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This March, when the Biden administration presented a staggering $813 billion proposal for “national defense,” it was hard to imagine a budget that could go significantly higher or be more generous to the denizens of the military-industrial complex. After all, that request represented far more than peak spending in the Korean or Vietnam War years, and well over $100 billion more than at the height of the Cold War. 

It was, in fact, an astonishing figure by any measure — more than two-and-a-half times what China spends; more, in fact, than (and hold your hats for this one!) the national security budgets of the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined. And yet the weapons industry and hawks in Congress are now demanding that even more be spent.

In recent National Defense Authorization Act proposals, which always set a marker for what Congress is willing to fork over to the Pentagon, the Senate and House Armed Services Committees both voted to increase the 2023 budget yet again — by $45 billion in the case of the Senate and $37 billion for the House. The final figure won’t be determined until later this year, but Congress is likely to add tens of billions of dollars more than even the Biden administration wanted to what will most likely be a record for the Pentagon’s already bloated budget.

This lust for yet more weapons spending is especially misguided at a time when a never-ending pandemic, growing heat waves and other depredations of climate change, and racial and economic injustice are devastating the lives of millions of Americans.  Make no mistake about it: the greatest risks to our safety and our future are non-military in nature, with the exception, of course, of the threat of nuclear war, which could increase if the current budget goes through as planned.

But as TomDispatch readers know, the Pentagon is just one element in an ever more costly American national security state.  Adding other military, intelligence, and internal-security expenditures to the Pentagon’s budget brings the total upcoming “national security” budget to a mind-boggling $1.4 trillion. And note that, in June 2021, the last time my colleague Mandy Smithberger and I added up such costs to the taxpayer, that figure was almost $1.3 trillion, so the trend is obvious.

To understand how these vast sums are spent year after year, let’s take a quick tour of America’s national security budget, top to bottom.

The Pentagon’s “Base” Budget

The Pentagon’s proposed “base” budget, which includes all of its routine expenses from personnel to weapons to the costs of operating and maintaining a 1.3 million member military force, came in at $773 billion for 2023, more than $30 billion above that of 2022. Such an increase alone is three times the discretionary budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and more than three times the total allocation for the Environmental Protection Agency.

In all, the Pentagon consumes nearly half of the discretionary budget of the whole federal government, a figure that’s come down slightly in recent years thanks to the Biden administration’s increased investment in civilian activities. That still means, however, that almost anything the government wants to do other than preparing for or waging war involves a scramble for funding, while the Department of Defense gets virtually unlimited financial support.

And keep in mind that the proposed Biden increase in Pentagon spending comes despite the ending of 20 years of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, a move that should have meant significant reductions in the department’s budget.  Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn, however, that, in the wake of the Afghan disaster, the military establishment and hawks in Congress quickly shifted gears to touting — and exaggerating — challenges posed by China, Russia, and inflation as reasons for absorbing the potential savings from the Afghan War and pressing the Pentagon budget ever higher.

It’s worth looking at what America stands to receive for its $773 billion — or about $2,000 per taxpayer, according to an analysis by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. More than half of that amount goes to giant weapons contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, along with thousands of smaller arms-making firms.

The most concerning part of the new budget proposal, however, may be the administration’s support for a three-decades long, $1.7-trillion plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles (as well, of course, as new warheads to go with them), bombers, and submarines. As the organization Global Zero has pointed out, the United States could dissuade any country from launching an atomic attack against it with far fewer weapons than are contained in its current nuclear arsenal.  There’s simply no need for a costly — and risky — nuclear weapons “modernization” plan. Sadly, it’s guaranteed to help fuel a continuing global nuclear arms race, while entrenching nuclear weapons as a mainstay of national security policy for decades to come. (Wouldn’t those decades be so much better spent working to eliminate nuclear weapons altogether?)

The riskiest weapon in that nuclear plan is a new land-based, intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).  As former Secretary of Defense William Perry once explained, ICBMs are among “the most dangerous weapons in the world” because a president warned of a nuclear attack would have only a matter of minutes to decide whether to launch them, increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war based on a false alarm. Not only is a new ICBM unnecessary, but the existing ones should be retired as well, as a way of reducing the potential for a world-ending nuclear conflagration.

To its credit, the Biden administration is trying to get rid of an ill-conceived nuclear weapons program initiated during the Trump years – a sea-launched, nuclear-armed cruise missile that, rather than adding a “deterrent” capability, would raise the risk of a nuclear confrontation.  As expected, nuclear hawks in the military and Congress are trying to restore funding for that nuclear SLCM (pronounced “Slick ‘em”).

The Pentagon budget is replete with other unnecessary, overpriced, and often potentially dysfunctional systems that should either be canceled or replaced with more affordable and effective alternatives.  The most obvious case in point is the F-35 combat aircraft, meant to carry out multiple missions for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. So far, it does none of them well.

In a series of careful analyses of the aircraft, the Project on Government Oversight determined that it may never be fully ready for combat. As for cost, at an estimated $1.7 trillion over its projected period of service, it’s already the most expensive single weapons program ever undertaken by the Pentagon. And keep in mind that those costs will only increase as the military services are forced to pay to fix problems that were never addressed in the rush to deploy the plane before it was fully tested.  Meanwhile, that aircraft is so complex that, at any given moment, a large percentage of the fleet is down for maintenance, meaning that, if ever called on for combat duty, many of those planes will simply not be available.

In a grudging acknowledgement of the multiple problems plaguing the F-35, the Biden administration proposed decreasing its buy of the plane by about a third in 2023, a figure that should have been much lower given its poor performance. But congressional advocates of the plane — including a large F-35 caucus made up of members in states or districts where parts of it are being produced — will undoubtedly continue to press for more planes than even the Pentagon’s asking for, as the Senate Armed Services Committee did in its markup of the Department of Defense spending bill.

In addition to all of this, the Pentagon’s base budget includes mandatory spending for items like military retirement, totaling an estimated $12.8 billion for 2023.

Running national (in)security tally: $785.8 billion

The Nuclear Budget

The average taxpayer no doubt assumes that a government agency called the Department of Energy (DOE) would be primarily concerned with developing new sources of energy, including ones that would reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels to help rein in the ravages of climate change.  Unfortunately, that assumption couldn’t be less true.

Instead of spending the bulk of its time and money on energy research and development, more than 40% of the Department of Energy’s budget for 2023 is slated to support the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which manages the country’s nuclear weapons program, principally by maintaining and developing nuclear warheads.  Work on other military activities like reactors for nuclear submarines pushes the defense share of the DOE budget even higher. The NNSA spreads its work across the country, with major locations in California, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Its proposed 2023 budget for nuclear-weapons activities is $16.5 billion, part of a budget for defense-related projects of $29.8 billion.

Amazingly the NNSA’s record of managing its programs may be even worse than the Pentagon’s, with cost overruns of more than $28 billion during the last two decades.  Many of its current projects, like a plan to build a new facility to produce plutonium “pits” — the devices that trigger the explosion of a hydrogen bomb — are unnecessary even under the current, misguided nuclear weapons modernization plan.

Nuclear budget: $29.8 billion

Running (in)security tally: $815.6 billion

Defense-Related Activities

This catch-all category, pegged at $10.6 billion in 2023, includes the international activities of the FBI and payments to Central Intelligence Agency retirement funds, among other things.

Defense-Related Activities: $10.6 billion

Running (in)security tally: $826.2 billion

The Intelligence Budget

Information about this country’s 18 separate intelligence agencies is largely shielded from public view.  Most members of Congress don’t even have staff that can access significant details on how intelligence funds are spent, making meaningful Congressional oversight almost impossible. The only real data supplied with regard to the intelligence agencies is a top-line number – $67.1 billion proposed for 2023, a $5 billion increase over 2022. Most of the intelligence community’s budget is believed to be hidden inside the Pentagon budget. So, in the interests of making a conservative estimate, intelligence spending is not included in our tally.

Intelligence Budget: $67.1 billion

Running (in)security tally still: $826.2 billion

Veterans Affairs Budget

America’s post-9/11 wars have generated millions of veterans, many of whom have returned from battle with severe physical or psychological injuries. As a result, spending on veterans’ affairs has soared, reaching a proposed $301 billion in the 2023 budget plan.  Research conducted for the Costs of War Project at Brown University has determined that these costs will only grow, with more than $2 trillion needed just to take care of the veterans of the post-9/11 conflicts.

Veterans Affairs Budget: $301 billion

Running (in)security tally: $1.127 trillion

International Affairs Budget

The International Affairs budget includes non-military items like diplomacy at the State Department and economic aid through the Agency for International Development, critical (but significantly underfunded) parts of the U.S. national security strategy writ large.  But even in this category there are significant military-related activities in the form of programs that provide arms and training to foreign militaries and police forces.  It’s proposed that the largest of these, the Foreign Military Financing program, should receive $6 billion in 2023. Meanwhile, the total requested International Affairs budget is $67.8 billion in 2023.

International Affairs Budget: $67.8 billion

Running (in)security tally: $1.195 trillion

The Homeland Security Budget

After the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established by combining a wide range of agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Agency, the U.S. Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, and the Coast Guard.  The proposed DHS budget for 2023 is $56.7 billion, more than one-quarter of which goes to Customs and Border Protection as part of a militarized approach to addressing immigration into the United States.

Homeland Security Budget: $56.7 billion

Running (in)security tally: $1.252 trillion

Interest on the Debt

The national security state, as outlined so far, is responsible for about 26% of the interest due on the U.S. debt, a total of $152 billion.

Interest on the Debt: $152 billion

Running (in)security tally: $1.404 trillion

Our Misguided Security Budget

Spending $1.4 trillion to address a narrowly defined concept of national security should be considered budgetary malpractice on a scale so grand as to be almost unimaginable — especially at a time when the greatest risks to the safety of Americans and the rest of the world are not military in nature. After all, the Covid pandemic has already taken the lives of more than one million Americans, while the fires, floods, and heat waves caused by climate change have impacted tens of millions more.

Yet the administration’s proposed allocation of $45 billion to address climate change in the 2023 budget would be less than 6% of the Pentagon’s proposed budget of $773 billion.  And as noted, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are slated to get just one-third of the proposed increase in Pentagon spending between 2022 and 2023. Worse yet, attempts to raise spending significantly to address these urgent challenges, from President Biden’s Build Back Better plan to the Green New Deal, are stalled in Congress.

In a world where such dangers are only increasing, perhaps the best hope for launching a process that could, sooner or later, reverse such perverse priorities lies with grassroots organizing. Consider, for instance the “moral budget” crafted by the Poor People’s Campaign, which would cut Pentagon spending almost in half while refocusing on programs aimed at eliminating poverty, protecting the environment, and improving access to health care.  If even part of such an agenda were achieved and the “defense” budget reined in, if not cut drastically, America and the world would be far safer places.

Given the scale of the actual security problems we face, it’s time to think big when it comes to potential solutions, while recognizing what Martin Luther King, Jr., once described as the “fierce urgency of now.” Time is running short, and concerted action is imperative.

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

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Mounting evidence continues to emerge proving the food shortages and supply chain disruptions are being manufactured by the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization in an effort to institute a New World Order, global government and destroy the United States.

A 2009 op-ed published by the United Nations, which is now removed from its website, heralds hunger as “the foundation of wealth” and a means to bolster the world economy.

Screenshot from UN

Hunger must be sustained to exploit manual labor, contends George Kent, a professor at the University of Hawaii’s political science department. who authored the November 2021 UN the document.

“We sometimes talk about hunger in the world as if it were a scourge that all of us want to see abolished, viewing it as comparable with the plague or aids. But that naïve view prevents us from coming to grips with what causes and sustains hunger. Hunger has great positive value to many people,” Kent notes. “Indeed, it is fundamental to the working of the world’s economy. Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is need for manual labour.”

Without “the threat of hunger,” essential low-paying jobs would become vacant, a labor shortage would emerge and the global economy would cease to exist, Kent continues.

“We in developed countries sometimes see poor people by the roadside holding up signs saying ‘Will Work For Food.” Actually, most people work for food. It is mainly because people need food to survive that they work so hard either in producing food for themselves in subsistence-level production, or by selling their services to others in exchange for money. How many of us would sell our services if it were not for the threat of hunger?

“More importantly, how many of us would sell our services so cheaply if it were not for the threat of hunger? When we sell ourselves cheaply, we enrich others, those who own factories, the machines and the lands, and ultimately own the people who work for them. For those who depend on the availability of cheap labour, hunger is the foundation of wealth.”

According to the U.N., assumptions attributing poverty and low-paying jobs to hunger are “nonsense” because people deprived of nourishment have stronger incentive to work.

“Who would have established massive biofuel production operations in Brazil if they did not know there were thousands of hungry people desperate enough to take the awful jobs they would offer?” Kent asserts. “Who would build any sort of factory if they did not know that many people would be available to take the jobs at low-pay rates?

“Much of the hunger literature talks about how it is important to assure that people are well fed so that they can be more productive. That is nonsense. No one works harder than hungry peopleYes, people who are well nourished have greater capacity for productive physical activity, but well-nourished people are far less willing to do that work.”

“Slaves to hunger” are “assets” to “people at the high end,” Kent concludes:

The non-governmental organization Free the Slaves defines slaves as people who are not allowed to walk away from their jobs. It estimates that there are about 27 million slaves in the world, including those who are literally locked into workrooms and held as bonded labourers in South Asia. However, they do not include people who might be described as slaves to hunger, that is, those who are free to walk away from their jobs but have nothing better to go to. Maybe most people who work are slaves to hunger?

For those of us at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster. If there were no hunger in the in the world, who would plow the fields? Who would harvest our vegetables? Who would work in the rendering plants? Who would clean our toilets? We would have to produce our own food and clean our toilets. No wonder people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.

The decades-oldop-ed was removed from the United Nation’s website on Wednesday hours it went viral.

The United Nation’s Chronicle subsequently issued a statement claiming the article is “satire.”

A 2020 report published by The Rockefeller Foundation that outlines a globalist plan to transform the food system is underway began circulating across the internet on Monday.

The Rockefeller Foundation document titled, “Reset The Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the U.S. Food System” argues the U.S. food system must be seized and transformed to advance “social justice” and “environmental protection.”

The report also calls for “numerous changes to policies, practices and norms” to modify the U.S. food supply, including data collection and online surveillance to track people’s the dietary habits.

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Alicia is an investigative journalist and multimedia reporter. Alicia’s work is featured on numerous outlets including the Gateway Pundit, Project Veritas, World Net Daily, Townhall and Media Research Center, where she exposes fraud and abuse in government, media, Big Tech, and Big Pharma and public corruption. She has a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She served in the Correspondence Department of the George W. Bush administration and as a War Room analyst for the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee. Alicia is originally from New York City and currently resides in Washington D.C.

Featured image is from GP

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The simmering tensions between Moscow and Japan during the past 4-month period of the war in Ukraine surged when the Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolay Patrushev sounded the warning at a meeting on national security in Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East on Tuesday that Japan is ramping up its revanchist plans for the Kuril Islands.   

To quote Patrushev,

“The border situation on the territory of the Far Eastern District is being shaped under the conditions of the US and its allies increasing their military presence in the Arctic and Asia-Pacific regions and activating Japan’s revanchist aspirations with regards to the Kuril Islands by means of creating new military blocs.”  

Russia has been a victim of Japanese revanchism historically. While the world is familiar with Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, most wouldn’t probably know about a similar Japanese attack 36 years earlier on February 8th, 1904 on the Russian Pacific Fleet based in Port Arthur that triggered the Russo-Japanese War. By the way, it was also an attack without a formal declaration of war.

Tokyo felt emboldened by the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, which obligated  either power to provide military aid if one found itself at war. The Alliance was directed against France and Russia. 

Patrushev has highlighted that the geopolitics of the Far East has phenomenally changed. Indeed, the deterioration of the Russo-Japanese relationship causes surprise, since the two countries have been coping with a cordial, “quasi-friendly” relationship through the past decade, their dispute over Kuril notwithstanding. 

Japan is not even remotely connected with Ukraine’s NATO membership, but Tokyo is acting in sync with the US-Japan Treaty, emulating Washington’s sanctions against Russia. Notably, Tokyo has abandoned its reticent diplomatic idiom regarding Kuril and now calls it a Russian “occupation”.  

Japan’s motivations may seem inscrutable but aren’t hard to fathom. Japan concluded that the war in Ukraine would spill over to the Far East and a conflict over Taiwan might ensue. Secondly, Japan bought into Washington’s narrative that the US had got Russia’s neck in the noose and Moscow would emerge out of the conflict in Ukraine as a weakened power, which in turn would shift the regional balance in favour of the Indo-Pacific strategy aimed at containing China. 

Thirdly, Tokyo is one hundred percent committed to the idea of the NATO entering the Indo-Pacific theatre. With NATO support, Tokyo may be calculating that a weakening of Russia would enable Japan to handle the Kuril dispute from a position of strength. 

Fourthly, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s trips to the US and major European capitals and his performance at the recent summit meetings of the G7 and NATO aimed to position Japan as a key player in the Indo-Pacific. The Russia-Ukraine war and Chinese “assertiveness” topped his agenda also during his 5-nation Southeast Asian tour in April-May and his appearance at the Shangri-La conference in Singapore in June. 

While in Jakarta, Kishida drew a direct line between the Russian aggression and China’s decade of “assertiveness” in the East and South China seas.

“We are facing many challenges, including the situations in Ukraine, the East and South China seas, and North Korea, and maintaining and strengthening the rules-based, free, and open international order has become more important,” Kishida said. 

Japan’s appeal in Southeast Asia lies in mutually beneficial economic engagement, fair and transparent infrastructure financing, and its potential as a security counterweight to China’s growing influence. In Washington’s reckoning, Japan stands perhaps the best chance of nudging the reluctant Southeast Asian nations to identify with the US-led international sanctions campaign against Russia and to shift to a more active position on the Ukraine war. 

On its part, Russia has belatedly begun reacting to Japan’s unfriendly stance. Moscow has bolstered its military forces in the Kuril Islands with new air and coastal defence missile batteries. With the Northern Sea Route opening up, Kuril’s strategic importance has vastly increased. The Kuril archipelago, located on the southern side of the Kamchatka peninsula, is in close proximity to Russia’s strategic bases hosting its nuclear submarine flotilla and guided-missile and ballistic missile launchers. The placement of the Russian nuclear submarine arsenal in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy requires the Kremlin to implement a program of militarisation of the Kuril Archipelago and the island of Sakhalin.  

Meanwhile, Japan sees that a defining feature of Russia’s national security posture today is its securing of the “no limits” partnership with China by a set of coherent, well-thought-out and complementary strategic rationales. No doubt, the war in Ukraine has cemented the Russian-Chinese partnership. Russia’s increasingly adversarial relationship with the West and its increasingly close partnership with China complement each other. Kishida realises all this and has decided that his predecessor Shnizo Abe’s strategy to entice Russia to be a “balancer” in the Japan-China-Russia triangle is no longer tenable. 

Patrushev’s sharp remarks are meant to convey to Tokyo that Moscow is taking serious note of the unfriendly shift in Japan’s stance. Moscow notices that Japan has lately entrenched its ties with NATO at a juncture when the alliance wants to limit Russia’s reach across the globe, including in the Pacific region. Moscow understands that it is under US protection and backing that Japan has become more strident on Kuril issue. 

Of course, Moscow will not lower its guard, as, technically, Japan and Russia are still at war. Although Japan surrendered to the Allies in September 1945, ending World War II, Moscow and Tokyo never signed an official peace treaty. 

In March, Moscow suspended the peace-treaty negotiations with Tokyo  after Japan slapped economic sanctions on Russia. Kishida called Moscow’s decision “extremely unreasonable and totally unacceptable.” Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Presidential Envoy to the Far East Federal District Yury Trutnev said last month that Moscow will strip Japan of the right to fish in waters near the Kuril Islands.

Last week, President Vladimir Putin issued a decree that appears to be a step towards nationalisation of the foreign shareholdings in the giant Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project where Mitsui and Mitsubishi hold 22.5% shares. The five-page decree says it is up to the Kremlin to decide whether foreign shareholders should remain in the consortium.

Meanwhile, Tokyo’s support for the US proposal at the recent G7 summit advocating a price cap on Russian oil has put Moscow’s back up. On Tuesday, the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev sternly warned that Japan would be kicked out of Sakhalin-2 project and its supplies of Russian oil and gas cut off if it supported the US move. Medvedev forecast that if any price cap is imposed on Russian oil, the market price will touch somewhere between $300-$400 per barrel!   

Sakhalin-2 is critical to Japan for meeting its energy needs. Sakhalin-2 alone meets about 8% of Japan’s gas needs and to replace it, Tokyo has to buy from spot market where competition for LNG shipments globally is currently intense and the price is around 6 times that of Russian gas. Besides, Japan’s entry will tighten the LNG market materially this decade, as Japan will have to compete with Europe.

Japan depends on imports to meet 90% of its oil and gas needs. The Japanese currency has fallen to its lowest in 20 years, resulting in its import bill shooting up by 70% in yen terms. This is indeed shaping up as one of the most serious energy crises Japan ever had, and it can severely hurt the economy. In a recent study, the Economist Intelligence Unit estimated that yen will continue to depreciate against the US dollar through 2022, which will “constrain Japan’s economic growth this year through stronger inflation, softer consumer spending and delayed business investment.”

As Russia tightens its screws on Japan, it appears Kishida may have bitten more than what he could chew on the price cap idea. Top Japanese experts have doubted the rationale behind Japan’s policy trajectory. Of course, Moscow’s dexterity to use oil and gas as geopolitical tool is not to be doubted. The Kremlin decree on Sakhalin-2 could be intended, partly at least, as a wake-up call that alienating Russia could damage Japan’s vital long-term interests. Patrushev spoke up only four days after that.      

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Featured image: Maiden cargo: LNG tanker arrives in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, in 2009 with first shipment from Sakhalin 2 project in Russia (Source: Indian Punchline)

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***

I can’t think of a single world leader who has done more damage to humanity, since 2019, than Boris Johnson. And yet, his reign of terror over a once great empire was not enough for the proponents of The Great Reset and Build Back Better agenda.

Johnson generated more COVID hysteria than any other world leader.

He pursued two full years of authoritarian rule, pursuing ruthless lockdowns, implementing vaccine passports, installing a surveillance state, and making a mockery of the unalienable rights of U.K. citizens.

He catered to every slogan and policy initiative of the World Economic Forum globalist mafia.

And still, the U.K. Prime Minister has been quickly relinquished of his marionette duties for not moving the levers of his country fast enough in the direction of global tyranny.

Having secured the prime minister role thanks to his Brexit leadership, Johnson quickly pivoted away from any semblance of a nationalist leader interested in protecting the rights of the British people. His tenure quickly became a relentless policy pursuit of selling out his own countrymen to a one-world, ESG-compliant, WEF-approved agenda.

After two years of depriving citizens of their basic liberties, Johnson summarized his agenda as “Building back greener, building back fairer, and building back more equal and, how shall I… in a more gender-neutral and perhaps more feminine way.”

Johnson confirmed his exit Thursday morning. “It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader … and therefore a new prime minister,” the British PM said.

What exactly is “Conservative” about the Tories in the U.K., you ask?

Well, like their counterparts in the U.S. Republican Party, they act to “conserve” the status quo. And if that means conserving communism, the tories are happy to align with the mission. The status quo in Britain is progressive, suicidal, authoritarian globalism. So the “Conservatives” there are fulfilling their role just swimmingly.

In short, don’t expect a nationalist, populist, or more libertarian leader to run the show next. BoJo The Clown was tossed aside by his own government because he was not moving fast enough to implement a totalitarian agenda. Therefore, his successor should be expected to accelerate the move in the direction of despotism.

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Featured image is from The Dossier

Of relevance to the ongoing “Food Crisis”, this article was first published on March 23, 2016.

Read carefully. Deliberate commodity market manipulations by powerful financial actors trigger increases in the price of food, with devastating social consequences.

And we are currently in a manipulative environment.

Michel Chossudovsky. GR, July 8, 2022

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The leading expert on food at the United Nations says sharp price fluctuations in the price of food has little to do with actual supply. Nowadays, rapacious out-of-control investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital now dominate food speculation through the commodities markets. They dwarf the amount traded by actual food producers and buyers needlessly tipping millions into hunger and poverty.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation currently estimates that about 795 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine, are suffering from chronic undernourishment in the period 2014-2016. We are not talking of poverty here but life threatening food shortages driven by the pursuers of profit.

About one in eight people, or 13.5 percent of the overall population, remain chronically undernourished in developing regions. As the most populous region in the world, Asia is now home to two out of three of the world’s undernourished people.

By 2014, food speculation by banks and hedge funds had risen to $126bn, a figure that has doubled from 2008. From 2000 to 2015 global food prices rose a staggering 94 percent and although they have been falling consistently over the last year, prices are still only 14 percent lower than all-time highs.

To give some perspective, speculative investment in agricultural commodities five years ago was 20 times the amount spent by all countries on agricultural aid and Goldman Sachs, for instance, earned $600 million from it. It was George Bush who deregulated this market with the Commodities Futures Modernization Act in 2000. Hence the astronomic price rises that followed and it is now estimated that 115 million people has suffered as a direct result.

Various attempts have ben made to curb speculation of food prices but most countries have done nothing significant.

From Global Justice Now:

When it comes to financial market regulation, there is a lot at stake. And none more so than in the area of the commodities market where years of deregulation was a major factor in driving food price spikes back in 2008. Staple foods like wheat and corn soared to record levels driving hunger and poverty across the globe.  But after four years of public campaigning, the EU agreed to introduce legislation to limit the amount that companies can bet on food prices and curb harmful speculation.

Public pressure played a key role in winning the legislation and it’s needed once again. The European commission has been considering proposals from the European regulator to implement the legislation. But these proposals are massively weak and would be ineffective at curbing speculation. So Global Justice Now supporters wrote to key MEPs to pressure the European parliament not to accept weakened proposals.

The parliamentary lead negotiator communicated this to the commission: ‘The latest drafts were far from being acceptable for the European Parliament. Especially the position limits regime urgently needs a comprehensive redrafting in order to effectively curb food speculation’

Global Justice also co-ordinated an open letter to the European commission endorsed by 5000 supporters and 26 European organisations to pressure the commission to reject the weak proposals. It delivered this letter last month and the commission has now sent the weak proposals back to the European regulator and asked for them to be reviewed. Weak rules have not been stopped from being proposed but this is a good development and shows that public pressure is making a difference.

Pressure groups such as Global Justice continue to campaign to make sure that the hard-fought for new rules are as strong as possible to stop corporations from betting on hunger.

Read their open letter on food speculation to the EU Commissioner

World Hunger reports that:

“There has been the least progress in the sub- Saharan region, where more than one in four people remain undernourished – the highest prevalence of any region in the world. Nevertheless, the prevalence of undernourishment in sub-Saharan Africa has declined from 33.2 percent in 1990– 92 to 23.2 percent in 2014–16, although the number of undernourished people has actually increased.”

Percentages are one thing to crow about but the actual number of the worlds hungry is actually increasing.

The target set at the 1996 World Food Summit was to halve the number of undernourished people by 2015 from their number in 1990-92.  However, in 25 years, although the actual number of hungry people in developing regions fell by over 200 million, from 991 million to 795 million – the goal was 495 million (1/2 of 991 million), and was not reached. This number is now on the rise again.

Hunger continues to take its largest toll in Southern Asia, which includes the countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The estimate of 276 million chronically undernourished people in 2014–16 is only marginally lower than the number in 25 years earlier. Eastern Asia (where China is by far the largest country) and South-eastern Asia (including Indonesia, Philippines, Mynamar, Vietnam and others) have reduced undernutriton substantially. Food speculation continues to drive global hunger and with the global movement of refugees now at its highest since the second world war, hunger is on the increase.

UNHCR reports that the number of global refugees has increased to 19.5 million worldwide with the number forcibly displaced from their homes now standing at 60 million today. 42,500 every single day are now leaving their homes in pursuit of safe refuge adding 15 million a year to the misery.

Globally 161 million under-five year olds were estimated to be stunted, 68 million were ‘wasted’ and every second pregnant woman in the developing world and about 40% of preschool children are estimated to be anemic.

UNHCR states that there is enough food for all people of the world but the principal problem is that many people in the world still do not have sufficient income to purchase enough food.

Part of this article is by Global Justice Now and Graham Vanbergen at truepublica.org.uk

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has adopted a “Future Framework” scheme that will allow Pfizer and Moderna to reformulate and release updated COVID shots without conducting any additional clinical trials

This Framework will allow completely untested, reformulated COVID injections to be churned out; the elimination of clinical trial requirements may also, over time, be expanded to other vaccines and drugs

The “Future Framework” will almost certainly guarantee that future COVID shots be less effective and/or more dangerous, because adding more mRNA (to cover more variants) will result in higher adverse event rates, and less mRNA per variant will lower the effectiveness

Over the years, we’ve seen plenty of examples of how vaccine trials are being rigged, and that the “Future Framework” is an extreme expansion and formalization of that rigging

Not recording injuries, or recording them improperly, are a common tactic used to fudge results and make a vaccine appear safer than it is. Another common strategy is to exclude any parameter that turns out to be problematic, and that includes participants who are injured. Because this is such a common trick, the fact that 3,000 of the 4,526 children (aged 6 months through 4 years) enrolled in Pfizer’s pediatric COVID trial were excluded is a huge red flag

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In a rather shocking turn of events, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sneaked in a “Future Framework”1 scheme that will allow Pfizer and Moderna to reformulate and release updated COVID shots without conducting any additional human clinical trials, other than what’s already been done.2,3,4

FDA Rewrites the Rules on the Fly

A vote on the Framework was scheduled to be taken June 28, 2022, by the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), but while the VRBPAC approved (19-2) a bivalent COVID shot for fall 2022,5 the expected voting on the Framework, specifically, didn’t seem to take place — only it DID.

As it turns out, we’ve been bamboozled yet again by an agency that keeps rewriting the rules on the fly. Toby Rogers, Ph.D. — a political economist whose research focus is on regulatory capture and Big Pharma corruption6 — explains how they sneaked this one by us:7

“Yesterday [June 28], the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee approved a bivalent COVID-19 shot with the Wuhan strain and the Omicron variant …

At the meeting, the manufacturers (Moderna, Pfizer, and Novavax) were asked what their production timelines are… and they said out loud, ‘So long as we don’t have to provide any clinical data, we’ll have them ready by fall.’ No one had a problem with that …

Wait, hold up, I thought the FDA was voting on the Future Framework yesterday? The policy question was whether reformulated COVID-19 shots would be treated as new molecular entities (which they are) in which case they should be subject to formal review or whether reformulated shots would be treated as ‘biologically similar’ to existing Covid-19 shots and be allowed to skip clinical trials altogether.

 Apparently the FDA did not have the votes to just pass this as a policy question. If you ask anyone whether reformulated mRNA represents a new molecular entity, well of course it is, so that would require formal regulatory review.

What the FDA did instead was to smuggle the policy question in disguised as a vote about reformulated ‘boosters’ for the fall.

In essence, the FDA just started doing the Future Framework (picking variants willy nilly, skipping clinical trials) and essentially dared the committee members to turn down a booster dose — knowing that all of the VRBPAC members are hand-picked because they’ve never met a vaccine they did not like.

So of course only two people on the committee had the courage to turn down a booster dose — even though it was based on this preposterous process (that was never formally adopted) where there was literally no data at all … By stealth, the FDA replaced a system based on evidence with a system based entirely on belief.”

Worst Idea in the History of Public Health

A decision to release reformulated mRNA shots without additional clinical trials is the worst development yet, by far, and has the power to radically change medical science moving forward.

Not only will completely untested COVID injections be churned out, but this “framework” may also, over time, be widened to include other vaccines and drugs that drug makers may want to tinker with. Heck, it could even lower standards for drug trials in general, which historically have required at least 10 years of multi-phase testing.8

In a May 31, 2022, Substack article, Rogers explained the origin and purpose of this incredibly dangerous proposal:9

“Pfizer and Moderna have a problem — their mRNA COVID-19 shots do not stop infection, transmission, hospitalization, nor death from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Everyone knows this … Pfizer and Moderna are making about $50 billion a year on these shots and they want that to continue.

So they need to reformulate the shots. Maybe target a new variant, maybe change some of the ingredients — who knows, these shots don’t work so it’s not clear what it will take to get them to work. This is a problem because reformulated shots mean new clinical trials and new regulatory review by the FDA.

There is a decent chance that any reformulated shot might fail a new clinical trial and the public is deeply skeptical of these shots so the scrutiny would be intense.

So Pfizer and Moderna have figured out a way to use regulatory capture to get their reformulated COVID-19 shots approved WITHOUT further clinical trials. Their scheme is called the ‘Future Framework’ … The purpose of the ‘Future Framework’ is to rig the COVID-19 vaccine regulatory process in perpetuity in favor of the pharmaceutical industry.

If this ‘Future Framework’ is approved all future COVID-19 shots, regardless of the formulation, will automatically be deemed ‘safe and effective’ without additional clinical trials because they are considered ‘biologically similar’ to existing shots.

This is literally the worst idea in the history of public health. If you change a single molecule of mRNA in these shots it will change health outcomes in ways that no one can anticipate. That necessarily requires new clinical trials — which is what the FDA is proposing to skip …

The FDA authorized COVID-19 shots for kids on June 14 and 15. So if the FDA approves the ‘Future Framework’ on June 28th, the shots that will be given to kids (and Americans of all ages) in the fall will be the reformulated shots that skipped clinical trials.”

SARS-CoV-2 Is a Horrible Vaccine Candidate, and They Know It

Before we continue, let’s review one important factor that tends to get lost. As explained by Rogers,10 “Viruses that evolve rapidly are bad candidates for a vaccine,” for the simple reason that they mutate faster than vaccine development can keep up with.

This is why we don’t have a vaccine against the common cold. It’s’ also why all previous attempts to develop a coronavirus vaccine failed. Those studies never made it past animal trials. The vaccines caused antibody-dependent enhancement, making the animals sicker than normal when exposed to the virus.

Most people are unaware that SARS-CoV-2 mutates at a rate that is two to 10 times faster than the influenza virus,11,12 and these mutations can considerably reduce vaccine effectiveness. Indeed, we’ve seen this both with the seasonal flu vaccine and the COVID shots. When you vaccinate against a rapidly mutating virus you also run the risk of pressuring it into a more virulent and/or vaccine-resistant form. As noted by Rogers:

“The FDA’s ‘expert advisory committee’ (VRBPAC) met on April 6, 2022 to discuss the ‘Future Framework’ for the first time. All of the committee members agreed that COVID-19 shots are not working, that boosting multiple times a year was not feasible, and that the shots need to be reformulated.

They also unanimously agreed that there are no ‘correlates of protection’ that one can use to predict what antibody levels would be sufficient to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

By now, the VRBPAC must know that the only way forward, really, is to withdraw the COVID shots and focus on therapeutics. But they’re not doing that. Instead, they’re doubling down on a failed strategy. On top of that, they’re making the situation even worse by foregoing clinical trials. There’s no doubt in my mind that this will pose grave risks to public health. I agree with Rogers, who said:13

“Think about it. The more mRNA you put into a shot, the higher the adverse event rate (as the genetically modified mRNA hijacks the cell and starts cranking out spike proteins). So if Pfizer and Moderna put more mRNA into these shots (in order to cover multiple variants) adverse event rates will skyrocket.

But if Pfizer and Moderna put less mRNA per variant into a shot (in order to keep the total amount of mRNA at 100 mcg for Moderna and 30 mcg for Pfizer) then the effectiveness against any one particular variant will be reduced. The Future Framework is 100% guaranteed to fail.”

They’re Fudging Effectiveness Too

The FDA also insists that, due to time constraints, evaluation of effectiveness must rely on “measures other than actual health outcomes.”14 In other words, whether the shots actually lower your risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death will have no bearing.

The only measure that will be taken into account is whether or not the jab triggers a rise in antibody levels, which has never been proven to offer significant protection. This also means that as long as antibody levels are through the roof, the death rate could be through the roof too, and the jabs will still be used, because that’s not part of the equation.

The focus on antibody levels to the exclusion of everything else may actually be backfiring. Data from Moderna’s trial suggest the shot actually makes you more prone to repeat infections due to the inhibition of antibodies against a particular portion of the virus.

A preprint study15,16 posted on medRxiv April 19, 2022, found adult participants in Moderna’s trial who got the real injection, and later got a breakthrough infection, did not generate antibodies against the nucleocapsid — a key component of the virus — as frequently as did those in the placebo arm.

Placebo recipients produced anti-nucleocapsid antibodies twice as often as those who got the Moderna shot, and their anti-nucleocapsid response was larger regardless of the viral load. As a result of their inhibited antibody response, those who got the jab may be more prone to repeated COVID infections.

These findings are further corroborated by data from the U.K. Health Security Agency. It publishes weekly COVID-19 vaccine surveillance data, including anti-nucleocapsid antibody levels. The report17,18 for Week 13, issued March 31, 2022, shows that COVID-jabbed individuals with breakthrough infections indeed have lower levels of these antibodies.

For clarity, antibodies thought to offer protection against COVID are the antibodies against the spike protein and the receptor binding domain (RBD).19 But this study suggests antibodies against other parts of the virus may play an equally important role, and at least one of them is being inhibited rather than boosted, resulting in a situation where you can get reinfected time and again.

The moral of the story here is that there is a whole lot we do not know about this virus, these shots, and the interaction between them. So, allowing the vaccine makers to reformulate the shots without clinical trials is a recipe for disaster.

Vaccine Trials Are Routinely Rigged

Over the years, we’ve seen plenty of examples of how vaccine trials are being rigged, and what the FDA is now proposing is really just an extreme expansion and formalization of that rigging. For example, in 2017, an eight-month investigation by Slate magazine20 revealed that HPV vaccine trials “weren’t designed to properly assess safety.”

In an internal report about Gardasil 9, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had actually called attention to some of these problems, saying Merck’s approach was “unconventional and suboptimal” and that it left “uncertainty” about Gardasil’s safety. Yet nothing was done about it.

