster,” has NEVER exposed anything about that Obama coup and about those Obama-Clinton-Biden lies about Ukraine, and about the U.S. Government’s planned conquest of both Russia and China — the things that might actually produce WW III (in other words: are even more important than what they do report about). In fact, Sirota had the nerve, on 15 February 2022, to post to Vimeo an anti-Republican-Party propaganda video, “The Pundits Who Lied America Into A War”, against the Republican Party’s liars who deceived the American people into invading and destroying Iraq in 2003 — though almost all leading Democrats, including Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton, had voted in the U.S. Senate for (not against) that lie-based invasion, and though all Democratic-Party ‘news’-media (and not ONLY the Republican-Party ones) unquestioningly transmitted the Bush-Administration’s lies to the American people, against Iraq, in order to fool Americans into supporting the then-upcoming U.S. invasion.

That Sirota video entirely ignores the Democratic-Party “Pundits” — such as the Party’s think tank, the Brookings Institution, whose Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, propagandized on TV and elsewhere to invade Iraq (such as in Pollack’s Council on Foreign Relations article, “Invasion the Only Realistic Option to Head Off the Threat from Iraq, Argues Kenneth Pollack in The Threatening Storm” did). Whereas Democrats blame Republicans, and Republicans blame Democrats, it’s the billionaires of BOTH Parties who actually fundall of these lies and liars — and who continue to fund those liars’ careers, and to present them on their ’news’-media as ‘experts’, to fool the public to okay the trillions of dollars that the U.S. Government pays to those billionaires’ corporations such as Lockheed Martin, to profit from those wars. It’s hypocrisy on top of lying, so as to convey an impression that neoconservatism — U.S. imperialism — is a ‘Republican’ (or else a ‘Democratic’) evil, when it’s ACTUALLY an evil by the billionaires who fund BOTH Parties AND who fund the ’news’-media, both liberal and conservative, and who profit from those invasions.

It’s not just the lies of America’s Presidents; it is the lies that are funded by America’s billionaires, who placed such people as that into Congress and the White House. This regime is an aristocracy, and imperialism is second nature to aristocrats. But an aristocracy is a dictatorship by the very rich — NOT any sort of democracy. This is the type of dictatorship that America now has — NOT a Republican dictatorship, or a Democratic dictatorship, but a dictatorship by the aristocracy, of BOTH Parties. They have made a mockery of their ‘democracy’. Practically everything they do is fake, except the vast harms that they produce.

That’s what led up to America’s invasion of Iraq. Here and here is what led up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

So: which is worse?

Were America and UK sanctioned for invading and destroying Iraq on the basis of lies? Should Russia be sanctioned for doing what the U.S. forced it to do in order to protect Russia’s national security?

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from CovertAction Magazine

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Media are reporting that pregnancy complications have spiked during the COVID pandemic, but claim the cause is unknown

Most blame the virus itself. But even then, they fail to address the fact that it’s the spike protein that is the most likely culprit. The obvious reason for that is because the spike protein is also what your body produces in response to the COVID shots

Around the world, women are reporting abnormal menses and vaginal hemorrhaging, both post-COVID and after exposure to the jab or someone who got the shot. Birth rates have significantly dropped, and we’re seeing upticks in preeclampsia, miscarriages, premature births and early puberty, as well as maternal and infant deaths

Despite the clear risks of vaccinating during pregnancy, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a whooping cough vaccine for newborns that is given to mothers in the third trimester. This is the first vaccine aimed at infants that is to be preemptively given to the mother during pregnancy

While U.S. media celebrated the FDA’s authorization of COVID shots for infants under the age of 5 last summer, European countries had long since stopped caring about the pandemic, and the head of public health in Denmark admitted it was a mistake to vaccinate children between the ages of 5 and 11

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As soon as it was announced that COVID-19 would be combated with novel mRNA gene transfer technology, a number of scientists spoke out against it with dire warnings about potential health ramifications, including the theory that fertility might be adversely impacted.

In the two years since the rollout of these COVID shots, our worst fears have come true. Still, mainstream media feign surprise. Case in point: The Washington Post recently reported that “Pregnancy complications spiked during the pandemic” and “no one knows exactly why.”1

Aside from COVID-19 itself, the COVID shots are the only thing that has impacted a vast majority of the population worldwide during this timeframe, and everywhere the same effects are reported. To claim “no one knows why” is to ignore the proverbial elephant in the room as its tail is swatting you in the face and its trumpet sound threatens to shatter your eardrums.

Both Virus and Shots May Have Similar Impacts on Pregnancy

The Washington Post seems to go out of its way to not implicate the COVID shots, laying all the blame on the virus itself. But even then, they fail to address the fact that it’s the spike protein that is the most likely culprit. The obvious reason for that is because the spike protein is also what your body produces in response to the COVID shots.

However, when you read things like, “last fall and winter, Amy Heerema McKenney, a Cleveland Clinic pathologist … began receiving eerily similar reports of stillbirths,” you realize that “last fall and winter” refers to the winter of 2021, not 2020 or 2019.

In other words, we’re talking about a time when most people had received one or more mRNA shots, while the virus itself had mutated into milder forms that were rarely associated with severe blood clotting issues and other anomalies.

That said, it’s by no means impossible that SARS-CoV-2, even in its milder expressions, might have an adverse impact on pregnancy. After all, we’re likely talking about a genetically engineered bioweapon.

The respiratory effects may have mutated to be less severe while other organs may still be more adversely impacted by the spike protein. We also have the “shedding” issue to contend with, so just because a woman is unjabbed doesn’t mean she’s not affected by COVID jab spike protein.

Unique Damage to the Placenta

The Washington Post goes on to describe what McKenney was finding in the winter of 2021:

“Almost as soon as she began looking into [the stillbirths], Heerema McKenney recalled, she became ‘pretty panicked.’ A normal placenta is spongy and dark, reflecting the nourishing blood flowing through it. The ones she was looking at in her lab from the mothers who lost their babies were like nothing she had ever seen before: firm, scarred and more of a shade of tan.

‘The degree of devastation was unique,’ she said. Flipping through case files, she noted that most of the women were in their second trimester, unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, and infected with the coronavirus within a two-week window before their pregnancies ending.

Heerema McKenney herself saw fewer than 20 potentially coronavirus-related stillbirths over about six months. But her findings matched up with cases colleagues were seeing in other parts of the world.

And they also echoed those in a paper from Ireland that looked at seven cases — six stillbirths and one second-trimester fetal death in pregnant people infected with the coronavirus — resulting from what the authors called ‘a readily recognizable pattern of placental injury.’ She said, ‘That’s when we realized we were all looking at the same thing.’”

While McKenney claims most were either unjabbed or partially jabbed, other evidence clearly implicate the COVID shots. For example, in November 2021, Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver, British Columbia (BC), delivered an astonishing 13 stillborn babies in a 24-hour period, and all of the mothers had received the COVID jab.2 In a typical month, there may be one stillborn baby at the hospital, making 13 stillbirths in 24 hours highly unusual.

Types of Pregnancy Complications on the Rise

That something is terribly wrong is clear from global statistics. Around the world, women are reporting abnormal menses3 and vaginal hemorrhaging,4 both post-COVID5 and after exposure to the jab6 7 or someone who got the shot. Birth rates have significantly dropped, and we’re seeing significant upticks in preeclampsia,8 miscarriages,9 10 11 12 13 premature births,14 early puberty, as well as maternal and infant deaths.

According to a research letter15 in JAMA published in late June 2022, maternal deaths in the U.S. rose from 18.8 per 100,000 live births prepandemic, to 25.1 per 100,000 live births during the second, third and fourth quarters of 2020, a relative increase of 33.3%.

That increase can be attributed to COVID-19, since no COVID shots were available in 2020. We don’t yet have the statistics for 2021 and 2022, but based on obituaries and social media posts, it seems many new mothers are now dying “suddenly” and for no apparent reason. Time will tell, but I doubt the trend has gotten any better after the rollout of the COVID shots for pregnant women.

More Vaccines for Pregnant Women

Despite the clear risks of vaccinating during pregnancy, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved a whooping cough vaccine for newborns that is given to mothers in the third trimester. This is the first vaccine aimed at infants that is to be preemptively given to the mother during pregnancy. According to Pharmacy Times:16

“Since children aged 2 months of age or younger are not eligible to receive an actual vaccine themselves, administering the Tdap vaccine to the mother can boost the infant’s immune system by boosting antibodies in the mother, who then transfers the antibodies to the developing fetus …

According to the CDC, although only 4.2% of US cases occur in this age group, 31% of infants who contract the disease who are also younger than 6 months go to the hospital due to the illness.”

Swedish Journalist Critiques American Reporting

In an early October 2022 commentary in the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan,17 18 journalist and author Johan Anderberg expressed being perplexed by The New York Times’ jubilant announcement this past summer that toddlers could finally get the COVID shot.

“For a reader on the other side of the Atlantic, the reporting on infant vaccination appeared somewhat puzzling,” Anderberg writes. “In most European countries, citizens had long since stopped caring about the pandemic, and in Denmark, the head of public health, Soren Brostrom, had even said that it was a mistake to vaccinate children between the ages of 5 and 11.

But for the New York Times — and its subscribers — this was a big event. When the magazine asked its readers to send in stories about what it was like to live with unvaccinated toddlers, they received 1,600 responses. Several of them said their children had never been allowed to play with friends or meet their relatives indoors.

At the end of the summer, the first numbers came out on how many Americans had actually vaccinated their toddlers in the first month. It turned out fewer than 5% of American children under the age of 5 had received their first injection.

Not so long ago, those kinds of numbers would have been thought provoking for a newspaper like the New York Times: Did we have an incorrect picture of the mood in the country? … Was there a perspective on the issue that we missed? But it no longer works that way.”

He goes on to describe how The New York Times has changed from “all the news that’s fit to print” into a publication that cherry picks its stories based on political bias and a preconceived agenda, and rarely ever presents more than one viewpoint anymore.

Had they been more journalistically inclined and less biased, they would not have gotten the COVID-jab-for-infants’ story so wrong. Many Americans also “received a blatantly incorrect picture of the risks with the new coronavirus through The New York Times reporting,” Anderberg writes.

The New York Times’ fallacies spread as far and as high as the Supreme Court, where Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor publicly overstated the number of serious COVID infections among children by 2,000%. That enormous flub was a direct result of depending on mainstream sources with an agenda to spread fear rather than truth.

Vaccines and Bioweapons Are One Industry

The fact that we have no real independent press anymore has become painfully clear over the past three years. What we have are corporate-government propaganda outlets and censored alternative media. There’s not much in between.

Certainly, you rarely ever find both sides of an issue covered by the same media outlet anymore. Media has become incredibly polarized and, with it, the population at large. As noted by Anderberg, the mainstream press has played a key role in this polarization, as it has abandoned rules of journalism such as unbiased research and reportage and presenting more than one side of every story.

The reason for this appears to be because media are owned and controlled by those who benefit from the pandemic. In short, media’s refusal to state the obvious is because the obvious doesn’t fit the narrative that we must surrender our freedom for biosecurity’s sake.

But the promise of biosecurity is itself a lie. Not only is SARS-CoV-2 a bioweapon, but the COVID shot is too. Once people realize that the vaccine industry and the bioweapons industry have become one and the same, the big picture will become clearer.

COVID Shots Are Weapons of Mass Destruction

These shots may have many purposes, but none of them is to protect your health. They may be part of a depopulation agenda. They may be part of an ongoing experiment to perfect some aspect of the transhumanist goal to merge man with AI and synthetic biology. They may have a social engineering purpose. They’re undoubtedly part of the global takeover effort by the New World Order/Great Reset cabal.

But they’re not part of a benevolent public health program. If they were, the corporate-government alliance would not have spent billions to first entice and bribe people into taking the shots (remember those million-dollar lotteries?), and later shame, bully and threaten to ostracize from society or outright kill the unvaccinated.

If COVID-19 were a naturally-occurring virus, then scientists, media, Big Tech and bioweapons chief Dr. Anthony Fauci would not have gone out of their way to suppress and censor debate about its origin.

