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First published by Global Research on July 14, 2022

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To read this article in Japanese, click here

この記事を日本語で読むには、ウェブサイトの翻訳ドロップダウンウェブサイトをクリックしてください。

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July 8 was a muggy day in the ancient capital of Japan. Shinzo Abe, the most powerful figure in Japanese politics, was delivering a stump speech for a local Liberal Democratic Party candidate in front of the Nara Kintetsu railway station when suddenly a loud bang rang out, followed by an odd cloud of smoke.

The response was incredible. Among those in the unusually large crowd gathered, not a single person ran for cover, or hit the ground in terror.

Abe’s body guards, who stood unusually far away from him during the speech, looked on impassively, making no effort to shield him, or to pull him to a safe location.

A few seconds later, Abe crumpled and collapsed to the ground, lying there impassive in his standard blue jacket, white shirt, now speckled with blood, and trademark blue badge of solidarity with Japanese abductees in North Korea. Most likely he was killed instantaneously.

Only then did the body guards seize the suspect, Yamagami Toruya, who was standing behind Abe. The tussle with Yamagami took the form of a choreographed dance for the television audience, not a professional takedown.

Yamagami was immediately identified by the media as a 41-year-old former member of the Maritime Self-Defense Force who had personal grievances with Abe.

Yamagami told everything to the police without hesitation. He did not even try to run from the scene and was still holding the silly hand-made gun when the bodyguards grabbed him.

Even after Abe was lying on the pavement, not a single person in the crowd ran for shelter, or even looked around to determine where the shots came from. Everyone seemed to know, magically, that the shooting was over.

Then the comedy began. Rather than putting Abe in a limousine and whisking him away, those standing around him merely called out to passersby, asking if anyone was a doctor.

The media immediately embraced the “lone gunman” conclusion for this attack, repeating entertaining tale of how Yamagami was associated with Toitsu Kyokai, a new religion started by the charismatic shaman Kawase Kayo, and why he blamed Abe, who had exchanges with that group, for his mother’s troubles.

Because Toitsu Kyokai has followers from the Unification Church founded by Reverend Moon Sun Myung, journalist Michael Penn jumped to the conclusion that the conspiracy leading to Abe’s death was the result of his collaboration with the Moonies.

Although the mainstream media accepted this fantastic story, the Japanese police and security apparatus did not manage to squash alternative interpretations. Blogger Takashi Kitagawa posted materials on July 10 that suggested Abe was shot from the front, not from the back where Yamagami stood, and that the shots must have been fired at an angle from the top of one, or both, of the tall buildings on either side of the intersection across from the railway station plaza.

Takahashi Kitakawa’s postings:

Kitagawa’s analysis of the paths of the bullets was more scientific than anything offered by the media that had claimed, without basis, that Abe had only been shot once until the surgeon announced that evening that there had been two bullets.

The chances that a man holding an awkward home-made gun, standing more than five meters away in a crowd, would be able to hit Abe twice are low. The TV personality Kozono Hiromi, who is a gun expert himself, remarked on his show “Sukkiri” (on July 12) that such a feat would be incredible.

A careful viewing of the videos suggests that multiple shots were fired by a rifle with a silencer from atop a neighboring building.

安倍晋三元総理大臣暗殺について 言明します from Emanuel Pastreich on Vimeo.

The message to the world

For a figure like Shinzo Abe, the most powerful political player in Japan and the person to whom Japanese politicians and bureaucrats rallied in response to the unprecedented uncertainty born of the current geopolitical crisis, to be shot dead with no serious security detail nearby makes no sense.

Perhaps the message was lost on viewers at home, but it was crystal clear for other Japanese politicians. For that matter, the message was clear for Boris Johnson, who was forced out of power at almost exactly the same moment that Abe was shot, or for Emmanuel Macron, who was suddenly charged with influence peddling scandal for Uber, and faces demands for his removal from office, on July 11—after months of massive protests had failed to sway him in any way.

The message was written all over Abe’s white shirt in red: buying into the globalist system and promoting the COVID-19 regime is not enough to assure safety, even for the leader of a G7 nation.