Then, in 2020, Dr. Peter Gøtzsche — a Danish physician-researcher, professor and cofounder of the Cochrane Collaboration and the Nordic Cochrane Centre — and two colleagues published a review and meta-analysis21 of the data from 24 HPV vaccine trials. Slate magazine reported those findings as well.22

Again, the conclusion was that HPV trials had put safety on the back burner by failing to conduct proper safety testing. Still, to quote Slate magazine, “The findings don’t affect official recommendations to get vaccinated.” According to Gøtzsche and his coauthors:23

“We judged all 24 studies to be at high risk of bias. Serious harms were incompletely reported for 72% of participants (68,610/95,670). Nearly all control participants received active comparators (48,289/48,595, 99%). No clinical study report included complete case report forms …

At 4 years follow-up, the HPV vaccines decreased HPV-related cancer precursors and treatment procedures but increased serious nervous system disorders (exploratory analysis) and general harms.

As the included trials were primarily designed to assess benefits and were not adequately designed to assess harms, the extent to which the HPV vaccines’ benefits outweigh their harms is unclear.”

Not recording injuries, or recording them improperly (such as listing an injury as a preexisting condition, for example), is a common tactic used to fudge results and make a vaccine appear safer than it is. Another common strategy is to exclude any parameter that turns out to be problematic, and that includes participants who are injured.

Because this is such a common trick, the fact that 3,000 of the 4,526 children (aged 6 months through 4 years) enrolled in Pfizer’s pediatric COVID trial were excluded is a huge red flag.24 Even more suspicious is the fact that Pfizer doesn’t explain why two-thirds of the children were dropped.

World Health Organization Is Behind Idea to Toss Safety

The FDA did not invent the “Future Framework” idea all by itself, however. According to Rogers, the World Health Organization and other predictable names are the real masterminds:25

“I did not understand until … I started to write this article, that this entire ‘Future Framework’ is actually coming from the WHO. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the biggest voluntary contributor to the WHO. So Gates is likely directing the play.

Gates requires that WHO use the McKinsey consulting firm so this is probably a McKinsey operation (and McKinsey also works for Pharma so this is a huge conflict of interest). As Naomi Wolf points out, the involvement of the WHO also raises troubling questions about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party over this process.

As far back as January, the WHO/Gates/McKinsey junta realized that these shots were terrible and so they decided to use that as an opportunity to seize even more power and control.

The WHO set up a Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 Vaccine Composition (TAG-CO-VAC) to implement these Orwellian ‘Future Frameworks’ across the developed world to lower manufacturing costs for Pharma and avoid bothersome health data that might hurt profits. All the messaging we have seen from the FDA and leaked to the press was initially developed and released by TAG-CO-VAC.”

We Must Reject All Future mRNA Shots

This COVID debacle — from its fraudulent PCR test beginnings, to these devastatingly dangerous COVID shots and the intentional negligence by vaccine makers and health authorities — is the most shocking example of a criminal enterprise I’ve ever seen. Nothing else even comes close.

And the proverbial cherry on top that proves none of it is accidental or caused by ignorance is this sneaky and underhanded erasure of the requirement of clinical trials for all future COVID shots in the name of expedience. COVID-19 is not a death sentence — far from it. So, there’s no need for expedience. And since there’s no need for expedience, there’s also no need to accept collateral damage in the form of COVID jab-related injuries and deaths.

So, why are they doing this? That’s the million-dollar question, and the most obvious answers are all disturbing in the extreme. At best, they don’t care how many people, including children, suffer and die. At worst, the intention is to dramatically reduce the population through adverse effects on fertility, reduction of life span and near-term death.

To save ourselves, indeed, to save mankind, we must reject all mRNA shots, present and future. And not just the COVID shots but also any others that are in the pipeline, because if they’re willing to skip the most basic of safety protocols once, you can be sure they’ll do it again.

Skimping on safety assessment has been the secret norm for decades, and now they’re attempting to formalize that process using stealth and subversion. The initial COVID shots haven’t even completed their trials yet, and they want you to believe those incomplete trials are sufficient to “prove” all future reformulations are “safe and effective” too!

We’ve also seen how the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came out saying they’ve seen no safety signals in the data, only to later discover that the reason they didn’t find any was because they never actually looked.26

It’s nothing short of insanity, and over the past two years, government agencies have proven they are not going to put a stop to the madness. No, they’re going to take this experiment as far as it’ll go, and that means, until people everywhere say “No more,” and leave all their stockpiles to rot.

There’s Help if You’ve Taken the Jab

In closing, if you’ve already taken one or more COVID jabs and now regret it, first, the most important step you can take is to not take any more shots, and that includes conventional vaccines and any other mRNA or gene-based injections as well.

Next, if you suspect your health may have been impacted, check out the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’s (FLCCC) post-vaccine treatment protocol, I-RECOVER,27 which you can download from covid19criticalcare.com in several different languages.

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Notes

1 FDA Briefing Document June 28, 2022

2, 14 The Defender June 27, 2022

3 The Epoch Times June 28, 2022 (Archived)

4 New York Times June 27, 2022 (Archived)

5 The Defender June 29, 2022

6 Brownstone Institute June 22, 2022, Author’s Bio

7 uTobian June 29, 2022

8 Phrma.org Biopharmaceutical research and Development

9, 10, 12, 13 uTobian Substack May 31, 2022

11 VRBPAC Meeting Comments by Trevor Bedford, April 6, 2022

15 medRxiv April 19, 2022 DOI: 10.1101/2022.04.18.22271936

16, 18 The Defender May 4, 2022

17 UK Health Security Agency COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance Report Week 13

19 CDC.gov MMWR December 10, 2021; 70(49): 1700-1705

20 Slate December 17, 2017

21, 23 BMC Systematic Reviews 2020; 9: article number 43

22 Slate March 11, 2020

24 Rumble June 17, 2022

25 uTobian June 26, 2022

26 Jackanapes Substack June 16, 2022

27 FLCCC I-RECOVER Post-Vaccine Treatment Protocol (PDF)

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Following Wednesday’s news that millions of barrels of oil released from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves were shipped overseas to China, India, and Europe, it has been revealed that nearly one million barrels of oil were sent to a Chinese energy company in which President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had a stake as recently as 2015.

On Wednesday, Reuters revealed that more than five million barrels of crude oil that were expected to be put into use in the US to bring down skyrocketing prices at the pump were instead sent to European nations, India, as well as China.

In April, the Biden administration announced that 950,000 Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels would be sold to Unipec, the trading arm of the China Petrochemical Corporation. Commonly known as Sinopec, this company is wholly owned by the Chinese government, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The sales of these barrels, as well as others as part of the sales of 30 million barrels in total, “will support American consumers and the global economy in response to Vladimir Putin’s war of choice against Ukraine,” the Department of Energy said in a statement, as well as “address the pain Americans are feeling at the pump as a result of Putin’s Price Hike and to help lower energy costs.”

Speaking with the Washington Free Beacon, Power the Future founder Daniel Turner blasted the Biden administration for selling “raw materials to the Communist Chinese for them to use as they want.”

“We were assured Biden was releasing this oil to America so it could be refined for gasoline to drive down prices at the pump. So right off the bat, they’re just lying to the American people,” Turner told the Washington Free Beacon. “What they’re saying they did and what they did are not remotely related.”

Turner noted that the decision to sell to Unipec highlights the Biden family’s “relationship with China.”

In 2015, a private equity firm cofounded by Hunter Biden, Bohai Harvest RST, previously owned a stake in the Sinopec Marketing valued at $1.7 million.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, “Sinopec went on to enter negotiations to purchase Gazprom in March, one month after the Biden administration sanctioned the Russian gas giant.”

In addition, Unipec has stated it would purchase “no more Russian oil going forward” once “shipments that have arrived in March and due to arrive in April” were fulfilled, but it was revealed that in May, the company “significantly increased the number of hired tankers to ship a key crude from eastern Russia,” according to Bloomberg.

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The lack of oversight for billions of dollars in US weapons pumped into Ukraine has concerned the Pentagon. They’re worried about anti-tank missiles and explosive drones ending up in the “wrong hands.”

A new investigation allegedly found some of these weapons are being sold on the dark web.

RT journalists pretended to be weapons buyers and claimed to have come in contact with Ukrainian arms smugglers offering machine guns, body armor, and some of the US/West’s most advanced weapons, such as Javelin and NLAW anti-tank systems or Phoenix Ghost and Switchblade explosive drones.

The journalist said one darknet marketplace had a Phoenix Ghost loitering munition listed for $4,000. 

Another Ukrainian arms smuggler offered US-made body armor sets for $1,500 and M4 carbines with suppressors and hundreds of 5.56×45mm NATO rounds for $2,400 per set.

Besides US weapons, Ukrainian arms smugglers were selling British-made NLAW anti-tank systems for $15,000. Acquiring the anti-tank weapon legally would cost between $30,000 to $40,000.

Since the journalist never completed transactions with the sellers, RT said, “it’s not possible to completely rule out that the sellers actually did not have the said weapons in stock, as the RT investigators did not complete the purchase. Scamming schemes are common for dark web marketplaces.”

As early as April, US officials began admitting that once Javelin anti-tank weapons cross into Ukraine, they have no idea where they go from there. 

One intelligence source told CNN:

“We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero. It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it after a short time.”

The European police agency Europol has also warned about the massive amount of weapons being pumped from the West into Ukraine. Once the weapons hit the ground, there’s no tracking the weapons from there, and some end up in criminal gangs’ hands.

“The weapons from this war are still being used by criminal groups today,” Europol Director Catherine De Bolle told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag in June.

Last Thursday, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) issued a statement urging US military leaders to send weapons inspectors into the war-torn country to monitor where the billions of dollars in arms are being handed out.

RT’s investigation sheds important light on the Pentagon’s worst fears of high-tech weapons ending up in the wrong hands and some of the weapons for sale on the darknet. There may never be oversight and accountability of the weapons on the ground because, as the NYTimes recently said, the CIA has had a presence on the battlefield since the start of the invasion. When it comes to the CIA’s covert arms programs, they usually like to keep where the weapons are being sent a secret.

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Ahead of US President Joe Biden security talks in a trilateral summit with South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, North Korean authorities in Pyongyang have accused Washington of trying to build an “Asian NATO” to contain the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Biden met with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts on the sidelines of the latest NATO summit in Madrid to discuss Pyongyang’s nuclear program. On June 29, North Korea’s state news agency, KCNA, said: “The US is hellbent on military cooperation with its stooges in disregard of the primary security demand and concern by Asia-Pacific countries.”

Seoul, Tokyo and Washington plan to conduct missile exercises near Hawaii next month. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told the press the three leaders discussed “the continuing threat” from North Korea, and also ways to “depriving the North of hard currency that they use to fund their nuclear and missile program.” Furthermore, this week US F-35 stealth fighters arrived in South Korea amid escalating tensions in the region.

In the broader context, tensions are also on the rise between China and Taiwan, between Japan and Russia, and China and Japan. Such disputes could spiral into a dangerous polarizing tendency. In the end of June, according to Axios, a South Korean official stated that his country would expect the United States to respond militarily to a Chinese “invasion” of Taiwan.

The Washington-Pyongyang talks which began under the previous (Donald Trump’s) presidency have stalled, and one could in fact say the Biden presidency’s approach towards the Korean peninsula has been mostly a setback. In any case, since the 1990s, no amount of sanctions have been effective in persuading the DPRK to give up  its nuclear weapons, which are perceived by it as a vital strategic matter – which is understandable, considering the American troops stationed near its borders. Even though reconciliation talks between the two Koreas had advanced during former South Korean President Moon Jae’s government, his conservative successor, Yoon Suk-yeol, stated last year, in September 22, that he will ask Washington to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in his country, if he feels threatened by his northern neighbor.  Such weapons have not been deployed by the United States there since the early 1990s, thanks to an agreement with Russia to ease tensions in the region.

The DPRK has always condemned the American-South Korean joint military exercises near its borders and perceives them as a threat. In its turn, North Korea has already run over 30 ballistic missiles tests this year, which is a record number, and some speculate the country might be ready to launch its first new nuclear weapon test since 2017 in order to demonstrate its supposed capacity to strike both its southern neighbor, the  Republic of Korea, and Japan.

The North Korean aforementioned statement also condemned the planned joint exercises as a sign that Washington has not changed its ambition to “overthrow” the Pyongyang’s government “by force”. Plus, it condemned the alliance as a “dangerous prelude to the creation of an Asian version of NATO.” It would be tempting to dismiss this as North Korean rhetoric, however many experts have also described the Japanese-American-Indian-Australian Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) as a new NATO. French economist Martine Bulard has recently written for Le Monde Diplomatique that an “Asian NATO” could be imminent, thus echoing such concerns.

Actually, some analysts see a possible connection between the rising tensions in Europe (over the Russian-Ukrainian war) and the ones in the Pacific. The West is largely responsible for the escalation of the conflict in the Russian-Ukrainian border into the current confrontation, after a series of provocations, and now a similar scenario is emerging in Asia over Taiwan. According to North Korea’s International Society for Political Research scholar Kim Hyo-myung, there are  “ominous signs that sooner or later the black waves in the North Atlantic will break the calm in the Pacific.”

Tensions between Tokyo and Pyongyang have been escalating since at least October 2020, when both South Korea and Japan started to strengthen their ties, in spite of their historic differences, to counter the DPRK. Moreover, since Biden and former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga met at the White House in April last year, Japan-China relations have also been at their lowest in decades.

In fact, while Donald Trump tried to contain Beijing in a commercial and economic way (by pursuing a “trade war”), Biden’s approach has added a more overtly military element to this competition, thus bringing it to a more dangerous realm. One can see signs of this in the American disproportionate response to the recent China-Solomon Islands security deal, and also in the broader US engagement in South Asia, and in the Pacific in general. So, the American-South Korean-Japanese summit must be seen in this context also.

Meanwhile, the US is now establishing a permanent military base in Poland for the first time and is pushing the rising militarization of Europe, to counter Moscow. NATO’s new Strategic Concept also addresses Beijing as a “challenge” to the Alliance for the first time. Moreover, this week,  the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director, while speaking in London next to his counterpart, the MI5 Director General Ken McCallum (in an unprecedented joint appearance), described China as the “biggest long-term threat” to both his country and the UK.

Thus, Washington’s current strategy apparently involves encircling both China and Russia, simultaneously, which has the disastrous collateral effect, from an American perspective, of bringing these two great powers closer. This is of course an extremely risky approach.

To sum it up, the US plans to expand both the QUAD+ and NATO itself to contain China in an already ultra tense world.

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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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In an interview with ZDoggMD, vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s advisory panel’s recent meeting on whether to modify COVID-19 boosters was unusual and he felt the panel was led to “vote yes” to reformulate boosters without critical data.

One of the members of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) vaccine advisory panel explained why he voted against adding an Omicron component to fall COVID-19 booster shots raising serious questions over a lack of critical data and the Biden administration’s role in politicizing the process.

In a July 6 interview with ZDoggMD, Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, described the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee’s (VRBPAC) recent meeting as “unusual.”

Offit continued:

“I’ve seen nothing like this. I guess the thing that’s most upsetting to me is normally when you get something from the FDA when we have these meetings, you usually get it a few days before you meet. You usually get a couple of hundred pages.

“Here on the other hand, normally you get the EUA [Emergency Use Authorization] submission from the company, which is 85 to 100 pages long, and then you get the FDA’s review of all those data. It’s a very thorough review. Not here though. Here, it was 22 pages from the FDA, which included a half-page on Pfizer’s data and a half-page on Moderna’s data.”

“You could get that from the press release,” Offit said. “In fact, it was no more detail than the press release provided.”

The question vaccine advisors are always asked to consider in the end is whether the benefits outweigh the risks — even if the risks are generally small and sometimes unknown, Offit said. “I didn’t see the benefits.”

Offit said he was surprised that out of 21 voting members, 19 voted “yes” because he “just didn’t see the evidence for that.”

“I think this was something that was desired by the Biden administration,” he added.

“I could be wrong but the other thing that was odd about this meeting was that we’re an advisory committee, we’re being asked for our advice,” Offit said. “So normally what happens is that they just present the data. Here’s the data. What’s your advice? And people can ignore our advice.”

However, during the June 28 meeting, someone from the World Health Organization presented their opinion and their opinion was that this was a good idea, Offit said. “Then you had someone from the FDA presenting where they also had an opinion.”

“That’s unusual,” Offit said. “Then the next day you read a press release from HHS [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] that says the government has decided to purchase at least 105 million doses from Pfizer with up to 300 million doses.”

The press release mentioned VRBPAC had just made its decision the day before, “so you just kind of felt like the fix was in a little bit,” Offit said. “Maybe that’s not the right phrase but it was something they wanted and I felt like we were being led here and with a critical lack of information.”

Offit said all COVID-19 vaccines are based on the original Wuhan strain before it “mutated and left China,” and now that BA.4 and BA.5 represent a little more than half of the circulating strands in this country.

It’s reasonable the FDA would consider trying to broaden immunity by including omicron or omicron subvariants in a bivalent vaccine, he said. But “both Moderna and Pfizer presented data during the June 28 meeting and it was not compelling.”

Offit explained:

“They did the studies the right way. So, they took people who had already received three doses of the ancestral strain and then gotten a fourth dose with the ancestral strain and compared that to three doses of the ancestral strain, plus the fourth dose of the bivalent strain which contains the omicron mRNA vaccine [BA.1] as well as the ancestral vaccine. That’s the right way to do the study.

“Then … they looked at virus-specific neutralizing antibodies against omicron and … found … when you got the omicron boost you had a 1.75-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies against omicron.

“Well, the question is, what does that mean? What does that number mean, and the answer is I think while statistically significant, I don’t think that’s a clinically significant difference.

“The reason I say that is because if you look at the original vaccines when they were authorized back in mid-December 2020, there was a two-fold difference between Moderna and Pfizer regarding neutralizing antibodies. Moderna had a two-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies, but it did not translate into a clinically significant difference in terms of protection against severe disease, which is the goal of this vaccine.”

In other words, having a two-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies does not necessarily correlate to efficacy.

Offit said his second concern was whether COVID-19 vaccines protect again BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants once Omicron is gone.

“Now both companies interestingly presented data after a fourth dose that showed you what the neutralizing antibody titer was to BA.4/BA.5, but they didn’t show you what the neutralizing antibody titer to BA.4/BA.5 was if your fourth dose was the ancestral strain,” Offit said. “They never showed those data.”

“That’s the obvious thing to do because that’s why you have control groups for your experiment, and I just found it odd that neither presented,” he added. “That bothered me.”

Offit also pointed out there were no animal models or “neutralizing antibody data that supports this.”

FDA burden of proof for COVID-19 vaccines ‘is gong down’

“There are potentially billions of dollars at stake to transform a vaccine from the ancestral strain to a new bivalent strain including these Omicron-specific boosters, without clear and compelling evidence that it’s actually going to improve the outcome we care about most which is protection against severe disease,” ZDoggMD told Offit. “And yet it seems like the burden of proof for FDA seems to be going down and down and down instead of being at a level that you’re comfortable with.”

Offit pointed out that a reformulated booster is a new product and it surprised him so many were willing to go forward with such “uncomfortably scant evidence of benefit.”

Offit said:

“No one would have predicted myocarditis associated with mRNA vaccines. I don’t think anybody would have predicted this clotting problem so-called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome. So humble yourself. … If you clearly have evidence of benefit, great, but if you clearly don’t have evidence of benefit then say no.”

As The Defender reported, the HHS on June 29 announced it had made an advance purchase of 105 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine for $3.2 billion, with options to buy up to 300 million doses.

The Biden administration used repurposed money to buy the additional vaccines, “betting on a next generation of boosters without knowing who might need one or how they will perform.”

The contract includes a combination of adult and pediatric doses and supplies of re-formulated booster doses that will contain the original Wuhan variant and BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants.

The announcement was made one day after the FDA’s VRBPAC voted 19 to 2 to recommend future COVID-19 booster doses be modified to include an Omicron component, and before the FDA’s announced it had made recommendations to vaccine makers that their boosters should target Omicron subvariants.

Watch ZDoggMD interview with Dr. Paul Offit here:

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Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.

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Evil in Our Time: Naomi Wolf on the COVID Response

July 8th, 2022 by Thorsteinn Siglaugsson

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What changed in March 2020? How have things played out? What are the causes? What can we expect, looking ahead? 

Those are the key questions Dr. Naomi Wolf addresses in her new book, The Bodies of Others – The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and The War Against the Human (All Seasons Press, Fort Lauderdale, May 2022).

Naomi Wolf is perhaps best known as a chief spokeswoman for third-wave feminism, a bestselling author and advisor to the campaigns of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. In her new book, Wolf‘s subject is not so much the SARS-CoV-2 virus as the worldwide reactions to its spread, and the consequences of those reactions. Reactions unprecedented in their severity; never before have whole nations been locked up in their homes for weeks, even months on end, to battle a respiratory virus.

Wolf‘s book is a travel through time, starting in March 2020, ending this spring. She switches between discussion and analysis of the situation at each stage and different aspects of it, and a kind of personal diary of how she and those around her were affected.

The book starts with a description of normal pre-pandemic life. The author is at a conference in London surrounded by friends, when she first hears about the lockdown in Italy. This is March 8, 2020. Reflecting, Wolf now sees the news of this first lockdown in Europe as an indication of a strike against the foundation of free Western society: “The flower of Europe was being struck down.”

She moves on to give us a vivid picture of normal life in her New York neighbourhood in the Bronx, its bustling life in all its diversity, suddenly struck down by the lockdown. She and her husband leave the city: “We had both been in conflict areas and we had both lived in close societies – we recognized their movements. We both knew something very bad was on its way; whether natural or political, or both, we could not yet tell.”

To Wolf, lockdown is more than just a way to slow the spread of a virus; it is an abandonment of free society; it signifies a new kind of society; a totalitarian oligarchy, and the fact that we allowed it means we have lost our freedom for the unforeseeable future.

Wolf was not a skeptic from the outset. At first she believed the official narrative, feared for herself and her loved ones, but slowly she started to discover the strange discrepancy between the narrative and the facts. She started questioning the data presented, the usefulness of the countermeasures, the psychological harm of mask-wearing, especially to children, and she describes how perplexed she was witnessing the utter lack of critical thinking on behalf of the media. She discovers how the fear of the virus has turned into a cult, the virus taking on the form of “Milton’s Satan.”

Wolf discusses the interests at play and explains how lockdowns have benefited certain business sectors, especially Big Tech, large corporations at the expense of small businesses. She suggests the proliferation of restrictions may have been driven by the elites, with a goal of disempowering the masses in order to grab their assets. The fact that someone benefits from a situation is of course not proof they caused it. But the financial interests are certainly there and there is little doubt that once the lockdowns and restrictions were in place, many of those who gained the most by them have certainly done much to support the narrative.

To Wolf, this is not about a conspiracy, but a mindset of arrogance and indifference among the elites of society: “But the point was that these people did not need to gather in the shadows or be part of a cabal. Why would this group need a secret sign or a secret meeting? They simply owned the global stratum in which they operated, and they were accountable only to one another.”

In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben analyzed the situation based on three key concepts in his philosophy, Homo Sacerthe State of Exception and Bare Life. Homo sacer is someone who is at the same time sacred and excluded. Homo sacer has in some way broken the taboos of society and is therefore already consecrated to the gods, he can be killed with impunity, but he cannot be sacrificed; he is subject to the power of government, but not protected by the law.

Homo Sacer is condemned to bare life, zoe in the original Greek sense; existing not as a citizen, but as a human stripped of all rights to take an active part in society. The state of exception is realized when law and constitution are abandoned and the executive arm of the state takes the reins, usually based on a declaration of a state of emergency.

As Agamben explains his seminal work, State of Exception, the Third Reich was based on a state of emergency throughout, as the Weimar constitution was in fact “unplugged” right at the beginning, while formally being unchanged the whole time.

Who are the homines sacri? In Biblical times the lepers, in modern times the prisoners of Auschwitz, refugees; homeless, stateless, at the mercy of the charity of foreign rulers.

Agamben’s suggestion, in his first blog posts on the coronavirus in 2020, is that with the lockdowns and other restrictions we have all become homines sacri; we are outside civil society, yet subject to the power of the rulers, unlimited now, based on the emergency declarations.

We are all homines sacri now, Agamben says; a long-term development has culminated in biopolitical totalitarianism. But as Wolf shows us, we may need a bit deeper analysis: She describes the joy of meeting up with her health-freedom friends in the woods late last year, away from the prying eyes of the police and the panicked, vaccine touting self-righteous majority.

And those people, the health-freedom group in the woods, they may be the homines sacri of our time, outside of society, they have broken the taboos, they are a threat to the obeying mass, to the friends who refuse to meet up with an unvaccinated person.

But still, those people, hiding away in the woods, talking, hugging, free from fear; those people are free. Free in the sense they can live and interact as normal human beings. It is here where the glimpse of hope lies according to Wolf; within the biopolitical regime, it is the outlaw, homo sacer, who still enjoys some level of freedom.

Then, let us look at the citizens of Wuhan in early 2020 or in Shanghai just now. Stripped of their citizen’s rights for sure, but more importantly now stripped of even life as an outcast, as homo sacer. Isolation, deprivation of human connection; this is the essence of the lockdowns; they signify the abolition, not only of rights and freedom, but of our existence as humans.

And what of those still in the grip of an absurd narrative, those who obey without questions, who ostracize their neighbours for not wearing a mask, for refusing the vaccine? They are surely still part of society, but are they free? “A fat servant is not a great man. A beaten slave is a great man, for it is in his heart that freedom resides,” to quote Icelandic author Halldor Laxness’s 18th century historical roman Iceland’s Bell.

Broadly speaking we can distinguish between three layers of freedom. The outermost layer is the freedom to work, to make money and keep the proceeds of your work. This is what political debate is mostly about in a free democratic society; how high should taxes be, to what extent should business be regulated and so forth.

The next layer is the freedom of expression and freedom to influence society through political participation. This layer of freedom is generally not debated in free democracies.

But within this layer there is yet another one; the freedom to live as a human being. The freedom to go to a restaurant or go shopping, to go for a walk, the freedom to meet your friends in the park, the freedom to recognize facial expressions, the freedom to smile and be smiled at. And of course the freedom to decide for yourself whether or not to be medicated. It is this layer of freedom that was being attacked during the coronavirus scare, by the authorities, by the media, and, first and foremost, by a hypnotized mass scared out of their wits over a virus.

This layer of freedom is so fundamental that it isn’t even a part of the definition of freedom. It is like the freedom of the horse to sprint, of the dog to bark. It is our freedom to live according to our nature.

The Bodies of Others is a valuable account of an unprecedented situation. Wolf paints a vivid picture of the contrast between normal human life and life under Covid restrictions. She describes the despair of the children deprived of the company of their peers, the emptiness in the eyes of the old and frail kept away from their loved ones by force, withering away in isolation, the crushed communities.

How basic moral principles, empathy and respect for other people’s privacy evaporate as the state assumes a “central role, and limitless authority, in managing our own bodies and the bodies of others.”

Wolf wonders about the possible causes. Unlike many authors, she does not offer a single, simple explanation, no single culprit; no conspiracy at play. “How could otherwise nice people have come to do such evil?” she asks. “How could they have allowed the suppression of young children’s respiration or consigned friends and colleagues to eat in the street like outcasts? How could it have happened in “enlightened” New York City that cops would have been sent to arrest a woman with a terrified nine-year-old child for trying to visit the Museum of Natural History without “papers?” To Wolf, this suggests “evil beyond human imagination,” a “spiritual dimension of evil.”

To her own surprise, and as it seems a bit of embarrassment as an enlightened modern intellectual, Wolf turns to her Jewish religious tradition “in which Hell (or “Gehenom”) is not the Miltonic hell of the later Western imagination, but rather a quieter interim spiritual place.”

And this is where the battle takes place, “between the forces of God and negative forces that debase, that profane, that seek to ensnare our souls. We have seen this drama before, and not that long ago.”The Bodies of Others is a personal, deeply empathic and excellently written tribute to the innermost layer of freedom, the very core that defines us as human beings. Or in Naomi Wolf’s own words: “The object of this spiritual battle? It seemed to be for nothing short of the human soul.”

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Thorsteinn Siglaugsson is an Icelandic consultant, entrepreneur and writer and contributes regularly to The Daily Sceptic as well as various Icelandic publications. He holds a BA degree in philosophy and an MBA from INSEAD. Thorsteinn is a certified expert in the Theory of Constraints and author of From Symptoms to Causes – Applying the Logical Thinking Process to an Everyday Problem.

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Chinese Vice Premier Liu He held talks with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on July 5 to discuss Washington’s trade tariffs on Chinese products and issues of global supply chain stability. According to Beijing’s press release, Liu stressed that the lifting of tariffs and sanctions, as well as the fair treatment of Chinese companies in the US, is a major concern for China. The US press release made no mention of changes to tariffs and instead mentioned the negative impact of the war in Ukraine for the global economy.

Both press releases did mention though that Liu and Yellen held discussions on the macroeconomic policies of the two countries, as well as global supply chain stability and global economic issues.

Given the fact that China’s chief trade negotiator spoke with Yellen, who has previously advocated for the removal of at least a significant portion of tariffs on Chinese products, it appears that tariffs are an important part of current discussions. This can only bring speculation that perhaps a thawing in the economic relations between the US and China is emerging, which is especially needed considering the economic troubles that the North American country is experiencing.

There is no consensus within the Biden administration on how to deal with China’s trade policy. Former President Donald Trump was belligerent and initiated a trade war. The trade war at its peak saw almost all Chinese exports to the US become subject to tariffs.

After that though, part of the tariffs were canceled and the so-called “Phase One” deal was signed, where it was expected China would increase the volume of goods purchased from the US by $200 billion over two years. However, tariffs on Chinese products totaling more than $300 billion remain in place.

At the beginning of his presidency, Biden did not make sudden moves in any direction and only talked about the comprehensive work of analyzing and revising his predecessor’s economic policies. In fact, none of the changes made by Trump have been amended by Biden.

The US is facing a new economic reality as the COVID-19 pandemic and the related economic crisis has forced authorities to resort to aggressive monetary stimulus measures. Ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing has helped contribute to massive inflation in the US. In fact, American citizens have not experienced such price hikes in 40 years.

To help alleviate economic pressures, some US officials believe they have found a solution – lifting tariffs on Chinese goods in its entirety.

None-the-less, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai opposed the tariff cuts. According to Tai, tariffs are a trump card in US hands, a lever to force Beijing to change its long-term trade policy. She said inflation is serious, but this is a short-term issue and the strategic task is to force China to comply with Washington’s demands. She believes that if tariffs were lifted, the US would weaken its negotiating position with China.

The reality is that China has not been greatly affected by the tariffs. Despite all the tariffs, China is not selling less goods to the US. In 2017, just before Trump kickstarted the trade war, the US trade deficit with China was $375 billion. In 2021, that figure was $396.5 billion.

Due to this reality, the main economic burden from the trade war actually falls on the shoulders of US consumers.

The Biden administration probably understands that the problem needs to be addressed as it no longer just a foreign policy issue, but a serious domestic one now. The Federal Reserve announced in June its largest interest rate hike in 28 years to try and control inflation, which hit a 40-year high in May. Some experts now believe that the US is in recession.

For this reason, it is clear that the US has decided to slowly move towards a gradual thaw in economic relations with China.

Although Washington seemingly wants a thaw in its relations with Beijing, differences, such as the causes of global instability in supply chains and economic processes, will make this a difficult task. However, investors still see this dialogue between the US and China as an undeniably positive signal, with stock exchanges reacting with enthusiasm, which could encourage Washington to end its trade war.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, one of Japan’s most influential postwar leaders, died Friday at the age of 67 after being shot while delivering a stump speech in the western city of Nara two days ahead of a national election.

Japan’s longest-serving leader was shot by a 41-year-old man who approached him from behind at around 11:30 a.m. as he was speaking in front of Kintetsu Railway’s Yamato-Saidaiji Station, police said, adding he collapsed on the ground after two shots were heard. He was rushed to a hospital with blood seen on his shirt.

A doctor with the Nara Medical University Hospital later said at a press conference that Abe was pronounced dead at 5:03 p.m. and the wound was deep enough to reach his heart, adding the cause of death is believed to be blood loss.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (C) lies on the ground on the side of a road after being shot by a gunman while delivering a stump speech in Nara, western Japan, on July 8, 2022, ahead of the July 10 House of Councillors election. (Kyodo)

Tetsuya Yamagami, a resident of Nara, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of attempted murder, the police said. The suspect was formerly a member of the Maritime Self-Defense Force, apparently for about three years through 2005, according to government sources.

“It’s not a grudge against the political beliefs of former Prime Minister Abe,” the Nara prefectural police quoted Yamagami, whose recent occupation remains unknown, as saying. His home was later searched by the police, who found an item that could be an explosive, they said.

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Featured image: Image from video footage shows former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivering a stump speech in Nara on July 8, 2022, shortly before he was shot by a gunman. (Kyodo)

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“Srebrenica Genocide” Narrative Bites the Dust

July 8th, 2022 by Stephen Karganovic

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The phoney “genocide” in Srebrenica marks its twenty-seventh anniversary on 11 July this year. As politically convenient fabrications go, it must be admitted that it has been extraordinarily effective in serving the purposes for which it was created, but this year’s rather low key observances suggest that it is at the end of its cycle.

There are two heavy hints to that effect. The genocide resolution illegally tabled in the UN General Assembly by Bosnia’s sectarian central government representative Sven Alkalaj, in disregard of the veto placed by the country’s Serb entity, Republika Srpska, has gone practically unnoticed and uncommented by major Western media and political figures. By contrast, in the past, it would have triggered unendurable evocations of the saga of “8,000 men and boys” and their unique suffering.

Concomitantly, as the narrative faces a deficit of global attention, this year simple mathematical realities are reducing the formerly massive funerals of exhumed “victims” to barely a trickle. The annual 11 July interments at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre in Potocari are the centrepiece of the Srebrenica cult. But the recklessness of past years, when every July hundreds of caskets would be buried in tear-jerking ceremonies, is finally taking its toll. As the total number of Srebrenica burials approaches the mandated total of about 8,000, reducing the annual count from hundreds to just a few dozen is the only way to ensure that the drama could be stretched out for a few more years.

Image on the right: Gravestones at the Potočari genocide memorial near Srebrenica (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Srebrenica is the oddest of genocides for several interesting reasons. For one, it went largely unnoticed for over two years until it was finally “discovered” and publicised at an international conference seemingly convened for that purpose in 1997 in Sarajevo. The supposed genocide went undetected also in the confidential intelligence reports of Sarajevo military and civilian authorities, the aggrieved side which should have been the first to become aware of it. The damning reportswere assembled, perhaps inadvertently, by the Hague Tribunal, the very body whose tendentious verdicts these reports discredit.

Equally curious is the forensic situation, which is completely at odds with what should be expected if a genocide had taken place. It does not support the standard narrative and Hague Tribunal claims which follow that narrative closely. It must be deemed extraordinary that in two and a half decades physical evidence in the form of 8,000 bodies has completely failed to materialise. Exhumation autopsy reports, the only relevant indicator, point to the presence of about 1,920 bodies in Srebrenica related mass graves, but of those only half, or roughly a thousand, exhibit a pattern of injury consistent with execution. The majority of the remainder have unmistakable combat injuries, pointing away from the execution of captured prisoners. That is consistent with known facts on the ground after 11 July 1995. Following the fall of Srebrenica, a large military force from within the supposedly “demilitarised” enclave conducted an armed break-out over a sixty-mile stretch of Serbian territory, along the way engaging Serbian forces in fierce combat and sustaining heavy losses.

The quiet shelving, after 2001, of autopsy-based Srebrenica evidence came in the form of Hague Tribunal’s rather brash attempt to substitute fluidly defined “DNA evidence” for hard forensic data, once it became clear that traditional methods would yield nowhere near the required 8,000 bodies.

From a juridical standpoint, even if the claimed victim figures were granted, a “genocide” whose organisers could not be identified (as freely admitted by ICTY judge Jean-Claude Antonetti in his separate opinion in the Tolimir case), which assuming anything like it had occurred was limited to the municipal level, and whose alleged death toll was only 8,000 in a population of over three million, literally beggars belief. And even more so, ICTY’s preposterous judgment that two weeks later the killing of three individuals in the neighbouring enclave of Zepa also constituted “genocide” because the victims were key community figures without whom the life of the surviving 5,000 inhabitants was rendered unsustainable.

The politically inspired “genocide” in Srebrenica stands out also because it is the only known occurrence of its type that, in the process of supposedly owning up to the failures that led to it, precipitated a world-wide slaughter of literally over a hundred times greater magnitude.

The stark fact is that the utter and most likely deliberate misrepresentation of what happened in Srebrenica, amplified by a powerful media and political machine, was behind the creation of the odious R2P “humanitarian intervention” doctrine. The scope and impact of that mendacious construct are well enough known to require elaboration. Suffice it to say that from Kosovo to Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the interventionist rationale ultimately rooted in fabrications generated around Srebrenica has destroyed an estimated two million lives, enabled imperialist plunder on an epic scale, and led to seemingly irreparable devastation of international law through the pernicious activity of the Hague Tribunal and subsequently its successor, the ICC.

Srebrenica has been an unmitigated human disaster because of the effects of its cynical misuse by the global powers that be, for the basest of purposes. Weaponised in Bosnia as a generator of vicious inter- communal enmity and enduring instability, globally it has wreaked death and destruction on an unprecedented scale, all the more appallingly because of the humanitarian veneer put on to conceal the utter cynicism and amorality of the perpetrators.

The gradual but inexorable disintegration of the phoney Srebrenica narrative should be welcomed by every person committed to honesty and truth.

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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The European Union is adamant that it is a “union of equals” and that the “interests and concerns of all of its current and/or prospective members will be taken into consideration”. Within the EU legal system, this is also made crystal clear by Article 4(2) TEU which states that “the Union shall respect the equality of Member States before the Treaties”. Still, the reality is starkly different. On paper, every member state is equally important. However, nobody truly believes that countries like Luxembourg or Malta could ever be as important and powerful as Germany or France. Worse yet, even France has trouble matching German dominance in the EU, to say nothing of other member states, particularly those in Southern and Eastern Europe.