Similarly, if the COVID shots were a novel but beneficial intervention for an unprecedented health crisis, the input and feedback of scientists around the world would have been welcomed rather than censored. (Ditto for doctors’ feedback on successful treatments. If saving lives was the goal, all suggestions would have been welcomed.)

The reason no one, regardless of qualifications, is permitted to speak about the dangers of these shots is because they’re supposed to be dangerous. They’re bioweapons. The mindset of those pushing for a post-human transhumanist world may be complex (if not incomprehensible), but the strategy to achieve their desired ends is that simple.

Mankind Is Being Regressed Into Oblivion

Mankind is being decimated by not just one but several different bioweapons — the original virus and a steady stream of ever-changing gene influencing shots. In the process, survivors of the next generation, children born and growing up in these times, are being robbed of intelligence, health and life span.

Mankind is quite literally being regressed. The Big Pharma-biotech-bioweapons complex are risking everything, the very future of mankind itself, in this effort to “reset” the world and shape it to their own liking and benefit.

Many worry about a nuclear World War III between nations but, in reality, World War III has already begun. The transhumanist-centered pharma-bioweapons industry has spent the last two years decimating its enemy — mankind — using the most sophisticated biowarfare and social engineering tools the world has ever seen.

Learn to Say No

The primary defense we have against these attacks is the word “no.” If enough of us simply reject whatever they roll out next and work on building our own parallel systems, we can preserve life and liberty for coming generations.

The globalist cabal is using bioweapons, but we can refuse to take them. They’re using sophisticated social engineering, but we can educate ourselves on their tactics, thereby insulating ourselves against their programming. They’re tearing down the infrastructure we depend on for life, including the financial system, the health care system and the food system, but we can replace them with ethical and pro-human alternatives.

We don’t have to agree to their “solutions,” which are coming, and will include living in smart cities with digital identities, a social credit score, surveillance down to your biological processes and a programmable central bank digital currency (CBDC), all of which will render you into a 21st century slave with a digital choke chain around your neck. Avoiding that fate won’t be easy. It certainly won’t be convenient. But it’ll be worth it.

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Notes

1 Washington Post October 8, 2022

2 The Phaser November 18, 2021

3 Science July 15, 2022

4 OpenVAERS Vaginal Hemorrhage data

5 Reproductive BioMedicine 2021 Jan; 42(1): 260–267

6 Obstetrics and Gynecology April 1, 2022: 139(4):481-489

7 BMJ 2021;374:n2211

8 New Yorker August 12, 2022

9 Obstetrics & Gynecology April 20, 2021

10 OpenVAERS Miscarriage reports

11 Pierre Kory Substack August 20, 2022

12 Wayback NEJM Letter to the Editor June 27, 2021

13 Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law November 2021; 4: 130-143

14 Health Day July 26, 2022

15 JAMA June 28, 2022; 5(6): e2219133

16 Pharmacy Times October 7, 2022

17 Sydsvenskan October 2, 2022

18 Twitter Anthony LaMesa October 9, 2022

Featured image is from NaturalNews.com


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

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Fake News, Fake Putin Nuclear Threat

October 25th, 2022 by Kurt Nimmo

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If one reads the news with an uncritical eye, he or she would more than likely believe Vladimir Putin intends to nuke Ukraine. Of course, Putin never said he would use nukes in Ukraine, only if his country faces an existential threat, undoubtedly the same policy followed the USG.

The lies and hysteria spread by the corporate war propaganda media have resulted in frightening millions of people in Europe and America.

The fear campaign went so far as to insinuate there will be a nuclear attack staged against New York.

The NYC Emergency Management Department played its part by releasing an entirely ludicrous PSA instructing New Yorkers what to do in response to a nuclear attack. Go inside, stay inside, and stay tuned, the video instructs.

Left unsaid is the fact that “sheltering in place” during a nuclear explosion is less than worthless. The PSA assumes a single nuke would be targeted at New York. More fear porn and stupidity. If its existence is threatened, Russia would use its Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, designed to replace it SS-18 Satan ICBM. The new missile can travel 6,000 miles and carry 16 independently targeted warheads. It has the capability to destroy and area the size of France.

Needless to say, those “sheltering in place,” from Manhattan to Queens and beyond, would die in place. It is conservatively estimated 4 million people would be killed with an additional 5 million injured. A couple of these nukes targeted at America’s east coast would kill more than 10 million people.

The bogus assertion making the rounds is that Putin will, as Foreign Policy (owned by Graham Holdings Company, an Operation Mockingbird production) puts it, “blow up the world.” Nothing of the sort will happen unless it is the result of a false flag.

It appears that the prospect of a false flag is a distinct possibility. “Russia’s defense chief on Sunday alleged that Ukraine was preparing a ‘provocation’ involving a radioactive device, a stark claim that was strongly rejected by Ukrainian and British officials amid soaring tensions as Moscow struggles to stem Ukrainian advances in the south,” Free Press Journal reported on October 23.

Russia’s defense ministry said [Sergei] Shoigu voiced concern about “possible Ukrainian provocations involving a ‘dirty bomb,’” a device that uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste. It doesn’t have the devastating effect of a nuclear explosion, but it could expose broad areas to radioactive contamination.

Telling lies and making omissions for political oneupmanship is hardly a recent development. One of America’s most revered presidents, John F. Kennedy, wasn’t straight with the media during the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis. Greg Mitchell writes for The Daily Beast (Newsweek),

While Kennedy drew wide praise for his handling of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, he had, in the process, sparked wide resentment among the media for how the White House had manipulated or even lied to the press about it while it was transpiring. Reporters had reluctantly gone along with repeated requests from Pierre Salinger, the White House press secretary, for self-censorship during the crisis and acceptance of a formal 12-point list of “guidelines” for withholding news. Surely, with the crisis over, the administration might admit it went a little too far—even lying about the president’s health and travel—or at least quickly shed the crisis-spawned secrecy demands.

Arthur Sylvester, a public affairs spokesman for the Pentagon, “set off a firestorm when he admitted the control of information was even tighter than in World War II” during the “crisis,” a practice he defended. “And he used a loaded term in speaking favorably of government ‘management’ of the news. (He stopped short of revealing that Kennedy himself had used the phrase ‘news management,’ and favored the practice.)”

“Journalists of all political persuasions raised a hew and cry, declaring that they were now expected to act as little more than government propagandists.”

There is no “hew and cry” today in corporate media suites over state-produced fake news.

The vast majority of “journalists” simply churn out lies and misinformation handed down by the state without complaint, lest their careers and livelihood arrive at a sudden dead end.

The American public, considered ignoramuses (and, admittedly, many are) by the state and its owners, must be fed a constant stream of big and little lies in order to shield the national security state (NSS) from criticism and public indignation.

Kennedy disliked the media and, in regard to the supposed missile crisis in Cuba, he wanted the CIA to verify the Soviets had removed all missiles from the embattled Caribbean island.

Behind the scenes, JFK continued to rail against the press. There were media reports that some Cuban refugees were claiming the Soviets were hiding some of the missiles they had purportedly removed from the island. In a meeting at the White House with national security aides, Kennedy complained that the American people were “bound to think it’s true” if it appeared in the press and that this could raise tensions with the Soviets again, even “possibly a war.” Such media reports made the Kennedy team appear “incompetent or liars.” He asked CIA Director McCone to verify the removal of the missiles and debunk the news accounts.

Kennedy wanted a “new system” to control what the media told the American people. “Aides argued, however, that it might not be a good idea for the White House to start refuting news scoops by attempting to prove the negative.” Kennedy eventually backed down on his demand the media turn over to the state evidence to back assertions made in news articles.

Naturally, due to the fact The Daily Beast (Newsweek) is a component of the big and small lie propaganda media coopted by the NSS (beginning in the 1950s under the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird), the article quoted above ends with harsh criticism of then president Trump.

Kennedy retreated on this. Even if he’d had his own Twitter feed at that time, one can’t imagine, unlike the current occupant of the White House, that he would have charged that the press “is the enemy of the American people” or that it is “frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write.”

There is no longer an adversarial relationship between the corporate media and the state. The current effort, ongoing for several years now, is to eradicate the “alternative” media by all means necessary. The information space must be sanitized and made safe for the dissemination of lies and misinformation favorable to the actions of the state, no matter how psychotic or murderous.

The above PSA is a textbook example of the sort of propaganda and scare tactics employed, no matter how absurd or at odds with reality, by the state and its media. The video leaves the impression Putin will nuke New York and much of the east coast. Fear is the preferred template, as it produces an emotional and irrational reaction on the part of the public and forms consensus for illegal and immoral wars abroad and further police state actions at home.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Kurt Nimmo 

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***

Unter der Schirmherrschaft des „Belgrader Forums für eine Welt der Gleichen“ präsentierte Prof. Michel Chossudovsky am 21. Oktober 2022 im Belgrader Hotel Moskva sein bereits ab 2019 als E-Book erhältliches (1) und 2021 im Belgrader Forum erschienenes zweisprachiges Buch (Englisch und Serbisch) „THE US-NATO WAR OF AGGRESSION AGAINST YUGOSLAVIA“.

Die Präsentation fand vor dem Hintergrund internationaler Spannungen und der Diskussion über die Mitgliedschaft Serbiens in EU (und NATO?) statt – weil der Druck der USA und der EU auf das Land immer stärker wird. Aus diesem Grund war der Zeitpunkt der Promotion des einzigartigen und faktenreichen Buches gut gewählt. Buch und Präsentation waren für die Anwesenden und das serbische Volk ein wertvolles Geschenk. Dem Belgrader Forum mit seinem Präsidenten Zivadin Jovanovic und dem Autor Prof. Michel Chossudovsky gebühren Dank und Ehre.

Image is from the author

Kinderkrankenhaus sowie historisches und kulturelles Erbe Jugoslawiens als strategische Ziele

Prof. Chossudovsky begann seine Präsentation mit denselben bewegenden Worten, die er bereits im Vorwort seines Buches fand:

„(…) In den frühen Morgenstunden des 24. März 1999 begann die NATO mit der Bombardierung der Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien. ‚Die Operation trug den Codenamen ‚Allied Force‘ – ein kalter, uninspirierter und perfekt beschreibender Spottname‘, so Nobosja Malic.

Als 1999 Belgrad bombardiert wurde, war das Krankenhaus Ziel von Luftangriffen. Es war von Militärplanern als strategisches Ziel ausgewählt worden.

Die NATO erklärte, um ‚das Leben der Neugeborenen‘ zu retten, bombardierten sie nicht den Teil des Krankenhauses, in dem die Babys untergebracht waren, sondern zielten auf das Gebäude, in dem sich der Stromgenerator befand, was bedeutete, dass die Inkubatoren keinen Strom mehr hatten. Das bedeutete, dass das gesamte Krankenhaus für alle Zwecke zerstört wurde und viel der Kinder starben.

Ich habe dieses Krankenhaus ein Jahr nach dem Bombenanschlag im Juni 2000 besucht und mit eigenen Augen gesehen, wie sie es mit äußerster Genauigkeit gemacht haben. Das sind Kriegsverbrechen, bei denen sogenannte Smart Bombs der NATO eingesetzt werden.

In Jugoslawien war die zivile Wirtschaft das Ziel, Krankenhäuser, Flughäfen, Regierungsgebäude, Fertigung, Infrastruktur, ganz zu schweigen von Kirchen aus dem 17. Jahrhundert und dem historischen und kulturellen Erbe des Landes.

Die Ursachen und Folgen dieses Krieges waren Gegenstand einer umfassenden Desinformationskampagne in den Medien, die versucht hat, die Kriegsverbrechen der NATO und der USA zu tarnen.

Es ist wichtig anzumerken, dass ein (korruptes) Segment von selbsternannten ‚Progressiven‘ in Westeuropa und Nordamerika Teil dieser Desinformationskampagne war und die militärische Intervention der NATO als eine notwendige humanitäre Operation darstellte, die darauf abzielt, die Rechte der ethnischen Albaner im Kosovo zu schützen.