Abe was highest ranking victim so far of the hidden cancer eating away at governance in nation states around the world, an institutional sickness that moves decision making away from national governments to a network of privately-held supercomputer banks, private equity groups, for-hire intelligence firms in Tel Aviv, London and Reston, and the strategic thinkers employed by the billionaires at the World Economic Forum, NATO, the World Bank and other such awesome institutions.

The fourth industrial revolution was the excuse employed to transfer the control of all information in, and all information out, for central governments to Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, Google, SAP and others in the name of efficiency. As J. P. Morgan remarked, “Everything has two reasons: a good reason and a real reason.”

With the assassination of Abe, these technology tyrants, and their masters, have crossed the Rubicon, declaring that those dressed in the trappings of state authority can be mowed down with impunity if they do not follow orders.

The Problem with Japan

Japan is heralded as the only Asian nation advanced enough to join the “West,” to be a member of the exclusive G7 club, and to be qualified to enter into collaboration with (and possible membership in) the top intelligence sharing program, the “Five Eyes.” Nevertheless, Japan has continued to defy the expectations, and the demands, of global financiers, and the planners within the beltway and on Wall Street for the New World Order.

Although it was South Korea in Asia that has constantly been berated in Washington as an ally not quite up to the level of Japan, the truth is that the super-rich busy taking over the Pentagon, and the entire global economy, were starting to harbor doubts about the dependability of Japan.

The globalist system at the World Bank, Goldman Sachs, or the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University has a set track for the best and the brightest from “advanced nations.”

Elites from Australia, France, Germany, Norway or Italy, learn to speak fluent English, spend time in Washington, London, or Geneva at a think tank or university, secure a safe sinecure at a bank, a government institution, or a research institute that assures them a good income, and adopt the common sense, pro-finance, perspective offered by the Economist Magazine as the gospel.

Japan, however, although it has an advanced banking system of its own, although its command of advanced technologies makes it the sole rival of Germany in machine tools, and although it has a sophisticated educational system capable of producing numerous Nobel Prize winners, does not produce leaders who follow this model for the “developed” nation.

Japanese elite do not study abroad for the most part and Japan has sophisticated intellectual circles that do not rely on information brought in from overseas academic or journalistic sources.

Unlike other nations, Japanese write sophisticated journal articles entirely in Japanese, citing only Japanese experts. In fact, in fields like botany and cellular biology, Japan has world-class journals written entirely in Japanese.

Similarly, Japan has a sophisticated domestic economy that is not easily penetrated by multinational corporations—try as they do.

The massive concentration of wealth over the last decade has allowed the super-rich to create invisible networks for secret global governance, best represented by the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders program and the Schwarzman Scholars program. These rising figures in policy infiltrate the governments, the industries, and research institutions of nations to make sure that the globalist agenda goes forth unimpeded.

Japan has been impacted by this sly form of global governance. And yet, Japanese who speak English well, or who study at Harvard, are not necessarily on the fast track in Japanese society.

There is stubborn independence in Japan’s diplomacy and economics, something that raised concerns among the Davos crowd during the COVID-19 campaigns.

Although the Abe administration (and the subsequent Kishida administration) went along with the directives of the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization for vaccines and social distancing, the Japanese government was less intrusive in the lives of citizens than most nations, and was less successful in forcing organizations to require vaccination.

The use of QR codes to block service to the unvaccinated was limited in its implementation in Japan in comparison with other “advanced” nations.

Moreover, the Japanese government refuses to fully implement the digitalization agenda demanded, thus denying multinational technology giants the control over Japan that they exercise elsewhere. This lag in Japan’s digitalization led the Wilson Center in Washington D.C. to invite Karen Makishima, minister of Japan’s Digital Agency (launched under pressure from global finance in September, 2021) so that she could explain why Japan has been so slow to digitalize (July 13).

Japanese are increasingly aware that their resistance to digitalization, to the wholescale outsourcing of the functions of government and university to multinational tech giants, and the privatization of information, is not in their interest.

Japan continues to operate Japanese-language institutions that follow old customs, including the use of written records. Japanese still read books and they are not so enamored with AI as Koreans and Chinese.