As then there’s Southeast Europe. Current and prospective EU members there are as overlooked and dismissed as they could possibly be. Greece, by far the most important and powerful member in Southeast Europe is held in perpetual debt enslavement, while Bulgaria and Romania are virtually without sovereignty. And last, the so-called “Western Balkans” or former Yugoslavia (and Albania). This region’s EU perspective is questionable, at best. However, not so much thanks to the region itself. It is the bureaucratic empire that has treated the region as an outright colony, the one it created by destroying the relatively prosperous (and sovereign) Yugoslavia, instead creating half a dozen neo-colonies with little in terms of actual historical heritage and identity, a practice better known as the so-called “nation-building”, which is an expertise of the US and NATO.

The only exception to this is Serbia, the original founding state and by far the most important member of former Yugoslavia. Currently a semi-sovereign state, Serbia has been through a lot in recent decades, particularly since 1991, when the political West placed the country under a decade-long siege, destroying and dismantling Yugoslavia, while doing everything possible to expand the territorial scope of everyone else in the region, at the expense of ethnic Serbs, who have been expelled from nearly all regions of former Yugoslavia. The EU itself was (and still is) instrumental in this, together with the US. To achieve this, the political West has bombed Serbs 3 times in less than a decade, starting with the Republic of Serbian Krajina (1994-1995), Republika Srpska (1994-1995) and Serbia itself (1999).

It was catastrophic for Serbs, with tens of thousands killed, nearly a million refugees being forced out of their millennia-old ancestral lands and the ensuing economic and social devastation, the result of which was decades of stagnation. However, the EU and the US weren’t done with destroying the country. Even this much smaller Serbia was “too big” and “too sovereign” for the political West, so they decided to dismantle it further, causing Montenegro to secede in 2006, as well as supporting the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo (2008), a historically Serbian province with an engineered Albanian majority. Since then, 22 out of 27 EU member states have recognized the narco-terrorist entity. Brussels has tried to convince others to do so as well.

Formally, the EU never set Kosovo recognition as a condition for EU membership, although it did imply it many times since. However, on July 6, the EU crossed that line as well, when the European Parliament adopted the Resolution on Serbia, which “expresses support” for Serbia’s membership in the EU, but conditions the ascension with “urgent compliance” with the EU sanctions against Russia and Belarus, as well as the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state. These two requirements are now set as mandatory for further ascension talks. Top EU bureaucrat for Serbia Vladimir Bilcik emphasized Brussels expects Serbia to fully comply.

“That is why it is important that Serbia moves towards the EU, and not to any other side,” said Bilcik.

The European Parliament also “expressed regret” that five EU member states have not yet recognized the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo and are again invited to do so. While Serbia was criticized for not sanctioning Russia and Belarus, the narco-terrorist neocolonial entity in occupied Kosovo was praised by the European Parliament for aligning with the European Union’s position on sanctions against Russia and Belarus.

Naturally, these terms are absolutely unacceptable to Serbia and can be considered indecent, to say the least. Neither Russia nor Belarus have ever done anything wrong to Serbia. On the contrary, both countries have been adamantly supporting Serbia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and continue to do so. Historically, Serbia has been supported by Russia for centuries. Without the involvement of the Eurasian giant, it’s highly unlikely Serbia would’ve ever gotten its independence, let alone survived numerous brutal invasions and genocides coming from the political West in the last 100 years.

Turning against Russia for the sake of becoming a full colony of a centuries-old enemy could only be described as a mindless stab in the back which no government in Serbia would be able to survive, as it would be tantamount to political suicide. Thus, this resolution by the European Parliament means that Serbia’s EU ascension is effectively dead. Considering that the majority of Serbs don’t want to become part of the EU anyway, all they themselves could say is good riddance.

*

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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The Empire Is Not Done Torturing Afghanistan

July 8th, 2022 by Pepe Escobar

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***

Once upon a time, in a galaxy not far away, the Empire of Chaos launched the so-called “War on Terror” against an impoverished cemetery of empires at the crossroads of Central and South Asia.

In the name of national security, the land of the Afghans was bombed until the Pentagon ran out of targets, as their chief Donald Rumsfeld, addicted to “known unknowns,” complained at the time.

Operation ‘Enduring Captivity’

Civilian targets, also known as “collateral damage,” was the norm for years. Multitudes had to flee to neighboring nations to find shelter, while tens of thousands were incarcerated for unknown reasons, some even dispatched to an illegal imperial gulag on a tropical island in the Caribbean.

War crimes were duly perpetrated – some of them denounced by an organization led by a sterling journalist who was subsequently subjected to years of psychological torture by the same Empire, obsessed with extraditing him into its own prison dystopia.

All the time, the smug, civilized ‘international community’ – shorthand for the collective west – was virtually deaf, dumb and blind. Afghanistan was occupied by over 40 nations – while repeatedly bombed and droned by the Empire, which suffered no condemnation for its aggression; no package after package of sanctions; no confiscation of hundreds of billions of dollars; no punishment at all.

The first casualty of war

At the peak of its unipolar moment, the Empire could experiment with anything in Afghanistan because impunity was the norm. Two examples spring to mind: Kandahar, Panjwayi district, March 2012: an imperial soldier kills 16 civilians and then burns their bodies. While in Kunduz, April 2018: a graduation ceremony receives a Hellfire missile greeting, with over 30 civilians killed.

The final act of the imperial “non-aggression” against Afghanistan was a drone strike in Kabul that did not hit “multiple suicide bombers” but instead eviscerated a family of 10, including several children. The “imminent threat” in question, identified as an “ISIS facilitator” by US intelligence, was actually an aid worker returning to meet his family. The ‘international community’ duly spewed imperial propaganda for days until serious questions started to be asked.

Questions also keep emerging on the conditions surrounding the Pentagon training of Afghan pilots to fly the Brazilian-built A-29 Super Tucano between 2016 and 2020, which completed over 2,000 missions providing support for imperial strikes. During training at Moody Air Force base in the US, more than half of the Afghan pilots actually went AWOL, and afterward, most were quite uneasy with the pile up of civilian ‘collateral damage.’ Of course the Pentagon has kept no record of Afghan victims.

What was extolled instead by the US Air Force is how the Super Tucanos dropped laser bombs on ‘enemy targets:’ Taliban fighters who “like to hide in towns and places” where civilians live. Miraculously, it was claimed that the “precision” strikes never “hurt the local people.”

That’s not exactly what an Afghan refugee in Britain, sent away by his family when he was only 13, revealed over a month ago, talking about his village in Tagab: “All the time there was fighting over there. The village belongs to the Taliban (…) My family is still there, I do not know if they are alive or died. I don’t have any contact with them.”

Drone diplomacy

One of the first foreign policy decisions of the Obama administration in early 2009 was to turbo-charge a drone war over Afghanistan and the tribal areas in Pakistan. Years later, a few intelligence analysts from other NATO nations started to vent off the record, about CIA impunity: drone strikes would get a green light even if killing scores of civilians was a near certainty – as it happened not only in ‘AfPak’ but also across other war theaters in West Asia and North Africa.

Nevertheless, imperial logic is ironclad. The Taliban were by definition “terra-rists” – in trademark Bush drawl. By extension, villages in Afghan deserts and mountains were aiding and abetting “terra-rists,” so eventual drone victims would never raise a ‘human rights’ issue.

When Afghans – or Palestinians – become collateral damage, that’s irrelevant. When they become war refugees, they are a threat. Yet Ukrainian civilian deaths are meticulously recorded and when they become refugees, they are treated as heroes.

A massive ‘data-driven defeat’

As former British diplomat Alastair Crooke has remarked, Afghanistan was the definitive showcase for technical managerialism, the test bed for “every single innovation in technocratic project management” encompassing Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and military sociology embedded in ‘Human Terrain Teams’ – this experiment helped spawn Empire’s ‘rules-based international order.’

But then, the US-backed puppet regime in Kabul collapsed not with a bang, but a whimper: a spectacular “data-driven defeat.”

Hell hath no fury like Empire scorned. As if all the bombing, droning, years of occupation and serial collateral damage was not misery enough, a resentful Washington topped its performance by effectively stealing $7 billion from the Afghan central bank: that is, funds that belong to roughly 40 million battered Afghan citizens.

Now, exiled Afghans are getting together trying to prevent relatives from 9/11 victims in the US to seize $3.5 billion of these funds to pay off debts allegedly owed by the Taliban – who have absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.

Unlawful does not even begin to qualify the confiscation of assets from an impoverished nation afflicted by a currency in free fall, high inflation and a terrifying humanitarian crisis, whose only ‘crime’ was to defeat the imperial occupation on the battleground fair and square. By any standards, would that persist, the qualification of international war crime applies. And collateral damage, in this case, will mean the termination of any “credibility” still enjoyed by the “indispensable nation.”

The full amount of foreign reserves should be unequivocally returned to the Afghan Central Bank. Yet everyone knows that’s not going to happen. At best, a limited monthly installment will be released, barely enough to stabilize prices and allow average Afghans to buy essentials such as bread, cooking oil, sugar and fuel.

The west’s own ‘Silk Road’ was dead on arrival

No one remembers today that the US State Department came up with its own New Silk Road idea in July 2011, formally announced by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a speech in India. Washington’s aim, at least in theory, was to re-link Afghanistan with Central/South Asia, yet privileging security over the economy.

The spin was to “turn enemies into friends and aid into trade.” The reality, however, was to prevent Kabul from falling into the Russia/China sphere of influence – represented by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – after the tentative withdrawal of US troops in 2014 (the Empire ended up formally being expelled only in 2021).

The American Silk Road would eventually allow the go-ahead for projects such as the TAPI natural gas pipeline, the CASA-1000 electricity line, the Sheberghan thermal power facility and a national fiber optic ring in the telecom sector.

There was much talk about  “development of human resources;” building infrastructure – railways, roads, dams, economic zones, resource corridors; promotion of good governance; building the capacity of “local stakeholders.”

A zombie of an empire

In the end, the Americans did less than nothing. The Chinese, playing the long game, will be leading Afghanistan’s resurgence, after patiently waiting for the Empire to be expelled.

Afghanistan for its part will be welcomed into the real New Silk Roads: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), complete with financing by the Silk Road Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and interconnecting with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the Central Asian BRI corridor, and eventually the Russian-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and the Iran-India-Russia-led International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).

Now compare and contrast with imperial minions NATO, whose “new” strategic concept boils down to expanded warmongering against the Global South, and beyond – including the outer galaxies. At least we know that should NATO ever be tempted back into Afghanistan, then another ritual, excruciating humiliation awaits.

*

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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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***

While front lines in Eastern Ukraine are burning, another battle is gaining momentum in the capital. The Kiev regime seems to face another crisis between the military and political leadership in the country.

Joint forces of the Donetsk, Luhansk People’s Republics and Russia claim new victories in the Donbass. After the Severodonetsk-Lisichansk metropolitan area came under control of the LPR, Russian-led forces achieved significant successes in their advance to the west. In the direction of Seversk, the town of Verhnekamenka became the stronghold of Russian units which will attack Seversk from the east.

In the morning on July 6, the advancing forces aligned the front and claimed control of the village of Spornoe located to the south of Verhnekamenka. At the moment, the mop up operation continues. Retreating Ukrainian units are shelling the village with artillery. The Russian advance was acknowledged in the evening summary by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which claimed Russian forces “had partial success in the area of the village”. This gain allows the Russians to attack Zvanovka and blockade Seversk from the southern direction.

Russian units are also approaching Seversk from the north-eastern direction. The offensive is developing on the right bank of the Seversky Donets River in the direction of Grigorovka and Serebryanka.

In the other regions, heavy positional fighting continues.

Suffering heavy losses on the front lines, the Kiev regime attempts to stop the outflow of civilians who can be conscripted into the military. However, it cannot decide on the necessary measures.

Earlier, the Ukrainian General Staff declared a legislative ban on leaving their place of residence for men of military age without the permission of the military enlistment office during the period of martial law.

On July 5, a bill has been submitted to the Verkhovna Rada clarifying the procedure for the departure of conscripts and reservists from their place of residence within Ukraine.

In turn, President Zelensky attempted to support his ruined reputation amid the unpopular regulation. On July 6, the President publicly demanded the General Staff not to take such decisions without him.

“I instructed the Minister of Defense, the Chief of the General Staff and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to report to me tomorrow all the details regarding the decision on the procedure. I ask the General Staff not to take such decisions without me in the future,” Zelensky said.

Such claims are humiliating for the Ukrainian general commanders.

Disagreements between the office of Vladimir Zelensky and the command of the Ukrainian army over the conduct of military operations have already been reported in the last months. In particular, the military reportedly believed that it was necessary to retreat on several fronts, while the president’s office insisted that no retreats were possible. As a result, the Armed Forces of Ukraine suffered heavy losses in manpower on the front lines.

*

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George Orwell in his dystopian novel 1984 introduced the concepts of “Newspeak” and “Thoughtcrime” or the curtailing of freedom of expression, narrowly defined.

Orwell’s depiction of an authoritarian society continues to reverberate four decades on. 

We live in an age of fear brought about by disinformation, amplified by absolute tyranny. This is demonstrated by the COVID-19 crisis where free press and free speech are being outlawed. 

Is this the kind of “democracy” we are passing on to future generations?

Global Research acts as a global platform for much needed debate and dialogue within the context of a very complex crisis. We have in the course of the last two years provided daily coverage and analysis of the COVID crisis, which is affecting people’s lives worldwide.

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Abandoning the Sinking Rat: Boris Johnson Resigns

July 8th, 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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***

Like the political equivalent of a cockroach, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived and endured one strike after another.  His credibility was shot, his mendacity second to none.  He lost the confidence of a party that delighted in his buffoonish performances and appeal.  Fearing electoral punishment, senior ministers and aides have left his side.  Labour opposition leader, Sir Keir Starmer, found himself making a witticism, calling this the first instance in history of the ship leaving the sinking rat.

No chronology on this would be sufficient.  But the recent turn of events has been something verging on spectacular.  There was partygate, which demonstrated the fullness of contempt shown by the Prime Minister and his staff to their constituents.  In April, he was fined for breaking his government’s own lockdown rules, having attended a gathering for his birthday in June 2020.  He also apologised for attending a “bring your own booze” party held in the Downing Street garden held during the first lockdown.  Despite showing some contrition, he believed, for the most part, that he had been following the rules and operating within them.

The occasion led to fines aplenty, though even the Police, at some point, drew a line underneath the sad and sorry saga.  Sue Gray, the senior civil servant tasked with investigating a series of social events held by political staff, came up with a grave conclusion.  “The senior leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for this culture.”

On June 16, the Tory leader survived a no-confidence vote from his own party, in which four out of ten parliamentarians voted against him.  Most PMs would have made a hasty exit.  Not Johnson, who seemed quixotically willing to make his last stand.

Then came the by-election losses in Tiverton and Honiton and Wakefield of June 23rd.  Instead of treating them as symptoms of a malady requiring treatment, Johnson simply put them down to the UK “facing pressures on the cost of living” and the fact that “in mid-term, governments post-war lose by-elections.”

The latest, and typically seedy entry in the scandals inventory, was the sexual harassment imbroglio involving Chris Pincher (“Pincher by name, Pincher by nature,” Johnson is said to have quipped).  As Conservative deputy-chief whip, he went to a private members’ club in London on June 29, got sozzled and was accused of groping two men.

A number of sexual assault allegations followed, some duly dusted for the occasion.  Despite a formal complaint being made against Pincher, Johnson denied knowledge of the “specific allegations”.  Not so, suggested former civil servant, Lord McDonald, seeing that he briefed the PM about it.  True to form, Johnson subsequently admitted he had been told in 2019, and regretted appointing Pincher to the party position in the first place.

Over the course of 48 hours, the Tory front bench was dramatically thinned of members.  Law makers and government officials left in an exodus of calculated and self-interested disaffection.  Stripped of support from across the most powerful figures in the party, the decision was made.

The resignation speech exuded reluctance, sounding more like a resume pitch for a return to the job.  It reflected the spectacular tone-deafness of his rule, with Johnson going so far as to lament those “Darwinian” rules that govern Westminster politics, driven by the hungry, remorseless “herd”.  The herd had moved and found their quarry.

Johnson extolled his government’s pandemic response on the vaccine front despite incompetence and bungling that led to the deaths of tens of thousands during the pre-vaccine phase.  Confused health directions on everything from mask wearing to whether Christmas might go ahead as usual, did not help.  When those responses firmed up in the form of strict lockdown rules, Johnson, his colleagues, and advisors flouted them with condescension and arrogance.

While being self-congratulatory on his own Brexit record, the report card is far from glowing.  Despite advertising the deal to electors as “oven ready”, the withdrawal agreement with the EU proved half-baked and raw at the core.

Even after reaching an accord with the EU, his government, last month, introduced plans to override parts of it, thereby threatening relations with the Union, the unity of the United Kingdom and the Irish peace process.  Only Johnson could term scrapping sections of the Protocol, which covers the way goods enter Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, “a relatively trivial set of adjustments.”

There was little chance Johnson would leave Ukraine out of his resignation speech.  Detractors, and even some of those sympathetic to him, had noticed how willingly he seemed to extol the virtues of Ukraine as each crisis engulfed him.  He was the first leader of any major Western nation state to visit Kyiv, and also pledged a number of weapons, including the Javelin and NLAW missiles, and M270 precision-guided rocket launchers.

Another largely neglected legacy of the Johnson years should be noted.  Domestically, his conduct in centralising power during the course of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic at the expense of Parliament has emboldened the executive arm of government and damaged accountability.  In August 2019, he suspended, or prorogued Parliament for 5 weeks, just prior to the return of MPs from the summer recess.  The following month, the UK Supreme Court declared the prorogation unlawful.  “It is impossible for us to conclude, on the evidence which has been put before us, that there was any reason – let alone good reason – to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament for five weeks”.

Through the course of his political career, Johnson never changed.  He had his supporters, his conspirators, his plotters.  He stayed true to his lies, abject opportunism and tabloid-styled villainy.  His administration proved rotten, but so were the various figures that gave him succour, including the indignant former advisor Dominic Cummings who now plays the role of stone-thrower in chief against his former boss.

Even now, some journalists and commentators detected throbbing notes of magnanimity and grace in his resignation speech, showing again how a profession that Johnson himself corrupted with such glee cannot be trusted to assess this legacy.

*

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

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The United States Supreme Court on June 24, 2022 handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that reversed the landmark US Supreme Court Roe v. Wade (1973) decision that granted the right to abortion for women in all states and US territories.  

Roe was the most important US Supreme Court case since Brown v. Board of Education (1954) if measured by the numbers of Americans it impacted. The Court held in Roe that protected “privacy” included the basic right of a woman to procure an abortion from a doctor in the first trimester of pregnancy.  “Privacy” replaced “freedom of contract.” This demonstrated that the Court was willing to interpret the Constitution as containing rights not obvious from reading the text. [Emphasis added] (McCloskey 2000, 172; Carter 2022).

Dobbs also reversed Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) where the Rehnquist Court ruled that laws requiring awareness of a spousal abortion were invalid because they placed an undue burden on a woman seeking an abortion of a “nonviable fetus.”  In short, Planned Parenthood v. Casey upheld Roe, but abandoned privacy as the foundation for the ruling.  On May 2, Justice Samuel Alito’s draft ruling for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked and published in Politico.  US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the draft’s authenticity and called for an investigation to reveal the leaker.  The Dobbs ruling abolished the right to abortion for 175 million women (Carter 2022).

Dobbs declares that it is the states’ prerogative to prohibit or regulate abortion and therefore this right is “returned” to the state governments.  This decision paves the way for state and local jurisdictions to institute restrictive laws that prohibit abortions outright and to bar women from traveling to obtain an abortion.  Additionally, draconian laws would allow jail sentences and fines for doctors, nurses, friends, and family members who “aid and abet” an abortion.  At least thirteen states have already passed so-called trigger laws that went into effect when the US Supreme Court handed down its decision.  Twenty-six states as of April 2022 are certain or likely to ban abortion subsequent the Court’s decision (Carter 2022; Nash and Cross 2022).

The Dobbs ruling ignored the primary task of juris prudence to respect the right of “Precedent.”  Since 1973, High Court Justices examined Roe v. Wade and upheld the decision.  The Roberts Court fails to address the concerns that led those Justices to their decisions.  Indeed, it ignores their predecessors’ conclusions and reasoning.  The Roberts Court in Dobbs(and the majority’s opinion) flies in the face of centuries of judicial tradition.  The Court’s omission must be stressed in light of the testimonies of Justices in the majority opinion who during their Senate confirmation hearings emphasized the importance of “settled law” (Tigar 2022).

Immediately following the leaked Dobbs decision, legal scholars warned ominously that the majority opinion challenges the fundamental rights that stem from the Fourteenth Amendment that lays the foundation for citizens’ rights, “due process of law,” and “equal protection of the laws.”  The Dobbs ruling also opens the door for further restrictions on the elementary principle of personal privacy—same sex or interracial marriage, LGBT rights, and legal contraception (Against the Current 2022; Ziegler 2022).

The High Court rationalized its ruling in Dobbs to end the 50-year-old Roe v. Wade decision by asserting that it was egregiously wrong from the beginning.  The majority stated that Roe was a badly reasoned decision by even the most ardent supporters of abortion rights including the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  The majority suggested that Plessy v. Ferguson(1896) that  instituted the “separate but equal” doctrine that legitimized racial segregation as constitutional is the best comparison to Roe (and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the ruling that saved abortion rights in 1992) (Ziegler 2022).

Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis warned: “If this decision signals anything bigger than its direct consequences, it is this: “No one should get used to their rights….  With Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Organization is a stark reminder that this can happen.  Rights can vanish….  They [the majority] tell us that the right to abortion is unlike other privacy rights, such as the right to marry whom you wish or to use whatever contraception you choose.  Abortion in their view is distinct from these because it puts someone else’s life on the line.  And, so, if we believe the Court’s conservative justices, this is a reckoning about abortion and nothing more” (Ziegler 2022).

Notwithstanding the Court’s assurances that no other rights will be forfeited—convincingly or not— the majority normalizes striking down with questionable logic a 50-year-old US Supreme Court decision that allowed for women to control their own bodies.

The Roe v. Wade decision spawned “a consensus around a woman’s right to choose has broadened and strengthened in the years since Roe was decided,” Tigar said.  In contrast, Justice Alito’s argument is that the Constitution is silent on abortion; he then cobbles together a string of laws dating from the sixteenth century that limited women’s rights (Tigar 2022; Ziegler 2022).

The Dobbs decision establishes a new legal test that any constitutional rights previously upheld by precedent can be erased without warning.  Dobbs mandates that rights not listed verbatim in the Constitution are unenforceable.  Any rights not widely recognized after December 1791 when the Bill of Rights was ratified are not guaranteed.  The High Court’s new legal test could be applied to all “fundamental Rights” that are not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.  It also calls all “unenumerated rights” into question by referring to them as “putative rights,” i.e., rights that are assumed to exist but that might not exist in reality (London 2022; Carter 2022).

While the majority argued that they could find no tangible support in the Roe v. Wade decision to affirm its constitutionality, the Ninth Amendment states, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”  The founders were cognizant that lists can deceive people into believing that any right not specifically mentioned implies that the right is unimportant or does not exist at all.  Alito’s logic could be turned to render the conclusion that abortion is a right because the Constitution does not specifically grant the government any right to prohibit it.  The Ninth Amendment serves as a safety valve to account for future generations’ new understandings (Tigar 2022; Carter 2022).

Michael E. Tigar, Professor Emeritus of Law at Duke University scorned Alito’s “originalist” analysis as “one of the stupidest and most ahistorical bits of writing in Supreme Court history that includes, one must recall, the Dred Scott [1857] case dictum that African Americans have ‘no rights that a white man is bound to respect.’”

Thomas Jefferson observed in 1816: “Some men look at the Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and then deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.”  Finally, there was little discussion in the Alito narrative that considered the damage that reversing Roe v. Wadewill inflict upon the most vulnerable women and children in US society (Tigar 2022; Ziegler 2022; Carter 2022).

Dobbs denounces the landmark decision Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) that legalized gay marriage throughout the United States.  Dobbs also criticized Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) that struck down legislation that prohibited the use of contraceptives based upon in part on the “right of privacy”—even though it is not mentioned specifically in the Constitution.

Writing for the majority, Justice William O. Douglas wrote the text in the Bill of Rights contained “penumbras and emanations” that protected marital privacy.  The notion that the Constitution is a document that is subject to interpretation in accordance with changes in social, economic, political, and technology must be acknowledged as having a firm basis in law.  The Roberts Court ignores this foundation and attempts to define modern law based on assumed doctrines of more than two centuries ago.   The repudiations of settled law delivered in the Roberts Court are frightening and dangerous in their scope of laying the foundations for potential attacks on the private lives of individuals (London 2022; McCloskey 2000).

 There are six ultraconservative Justices who came down as a bloc against Roe: John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.  Republicans nominated them all.  President Donald Trump named three of the six during his single term in the Oval Office: Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

Democrats nominated the remaining three “liberal” Justices who opposed Dobbs.  Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Stephen Breyer, who retired on June 30.  On February 25, 2022, President Joseph Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to take the bench upon Justice Breyer’s retirement.  The Senate confirmed Jackson on April 7, and Chief Justice John Roberts swore her into office on June 30.

Both major political parties with the Republicans acting aggressively and the Democrats passively acquiescing to their every whim brought the US Supreme Court to the point where settled law is no longer the foundation of the law.  Instead, six of the nine Justices on the Court hold a super majority whereby they act in concert to further a reactionary ideology based on religious beliefs and the erosion of democratic rights.

*

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Edward B. Winslow is a historian and writer.  Readers can reach Edward at [email protected]

Sources

Against the Current. 2022. “The Rightwing’s Supreme Court Coup.” againstthecurrent.org. June 24. Accessed June 29, 2022. https://againstthecurrent.org/atc219/the-rightwings-supreme-court-coup/.

Carter, Tom. 2022. “The Legal Implications of the US Supreme Court’s Draft and Anti-abortion Decision.” wsws.org.May 13. Accessed June 29, 2022. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/05/14/scot-m14.html.

London, Eric. 2022. “The Supreme Court’s Ruling on Abortion: The Speahead of a Massive Assault on Democratic Rights.” wsws.org. May 7. Accessed June 29, 2022. https://wsws.org/en/articles/2022/05/07/ukvl-m07.html.

McCloskey, Robert G. 2000. The American Supreme Court, Third Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Nash, Elizabeth, and Lauren Cross. 2022. “26 States Are Certain or Likely to Ban Abortion Without Roe: Here’s Which Ones and Why.” guttmacher.org. April 19. Accessed July 3, 2022. guttmacher.org/article//2021/10/26–states-are-certain-or-likely-ban-abortion—-without-roe-heres-which-ones-and-why.

Tigar, Michael E. 2022. “mronline.org.” The Supreme Court, Rights, and Judicial Abdication. June 27. Accessed June 28, 2022. https://mronline.org/2022/06/27/the-supreme-court-rights-and-judicial-abdication/?mc_cid=774a45390f&mc_eid=1b93ae7950.

Ziegler, Mary. 2022. “If the Supreme Court Can Reverse Roe, It Can Reverse Anything.” theatlantic.com. June 24. Accessed July 1, 2022. https://theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/roe-overturned-dobbs-abortion-supreme-court/661263/.

Featured image is from The Conversation

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***

The following text is a translation by Evolve to Ecology of an article published in Uruguay’s El Observador

***

At 9 a.m. this morning, Recarey began the hearing for the appeal led by lawyer Maximiliano Dentone to stop vaccination against covid to children under 13 years of age. Maximiliano Dentone said at the hearing that he wants to suspend the vaccination of children under 13 years of age until it is proven that it does not harm health.

The Uruguay judge has submitted 18 questions to Pfizer that need to be answered by Thursday 7th July, morning, before 9am.

Since 9 a.m., the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) and the pharmaceutical company Pfizer have been in a hearing in the Judiciary for the appeal led by the lawyer Maximiliano Dentone, who has petitoned to suspend vaccination against covid in children, and requests information on vaccines and contracts for the purchase and sale of these.

The substitute judge for Administrative Litigation, Alejandro Recaray, approved the appeal, and made a list of 15 requests to the government and the US company, which the government prepared to present this day, Wednesday the 6th of July, 2022.

Both Recaray and Dentone are supported by a group of protesters outside the Courts, who ask that vaccination be suspended in children like the lawyer. Among them is PERI deputy César Vega, whom Dentone defended in a defamation case.

At the beginning of the hearing, the judge asked the lawyer three questions:  whether “he understands acting in a personal capacity and to what extent. Dentone responded that he is acting in “his own best interest”, but also “defending minors” of young age. The second question from Recarey was “What is the age range for which the suspension of the vaccination campaign is requested?”, to which the lawyer replied that he seeks to suspend vaccination for those under 13 years of age.

The third question was based on knowing if Dentone seeks to “limit or condition the suspension to some specific factor. For the complainant, the suspension would be limited “until it is proven that there is no harm to health” from being vaccinated against the coronavirus, he replied at the hearing.  To get to that point, he understands, the delivery of information from the government and Pfizer is necessary. The reason being is that “The population was instructed to give consent to the vaccine without being fully informed”, he highlighted at the end of this response.

Judge ordered Salinas to answer 18 questions about vaccination he judge ordered that an clerk take a statement in his office

The Minister of Health, Daniel Salinas, had been summoned by Judge Alejandro Recarey but did not appear, so he was represented by lawyers from the MSP. At the hearing, the judge ruled that the minister must testify and answer 18 questions about vaccination. For this, he arranged for a bailiff or an clerk to take a statement from his office.

In the decree issued by Recarey, he indicated “personally request the response of Daniel Salinas by the bailiff and/or clerk at his work address,” and ordered that the response must be added to the case file this Thursday at 9 a.m. The hearing for the amparo appeal will continue this Thursday.

The 18 questions Salinas will have to answer:

1. Beyond any contractual reserve, have independent studies been carried out by the Uruguayan State on the information provided by their manufacturers, to verify the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine substances in use in Uruguay? Were international independent studies also used?

2. Starting from the reservation regarding the composition of the vaccine substances, how were they made, if they did, the identity and quality controls of each consignment of imported vaccines, one by one, as what were coming to our country? If so, detail -synthetically- amount of analysis and methodology.

3. Were and are all the batches of vaccines that are injected the same? Demonstrate if your answer is born from an effective knowledge of its components, or not.

4. For what reason were different types and brands of vaccines administered to different groups or population groups (for example, age groups, for police officers, health personnel, minors, etc?

5. Are there differential assessment criteria regarding effectiveness and safety for the different brands (Pfizer, Sinovac or Coronavac)?

6. What vaccine is injected to minors, and what are the proven scientific criteria that lead to preferring this one to others?

7. Did the MSP monitor the vaccinated and a control group of non-vaccinated individuals to determine rates of infection, re-infection, and death in both groups, obtaining statistically valid and generalizable data? If so, what was it, where can it be examined, who did it and how?

8. It is already known that vaccines, or some of them, contain the so-called “spike protein”. Are you aware if your inoculation has adverse effects -in the short, medium and long term- on the structure of the natural immune system? of people (in general and especially in children)? If you know there are no negative effects, based on what studies? If studies in this regard had been analyzed by the MSP (or any other national health authority), what were these specifically, what were their origins and who were their authors?

9. Do you know if the “spike protein” has any level of toxicity in itself? If you know that it is not, based on what information?

10. Is Covid-19, Sars Cov-2, a disease deemable as high or significantly aggressive for children? Does it cause, on average, serious effects? Or is there a predominance of mild effects in the child population? If statistical gravity is established in the aforementioned effects, based on what studies is it done?

11. Has the correlation between the occurrence of the disease and vaccination been studied, at the national state level, in the cases of those already vaccinated? That is, contagion, and development of the disease in these hypotheses.

12. Did the cases of Covid-19 in minors grow -of whatever level of severity- after vaccination, in relation to those that had been verified before (for the same age group, of course), in the period that ran from the initial validity of the health emergency of the year 2020, and the beginning of the inoculations to minors? In the event that after vaccinating minors an increase in cases had been reported in them, have the causes been studied? How?

13.Does the vaccination process during an epidemic increase the variability of mutations in virus proteins? Does it harm in any way the natural reaction of the immune system of those inoculated, especially minors?

14. Has it been studied whether, in the case of the vaccines supplied in Uruguay, the usual three-year trial protocols with control groups have been followed? Are you aware that the Pfizer company, in relation to the vaccine that is supplied to minors in Uruguay, has eliminated its control groups? Or avoided in any way its implementation and development?

15. If the answer to the previous question shows that the effects of vaccines have not been analysed, with due safety protocols, could it be technically argued that vaccination implies a risk factor, even a relative risk? Or not (and in your case why)?

16. Are you aware of the existence of international reports, such as those of the VAERS (or others), who report deaths or serious secondary effects -at any age- linked to the vaccines that are supplied in Uruguay? If so, have they been studied by the Uruguayan State? At what level, by whom and with what results?

17. Has the evidence been studied in Uruguay to conclude that vaccination against Covid 19 in minors produces more benefits than risks? If so, at what level, by whom, and with what results?

18. Did the Uruguayan State study the report of the “Pharmacology and Therapeutics Committee of the Uruguayan Society of Pediatrics”, dated 9.XI.2021 (and written by seven university professors), which pointed to the risks of vaccination in minors 12 years old? In your case, what scientific-technical reasons would have led to the MSP being discarded (in practice)?

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***

On June 25, the U.S. Navy sent a warship, the USS Benfold, to the South China Sea, only one day after a U.S. spy plane provocatively flew over the Taiwan Strait under the close monitoring of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

According to CNN, the U.S. flyover came after China sent 29 planes into Taiwan’s self-declared air defense identification zone (ADIZ).

Image

Satellite image of USS Benfold entering South China Sea on June 25 through Verde Island passage. [Source: twitter.com]

From China’s point of view, the U.S. spy plane mission on June 24 was especially provocative because it was the first U.S. military activity in the region after China made it clear that there are no “international waters” in the Taiwan Strait.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, China claims jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan Strait - Wikipedia

Source: wikipedia.org

The PLA Eastern Theater Command organized aerial and ground forces and tracked the spy plane’s movements on high alert throughout its entire course on June 24 according to Senior Colonel Shi Yi, spokesperson of the PLA Eastern Theater Command.

Shi slammed the Biden administration’s move as being “intentional,” whose purpose was “to disrupt the regional situation and endanger the cross-Straits peace and stability. We firmly oppose this,” she said.

Turning Taiwan into a Porcupine

Ever since the Obama administration launched a “pivot to Asia,” the U.S. has expanded its military forces and provocative military maneuvers in an effort to encircle and intimidate China. The Biden administration, following Trump, has extended this policy, with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stockpiling the National Security Council (NSC) with China hawks.[1]

U.S. strategic planners consider Taiwan—which broke away from China in 1949 after the defeated Guomindang in China’s civil war took refuge there with U.S. backing—essential in blockading China and a key source for the manufacture of advanced computing chips essential to the U.S. military and industry.[2]

When Biden made a commitment to backing Taiwan militarily, he effectively overturned the “One China Policy”—established when the U.S. resumed diplomatic relations with China in 1979—recognizing Beijing to be the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan.[3]

Since 2019, the U.S. has sold more than $14 billion in weaponry to Taiwan and sent military advisers to train its Special Forces. A U.S. government official described the U.S. strategy as being designed to turn Taiwan into a “porcupine”— a territory bristling with armaments and other forms of U.S.-led support that makes it “appear too painful to attack.”

Rejecting China’s Claim of Sovereignty over the Taiwan Strait

In line with this latter strategy, the Biden administration rejects China’s claims to sovereignty over the Taiwan Strait. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said that the spy plane’s transit demonstrates the United States’s “commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told Bloomberg News that “the Taiwan Strait is an international waterway” where freedom of navigation and overflight “are guaranteed under international law. The United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, and that includes transiting through the Taiwan Strait.”

According to Price, China’s assertion that “there are no international waters” in the Taiwan Strait is not legitimate but is intended to “deter the U.S. from sailing through the Strait,”something that Beijing says “harms stability and send[s] the wrong signal to ‘Taiwan independence forces.’”

Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which China has ratified but the U.S. has not, nations are entitled to territorial waters stretching 12 nautical miles (22km) from their coast.

They may also claim an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) stretching another 200 nautical miles—beyond that are the high seas.

At its widest, the Taiwan Strait spans about 220 nautical miles; however, at its narrowest, it is 70 nautical miles—meaning recent U.S. actions are illegal.

If one accepts that Taiwan is part of China, as the U.S. nominally still does under the One China policy, then the entirety of the strait generally falls under Chinese jurisdiction—as China alleges.

A Habitual Aggressor

According to the Global Times, the USS Benfold—a guided missile destroyer built by Ingalls Shipbuilding—is a habitual aggressor in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

In January 2022, the destroyer illegally entered the Chinese territorial waters off the Xisha Islands in the South China Sea without authorization from the Chinese government, leading the PLA Southern Theater Command to organize naval and air forces to warn it away.

U.S. Navy spokesmen referred to the USS Benfold’s operations as “freedom of navigation operations.”

They accused China of violating international law by establishing baselines around dispersed islands like the Paracels in the South China Sea, which allows China to “claim more internal waters, territorial sea, exclusive economic zone, and continental shelf than it is entitled to under international law.”

China, however, accuses the U.S. of “infring[ing] on China’s sovereignty and security,” while “pursuing maritime hegemony and militarizing the South China Sea. Facts fully prove that the U.S. is a ‘risk-maker’ in the South China Sea and the ‘biggest destroyer’ of peace and stability in the South China Sea.

The South China Sea Is Not the Gulf of Mexico

We should remember that the name of the Sea where the U.S. is sending its naval vessels and spy planes is the South China Sea—and not the Gulf of Mexico.

If China were sending its warships on provocative missions off the coast of Mexico or Canada, U.S. leaders would respond with hysterics and probably immediately begin bombing.

Rising Specter of Nuclear War

Mark Selden, the editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal and academic expert on China, raised concern in an interview about “the rising specter of nuclear war,” particularly “in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine” and “at a time when [the] U.S. calculus has shifted from welcoming growing Chinese economic and geopolitical strength, notably in the Nixon era, to across-the-board pressures on China.”