Die Intervention verstieß gegen internationales Recht. Präsident Milosevic hatte bei den Gesprächen in Rambouillet 1998 die Stationierung der NATO-Truppen in Jugoslawien abgelehnt.“ (2)

Kosovo „Unabhängigkeit“

Image is from the author

Im Vorwort des Buches schreibt Prof. Chossudovsky zum Thema Kosovo:

„Die Bilanz der US-NATO-Kriegsverbrechen ist wichtig für die Bewertung der jüngsten Entwicklungen im Kosovo.

Seit Beginn ihrer jeweiligen Mandate im Juni 1999 haben sowohl die NATO als auch die UN-Mission im Kosovo (UNMIK) die UCK, die zahlreiche Gräueltaten begangen hat, aktiv unterstützt.

Seit 1999 ist der Staatsterrorismus im Kosovo zu einem integralen Bestandteil des NATO-Konzepts geworden.

Die Zerstörung der Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien ist durch drei zusammenhängende Prozesse gekennzeichnet:

  • die Destabilisierung der jugoslawischen Volkswirtschaft, die in den frühen 1980er Jahren begann,
  • die verdeckte Unterstützung bewaffneter Aufstände in Bosnien, Kosovo und Mazedonien,
  • die NATO-Bombenkampagne von 1999.

Dieses Buch ist ein Rückblick. Es versetzt den Leser in die Geschichte zurück. Einige der Texte wurden auf dem Höhepunkt der Bombenangriffe von 1999 oder kurz danach geschrieben.“ (3)

Ein Referent, dessen Gedanken und Gefühle die Mitmenschen einbeziehen

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky ist nicht nur ein unabhängiger Denker, ein unermüdlicher Aufklärer und ein Kämpfer für Frieden, Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit, der die komplexen politischen, wirtschaftlichen und finanzpolitischen Machenschaften der kriminellen Machthaber und Geheimdienste bestens durchschaut. Er ist vor allen Dingen ein Mitmensch, der sich in die Freuden und Nöte seiner Mitmenschen weltweit einfühlen kann und stets bereit ist zu helfen. Man spürt mit jedem Satz, dass hier ein Menschenfreund spricht – und somit auch ein Freund der Serben.

Die vielen Hintergrundinformationen, von denen die meisten Teilnehmer der Promotion vielleicht das erste Mal gehört haben, kann man in dem zweisprachigen Buch des Belgrader Forums nachlesen oder in den Interviews, die Prof. Chossudovsky während seines mehrtägigen Aufenthalts in Belgrad den serbischen Zeitungen gab (4).

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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 zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Sein Lebensmotto (nach Albert Camus): Geben, wenn man kann. Und nicht hassen, wenn das möglich ist.  

Noten 

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-years-ago-natos-war-of-aggression-against-yugoslavia/5671987

2. a.O.

3. a.O.

4. Siehe u.a. „Politika“ vom 22. Oktober 2022, S. 1 und 7


The US-NATO War of Aggression against Yugoslavia 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Centre  for Research on Globalization, Global Research E-Book Series,  Montreal, March 2021

Twenty-two years ago in the early hours of March 24, 1999, NATO began the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. “The operation was code-named “Allied Force ” – a cold, uninspired and perfectly descriptive moniker” according to Nebosja Malic. 

In 1999, when Belgrade was bombed, the children’s hospital was the object of air attacks. It had been singled out by military planners as a strategic target.

NATO stated that to “save the lives” of the newly borne, they did not bomb the section of the hospital where the babies were residing, instead they targeted the building which housed the power generator, which meant no more power for the incubators. What this meant that was that the entire hospital was for all sakes and purposes destroyed and many of the children died.

I visited that hospital, one year after the bombing in June 2000 and saw with my own eyes how they did it with utmost accuracy. These are war crimes using NATO’s so-called smart bombs.

Click here to read the Ebook.

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***

Under the auspices of the “Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals”, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky presented his bilingual book (English and Serbian) “THE US-NATO WAR OF AGGRESSION AGAINST YUGOSLAVIA”, already available as an e-book from 2019 (1) and published by the Belgrade Forum in 2021, on 21 October 2022 in Belgrade’s Moskva Hotel.

The presentation took place against the background of international tensions and the discussion about Serbia’s membership in the EU (and NATO ?) – because the pressure from the USA and the EU on the country is getting stronger. For this reason, the timing of the promotion of the unique and fact-filled book was well chosen. The book and the presentation were a valuable gift for those present and for the Serbian people. The Belgrade Forum with its President Zivadin Jovanovic and the author Prof. Michel Chossudovsky deserve thanks and honour.

Image is from the author

Children’s hospital and Yugoslavia’s historical and cultural heritage as strategic goals

Prof. Chossudovsky began his presentation with the same moving words found in the preface of his book:

“(…) In the early hours of 24 March 1999, NATO began the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. ‘The operation was code-named “Allied Force” – a cold, uninspired and perfectly descriptive mockery,’ Nobosja Malic said.

When Belgrade was bombed in 1999, the children’s hospital was the object of air attacks. It had been singled out by military planners as a strategic target.

NATO stated that to ‘save the lives’ of the newly borne, they did not bomb the section of the hospital where the babies were residing, instead they targeted the building which housed the power generator, which meant no more power for the incubators. What this meant that was that the entire hospital was for all sakes and purposes destroyed and many of the children died.

I visited that hospital, one year after the bombing in June 2000 and saw with my own eyes how they did it with utmost accuracy. These are war crimes using NATO’s so-called smart bombs.

In Yugoslavia, the civilian economy was targeted, hospitals, airports, government buildings, manufacturing, infrastructure, not to mention 17th century churches and the historical and cultural heritage of the country.

The causes and consequences of this war against the people of Yugoslavia have been the object of a vast media desinformation campaign, which has sought to camouflage NATO and the US war crimes.

It is important to note that a (corrupt) segment of self-proclaimed ‘progressives’ in Western Europe and North America were part of this disinformation campaign, presenting NATO’s military intervention as a necessary humanitarian operation aimed at protecting the rights of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

The intervention violated international law. President Milosevic had rejected the deployment of NATO troops in Yugoslavia at the Rambouillet talks in 1998.” (2)

 

Kosovo “independence

Image is from the author

In the preface of the book, Prof. Chossudovsky writes on the subject of Kosovo:

“The record of US-NATO war crimes is important in assessing recent developments in Kosovo.

Since the beginning of their respective mandates in June 1999, both NATO and the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) have actively supported the UCK, which has committed numerous atrocities.

Since 1999, state terrorism in Kosovo has become an integral part of NATO’s concept.

The destruction of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is characterised by three interrelated processes:

1) the destabilisation of the Yugoslav national economy, which began in the early 1980s,

2) the covert support of armed insurgencies in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia,

3) the NATO bombing campaign of 1999.

This book is a retrospective. It takes the reader back into history. Some of the texts were written at the height of the 1999 bombing campaign or shortly afterwards.” (3)

A speaker whose thoughts and feelings involve fellow human beings

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky is not only an independent thinker, a tireless enlightener and a fighter for peace, freedom and justice, who sees through the complex political, economic and financial machinations of the criminal rulers and secret services.

Above all, he is a fellow human being who can empathise with the joys and needs of his fellow human beings worldwide and is always ready to help. One senses with every sentence that a philanthropist is speaking here – and thus also a friend of the Serbs.

The much background information, which most participants in the promotion may have heard about for the first time, can be read in the bilingual book of the Belgrade Forum or in the interviews Prof. Chossudovsky gave to Serbian newspapers during his stay of several days in Belgrade (4).

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a teacher (retired headmaster), 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) https://www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-years-ago-natos-war-of-aggression-against-yugoslavia/5671987

(2) op. cit.

(3) Op. cit.

(4) See, among others, “Politika” of 22 October 2022, pp. 1 and 7.


The US-NATO War of Aggression against Yugoslavia 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Centre  for Research on Globalization, Global Research E-Book Series, Montreal, March 2021

Twenty-two years ago in the early hours of March 24, 1999, NATO began the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. “The operation was code-named “Allied Force ” – a cold, uninspired and perfectly descriptive moniker” according to Nebosja Malic. 

In 1999, when Belgrade was bombed, the children’s hospital was the object of air attacks. It had been singled out by military planners as a strategic target.

NATO stated that to “save the lives” of the newly borne, they did not bomb the section of the hospital where the babies were residing, instead they targeted the building which housed the power generator, which meant no more power for the incubators. What this meant that was that the entire hospital was for all sakes and purposes destroyed and many of the children died.

I visited that hospital, one year after the bombing in June 2000 and saw with my own eyes how they did it with utmost accuracy. These are war crimes using NATO’s so-called smart bombs.

Click here to read the Ebook.

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***

As the UK faces another round of austerity to schools and hospitals from the new chancellor Jeremy Hunt, amid a growing cost of living crisis, tens of billions of pounds of public money are being wasted on unusable and extravagant weapons systems, irrelevant to modern conflict.

The government wants to award the armed forces close to £200bn extra by 2030 – the biggest increase in their budget since the start of the Cold War. By then their spending would double to £100bn a year.

Threatening to resign – along with his boss, defence secretary Ben Wallace – if the armed forces did not get these huge increases, defence minister James Heappey says: “There is no prosperity without security”.

The reverse is true; there is no security without prosperity. Influence in today’s world, as one of Britain’s most senior diplomats has said, is composed of many things, notably a strong economy. And nuclear weapons are among the least relevant.

The demands of the armed forces, and arms companies and lobby campaigns on their behalf, are particularly astonishing as they are made against the background of such profligacy that would be embarrassing had it not been so successfully ignored.

If Jeremy Hunt wants to seek “efficiency savings” in government, he does not have far to look. There have been years of damning reports from MPs and parliament’s spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, on the waste of public money by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

The Ajax debacle

To take one current example: the ministry has spent more than £3bn of the public’s money, with the prospect of having to pay out £2bn more, on an armoured car called Ajax. The vehicle, tests show, deafens and injures the occupants, it cannot reverse over obstacles more than 20 centimetres high, and is too unwieldy to fit in the RAF’s transport aircraft.

The project was conceived in 2010 and due to be completed in 2017. By December 2021 the MoD had paid £3.2bn for just 26 Ajax vehicles, none of which it can use.

Defence minister Alec Shelbrooke said recently he “cannot determine a realistic timetable” about when the Ajax would be operational. Some defence industry commentators say it never will be.

The company pocketing billions from the Ajax is the UK subsidiary of the American company, General Dynamics. The company’s manager of the project is Carew Wilks, a former army general in charge of the MoD’s “land equipment” department. General Sir Peter Wall, a former head of the army, was appointed a non-executive director of the company.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) castigated the MoD in a recent report:

“We have seen similar failings again and again in the Department’s management of its equipment programmes”, it said.

“The Ajax programme also raises serious concerns about the Department’s processes and culture for testing whether new equipment is safe to use.”

It continued:

“The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine only reinforces the urgent need for the Department to reform, prioritise and effectively manage its expenditure to ensure the Armed Forces can secure all the equipment that they need in the quickest possible time.

Edward Arnold​, a research fellow with the partly UK government-funded Royal United Services Institute, said the Ajax saga had moved “from a technical problem to a cultural one at the heart of the MoD.”

He added: There still appears to be an inability for individuals to show leadership, moral courage and accountability…It’s time for the MoD to learn lessons, rather than simply identifying them”.

‘Wastage of taxpayers’ money’

It is not the first time the criticism has been levelled at the MoD. The devastating Chilcot report into the 2003 invasion of Iraq noted: “The MoD is good at identifying lessons but less good at learning them.” It has still not learned.

In a report last year the PAC said it was “extremely disappointed and frustrated by the continued poor track record of the MoD and its suppliers…and by wastage of taxpayers’ money running into the billions.”

It was “deeply concerned about departmental witnesses’ inability or unwillingness to answer basic questions and give a frank assessment of the state of its major programmes”.

The Committee also said the ministry did not know how the extra £16.5bn it was awarded in the 2020 Spending Review would benefit the armed forces. It warned that the money “could be swallowed whole by the up to £17.4bn funding black hole at the centre of our defence capabilities.”