Japan’s resistance can be traced back to Meiji restoration of 1867. Japan set out to create governmental system wherein Western ideas were translated into Japanese, combined with Japanese concepts, to create a complex domestic discourse. The governance system set up in Meiji restoration remains in place to a large degree, using models for governance based on pre-modern principles from Japan and China’s past, and drawn from 19^th century Prussia and England.

The result is feudalistic approach to governance wherein ministers oversee fiefdoms of bureaucrats who carefully guard their own budgets and who maintain their own internal chains of command.

The Problem with Abe

Shinzo Abe was one of the most sophisticated politicians of our age, always open to make a deal with the United States, or other global institutions, but always cagy when it came to making Japan the subject of globalist dictates.

Abe harbored the dream of restoring Japan to its status as an empire, and imagined himself to be the reincarnation of the Meiji Emperor.

Abe was different from Johnson or Macron in that he was not as interested in appearing on TV as he was in controlling the actual decision making process within Japan.

There is no need to glorify Abe’s reign, as some have tried to do. He was a corrupt insider who pushed for the dangerous privatization of government, the hollowing out of education, and who backed a massive shift of assets from the middle class to the wealthy.

His use of the ultra-right Nihon Kaigi forum to promote an ultranationalist agenda, and to glorify the most offensive aspects of Japan’s imperial past, was deeply disturbing. Abe gave his unflinching support for all military expenditures, no matter how foolish, and he was willing to support just about any American boondoggle.

That said, as the grandson of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, and the son of foreign minister Shintaro Abe, Shinzo Abe showed himself to be an astute politician from childhood. He was creative in his use of a wide range of political tools to advance his agenda, and he could call on corporate and government leaders from around the world with an ease that no other Asian politician could.

I remember vividly the impression I received from Abe on the two occasions that I met him in person. Whatever cynical politics he may have promoted, he radiated to his audience a purity and simplicity, what the Japanese call “sunao,” that was captivating. His manner suggested a receptiveness and openness that inspired loyalty among his followers and that could overwhelm those who were hostile to his policies.

In sum, Abe was sophisticated political figure who was capable of playing one side against the other within the Liberal Democratic Party, and within the international community, while appearing to be a considerate and benevolent leader.

For this reason, Japanese hostile to Abe’s ethnic nationalism were still willing to support him because he was the only politician they thought capable of restoring global political leadership to Japan.

Japanese diplomats and military officers fret endlessly about the Japan’s lack of vision. Although Japan has all the qualifications to be a great power, they reason, it is run by a series of unimpressive, University of Tokyo graduates; men who are good at taking tests, but are unwilling to take risks.

Japan produces none like Putin or Xi, and not even a Macron or a Johnson.

Abe wanted to be a leader and he had the connections, the talent, and the ruthlessness required to play that role on the global stage. He was already the longest serving prime minister in Japanese history, and had plans for a third bid as prime minister, when he was struck down.

Needless to say, the powers behind the World Economic Forum do not want national leaders like Abe, even if they conform with the global agenda, because they are capable of organizing resistance within the nation state.

What went wrong?

Abe was able to handle, using the traditional tools of statecraft, the impossible dilemma faced by Japan over the last decade as its economic ties with China and Russia increased, but its political and security integration with the United States, Israel and the NATO block proceeded apace.

It was impossible for Japan to be that close to the United States and its allies while maintaining friendly relations with Russia and China. Yet Abe almost succeeded.

Abe remained focused and cool. He made use of all his skills and connections as he set out to carve a unique space for Japan. Along the way, Abe turned to the sophisticated diplomacy of his strategic thinker Shotaro Yachi of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to assure that Japan found its place under the sun.

Abe and Yachi used contradictory, but effective, geopolitical strategies to engage both East and West, making ample use of secret diplomacy to seal long-term deals that put Japan back in the great powers game.

On the one hand, Abe presented to Obama and Trump a Japan that was willing to go further than South Korea, Australia or other India in backing Washington’s position. Abe was willing to suffer tremendous domestic criticism for his push for a remilitarization that fit the US plans for East Asia.

At the same time that he impressed Washington politicians with his gung-ho pro-American rhetoric, matched by the purchase of weapons systems, Abe also engaged China and Russia at the highest levels. That was no small feat, and involved sophisticated lobbying within the beltway, and in Beijing and Moscow.