According to Selden, the shifting U.S. calculus “includes mounting U.S. military support for Taiwan and stepping back from its position of calculated ambiguity on the future of the island in favor of direct and indirect challenges of China’s claims. The result is the largest increase in U.S. military spending since World War II in the form of $70 billion in aid…at a time when U.S.-China conflict again centers on Taiwan.”

Tally of Provocative Military Maneuvers

The Committee for a SANE U.S.-China Policy, an activist group that aims to prevent war, has compiled a tally of provocative military maneuvers and close encounters between the U.S. and China since January 2021 in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.

According to their findings, the U.S. in that time initiated 45 incidents, and the Chinese 53.

Joseph Gerson and Michael T. Klare, the founders of the committee, write that

“almost every day, China and/or the United States deploy their ships and warplanes in a menacing (“muscle-flexing”) fashion to demonstrate resolve and to throw the other side off balance….While officials on both sides claim that their forces are merely conducting military drills that pose no threat to their rival, these mock combat operations in the vicinity of opposing forces send an unmistakable signal of hostile intent. It is not unusual, moreover, for ships and planes of one side to monitor the operations of the other, and even, on occasion, to interfere with them. When this occurs, there is always the risk of a collision or unintended shooting incident, leading to further military action and full-scale conflict.”

A picture containing text, outdoor, boat, sign Description automatically generated

Source: apjjf.org

In short, the specter of war between the U.S. and China has never been greater. It is up to us, consequently, to try to avert conflict and restore legality and sanity to U.S. foreign policy through concerted political activism.

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

  1. One of the hawks was Kurt Campbell, an architect of Obama’s pivot who declared that “the period that was broadly described as engagement [with China] has come to an end.” 

  2. Peter Symonds, “U.S.-China tensions flare over Taiwan Strait,” World Socialist Website, June 24, 2022, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/06/25/pbhh-j25.pdf. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company produces more than 90% of the world’s most advanced computing chips. 
  3. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have introduced the bipartisan Taiwan Policy Act into Congress that, according to Peter Symonds, “would drop any pretense of ‘strategic ambiguity’ and commit the U.S. to a war with China over Taiwan. As well as providing almost $4.5 billion in military assistance to Taiwan, the bill would designate Taiwan as a Major Non-NATO ally.” 

Featured image: Biden laughing in 2021. [Source: ia.acs.org]

Ukraine Bans Political Opposition

July 7th, 2022 by Katya Sedgwick

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American media dedicated at least some coverage to Ukraine’s recent ban on the pro-Russian “Opposition Platform—For Life Party,” which effectively eliminated electoral competition in the country. But Ukraine’s sedition law of March 9 this year is less known. 

The Rada Bill 7116, known as the Not a Step Back law, stipulated punishment for collaboration and sedition under martial law. It established life imprisonment with property confiscation as the maximum penalty for individuals found guilty of treason.

Among the accused under the law are mayors and other elected officials of the towns that surrendered to the Russian army when the Ukrainian armed forces withdrew, who allegedly provided the Russian Federation with logistical support. The law also applies to individuals who transmit information about troop movements. More controversially, it has prescribed penalties to Ukrainians who speak favorably of Russia.

Since the the law passed, I have been clipping news items about random citizens who fall under the latter category.

For instance, one entry on the KharkivLife Telegram Channel discusses police “exposing” a “malefactor.” The malefactor is a forty-year-old woman who, in a private conversation, recorded by a person she apparently trusted, said “I’m waiting for Russia, yes. You know why? [unclear] because I am for Russia and because I am a person of Russian soul.” She is now under investigation for acts of collaboration.

A similar incident is recorded approvingly by KievLive Telegram. Ukrainian border police arrested a man for supporting Russia, exchanging photos and videos of artillery fire, and being in the possession of Russian food rations.

A drunk man brandishing a machete was arrested in Odessa for screaming pro-Russian “propaganda.” I admire the Odessa cops for arresting the lout—as a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, I don’t take law and order for granted—but I find it difficult to see his actions as treason.

In another video posted on KharkivLife, a frightened thirty-four-year-old resident of the area issued a public apology for “actively expressing her hate of Ukraine’s defenders.” Her crime was “discovered” during routine “monitoring of social media,” presumably by security services. After “a conversation” with cops she decided to ask for forgiveness.

A news clip released by the Associated Press shows an arrest and a visit to the house of alleged traitors in the city of Kharkiv. One man, we are told, was found filming the aftermath of an artillery strike and this act drew suspicion. The man was later found to have exchanged electronic messages with enemy forces and his father confirmed that he is a Russian sympathizer. Creepily, a babushka from the neighborhood remarks that the security forces will “cure him.”

Another man in the video appears to be guilty of nothing more than displaying pro-Russian messages on social media. Visibly frightened, he apologized to Ukrainian Security Service during his arrest, saying that he already changed his mind. An arresting officer reassured an older member of the household that everything will proceed as prescribed by the law.

The rule of law in Ukraine is notoriously shaky. It was bad in peacetime, and I doubt the war is helping. In April Vitaly Kim, the genial-looking governor of Nikolaev Oblast, said in an interview with the Ukrainian Channel 24:

Today, a Russian blogger was shot dead in his car [in Nikolaev]. This means that there are still Russian traitors in Ukraine and all traitors will be executed. I am not afraid of this world: it will be so. And we will not be able to stop people from shooting traitors either.

He added that Ukraine has the best cybersecurity in the world, and that they will be able to track everyone and “nobody will be able to escape justice.”

The ill-fated blogger was accused of informing the Russian forces of Ukrainian troop movements. If that was indeed his crime, of course no country would let him continue operations. But in Ukraine, where a man can be tried for sedition in court under the law, security services assassinated him and a government official called for lynching.

Lynchings are apparently taking place with the approval of verified and official Telegram channels. I have seen no dead bodies, but plenty of humiliation of alleged collaborators and Russian sympathizers—people kneeling and tied to the polls with plastic wrap, signs of recent beatings and partially naked bodies in full display.

I have found no estimate of prevalence of mob attacks on the alleged traitors. Thousands of alleged collaborators are now under investigation by the Ukrainian government. The actual number of Russian sympathizers is unknown.

Given that Ukraine is in the midst of a major war, a tightening of rules regarding dissent should be expected. Our country has done the same: Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War and the German-American ethnic identity was stamped out after U.S. entry into the First World War.

The recently banned “Opposition Platform—For Life Party” was the second largest faction in the country. It joins ten other parties already banned by the state. It is worth noting that Zelensky himself was elected on the platform of rapprochement with Russia and that prior to the 2014 Maidan overthrow of Victor Yanukovich, his “Party of Regions” commanded about half the country.

The key question about Ukraine is whether it can ever exist as a Western democracy. The country is contiguous to Russia, about one third of Ukrainians have relatives in the Russian Federation, and a large section of the population prefers the Russian language. If in a very tightly controlled media environment Ukraine can’t convince its people that Russia is their enemy, what will happen if the regime ever relaxes the rules?

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Katya Sedgwick is a writer in the San Francisco Bay area. You can follow her on Twitter @KatyaSedgwick.

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***

Uruguayan government officials and Pfizer were ordered to appear in court Wednesday to provide documents for review regarding vaccine ingredients, adverse effects and contracts shielding the pharma giant from liability.

Uruguayan government officials and Pfizer on Wednesday appeared in court after a judge gave them 48 hours to present detailed information on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine while the court considers an injunction request to halt COVID-19 vaccinations for children 5 and older.

Judge Alejandro Recarey of the Administrative Litigation Tribunal used his inquisitorial powers to demand the Uruguayan Ministry of Public Health, State Health Services Administration and the President’s Office submit all information regarding the contracts for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines, including contractual information related to any clauses of civil indemnity or criminal impunity of the suppliers in the event of adverse effects.

According to a court order released on Saturday, Judge Recarey ordered Pfizer and government officials to:

  • Provide full and unredacted, certified copies of “each and every one of the purchase contracts (as well as any other related negotiation agreement), of the so-called anti-COVID vaccines that you have signed, own or are simply within your reach.”
  • Explain whether “these instruments” contain clauses of “civil indemnity and/or criminal impunity of the suppliers regarding the occurrence of possible adverse effects.”
  • Provide extensive detail about the biochemical composition of “so-called vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 in supply to the national population, especially the one aimed at children.”
  • Explain if the “different doses are distributed in batches or differential (different) items,” and if so, “clarify for what reason, and based on what criteria, each would be provided to different population levels, whether the drugs in each batch are diverse by their content and how and for whom they would be distinguishable. If it “turns out to be the real existence of different lots,” doses of each are “requested for judicial expert examination.”
  • Specify if the “so-called vaccines” contain messenger RNA by explaining, if necessary, what that means. Explain what “therapeutic or extra therapeutic consequences — adverse or not — [mRNA] can have for the person inoculated with it. It must be specified with regard to the latter, and in a negative hypothesis in terms of alleged damages, if there is indeed — with scientific rigor — the possible safety of the messenger RNA, or if there is simply a lack of information on the point.”
  • State “very specifically and beyond what has been inquired, it is requested that it be said if it is known to you that those labeled as vaccines contain or may contain nanotechnological elements. Clarifying, if not, whether such a temperament would arise from an effective verification of its absence, or from mere ignorance of the components of the referred ‘vaccinal’ substances.”
  • Certify whether the substances contained in the “so-called vaccines” supplied in Uruguay are experimental or not. That is, “explain in full and detail whether they are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or equivalent body, according to the usual protocols, or if they have some other type of emergency permission.” If this is the case, explain “granted by whom and with what guarantees and based on what regulations.”

In short, you “must also respond if you are aware that either the manufacturer and/or supplier, or any academic or governmental body (domestic or foreign), have admitted — in any way that may be — the experimental nature of the aforementioned vaccines.”

  • Present complete and up-to-date information in your possession about “what is scientifically known — and what is not known — about the effectiveness of those labeled as vaccines” and their possible short, medium and long-term adverse effects.
  • “Provide official figures that demonstrate the negative or positive incidence of so-called vaccination in the number of infections and deaths diagnosed with COVID from the beginning of the campaign to date.”
  • State whether “studies have been carried out to explain the noticeable increase in deaths for COVID-19 since March 2021 or if information is in your possession — with sufficient scientific support and evidence — about it.”
  • Provide information on the total number of deaths in Uruguay due to COVID-19 since the beginning of the “so-called pandemic,” the global average age and how many were for “COVID-19 in an exclusive causal relationship” and how many were “with COVID-19” — that is, with the presence of the virus, but was not the main cause of death.
  • “Demonstrate scientifically — with evidence of national or international studies that have been done — whether the status of non-vaccinated poses a health hazard to the entire population or third parties.“

If it is the case, two other things will be required: the determination and demonstration of the degree of danger, and the reason that explains why, if this were eventually the case,” vaccination would not have been mandated. Prove whether both the vaccinated and unvaccinated infect equally. If they do not, explain what this would be like and in what proportions — and prove what is stated.

  • Clarify the reasons for the “lack of preview informed consent, in relation to the act components of what the government itself presents as a vaccination campaign.”
  • “Detail, with first and last names, the identity of the professional technicians who have directed and direct the aforementioned campaign, or anyone who has provided advice at any level.”

Also provide relevant data for their location “for their judicial interrogation, adding to the required information, data about whether any of them are part of any foreign governmental or para governmental organization, or they have worked for one of them in any way, or, where appropriate, manage in a multinational company” focused on healthcare. “Detail, if necessary, the personal names and organizations or companies involved.”

  • Explain if alternative therapies for COVID-19 have been studied for any variants. If not, clarify why those were not explored. “If positive, give the research results — giving an account of whether those were used in Uruguay or not.”

For the latter option, provide the reasons that would have been taken to discard the use of alternative therapies, adding whether or not “you know that they have been used in other countries successfully, still relative, or not.”

The order also required Pfizer to state within 48 hours whether it has “admitted, in any area, internal or external to it and its partners, the verification of adverse effects” of its COVID-19 vaccines in children.

“I applaud Uruguayan judge Recarey for posing many tough questions to Pfizer over its COVID shots and the contracts it imposed on Uruguay,” Mary Holland, president of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), told The Defender in an email.

“From the beginning, Pfizer has hidden its data and liability-free contracts to avoid liability from the shots,” Holland said.

She explained:

“Many countries, including those in Latin America, have relied on U.S. regulatory agencies in the past to guide health policy. But the U.S. regulatory bodies have failed regarding COVID.

“There is no scientific or ethical justification to authorize COVID shots for children, as some countries, including Denmark, now acknowledge. We know that children are at almost zero risk of dying from COVID. The FDA has extended Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine while illegitimately ‘approving’ Comirnaty, thus engaging in a fraudulent ‘bait-and-switch’ scheme to avoid all liability while hawking ‘approved’ vaccines.”

Holland said CHD is currently pursuing two lawsuits against the FDA for its arbitrary and capricious decisions on COVID-19 shots, and she is “pleased to see that other countries are stepping into the scientific and legal breach.”

“I hope Pfizer complies with the judge’s order, but given its long criminal rap sheet, it remains to be seen,” Holland added.

Dr. Salle Lorier on Twitter called Judge Recarey’s historic ruling a “judicial Maracanazo,” and posted a video explaining the order.

Although Judge Racarey took it upon himself to review data presented by Pfizer and government officials on COVID-19 vaccines, Uruguay is one of 47 co-sponsoring countries that agreed to the Biden administration’s amendments to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2005 International Health Agreements that attempted to place member states’ health sovereignty in the hands of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and its regional directors.

U.S. judge requires FDA to turn over Pfizer COVID-19 documents

This is not the first time government officials or Pfizer have been required to turn over data regarding COVID-19 vaccines.

A federal judge on Feb. 2 rejected a bid by the FDA, with the support of Pfizer, to delay the court-ordered release of nearly 400,000 pages of documents pertaining to the approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Federal Judge Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued an order requiring the FDA to release redacted versions of the documents in question according to the following disclosure schedule:

  • 10,000 pages apiece, due on or before March 1 and April 1, 2022.
  • 80,000 pages apiece, to be produced on or before May 2, June 1 and July 1, 2022.
  • 70,000 pages to be produced on or before Aug. 1, 2022.
  • 55,000 pages per month, on or before the first business day of each month thereafter, until the release of the documents has been completed.

The ruling was part of an ongoing court case that began with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in August 2021 by Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT).

PHMPT, a group of more than 30 medical and public health professionals and scientists from institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and UCLA, in September 2021 filed a lawsuit against the FDA after the agency denied its original FOIA request.

In that request, PHMPT asked the FDA to release “all data and information for the Pfizer vaccine,” including safety and effectiveness data, adverse reaction reports, and a list of active and inactive ingredients.

The FDA argued it didn’t have enough staff to process the redaction, claiming it could process only 500 pages per month. This would have meant the cache of documents would not be fully released for approximately 75 years.

In his Jan. 6 order, Pittman rejected the FDA’s claim and instead required the agency to release 12,000 pages of documents by Jan. 31 and an additional 55,000 pages per month thereafter.

Pfizer responded to the Jan. 6 order with a request to intervene in the case for the “limited purpose of ensuring that information exempt from disclosure under FOIA is adequately protected as FDA complies with this court’s order.”

Pfizer claimed to support the disclosure of the documents, but asked to intervene in the case to ensure that information legally exempt from disclosure will not be “disclosed inappropriately.”

Lawyers for PHMPT, in a brief submitted Jan. 25, asked Pittman to reject Pfizer’s motion, prompting the Feb. 2 order.

The first batch of documents produced in Nov. 2021, which totaled a mere 500 pages, revealed more than 1,200 vaccine-related deaths within the first 90 days following the release of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Since then, thousands of documents released as a result of Pittman’s court order raise serious questions about the data used by U.S. regulatory agencies to justify the authorization and approval of Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccines.

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Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.

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***

While traveling to London to meet with his British counterpart, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned Western business leaders that their companies could be impacted by crime from Beijing. 

During a joint press conference attended by executives in various financial sectors, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum cautioned that China presented the most significant threat. “By volume, most of what is at risk from Chinese Communist Party aggression is not, so to speak, my stuff. It’s yours. The world-leading expertise, technology, research, and commercial advantage developed and held by people in this room, and others like you,” he said.

FBI Director Christopher Wray also claimed that China seeks to steal “innovation” from Western firms. “We’ve seen the regional bureaus of China’s MSS – their Ministry of State Security – key in specifically on the innovation of certain Western companies it wants to ransack.” He added, “I’m talking about companies everywhere from big cities to small towns – from Fortune 100s to start-ups, folks that focus on everything from aviation, to AI, to pharma.”

Wray pushed corporate leaders to work with the FBI and MI5, insisting “We’re not just in the business of articulating problems, we’re doing something about them, together with MI5, with the private sector itself, with other government partners.” He also warned that China is insulating its economy from potential western sanctions that would come if Beijing ordered the military takeover of Taiwan.

The meeting between the two intelligence chiefs came days after President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed off on a new NATO security strategy which names China as a top threat. Following a major summit in Madrid last week, the alliance released its new Strategic Concept document, stating Beijing poses a “systemic challenge to Euro-Atlantic security.”

An additional source of friction between Beijing and Washington came after the US ambassador to China recently demanded that the Chinese Communist Party stop spreading Russian “lies.” On Wednesday, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center also issued a bulletin warning state and local governments that Beijing is stepping up its information warfare.

China “understands that US state and local leaders enjoy a degree of independence from Washington and may seek to use them as proxies to advocate for national US policies Beijing desires,” the agency said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is reportedly set to meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali later this week, where he is expected to press the FM on Beijing’s ties with Moscow.

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Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, assistant editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter.

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***

One of the leading candidates to take over as the chief of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has called for Israel to step up assassinations of leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

IDF Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir made the case in a 74-page paper for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel American think tank based in Washington. He said the assassinations were necessary to stop Iran from further entrenching itself in Syria.

Israel frequently bombs Syria and frames the strikes as attacks on Iranian assets in the country, although the airstrikes often kill Syrian soldiers or target civilian infrastructure. Zamir said if Israel invades Lebanon to fight Hezbollah, Iran could launch attacks from Syria to hit Israeli forces.

Zamir described the IRGC as the “backbone” of Iran and “the main means by which it seeks to dominate the region.” He outlined several ways Israel could work with allies to target IRGC leaders, including what he called the “Soleimani model,” referring to the January 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the former head of the IRGC’s Quds force. Soleimani was killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad.

In recent months, Israel has stepped up its covert attacks inside Iran and is suspected of several killings, including against scientists working for Iran’s military. US officials have said Israel was behind the killing of IRGC Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, who was gunned down in Tehran at the end of May.

Zamir is a candidate to replace Avi Kohavi, the current IDF chief of staff. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has said he plans to appoint a new chief of staff before the upcoming Israeli election in November. Gantz has named other candidates, but whoever is appointed will likely agree to put more pressure on Tehran.

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

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***

Guest: Sören Pohlen, a gastronomer, former owner of the “Scotch&Sofa” a cocktail bar in Berlin.

This session is a discussion on the events and his experiences since the founding of the party “Team Freiheit” and the termination of the lease for his cocktail bar Scotch&Sofa.

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***

Obvious examples of Central Intelligence Agency covert action abroad are difficult to identify today, save for occasional acknowledged calamities, such as the long-running $1 billion effort to overthrow the government of Syria, via funding, training and arming barbarous jihadist groups.

In part, this stems from many of the CIA’s traditional responsibilities and activities being farmed out to “overt” organizations, most significantly the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Founded in November 1983, then-CIA director William Casey was at the heart of NED’s creation. He sought to construct a public mechanism to support opposition groups, activist movements and media outlets overseas that would engage in propaganda and political activism to disrupt, destabilize, and ultimately displace ‘enemy’ regimes. Subterfuge with a human face, to coin a phrase.

Underlining the Endowment’s insidious true nature, in a 1991 Washington Post article boasting of its prowess in overthrowing Communism in Eastern Europe, senior NED official Allen Weinstein acknowledged, “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

It Begins

Fast forward to September 2013, and Carl Gershman, NED chief from its launch until summer 2021, authored an op-ed for The Washington Post, outlining how his organization was hard at work wresting countries in Russia’s near abroad – the constellation of former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact states – away from Moscow’s orbit.

Along the way, he described Ukraine as “the biggest prize” in the region, suggesting Kiev joining Europe would “accelerate the demise” of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Six months later, Ukraine’s elected president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in a violent coup.

Writing in Consortium News earlier that month, investigative legend Robert Parry recorded how, over the previous year, NED had funded 65 projects in Ukraine totaling over $20 million. This amounted to what the late journalist dubbed “a shadow political structure of media and activist groups that could be deployed to stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn’t act as desired.”

NED’s pivotal role in unseating Yanukovych can be considered beyond dispute, an unambiguous matter of record – yet not only is this never acknowledged in the mainstream press, but Western journalists aggressively rubbish the idea, viciously attacking those few who dare challenge the established orthodoxy of US innocence.

As if to assist in this deceit, NED has removed many entries from its website in the years since the coup, which amply underline its role in Yanukovych’s overthrow.

For example, on February 3rd 2014, less than three weeks before police withdrew from Kiev, effectively handing the city to armed protesters and prompting Yanukovych to flee the country, NED convened an event, Ukraine’s lessons learned: from the Orange Revolution to the Euromaidan.

It was led by Ukrainian journalist Sergii Leshchenko, who at the time was finishing up an NED-sponsored Reagan–Fascell Democracy Fellowship in Washington DC.

Alongside him was Nadia Diuk, NED’s then-senior adviser for Europe and Eurasia, and graduate of St. Antony’s College Oxford, a renowned recruiting pool for British intelligence founded by former spies. Just before her death in January 2019, she was bestowed the Order of Princess Olga, one of Kiev’s highest honors, a particularly palpable example of the intimate, enduring ties between NED and the Ukrainian government.

While the event’s online listing remains extant today, linked supporting documents – including Powerpoint slides that accompanied Leshchenko’s talk, and a summary of “event highlights” – have been deleted.

What prompted the purge isn’t clear, although it could well be significant that Leshchenko’s talk offered a clear blueprint for guaranteeing the failure of 2004’s Orange Revolution – another NED-orchestrated putsch – wasn’t repeated, and the country remained captured by Western financial, political and ideological interests post-Maidan. It was a roadmap NED subsequently followed to the letter.

Along the way, Leshchenko specifically highlighted the importance of funding NGOs, exploiting the internet and social media as “alternative [sources] of information,” and the danger of “unreformed state television.”

So it was that on March 19th, representatives of the far-right Svoboda party – which has been linked to a false flag massacre of protesters on February 20th, an event that made the downfall of Yanukovych’s government a fait accompli – broke into the office of Oleksandr Panteleymonov, chief of Ukraine’s state broadcaster, and beat him over the head until he signed a resignation letter.

That shocking incident, motivated by the station broadcasting a Kremlin ceremony at which Vladimir Putin signed a bill formalizing Crimea as part of Russia, was one of many livestreamed by protesters that traveled far and wide online.

The brutal defenestration of Ukraine’s state TV chief notwithstanding, much of this livestreamed output served to present foreign audiences with a highly romantic narrative on the demonstrations, and their participants, which bore little or no relation to reality.

The Revolution Will Be Televised

Writing in NED’s quarterly academic publication Journal of Democracy in July that year, Leshchenko discussed in detail the media’s role in the Maidan coup’s success, drawing particular attention to the fundamental role of “online journalist” Mustafa Nayyem.

He kickstarted the protests the previous November, rallying hundreds of his Facebook followers to protest in Kiev’s Independence – now Maidan – Square, after Yanukovych scrapped the Ukrainian-European Association Agreement in favor of a more agreeable deal with Moscow.

Nayyem was no ordinary “online journalist”. In October 2012, he was one of six Ukrainians whisked to Washington DC by Meridian International, a State Department-connected organization that identifies and grooms future overseas leaders, to “observe and experience” that year’s Presidential election.

Funded by the US embassy in Kiev, over 10 days they “[gained] a deeper understanding of the American electoral process,” meeting candidates and election officials, and touring voting facilities. They were also invited to discuss “Ukraine’s progress towards a more fair and transparent election process” with “equally curious” representatives of US government agencies.

With whom the sextet met is unstated, although promotional pictures show Nayyem filming a personal summit with John McCain on his smartphone. The video was posted to his personal YouTube channel – in it, Nayyem asks the noted warhawk for his thoughts on Ukraine, to which he responds, “I’m concerned with the influence of Russia.”

This is striking, for McCain flew to Kiev in December 2013 to give an address to Maidan protesters, flanked by known Neo-Nazi Oleh Tyahnybok. Then-State Department official Victoria Nuland, now Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, was also present, notoriously handing out motivational cookies to attendees.

On February 4th 2014, one day after Leshchenko’s NED presentation, an intercepted recording of a telephone call between Nuland – now Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs – and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was leaked, in which the pair discussed how Washington was “midwifing” Yanukovych’s ouster, and named several handpicked individuals to head the post-coup government.

Whether Nayyem’s influential US contacts in any way motivated his decision to ignite the Maidan demonstrations in November 2013 isn’t certain. The pivotal part he played in promoting the protests globally is far clearer, for he was a key founder of digital broadcaster Hromadske TV.

In his Journal of Democracy article, Leshchenko records how Hromadske hadn’t even officially launched when it began streaming Maidan demonstrations live, the literal second they erupted at Nayyem’s direction.

While Leshchenko coyly states that Hromadske “drew most of its modest funding from international organizations and the donations of Ukrainian citizens,” it actually received hundreds of thousands of dollars in financing from a variety of questionable sources, including the US Embassy in Ukraine, intelligence front USAID, George Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation, American oligarch Pierre Omidyar, and – of course – NED.

Hromadske’s audience expanded rapidly both within and without Ukraine thereafter, its embedded output eagerly recycled by countless mainstream news outlets, meaning Western viewers were presented with a single, partisan perspective on the unrest – and a highly misleading one at that.

Based on Hromadske’s coverage, overseas onlookers would’ve been entirely forgiven for concluding the protests were wholly energized by concerns over human rights and democracy, and overwhelmingly – if not universally – popular.

In a representative February 2014 essay dismissing as Russian propaganda the demonstrable fact that both the Maidan demonstrators and their leadership were riddled with neo-Nazis, academic and Journal of Democracy contributor Andreas Umland boldly declared that “the movement as a whole…reflects the entire Ukrainian population, young and old.”

Nothing could’ve been further from the truth. An extraordinarily revealing Washington Post op-ed by North American academics Keith Darden and Lucan Way published that same month detonated that narrative, which has endured – and intensified – ever since.

The pair forensically exposed how less than 20 percent of protesters professed to be driven by “violations of democracy or the threat of dictatorship,” only 40 – 45 percent of Ukrainains were in favor of European integration, Yanukovych remained “the most popular political figure in the country,” and no poll conducted to date had ever indicated majority support for the uprising.

In fact, “quite large majorities oppose the takeover of regional governments by the opposition,” and the population remained bitterly divided on the future of Ukraine, Darden and Way wrote. Such hostility stemmed from “anti-Russian rhetoric and the iconography of western Ukrainian nationalism,” rife among the demonstrators, “not [playing] well among the Ukrainian majority.”

Of the 50 percent of Ukraine’s population residing in regions that had “strongly identified with Russia” for over two centuries, “nearly all [were] alienated by anti-Russian rhetoric and symbols.”

“Anti-Russian forms of Ukrainian nationalism expressed on the Maidan are certainly not representative of the general view of Ukrainians. Electoral support for these views and for the political parties who espouse them has always been limited,” Darden and Way concluded. “Their presence and influence in the protest movement far outstrip their role in Ukrainian politics and their support barely extends geographically beyond a few Western provinces.”

‘Pro-Ukrainian Agenda’

Despite – or perhaps because of – such slanted coverage, Hromadske only grew from strength to strength subsequently. Such was its surging popularity, Leshchenko records, even Ukraine’s state broadcaster “struck a deal” to amplify its output, “thus handing this small ‘garage’ webcasting enterprise an audience of millions.” In the process, Ukrainians – and the world – were well-educated in the false narrative of Yanukovych being overthrown via popular will.

Hromadske’s potential to influence perceptions was evidently not lost on other Western governments either. In 2015, the British Foreign Office provided significant funds to develop “radio broadcasting” initiatives in the Russian-majority regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, for a project dubbed “Donbas calling”. The next year, London proferred more sums to the outlet, so it could serve as a local “information provider” to an “audience of up to one million people.”

In 2017, Hromadske again received hundreds of thousands of pounds to expand even further into the breakaway regions. Among other things, Britain supported the installation “of 16 FM transmitters in Ukraine-controlled areas along the contact line and ‘grey zone’ in the east,” meaning the station could reach up to two million citizens potentially possessed of separatist perspectives.

The public profiles of Leshchenko and Nayyem concurrently rose exponentially too. In Ukraine’s October 2014 elections, both were elected to parliament as part of Petro Poroshenko’s bloc, the former becoming a member of its anti-corruption committee, the latter its cross-party group on European integration, leading to glowing profiles in the Western media. All along, NED closely monitored their progress, hailing the pair as emblems of the new, liberated Ukraine that flowered in the wake of Maidan.

Nonetheless, Leshchenko’s personal commitment to democracy was rather undermined in August 2016, when he and Artem Sytnyk, head of Kiev’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, leaked documents – dubbed the “the black ledger” – identifying payments to Donald Trump’s then-campaign manager Paul Manafort from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, to the US media.

Leshchenko expressed his “hope” that the disclosure would damage Trump’s electoral chances and would be “the last nail in Manafort’s coffin lid,” as “a Trump presidency would change the pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy.” He was one of several prominent politicians in Kiev “involved to an unprecedented degree in trying to weaken the Trump bandwagon,” as the Atlantic Council, NATO’s propaganda arm, conceded at the time.

Manafort duly resigned, and the RussiaGate racket erupted – a connivance that went some way to ensuring the “pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy” wasn’t compromised one iota.

Indeed, Trump’s term in office was typified by ever-escalating hostility between Washington and Moscow, the Oval Office resident going to dangerous lengths his predecessor had consistently refrained from to arm and galvanize the most reactionary and violent elements of the Ukrainian armed forces, including the notorious Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, and tear up Cold War arms control treaties, much to Moscow’s chagrin.

In December 2018, a Ukrainian court ruled that Leshchenko and Sytnyk’s release of the “black ledger” was illegal, amounting to “interference in the electoral processes of the US” that “harmed the interests of Ukraine as a state.”

In May the next year, a corruption probe was launched after Leshchenko purchased a $300,000 apartment in central Kiev, a sum far in excess of his apparent means. Two months later, he was voted out of parliament, a candidate of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party taking his seat in a landslide. His friend and collaborator Nayyem simply opted not to stand, in order to seek a government post “connected to the Donbas.”

Despite no longer being part of the legislature, Leshchenko has continued to wield significant sway over the Ukrainian government, directly advising Zelensky on “Russian disinformation” to this day.

What direct influence NED still exerts over him – and Ukraine’s President by extension – isn’t certain. Although, mere days before the Russian invasion began, in an interview with The Guardian, Leshchenko referred to the Minsk Accords – which Zelensky stood on a specific platform of implementing – as “toxic”, suggesting the leader would “betray” his country by adhering to their obligations, which included granting autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk.

This reflects NED’s position – on February 14th this year, its Journal of Democracy published an article declaring the Accords to be “a bad idea for the West and a serious threat to Ukrainian democracy and stability,” not least because they would mean “tacitly accepting  Russia’s false narratives about the Donbas conflict” – namely, that the conflict “was caused by the West-orchestrated ‘coup’ in 2014.”

Screenshot from Journal of Democracy

In other words, an objective analysis of what actually happened and why, in which NED is completely central. Still, the organization didn’t need to rely purely on Leshchenko to keep the Minsk Accords moribund. Its extensive network of assets in the country, and Washington’s dark alliance with Ukraine’s far-right, was more than sufficient to ensure that Zelensky’s overwhelmingly popular mission of restoring relations with Russia would and could never be fulfilled.

‘In Solidarity’

In the hours following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NED hurried to remove any and all trace of its funding for organizations in Ukraine from its website.

A search of the NED grants database today for Ukraine returns “no results,” but a snapshot of the page captured February 25th reveals that since 2014, a total of 334 projects in the country have been awarded a staggering $22.4 million. By NED President Duane Wilson’s reckoning, Kiev is the organization’s fourth-largest funding recipient worldwide.

An archive of NED funding in Ukraine over 2021 – which has now been replaced with a statement “in solidarity” with Kiev – offers extensive detail on the precise projects backed by the CIA front over that pivotal 12-month period.

It points to a preponderant focus on purported Russian misdeeds in eastern Ukraine. One grant, of $58,000, was provided to the NGO Truth Hounds to “monitor, document, and spotlight human rights violations” and “war crimes” in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Another, of $48,000, was provided to Ukraine’s War Childhood Museum to “educate the Ukrainian public about the consequences of the war through a series of public events.” Yet another received by charity East-SOS aimed to “raise public awareness” of “Russia’s policies of persecution and colonization in the region, and document illustrative cases,” its findings circulated to the UN Human Rights Council, European Courts of Human Rights, and International Court of Justice.

There was no suggestion this wellspring would be used to document any abuses by Ukrainian government forces. UN research indicates 2018 – 2021, over 80 percent of civilian casualties were recorded on the Donbas side. Meanwhile, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reports show that shelling of civilian areas in the breakaway regions intensified dramatically in the weeks leading up to February 24th, potentially the precursor of a full-blown military offensive.

As such, NED’s expurgation of records exposing its role in fomenting and precipitating the horror now unfolding in southeast Ukraine not only protects de facto CIA agents on the ground. It also reinforces and legitimizes the Biden administration’s sprawling, fraudulent narrative, endlessly and uncritically reiterated in Western media, that Russia’s invasion was entirely unprovoked and groundless.

Ukrainians now live with the mephitic legacy of that reckless, unadmitted meddling in the most brutal manner imaginable. They may well do so for many years to come. Meanwhile, the men and women who orchestrated it rest comfortably in Washington DC, insulated from any scrutiny or consequence whatsoever, every day cooking up fresh schemes to undermine and topple troublesome foreign leaders, hailed as champions of liberty by the mainstream press every step of the way.

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***

On 25 June 2022, in the Parliament of the Republic of Poland there was a press conference and a meeting of the Parliamentary Team for International Relations and the Interests of Poland and the Polish Diaspora, organized by Mr. Grzegorz Braun, MP, with the participation of prof. M. Piotrowski, prof. S. Bielen and prof. W. Korab-Karpowicz.

The Statement on Peace in Ukraine (Oświadczenie o pokoju na Ukrainie) was signed.

Its English translation is given below.  

***

The individuals and organizations gathered here call for an immediate end to the war in Ukraine and for a compromise between Russia and Ukraine that will lead to lasting peace. War is a huge human and cultural tragedy. People die on both sides every day: they take their dreams and the personal potential they represent with them irretrievably. War is associated with perversion. In the time of duration, there are acts of cruelty and war crimes. War teaches us to be hostile and to hate. It degenerates us as human beings. In the name of the defense of life and our humanity, the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine should be stopped immediately.

The present war, in which NATO countries are involved, providing Ukraine with modern weapons, including offensive weapons, is the most dangerous military conflict since the Second World War. It is a huge threat to the economic situation of the world and to world peace. The populations of many countries are now threatened with starvation due to the decline in grain exports from Ukraine and Russia. In addition, the world is experiencing a sharp increase in fuel prices, produced by Russia. As a consequence, we are threatened by a global economic crisis with unimaginable effects.

But even a more serious disaster would be the situation when the present war gets out of hand and turns from a local conflict into a continental war or another world war. This would involve hundreds of millions of casualties, the destruction of states, and the collapse of all our civilization achievements.

We believe that for peace and the resolution of the conflict, it is important to understand its causes well. The primary factor that often causes wars is fear. In this case, Russia is afraid of NATO enlargement and the neighboring countries fear that Russia is a power. Therefore, in order to resolve the conflict, mutual fear must be removed, and this can only be achieved by professional diplomacy and a willingness to compromise, and not by a military action.

Another reason for the current war, which is less discussed, is the introduction of changes to the language law in Ukraine that is discriminatory to the Russian linguistic minority. This has led to a referendum in Crimea and a war in Donbas. The current war is therefore also a consequence of a wrong Ukrainian domestic politicy. It leads us to huge human tragedy and enormous destruction. These problems should not be settled by war and by having the whole world is involved in it, but by negotiations and compromise. Therefore we are calling for negotiations, compromise and peace.

We live in a globalized world, where countries are interdependent. Due to the world position of Russia and Ukraine, the consequences of the current war are having a catastrophic effect on the whole planet. It is not too late to resolve this armed conflict, which is very harmful and dangerous for all of us. We call for reason, reflection and peace.

“Nothing is lost by peace. Everything can be lost by war.”

Grzegorz Braun, MP, Konfederacja Korony Polskiej (The Confederation of the Polish Crown)

Prof. Mirosław Piotrowski, Ruch Prawdziwa Europa (The True Europe Movement)

Prof. Włodzimierz Korab-Karpowicz, Wolne Wybory (Free Elections)

Dr Leszek Sykulski, Polskie Towarzystwo Geostrategiczne (The Polish Geopolitical Society)

Prof. Ryszard Zajączkowski

Prof. Jakub Z. Lichański

Prof. Stanisław Bieleń

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***

Kommt es jetzt europaweit zu Bauernprotesten gegen wahnsinnige, hausgemachte Teuerung, Energiekrise und die EU? Nachdem sich seit Wochen bereits die Bauern in den Niederlanden gegen den “Green Deal” der EU und somit gegen Schwabs Great-Reset-Traum stemmen, indem sie den Protest auf die Straße tragen, kommt es nun auch wieder in Spanien – wie zuletzt im März – zu Protesten durch Bauern. Immer größere Teile der Bevölkerung stehen hinter den Bauern und solidarisieren sich mit ihnen. 

Nach den Bauernprotesten in den Niederlanden kommt es nun auch in Spanien wieder zu Straßenblockaden. Der Protest andalusischer Bauern richtet sich erneut – wie bereits im März, wo 150.000 Bauern aus ganz Spanien protestierten – gegen die hohen Preise für Treibstoffe und Grundnahrungsmittel. Vor allem im südlichen Teil Spaniens, in Andalusien, protestieren die Bauern wegen der Inflation und der enorm gestiegenen Preise für Energie und Lebensmittel. In Spanien lag die Inflation im Juni bereits über 10 Prozent.