‘Unaffordable vulnerable metal cans’

The allure of notionally prestigious weapons systems has seduced Labour as much as the Conservatives. Gordon Brown enthusiastically backed Blair’s agreement to build two aircraft carriers, the largest warships built for the Royal Navy, in Rosyth, close to Brown’s Scottish constituency.

Their combined cost, initially estimated at less than £4bn, rose to more than £6bn.

They are designed to carry the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) version of US F35 Lightning II jets. This version of Lockheed Martin’s F35s has a shorter range and smaller payload than the alternative catapult and arrester gear (“cats and traps”) version that was abandoned on grounds of cost.

The MoD’s plan to buy 48 jets for the two carriers – the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales – is estimated to cost £13bn over 30 years.

The carriers are extremely vulnerable to long range missiles being developed notably by China, making a mockery of the “show of strength” hailed by the MoD when the Queen Elizabeth was deployed to the Pacific in 2021.

Lord Richards, the former chief of the defence staff, described the carriers to me as “behemoths…unaffordable vulnerable metal cans”.

And at precisely the moment we are at greatest risk of war with Russia, one of the carriers is marooned in Rosyth, being repaired for a leaking propeller – a problem that has persistently plagued the vessel.

The government says the Prince of Wales carrier has spent 267 days at sea and 193 days undergoing repairs since it was commissioned in December 2019.

Disastrous decisions

In another egregious waste of money, a fleet of new and much-delayed Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft were scrapped at a cost of £4bn in the 2010 defence review on the grounds they would cost too much.

The MoD wastes public money even when it comes to providing the most basic services. The National Audit Office revealed in 2018 that the ministry was £4.2bn worse off for selling married quarters to a Guernsey-based company – at a time there was a £40bn black hole in its weapons programme.

The MoD has been forced to apologise for the squalid and even dangerous state of the homes for armed forces families.

I have estimated, taking into account National Audit Office and PAC reports that at least £300bn over the past 20 years have been wasted on disastrous defence and military decisions, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Labour and nuclear arms

Labour has belatedly pointed to the MoD’s abuse of public money, raising the £13bn the ministry has admitted wasting since 2010.

What Labour is not doing is questioning the cost, of at least £200bn, of Britain’s nuclear weapons programme, a figure not disputed by the MoD. Sir Keir Starmer has stated that Labour’s “support for nuclear deterrence is non-negotiable”.

Tony Blair commented in his memoir, A Journey, that Trident’s military use was “non-existent” but to give it up was “too big a downgrading of our status as a nation”.

The leadership of both main parties has conspired to prevent any meaningful Commons debate about the credibility of a British “nuclear deterrent”.

Successive governments have described nuclear weapons as the “ultimate insurance” against a nuclear attack. Yet they have failed to insure against very real threats, most recently of a pandemic, and invest adequately in weapons relevant to modern conflict, including drones and countering cyber attacks.

Instead, the government continues to feed the profits of arms companies by indulging in the sheer hypocrisy of supporting lucrative arms contracts with Saudi Arabia and other despotic states of the Gulf.

While loudly attacking the abuse of human rights in China and elsewhere, it promotes British arms sales to some of the world’s biggest abusers of human rights – under the guise of protecting Britain’s security. And Labour leaders turn away.

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Richard is a British editor, journalist and playwright, and the doyen of British national security reporting. He wrote for the Guardian on defence and security matters and was the newspaper’s security editor for three decades.

Featured image: One of Britain’s two aircraft carriers is currently being repaired. (Photo: MOD)

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***

Time is running out. We urge you to take the necessary steps to create legislation that ensures the human rights and freedoms of your country’s citizens.

In March 2022, paralyzed Australian Philip O’Keefe was the first man in history to post a message on Twitter, using only his mind to type it out. To transmit thoughts from the brain to the internet or cell phone system, you just need to collect the electromagnetic waves emitted by the brain during its activity, convert them into written words and transmit them to the cell phone or its display or the internet system. To reverse this process, it suffices to transmit in the brain electromagnetic signals at the frequencies of the activity of the targeted neurons, which will absorb this energy and thus, the new neuronal activity produced from outside will appear in the brain.

Already in 1962 sounds were produced in human brains by microwaves pulsed in the frequencies of the nervous activity of the human auditory systems.

In 2007, the Washington Post wrote: „in October 1994 at the Air Force laboratory… scientists were able to transmit sentences in the heads of human subjects, albeit with marginal intelligibility”. If these transmitted sentences were converted into ultrasound, people would not hear them and moreover, they would not realize it, but their brain would accept them and in this way they would become the “thoughts” of the targeted individuals. In many countries it is forbidden to use ultrasound to manipulate peoples’ minds, but there is no similar ban on the manipulation of the human nervous system, brain and thought by pulsed microwaves.

In 2020, the American Academy of Sciences wrote in the report on attacks of American diplomats in Cuba and China, well known as the Havana syndrome, that the most likely cause of their problems was pulsed microwaves. It is well known that these attacks are accompanied by artificially produced sound hallucinations. It proves that pulsed microwaves are being used as a weapon already today.

In 2018, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari warned in his speech about the rise of a new totalitarianism based on access to the human brain. According to Mr. Harari, “Once we have algorithms that can understand us better than ourselves, they could predict our desires, manipulate our feelings, and even make decisions on our behalf. And if we’re not careful, the outcome may be the rise of digital dictatorships”.

At present, there is no legislation prohibiting the use of mind control technologies and for this the scientists in the matter feel free to work on the development of “nanobots”, nanoparticles that can enter the blood and connect the brain to the Internet. Once connected to the internet the human brain’s activity may be manipulated from there as well, especially if the internet is transmitted by pulsed micowaves, as it actually happens (though probably not yet in the brain frequencies, but there is a plan to connect brains to internet in the sixth generation of cell phone telephony and then the cell phone signals will be transmitted in the brain frequencies – this should happen within 10years).

In October 2018 a scientist from the American military research agency DARPA  James Giordano said in a lecture to cadets that his agency produced nanomaterial, which can be aerosolized and when breathed in, penetrate the human brain and make it controlable from outside.

This material evidently works as an antenna, which can collect pulsed microwaves transmitted from an outside antenna in the brain. This nanomaterial is more than probably graphene which is so small that it can penetrate the blood-brain barrier. Scientists say: „The graphene implants are designed to interpret brain signals with exceptional accuracy to provide a therapeutic response adapted to the clinical condition of each patient”.

In 2021 the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO wrote: „External tools that may interfere with our decisions can call into question, or even challenge, an individual’s free will, and consequently an individual’s responsibilities. In this way, neurotechnology could affect freedom of thought, decision-making and action. Taken together, these could have a profound impact on justice systems and social organizations” (pg. 36) and it encourages member states to guarantee neurorights to their citizens” (pg.38).

In September 2021, the Chilean Parliament approved a law guaranteeing Chilean citizens the rights to personal identity, free will and mental privacy.

Evidently it is now your urgent task to follow Chilean example and prove to your citizens that you are not planning to transform your state, (eventually based on democracy and respect for human rights), into a totalitarian state where the elite turn citizens into bio-robots, controlled by supercomputers.

Legislation, which is lacking in your state, should provide for the creation of teams capable of detecting electromagnetic or other attacks that produce electrical currents in the human brain or body that would deprive them of their freedom of thought and privacy or injure their body.

On March 20 2021,the Human Rights Council of the United Nations wrote: “to ensure the adequate implementation of the prohibition of torture and related legal obligations in present and future circumstances, its interpretation should evolve… also in areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology and neurotechnology” (par 76). In paragraph 73 it wrote: „In practice, cybertechnology already plays the role of an ‘enabler’ in the perpetration of both physical and psychological forms of torture, most notably… and increasingly also through the remote control or manipulation of… medical implants and, conceivably, nanotechnological or neurotechnological devices”..

Since there are thousands of people worldwide who complain about being exposed to this kind of torture, the teams you should create should also be able to find sources of harmful radiation and should include representatives of human rights organizations, to ensure their independence from powerful state agencies.

We call on you to pool your efforts and create such legislation in order to fulfill the principles embedded in our Constitution and guarantee the citizens of our state their very basic rights and freedoms, including freedom of thought, in a fast changing world.

Please contact military neurotechnologists in your country, if you are looking for more information.

Thank you.

Mojmír Babáček for Citizen’s Association for the Ban of Manipulation of Human Nervous System by Radiofrequency Radiation https://zakaz.webgarden.cz/

Co-signed by:

Harald Brems for Schutzschild e.V.
Germany
Schutzschild

Richard Lighthouse for Targeted Justice
United States
Targeted Justice

Saroja Angadi MS.MT(ASCP), PMP for Society of safe Bharath against covert torture and energy weapons
India
Society of safe Bharath against covert torture and energy weapons

Peter Mooring for STOPEG Foundation (STOP Electronic weapons and Gangstalking)
Netherlands
STOPEG

Melanie Vritschan for International Coalition Against Electronic Torture and Robotization of Living Beings (ICATOR)
Avenue Paul Hymans 120/47, B – 1200 Brussels
Belgium
ICATOR

Derrick Robinson for PACTS, International
United States
PACTS, International

Terukatsu Ishibashi for the Board of Directors of Technological Crime Victims Network Specified Nonprofit Organization
Japan
Technological Crime Victims Network

Stéphane Mille for ADVHER (Association de Defense des Victimes de Harcélement Electromagnétique et en Réseau)
France
ADVHER (Association de Defense des Victimes de Harcélement Electromagnétique et en Réseau)

Paolo Dorigo for ACOFOINMENEF (association against all forms of mental and neurophysiological interference and control)
Italy
Acofoinmenef (ex AVae-m)

Giuseppe Palmieri for MOVIMENTO AMPIO CONTRO LA TORTURA TECNOLOGICA PSICOLOGICA E MENTALE
Italy
movimento ampio contro la tortura tecnologica psicologica e mentale

Mikael Eleman for Föreningen för hjärnans integritet i Sverige
Sweden
Society for brain integrity in Sweden

Zofia Filipiak for Stowarzyszenie STOP Zorganizowanym Elektronicznym Torturom
Polska
https://stopzet.pl/

Stanislav Kalinovsky for Stop-torture, Canada
Canada
Stop-torture, Canada

Alicia Cruz Sánchez
VIACTEC ESPAÑA

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Big Pharma’s Child-Vax Windfall

October 24th, 2022 by Prof. Samira Kawash

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***

On Oct. 20, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention handed another huge gift to Big Pharma: In a little-publicized meeting, the agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to recommend adding the Covid vaccine to the childhood and adolescent immunization schedule. This makes the Covid vaccine market vast and indefinite—exposing children to unnecessary risks while shielding drug companies from liability.

“There is no reason to inject children with this novel therapeutic.”

Throughout the pandemic, the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration rubber-stamped every iteration of the vaccines that came through the door. So this final outcome is hardly surprising. And yet it still has the power to shock. It never should have come to this. Despite all the “sciencing” that led us here, it is a completely perverse outcome. The Covid bonfire is down to its last fading embers—and now the CDC effectively decrees that every child forever should receive this novel, barely tested, potentially dangerous injection.

The potential profits flowing from this approval are enormous. The Covid injections were all approved under emergency laws that effectively shielded the corporate developers from any liability. This temporary shield would expire in October 2024. When the CDC officially adds the shots to the childhood immunization schedule, all future liability transfers to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, or VICP. The shield extends to adult shots, as well; once the product is covered under VICP, manufacturers become immune against all consumer legal challenges, shifting damages claims to US taxpayers. Having already received FDA approval as “safe and effective,” and with no concern for liability, the manufacturers are free to churn out mRNA injections as they will. Shots and boosters from birth until death, multiplied by every citizen in the nation. Childhood Covid vaccination is the 2021 windfall compounded into eternity.

Children are at minuscule risk from the novel coronavirus and transmit it at lower rates than adults. That much we have known since the early days of the pandemic. Public-health authorities also acknowledge that the Pfizer/Moderna products don’t prevent infection or transmission of the virus, that the mRNA formulation doesn’t grant any lasting immunity, that the benefit of the shot against severe disease is only evident for older patients, and that there are risks of significant adverse events, including heart inflammation, neurological impairment, autoimmune disease, and death. There is no reason to inject children with this novel therapeutic.

Parents have spoken with their feet; the uptake of these injections for children under 11 has been well below what officials were hoping. Despite a massive publicity campaign that likened vaccination to a “super-power” and recruited Sesame Street characters to the cause, by September, only 6 percent of children under 5 had received even a single dose, and fewer than 2 percent were “fully vaccinated.” Dr. Peter Hotez, CNN’s go-to vaccine advocate, thinks the reason is a failure to scare parents enough. As he told The Washington Post, “we haven’t done a good job explaining the long-term developmental consequences of long covid for younger children.” Or, maybe parents can see what is hiding in plain sight: Kids don’t need this shot, and the risk of harm is real.

If Elmo and fun bandaids were the carrots, the childhood vaccination schedule is the stick. While childhood vaccines aren’t mandated per se, states require adherence to a state-determined vaccination schedule as a condition for school enrollment, and have been expanding and tightening these requirements over the last 20 years. Some states may not add the Covid shot to their mandatory schedule, but the routinization of childhood vaccination compliance means that for all but the most contrary-minded, the Covid shot is no longer a matter of parental choice in any meaningful sense. There is a glimmer of hope here, though. On Thursday, Twitter was lighting up with the battle cries of furious parents determined to take the fight to their state governments and try to keep the Covid shot off the mandatory schedule. Governors of more than 10 states including Florida, Virginia, Colorado, and Tennessee have publicly come out against adding the Covid shot to their school mandates.

Cui bono? It isn’t the kids. They assume all the risk of adverse effects in the name of vaporous and hypothetical benefits that run counter to common sense and observation. The only answer that makes any sense at this point is Big Pharma. It is certainly not the first time that the health and safety of children has been treated as road kill on the path to capital accumulation.

We know who is at risk for serious Covid outcomes: the aged, the infirm, the obese. These are the people who die from Covid; these are the deaths the Covid shot might possibly prevent. Requiring children to get the Covid shot in perpetuity is an inversion of protection and risk. It is the final act in the perverse practice of public health for the last two years that has sacrificed children’s well-being in order to “stop Covid” and “protect the vulnerable.”

It is often said that children are “priceless,” that “the children are our future.” But the people in charge don’t act like they believe it. The most recent bivalent booster was never tested on children. In fact, it was never tested on any human. Which might be fine for adults, who can decide for themselves whether an antibody response in the eight mice Pfizer bothered to test is good enough. Now, children in many states won’t really have that option. Forcing this drug on children via the childhood vaccination schedule is, at best, a reckless disregard for the well-being of some of society’s most vulnerable members.

Something beyond recklessness and corporate greed is coming into the light as the Covid endgame plays out on children’s bodies. The harm isn’t accidental, even if it is dressed up in the white coat of medicine. It is the price that must be paid to “end Covid,” to regain security and safety—not for children, but for adults who quiver at the prospect that some day they will have to die, and who look to the miracles of science to beat back the ravages of time and decay. If children matter at all these days, it is only as raw material to be consumed in a desperate grasp at a quickly vanishing immortality.

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Samira Kawash is a professor emerita of women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 

Purchase directly from the Global Research Online Store

You may also purchase directly at DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page(NOTE: User-friendly)

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***

The White House has deployed thousands of American soldiers just miles from Ukraine to prepare for war, according to CBS News. Officers speaking with the outlet revealed they were there for combat against Russia.

Brigadier General John Lubas confirmed nearly 5,000 troops from the 101st Airborne recently joined the 100,000 American soldiers already deployed to Europe. Lubas described his troops as being on “full deployment,” and they are preparing to fight Russian soldiers in Ukraine. “This is not a training deployment, this is a combat deployment for us. We understand we need to be ready to fight tonight,” he said.

CBS Reporter Charlie D’Agata was embedded with the American forces as they conducted military drills – at a forward operating base – within four miles of Ukraine’s border. The 101st Airborne is engaged in joint exercises with Romanian forces, simulating Ukrainian soldiers’ combat against Russian troops.

Colonel Edwin Matthaidess said his forces have been “closely watching” the Russian soldiers, “building objectives to practice against” and conducting war games that “replicate exactly what’s going on” in Ukraine.

CBS News reported, “[Russia’s] goal is to cut off all Ukrainian access to the sea, leaving the country and its military forces landlocked.” CBS News did not provide a source for that assertion. The Kremlin has publicly said its war goal is limited to eastern Ukraine.

Lubas declared the division was “ready to defend every inch of NATO soil.” However, Moscow has never threatened to invade a NATO country. Ukraine is not a NATO member. When President Zelensky said Ukraine should be allowed into the North Atlantic alliance last month, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg rejected Kiev’s proposal.

The 101st Airborne is a light infantry division. It carries the nickname the “Screaming Eagles” as the Pentagon utilizes the 101st as a force that can deploy around the world within hours. Lubas described his division as bringing a “unique capability, from our air assault capability… We’re a light infantry force, but again, we bring that mobility with us, for our aircraft and air assaults.”

Romanian Major General Lulian Berdila told CBS News that the presence of American troops was reminiscent of WWII, “The real meaning for me, to have the American troops here, is like if you were to have allies in Normandy before any enemy was there.” The 101st has not deployed to Europe since the last world war.

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Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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***

The premise behind COVID shot mandates and vaccine passports was that by taking the shot, you would protect others, as it would prevent infection and spread of COVID-19

In early October 2022, during a COVID hearing in the European Parliament, Dutch member Rob Roos questioned Pfizer’s president of international developed markets, Janine Small, about whether Pfizer had in fact tested and confirmed that their mRNA jab would prevent transmission prior to its rollout

Small admitted that Pfizer never tested whether their jab would prevent transmission because they had to “move at the speed of science to understand what is happening in the market … and we had to do everything at risk”

We’ve known for well over two years that the shots were never tested for transmission interruption. In October 2020, Peter Doshi, associate editor of The BMJ, highlighted that trials were not designed to reveal whether the vaccines would prevent transmission. Yet everyone in government and media insisted they would do just that

It was never about science or protecting others. It was always about following a predetermined narrative that sought to get experimental mRNA technology into as many people as possible

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February 9, 2021, I published an article that clarified the medical and legal definitions of a “vaccine.” In the article, I noted that mRNA COVID-19 jabs did not meet those definitions, in part because they don’t prevent infection or spread. In reality, they’re experimental gene therapies. In July that year, The New York Times published a hit piece on me citing that February 9 article:1

“The article that appeared online on Feb. 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. Then over its next 3,400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were ‘a medical fraud’ and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease.

Instead, the article claimed, the shots ‘alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.’ Its assertions were easily disprovable …”

Pfizer Moved ‘at the Speed of Science’

Fast-forward to early October 2022, and my claims were officially confirmed during a COVID hearing in the European Parliament. Dutch member Rob Roos questioned Pfizer’s president of international developed markets, Janine Small, about whether Pfizer had in fact tested and confirmed that their mRNA jab would prevent transmission prior to its rollout.

As noted by Roos, the entire premise behind COVID shot mandates and vaccine passports was that by taking the shot, you would protect others, as it would prevent infection and spread of COVID-19. Small replied:

“No. We had to really move at the speed of science to understand what is happening in the market … and we had to do everything at risk.”2

As noted by Roos, “This means the COVID passport was based on a big lie. The only purpose of the COVID passport: forcing people to get vaccinated.” Roos added that he found this deception “shocking — even criminal.”3

In the video below, biologist and nurse teacher John Campbell, Ph.D., reviews this growing scandal. He points out that U.K. government officials emphatically assured the public that everything that was normally done in clinical trials for a vaccine was done for the COVID shots. Now we’re told that was not the case after all.

The question is why? According to Small, these basic trials were not done because they “had to move at the speed of science.” But just what does that mean? As noted by Campbell, these are “just words without meaning.” It’s complete nonsense.

Moreover, what does it mean to “do everything at risk”? Campbell admits he has no idea what that means. I don’t either, but were I to venture a guess, I’d guess it means they knowingly skipped certain testing even though they knew the risks of doing so.

Government and Media Promulgated a Blatant Lie

Over the past three years, mainstream media have promulgated the lie that the COVID shots will prevent infection and transmission, telling us that anyone who doesn’t get the shot is selfish at best, and at worst, a potential murderer at large. Anyone who refuses poses a serious biomedical threat to society, hence the need for heavy-handedness.

Alas, it was all a lie from the start. The frustrating part is that we’ve KNOWN for well over two years that the shots were never tested for transmission interruption, yet everyone in government and media insisted they would do just that.

In October 2020, Peter Doshi, associate editor of The BMJ, highlighted the fact that the trials were not designed to reveal whether the vaccines would prevent transmission, which is key if you want to end the pandemic. He wrote:4

“None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.”

So, by October 2020, at the latest, it was clear that no studies had been done to determine whether the shots actually prevented transmission, which is a prerequisite for the claim that you’ll save the lives of others if you take it.

By then, Moderna had also admitted they were not testing its jab’s ability to prevent infection. Tal Zaks, chief medical officer at Moderna, stated that this kind of trial would require testing volunteers twice a week for long periods of time — a strategy he called “operationally untenable.”5

So, neither Pfizer nor Moderna had any clue whether their COVID shots would prevent transmission or spread, as that was never tested, yet with the aid of government officials and media, they led the public to believe they would. Below is just one example where Pfizer clearly obfuscated the truth.6 If stopping transmission was their “highest priority,” why didn’t they test and confirm that their shot was accomplishing this priority?

pfizer inc tweet

Similarly, in an Israeli interview7 (below), Bourla stated that “The efficacy of our vaccine in children is 80%.” The reporter asked him to clarify, “Are you talking about efficacy to prevent severe disease or to prevent infection?” and Bourla replied, “To prevent infection.” How could he say that when preventing infection has never been tested? Is that not evidence of fraud, caught on camera?

COVID Shots Have Been Fraudulently Marketed

As I stated in February 2021, the shots are a medical fraud. A true vaccine prevents infection; COVID shots don’t. Hence, they’ve also been fraudulently marketed. Governments around the world enabled this marketing fraud and media promulgated it.

As a result of mandating COVID shots and vaccine passports based on a blatant lie, millions have suffered potentially permanent harm and/or have died. Millions have also lost their jobs, forfeited careers and missed out on educational opportunities. This all happened because we DIDN’T follow the science.

Massive Conflicts of Interest Have Been Allowed

Why did government agencies go along with what was, to anyone with a microgram of critical thinking skills, an apparent fraud? Probably, because they’re in on it. As reported by investigative journalist Paul Thacker, the same PR company that serves Moderna and Pfizer also staffs the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Viral Diseases team:8

“Early last month [September 2022], CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky endorsed recommendations by the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for updated COVID-19 boosters from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

‘This recommendation followed a comprehensive scientific evaluation and robust scientific discussion,’ Dr. Walensky said in a statement. ‘If you are eligible, there is no bad time to get your COVID-19 booster and I strongly encourage you to receive it’ …

[The] PR firm Weber Shandwick, which has long represented Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies and began providing public relations support to Moderna sometime in 2020.

In an odd case of synchronicity — and let’s be honest, a whiff of undue influence — Weber Shandwick employees are also embedded at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), the CDC group that implements vaccine programs and oversees the work of ACIP [CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] …

The CDC has refused to respond to questions explaining this apparent conflict … ‘[It] is irresponsible of CDC to issue a PR contract to Weber Shandwick, knowing that the firm also works for Moderna and Pfizer,’ emailed Public Citizen’s Craig Holman. ‘It raises legitimate questions of whose interests Weber Shandwick will put first — their private sector clients or the public’s interest at NCIRD.’”

Incidentally, Weber Shandwick was in 2016 found to have ghostwritten a drug study for Forest Pharmaceuticals — another unethical practice that has undermined the foundation of medical science for decades.

One PR Company, One Consistent Message

Weber Shandwick’s responsibilities at the CDC include but are not limited to “generating story ideas, distributing articles and conducting outreach to news, media and entertainment organizations” to boost vaccination rates.9 The company provides similar services to Moderna.