In einem auf Twitter veröffentlichten Video sind dutzende Bauern mit gelben Westen bekleidet – im Hintergrund ihre Traktoren –  zu sehen, die eine Autobahnauffahrt blockieren.

Die Proteste reihen sich in niederländischen Bauernproteste ein, die derzeit von den Behörden dort versucht werden zu unterbinden. Wie jouwatch berichtete, hat die niederländische Polizei am Mittwoch erstmals Schüsse auf die Demonstranten abgefeuert. Ein Video zeigt, dass dies völlig grundlos geschah. Die Systemmedien  hüben wie drüben konstruieren aktuell eine Gefährdungsgeschichte, auf welche die Polizei „nur“ reagierte. Zudem belegen weitere Aufnahmen, dass bezahlte Provokateure gezielt versuchen, die Situation eskalieren zu lassen.

Laut den grünen Umbaupläne des “Green Deal” der EU und somit nach Schwabs Great-Reset-Plan soll nicht nur eine Reduktion des CO2-Ausstoßes durch die Zerstörung der Automobilindustrie vorgenommen werden, sondern auch die Fleischproduktion minimiert werden. Dafür sorgt eine EU-Verordnung, die vorsieht, die Stickstoffemission bis Ende 2030 um 50 – 95 Prozent zu reduzieren. Für viele holländische Bauern bedeuten diese Pläne das Aus. Die betroffenen Landwirte sollen ihre Betriebe freiwillig aufgeben und dafür eine Entschädigung enthalten – unter der Bedingung, dass sie zukünftig keinen landwirtschaftlichen Betrieb mehr aufnehmen. Sollten sie damit nicht einverstanden sein, kann es zur Enteignung kommen.

Unter den holländischen Landwirten kursieren offenbar Gerüchte , dass die niederländischen Bauern gar den Migrationsplänen der EU im Wege stehen. Die Massenzuwanderung im Zuge des “UN Replacement Population Plan” könnte der Grund für die massenhafte Enteignung der Bauern sein. So käme die Regierung billig an Land, heißt es in nachfolgendem Beitrag:

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***

Translated from German

Are there now farmers’ protests across Europe against insane, home-made inflation, the energy crisis and the EU? After the farmers in the Netherlands had been fighting against the EU’s “Green Deal” and thus against Schwab’s Great Reset dream for weeks by taking the protest to the streets, it’s now happening again in Spain – like last time in March – to protests by farmers. Ever larger parts of the population are behind the farmers and show solidarity with them.

After the farmers’ protests in the Netherlands, there are now road blockades again in Spain. The protests of Andalusian farmers are again directed against the high prices for fuel and staple foods, as they did in March, when 150,000 farmers from all over Spain protested. Especially in the southern part of Spain, in Andalusia, the farmers are protesting because of the inflation and the enormously increased prices for energy and food. In Spain, inflation was already over 10 percent in June.

In a video posted to Twitter, dozens of farmers dressed in yellow vests can be seen, with their tractors in the background, blocking a highway entrance.

The protests are part of Dutch peasant protests that the authorities there are currently trying to stop. As Journalistenwatch reported, the Dutch police fired shots at the demonstrators for the first time on Wednesday. A video shows that this happened completely without reason. The system media here and there are currently constructing a story of danger to which the police “only” reacted. In addition, further recordings show that paid provocateurs are specifically trying to escalate the situation.

According to the green conversion plans of the EU’s “Green Deal” and thus according to Schwab’s Great Reset Plan, not only should CO2 emissions be reduced by destroying the automotive industry, but meat production should also be minimized. This is ensured by an EU regulation that provides for a 50-95 percent reduction in nitrogen emissions by the end of 2030. For many Dutch farmers, these plans mean the end. The farmers affected should give up their farms voluntarily and receive compensation for this – on the condition that they no longer start farming in the future. If they do not agree to this, it can lead to expropriation.

Apparently, rumors are circulating among Dutch farmers that Dutch farmers are actually standing in the way of EU migration plans. Mass immigration as part of the “UN Replacement Population Plan” could be the reason for the mass dispossession of farmers. This is how the government would get ashore cheaply, according to this article.

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***

During a press conference last week, I interrupted Chrystia Freeland to ask whether Canada sent special forces to fight Russia in Ukraine. I also queried the deputy prime minister on whether Canada was at war with Russia and if she’s concerned about the possibility of nuclear war. I also asked if she considered NATO an aggressive alliance.

Before receiving a response, I was ushered out of the room at the Maison du développement durable in Montréal. But a reporter later asked Freeland about a New York Times report that Canadian special forces are working with US, British, Lithuanian and French counterparts in Ukraine. The elite troops are assisting Ukrainian forces with training and intelligence gathering. According to that article Canada’s secretive commandos are operating alongside a CIA mission to help coordinate US intelligence support for Ukraine’s war effort.

In her response, Freeland refused to confirm the deployment, instead focusing on the illegality of Russia’s actions. While most Canadians would agree with Freeland’s description of Russia’s horrendous invasion, we deserve to know if we are at war with a nuclear-armed state.

Alongside special forces, Ottawa has encouraged retired soldiers to take up arms against the Russians. Hundreds of Canadians have been assisting the war effort, including former top generals Rick Hillier and Trevor Cadieu.

Ottawa has also delivered or allocated $600 million in heavy weaponry to repel Russian forces from the eastern region of Ukraine, known as the Donbas. Canadian assistance includes howitzers and light armoured vehicles as well as tens of thousands of artillery shells, grenades and rocket launchers. The Communications Security Establishment is also helping the military deliver the weapons into Ukraine and assisting with other operations in the region.

About 1,400 Canadian troops are currently stationed in eastern Europe as part of Operation Reassurance. Since 2017 Canada has led a NATO battlegroup on Russia’s doorstep, which is set to more than double in size to 5,000 personnel. Canada’s deployment to Latvia was recently extended, which may violate the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act’s prohibition on permanently stationing troops in former Warsaw Pact countries.

Last week two Canadian vessels left Halifax to participate in NATO missions in the Baltic and North Sea. They are joining two other Canadian warships patrolling near Russia’s territorial waters.

NATO is bolstering its operations in eastern Europe in response to a war partly spurred by the alliance’s enlargement. When NATO moved to expand eastward in contravention of promises made to Soviet officials, the architect of US containment strategy towards the Soviet Union, George Kennan, warned that it would “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion.” In a 1997 New York Times op-ed Kennan predicted NATO expansion would “impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”

Still, Ottawa pushed to expand the alliance, including Ukraine’s adhesion to NATO. In a 2008 cable to the secretary of state, the Moscow-based diplomat William Burns, who currently leads the CIA, wrote, “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).”

While not formally part of NATO, Ukraine has been drawn into the alliance since elected President Viktor Yanukovich, who legislated the country’s neutrality, was ousted with Western support in 2014. With Canadian soldiers leading the charge, NATO has trained and armed 10,000 Ukrainian troops annually over the past seven years. Canadian military trainers repeatedly said one of their aims was to pave the way for full Ukrainian participation in NATO by making its forces interoperable with the rest of the alliance.

Ottawa’s policies have aggravated tensions in eastern Europe. To help ensure the conflict doesn’t escalate even further we need to start asking tough questions of our political leaders.

At a minimum we should be told by our government if Canadian forces are on the ground in Ukraine.

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Bianca Mugyenyi is an author, activist and director of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute. She is based in Montréal.

Featured image: The NATO Enhanced Forward Presence Battle Group conducts an exercise in the Camp Ādaži training area in Latvia as part of Operation Reassurance, September 1, 2019. Photo by Corporal Djalma Vuong-De Ramos/DND.

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***

Throughout the non-mainstream media there has been a plethora of praise for the pioneering work and courageous efforts of the dissident physician Dr. Vladimir Zelenko who suddenly passed away from lung cancer on June 30 at the young age of 48. Dr. Zelenko earned a reputation for himself by treating patients testing positive for the SARS-2 virus very early during the pandemic. It may be recalled that when Covid-19 deaths spiked dramatically, particularly in New York City, there was no FDA approved treatment specifically targeting SARS coronavirus infections. People who tested positive were simply told to return home and isolate themselves. Consequently, infected individuals, especially the senior citizens, locked themselves down until their symptoms worsened and death knocked at their door. They would subsequently be rushed to hospital ICUs, placed on ventilators, and would often die in the absence of their families and loved ones. The same was witnessed throughout the nation’s nursing homes in the regions where Covid-19 cases were high.

Despite the inept efforts to treat Covid patients in hospitals and conventional medical facilities, with only a small handful of exceptions, there were nevertheless physicians who made efforts to delve more deeply into the medical literature in order to find potential FDA approved drug candidates that might effectively and safely treat SARS-2 infections. Dr. Zelenko was among the earliest of these doctors.  In the absence of any forthcoming therapeutic recommendations from government health officials and the professional medical associations, he prescribed a combination of the inexpensive generic malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), azithromycin, and a zinc supplement. Moreover, the Zelenko protocol cost a mere several dollars. He also had a very high success rate in treating Covid patients that far excelled the medical facilities that followed the Anthony Fauci rules-based doctrine minus any viable therapeutic value.

The Fauci formula was a do-nothing strategy except to distance and isolate patients until a new novel drug and/or a vaccine appears on the market. Until such a time arrived, there was nothing an infected patient could do except pray or a recovery. Yet, very early in the pandemic, other nations, including China, were already promoting a variety of treatments. HCQ was already being widely accepted as one feasible course of SARS-2 treatment before Trump touted it publicly and was widely attacked by the liberal media.

Just two months after the first public report about the new coronavirus contagion in Wuhan, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, one China’s oldest and most prestigious universities, publicly released its “Handbook of CoVid-19 Prevention and Treatment” worldwide. Having been the first on the front lines against the new SARS strain, it was perhaps the most concise document for healthcare measures to prevent and contain the spread of the virus. For example, the Chinese report recommended the use of chloroquine following a favorable electrocardiogram. In addition to conventional treatments, the Zheijiang scientists listed herbal formulas based upon Traditional Chinese Medicine studies.

Yet Fauci and the US federal health agencies would have none of that. HCQ and ivermectin were not profitable for Fauci, the NIAID/FDA, and their deep financial collaborations with the pharmaceutical industry and vaccine makers.

The New York Times and its biase reporting has been at the forefront to advance the Fauci doctrine by ridiculing and damning physicians and medical experts such as Dr. Zelenko, Dr. Paul Marik formerly at Eastern Virginia Medical School, Dr. Pierre Kory and many more. Therefore when the Times published an obituary about Dr. Zelenko, it would seem that the obituary’s author continued to promote the CDC’s talking points. The obituary ignores the human story about a brave outspoken physician deeply cared for the lives of his patients and wanted to save them at all costs. Dr Zelenko and many other doctors found it unconscionable to blindly follow the vague and uncertain dictates of medical bureaucrats in Washington whose delusional belief in themselves as the stalwarts of science placed their hubris above the lives of millions of frightened and confused people about a new virus waiting around every corner. Aside from begging for patience, there were no serious solutions coming forth from Washington.

Put into proper context, the Times agrees with Fauci’s do-nothing strategy, insisting “that months of research would be needed to find an effective treatment.” America waited and during those months of waiting death’s mounted into the hundreds of thousands until Fauci’s largely ineffective magic bullet, Remdesivir, reached the market at a whopping $3,100 cost for a 5-day treatment.

It is important to note that the New York Times obituary to discredit Dr. Zelenko’s HCQ protocol provides an excellent example of corporate media’s blatant misreporting, abysmal due diligence and fact checking and perhaps shameless malfeasance. Even the sad and untimely death of a courageous and compassionate doctor who does everything within his power and medical knowledge to save lives, can be turned into a weapon against one’s enemies.

In order to discredit Dr. Zelenko’s HCQ protocol, the article references the highly flawed University of Minnesota study published in the August 2020 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. This study has been thoroughly criticized and debunked by many medical experts. On the one hand, the Minnesota study relied upon excessively high doses of HCQ that to our knowledge no practicing physician would ever prescribe in their clinical practice. Second, the study did not include zinc supplementation in its course of treatment, a key item in Dr Zelenko’s protocol. Zinc is crucial for HCQ’s effectiveness and against the SARS-2 virus and all HCQ advocates include zinc in their protocols. HCQ works in conjunction with zinc, as explained by Los Angeles emergency room specialist Dr. Anthony Cardillo, who like Dr. Zelenko and now thousands of other physicians are successfully treating Covid patients. In an interview Dr. Cardillo explains that “hydroxycholoroquine opens a zinc channel, zinc goes into the cell, it then blocks the replication of the cellular machinery.” “Every patient I’ve prescribed it to has been very very ill,” Cardillo stated, “and within 8 to 12 hours they were basically symptom free.” In many countries, zinc is now part of a standard course of treatment against SARS-2.

But there is more.  Citizens expect individuals who pride themselves as responsible journalists to investigate their subject matter thoroughly. We expect journalists to at least have a somewhat knowledgeable background on the topic and to fact check any reference material used to support their argument. This makes the Time’s reference to the Minnesota study all the more egregious as a weapon against the advocates of HCQ. Besides its poor design, the trial underwent several curious methodological changes.  When a clinical trial is pre-registered, the researchers are confirming that the methodology will be uniform throughout the course of the study. Trial changes recorded in the National Library of Medicine’s Clinical Trials data system indicate that the Minnesota study was altered as it was being conducted in order to assure that HCQ would show unfavorable results.  This included changes to the actual targets the study was trying to measure. The study was originally scheduled to last a full year – until May 2021. But several days after Trump’s public recommendation of chloroquine drugs, the trial timeline was reduced to two months. During that time, the trial’s methodology was substantially changed at least six times, including the number treatment days being reduced from 6 days to 4.

Moreover, the clinical trial’s lead corresponding author, Prof. David Boulware, reported no conflicts of interests. However, while the study was underway, the Canadian drug company Revive Therapeutics appointed Boulware as its new Scientific Advisor for infectious disease. In its March 24th press release, Revive was developing “the use of Bucillamine as a potential novel treatment for Covid-19.” Boulware himself stated, “I am excited to assist Revive in their objective in pursuing the clinical development of Bucillamine for infectious diseases and its prospect as a potential solution for COVID-19.”  According to Brad Geyer at the website Grant Fraud, Boulware “reportedly advised the President [Trump] to stop taking hydroxychoroquine” and failed to disclose his other conflict of interest with Gilead, the developers of remdesivir.

In our opinion, based upon the written and reported evidence, and the unreported conflicts of interests, this entire study was a sham. Yet two years later, the New York Times continues to tout this junk study as having medical value.

HCQ, and later the more effective anti-parasite drug Ivermectin, have been prescribed for early treatment and as a prophylaxis by physicians working on pandemic’s front lines with enormous success.  Yet these American physicians, including Dr. Zelenko, who struggled to get the urgent message out about these drugs’ success rates were marginalized and ridiculed en masse.

The entire American corporate media has used scare tactics to attack both HCQ and ivermectin. In the case of HCQ, the government attempted to flout studies emphasizing its toxicity. However, this was only at very high doses that are never recommended in a clinical setting. Otherwise, HCQ has an exemplary safety profile. The 60-year old, five-dollar drug has been prescribed to approximately 5 million people annually for a variety of illnesses, including malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. A study conducted by Dr. Stephen Smith, a former research scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases showed that when HCQ dosage was properly adjusted to a patient’s weight it improved Covid patients’ survival rate by over 100 percent.  Likewise the corporate media demonized ivermectin under the misleading label as a veterinarian deworming drug for horses.  Corporate media tabloids such as the New York Times and Washington Post consistently repeated this talking point despite ivermectin having one of the longest safety profiles in medical history and having been prescribed to over 3.5 billion people worldwide. Both drugs are listed on the World Health Organization’s essential drug list.

Hence we are providing an accurate overview and update of the current status on the medical research supporting the use of HCQ and ivermectin.

Worldwide, 421 studies, in 51 nations, have been conducted to investigate the effectiveness of HCQ against SARS-2. As of July 4, 2022, 323 studies are peer-reviewed and 348 clinical trials compare treatment and control groups.  All total, the 348 clinical trials enrolled over 458,000 participants and 72 percent showed HCQ’s positive effects in reducing length of symptoms, and rates of morbidity and mortality. For early Covid treatment, HCQ showed an average 63 percent improvement and 72 percent lower mortality. It is true that HCQ has been shown to be relatively ineffective for late treatment. Excessive doses, which make up the majority of the negative studies, such as the University of Minnesota trial, argue against HCQ’s use. In addition, unfavorable studies were overwhelmingly retrospective, which are highly unreliable for drawing sound conclusions. American funded HCQ studies show a large bias towards publishing negative results.  In fact, American studies had a 260 percent higher rate of reporting negative results than studies originating from other countries.

Ivermectin has an even more impressive success profile across the entire course of SARS-2 infection: 83 percent improvement as a prophylaxis, 63 percent improvement for early and 39 percent for late treatment. One hundred eighteen of 172 ivermectin studies have been peer-reviewed and 88 were clinical trials comparing ivermectin treatment and control groups. Only about 20 studies reported negative results and over half of these were retrospective. Forty six studies show that ivermectin lowers overall mortality by an average 52 percent. Twenty-two countries have officially adopted ivermectin for early treatment.

If we look outside the US, UK, Canada and a few other nations we will find tens of thousands of physicians and medical facilities regularly including HCQ and ivermectin in their therapeutic regimens to treat SARS-2 infections.  Yet in the US and other US-aligned nations where the medical establishment has become an authoritative regime, there can be no room for dissent. What we are witnessing is a frontal assault against doctors that is unprecedented in the history of medicine. Since when does the successful clinical experience of 1000s of physicians count less than the highly politicized opinions of corporate journalists who deny outright the full scope of peer-reviewed literature and refuse to interview the physicians who use alternative therapies and their patients? The only necessary proof is that doctors prescribing HCQ, ivermectin and other repurposed drugs have saved far more lives than those physicians who simply follow the Fauci doctrine. More chilling, at the behest of Washington, state medical boards and professional medical associations are making efforts to criminalize health professionals who support and advocate alternative Covid treatments and who speak out against the life-threatening risks of the gene therapy based Covid vaccines.

Johns Hopkins University claims that over 1 million people died of Covid-19 in the US alone.  Despite the numerous arguments that can be made about the actual cause of these deaths, there is a more important question to ask. How many of these people might still be alive if American medicine were not an authoritative operation creating obstacles to physicians practicing their profession? And if the majority of peer-reviewed clinical evidence validates these treatments, is the government, the pharmaceutical industry and their lobbyists and the corporate media, such as the New York Times, complicit in preventing patients from having access to life-saving drugs?

*

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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. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Desert Review

Brazilian Mercenaries in Ukraine

July 7th, 2022 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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***

Two Brazilians were killed in Ukraine in the first week of July after a Russian drone operation in Kharkiv. In all, three Brazilian mercenaries have died in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian special military operation on February 24th. In the South American country, the mainstrem media has a strong pro-Western ideological orientation, which is why it encourages “volunteers” to go to Eastern Europe. In their speech, the media outlets claim that it is “easy” to fight against Russians because Kiev is supposedly “winning” the conflict. However, upon arriving in Ukraine, the foreign mercenaries are faced with a different and much harsher reality.

Between the night of July 1 and the morning of July 2 Brazilian mercenaries Douglas Rodrigues Búrigo and Thalita do Valle died after a Russian attack in Khakiv. Douglas was a former soldier of the Brazilian Army and had been fighting in Ukraine since May. Thalita was a model, lawyer, and professional sniper, who had previously worked as a military volunteer and propaganda agent for the Kurdish women’s battalions in the Middle East. Apparently, she died of asphyxiation while trying to flee her accommodation in the face of a drone attack, while Douglas was reportedly hit by shrapnel from mortar shells on the outside.

In June, another Brazilian had already died in Ukraine. André Hack Bahi was fatally shot during Russian bombing raids in Severodonetsk. Bahi was a former fighter in the French Legion and had already participated in some missions in Africa, but he was not able to survive the intense reality of the fighting in Ukraine. It is also necessary to mention that not all the dead have been properly identified yet, which leads to believe that there may be more Brazilians among the dead in Ukraine, since there is ample participation of mercenaries from the South American country in the region.

There is still no official report by the authorities indicating the precise number of Brazilian citizens who are fighting for Kiev’s side in the conflict, but the number is certainly greater than what was expected from a neutral country with good relations with Russia. Even Brazilian parliamentarians fought in favor of Kiev, such as former deputy Artur do Val, who had a quick and scandalous performance in Ukraine, where he committed acts of sexual harassment against Ukrainian women. It is also known that over the last eight years several Brazilians have tried to join the Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary troops to fight in Donbass, having been rejected due to the anti-Latin racism of these groups. Now these same militants are finding their way into the Ukrainian positions due to Kiev’s policy of accepting all foreign volunteers.

But it is absolutely impossible to analyze the situation without criticizing the destabilizing role that the Brazilian local media has played in its coverage of the events in Ukraine. Pro-Western media outlets report the conflict fallaciously, pointing to a non-existent “Ukrainian victory” and “ease” in fighting Moscow’s forces, portraying voluntary combat as a kind of “hunting safari” against Russians. Obviously, when the “volunteers” (almost all of them being paid private soldiers linked to mercenary companies) arrive on the battlefield, they are faced with situations very different from those reported by the journalists who encourage volunteering.

Agencies also have tried to publicize an image of “heroism” when talking about Brazilians fighting in Ukraine, ignoring important issues, such as the fact that they are cooperating with neo-Nazi militants and supporting a government that practices genocidal policies against the Russian population. Since the beginning of the Russian operation, Brazilian media agencies and Brazilian branches of foreign agencies have praised the “heroism” of the mercenaries who would be “helping to fight the invasion”, which also serves as propaganda and incentive for volunteering.

Brazilian media is not acting alone, but following the agenda imposed by the great world media agencies, which have increasingly bet on the speech of “Ukrainian victory” as a way to raise the morale of the troops and justify the irresponsible military aid that the Western countries are sending to Kiev.

Private security companies hired to help Kiev are the ones that profit most from the propagation of this fallacious speech among the public opinion, as they manage to convince an increasing number of volunteers to go and fight in Ukraine. In fact, some of these volunteers are not designated for direct combat but remain in safe places taking photos and videos to publish on the internet, reproducing propaganda to encourage more men to go – always trying to convince that combats are “easy” and “safe”, so that more people enlist in the mercenary companies. The result is that of the deluded enlisted men only a few are directed to propaganda, while others die on the battlefield.

Obviously, for Western countries and for private companies, investing in this type of propaganda is strategic and profitable, but not for Brazil. As a member of the BRICS, not participating in anti-Russia sanctions and being Moscow’s partner in several areas, the Brazilian government should act more incisively to monitor the destabilizing role that its media agencies are playing, seeking to prevent foreign speeches from taking Brazilians to die on the battlefield. Furthermore, it is not at all beneficial to Brasilia’s international image that the country is known for having a large number of citizens volunteering to fight alongside neo-Nazi battalions.

It is important to remember that mercenaries and “volunteers are not considered prisoners of war, but common criminals, which means that Brazilian citizens can be tried by courts in the liberated parts of Ukraine if they are captured. This type of situation will certainly generate diplomatic discomfort and, as Brazil and Russia are members of the BRICS, this is not a favorable condition for either side.

The best thing for the Brazilian government to do is to ban its citizens from volunteering in wars that do not concern the national interest of Brazil.

*

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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.

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***

On June 2, Saudi-led OPEC and its allies announced it will accelerate oil production in July and August, as the cartel’s key player, Saudi Arabia, agreed to U.S. pleadings that it take action to cool crude oil prices. The sharp rise in the price of a barrel of crude since the start of hostilities in Ukraine has threatened to stall the global economy with the United States being especially vulnerable.

OPEC indicated it would increase output by nearly 650,000 barrels a day in the next two months, which is a sharp increase on the previously scheduled increase of 400,000 b/d. The announcement followed in the wake of a statement from the European Union that member states had agreed to impose a partial ban on Russian oil imports.

This only served to underline fears in the energy markets that shortages will be exacerbated and cause a further scramble for ever rarer surplus supplies. The expectations around the OPEC meeting were that most of the supply increase will be met by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The extra supplies will come after months of high-level U.S. diplomacy to repair relations with Riyadh.

It also represents a climbdown for the Biden administration, which came to power in 2021 on election slogans which had seen Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, being labeled a “murderer” and Saudi Arabia itself a “pariah state” by candidate Joe Biden.

The U.S. welcomed OPEC’s statement in what it termed an “important decision” and gave a very vocal credit to Saudi Arabia ensuring that the OPEC gathering succeeded in “achieving…consensus amongst the group members.” The White House also recognized the “positive contributions of the UAE, Kuwait, and Iraq.”

OPEC’s decision comes ahead of a planned visit to the Middle East by U.S. president Joe Biden.

The U.S. president has now added Riyadh to his itinerary, a move that was thought unthinkable as recently as February of this year, and which some are saying is tantamount to a “pardon for murder.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has forced Joe Biden to not only soften his previous antipathy toward Prince Mohammed but to retreat so aggressively from that position that any veneer of self-respect has been thoroughly removed.

Joe Biden has maintained a distance from the Crown Prince because of his links to the murder of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Realpolitik, however, means that the U.S. is forced to improve ties with Saudi Arabia, with energy a cornerstone of the bilateral relationship stretching back nearly 75 years.

Background briefings indicate that Saudi Arabia’s softening of its stance toward the Biden administration follows weeks of shuttle diplomacy by the White House’s top Middle East energy envoys, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, who paved the way for an improvement in relations between Riyadh and Washington.

All of this begs the question: Why does the Biden administration refuse to reach compromise with the oil giant that is Venezuela? This is a country with the largest proven reserves of oil in the world and it is located right next to the U.S.’s backyard.

Historically, the Venezuelan oil industry has been as much under the de facto control of U.S. Big Oil as was Saudi oil for decades. It is a fact that several of the largest refineries located on the Gulf Coast of the United States were built specifically to refine Venezuelan crude. So why then Biden’s unwillingness to step forward with an extended hand and grasp the opportunity for rapprochement with the government of President Maduro?

That the U.S.’s attempts to install former head of the Venezuelan National Assembly Juan Guaidó as “interim president” has been an embarrassing failure is no longer a matter for debate. Even an attempted coup in early 2020 fell comically flat on its face with evidence emerging in its aftermath of ludicrously high success fees having been offered by Guaidó and his inner circle to the ringleaders.

US Plotted 'Terrifying' Venezuela Invasion with Opposition's Blessing | Venezuelanalysis.com

Juan Guaidó and Donald Trump. [Source: venezuelaanalysis.com]

Further revelations about misuse of substantial donor funds, with fingers pointing directly at Guaidó’s brother, have also eroded what little support remained for the former National Assembly chief. Another source of embarrassment for Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken is that Guaidó today is not even an elected official.

What little authority he had has been greatly reduced since the time that Donald Trump anointed him “Interim President.” The fickle Trump soon pulled back from Guaidó and clearly viewed him with disdain and contempt, as revealed in former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s recent book “A Sacred Oath.”

The only viable alternative, Nicolás Maduro, is the man who, despite the best laid plans of Washington hawks like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, has remained in power since being passed the baton by late President Hugo Chávez in 2013.

Nicolás Maduro has shown a very astute political acumen which has surprised many outsiders who have failed to grasp the loyalty the vast majority of Venezuelans feel toward him. He has been able to navigate Venezuela through the worst ravages of the COVID pandemic to the edge of a sustained economic recovery.

Shops in downtown Caracas are once again full, the local stock market has been amongst the best-performing globally over the past 12 months and 2021 saw annual GDP in positive territory for the first time in several years. And now, Venezuela is projected to have a whopping 20 percent growth in 2022, an eye-catching turnaround, but not good enough for Joe Biden, Secretary of State Blinken and others. It seems that Venezuela can do nothing right.

Or perhaps in keeping with the way U.S. administrations have behaved over the past decade, the Biden administration only shows respect to those who show it no respect in return. Historically, Venezuela has been as close an ally of the United States as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the reason for the truculence of President Biden is that he would rather seek to exploit the natural resources of Venezuela whereas, in the case of Saudi Arabia, the U.S. would rather take advantage of that country’s very significant cash reserves and sell more overpriced weapons and second-hand technology polished up to look brand new.

In March of this year, after a few days of fighting in Ukraine, it appeared that the Biden White House had awakened and recognized the Bolivarian Republic for the friend that it has always been rather than the pariah that the Trump regime (and indeed the late-Obama period) had painted it. No sooner had it been confirmed that the highest level delegation in many years to officially visit had arrived in Caracas, that the anti-Venezuela brigade went apoplectic, claiming to anyone who would listen that the event was akin to the betrayal of Christ and that the end of civilization was near!

President Joe Biden, left, with Juan S. Gonzalez, who headed the U.S. delegation to Venezuela in March, at right. (Twitter)

President Joe Biden with Juan S. González, who headed the U.S. delegation to Venezuela in March. [Source: venezuelaanalysis.com]

Nevertheless, it is a fact that the visit to Caracas was long overdue. Any serious first-year student of political science would be able to confirm that. Unfortunately, in what passes for civilized political discourse (you shout, I shout, we both shout, we both tweet videos of the other person shouting, and both call the other out for being radical), the anti-reconciliation coalition led by Marco Rubio (R-FL) ratcheted up the noise to such a level that any dialogue became impossible.

Even the substantial gesture of goodwill shown by President Maduro in releasing two Americans held in Venezuela was condemned as “tokenism” by Senator Rubio. Indeed, the hysteria from the right rose to such a level that the Biden administration was forced onto the back foot to such an extent that it appeared for a few days that this initiative, based on political and economic realities, was all but dead.

The problem for President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken is that this is not where this matter can be allowed to end. There is far too much at stake for the initiative to be buried by the rabid right.

And, of course, the situation has the added complexity of the ongoing detention in Miami of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab.

Alex Saab is the Venezuelan Special Envoy who was forcibly and unprecedentedly brought to the United States from the West African state of Cape Verde in October 2021. He had been detained by the Cape Verdean authorities since June 12, 2020, during a refueling stop en route from Caracas to Iran to undertake a humanitarian special mission at the peak of the COVID pandemic.

What makes Saab’s ongoing detention in Miami unique and a matter of concern to not just Venezuela, but especially to the global diplomatic community, is that, as a Special Envoy traveling from Venezuela to Iran, where he was accredited to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he was entitled to diplomatic immunity and inviolability and protected by centuries-old rules which govern the freedom of movement of diplomats and political agents.

Saab’s detention, initially in Cape Verde and now in Miami, had to be cloaked in allegations of criminal activity in order to justify it, which is a widely held view beyond U.S. law enforcement circles. It is the fulfillment of a political goal—the overthrow of the government of President Nicolás Maduro—which has been behind the pursuit of Saab who was indicted and sanctioned by the United States on July 25, 2019.

What began as an openly declared political objective of the Trump administration (the removal of Nicolás Maduro from office) had become increasingly untenable over the past 18 months even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Unfortunately for the United States, President Maduro has not only remained in office but strengthened his power-base with an unwaivering campaign of defying the economic and political blockade of Venezuela by the United States.

The dramatic rise in the price of gasoline, together with the increasing incidences of “heat or eat” in conjunction with upcoming U.S. mid-term elections, have combined to create a perfect storm that should result in a significant reset of the Venezuela-U.S. political and economic relationship. Only it has not.

This is why the inability of Biden, Blinken and others to reach an accommodation with Venezuela when they have shown an astonishing ability to undertake a U-turn with Saudi Arabia without so much as a blush of embarrassment is extraordinary.

The Biden administration has been criticized for ineptitude on several fronts but its schizophrenic approach toward President Maduro has shocked many and is now in danger of collapsing altogether. Venezuela has made it clear that it wants its diplomat, Alex Saab, released and allowed to return to Caracas. Is this really so difficult to do?

It seems that, making nice with Saudi Arabian officials, whom Biden once warned of “significant changes” in their country’s relationship with the U.S. as a result of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, was not hard to do. Perhaps because it comes with a different level of political risk assessment. No Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz or noisy social media activists telling anyone who will listen that you are soft on this or that. Or that you are giving in to communists. The Saudis may be many things but communists they are not.

The recent Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles, which was meant to be a showcase for President Biden’s engagement with South America, was a public relations disaster with several prominent no shows. The debacle has left Biden, Blinken and the summit’s chief organizer, Juan González, desperate for a “win” in their backyard. However, with Colombia (one of the few remaining allies that the U.S. has in its backyard) recently following the region’s trend and turning politically left, the Troika is now adrift.

González, who has the grandiose titles of “Senior Adviser and Special Assistant to the President of the United States and the Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council,” came into his post in early January 2021 with high expectations. One article referred to his appointment this way: “As for the Western Hemisphere, after four years of the [Trump] anti-immigrant and xenophobic stances on the region, González’s appointment represents the start of new relations between the United States and Latin America.”

Coming on the heels of “America is back!” there was genuine optimism that the return of a Democratic administration in Washington would lead to a rebuilding of historical ties; however, that early optimism has been shattered by a combination of surprising political naivete and acute political partisanship which means the two sides of the congressional aisle cannot agree which day of the week it is, let alone agree on a meaningful approach to dealing with a whole continent.

Juan González has, in the eyes of many observers, been a disappointment. It has not helped, of course, that those above him have shown an inability to provide any leadership. Nonetheless, the cringe-worthy knots into which the White House has tied itself since making an initial approach to Caracas in March, following the commencement of hostilities in Ukraine and the accompanying surge oil prices, has been embarrassing.

That the U.S. needs Venezuelan oil is self-evident. That Caracas is willing to supply that oil is very self-evident. That the Trump-anointed Juan Guaidó is irrelevant is self-evident. That the diplomat Alex Saab’s release is a must for the political progress Washington wants is very self-evident.

The time has come for the grown-ups in the White House to accept that Nicolás Maduro is not leaving his presidential palace any time soon, accept that international law provides Alex Saab with immunity and inviolability, stop creating artificial barriers to political dialogue and accept that American authority will be better served by being engaged with one of its most economically significant neighbors rather than continuing with a discredited political policy that the U.S. neither needs nor wants.

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Daniel Kovalik graduated from Columbia University School of Law in 1993. He then served as in-house counsel for the United Steelworkers, AFL-CIO (USW) until 2019. Mr. Kovalik received the David W. Mills Mentoring Fellowship from Stanford University School of Law and was the recipient of the Project Censored Award for his article exposing the unprecedented killing of trade unionists in Colombia. He has written extensively on the issue of international human rights and U.S. foreign policy for the Huffington Post and Counterpunch and has lectured throughout the world on these subjects. He is the author of several books including The Plot To Overthrow Venezuela, How The US Is Orchestrating a Coup for Oil, which includes a Foreword by Oliver Stone. Daniel can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from Energy and Capital

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***

Since January 17, 1961, the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping and assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba has remained a symbol of the legacy of colonialism on the African continent.

Lumumba rose to prominence during 1958-1960 due to his involvement in independence politics when the people of the former Belgian colony of Congo rose up in rebellion to demand national liberation.

His only known bodily remains, a tooth, had been held in Belgium as a souvenir from those who carried out his torture and execution. As an act aimed at making amends for the legacy of colonialism in the Belgian Congo, the tooth was returned to the DRC and given a proper burial by the current government of President Felix Tshisekedi. (See this)

The details of the murder of Lumumba and two of his cabinet members, Maurice Mpolo, Minister of Youth and Sports along with Joseph Okito, the Second Vice President of the Senate, were gruesome. After being taken to Thysville, located approximately 100 miles from Leopoldville, a disagreement erupted among the Congolese troops who were divided over whether to support the MNC-Lumumba.

Lumumba and his comrades were killed by a firing squad of Belgian troops. Later their bodies were destroyed with acid in efforts to conceal the evidence.

U.S. and Belgian-backed puppet leader, Col. Mobuto Sese Seko, who had declared himself leader of the country at the aegis of Washington in September 1960, arrived at the military camp in Thysville just days prior to the assassinations. Mobuto and other Belgian officers ordered Lumumba, Okito and Mpolo taken to Elizabethville, (now known as Lubumbashi), the center of the mining areas in Katanga province. This area had been deliberately broken off by a secessionist putsch during the early days of independence in efforts to undermine the MNC-Lumumba administration in Leopoldville.

After taking office on June 30, 1960, in the capital of Leopoldville (now Kinshasha), Lumumba and his Congolese National Movement (MNC) political party set out to institute a people’s government in the newly independent state. However, the imperatives of the Belgian colonialists and their western allies had no interest in allowing MNC-Lumumba to implement a program based upon anti-imperialism and Pan-Africanism.

This intransigence on the part of Brussels and Washington was clearly based upon the strategic mineral wealth which exists in the country now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The imperialist powers could not afford to allow these vast reservoirs of natural resources such as cobalt, diamonds, gold, copper, cassiterite (tin ore) and coltan, as well as timber, coffee and oil to be utilized by the African people to build an independent existence in cooperation with other states.

After Lumumba and his comrades were removed by the Belgian military officials and the western-backed collaborators in the DRC, he was tortured and killed in Elizabethville, Katanga. Moise Tshombe, who had been selected, groomed and installed by the Belgium government and the United States as head of Katanga, was projected by the imperialist-oriented media outlets as one of the responsible leaders in the country. These developments created chaos in Leopoldville (now Kinshasha), isolating the capital in the west of the country from the mineral rich areas of the south and east of the country.

The Role of the U.S. in the Coup Leading to the Assassination of Lumumba

To establish a pretext for the elimination of Lumumba, the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower labelled him as “pro-communist” and a threat to western interests. Lumumba sought to build good relations with the U.S. as well as the Soviet Union in 1960. The Congolese prime minister even visited the U.S. during the summer of 1960 in order to meet with the president. Nonetheless, Eisenhower refused to talk with him and continued the hostile policy towards the new government in Leopoldville.

High-level Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers working in the U.S. embassy in Leopoldville, were ordered to overthrow the MNC-Lumumba administration and to bring about his liquidation. A 2001 report into the assassination by a Belgian Commission provided details of the joint U.S.-Belgian plan to kill Lumumba.

Initially there was a CIA plot to poison Lumumba right at the headquarters of the independence government. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, according to documents released decades later, had authorized the assassination of Lumumba in 1960.

Nonetheless, the plot to poison him was unsuccessful. CIA-employed chemist Sidney Gottlieb concocted poisonous agents to be used for the assassination. During September 1960, Gottlieb transported the poison to Leopoldville while Larry Devlin, a CIA operative with official diplomatic cover, came up with a scheme to infect Lumumba’s toothbrush or his food. Despite these plans, Devlin’s operatives were unable to carry out the assassination at this time.

A voluminous book by Madeleine G. Kalb, entitled Congo Cables, documents communications by Devlin at the time which encouraged the assassination of Lumumba. Later the CIA station chief helped to conduct the search for Lumumba after he left Leopoldville to join his supporters in establishing an alternative government in the east of the vast country. Devlin was a key figure in arranging Lumumba’s transfer to Katanga while the CIA base chief in Elizabethville was in direct touch with the assassins the same day that Lumumba was killed.

John Stockwell, a CIA officer in the Congo and later a station chief, wrote in 1978 in his book entitled In Search of Enemies, that a CIA agent had the bodies in the trunk of his car in order to dispose of them. Stockwell believed that Devlin knew more than anyone else about the assassination of Lumumba, Okito and Mpolo.

Kalb also asserts that it was during a National Security Council meeting in Washington that Eisenhower gave the order to eliminate Lumumba. The assassination was carried out just three days prior to the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy on January 20, 1961. Kennedy, after taking office, covered up the U.S. role in the coup against the MNC-Lumumba government and the assassination of these three African leaders.

After the assassination of Lumumba, the U.S. administrations beginning with Kennedy right up until Bill Clinton, supported the regime of Mobuto. Untold national wealth was expropriated from the DRC by banks and mining conglomerates, a process which continues until today. The Mobuto regime was overthrown by the Allied Democratic Forces for Liberation (ADFL), led by Laurent Kabila in 1997.

Image on the right: Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Nkrumah

Other imperialist states have been implicated in the plot to overthrow and liquidate Lumumba including Britain and Canada. The United Nations military forces, which were invited into the country by Lumumba in his attempt to end the Belgian occupation, refused to secure the MNC government and instead objectively sided with the forces of counter-revolution. (See this and this)

After the assassination of Lumumba and the destabilization of the Congolese Revolution, the imperialist turned their attention to removing the first independence government in the West African state of Ghana (formerly a British colony known as the Gold Coast) led by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the prime minister and later president of the country. Although Nkrumah wrote in his post-coup book, Dark Days in Ghana (1968), that the CIA utilizing the U.S. embassy coordinated his removal from office, Stockwell in his 1978 work, In Search of Enemies, confirmed that the CIA station chief engineered the removal of Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party (CPP) administration on February 24, 1966.

The coup in Ghana was conducted in a manner that made it appear as if it was a military and police operation. However, Nkrumah’s removal could not have taken place without the leading role of the CIA and the State Department. Documents related to this blatant interference in the internal affairs of Ghana have been subsequently declassified.

These historical events illustrate the vested interests of imperialism in preventing the genuine independence and unity of the African continent. Even in the current period, Washington and Wall Street are still seeking to maintain their hegemony over Africa and other geo-political regions of 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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***

Things Still Fall Apart shows that Africa is a neglected and exploited continent. Since it was invaded c.1500 by Europeans, it has accumulated only 1 per cent of the world’s wealth, despite containing 16 per cent of the world’s population and immense natural and human resources.

This collection of memories by a Brazilian economist, from his 20 years working on the continent, explains that this relative stationary situation is caused mostly by political decisions. Political decisions made on behalf of domestic rulers and rich countries; meanwhile, the poor have no voice or power.

The book challenges many historical narratives of the continent and unveils issues such as negative primitive accumulation and the politics of sexuality. The findings of this book reflect the reality of the poor and may be considered alarming and challenging – they need special attention and funding. If not, further stagnation, civil conflicts and migratory waves will persist. As a result, suffering for poor and future costs for rich countries will increase.

Nelio Dorea de Oliveira was born in Bahia, Brazil, in 1944. He studied Economics at the Federal University of Bahia, and the University of Glasgow in a PhD programme. He worked at the Ministry of Finance and the National Socio Economic Development Bank (BNDES) in Rio de Janeiro. He moved to Africa to work with the African Development Bank, in conjunction with the World Bank and IMF. Nelio also consulted with the UNDP and Goldman Sachs. He taught at Rio de Janeiro University, Oporto University and at the Tunis Business School. His international career has enabled him to gain a wide range of skills and exposure to different cultures and languages. He is married with two daughters and lives in London.

Click here to order the book.

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Pfizer Crimes Against Our Children: Cardiac Arrest of Two Month Old Baby an Hour After Experimental Vaccine

By Ranit Feinberg and Yaffa Shir-Raz, July 06, 2022

An analysis of VAERS reports shows that contrary to the FDA’s briefing document claiming that the majority of adverse events in Pfizers’ clinical trial were non-serious – at least 58 cases of life-threatening side effects in infants under 3 years old who received mRNA vaccines were reported.

Crime and Punishment. Government Officials Must be Held Accountable: Dr. Philip Giraldi

By Philip Giraldi, July 06, 2022

It has long been known that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in the wake of 9/11, resorted to torture in its overseas “black” prisons, but details of what took place and anything that would stand up in court as evidence has been difficult to discern as it has been easy for the Agency to shroud its more nefarious deeds through claims of protecting “states secrets.”

Syrian Troops and Civilians Chase Away US Occupation Convoy in Hasakah

By The Cradle, July 06, 2022

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), along with local citizens from the village of Al-Mujaibara, have expelled a US army convoy that tried to break into an area under the control of the Syrian government in the northeastern Hasakah governorate.

EU Economies Are Down on Their Knees

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, July 06, 2022

On July 1 at the White House, US President Joe Biden made a startling disclosure that “the idea we’re going to be able to click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline, is not likely in the near term

Two and Three-Year-Old Kids with Seizures Is “the New Normal”, 2-5 Days After COVID Vaccine

By Steve Kirsch, July 06, 2022

Doctors are mystified by a rash of seizures, rashes, etc. happening to 2 and 3-year-old kids. The only thing these kids have in common is that they were given the COVID vaccine just days earlier (two to five days earlier).

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (and Inside). Natural Gas to Heat Homes. What’s to Come this Winter…

By Ken Meyercord, July 06, 2022

Baby, it’s Cold Outside” is a song from the 1950s where, in contrapuntal verses, a woman explains why she must leave (“I really can’t stay”) and a man counters with a reason she should stay (“But, baby, it’s cold outside”). In light of the disruption in the global trade in oil and natural gas ensuing from the conflict in Ukraine, the last line of the song (“At least there will be plenty implied / If you got pneumonia and died”) might be a premonition of what’s to come this winter.

The Serpent and the Staff: Symbols of Safety and Security in the Propaganda of a Global Medical Tyranny

By Prof. Daniel Broudy and Dr. Valerie Kyrie, July 06, 2022

Understanding the bizarre social and economic transformations afoot in the world today requires a considerably wider view of history than is presented in contemporary corporate media. In this present era of an emerging Bio-Nano Age, we can see, if we squint at history, the faint contours of ancient cultures practicing mystic rites, medicine, and alchemy.

Russia and India Expand Cooperation on Modernizing Indian Air Force

By Drago Bosnic, July 06, 2022

Russia’s contribution to India’s reestablishment as one of the world’s great powers cannot be overstated. This is especially true when it comes to the Asian giant’s military, which according to various estimates uses up to 85% of Soviet and Russian weapons and equipment in its massive arsenal.

Black Alliance for Peace Condemns Massacre of African Migrants by US-backed Moroccan Armed Forces

By Black Alliance for Peace, July 06, 2022

Video images captured the horrific actions of Moroccan security forces armed and trained by the United States through the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and working on behalf of the Spanish government, systematically beating and slaughtering African migrants on June 24, 2022.

Rogue Cops: The Supreme Court Is Turning America Into a Constitution-Free Zone

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, July 06, 2022

The Supreme Court has spoken: there will be no consequences for cops who brutalize the citizenry and no justice for the victims of police brutality. Although the Court’s 2021-22 rulings on qualified immunity for police who engage in official misconduct were largely overshadowed by its politically polarizing rulings on abortion, gun ownership and religion, they were no less devastating.

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July 6th, 2022 by Riccardo Petrella

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Former Chief of the General Staff, General Lord Richard Dannatt, believes that the plan to slash 9,500 soldiers from the British Army is “madness” and could “break” what remains of the force. According to him, cutting troop numbers from 82,000 to just 72,500 will put unsustainable pressure on what is left of the British Army. But what does this mean for the bold plans of a New Roman Empire claimed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson?

“It’s a mere fact of life, we will break the remainder of our Army if our Army is not large enough, trained well enough and equipped well enough to do what the Government of the day wants us to do,” the retired officer, who was head of the Army during operations in Afghanistan, told Sky News. “You can’t make people work endlessly with such small numbers, so numbers in terms of our land forces really, really matter.”

Although the British Army is being downsized in terms of manpower, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said at the NATO Summit in Madrid that defense spending would boost to 2.5% of GDP from the current 2.12% by the end of the decade. However, General Dannatt urged Johnson to abandon the cuts because of the Russian military operation in Ukraine.

“Frankly, that’s madness because if NATO is going to have 300,000 high-readiness troops, we’ve got to play our part in that and reducing our Army further just makes no sense whatsoever.”

It’s recalled that NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the bloc, which has 40,000 response troops, would bolster that to 300,000 high-readiness forces following the war in Ukraine.

This development comes as Johnson supported the French President’s proposal on the European Political Community by suggesting the creation of a kind of new Roman Empire encompassing Turkey and major North African countries. The union of countries, as suggested by the British prime minister, would extend from the UK to the Maghreb region in North Africa and would also include Turkey and Ukraine.

Johnson said that although French President Emmanuel Macron claims credit for the idea, its origins are from when he “first became foreign secretary.” Speaking at the press conference on the way to the NATO summit on June 29, the prime minister said he believes that “we should basically be recreating the Mare Nostrum of the Roman Empire” – Mare Nostrum being the Roman name of the Mediterranean and adopted at the time when the empire controlled most of Europe, the coast of North Africa and Anatolia.

Macron’s proposal to the political community, which would be broader than the 27-member European Union, would primarily be for Ukraine and other Eastern European countries to be part of an extended organization in the hope of weakening Russian influence.

Recently, at the G7 summit in Germany, the Élysée Palace suggested that the British prime minister and the French president showed interest in their respective ideas. Although relations between the leaders of France and the UK have been quite cold in the recent past, both agreed to a fresh start at the G7 summit. A senior British official described the new partnership as “Le Bromance”, however, a French official was less excited, describing the meeting as just having gone well.

Even so, there are still many issues on which Johnson and Macron disagree, with Paris reportedly unhappy with the British prime minister’s turnaround on the Brexit issue, as well as his public claims that Macron is not aggressive enough in his negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The question begs then whether Johnson can achieve his new Roman Empire with a smaller army?

Britain’s ‘Future Soldier’ program envisages educating, ameliorating, and making the lowly Non-Commissioned Officer more tech-savvy to make up for the army’s smaller size. Maj Gen Paul Griffiths, its Director of Personnel, said in an interview with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), that:

“Think widely about using technology because a smaller army does not have mass. We are going to increase our mass by using machines. So, the young Corporal has to think not only about his section but probably the weapons systems that are with him in the fight bringing people and machines together as a team.”

But as British Chief of General Staff General Patrick Sanders said at a RUSI conference on June 28, with UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, United States Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth and Germany’s Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Alfons Mais all in attendance:

“The war in Ukraine reminds us of the utility of Land Power: it takes an army to hold and regain territory and defend the people. It takes an Army to deter. If this battle came, we would likely be outnumbered at the point of attack and fighting like hell […] You can’t cyber your way across a river. No single platform, capability, or tactic will unlock the problem.”

Effectively, Johnson’s attempts to carve out an imperial-like influence in the 21st century is struggling to materialize, as seen with the British army’s downsizing.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst. 

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***

The Honorable Robert M. Califf, M.D.
Commissioner
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20993

Dear Commissioner Califf and Members of VRBPAC,

As the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reviews the application for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of COVID-19 vaccines for approved use in children ages five and under, we believe there are a number of facts to be considered and questions to be asked.

This letter and the questions we raise are focused solely on the youngest of children, those ages five and under as that is the issue before the FDA and perhaps soon before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for consideration.

Public health officials and Congress recognize the importance of different approaches in addressing health care risk and disease among various populations. We believe our approach to COVID-19 should weigh these various factors as well.

A May 202 CDC study[1] reported that 68% of children 1-4 years of age are SARS-COV2 seropositive—meaning that they have previously had COVID-19. The study also found that for those 5-11 and 12-17, the rates were 77% and 74% respectively. With the Omicron wave in early 2022 and another wave in cases in April and May, it is common sense to presume that these rates are even higher now, with perhaps 80% of children across these age groups being seropositive.

The broad approach of the CDC and FDA to date has been a one-size fits all policy—get the vaccine regardless of age, risk factors, the underlying health of the individual, or previous infection. Yet, to date there remain many unanswered questions about these EUA-approved (COVID-19 vaccines and only a small percentage of the safety data about these vaccines that are in the possession of the FDA and the manufacturers has been released for review.

These mRNA vaccines lack long-term safety studies and may carry unknown long-term risks. Even with respect to near-term acute adverse reactions, the study populations for these vaccines are very small, as it was only with mass vaccinations that the FDA was able to detect serious adverse reactions, particularly among young males.

By its very definition, a one-size-fits-all approach assumes the following: the vaccine is safe and has no unknown long-term adverse effects; that small population studies are sufficient to detect near-term acute adverse reactions among young children; and even without answers to these questions the EUA vaccine is a necessary risk to approve a one-size-fits-all approach to children who have a 99.98%[2] COVID-19 survival rate.

We believe it is prudent and necessary that the FDA provide answers to a number of questions before approving EUA vaccines for children under age 5, including more than 70% of whom are already seropositive for COVID-19.

  1. Why has the FDA been so slow to release the hundreds of thousands of pages of data from pre-approval manufacturer studies, post-approval adverse events data, other post-approval manufacturer data submitted to the FDA as required by law?
  2. What is the FDA doing to expedite the release of this data and when can we expect all of the data in the FDA’s possession on these vaccines to be publicly released?
  3. Should the FDA approve EUA COVID vaccines for children under age 5, will the FDA release the data to the public with 14 days of approval that served as the basis for FDA EUA approval? If not, why not? If not within 14 days, when will the FDA release all of this data to the public?
  4. When will the FDA and CDC provide the public with more details on those children who have had the most serious adverse outcomes from COVID-19 infections? As of April 2022, the CDC reported 484[3] COVID-related deaths among children ages five and under. According to the CDC there are about 24,000[4] deaths overall in children age s0-5 annually. Each of these deaths is tragic for these families and society. As the FDA and CDC consider COVID vaccine policies, we believe it is important to understand facts related to these COVID-related deaths, including any underlying conditions that may have been a factor in their death. This is important data for parents, health care providers and public health officials so that they can make fully informed decisions about the best health care decision for each child, particularly if the child is seropositive and has no other known risks for adverse outcomes from COVID. It is also noteworthy that as the older population has seen increasing hospitalizations and death with waves of COVID cases CDC cumulative data[5] show significantly less adverse impact on children under age five even during such waves.
  5. What is the cardiac risk factor in administering these EUA COVID vaccines to children? As COVID vaccines were administered to larger numbers of those ages 5-18, public health officials began to notice a previously unknown risk factor related to cardiac inflammation, pericarditis and myocarditis in particular. Not only have there been a number of deaths but the long-term effects of those who suffered cardiac-related inflammation are as yet unquantified by public health officials.
  6. Why has the FDA recently lowered the efficacy[6] bar for COVID vaccines for youngest children? This change significantly lowers the expected benefits from any COVID vaccination recommendation for young children and is of particular concern given that over 70% of this age cohort are already seropositive. Recall that when FDA gave EUA approval to COVID vaccines for those ages 16 and older it did so based on data demonstrating over 90%[7] effectiveness in “preventing confirmed COVID infection.” We now know that the efficacy is considerably lower.
  7. The FDA decided to evaluate effectiveness of this vaccine on a measurement of neutralizing antibodies to the original SARS-CoV2 spike protein. What evidence does FDA have if any that “immunobridging” is an adequate surrogate to the disease prevention metrics used for previous EUAs? Please explain and provide us with FDA data that demonstrates the correlation between immunobridging and disease prevention comparisons between vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
  8. Is it a possibility that administering the proposed COVID vaccines in young children could predispose them to increased risk from future novel COVID variants? These COVID vaccines were developed using the original SARS-CoV-2 strain and published studies indicate that vaccine efficacy wanes[8] after subsequent doses and as new COVID variants arise in the  population.
  9. World renowned immunologist have raised concerns about the possibility of antibody-dependent enhancement phenomenon[9] (ADE) resulting from COVID vaccines, noting that ADE was a problem in earlier, unrelated COV vaccine trials. What studies has the FDA relied upon when examining the possibility of ADE resulting from EUA COVID vaccines in children ages five and under, or any age group for that matter? Will the FDA affirm with 100% certainty that ADE is not a risk factor for children receiving this vaccine?
  10. If approved and widely used among children ages five and under how many lives does FDA estimate will be saved in this age group over the next year? Given the injuries reported in the FDA’s own VAERS system, how will the FDA evaluate potential tradeoffs of serious vaccine injuries versus serious COVID outcomes?
  11. If approved what does FDA estimate will be the cost of administering these vaccines to this age group?
  12. CDC reports[10] seropositivity of 68% of children 1-4 years, 77% for those 5-11, and 74% children ages 12-17. With two additional COVID waves since this data was reported and corresponding increases in seropositivity, what percentage does FDA consider herd immunity?
  13. According to the FDA, how many children ages five and under with pre-existing medical conditions have died from COVID or its variants?
  14. According to the FDA, how many healthy children ages five and under without pre-existing medical conditions have died from COVID or its variants?
  15. According to the FDA, how many children ages five and under with pre-existing medical conditions have been hospitalized due to (not with) COVID or its variants?
  16. According to the FDA, how many healthy children ages five and under without pre-existing medical conditions have been hospitalized due to (not with) COVID or its variants?
  17. According to the FDA, how many children ages five and under with pre-existing medical conditions have required treatment due to COVID or its variants?
  18. According to the FDA, how many healthy children ages five and under without pre-existing medical conditions have required treatment due to COVID or its variants?
  19. Please list the medical emergencies of children 0 to 4 years old that enables the FDA to approve the COVID vaccine for children using its EUA.

The data show that the risks of serious adverse outcomes for COVID for children five and under is very low and as such the standard for evaluating EUA interventions must be very high.

We believe each question raised above is not just important, but essential questions for the FDA, VRBPAC and the CDC when it comes to doing a thorough job of evaluating the potential benefits and potential risks of the vaccines for which you have been asked to consider granting an Emergency Use Authorization.

Thank you for your attention to the important questions raised in this letter and we look forward to a timely and thorough response.

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Notes

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4092074

[2] https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid019-infections/children-and-covid-19-state-level-data-report/

[3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/05/17/covid-deaths-one-million-united-states/9732932002/

[4] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-08-508.pdf

[5] https://www.covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographicsovertime

[6] https://endpts.com/fdas-peter-marks-to-congress-youngest-kids-vaccine-wont-need-to-hit-50-efficacy-mark/

[7] https://www.fda.gov/media/144416/download

[8] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2119451

[9] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8512237/

[10] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4092074

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On May 13, two days after the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli Occupation Forces, as her loss still dominated international news cycles, thousands of Palestinian mourners gathered to pay tribute to the woman who had given them voice for so long. They came to lay her body to rest.

Immediately, as the funeral procession was just starting, images emerged of Israeli forces attacking the pallbearers as they attempted to carry her coffin across the courtyard from the French hospital in East Jerusalem. One of the first reports came from British-Egyptian correspondent Emir Nader with BBC News investigations, who posted footage and said on Twitter (5/13/22):

“Horrible scenes as Israeli security forces beat the funeral procession for slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the crowd momentarily lose control of her casket.”

Al Jazeera carried the funeral live on air, and the footage showing the attack was widely shared over social media. One Twitter user (5/13/22) described the video, referring to the IOF, or Israeli Occupation Force:

Everyone switch on to Al Jazeera right now. This is one of the most horrifying things I’ve seen. IOF is attacking mourners carrying Shireen’s body from the hospital right now. They’re using stun grenades and tear gas and charging at them with horses and batons.

The Intercept (5/13/22) noted the footage that unfolded on live television, stunned viewers and only “intensified the outrage over her death.” Video was quickly remixed and shared, and the article linked a 45-second video on Twitter (5/13/22) posted by Rushdi Abualouf, a Palestinian journalist working for the BBC. Described as “the closest video” of the attack, it mixed Arab instrumental music over a slowed version that show helmeted, uniformed riot police singling out pallbearers and smashing bare arms with batons as mourners struggled to keep the casket upright.

The language of obfuscation

Mirroring the euphemism-dominated coverage of Abu Akleh’s killing (FAIR.org, 5/20/22), many of the first corporate press reports employed language that mystified what was happening at the funeral.

MintPressNews editor Alan MacLeod recognized the language of obfuscation, posting a series of news headlines on Twitter (5/13/22) that transformed black-clad Israeli riot squads wantonly beating pallbearers into “clashes.” Referring to an article he wrote for FAIR (12/13/19), MacLeod (5/14/22) observed that the word “clash” is used by media “when they have to report on violence, but desperately want to obscure who the perpetrators are.”

Violence comes from nowhere, it simply erupts: CBS‘s headline (5/13/22) was, “Shireen Abu Akleh Funeral Sees Clashes Between Israeli Forces and Palestinian,” updated later that day to report that “Violence Erupts” at the funeral as Israeli forces “Confront” mourners. The Times of Israel (5/13/22) had “Violence Erupts as Journalist’s Casket Emerges From Jerusalem Hospital.” And the BBC (5/13/22) went with “Shireen Abu Akleh: Violence at Al JazeeraReporter’s Funeral in Jerusalem.”

CBS‘s language prompted one Twitter user (5/13/22) to wonder about

the best term for lies by omission, untruths couched in deliberately obfuscating language. Perhaps “willfully misleading”? Denial of facts, even gaslighting, given the footage circulating of attacks on pallbearers….

An exception was a report from Jerusalem by Atika Shubert for CNN (5/13/22) headlined, “Video Shows Israeli Police Beating Mourners at Palestinian-American Journalist’s Funeral Procession.” It opened:

Israeli police used batons to beat mourners carrying the coffin of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh…. Tear gas was fired by Israeli forces and at least one flash bomb was used.

Mondoweiss (5/13/22) pointed out that the “White House says it ‘regrets the intrusion’ into Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral, but it doesn’t condemn Israeli police actions.”

Repression as retaliatory

Reporting went from bad to worse when the Israeli government issued an official statement claiming that police had to respond to Palestinian violence. Many Western news outlets repeated the claims.

Under an early BBC video (5/13/22), after “clashes broke out” and “violence erupted,” the text read, “Projectiles are seen flying towards the police, who also fired tear gas,” and then, “Israeli police said officers at the scene were pelted with stones and ‘were forced to use riot dispersal means.’”

In a later, longer version, the BBC text (5/13/22) opened with, “Police said they acted after being pelted with stones,” and repeated, “Police said officers ‘were forced to use riot dispersal means.’” The body of the text included on-the-ground reporting that accurately described what happened, only to be followed with more back-and-forth accusations.

The descriptive reporting on the funeral attack and Israeli brutality, followed with patched, confused “balance” between Palestinian and Israeli statements–contention often going back decades–began to characterize coverage. This style of journalism presents repression surrounded in a fog of inevitability, rendering even eyewitness accounts inexplicable, without context or solution.

As many reports repeated Israeli justifications for the attacks, presenting Israeli state repression as retaliatory, the Intercept (5/13/22) refuted the official Israeli version, showing how it fabricated Palestinian violence.

On Twitter (5/13/22), activist Rafael Shimunov explained how the Israeli police account used drone video to “prove” that two of the mourners had thrown rocks at police:

But a comparison of that video to ground-level news footage showed that the police video had been edited to remove the initial police charge and slowed down to make it seem as if a man who just waved his arms in frustration had thrown something at the officers.

Shimunov concluded that the mourner had no stone, his “action was putting his body between them and Shireen Abu Akleh’s casket.” He added: “To be clear, no stone justifies attacking mourners at a funeral of a journalist assassinated by your military.”

‘This isn’t a tussle’

All the media techniques come together on a CBS video posted on Twitter (5/13/22), with overlaid text saying police “clashed” with mourners, and that the “tussling” was so bad they almost dropped the coffin. “Projectiles could be seen flying through the air as Palestinians chanted anti-Israeli slogans,” the network declared.

The response on Twitter was outrage. One user (5/13/22) replied:

This isn’t a tussle or push back. This is an occupying force abusing its power. The sooner @CBSNews calls it how it is, the sooner we can pressure change. Do better.

Another “fixed” the headline, changing “clashes” to “attacking,” and switching Abu Akleh being “killed” to “assassinated.” Another Twitter used said, “These are violent occupiers (who killed journalists prior #ShireenAbuAkleh) invading a funeral… not a ‘tussle.’” Yet another asked:

Oh clashing was it? Clashing? Very interesting choice of words for being attacked by armored thugs during a peaceful memorial for a journalist those armored thugs also murdered.

Another tweeter was “imagining the headline ‘Ukrainians left dead in Bucha after clashes with Russian forces.’”

Posting an unedited video in response to CBS, a user asked: “Why was this clip cut?… to falsify the facts of course.”

In fact, the actual footage was stunning for its clear view of one-sided violence—beginning unmistakably when helmeted Israeli forces stormed the crowd and began to beat pallbearers with batons. The pallbearers stumble and are sometimes ripped from their positions, but they never retaliate. One tries to shield his head with his arm. A man wearing jeans, tennis shoes and a sleeveless shirt kicks at the helmeted, uniformed police, trying to stop them from hitting the pallbearers. Those carrying the coffin do all they can to prevent it from falling, ignoring the blows.

Al Jazeera (5/12/22) interviewed Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, who said that Israel has a track record of creating ambiguity over social media as a strategy to “muddy the waters,” knowing that many press accounts will repeat their claims.

‘Incitement’ or expression?

Explaining the funeral attacks, the Intercept (5/13/22) reported, Israeli police “said they attacked the procession because mourners waved Palestinian flags and chanted nationalist slogans.”

NPR (5/13/22) also reported, “Police said the crowd at the hospital was chanting ‘nationalist incitement,’ ignored calls to stop and threw stones at police.” It added, citing police, that “the policemen were forced to act.” NPR went on to explain why police raided Shireen’s family home, saying they “went” there “the day she was killed and have shown up at other mourning events in the city to remove Palestinian flags.”

The CBS video (5/13/22) posted on Twitter overlaid with text also read, “Al Jazeera said Israel had warned her brother to limit the size of the funeral and told him no Palestinian flags should be displayed and no slogans chanted.” They followed with, “The network said he neglected to take that guidance given the outpouring of grief and anger over the reporter’s killing.”

No comment is made about Israeli repression of Palestinian freedom of expression. “Neglected” and “guidance” are unlikely choices of words from Al Jazeera, given that the network published a scathing piece (5/12/22) slamming Western media coverage for obscuring and denying Israel’s murder of its journalist, calling it a “whitewash.” Al Jazeera has assigned a legal team to refer the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces to the International Criminal Court (Al Jazeera, 5/27/22).

Though CNN journalist Atika Shubert (5/13/22), reporting from the funeral, acknowledged Israeli attacks, she ended by saying that the family was “told not to display the Palestinian flag, that was a special request, but as you can imagine, it’s very difficult to control these crowds,” and the flags were flying. The “request” was a raid on Abu Akleh’s family home, where flags were forcibly removed. Restrictions on flying the Palestinian flag are normalized within these stories, not exposed as violations of human rights and freedom of expression.

When US media routinely repeat without comment Israeli “reasons” for “clamping down” on any display of support for Palestinian statehood, or that Palestinians were “chanting nationalistic slogans,” amounting to “incitement,” they condone the repression of Palestinian rights, which would cause other countries to be called dictatorships, or at least authoritarian regimes. Yet Israel is still listed as a democracy. As Nolan Higdon (5/28/22) pointed out, “You Can Kill and Censor Journalists or You Can have Democracy—You Can’t Have Both!” Such attitudes toward Israeli repression of Palestinian expression are a major contradiction by US media institutions, which themselves enjoy press freedoms and should be able to recognize when those freedoms are being violated.

Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian American and Columbia University professor, told FAIR that US media are “terrified of being attacked if they don’t repeat the Israeli versions of events. They live in constant fear. This happens on the ground, and during editing.” These practices were confirmed in an article published in Slate (5/22/21) last year, when a journalist admitted having trouble “reporting the truth” from Gaza.

‘System of domination’

There are rules for occupying forces articulated by the International Committee of the Red Cross on Occupation and International Humanitarian Law (4/8/04); these prohibit the collective punishment of occupied peoples. Violent repression of nationalist slogans and the Palestinian flag violates the International Declaration of Human Rights, rights which are established for those living under occupation.

Writing for Common Dreams (5/23/22), the Institute for Policy Studies’ Phyllis Bennis and Princeton’s Richard Falk noted that Israeli forces “threw Palestinian flags to the ground and violently beat mourners—including the pallbearers.” They placed the attacks into a context of “the structural nature of Israeli violence against Palestinians,” citing an Amnesty International report on Israeli violence in the Occupied Territories characterizing it as a “Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity.”

The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and the supposedly defensive attacks on mourners are part of a “pattern of repression…far more pervasive,” and in fact codified in the country’s Law of 2018, which grants only Jewish citizens the right of self-determination. Along with Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem, Bennis and Falk concluded that this “constitutes the crime of apartheid.”

This point was made visually online by Tony Karon (Twitter, 5/13/22) , a lead editorial writer at Al Jazeera, who set pictures of South African apartheid next to Israeli attacks on the funeral with the text:

African police in ‘87 attacking the coffin of Ashley Kriel to seize the ANC flag that draped it: Israeli police attacked the coffin of #ShireenAbuAkleh today, trying to seize Palestinian flags. Apartheid regimes waging war on their victims, even after death.

US responsibility 

For decades, the United States has unconditionally provided Israel with “political, diplomatic, economic and military support,” Bennis and Falk wrote. Military subsidies alone amount to about $3.8 billion every year, “most of it used to purchase US-made weapons systems, ammunition and more. This makes the US complicit in Israel’s criminal wrongdoing.”

With 20% of Israeli’s military budget supplied by the US, “the bullet or the gun used to kill Shireen could have even been purchased from US weapons manufacturers with our own money.” The use of US military aid for repression is a violation of US law:

The Leahy Law’s restriction on military aid is unequivocal: “No assistance shall be furnished,” it says, “to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”

To date, there have been six investigations into the killing of Abu Akleh, all that find conclusive evidence that the journalist was killed by Israeli Forces. “A reconstruction by the Associated Press lends support to assertions” from both the Palestinian Authority and Abu Akleh’s colleagues, the news service (5/24/22) reported, “that the bullet that cut her down came from an Israeli gun.” CNN (5/26/22) explained, “There were no armed clashes in the vicinity,” and the text over a map reads, “Footage from the scene showed a direct line of sight towards the Israeli convoy.”

Demanding the fatal bullet

Much has been made of the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, and the Israeli demands that it must be turned over to them (New York Times, 5/12/22). This offers a last talking point for Israeli’s claim that Palestinian fighters are responsible for shooting her.

For example, when Reuters (5/26/22) reported on the investigations into her killing, it added Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s response on Twitter(5/26/22): “Any claim that the IDF intentionally harms journalists or uninvolved civilians is a blatant lie.” Reuters also included his demand that the Palestinian Authority hand over the bullet for ballistic tests to see if it matched an Israeli military gun.

Palestinian tests, noted by Reuters (5/27/22), have determined that the bullet that killed Abu Akleh “was a 5.56 mm round fired from a Ruger Mini-14 semiautomatic rifle, which is used by the Israeli military.” But Reuters followed that with the Defense minister’s claim that the “same 5.56 caliber can also be fired from M-16 rifles that are carried by many Palestinian militants,” adding: “Al-Khatib did not say how he was sure it had come from an Israeli rifle.”

As Khalidi pointed out, “Anything the Israelis say, even about an investigation, will be repeated, you will still get the Israeli version—that in the name of balance.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (5/26/22) cited the numerous reports, including the findings of the Dutch-based Bellingcat Investigative Team, confirming Israeli culpability, and joined 33 other press freedom and human rights groups calling for an independent investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing.

‘The world knows very little’

Yet on June 3, 2022, the New York Times’ editorial board wrote, “The world still knows very little about who is responsible for her death.” The wordy piece repeated every Israeli talking point, including the justification of the funeral attack, saying Israeli police “appeared to want to prevent” the funeral from becoming a “nationalist rally,” and said the officers had acted against a mob “in violation of a previously approved plan.” In other words, pallbearers and mourners were attacked for expressing political opinions and allowing Palestinian society to participate in the burial of Abu Akleh.

The Middle East Eye (6/8/22) reported that when Abby Martin, host of the Empire Files, confronted Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, she asked why there has been “absolutely no repercussions” for Israel over Abu Akleh’s killing. Blinken responded that the facts had “not been established” in the killing of the veteran Al Jazeera journalist, yet no independent investigation has been started.

Washington Post reporters (6/12/22) reviewed the audio, video, social media and witness testimony of Abu Akleh’s killing, and confirmed that an Israeli soldier likely shot and killed her. Mondoweiss (6/12/22) reported the findings, expressing hope that the report would “add pressure on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to actually demand an independent investigation and accountability.”

Yet even though the Post’s editorial board (6/13/22) referred its its own reporter’s investigation as “impressive,” it still called on the Palestinian Authority to agree to a joint investigation with Israel, with US participation. In what amounts to an attempt to control the narrative about Abu Akleh’s killing, the Post editorial cited “emotional” reasons for refusing to back calls for an international investigation, saying, “We’re skeptical such an impartial inquiry is possible given the high emotions, and low trust, that permeate global discussion of the Middle East.”

On June 14, 2022, journalist Dalia Hatuqa, who covers Israeli/Palestinian affairs, told Slate’s Mary Harris (6/14/22) that Blinken had promised Shireen’s family that there would be a full investigation, then she continued: “But honestly, nothing’s happened. It’s been a month. It’s not that hard: There’s footage, eyewitnesses, all kinds of stuff. This isn’t a mystery.”

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Robin Andersen teaches media studies at Fordham University. (Follow her @MediaPhiled).

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***

GR Editor’s Note

US threatens the world with the unthinkable, blames Russia for Ukraine, etc., whilst illegally invading, inhabiting, recruiting terrorists, stirring, stealing, destabilizing, terrorizing in Syria.

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The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), along with local citizens from the village of Al-Mujaibara, have expelled a US army convoy that tried to break into an area under the control of the Syrian government in the northeastern Hasakah governorate.

According to local sources, a US convoy of five vehicles made an attempt to cross through the village towards one of its bases in the countryside of Hasakah on 5 July. It was intercepted by locals and SAA troops, who forced the occupation troops to turn tail.

On the same day, several protests were reported in the villages of Yusufiya and Al-Junaidah in Rmelan, Hasakah, with locals blocking roads and chanting slogans against the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

This is the second time in the span of a week that Syrian troops intercept US occupation forces, as another US convoy on 1 July was stopped as it tried to make its way through the village of Qabur al-Granja in the Qamishli area.

Discontent has been growing against the US army and its proxy militias across Syria, with many protests taking place over the past year.

Tuesday’s events came just one day after a large missile strike reportedly targeted a US occupation base in Deir Ezzor governorate.

Hours before the attack, a US convoy consisting of 55 tanker trucks smuggled stolen oil from Hasakah to the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

Hundreds of trucks filled with Syrian wheat and oil have been smuggled out of the war-torn country over the past 18 months alone, forcing Damascus to rely on the solidarity of regional powers to fulfill its needs.

The presence of US forces in Syria is illegal under international law, as troop deployment in the war-torn country was implemented without the consent of Damascus or the UN.

Earlier this year, The Cradle reported that US forces transferred dozens of ISIS detainees, including high-ranking commanders, to Deir Ezzor governorate, close to the Iraqi border.

This was reportedly an attempt to ‘revive ISIS’ for the purposes of destabilizing a region that had recently been liberated by the SAA, with the help of Russian troops.

A recent report also suggests that the CIA is actively working to recruit ISIS militants imprisoned by the SDF in northeast Syria to join the fight against the Russian army in Ukraine.

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Quite likely a majority of Americans would agree that it is wrong for the government or police to torture someone, though some would surely accept the “ticking time bomb” exemption, where a detainee is withholding information that could save many lives. It is in fact illegal to torture someone as well as it being morally wrong. Indeed, it could constitute a crime against humanity or a war crime depending on circumstances. The United States, which has signed the United Nations Convention Against Torture and is bound by it, has thereby accepted legal sanctions to back up the view that torture is never permissible. Under US law, torture committed by “government officials and their collaborators upon a person restrained by the government is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison, and its fruits are inadmissible in all courts.” Given that background, one is astonished to learn that some in the government have not taken the obligation seriously. To be sure, the US has been quick to react when lower ranking officials, contractors and ordinary soldiers have reportedly been involved in torturing prisoners, as occurred with Abu Ghraib prior to 2004, but the higher one goes up the ladder of power the less do laws apply to even the most egregious misbehavior.

It has long been known that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in the wake of 9/11, resorted to torture in its overseas “black” prisons, but details of what took place and anything that would stand up in court as evidence has been difficult to discern as it has been easy for the Agency to shroud its more nefarious deeds through claims of protecting “states secrets.” But now some more details have emerged.

The news that former Donald Trump appointed CIA Director Gina Haspel during her tour overseeing a prison in Thailand in 2002 personally observed at least one terrorist suspect being tortured by waterboarding, which simulates being drowned repeatedly until a confession is obtained. Waterboarding was used by the Japanese on prisoners of war in the Second World War and was subsequently considered to be torture, a war crime.