For example, it helped generate 7,000 news articles internationally after Moderna applied for emergency use authorization (EUA) for its jab.

In June 2022, Moderna announced a “cross-discipline team drawing on talent and expertise from Weber Shandwick” would “drive the brand’s narrative globally,” and “support Moderna in activating and engaging key internal and external audiences, including employees, consumers, health care providers, vaccine recipients and policymakers.”10

Considering the primary COVID jab makers have the same PR company as the CDC, is it any wonder that the messaging has been so consistently one-sided? As noted by Doshi in a recent interview on German television,11 mainstream media have consistently ignored COVID jab data and have “not done a good job in providing balanced coverage” about the shots.

“We’re not getting the information we need to make better choices and to have a more informed understanding of risk and benefit,” he told the interviewer, adding:12

“It was very unfortunate that from the beginning, what was presented to us by public health officials was a picture of great certainty … but the reality was that there were extremely important unknowns.

We entered a situation where essentially the stakes became too high to later present that uncertainty to people. I think that’s what set us off on the wrong foot. Public officials should have been a lot more forthright about the gaps in our knowledge.”

Reanalysis of Trial Data Confirms COVID Shot Dangers

In late September 2022, Doshi published a risk-benefit analysis focused on serious adverse events observed in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s COVID trials. Reanalysis of the data showed 1 in 800 who get a COVID shot suffers a serious injury. As detailed in Doshi’s paper:13

“Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an excess risk of serious adverse events of special interest of 10.1 and 15.1 per 10,000 vaccinated over placebo baselines of 17.6 and 42.2 respectively.

Combined, the mRNA vaccines were associated with an excess risk of serious adverse events of special interest of 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated; risk ratio 1.43.

The Pfizer trial exhibited a 36 % higher risk of serious adverse events in the vaccine group … The Moderna trial exhibited a 6 % higher risk of serious adverse events in the vaccine group … Combined, there was a 16 % higher risk of serious adverse events in mRNA vaccine recipients …”

Doshi and his coauthors also concluded that the increase in adverse events from the shots surpassed the reduction in risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19. So, in short, the shots confer more harm than good.

Sen. Rand Paul Promises Investigation

A spokesperson for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., replied to an inquiry by Thacker stating, “[T]hat CDC had a contract with the same PR firm representing the manufacturers of the COVID-19 vaccine raises serious concerns,” adding that “these conflicts of interest will be thoroughly investigated” by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) — which oversees the CDC — sometime next year.

After the November midterms, Paul will be next in line as the top Republican on this committee. It’s well worth noting that, at bare minimum, this kind of conflict of interest should have been disclosed by both parties. At best, it should have been avoided altogether. The CDC did neither. It didn’t disclose its relationship with the PR firm and it didn’t prevent the conflict of interest from developing in the first place.

What Was the COVID Jab Push All About?

The rational take-home from all this is that the massive push to inject the global population with these experimental jabs was never about following science and protecting others.

It was always about promoting a false, invented narrative designed to allow for the implementation of a top-down directive to inject every person on the planet with a novel mRNA technology. This, in turn, brings up two central questions:

  • Who’s at the top? — We don’t yet know. All we can say for sure is that they have a very powerful and global influence — powerful enough that government officials have willingly lied and sacrificed their own populations in an incredibly risky medical experiment.
  • Why is injecting everyone with mRNA technology so important to the anonymous decision-makers? — Again, we don’t know, but it’s quite clear that there’s a reason for it, that it’s supposed to accomplish something.

As detailed in previous articles, the only rational reason for why the CDC is allowing COVID jab EUA’s for young children is because they’re assisting drug makers in their effort to obtain liability shielding by getting the shots onto the childhood vaccination schedule.

ACIP is poised to add COVID shots to the childhood vaccination schedule any day now,14 and once on the childhood schedule, vaccine makers will not be liable for injuries and deaths occurring from their shots, whether they occur in children or adults.

Also, remember that even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID shot, Comirnaty was never released to the public. The Pfizer shot being given is still under EUA.

Why was Comirnaty never released? Probably because once the shot has full FDA approval, liability kicks in. It appears they’re trying to avoid liability by getting the EUA shot on the childhood schedule before Comirnaty is rolled out and starts injuring and killing people.

Now, if they’re concerned about liability, that means they know the shot is dangerous. And if they know it’s dangerous (which all available data clearly show it is), then why do they want every person on the planet to get it?

Following this line of questioning to its logical conclusion leads us to the shocking conclusion that even though we don’t know the reasons why, the injuries and deaths from these jabs are intentional.

Vaccine Makers Continue to Spread Lies

Despite Small’s unequivocally clear admission that Pfizer has not tested its COVID shot to ascertain whether it prevents transmission, Pfizer’s CEO still does not shy away from insinuating as much. Here’s what he tweeted out October 12, 2022.15 He’s not saying the shot has been confirmed to prevent COVID, but he insinuates that it does by saying the FDA authorized it for the prevention of COVID. This is also known as lying by omission.

albert bourla tweet

Meanwhile, so-called fact checkers are trying to salvage Pfizer’s reputation by saying the company never actually stated the shot would stop transmission.16 That may be so, but government officials and media DID claim it would prevent both infection and spread, and Pfizer never corrected them, even as people were being fired and ostracized from society for not taking the jab.

If they were truly on the up-and-up, Pfizer officials would have clarified that the shot had not been tested to confirm it would prevent transmission, and until that was known, mandates and passports had no basis. Pfizer didn’t do that. Instead, they went along with it.

The Jabs Were Always To Be Pushed — ‘By Fair Means or Foul’

In conclusion, there’s no reason to trust government ever again, at least not in the U.S., which stands alone in pushing the jab on toddlers. (The reason for that, as mentioned earlier, is probably to get the jabs onto the childhood vaccination schedule, which will shield the vaccine makers from financial liability for harms.)

As noted by GB News host Neil Oliver in the video above, the very basis for COVID mandates or vaccine passports — that everyone had to get jabbed for the greater good, to protect others and help end the pandemic — was a deliberate lie from the start.

Many of us realized this early on, but our voices were drowned out as government, Big Tech and media pulled out all the stops, censoring anyone who told the truth. And all who have participated in this grand deception remain unrepentant to this day.

In a recent Twitter thread, a Twitter user named Daniel Hadas lays out an excellent description of what the last three years were really about:17

“The debate over whether, when, and to what extent lies were told about COVID vaccines preventing transmission misses a central point: No matter what the trial data showed, the vaccines were ALWAYS going to be pushed on entire populations, by fair means or foul.

Very early on, the COVID response was locked into a specific narrative. The world would lock down and stay safe, while brave scientists hammered away at a vaccine … You may recall that, in the first months of COVID, there was a lot of breathless talk about whether there would EVER be a vaccine.

This was all nonsense … Our authorities would not have adopted the strategy of lockdown-till-vaccine unless they were certain a vaccine could and would be made …

The purpose of sowing fear that there might never be a vaccine was to increase gratitude and enthusiasm when one came along. Indeed, every part of the early COVID response can be understood as (in part) pre-release marketing for the vaccine …

That’s why COVID risks for the young were wildly amplified. That’s why there was unending obfuscation of the central role of infection-conferred immunity both in protecting individuals and in ending the pandemic.

The plan was that the vaccine would be met by a perfectly primed population: immunologically naive, desperate to be released from lockdowns, terrified of COVID, eager to do the right thing, i.e. protect others through taking the shots.

Once so much effort had gone into priming, it is UNIMAGINABLE that authorities would have pivoted to telling us … ‘Well, actually, the vaccine’s safety profile is only so-so, efficacy is murky, and most people don’t need to worry about COVID anyway. So best most of you not take this … Sorry about the lockdowns.’

That was not in the script. So it was inevitable that the vaccine be pushed on everyone, and inevitable that the best arguments for universal vaccination would be used. Those arguments were: COVID is super-dangerous for YOU. Distrust in this vaccine is distrust in science. Refusing to get vaccinated is immoral, because you will infect others.

The veracity of these claims didn’t matter: they were in the script, and it was too late to deviate … Accordingly, the stage was also set for vaccine mandates.

None of this is conspiratorial. It is descriptive … Clarifying the details won’t alter the essence of the picture — The COVID response was determined by a script of vaccine salvation, and societies’ investment in that script was too deep for mere realities to divert its execution.”

The primary questions that still remain unanswered are: Why was this script created? What are its intended consequences? And, who created it? As mentioned earlier, the evidence suggests harm is an intended outcome — harm to our economy, our social order, our health, our life span and reproductive capacity.

As for “why,” we can just look at what has been accomplished so far. Assuming the consequences were intentional, the “why” appears to be wealth transfer, depopulation and the creation of a one world government.

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Notes

1 New York Times July 24, 2021 (Archived)

2 News.com.au October 12, 2022

3 Twitter Rob Roos October 11, 2022

4, 5 The BMJ 2020;371:m4037

6 Twitter Pfizer January 13, 2021

7 Twitter Dr. Eli David October 18, 2022

8, 9, 10 Disinformation Chronicle October 11, 2022

11, 12 Maryanne Demasi Substack October 17, 2022

13 Vaccine September 22, 2022; 40(40): 5798-5805

14 Steve Kirsch Substack October 17, 2022

15 Twitter Dr. Eli David October 13, 2022

16 Twitter Lewis U October 14, 2022

17 Twitter Daniel Hadas October 15, 2022

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 

Purchase directly from the Global Research Online Store

You may also purchase directly at DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page(NOTE: User-friendly)

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***

A court approved a request Friday to depose Dr. Anthony Fauci, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, and a bevy of other Biden administration officials in a free speech case.

The attorneys general for Missouri and Louisiana have accused the Biden administration of “colluding to suppress freedom of speech” with major tech companies and first filed in May. The duo has specifically alleged Big Tech and the Biden administration worked to suppress speech about COVID-19, election integrity, and other matters unfairly.

“After finding documentation of a collusive relationship between the Biden Administration and social media companies to censor free speech, we immediately filed a motion to get these officials under oath,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said. “It is high time we shine a light on this censorship enterprise.”

He backed the lawsuit along with fellow Republican Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana approved the deposition request.

The lawsuit alleged that the collusion amounted to an infringement upon the First Amendment rights of everyday people. It also alleged Action in Excess of Statutory Authority Administrative Procedure Act Violations by Health and Human Services officials and Administrative Procedure Act violations by Department of Homeland Security officials.

In addition to Fauci and Psaki, the court also approved the deposition of the Director of White House Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and FBI supervisory special agent Elvis Chan.

In a lengthy 26-page order, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, appointed by former President Donald Trump, went through the list of officials requested for deposition and concluded that Schmitt and Landry satisfied the burden of proof for testimony.

For example, Doughty agreed with the plaintiffs’ arguments that there were “compelling reasons that suggest Dr. Fauci has acted through intermediaries” to communicate with Big Tech.

Purported Big Tech censorship has become a rallying cry for conservatives over recent years. Meanwhile, liberals, including the Biden administration, have fretted over the prevalence of misinformation online and have pushed social media platforms to crack down on it.

Two examples cited in the suit were the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story and efforts to curb mentions of the so-called lab leak theory, which hypothesized COVID-19 originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.

*

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***

 

 

 

 

Refugee organisations have balked at new proposals by the British government to ban refugees who cross the English Channel from seeking asylum.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman set out the new plans at the Conservative Party conference on Tuesday in a bid to cut down the number of migrants taking the dangerous journey from France.

“If you deliberately enter the United Kingdom illegally from a safe country, you should be swiftly returned to your home country or relocated to Rwanda. That is where your asylum claim will be considered,” she said in her speech.

“UK policy on illegal migration should not be derailed by abuse of our modern slavery laws, Labour’s Human Rights Act, or orders of the Strasbourg Court.”

She said she would overhaul the Modern Slavery Act to prevent asylum seekers claiming to be victims in order to prevent deportation.

The Times reported on Monday that any legislation would be worded in such a way as to not put the UK in violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention, although a number of party sources told the newspaper that the country could be forced to leave the convention in order to implement it.

A spokesperson from the Refugee Council told Middle East Eye that refugees should not be “criminalised” and expressed concern that the move would put further pressure on the country’s obligations under international law.