The new information came from one of the creators of the Agency’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” program, psychologist James E. Mitchell, who was testifying in a May pretrial hearing at Guantanamo Prison relating to the treatment of Saudi al-Qaeda linked terrorist suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who has been accused of being complicit in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 American sailors. Al-Nashiri, who was shipped to Gitmo in 2006 and who has been waiting sixteen years for his trial, could face the death penalty if he is convicted. His defense is seeking to demonstrate that the evidence against him was obtained by torture and should therefore be inadmissible.

Al-Nashiri was subjected to four months of waterboarding as well as to what have been described as “other coercive techniques” during his questioning in Thailand. According to testimony, the hooded interrogators repeatedly slammed al-Nashiri’s head into a wall and forced him naked into a small confinement box. When he briefly went on a hunger strike due to his treatment he was fed rectally. It is not known how frequently Gina Haspel, the senior officer in charge of the base, observed the torture, which she allegedly watched but did not participate in, but she drafted up the classified cables detailing what had occurred and what information had been developed. Oddly, al-Nashiri was freely answering the questions from the interrogators, who recommended that the extreme measures be stopped, but CIA Headquarters insisted that the torture continue in the belief that nothing is “true” until it is verified under torture. Rather than resigning to demonstrate her disagreement, Haspel allowed the process to continue, which is why in part some of her former Agency colleagues regularly refer to her as “Bloody Gina.”

Videotapes were made of the torture but they were subsequently destroyed. Haspel participated in the November 2005 destruction of hundreds of hours of recordings contained on 92 tapes showing at least two interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. She did so while serving as chief of staff to the Director of the National Collection Service Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. At her Senate confirmation hearing as Director in 2018, she said “I would also make clear that I did not appear on the tapes.” Rodriguez, who made the decision to destroy the tapes, also reportedly determined how to handle a suspected terrorist detainee Gul Rahman. Rahman was chained, nearly naked, to a concrete floor for an extended time and then froze to death. There was an internal CIA investigation but no officer on-site nor at the Agency headquarters was punished – let alone prosecuted. In fact, Rodriguez, who was in charge of the detention site, received a $2,500 bonus for his “consistently superior work.”

The Agency currently regards the existence of the black prisons and the procedures used to elicit information as a “state secret” even though the existence of the sites is widely known and has been reported on extensively. After serving as Director of Central Intelligence Haspel retired from CIA in January 2021. She currently works for a major Washington law firm King & Spalding L.L.P., a typical transition for senior officials who are able to exploit the revolving door between government and the private sector. She reportedly is part of the firm’s Government Matters practice where she “advise[s] clients on cybersecurity and information technology, among other issues.”

Every instance of torture by the federal government or its agents is by law a separate felony. Beyond that, what went on in the Agency’s black overseas prisons is shocking even in a Washington where no crime is too low to the contemplated by the governments we have unfortunately placed into power. Some might object that Gina’s actions amounted to oversight of a dreadful necessity, but there is something particularly loathsome about a powerful Administration intelligence officer finding time to watch the horrors performed on a suspect who undoubtedly was not afforded any due process before he arrived in his cell to be experimented on by a team of modern-day Torquemadas.

The unfortunate fact is the Gina Haspel is not alone. She committed what are undeniably felonies and now enjoys a well-paid sinecure with a law firm that deals extensively with the government. One might recall similar trajectories relating to the former CIA Director George Tenet who lied America into a war with Iraq that is regarded as the greatest foreign policy failure since the Second World War. He was rewarded with a professorship at Georgetown.

And then there is his partner in crime Paul Wolfowitz, he of the fabricated intelligence, who was named head of the World Bank only to subsequently step down after an unacceptable sexual relationship with a subordinate whom he rewarded with promotions was exposed. He is now a Senior Fellow at the neocon affiliated American Enterprise Institute think tank. George and Paul just might consider how the Nuremberg Trials regarded starting a war of aggression as “the ultimate war crime.” And they might suggest a bit of retrospection from their friends George Bush, Doug Feith, Scooter Libby, and Condi Rice, all of whom have been complicit in the same infamy. And then there is Donald Trump’s assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani based on a lie that he was seeking to kill Americans. They are all doing quite well, thank you, either still active or ensconced in highly respected retirement positions, shielded by their wealth and power.

As long as there is no accountability in Washington the farce of government “of the people, and for the people” will continue. That a government can use the “secrets privilege” to conceal and avoid any consequences when killing people without any due process is despicable. If you use government resources to murder someone, you should be tried and go to prison. If you start a war through deliberate lying, you should stay in prison forever. Those who make the decisions to commit crimes are wired into the system and are in a sense bullet-proof, while the public has been completely brainwashed and the beat goes on.

Another recent story tells how the CIA was apparently planning to kill currently imprisoned journalist Julian Assange in London. It reportedly included scenarios for a possible shoot-out in the heart of the city, the ramming of Russian diplomatic vehicles and the disabling of any airplane that might be involved in an escape attempt. Who came up with that one? It dates back to 2010, when the noted constitutional lawyer Barack Obama was president. Didn’t he or his advisers know that murder is against the law?

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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EU Economies Are Down on Their Knees

July 6th, 2022 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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On July 1 at the White House, US President Joe Biden made a startling disclosure that “the idea we’re going to be able to click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline, is not likely in the near term.” 

American gas exporters have positioned themselves accordingly to fill the gap as Europe turns away from Russian imports. FT reported recently that “US liquefied natural gas producers have announced a string of deals to boost exports as the industry capitalises on shortages that have left Europe with a mounting energy crisis.” 

The deals are so lucrative that Cheniere, America’s leading gas exporter, has taken an investment decision to push ahead with a project that will boost its capacity more than 20 per cent by late 2025, anticipating long-term supply deals and locked in purchases of US gas over the coming decades. The US producers of gas are reportedly running plants flat-out to increase supplies to the EU. 

The US has overtaken Russia for the first time as Europe’s top gas supplier. Although LNG from the US is sold to Europe at much higher costs than pipeline gas from Russia, EU countries have no choice. 

With Russian supply via Nord Stream at just 40% of capacity, and deliveries to be halted completely for annual maintenance on July 11-21, the outlook for near-term Russian gas supply to Europe appears bleak. 

Germany has warned of the risk that Nord Stream gas may not return at all following the maintenance. At any rate, Russian supply to Europe is at record lows and is “set to remain constrained through the third quarter,” per S&P Global.

Germany is heading for a major economic crisis. The head of the German Federation of Trade Unions has been quoted as saying in the weekend, “Entire industries are in danger of collapsing forever because of the gas bottlenecks — especially, chemicals, glass-making, and aluminium industries, which are major suppliers to key automotive sector.” Massive unemployment is likely. When Germany sneezes, of course, Europe catches cold — not only the Eurozone but even post-Brexit Britain. 

Welcome to the European Union’s “sanctions from hell.” The US literally hustled the Europeans into the Ukraine crisis. How many times did Secretary of State Antony Blinken travel to Europe in those critical months in the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to ensure that the door to any meaningful talks with the Kremlin remained shut! And American energy companies are today making windfall profits selling gas to Europeans. Won’t Europeans have the common intelligence to realise they have been had? 

Now, Biden has washed his hands off the gas crisis. He brusquely stated at a press conference in Madrid on June 30 that such premium on oil prices will continue “as long as it takes, so Russia cannot, in fact, defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine. This is a critical, critical position for the world. Here we are.  Why do we have NATO?” 

Biden’s counterfactual narrative is that the sanctions against Russia are going to work eventually and a long war in Ukraine would be Russia’s undoing. The US narrative is that if you look under the hood of the Russian economy, it may not be flexible and resourceful enough to develop an entrepreneurial bunker spirit and adopt new business models to neutralise the sanctions. Biden is convinced that Russian economy is in the grip of industrial mafias that are not very innovative and, therefore, there aren’t many options for Russia under the western sanctions. 

Biden said in Madrid:

“Look at the impact that the war on Ukraine has had on Russia… They’ve (Russians) lost 15 years of the gains they made in terms of their economy…  They can’t even — you know, they’re having — they’re going to have trouble maintaining oil production because they don’t have the technology to do it.  They need American technology. And they’re also in a simi- — similar situation in terms of their weapons systems and some of their military systems. So they’re paying a very, very heavy price for this.” 

But even if that’s the case, how does all that help the Europeans? On the other hand, President Putin’s strategic calculations with respect to the war remain very much on track. Russian forces made indisputable progress in establishing full control over Luhansk. On Monday, Putin gave the green signal to a proposal from the army commanders to launch “offensive operations.” Five months into the war, Ukrainians are staring at defeat and Russian army generals know it.

Russia didn’t wander into Ukraine unprepared, either. Evidently, it took precautionary steps both before and since the war to shield its economy. And this enables the Russian economy to settle down to a “new normal”. Washington’s options are quite limited under the circumstances. Fundamentally, western sanctions do not address the causes of the Russian behaviour, and therefore, they are doomed to fail to solve the problem at hand. 

To be sure, Putin has some nasty surprises in store for Biden closer to the November mid-term elections. Biden blithely assumes that he controls all the variables in the situation. Schadenfreude is never a rational basis for statecraft. 

Yesterday, the strategically important Kherson region bordering Crimea formed a new government with the First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia’s Kaliningrad region heading the cabinet and Russian nationals among his deputies. Now that HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, contrary to Biden’s promise, is blasting Russian cities, expect some major Russian retaliation. 

The pathway of Russia’s offensive operations is being relaid to include Kharkov and Odessa as well, apart from Donbass. The influential Kremlin politician and chairman of Duma Vyacheslav Volodin said on Tuesday, 

“Some people are asking what our goal is and when all this will end. It will end when our peaceful cities and towns no longer come under shelling attacks. What they are doing is forcing our troops not to stop on the borders of the Lugansk and Donetsk republics (Donbass) because strikes (on Russian regions) are coming from the Kharkov regions and other regions of Ukraine.”

How long does Biden think the Europeans will want to be involved in a protracted proxy war with Russia? Bild reported on Sunday that 75% of German respondents see recent price hikes as a heavy burden, while 50% said they feel their economic conditions are worsening; every second German fears a lack of heating this coming winter due to reduced Russian gas supplies and rising inflation in the European Union. 

Yet, Biden says war will go on “for as long as it takes” and fuel shortage will continue “for as long as it takes.” The European economy is expected to start contracting over the course of the second half of 2022 and the recession may continue until the summer of 2023 at least. 

Analysts at JP Morgan Chase, the US investment bank, said last week that Russia could also cause “stratospheric” oil price increases if it used output cuts to retaliate. It said, “The tightness of the global oil market is on Russia’s side.” Analysts wrote that prices could more than triple to $380 a barrel if Russia cut production by 5m barrels a day.

Putin’s decree last week is ominous — the Kremlin taking full control of the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in Russia’s Far East. State-owned Gazprom held a 50% plus one share stake in the project and its foreign partners included Shell (27.5%), Mitsui (12.5%), and Mitsubishi (10%). The decree stipulates that Gazprom will keep its majority stake, but foreign investors must ask the Russian government for a stake in the newly created firm within one month or be dispossessed. The government will decide whether to approve any request. 

An aerial view of the liquefaction plant, part of the Sakhalin-2 liquefied natural gas project in Sakhalin, Russia, described as one of the world’s largest integrated oil & gas project. (Source: Indian Punchline)

This will unsettle energy markets further and put more strain on the LNG market, and can be seen as a move to put more pressure on the West by concurrently restricting gas supplies to Europe and creating more demand for LNG in Asia that will draw off supplies currently going to Europe. Sakhalin-2 supplies circa 4% of the global LNG market! 

The only part of the US agenda that is going well seems to be the unspoken part of it: the very same Anglo-American objectives that Lord Ismay once predicted as the rationale behind the NATO’s existence —”to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”  

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***

When Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador meets with United States President Joe Biden on July 12, he plans to once again urge the US government to drop the charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Obrador is one of the few presidents in the world, who has expressed genuine support for Assange and even offered to engage in talks about asylum in Mexico.

“If they take him to the United States and he is sentenced to the maximum penalty and to die in prison, we must start a campaign to tear down the Statue of Liberty,” Obrador said, as he referred to Assange during a press conference on July 4.

According to El País, Obrador insisted that the Statue of Liberty would “no longer be a symbol of freedom” if Assange was extradited. He maintained there could be “no silence” on the matter.

The UK government authorized Assange’s extradition on June 17. Assange’s legal team appealed the decision.

While it is a welcome development that an ally and neighboring country is challenging the US to uphold press freedom, the remarks from Obrador apparently came while deflecting criticism of Mexico from Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Mexico is one of the more dangerous countries in Latin America for journalists. RSF, which also supports Assange, condemned Mexico after “Yesenia Mollinedo, the founder and editor of the Facebook news outlet El Veraz, and Sheila Johana García, a video reporter for El Veraz,” were “gunned down in broad daylight in Cosoleacaque, in the eastern state of Veracruz.”

“[RSF] is appalled by the murders of three more reporters in less than a week in Mexico, which—subject to confirmation by RSF’s investigations—will bring the total number of Mexican journalists killed in connection with their work since the start of the year to 11,” the press freedom organization declared.

With no evidence, Obrador suggested RSF’s statement was part of a “smear campaign against the government of Mexico.”

But Obrador is not alone when it comes to invoking the Assange case to deflect responsibility. Several leaders throughout the world, including in China, Russia, and Azerbaijan, have responded to Western criticism of how their governments treat journalists by asking how the US and United Kingdom can claim to support press freedom when Assange is in jail.

Additionally, supporting Assange is a way for the Mexico government to assert its independence and breakaway from a history of US meddling and destabilization in Latin America. After all, this is partly why Ecuador President Rafael Correa granted political asylum to Assange in 2012 and allowed the WikiLeaks founder to live in the country’s London embassy.

Obrador is recognized as Mexico’s first left-wing president in decades.

In the last week of June, Obrador contended that Assange is the “best journalist of our time, in the world. And he has been, I repeat, very unjustly treated, worse than a criminal. That is a shame for the world.” He added, “Mexico opens its doors to Assange.”

Obrador, as Ben Norton recounted for Multipolarista, paused during this press conference to show a clip from the “Collateral Murder” video, which was released by US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning to WikiLeaks. The video showed a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by US soldiers in Baghdad. The troops killed two Reuters journalists and a father who stopped his van to provide aid.

The Mexico leader took a firm stand in June and refused to attend the Summit of the Americas, which was hosted by the US State Department in Los Angeles. He boycotted the summit because the leaders of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua were barred.

Obrador’s boycott inspired the leaders of Bolivia, Guatemala, and Honduras to join Mexico in giving the US government the cold shoulder. It effectively ensured the so-called democracy summit was sparsely attended and would be an entirely inconsequential gathering for all involved.

To deal with the fallout, US officials invited Obrador to the White House.

One of the earliest statements of support from Obrador came on January 3, 2020. He highlighted the US diplomatic cables that Assange published, which also came from Manning.

“I don’t know if he has recognized that he acted against rules and norms of a political system, but at the time these cables demonstrated how the world system functions in its authoritarian nature,” Lopez Obrador said. “Hopefully consideration will be given to this, and he’s released and won’t continue to be tortured.”

Obrador asked President Donald Trump to pardon Assange, but Trump was too concerned with whether senators in the Republican Party would vote to impeach him. He declined to issue a pardon.

On January 4, 2021, Obrador cheered the initial decision by a UK district court to block Assange’s extradition. He also offered asylum.

The Crown Prosecution Service ruthlessly used Obrador’s asylum offer to keep Assange in jail.

Clair Dobbin QC, a prosecutor, claimed Assange had a history of attempts to evade extradition. He was willing to live in the Ecuador embassy and might “flee” to the Mexico embassy if he believed the US government would ultimately win their appeal, she argued.

The tactic helped to persuade District Judge Vanessa Baraitser. Bail was denied two days after ruling that incarceration in the United States would lead Assange to act upon a single-minded determination to take his own life, an impulse he could not control.

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Kevin Gosztola is Managing editor of Shadowproof, host of the “Dissenter Weekly,” co-host of the podcast “Unauthorized Disclosure,” and member of Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).

Featured image: Screen shot of Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador from MILENIO broadcast of press conference on July 4, 2022 (Source)

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***

Doctors are mystified by a rash of seizures, rashes, etc. happening to 2 and 3-year-old kids.

The only thing these kids have in common is that they were given the COVID vaccine just days earlier (two to five days earlier).

The doctors cannot figure out what is causing the seizures (since it couldn’t be the vaccine since those are safe and effective). The medical staff is not permitted to talk about the cases to the press or on social media or they will be fired.

One nurse posted something to the effect of “how is this legal????” I had to paraphrase to protect the poster.

This is why you are hearing these reports from me. They can’t fire me.

There is nothing on the mainstream media about this since the nurses and doctors aren’t allowed to talk about it.

This will all come out some day, but for now, everyone is keeping quiet about it and the doctors are instructed to convince the parents that it isn’t vaccine related and that they are the only ones having the problem.

Because that’s how science works.

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Allysia Finley, a member of Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, Monday called into question the motives behind the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decision to extend emergency use of Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines to infants and toddlers.

A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial board member Monday called into question the motives behind the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to extend Emergency Use Authorization of Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines to toddlers and infants as young as 6 months old, writing that the decision was motivated by politics and pressure rather than science.

In her WSJ opinion piece — “Why the Rush for Toddler Vaccines?” — Allysia Finley wrote:

“The FDA standard for approving vaccines in otherwise healthy people, especially children, is supposed to be higher than for drugs that treat the sick.

“But the FDA conspicuously lowered its standards to approve COVID vaccines for toddlers. Why?”

Finley started her piece with a quote from President Biden, which praised the FDA’s recommendation: “This is a very historic milestone. The United States is now the first country in the world to offer safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as six months old.”

She responded, writing, “In fact, we don’t know if the vaccines are safe and effective.”

She continued:

“The rushed FDA action was based on extremely weak evidence. It’s one thing to show regulatory flexibility during an emergency. But for children, Covid isn’t an emergency.

“The FDA bent its standards to an unusual degree and brushed aside troubling evidence that warrants more investigation.”

“Mr. Biden’s hypocrisy is hard to stomach,” she wrote, listing many reasons for caution in vaccinating young children against COVID-19, including:

  • Children are at low risk of dying from COVID-19: Only 209 kids between 6 months and 4 years old have died from COVID-19 — about 0.02% of all virus deaths in the U.S. About half as many toddlers were hospitalized with COVID-19 between October 2020 and September 2021 as were hospitalized with the flu during the previous winter.
  • The two children in Pfizer’s trial who got sickest with COVID-19 also tested positive for other viruses. It’s possible that many hospitalizations attributed to COVID-19 this winter were instigated or exacerbated by other viruses.
  • The FDA authorized vaccines for toddlers based on a comparison of the antibodies they generated to the original Wuhan variant with those in young adults who had received two doses. But two doses offer little if any protection against Omicron infection in adults, and even protection against hospitalization is only around 40% to 60%.
  • Vaccinated toddlers in Pfizer’s trial were more likely to get severely ill with COVID-19 than those who received a placebo. Most children who developed multiple infections during the trial were vaccinated.

“FDA granted the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for toddlers an emergency-use authorization allowing the agency to expedite access for products that ‘prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions,’” wrote Finley.

“While adult COVID vaccines clearly met this standard in late 2020, the toddler vaccines don’t.”

As to why the FDA “rushed” and “bent its standards,” Finley suggested, “perhaps [the FDA] felt pressure from the White House as well as anxious parents.”

White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha repeatedly told parents that he expected vaccines for toddlers would be available in June, she wrote.

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Susan C. Olmstead is the assistant editor of The Defender.

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“Baby, it’s Cold Outside” is a song from the 1950s where, in contrapuntal verses, a woman explains why she must leave (“I really can’t stay”) and a man counters with a reason she should stay (“But, baby, it’s cold outside”). In light of the disruption in the global trade in oil and natural gas ensuing from the conflict in Ukraine, the last line of the song (“At least there will be plenty implied / If you got pneumonia and died”) might be a premonition of what’s to come this winter. What would be implied today is that some country or group of countries should be held accountable, should millions in Western Europe or the United States or both freeze to death this winter for lack of ability to heat their homes.

Such a dire situation is widely predicted as Russia has been reducing the amount of natural gas supplied to many NATO member countries. Because natural gas is the primary fuel used to heat homes (either directly or through gas-fired electric power plants), we don’t have to wait till winter to gauge how likely the prediction is to come true. This precognition is made possible because of the way natural gas is produced, stored, traded, and consumed.

The demand for natural gas varies greatly over the course of a year, with peak demand coming in the colder months. For instance, in the United States consumption of natural gas in the winter is around 150 bcf (billion cubic feet) per day but less than 100 bcf per day in summer. For technical reasons, the supply of natural gas is more or less constant throughout the year, currently about 100 bcf per day in the US.

Source: US Energy Information Administration

To handle the seasonal variation in the demand for natural gas, the industry stores excess gas in the warmer months, then taps the stored gas to meet the greater demand in winter. Natural gas cannot be stored in tanks like oil because of its diffuse, i.e., gaseous, nature (the tanks would need to be a degree of magnitude larger than those used to store oil). So, what the industry does is inject some of the gas they just extracted back underground during summer (using depleted fields as storage tanks) and taps the reserved gas as needed in winter.

The issue of volume does not arise with gas transported by pipeline, as the gas is pumped in its diffuse state, but it does in the case of gas transported by ship. So, for maritime transport, natural gas is converted to a liquid by lowering its temperature to -260° Fahrenheit (The volume of natural gas in its liquid state is about 600 times smaller than its volume in its gaseous state). The liquified natural gas (LNG) is converted back into a gas in regasification terminals at the tankers’ destinations.

Transport by ship is much more expensive than transport by pipeline. Hence, gas from Russia is sent to Germany through the infamous Nord Stream pipelines, not shipped across the Baltic Sea. If Europeans have to depend on LNG shipped from the United States or the Middle East this winter, it will cost them a lot more to heat their homes (Prior to the hostilities in Ukraine, Russian gas delivered by pipeline was about 40% cheaper for Europeans than LNG shipped from the United States).

More fundamental than price as to whether we or the Europeans will be freezing this winter is supply. Russia has curtailed deliveries of natural gas to several European countries and more curtailments are likely to follow if hostilities continue. The United States’ NATO allies are depending on the US to make up for any shortfalls, but is that possible? Only if the US increases production or cuts domestic consumption (so as to have more gas available for export). As to increasing production, the price natural gas is traded at on the global market has risen from around $4 last year to over $8 today. This should motivate our drillers to bring marginally profitable fields into production, though it’s unlikely that can be done in time to ameliorate any shortage this winter (Even if we had more LNG to send to Europe, the amount we could provide is constrained by a lack of enough regasification terminals there).  Reducing domestic consumption is fraught with the danger of sociopolitical turmoil (look at the chaos resulting from airlines reducing their flight schedules, which may have more to do with an unstated goal of reducing domestic consumption of jet fuel than a lack of pilots).

The interplay amongst the various factors which determine the provisioning of natural gas to consumers is too complex to go into here (even if I understood it!), but I do believe there is a simple, indicative metric which lies at the nexus of all these factors. This metric is the rate at which underground storage of natural gas is being replenished during the low demand season. Here’s a chart showing the amount of natural gas (in bcf) in underground storage in the United States over the last 3 1/2 years:

As can be seen, underground storage went from being depleted to being replenished around April 1st this year, which is normal. However, the rate of replenishment is slower than all other years (e.g., 2095 bcf in the latest week, versus 2203 bcf in 2019). If the growth in stored gas is slower than normal, it means either production is not growing apace with consumption or domestic supplies are being diverted for export.

In 2014 the amount of gas in storage hit a low of 822 bcf (in March), which caused a number of public utilities to shutter some of their power plants for lack of fuel. One electric company executive warned that we had dodged “not a bullet, but a cannonball” that year. So, keep an eye on how fast underground storage is being refilled in the coming months here. If it’s significantly slower than the 5-year average listed on the right of the chart (2429 bcf for the latest week), then bundle up, baby, because it’s going to be cold outside—and inside, too—come winter.

Below is a chart of US exports of natural gas last year and for the first three months of this year (Source: US Energy Information Administration).

Some things of note are:

(1) The increase in our exports to NATO allies (France, Spain, Turkey, UK) this year, from less than 800 bcf/yr to 2200 bcf/yr (on a projected annualized basis). Note that the increase in our exports to these countries began before hostilities in Ukraine began on Feb. 24th (compare Jan 2021 to Jan 2022: France – 4 bcf vs. 50 bcf, Spain – 7 bcf vs. 49 bcf, etc.).

(2) Exports to Brazil, Chile, India, Japan, and South Korea have dropped over the same time period, from almost 2000 bcf to 800 bcf (on a projected annualized basis). Again, the decrease began before Russia invaded Ukraine (compare Jan 2021 to Jan 2022: especially China – 39 bcf vs. 0 bcf, Japan – 64 bcf vs. 22 bcf, South Korea – 56 bcf vs. 22 bcf). To what country are these countries turning to to make up the shortfall (Russia?).

(3) Total gas exports from the US have increased from 6653 bcf in 2021 to over 7000 bcf this year (projected), while production has remained constant at around 41,000 bcf/yr and withdrawals from underground storage have increased from 1547 bcf in the first three months of 2021 to 1816 bcf in the same period this year (see this), which hints at increased pressure on our natural gas supply.

An interesting graph from Bloomberg on the price of natural gas around the world:

Note that price had risen sharply even before Russia invaded Ukraine, raising the question “Which came first?”- the Russian gas cut-offs to Europe or a price rise which led the NATO countries to feel it was time for a showdown with Russia and so they provoked one?

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This article was originally published on Ken’s Blog.

Ken Meyercord is a retired computer type living in Reston, Virginia, where he fills his ample spare time with taking fitness classes at the Y; hiking, biking, and kayaking the USA; and maintaining a blog (kiaskblog.wordpress.com) for which he has cobbled together enough tall-tales, iconoclastic views, and misinformation to generate over 80 postings. Ken has self-published four books: a treatise on economic theory, “The Ethic of Zero Growth”; a memoir of the Vietnam War years, “Draft-Dodging Odyssey” (under the penname “Ken Kiask”); a eulogy to his starry-eyed, star-crossed son, “At the Forest’s Edge” (under the son’s name: Khaldun Meyercord); and a course teaching a simplified version of English, “Ezenglish” (all available online wherever fine books are sold). In pre-COVID times he haunted think-tank events to ask provocative, iconoclastic questions (see “Adventures in Think Tank Land” on YouTube) and produced a public access TV show, “Civil Discord”, on which discordant views on controversial topics were discussed in a civil manner (episodes of the show can be viewed on YouTube; search for “Civil Discord Show”). 

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Introduction

Understanding the bizarre social and economic transformations afoot in the world today requires a considerably wider view of history than is presented in contemporary corporate media. In this present era of an emerging Bio-Nano Age, we can see, if we squint at history, the faint contours of ancient cultures practicing mystic rites, medicine, and alchemy. It is hardly a stretch of the imagination to witness traces of the mythological past expressed in the present and to see the use of symbols as integral to such practices.

Mass consent to these radical changes is due, in large measure, to powerful forms of propaganda and the effective use of key symbols working on populations terrorized consistently by authority figures issuing ominous warnings of certain societal doom. Why are signs and symbols in the hands of power structures so elemental to a particular social order?

Public consent in democratic societies necessitates that power and authority manufacture or maintain the significance of symbols that will, in the popular imagination, help regiment perception, thought, and behavior. The people must be conditioned to recognize and perceive in the symbol shared meanings, whether consciously or unconsciously, and think about or respond to them in the approved and appropriate ways. This is the job of integration and agitation propaganda — to agitate emotion and enfeeble human reason to sufficient degrees so as to integrate the mass public into approved plans of acceptable social practice.

“Because of their transcendent practical importance,” Walter Lippmann noted, “no successful leader has ever been too busy to cultivate the symbols which organize his following”. This article examines the history of the symbol as an organizing material principle of social control central to the purpose of propagandizing acceptable social practices and conditioning the masses to follow — in the present age — the dictates of an emerging bio-secure global economy. The aim is to show how symbols in ancient cultural practices wield significant influence in the new tyrannical normal and what this kind of social reproduction might portend for the future.

Ancient Concepts & Practices

Since nothing of productive value can come from chaos, efforts to organize social control are not always rooted in some hidden sinister scheme. “What privileges do within the hierarchy,” Lippmann observes, “symbols do for the rank and file. They conserve unity”. A unified people, however, can be both a blessing and a curse.

Some of the earliest recorded instances of a culturally unified response to symbols can be found in the Biblical record of Numbers. Here, it is recorded, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness of Sinai for years, and some — struck by pit vipers — were instructed to look upon a bronze serpent crafted by Moses as a symbol of Yahweh’s miraculous power to attend personally to the afflicted. Though the faithless masses had failed to see their own offence of unbelief — even as they had witnessed their own unlikely freedom from bondage — Yahweh made a way to atone. The overtly futile act of simply gazing upon a bronze serpent for an ailing Israelite, immensely humbled, served as a material lesson in the curative powers of repentance.

The symbol of the serpent in time became a powerful point upon which to focus attention for necessary healing. “From the totem pole to the national flag, from the wooden idol to God the Invisible King, from the magic word to some diluted version of Adam Smith or Bentham,” Lippmann says “symbols have been cherished by leaders, many of whom were themselves unbelievers, because they were focal points where differences merged”.

Over the years, however, the bronze serpent also became for the Israelites a mysterious expression of magic that, for them, morphed eventually into an idol of worship. The story of the cult of the serpent cautions us to consider today the claims of corruptible mortals who, with overweening pride, arrogate to themselves unassailable powers of complete healing.

In ancient Greek narratives, too, the serpent figured prominently in the development of medical practice. The Staff of Aesculapius, an ancient Greek symbol of healing and medicine, depicts a serpent entwined around a wooden sceptre. The symbol is associated with the Greek demigod Ascleplius, a master healer who, according to legend, acquired his powers through the whispering of snakes.

The medicinal power of snakes in myth and scripture is said to emanate from the dual ability of their venom to both kill and heal, just as drugs can poison or cure and incisions wound or repair. Biblically, whether the serpent exerted its deadly or curative power rested with the faith of the follower. According to Moses’ account, the snakes that plagued the Israelites served as chastisement for their loss of belief in Him who had called them out of captivity. Cure for the deadly snake bites came only by virtue of faith in Moses’ bronze serpent, which brought healing through the redemption of restored faith. Thus, the serpent’s medicinal power is historically infused with penance for sin, and salvation through a return to devotion.

In these ways, the serpent and the staff combine the authority of a king’s sceptre and the magic of a wand with the menacing creature whose deadly venom turns magically medicinal in the hands of a saintly healer. Together, the two symbols signify an alchemical transformation of the flesh from condemnation to redemption, poison to potion, curse to cure and death to life, through faithful belief in the anointed staff-bearer.

Current Concepts & Practices

Image on the right: Steffen Heilfort, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

As Lippmann notes, “the leader knows by experience that only when symbols have done their work is there a handle he can use to move a crowd. In the symbol emotion is discharged at a common target, and the idiosyncrasy of real ideas blotted out”. Consistent exposure to society’s key signs and symbols in education, advertising, and public discourse conditions us to heed the warnings offered by authorities who embody the associated “mythologies” of contemporary medical practice. In this sense, the individual’s psyche is subdued and with it each unique human perspective and idea subordinated to the plans and demands of leadership.

The Staff of Aesculapius is today an internationally recognised symbol of medicine. Just as Moses and the temple of Asclepius brought physical transformation and staved off death, so too do doctors in today’s medical temple — the hospital — whose powers of healing may appear equally as miraculous. We, as anesthetized patients, may be put to sleep in one broken physical state and awakened to another renewed. We enter a doctor’s office bearing suffering and exit with a recipe for relief. Our doctors fathom the mysteries of the invisible world inside our bodies, our cells, our organs, our brains, with nearly magical insights divined from arcane realms of knowledge known only to the initiated. They make us better, stronger, safer, and keep us alive. We sin. We eat too much, we drink too much, we sit too much, we become too stressed. Our doctors redeem us. They forgive us. Our only responsibility is to trust them and to do what they say without question. Follow doctors’ orders.

As a key symbol of medicine, the Staff of Aesculapius codes for these medicinal and healing powers, and for the roles and relationships that sustain them, with all the attendant expectations those roles require, on our doctors and ourselves. Doctors are expected to know and understand. The lay public are not. Doctors are expected to lead. We are expected to follow. Doctors are expected to be god-like. We are expected to place our life in their hands.

Under the current invocation of serpent and staff, since the advent of the COVID-19 narrative and the global medicalisation of politics, the roles and responsibilities of doctors have been fused with those of the state. Medical interventions have morphed into political expedients implemented by the world’s powerbrokers on a worldwide scale. The doctor-patient relationship has migrated from the interpersonal privacy of the doctor’s office to a geopolitical stage. Along with it, the archetypal good-liness and godliness of doctors (hand-selected by The State and The Plutocracy) has been projected onto our governing institutions and authorities. Whole societies are now cast in corporate media as vectors of infectious disease wards, and citizens as patients whose primary responsibility is not to be functioning members of society but merely potential carriers of pathogens. The new role foisted upon citizens is that of the perpetual patient who follows, without question, the doctor’s orders synthesized in the orders of the state.

Image below: World Health Organization, public domain

Thus, under the blue and white staff of Aesculapius, the citizen-patient’s unquestioning faith is summoned from on high by the World Health Organization. Of course, we cannot help but recall a corollary during the post-9/11 hysteria when Tucker Carlson claimed that David Ray Griffin’s critical analysis of the official 9/11 Report was “blasphemous and sinful.” Perhaps one of the main permutations of this present form of “unquestioned fealty to authority” is that it is now a call for global deference rather than a deification of nationalism.

With social interactions medicalised today, the social contract and the very nature of citizenship — and even human existence — has been radically restructured in the name of the pandemic, the virus, and the holy ‘case’. The high priests of politico-medical alchemy call all adherents to publicly signal the latest virtues of devotion to the state: “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science,” sayeth Anthony Fauci, posing as Moses.

Thus, the mere mortal, whose FDA and its brethren receive billions from, and enjoy patent and profit rights to, the pharmaceutical giants and products they purportedly oversee, elevates himself from a lowly human prone to greed, grandiosity and power-hunger, to a status on par with an infinite order underpinning reality itself: The Science™. Obedient disciples of the vaccination cult of COVID-19, with its official state-sanctioned rites and remedies for healing, can purchase devotional candles casting Fauci as a holy being, and even, reportedly, view the objects of veneration on his own bookshelf.

This cult of personality, as Mark Crispin Miller observes, is reinforced by the celebrity hero-worship of Anthony Fauci. Although public support for the cult appears to be waning somewhat, as of this writing, we suspect that its influence and presence will re-emerge during whatever “next one … will get attention”, just as Gates had forewarned.

Trump White House Archived, Public domain

In this reconfigured global order founded on governance-by-health-emergency and health czar, the politico-medical prescription is drawn not from the repository of medicine but from that of totalitarianism, in the form of social control, with the dispensaries our social institutions: schools, police, the military, the media and the courts. Heavy doses of censorship and oppression are administered daily; strict adherence to the political regimen in medical disguise is imposed. Questions, critical thought, debate, and dissent threaten to neutralise the prophylactic control mechanisms and are assessed as public health threats to be eradicated. The active citizen, the beating heart of democracy, is the noncompliant patient who must be restrained. For their own good. Only following doctor’s orders.

Symbolically and archetypally, to question the word of public health bodies in this context is to question the word of the Lord: it is a feeble uninformed attempt by the unwashed masses to strip the staff-bearer and serpent-tamer of their godly powers. Dissent, the currency of a vibrant democracy, becomes blasphemy. Curiosity and critical questioning become heresy. Disrobing the high priests of political medicine leaves the faithful forsaken and unprotected, at the mercy of certain death in the viral wilderness, as the Israelites plagued by serpents in the Sinai. By these symbolic mechanisms, the medical bureaucracy of today assumes the role of the Holy Roman Empire in Galileo’s age. Unbelievers who seek to hold their governing institutions accountable are sinners who must be shunned and excommunicated. Scientists bearing evidence and reason are heretics to be damned.

Future Concepts & Practices

That this fundamental restructuring of governance and citizenship unfolded in 2020 is worthy of note. 2020 is the year that had been earmarked by the national security state as the commencement of a Bio-Nano Age. This new Bio-Nano era was to be ushered in under social and economic disruption that would pave the way for innovations including tele-everything, genetic modification of human beings, AI, synthetic biology, smart dust, cyborgs, and nanotags, for “everything, everywhere”. The endeavour, outlined in a 2001 NASA document citing DARPA, the CIA, DIA, the Australian Defence Department, NASA itself, and others, amounted to a roadmap toward a transhumanist future.

If the serpent that beguiled Eve in the Garden of Eden was a key symbol of supernatural deception, it is ironic that the symbol serves today in this global movement toward a hyperrational transhumanism. The ideology, in fact, has an ancient past grounded in man’s wish to live forever — to transcend by his own power the physical limitations of the flesh. To reach this unattainable goal, faithful adherents believe the human body must be “upgraded”  through technological innovations. Transhumanism can be understood today as a global scientific and social movement focused on the development of technologies aimed at enhancing the human condition. Practitioners summon the alchemical powers of biotech to integrate human beings with new technologies that “upgrade” sense perception, cognitive capacity, and to solve issues in maintaining constant connectivity to the “global central nervous system” — the internet.

As the head of the World Economic Forum has suggested consistently over the years, we must all prepare for a future that sees the convergence of biological life, synthetic technologies, and digital currencies.

This sort of future, however, is unfolding now. In the context of COVID-19 ‘vaccines’, Broudy and Kyrie trace the connections between COVID-19 and NASA’s Bio-Nano blueprint. They note that the mRNA technology rolled out in response to SARS-CoV-2 bears transhumanist footprints, from its origins with DARPA, the US Defense Department’s R&D arm, and NASA’s Bio Nano collaborator, to mRNA technology’s transhumanist applications in genetic engineering and nano-biology, to the fact that key actors behind both transhumanist research and COVID-19 interventions are one and the same.