“Prime ministers since Winston Churchill have committed to the Refugee Convention – which we were a founding signatory of – and we should be strengthening our commitment to this, not seeking to break from it,” said Enver Solomon, the organisation’s CEO.

Others suggested that the country could end up in breach of any number of international legal requirements.

“Banning anyone who crossed the Channel from applying for asylum here is unlawful as it’s in breach of the Refugee Convention, the Human Rights Act and common law,” said Beth Gardiner-Smith, CEO at Safe Passage International, speaking to MEE.

“Trashing Britain’s record on human rights, and as one of the architects of the Refugee Convention, is reckless – it will cost lives and is bad news for us all.”

A violation of international law?

Refugee groups had already been highly critical of existing government legislation targeting the Channel crossings.

A policy of deporting refugees who arrived in the UK by irregular means to Rwanda was widely condemned and ran into legal problems, with the first attempted flight in June being blocked by court action.

However, Braverman has repeatedly boasted of her willingness to confront legal blocks on the government’s policies, threatening even withdrawal from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

So far, the only countries to have withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the ECHR are Russia earlier this year, following the invasion of Ukraine, and Greece in 1969 following a military coup (it was later re-admitted).

No country has taken the step of withdrawing from the Refugee Convention, though many countries are not party to it.

According to Daniel Sohege, a lawyer and director of Stand For All, a consultancy firm specialising in immigration, the emphasis on penalising potential asylum seekers based on their method of entering the country was very likely illegal under international law.

“The Convention sets out very clearly that someone seeking asylum must not be penalised for their manner of entry. That is one of the most crucial aspects of international refugee law, as it recognises that the majority of refugees are not in a position to wait until someone decides that they can travel by a ‘resettlement route’,” he explained.

He added that the current existing Rwanda scheme – which has still yet to be fully implemented as a result of its own legal problems – would be inadequate under the new proposals.

“Would someone fleeing persecution from Iran, of which a high proportion of those crossing the Channel are, be sent back there?” he asked.

“This would clearly contravene the European Convention on Human Rights, among other things, regarding inhumane treatment.”

Legal travel near impossible

At least 30,000 people have reportedly made the crossing over the Channel in small boats so far this year, an increase on 2021.

Though polling has generally shown sympathy for refugees among the wider British public, the ruling Conservative Party has repeatedly focused on the issue and argued that tackling them is necessary to save migrants from exploitation by people smugglers.

However, rights groups argue that the ultimate impact of the policies has simply been to make seeking asylum in the UK at best unattractive and, at worst, impossible.

Yumna Kamel, legal education officer at Right to Remain, told MEE that what Braverman was proposing was largely a “continuation” of the policies pursued by her predecessor, Priti Patel, and the Nationality and Borders Act (NABA) passed earlier this year.

“Unless the reason for seeking asylum arises after a person’s arrival in the UK, according to NABA, it is now near impossible to enter the UK ‘legally’ with a view to claiming asylum,” she explained.

“Most people arrive clandestinely, via lorry or small boat, or by using a false passport – which the Refugee Convention pardons in many circumstances, but NABA has curbed in the UK – because most people are fleeing danger.”

Sohege said that the new policy, much like those previously implemented by Patel, had little to do with protecting migrants.

“It is a policy designed to stoke outrage in its inhumanity and illegality, not to be a practical means by which to reduce Channel crossings, which would require a focus on providing safer routes and simpler access to the UK asylum system,” he said.

*

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Featured image: Official portrait of Suella Braverman MP 3×4 portrait of Suella Braverman (Photo by David Woolfall, licensed under CC BY 3.0)

Russia’s Homage to Nord Stream Pipelines

October 24th, 2022 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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David Brinkley, the legendary American newscaster with a career that spanned an amazing fifty-four years from World War II once said that a successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. How many American statesmen ever practised this noble thought inherited from Jesus Christ remains doubtful. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stunning proposal to Turkish President Recep Erdogan to build a gas pipeline to Turkiye to create an international hub from which Russian gas can be supplied to Europe breathes fresh life into this very “Gandhian” thought.  

Putin discussed the idea with Erdogan at their meeting in Astana on October 13 and since spoke about it at the Russian Energy Week forum last week where he proposed creating the largest gas hub in Europe in Turkey and redirecting the volume of gas, the transit of which is no longer possible through the Nord Stream, to this hub.

Putin said it may imply building another gas pipeline system to feed the hub in Turkiye, through which gas will be supplied to third countries, primarily European ones, “if they are interested.” 

Prima facie, Putin does not expect any positive response from Berlin to his standing proposal to use the string of the Nord Stream 2, which remained undamaged, to supply 27.5 billion cu. metres of gas through the winter months. Germany’s deafening silence is understandable. Chancellor Off Scholz is terrified about President Biden’s wrath. 

Berlin says it knows who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines but won’t reveal it as it affects Germany’s national security! Sweden too pleads that the matter is far too sensitive for it to share the evidence it has collected with any country, including Germany! Biden has put the fear of God into the minds of these timid European “allies” who have been left in no doubt what is good for them! The western media too is ordered to play down Nord Steam saga so that with the passage of time, public memory will fade away. 

However, Russia has done its homework that Europe cannot do without Russia gas, the present bravado of self-denial notwithstanding. Simply put, the European industries depend on cheap, reliable supplies of Russian for their products to remain competitive in the world market. 

Qatar’s energy minister Saad al-Kaabi said last week that he cannot envisage a future where “zero Russian gas” flows to Europe. He noted acerbically, “ If that’s the case, then I think the problem is going to be huge and for a very long time. You just don’t have enough volume to bring (in) to replace that (Russian) gas for the long term, unless you’re saying ‘I’m going to be building huge nuclear (plants), I’m going to allow coal, I’m going to burn fuel oils.’” 

Quintessentially, Russia plans to replace its gas hub in Haidach in Austria (which Austrians seized in July.) Conceivably, the hub in Turkiye has a ready market in Southern Europe, including Greece and Italy. But there is more to it than meets the eye. 

Succinctly put, Putin has made a strategic move in the geopolitics of gas. His initiative rubbishes the hare-brained idea of the Russophobic European Commission bureaucrats in Brussels, headed by Ursula von der Leyen, to impose a price cap on gas purchases. It makes nonsense of the US’ and EU’s plans to put down Russia’s profile as a gas superpower. 

Logically, the next step for Russia should be to align with Qatar, the world’s second biggest gas exporter. Qatar is a close ally of Turkey, too. At Astana recently, on the sidelines of the summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), Putin held a closed-door meeting with the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. They agreed to follow up with another meeting soon in Russia. 

Russia already has a framework of  cooperation with Iran in a number of joint projects in the oil and gas industry. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak recently disclosed plans to conclude an oil and gas swap deal with Iran by the end of the year. He said that “technical details are being worked out – issues of transport, logistics, price, and tariff formation.” 

Now, Russia, Qatar and Iran together account for more than half of the world’s entire proven gas reserves. Time is approaching for them to intensify cooperation and coordination on the pattern of the OPEC Plus. All three countries are represented in the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF). 

Putin’s proposal appeals to Turkiye’s longstanding dream to become an energy hub at the doorstep of Europe. Unsurprisingly, Erdogan instinctively warmed up to Putin’s proposal. Addressing the ruling party members in the Turkish parliament this week, Erdogan said,

“In Europe they are now dealing with the question of how to stay warm in the coming winter. We don’t have such a problem. We have agreed with Vladimir Putin to create a gas hub in our country, through which natural gas, as he says, can be delivered to Europe. Thus, Europe will order gas from Turkey.” 

Apart from strengthening own energy security, Turkiye also can contribute to Europe’s. No doubt, Turkiye’s importance will take a quantum leap in the EU foreign policy calculus, while also strengthening its strategic autonomy in regional politics. This is a huge step forward in Erdogan’s geo-strategy — the geographic direction of Turkish foreign policy under his watch.  

From the Russian viewpoint, of course, Turkiye’s strategic autonomy and its grit to pursue independent foreign policies works splendidly for Moscow in the present conditions of western sanctions. Conceivably, Russian companies will start viewing Turkiye as a production base where western technologies become accessible. Turkiye has a customs union agreement with the EU, which completely removes customs duties on all industrial goods of Turkish origin. (See my blog Russia-Turkey reset eases regional tensions, Aug 9, 2022)

In geopolitical terms, Moscow is comfortable with Turkiye’s NATO membership. Clearly, the proposed gas hub brings much additional income to Turkiye and will impart greater stability and predictability to the Russia-Turkey relations. Indeed, the strategic links that tie the two countries together are steadily lengthening — the S-400 ABM deal, cooperation in Syria, the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, Turk-stream gas pipeline, to name a few. 

The two countries candidly admit that they have differences of opinion, but the way Putin and Erdogan through constructive diplomacy keep turning adverse circumstances into windows of opportunity for “win-win” cooperation is simply amazing. 

It does need ingenuity to get the US’ European allies source Russian gas without any coercion or boorishness even after Washington buried the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the depths of the Baltic Sea. There is dramatic irony that a NATO power is partnering Russia in this direction. 

The US foreign policy elite drawn from East European stock are rendered speechless by the sheer sophistication of the Russian ingenuity to bypass without any trace of rancour the shabby way the US and its allies — Germany and Sweden, in particular — slammed the door shut on Moscow to even take a look at the damaged multi-billion dollar pipelines that it had built in good faith in the depths of the Baltic Sea at the instance of two German chancellors, Gerhard Schroeder and Angela Merkel. 

The current German leadership of Chancellor Olaf Scholz looks very foolish and cowardly– and provincial. The European Commission’s Ursula von der Leyen gets a huge rebuff in all this which will ultimately define her tragic legacy in Brussels as a flag carrier for American interests.  This becomes probably the first case study for historians on how multipolarity will work in the world order.  

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Featured image: Who stands to gain? First pictures of Nord Stream pipeline show 50 metre hole after “powerful explosions” confirming sabotage.

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***

On October 20, deadly clashes between security forces and demonstrations erupted in Chad. This is a major cause of concern for Paris and can also be seen as a sign of the challenges European powers are to face in Africa in general. In May there were major anti-French protests in the country, which has been under French military occupation. Protests in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso (former French colonies) have included calls for greater military ties with Moscow instead of Paris.

Europe is considering relying more and more on African resources amid today’s energy crisis – and this could increase should the EU’s relations with China deteriorate, as seems to be Brussel’s desire if one takes seriously the recent anti-Chinese recommendations the European External Action Service issued to its member states.

From 1900 to the country’s independence in 1960 Paris controlled Chad. One could say in fact the country has hosted an almost non-stop succession of military operations since its independence.

In 1990, Paris went to great lengths to support Idriss Déby’s coup d’état against then president Hissene Habré. France, in the following years, offered its support to Déby against internal attempts to overthrow him and has kept a military presence in Chad. It also maintains an air force base at N’Djamena International Airport.

The country is located in a strategic area, and the relationship between Paris and the Chad authorities in N’Djamena has been mostly about military interests. Déby was not just a mere provider of troops to French regional wars. Chadian armed forces are today regarded as among the most efficient in the region and have played an important part in interventions in Central Africa, including in Mali. By means of its military interventionism and Déby’s role as a strongman, Chad was able to acquire global political capital as a partner of the West in the “war on terror”. N’Djamena has maintained regional stability, from a French perspective, by combating terrorist groups Boko Haram and other organizations. However, its interference elsewhere, particularly in the Central African Republic, could be described as having destabilizing outcomes instead.

Some analysts argue that N’Djamena diplomacy was succesfull in portraying the country and its government as indispensable to the West, and also argue that over the years Chad’s government has skillfully instrumentalized the “war on terror” by branding internal rebels and opposition as “terrorists”. French Operation Barkhane in the country, for example, has targeted several Chadian rebels that had nothing to do with the Jihadist organization in the Sahel with which Paris was really worried.

When Déby was killed by rebels in 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron attended his funeral and even Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Representative to the UN, had very nice words to say about the departed leader (largely seen as a dictator). Upon Déby’s death, the government and the parliament were dissolved, and a Transitional Military Council was set up, headed by Mahamat Déby Itno, the deceased leader’s son. This opened the way to a troublesome transition crisis and conflict.