Should 2020 have delivered on the national security state’s roadmap for social disruption, heralding a new Bio-Nano transhumanist age, the compliant patient-citizen is today’s perfect creature made fit for a post-human tomorrow. Primed for worship and blind faith, the all-too-human devotees offer up their arms, and those of their children, in a self-sacrificial ritual of obeisance and virtue. No questions asked. For the betterment of humankindIn the name of Pfizer.

The good patient-citizen takes their politico-medical sacrament by donating their body to science, shot by shot, booster by booster in infinitude for purification and atonement. Practicing the rite of receiving a piercing puncture and risking a life-altering injury atones for the original sin of an unclean, diseased, infectious bodily state. The infusion with state-of-the-art nanoparticle gene-based agents cleanses, at the molecular level, all biochemical traces of selfish human indulgence from the sins of social intercourse: travel, work, friendship, love, conversation, affection, sex, reproduction. Thus, man as a carbon-based life form can practice in self-righteous faith the new state rituals of self-loathing and self-denial by despising, as he is instructed to do, his own carbon footprint. Furthermore, the pain of the injection site, the fatigue, the headaches, the nausea, the blood clots, the heart attacks, the strokes, all hallowed suffering — marks of martyrdom — punish the flesh to chase out the demons of infectiousness.

The needle in this context becomes the instrument of a holy flagellant act, a symbol of the virtue of self-sacrifice and the miracle of medicine. Smallpox, polio and diphtheria all exorcised by the magic of the jab. The ultimate real-world impact of the vaccination campaign against COVID-19 matters not, even as it is revealed to be snake oil in the premier medical journal the Lancet. It is the act of submission to the needle that keeps the faith alive, the magic of medicine intact, and viral damnation at bay. The mask, in all its futility and discomfort, symbolises the humiliation and shame of the perpetually fallen and infectious human state.

As a first psychological step toward transhumanism, the imposition of regular and routine genetic nanoparticle-based injections may seem like a small step for humankind, but it is a giant leap for synthetic biology. The zealous disavowal of natural immunity in response to COVID-19, contrary to evidence and pure reason, has not only fuelled the Cult of Vaccinatus, but has opened the door to perpetual improvement upon the natural human state, via synthetic immunity, in genetic bio-nano form.

The underlying psychological erasure of our human biology (natural immunity) has fostered mass consent to a foundational shift toward perpetual (six monthly) injectable technological, bio-nano upgrades, in the guise of vaccines. Thus, the symbol of Aesclepius has served its global masters by mobilising emotions capable of nudging humanity ever closer to a transhumanist existence. The staff and serpent have, thereby, functioned as a symbolic camouflage of sorts, behind which those directing bio-nano tyranny can hide: the refuge of mad scientists.

Conclusion

As we suggested at the outset, symbols are central to the organization of disparate peoples pursuing conflicting interests. Stanley Milgram had famously contemplated the symbolic powers of fascist authority embodied in official lab coats calmly handling clipboards, taking notes, and issuing insights on how to conduct this or that experiment or examination. He had wondered how perfectly ordinary people, seemingly possessed of sound mind and intellect, could obey orders to participate explicitly or tacitly in the slaughter of millions of their fellow human beings.

Milgram’s experiments were horrifying because they confirmed not just the banality of evil, but the power of symbols to embody the connotations of accepted authority. When used in the right situations among people sufficiently primed to receive directions or commands, symbols represent key focal points of attention where the masses can direct shared emotions at material forms of official power or disgust.

As with Nazi Germany when Jewish people were recast in public discourse as vermin to be marginalized then eradicated, so too do we see today in state-corporate propaganda the casting of recalcitrant masses as infectious rodents rejecting mandates with untested mRNA platforms. Like the serpent’s venom, the lauded mRNA technology comes with the threat of death. It is only, however, the positive connotations associated with the WHO’s ubiquitous serpent and staff that are reinforced daily in corporate media.

The aim in this purposeful repetition is to organize a global following under the banner of the WHO, with the compliant passivity of a medicalised social order. As history shows, because symbols serve to organise and subordinate people to a common cause, and because they are so common to human experience, their significance to our willing submission goes largely unnoticed, leaving the subliminal imagery to whisper, instead, to our unconscious mind, like the somnambulance of a hypnotist’s trance.

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This article was originally published on Propaganda in Focus.

With a doctorate in applied psycholinguistics and experience as an imagery analyst, Daniel Broudy lectures in areas ranging from communication theory to visual rhetoric and from composition to rhetorical grammar. His research focuses on sounds, symbols, signs, images, and colors as tools deployed by centers of power to shape knowledge and influence human perception and emotion. Selections of his scholarly work can be found at ResearchGate. Daniel is an Associate Researcher with the Working Group on Propaganda and the 9/11 Global ‘War on Terror’.

Working in the areas of political psychology, the psychology of atrocity, and psychological operations, Valerie Kyrie holds a doctorate in psychology on the topic of reality-perception and its manipulation. She has contributed to work in the areas of international human rights, media, advocacy and policy, focusing on the deceptions, tactics and machinations underpinning collective violence and atrocity. Her most recent work analyses bio-tech intrusions on human biology. Valerie is an Associate Researcher with the Working Group on Propaganda and the 9/11 Global ‘War on Terror’.

Featured image: Eugène Roger, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

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***

Russia’s contribution to India’s reestablishment as one of the world’s great powers cannot be overstated. This is especially true when it comes to the Asian giant’s military, which according to various estimates uses up to 85% of Soviet and Russian weapons and equipment in its massive arsenal. This close strategic partnership has been going on for decades and has survived the end of the (First) Cold War. Even throughout the troublesome 1990s, Russia provided critical technology transfers, ensuring India’s military and technological lead in the Global South. One of the most prominent examples (and one of the cornerstones) of this cooperation is the Su-30MKI multirole fighter jet, forming the backbone of the Indian Air Force, the fourth largest in the world, operating approximately 2,200 aircraft.

The Su-30MKI is based on Russia’s legendary Su-27 “Flanker” air superiority jet. Started as a joint venture between Russian Sukhoi (now part of the United Aircraft Corporation) and Indian Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, a state-owned aerospace corporation, the jet is being manufactured in India under license in one of the production facilities of the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), where the Indian state-owned corporation receives preproduction parts, better known as “completely knock downed” (CKD) kits produced in Russia’s Irkutsk aircraft plant. The joint project is being carried out under the successful “Make in India” program, which has seen numerous technology transfers and helped India’s domestic military-industrial sector grow exponentially.

Russia has been the first to accept India’s requests in the framework of the “Make in India” program and has supported the Asian giant in establishing a robust domestic military production and design capability. Technology transfers between Russia and India include everything from assault rifles to advanced aircraft and missile technology, including the latest hypersonic weapons. This [М1]  cooperation has been instrumental in not just ensuring India’s security, but also establishing the Asian giant as one of the premier global military powers. Thus, India chose to continue the close cooperation, despite ongoing attempts to diversify its arms procurement and create an even more independent domestic Military-Industrial Complex.

Russia and India are also continuing their close cooperation and will carry out joint work on modernizing the multirole jet, including the integration of the latest weapons and avionics. According to various reports, India is planning to upgrade its Su-30MKI fighters with Russian Phazotron Zhuk-AE AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radars and other next-generation advanced sensors. Although the details of any upgrade negotiations and possible agreements are a state secret, a number of reports indicate that the upgrades may also include the Saturn AL-41F1S afterburning turbofan 3D thrust-vectoring jet engines, used on the advanced Russian Su-35S air superiority/multirole fighter jets. Other upgrades are likely to include the integration of various air-to-air, air-to-ground and anti-ship missiles, giving the Su-30MKI multirole capabilities which are unrivaled anywhere in the Global South.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the maiden flight of the Su-27 fighter prototype developed by the legendary Pavel Osipovich Sukhoi himself, founder of the Sukhoi Design Bureau, paving the way for the emergence of not just the Su-27 and its variants, but also the Su-30 and Su-35 air superiority/multirole fighter jets, in addition to the Su-34 fighter-bombers. The Su-30 itself has been one of the most successful jets in the world in recent decades, seeing the development of multiple variants and international orders from Latin America to Southeast Asia. In addition to the Russian Aerospace Forces, the Su-30’s global customers include India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Algeria, Angola, Uganda, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Venezuela, with Iran and Argentina reportedly showing interest in acquiring the advanced jet.

Since the early 2000s, Sukhoi has delivered approximately 700 Su-27/Su-30 fighter jets to the global market, with avionics, engines, sensors, systems, weapons and other components all produced in Russia. According to Alexander Mikheev, Director General of Rosoboronexport, Russia’s main weapons export agency, over the past 10 years, “the share of aircraft supplies in Russia’s total arms exports has stood at 40-50%, and even exceeds this figure today.” Due to its “open architecture” design, the Su-30 can integrate foreign-made avionics and weapons systems, with customers being able to integrate locally-made weapons and other systems to customize the fighters in accordance with their requirements.

This is especially useful for India and its “Make in India” program, which has integrated a number of domestically designed and produced components on its Su-30MKI jets, in addition to French and Israeli systems, subsystems and avionics. No other jet in the world comes even close to the modularity of the Su-30, making it a very sought-after weapons platform, ensuring the customer’s sovereignty and independence. What’s more, the Russian jet comes with no political baggage and blackmail, unlike many other weapons designed and produced in the countries of the political West, which is precisely what countries like India need, as they are working to establish a more optimized and independent military production capabilities.

*

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

Video images captured the horrific actions of Moroccan security forces armed and trained by the United States through the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and working on behalf of the Spanish government, systematically beating and slaughtering African migrants on June 24, 2022. The migrants’ only crime was attempting to cross from Morocco to Europe via the Spanish held enclave of Melilla. For that, at least 39 human beings were beaten to death, as recorded by the NGO Walking Borders. This racist barbarism by a U.S.-backed neo-colonial regime and the lack of swift and unambiguous condemnation by the U.S. State demonstrates, yet again, that human life, especially African lives hold no value for U.S. officials. 

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) denounces first, the Moroccan government’s security forces and the Spanish government for their collaboration in this massacre and their ongoing dehumanizing treatment of African asylum seekers. We must note that, as the Moroccan police were beating and hog-tying the African migrants, AFRICOM was carrying out “Operation African Lion” – military exercises in Morocco with more than 7,500 troops from Western nations and African neo-colonies. Soon after, NATO nations (the coterie of U.S. minions) held their meeting in Spain, with no acknowledgement of the massacre.

We especially condemn the United States government for its unmitigated hypocrisy in claiming that its presence and policies in Africa are to “promote regional security, stability, and prosperity.” The only securing and stabilizing AFRICOM and U.S. policy are doing in Africa are for the prosperity of international finance capital and hegemony of U.S. interests. We know that U.S. militarism – which guarantees European imperialism on the African continent, while giving cover to the repressive actions of neo-colonial states such as Morocco – will continue to be the main cause of escalating violence for the African people.

“All evidence suggests that U.S. militarism and training of police, and other repressive forces in Africa has only intensified death and destruction;” says Netfa Freeman, Co-Coordinator of BAP’s Africa Team 

BAP extends solidarity to all the African migrants and their families, victims of the brutal racist attack. We also demand a full independent investigation and indictment of the actions of Morocco, Spain, and the U.S. And we demand, once again, that the U.S. get out of Africa and that NATO and AFRICOM be shut down!

The Black Alliance for Peace calls on all anti-imperialists to join the U.S. Out of Africa Network to help us achieve this imperative.

U.S. Out of Africa!

Shut Down AFRICOM!

*

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***

No one should get used to their rights. Predicting with certainty which ones, if any, will go, or when, is impossible.”—Mary R. Ziegler, legal historian

The Supreme Court has spoken: there will be no consequences for cops who brutalize the citizenry and no justice for the victims of police brutality.

Although the Court’s 2021-22 rulings on qualified immunity for police who engage in official misconduct were largely overshadowed by its politically polarizing rulings on abortion, gun ownership and religion, they were no less devastating.

The doctrine of qualified immunity was intended to insulate government officials from frivolous lawsuits, but the real purpose of qualified immunity is to ensure that government officials are not held accountable for official misconduct.

In Egbert v. Boule, the Court gave total immunity to Border Patrol agents who beat up a bed-and-breakfast owner, in the process carving out a massive exception to the Fourth Amendment for border police (and by extension, other federal police) who unconstitutionally use excessive force. As journalist Ian Millhiser concludes, “Egbert v. Boule is a severe blow to the proposition that law enforcement must obey the Constitution.”

In Cope v. Cogdill, the Court let stand a Fifth Circuit ruling that granted qualified immunity to jail officials who watched a suicidal inmate strangle himself without intervening or calling for help. Likewise, in Ramirez v. Guadarrama, the Court let stand a lower court ruling granting qualified immunity to police officers who fired their tasers at a suicidal man who had doused himself in gasoline, causing the man to burst into flames.

Both Cope and Ramirez move the goal posts for the kind of misconduct that merits qualified immunity, suggesting that even sheer incompetence is excusable when it involves a cop.

It’s a chilling reminder that in the American police state, ‘we the people’ are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”

This is how unarmed Americans keep dying at the hands of militarized police.

Under the guise of qualified immunity, there have been no consequences for police who destroyed a private home by bombarding it with tear gas grenades during a SWAT team raid gone awry, or for the cop who mistakenly shot a 10-year-old boy after aiming for and missing the non-threatening family dog, or for the arresting officer who sicced a police dog on a suspect who had already surrendered.

Qualified immunity is how the police state stays in power.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982) that suing government officials for monetary damages is “the only realistic avenue” of holding them accountable for abusing their offices and violating the Constitution, it has ostensibly given the police and other government agents a green light to shoot first and ask questions later, as well as to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts.

Whether it’s police officers breaking through people’s front doors and shooting them dead in their homes or strip searching motorists on the side of the road, these instances of abuse are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to virtually every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution.

Make no mistake about it: this is what constitutes “law and order” in the American police state.

These are the hallmarks of a police state: where police officers, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

Unfortunately, we’ve been traveling this dangerous road for a long time now.

A review of critical court rulings over the past several decades, including rulings affirming qualified immunity protections for government agents by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order, protecting the ruling class, and insulating government agents from charges of wrongdoing than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Indeed, as Reuters reports, qualified immunity “has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights.” Worse, as Reuters concluded, “the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police.”

For instance, police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless searches. In Anderson v. Creighton, the Supreme Court ruled that FBI and state law enforcement agents were entitled to qualified immunity protections after they were sued for raiding a private home without a warrant and holding family members at gunpoint, all in a search for a suspected bank robber who was not in the house.

Police can claim qualified immunity for using excessive force against protesters. In Saucier v. Katz, the Court ruled in favor of federal law enforcement agents who forcefully tackled a protester as he attempted to unfurl a banner at Vice President Gore’s political rally. The Court reasoned that the officers acted reasonably given the urgency of protecting the vice president.

Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a fleeing suspect in the back. In Brosseau v. Haugen, the Court dismissed a lawsuit against a police officer who shot Kenneth Haugen in the back as he entered his car in order to flee from police. The Court ruled that in light of existing case law, the cop’s conduct fell in the “hazy border between excessive and acceptable force” and so she did not violate clearly established law.

Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a mentally impaired person. In City of San Francisco v. Sheehan, the Court ruled in favor of police who repeatedly shot Teresa Sheehan during the course of a mental health welfare check. The Court ruled that it was not unreasonable for police to pepper spray and shoot Sheehan multiple times after entering her room without a warrant and encountering her holding a knife.

Police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits. In Plumhoff v. Rickard, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that police officers who used deadly force to terminate a car chase were immune from a lawsuit. The officers were accused of needlessly resorting to deadly force by shooting multiple times at a man and his passenger in a stopped car, killing both individuals.

Police can stop, arrest and search citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. In a 5-3 ruling in Utah v. Strieff, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively gave police the go-ahead to embark on a fishing expedition of one’s person and property, rendering Americans completely vulnerable to the whims of any cop on the beat.

Police officers can stop cars based on “anonymous” tips or for “suspicious” behavior such as having a reclined car seat or driving too carefully. In a 5-4 ruling in Navarette v. California, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that police officers, under the guise of “reasonable suspicion,” can stop cars and question drivers based solely on anonymous tips, no matter how dubious, and whether or not they themselves witnessed any troubling behavior. Then in State v. Howard, the Kansas Supreme Court declared that motorists who recline their car seats are guilty of suspicious behavior and can be subject to warrantless searches by police. That ruling, coupled with other court rulings upholding warrantless searches and seizures by police renders one’s car a Constitution-free zone.

Americans have no protection against mandatory breathalyzer tests at a police checkpoint, although mandatory blood draws violate the Fourth Amendment (Birchfield v. North Dakota). Police can also conduct sobriety and “information-seeking” checkpoints (Illinois v. Lidster and Mich. Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz).

Police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime. In Maryland v. King, a divided U.S. Supreme Court determined that a person arrested for a crime who is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty must submit to forcible extraction of their DNA. Once again the Court sided with the guardians of the police state over the defenders of individual liberty in determining that DNA samples may be extracted from people arrested for “serious” offenses. The end result of the ruling paves the way for a nationwide dragnet of suspects targeted via DNA sampling.

Police can use the “fear for my life” rationale as an excuse for shooting unarmed individuals. Upon arriving on the scene of a nighttime traffic accident, an Alabama police officer shot a driver exiting his car, mistakenly believing the wallet in his hand to be a gun. A report by the Justice Department found that half of the unarmed people shot by one police department over a seven-year span were “shot because the officer saw something (like a cellphone) or some action (like a person pulling at the waist of their pants) and misidentified it as a threat.”

Police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes.” In Florida v. Harris, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court determined that police officers may use highly unreliable drug-sniffing dogs to conduct warrantless searches of cars during routine traffic stops. The ruling turns man’s best friend into an extension of the police state, provided the use of a K-9 unit takes place within a reasonable amount of time (Rodriguez v. United States).

Not only are police largely protected by qualified immunity, but police dogs are also off the hook for wrongdoing. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a police officer who allowed a police dog to maul a homeless man innocent of any wrongdoing.

Police can subject Americans to strip searches, no matter the “offense.” A divided U.S. Supreme Court actually prioritized making life easier for overworked jail officials over the basic right of Americans to be free from debasing strip searches. In its 5-4 ruling in Florence v. Burlington, the Court declared that any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials, which involves exposing the genitals and the buttocks. This “license to probe” is now being extended to roadside stops, as police officers throughout the country have begun performing roadside strip searches—some involving anal and vaginal probes—without any evidence of wrongdoing and without a warrant.

Police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home. In an 8-1 ruling in Kentucky v. King, the U.S. Supreme Court placed their trust in the discretion of police officers, rather than in the dictates of the Constitution, when they gave police greater leeway to break into homes or apartments without a warrant. Despite the fact that the police in question ended up pursuing the wrong suspect, invaded the wrong apartment and violated just about every tenet that stands between us and a police state, the Court sanctioned the warrantless raid, leaving Americans with little real protection in the face of all manner of abuses by police.

Police can use knock-and-talk tactics as a means of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment. Aggressive “knock and talk” practices have become thinly veiled, warrantless exercises by which citizens are coerced and intimidated into “talking” with heavily armed police who “knock” on their doors in the middle of the night. Andrew Scott didn’t even get a chance to say no to such a heavy-handed request before he was gunned down by police who pounded aggressively on the wrong door at 1:30 a.m., failed to identify themselves as police, and then repeatedly shot and killed the man when he answered the door while holding a gun in self-defense.

Police can carry out no-knock raids if they believe announcing themselves would be dangerous.Police can perform a “no-knock” raid as long as they have a reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence, under the particular circumstances, would be dangerous or futile or give occupants a chance to destroy evidence of a crime (Richards v. Wisconsin). Legal ownership of a firearm is also enough to justify a no-knock raid by police (Quinn v. Texas). For instance, a Texas man had his home subject to a no-knock, SWAT-team style forceful entry and raid based solely on the suspicion that there were legally-owned firearms in his household. The homeowner was actually shot by police through his closed bedroom door.

Police can recklessly open fire on anyone that might be “armed.” Philando Castile was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop allegedly over a broken taillight merely for telling police he had a conceal-and-carry permit. That’s all it took for police to shoot Castile four times in the presence of his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter. A unanimous Supreme Court declared in County of Los Angeles vs. Mendez that police should not be held liable for recklessly firing 15 times into a shack where a homeless couple had been sleeping because the grabbed his BB gun in defense, fearing they were being attacked.

Police can destroy a home during a SWAT raid, even if the owner gives their consent to enter and search it. In West v. Winfield, the Supreme Court provided cover to police after they smashed the windows of Shaniz West’s home, punched holes in her walls and ceilings, and bombed the house with so much tear gas that it was uninhabitable for two months. All of this despite the fact that the suspect they were pursuing was not in the house and West, the homeowner, agreed to allow police to search the home to confirm that.

Police can suffocate someone, deliberately or inadvertently, in the process of subduing them. “I can’t breathe” has become a rallying cry following the deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd, both of whom died after being placed in a chokehold by police. Dozens more have died in similar circumstances at the hands of police who have faced little repercussions for these deaths.

Clearly, 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 system is rigged.

Because the system is rigged, because the government is corrupt, and because the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently chosen to protect the police at the expense of the people, we are dealing with a nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat.

This is how “we the people” keep losing.

*

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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.

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***

An Emirati-Israeli group brought a delegation to Israel in May that included Pakistani nationals and Pakistani Americans.

Israel and Pakistan have no formal relations. Every Pakistani passport bears the inscription, “This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel.”

Still, the 15-member delegation appears to be part of an effort to pressure Pakistan into recognizing Israel – something that would violate one of Pakistan’s core political principles since its founding.

Trip to promote Israel

The trip was organized by Sharaka, a shadowy group that says it has offices in the United Arab Emirates and Israel that was formed after the so-called Abraham Accords.

These are the deals brokered by the US between Israel and several Arab states since 2020 – despite the popular opposition of citizens of those countries to normalizing relations with Tel Aviv.

The Washington-based American Muslim and Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council (AMMWEC) also helped arrange the junket.

Anila Ali, president of AMMWEC and now a board member of Sharaka, led the delegation.

A Pakistani-born US citizen, Ali describes herself as a “centrist Democrat” who previously served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

She is a long-time defender of Israel who has repeatedly characterized Palestinians as “terrorists.”

Her organization lists among its “partners” the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, several police departments and Hillel, a national US Jewish organization which boasts that Israel, an apartheid state, “is at the heart” of all of its work.

While claiming to offer a welcoming home to Jews on American campuses, Hillel boycotts Jews and non-Jews who disagree with its hardline pro-Israel positions.

AMMWEC also partners with the Anti-Defamation League, an Israel lobby group that plays a major role in attacking and smearing Palestinians and supporters of their rights.

The delegation Ali led met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, to whom Ali gifted a book written by her father – a biography of Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a staunch opponent of Zionism.

“The delegates spoke to the president about their efforts to develop relationships with Israel,” AMMWEC said.

It “was an amazing experience because we haven’t had a group of Pakistani leaders in Israel ever in such scope,” Herzog later told the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“And that all stemmed from the Abraham Accords, meaning Jew and Muslim can dwell together in the region, of course with Christians who live in the region and Druze and other religions.”

The delegation went to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

They also visited the al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem – a frequent site of attacks by Israeli forces on Palestinian worshippers.

Fury in Pakistan

The trip caused outrage in Pakistan, where solidarity with Palestine has always been a foundational principle.

The delegation included Pakistani journalist Ahmed Quraishi and Jewish Pakistani Fishel BenKhald.

Quraishi was fired from his position at state broadcaster PTV for making the trip.

“Persons indulging in cheap publicity should have thought of their national interests first and last,” PTV stated.

“In lieu of unacceptable actions, Pakistan Television has terminated the contract of an individual who proceeded to travel to a specific country out of his own accord.”

Although Quraishi, who was born and raised in Kuwait, claimed the junket was “private,” he told Ellie Cohanim, a broadcaster and formerly the Trump administration’s deputy special envoy for anti-Semitism, that he hoped the controversy would help persuade his fellow Pakistanis of the case for relations with Israel.

“This is the moment really for us to finally have peace with Israel and deal directly with Israel,” Quraishi said.

Quraishi also revealed himself to be a Muslim Zionist. “As a Muslim, I think we need to own what’s written also in the Quran about the story of Israel and the Israelites and the people of Israel,” he asserted, “and there’s a claim, a very strong one, that the Jewish people have to their historical homeland.”

In a resolution passed after the trip, the Senate of Pakistan condemned recent Israeli attacks against worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem.

And a Pakistani senator called for the revocation of the citizenship of those who went to Israel.

What is Sharaka?

Sharaka – which means “partnership” in Arabic – also led a delegation of young Arabs and Muslims to Auschwitz, the site of the World War II German government death camp in Poland earlier this year.

Although it claims to be motivated by pursuing interfaith harmony, Sharaka has the stated goal of “realizing the tremendous potential of the Abraham Accords.”

Sharaka’s website presents the group as a grassroots, non-governmental initiative “founded by young leaders from Israel and the Gulf in order to turn the vision of people-to-people peace into a reality.”

Sharaka’s Israeli co-founder, Amit Deri, is also the founder of Reservists on Duty, a group of Israeli soldiers dedicated to combating the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – a campaign promoting Palestinian freedom and equality.

David Brog, former executive director of the fanatically anti-Palestinian group Christians United For Israel, and pro-Israel lobbyist Arsen Ostrovsky, are also on Sharaka’s board.

And although Sharaka claims to be nongovernmental, its Emirati co-founder Majid al-Sarrah says in a Sharaka video promoting Israel that “I consider myself a representative of the Emirati state and its policies.”

The reality is that no such organization would be permitted in the United Arab Emirates – where there is no freedom of speech or association – without government approval.

Though it solicits donations through its website, Sharaka is silent about where it obtains the substantial funding that would be needed to finance the various delegations it sponsors. Its website provides no information about where the organization is registered.

Sharaka did not respond to a request for comment regarding where it is registered as a nonprofit organization and whether it receives any government funding.

Notably, Jared Kushner, the adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, was personally present in December when Sharaka signed a cooperation agreement with the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, a US-based group with a similar pro-Israel mission.

Normalization under the banner of religion

The Abraham Accords were brokered by the Trump administration and are supported by the Biden administration to formalize diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab states. They aim to consolidate military, economic and political cooperation between Israel and other local American client regimes while putting an end to the Palestinian national liberation struggle.

These efforts are often marketed as promoting “interfaith” cooperation – relying on the misrepresentation that the violence arising from Israel’s belligerent occupation and colonization of Palestinian land is really rooted in religious strife.

Promoting the myth that Muslim-Jewish disharmony is the root of conflict is a common tactic used by Israel propagandists.

Similarly, Israel has long promoted the falsehood that commemoration of the German-led European genocide of millions of European Jews during World War II is inextricably linked to the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

“Israeli Zionists have appropriated events in Jewish history, including the Holocaust, for propagandistic purposes to assert their ‘right’ to Palestine – a land to which they had laid their suspect colonial claim half a century before the genocide,” Columbia University professor Joseph Massad recently wrote in relation to the Sharaka-sponsored trip to Auschwitz.

“Palestinians and other Arabs were called upon to accept the linkage between the Holocaust and Israel’s ‘right to exist as a Jewish state’ as a package deal.”

The bid to “engage Palestinians and other Arabs with the history of the Holocaust is an attempt to deflect Palestinian and Arab engagement away from the Zionist Jewish and Israeli present and an attempt to justify Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people,” Massad adds.

“Israeli demands that Palestinians and Arabs commemorate the Holocaust are not about the Holocaust at all, but about the other part of the formula, namely recognizing and submitting to Israel’s ‘right to exist’ as a settler-colonial, racist Jewish state,” Massad concludes.

US-Pakistan “reset”

It is clear that bringing Pakistani nationals to Israel is an attempt to push Pakistan – a Muslim state with a population of 220 million people and an arsenal of nuclear weapons – towards recognition of and normalization with Israel.

Indeed, this issue may be at the heart of recent political turmoil in the country. An April no-confidence vote removed Imran Khan as Pakistan’s prime minister.

Analysts saw Khan’s unwavering solidarity with Palestinians and refusal to warm up to Israel as key motivators for what was effectively a US-backed putsch against him.

Rumors emerged last year that Saudi Arabia had been pushing Pakistan to normalize relations with Israel after Khan was asked about such pressure in a November 2020 interview with local broadcaster GNN.

Saudi Arabia is both a key – though informal – ally of Tel Aviv and a major source of financing for Islamabad.

“How much pressure is on you to recognize Israel?” the interviewer asked the then-prime minister.

“The pressure is because Israel has a big influence on America,” Khan said, adding that this had increased under the Trump administration.

“Now, it was never in our thinking that we can recognize Israel,” Khan said.

He added that since Pakistan’s founding, its policy has been that until Palestinians “get their rights and a just settlement,” there can never be recognition.

Pakistan’s refusal to cut ties with Russia following the latter’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year may also explain the American animosity towards Khan.

Khan went to Moscow just hours after Russian forces entered Ukraine in late February.

Although the visit had been pre-planned, the Pakistani leader rebuffed Washington’s efforts to persuade him to cancel it.

Khan also revealed his willingness to buy Russian gas and grain just as the US and EU were pressuring the rest of the world – albeit unsuccessfully – to impose sanctions on Moscow.

Following Khan’s removal from office, his replacement as prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, expressed enthusiasm for “deepening” Pakistan’s relationship with the United States.

Imperial courtiers in Washington also view Khan’s downfall as a golden opportunity to “reset” the US relationship with Pakistan.

Writing for the Brookings Institution think tank, CIA veteran Bruce Riedel and Brookings fellow Madiha Afzal denounce Khan as an “anti-American” ideologue who was “leaning away from America toward Russia and China.”

Though they acknowledge the legendary corruption of the Sharif family – Shehbaz’s brother Nawaz was prime minister several times before being barred from office due to corruption – Riedel and Afzal view them as “pragmatic men” with whom Washington can do business.

Similarly, pro-Israel Pakistanis may view this moment as a golden opportunity to fulfill the dream of seeing the Israeli flag fluttering over a Zionist embassy in Islamabad.

*

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Tamara Nassar is associate editor and Ali Abunimah is executive director of The Electronic Intifada.

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Introduction

Many millions of families in Western nations have been internally stressed, if not broken, as a result of the global Covid-19 infection and the policies surrounding it.

Note that I do not refer to Covid as a pandemic. The definition of “pandemic” was changed in July 2008, soon before the swine flu “pandemic”, which fizzled. Neither infection would qualify under earlier definitions.[1]

However, the widespread divisiveness that remains in its wake is a pandemic.

During the early months of “flatten the curve,” few would have disputed or resisted the public health instructions to wear masks, keep a distance of six feet, wash hands frequently, and stay home if possible.

 

During the first year, with many small businesses failing, governments eased financial disruption with handouts, as most people pulled together to put the disease behind them.

Throughout much of 2020, while the vaccines were still in development, prominent epidemiologists were presenting high-level evidence that early treatment protocols could save millions of lives.[2] This evidence was ignored and/or ridiculed in the media.[3]

Cracks in public confidence began to emerge in December 2020 with the arrival of the mRNA vaccines, along with passports to monitor vaccination status.

Suddenly there was a rift in society between the willing and the unwilling.  The latter were not only socially restricted and unemployed, but were systematically prevented from using alternative early treatments by the ubiquitous, media-backed policy of preventing “vaccine hesitancy”.

Social media discipline followed, with any discussion of early treatments causing suspensions and banishments from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

But what was happening between the willing and the unwilling in families and friendships across the land?

My Own Case

I am a retired career medical librarian who served public health executives in a large government agency for 25 years. I have written many articles tracking and analyzing Covid policy as it developed.[4]

As a health information professional, accompanied by other health professionals close to the situation, I opted to stock up on early treatment medications rather than to choose one of the new mRNA vaccines, which have had FDA emergency use status only.

When the national US, UK, and European databases started blinking red about Covid vaccine injuries in the spring of 2021, I pointed this out to people in my family, and to my husband’s family, and also reported some of the database evidence on Twitter (from which I was permanently suspended on March 1, 2022).

A member of my immediate family and two of my closest long-time friends have been dismayed at my position – one indicating that it was based on a character flaw. These relationships are on hold, with no contact.

My husband’s family opted for vaccination. Although the incessant drumbeat tested our relationships, we chose to keep them strong and loving.

Others, whom I know more casually, have withdrawn their warmth and in the street simply nod to me.

What is at the Heart of this Divisiveness?

Everyone within reach of a news source on this planet has heard the singular narrative that Covid-19 is a frightening 100-year pandemic with only one solution: vaccination.

This has been repeatedly emphasized every day for more than two years.

Its effect on populations has been analyzed by Belgian clinical psychologist and professor, Dr. Mattias Desmet.

Desmet has identified the population effect as mass formation psychosis. He says that about 30% of people are solidly hypnotized by the public health media barrage. A further 40% go along with it, and only 20-30% remain free of its power.[5]

So there is great divisiveness. Within this divisiveness, two important things may be constructively discussed between people who are in conflict:

1.     Sources of Information:

Often when people are arguing, they have been influenced by different sources. The argument is most primarily between the sources, rather than between those who read them. This is why the alternative sources have been suppressed and censored:  So that many people will believe there is no argument.

Thus it is very important to start the discussion by considering the sources that each has read or listened to.  Ultimately, it is the sources that disagree, and if people want to preserve their relationships, they should trust each other to look at each other’s sources together.

This is challenging because the most qualified sources that disagree with the singular narrative have been actively suppressed and censored by the Trusted News Initiative,[6] and by social media.  Many health professionals know this, and their family and friends really should be open to what they have to say.

2.     The Need to be Right:

Most families were already subject to the ordinary pressures of life before Covid came along. Even before Covid, basic family dynamics under the pressures of life kept psychologists, antidepressants, and divorce lawyers in business.

Underneath it all has been the fragility of self-worth, which inevitably looms up when people are in disagreement or conflict.

Disagreements and conflicts always point to the possibility of being wrong.

Being wrong is something no one wants to be.  In competitive argument it is a losing position. Being right, on the other hand, is a dominant position. Conflict is about winner over loser, about strength over weakness, about being admired over being disdained.

So it is no wonder that the two positions during a reportedly lethal global pandemic – being vaccinated or unvaccinated – have become so utterly contentious and divisive.

The unvaccinated are constantly aware of their pariah status among Desmet’s completely hypnotized 30%.

Meanwhile, if the new mRNA injections are indeed causing unprecedented adverse effects, acknowledgement of this puts some of Desmet’s 40% who went along with vaccination into a state of unsettled anxiety.

Not to mention those among Desmet’s independently aware 20-30%, who feared the new injections but capitulated to save their jobs, marriages, and social status.

It’s an ugly situation – an ongoing divisiveness across society unlike any other we have experienced as a culture.

How can we Heal this Situation?

This is perhaps the most important question we are facing.

How can people who are on opposite sides of what they have been led to believe is a life-and-death issue, resolve their positions without losing face?

These questions, in this order, might be useful to ponder:

1.     Were there already unresolved stresses in your relationship(s) before the pandemic, which then became worse?

2.     Do you trust the character of the persons/people you are at odds with?

3.     If yes, do you want to have the relationship(s) restored to good faith?

4.     If yes, are you willing to examine the information sources that those you disagree with have been trusting?

5.     Overall, do you embrace the idea that the Spirit is in each one of us, that everyone is born good and wants happy relationships?

6.     If so, are you willing to try to rise above conflict by encouraging transactions among the various personality types, based on the “I’m OK; You’re OK” approach to peace?[7]

Negative Emotion: We Must Find Another Way of Being

Many of us are addicted to negative emotion.

Indeed, negative emotion has increasingly captured society as a whole through the incessant media preoccupation with fear, fear, fear – and panic.

Recently, Canadian Members of Parliament were issued with “panic buttons” in case members of the public threatened them. What would Winston Churchill have said about the implied “panicky” Members of Parliament?  Do we have frightened people running the country?

Perhaps we do. Philosopher P.D. Ouspensky in his book, “The Fourth Way,” notes that “there is not a single useful negative emotion, useful in any sense. Negative emotions are all a sign of weakness.”

As one author has summarized him:

Many of us dwell on the negative far past the time when it is relevant, allowing it to diminish the joy of the present. In politics, in jobs, in personal life, we take great liberties in imposing our negative emotions on others, and we often derive a great deal of pleasure from it. Ouspensky points out that “almost all of our personal negative emotions are based on accusations, somebody else is guilty,” but if we realize “we are the cause of all that happens to us, that changes things…” He goes on to say that “You do not realize how much you lose by these spontaneous manifestations of negative character. They make so many things impossible.”[8]

Most specifically, they make love impossible.

And as the world’s great religions agree — and which Martin Luther King’s grandfather observed:

In conclusion, it’s time to consciously acknowledge and overcome the spiritual weakness that has been revealed in the West — by its panicked, divisive response to a virus with a very high infection survival rate:

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This article was originally published on Lizzy’s Newsletter.

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

Notes

[1] Ron Law, “WHO Changed Definition of Influenza Pandemic,” BMJ, 06 June 2010 (https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/02/who-changed-definition-influenza-pandemic ). See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic

[2] U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, “Early Outpatient Treatment: An Essential Part of a COVID-19 Solution,” 19 November 2020, (https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/early-outpatient-treatment-an-essential-part-of-a-covid-19-solution ).

[3] Ashish Jha, “The Snake-Oil Salesmen of the Senate,” New York Times, 24 November 2020 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/opinion/hydroxychloroquine-covid.html ).

[4] https://muckrack.com/elizabeth-woodworth/articles

[5] Mattias Desmet, “How To END The Phenomena Of Mass Formation Psychosis, 2 November 2021

[6] Elizabeth Woodworth, “COVID-19 and the Shadowy ‘Trusted News Initiative’

How it Methodically Censors Top World Public Health Experts Using an Early Warning System,” 22 January 2022

(https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-shadowy-trusted-news-initiative/5752930). See also short video, “What is the Trusted News Initiative,” 2 January 2022, 3:55 min

[7] “I’m OK, You’re OK – How to Develop Your Attitude,” (https://ta-course.com/im-ok-youre-ok/ )

[8] Jessica’s blog, “Ouspensky’s ‘The Fourth Way’ and Negative Emotions,” 14 September 2012 (https://searchingforthegracefulmuse.blogspot.com/2011/07/ouspenskys-fourth-way-and-negative.html ).

All images in this article are from the author