Paris and Washington cooperate and also sometimes compete for influence in Africa, but both powers see Chad as a major proxy – and now that it is haunted by the specter of instability and chaos, how will Paris respond?

We should expect an increase of European aggressive interventionism in Africa in general, but this could backfire and also expand the potential for US-European competition, as France has its own interests in Djibouti and nearing Somalia, while US President Joe Biden has escalated the American “forever war” in the latter – a situation that very much concerns Paris.

The African continent is targeted to become a major stage of great power competition, in a neocolonial manner, it would seem. However, things are changing. African nations and other emerging states are increasingly building on multi-alignment, non-alignment, and multilateralism while developing beneficial relations with China and Russia, as exemplified by the Egyptian Russian-built nuclear plant, while the West hypocritically campaigns against energy projects in the continent. In fact, despite green commitments, coal-fired plants are back in Europe – and so is Nazism, despite democratic commitments. These developments potentially undermine part of the Western soft power, as we have seen recently with the UN October 6 vote against a report (on China) written by its own human rights commissioner.

In fact, Europe today faces not only an economic, political and energy crisis, but a spiritual one, pertaining to its own values and self-perceptions – and this impacts on its very capacity to project its power abroad.

On October 13, Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, stated that “Europe is a garden” while most of the rest of the world “is a jungle”. He bluntly added that the jungle “could invade the garden.” This was of course not well received in Africa and elsewhere. Regarding Borell’s remarks, volumes could be spoken about European self-perceptions of exceptionalism and the implicit dichotomy of culture (or “civilisation”) versus nature or “barbarism”. One could argue that the so-called “garden” (of freedom, democracy and so on) already has to deal, from Brussel’s perspective, with inconvenient dissonances inside, exemplified by Hungary and Poland. By embracing Ukraine, with its long record of neo-Nazism and human rights infringements, the “garden” has already opened its gates, so to speak, according to its own standards. In any case, the political and diplomatic power of the West’s human rights narratives is wearing off.

Moscow and Beijing have much to gain from such a situation – as Europe seems to be bluntingly unmasking its neocolonialist tendencies and exposing the hypocrisy of its green and human rights narratives in broad daylight. And African states also have much to gain, by navigating the emerging polycentric world  through multialignment.

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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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Za NATO su dečje bolnice bile strateški ciljevi

October 24th, 2022 by Mina Ćurčić

Rat protiv Jugoslavije bio je generalna proba za mnoge ratove koji su se kasnije dešavali, glasi jedan od zaključaka s jučerašnje promocije knjige jednog od najvećih nezavisnih mislilaca savremenog sveta Mišela Čosudovskog, profesora Univerziteta u Otavi i direktora Centra za istraživanje globalizacije. Njegovo delo „Agresija SAD i NATO na Jugoslaviju” štampao je Beogradski forum za svet ravnopravnih i predstavljeno je juče u Beogradu, a profesor Čosudovski rekao je da je na mnogo načina rat koji je vođen u Jugoslaviji počeo znatno ranije, odnosno osamdesetih godina i da je bio generalna proba za oružane sukobe koji su se posle desili.

„Već početkom devedesetih godina počeo sam da istražujem ekonomske dimenzije o situaciji ovde i shvatio sam koliko je ona ključna u strateškom i vojnom pogledu”, rekao je profesor Čosudovski na početku svog izlaganja. On je ukazao na to da je NATO kategorički tvrdio da je cilj bio sačuvati živote, ali je dodao da je godinu dana posle rata posetio dečju bolnicu za koju je rekao da je bila strateški cilj tokom bombardovanja, jer su u slučaju te bolnice pogođeni generatori za struju.

Profesor Čosudovski navodi da je Jugoslavija bila ekonomija u usponu, a da nakon 1999. godine usleđuje šok-terapija Međunarodnog monetarnog fonda i da je ova institucija 1999. godine imala strategiju kojom je uništila fiskalnu politiku Jugoslavije. Čosudovski je kazao da je u periodu od 1990. do 1995. godine strategija SAD bila da se na ovu teritoriju uvedu teroristi Al Kaide i da su oni uključeni u bošnjačko-muslimansku vojsku. Podsetio je da je Dejtonski mirovni sporazum potpisan 1995. u vojnoj bazi u Ohaju, pod nadzorom američke vlade, vojske i – armije advokata.

Govoreći o prelazu sukoba s tla Bosne i Hercegovine na Kosovo i Metohiju, profesor Čosudovski je objasnio da su SAD, da ne bi bile direktno povezane s ratom, unajmile privatnu plaćeničku kompaniju, odnosno korporaciju za vojno profesionalno regrutovanje. „Oni su regrutovali Agima Čekua, a kasnije je postao glavnokomandujući tzv. Oslobodilačke vojske Kosova”, ukazao je autor knjige i dodao da je tzv. OVK bila finansirana zahvaljujući organizovanom kriminalu.

O knjizi „Agresija SAD i NATO na Jugoslaviju” govorili su general u penziji i ranije načelnik GŠ Vojske Jugoslavije Branko Krga, general u penziji i predsednik IO Kluba generala i admirala Srbije Luka Kastratović i predsednik Beogradskog foruma za svet ravnopravnih Živadin Jovanović. Krga je rekao da veruje da je javnost u Srbiji s posebnim odobrenjem prihvatila naslov knjige koji glasi „agresija”. „Pojam agresije predstavlja samu suštinu onoga što se dešavalo 1999. godine”, rekao je Krga i podsetio na to da postoje i drugačije interpretacije, poput one „humanitarna intervencija”. Krga je istakao da je u vreme rata bio na čelu vojnoobaveštajne službe i naglasio da nije bilo apsolutno nikakvog plana etničkog čišćenja, kao i da je to profesor Čosudovski zapazio u poglavljima svog dela.

Razloge za rat koji je vođen protiv nas mnogi autori pronalaze u reafirmaciji NATO-a, povodom obeležavanja 50 godina od formiranja, a između ostalog i u neutralisanju Rusije na ovom prostoru, testiranju modela neke buduće intervencije, ukazao je Krga. Govoreći o posledicama rata, istakao je da je jedna od posledica stradanje srpskog, nesrpskog i albanskog stanovništva od humanitarnih bombi sa osiromašenim uranijumom, o čemu se takođe govori u knjizi. Još jedna posledica rata, ukazao je, jeste da je time izvršena generalna proba za ratove u Avganistanu, Siriji, Jermeniji i u drugim zemljama.

Kastratović je naveo da je napisano mnogo knjiga o NATO agresiji. „Jako bitno je istaći da je to bila agresija SAD, a NATO je samo produžena ruka SAD”, rekao je Kastratović i dodao da nas je profesor Čosudovski podsetio na ovu činjenicu. Istakao je da je značaj knjige i u tome što je ona napisana tokom agresije na našu zemlju, kao i da je trenutak same promocije dela značajan zato što SAD i EU otvoreno prete Srbiji i ucenjuju je.

Predsednik Beogradskog foruma za svet ravnopravnih Živadin Jovanović rekao je da je knjiga s velikim zadovoljstvom i čašću objavljena u dvojezičnoj formi, odnosno na srpskom i engleskom jeziku. „Iz knjige i iz izlaganja koje smo čuli proizlaze neke ocene koje uvek moramo imati u vidu, pogotovu što smo žrtve jednostrane prozapadne i pronatovske propagande i nismo uvek u stanju da razlučimo šta je objektivno, a šta je propaganda”, istakao je Jovanović. Kao prvo i najvažnije, naveo je da SAD i NATO imaju odgovornost zato što su vratile rat na evropsko tlo, posle Drugog svetskog rata, a kao drugu bitnu činjenicu, Jovanović navodi da je taj rat ekspanzionistički, to je rat širenja i osvajački rat. „To je daleko od neke intervencije, bilo da se ona zvala humanitarna ili nekako drugačije. Ta strategija širenja NATO-a na Istok je osnova na osnovu koje je izvršena agresija NATO”, rekao je Jovanović i dodao da je lanac NATO baza koje su nicale, kako je rekao, „kao pečurke posle kiše” u Bugarskoj, Rumuniji, sve do baltičkih republika i Poljske, počeo od „Bondstila”.

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***

проф. др Мишел Чосудовски у Београду 21. октобар 2022.

Агресија НАТО 1999. године је израз политике ширења на Исток која се наставља до данашњих дана и почетак милитаризације Европе.

Ово је, поред осталог, речено на представљању књиге “Агресија САД и НАТО на Југославију” познатог канадског економисте, научника и педагога, носиоца Ордена Златне медаље Србије, Мишела Чосудовског, данас одржана у сали хотела Москва у Београду.

Аутор овог двојезичног српско-енглеског издања проф. Чосудовски, окарактерисао је агресију као илегални и криминални чин а његове носиоце одговорне за цивилне жртве, убиство деце, разарање цивилне инфраструктуре и, како је рекао, за нуклеарни напад ниског интензитета.

О књизи и поводом књиге говорили су проф. генерал у пензији, Бранко Крга, генерал у пензији Лука Кастратовић, председник ИО Клуба генерала и адмирала Србије и Живадин Јовановић, у име Београдског форума за свет равноправних као издавача.

Генерал Крга истиче 3 главна утиска о књизи: први, пошто појам агресија представља саму суштину онога што се овде догађало те 1999. године, верује да је наслов књиге апсолутно примерен; други, аутор се потрудио да за сваки процес пронађе саму суштину или, како филозофи кажу, трагао је за одговором на онтолошка питања; трећи, аутор је обухватио широк географски простор и разрадио велики број тема које су у директној вези са агресијом НАТО на овим просторима. Те теме су политичке, геополитичке, економске, међународно – правне, кривично-правне, криминалне, војно-стратегијске, хуманитарне, еколошке, медијске, етичке итд. Генерал подвлачи да је свака од ових тема писана са низом интересантних података, који објективно указују на то шта се заиста догађало и који су узроци тих процеса.

Генерал Кастратовић је истакао да је значај ове књиге у томе што је део текстова написан у току агресије, што је професор Чосудовски од почетка агресије, када смо били усамљени, устао да осуди агресију САД и НАТО, указао на њен карактер, мотиве, циљеве и последице. Генерал из књиге као посебно значајно истиче поглавље које је написано шест година после агресије, под називом: ”Економски ратни злочини: Разбијање Југославије, реколонизација БиХ”, где је детаљно, са подацима, аутор описао ”уништавање и поделу Југославије, укључујући и режирани банкрот наметнут од Светске банке који је довео до пропасти производног сектора Југославије крајем 1980-тих годиха” као и ”шок третман” који је активирао ММФ 1. јануара 1990. године. Подвлачи цитирајући из књиге да су ”сецесионистичке тенденције које се хране друштвеним и етничким подјелама добиле на замаху управо у периоду бруталног осиромашења југословенског становништва, а економске реформе изазвале су економску и политичку пустош”.

Живадин Јовановић је рекао да су НАТО и САД одговорни за враћање првог рата на тло Европе после Другог светског рата, за илегалну сецесију српске покрајине Косово и Метохија и за урушавање архитектуре Европске безбедности и сарадње, која се ни до данас није опоравила од последица те агресије. Он је рекао да питање КиМ никад нико није изместио из надлежности СБ УН, нити предао било коме овлашћења за његово решавање. Генерална скупштина УН је својом саветодавном резолуцијом само констатовала интерес Европске Уније (ЕУ) да “олакшава дијалог страна” и ништа више од тога. Ово питање остаје у искључивој надлежности СБ УН. Додао је да све покушаје притисака, поготово ултиматума, Србији да призна илегално оцепљење КиМ, односно да дозволи његово чланство у УН и друге међународне организације, треба осудити и одлучно одбити у старту. Он је, такође, рекао да притиске и ултиматуме у најави треба одлучно осудити а не “објективистичким” регистровањем, призивати.

Професор Чосудовски, носилац Ордена Златна медаља, положио је данас цвеће на Споменик Деци жртвама агресије 1999. године у Ташмајданском парку.

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