In the case of Russia, Abe successfully negotiated a complex peace treaty with Russia in 2019 that would have normalized relations and solved the dispute concerning the Northern Territories (the Kuril Islands in Russian). He was able to secure energy contracts for Japanese firms and to find investment opportunities in Russia even as Washington ramped up the pressure on Tokyo for sanctions.

The journalist Tanaka Sakai notes that Abe was not banned from entering Russia after the Russian government banned all other representatives of the Japanese government from entry.

Abe also engaged China seriously, solidifying long-term institutional ties, and pursuing free trade agreement negotiations that reached a breakthrough in the fifteenth round of talks (April 9-12, 2019). Abe had ready access to leading Chinese politicians and he was considered by them to be reliable and predictable, even though his rhetoric was harshly anti-Chinese.

The critical event that likely triggered the process leading to Abe’s assassination was the NATO summit in Madrid (June 28-30).

The NATO summit was a moment when the hidden players behind the scenes laid down the law for the new global order. NATO is on a fast track to evolve beyond an alliance to defend Europe and to become an unaccountable military power, working with the Global Economic Forum, the billionaires and the bankers around the world, as a “world army,” functioning much as the British East India Company did in another era.

The decision to invite to the NATO summit the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand was a critical part of this NATO transformation.

These four nations were invited to join in an unprecedented level of integration in security, including intelligence sharing (outsourcing to big tech multinationals), the use of advanced weapons systems (that must be administrated by the personnel of multinationals like Lockheed Martin), joint exercises (that set a precedent for an oppressive decision-making process), and other “collaborative” approaches that undermine the chain of command within the nation state.

When Kishida returned to Tokyo on July first, there can be no doubt that one of his first meetings was with Abe. Kishida explained to Abe the impossible conditions that the Biden administration had demanded of Japan.

The White House, by the way, is now entirely the tool of globalists like Victoria Nuland (Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs) and others trained by the Bush clan.

The demands made of Japan were suicidal in nature. Japan was to increase economic sanctions on Russia, to prepare for possible war with Russia, and to prepare for a war with China. Japan’s military, intelligence and diplomatic functions were to be transferred to the emerging blob of private contractors gathering for the feast around NATO.

We do not know what Abe did during the week before his death. Most likely he launched into a sophisticated political play, using of all his assets in Washington D.C., Beijing, and Moscow—as well as in Jerusalem, Berlin, and London, to come up with a multi-tiered response that would give the world the impression that Japan was behind Biden all the way, while Japan sought out a détente with China and Russia through the back door.

The problem with this response was that since other nations had been shut down, such a sophisticated play by Japan made it the only major nation with a semi-functional executive branch.

Abe’s death parallels closely that of Seoul’s mayor Park Won Sun, who went missing on July 9^th, 2020, exactly two years before Abe’s assassination. Park took steps in Seoul City Hall to push back on the COVID-19 social distancing policies that were being imposed by the central government. His body was found the next day and the death was immediately ruled a suicide resulting from his distress over charges of sexual harassment by a colleague.

What to do now?

The danger of the current situation should not be underestimated. If an increasing number of Japanese come to perceive, as the journalist Tanaka Sakai suggests, that the United States destroyed their best hope for leadership, and that the globalists want Japan to make do with an unending series of weak-minded prime ministers who are dependent on Washington and other hidden players of the parasite class, such a development could bring about a complete break between Japan and the United States, leading to a political or military conflict.

It is telling that Michael Green, the top Japan hand in Washington D.C., did not write the initial tribute to Abe that was published on the homepage of CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), his home institute.

Green, veteran of the Bush National Security Council and Henry A. Kissinger Chair of the Asia Program at CSIS, is the author of Line of Advantage: Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzo. Green was a close associate of Abe, perhaps the closest of any American.  

The tribute to Abe was drafted by Christopher Johnstone (the Japan chair at CSIS and former CIA officer). The weird choice suggests that the assassination is so sensitive that Green instinctively wished to avoid writing the initial response, leaving it to a professional operative.

For responsible intellectuals and citizens in Washington, Tokyo, or elsewhere, there is only one viable response to this murky assassination: a demand for an international scientific investigation.

Painful as that process might be, it will force us to face the reality of how our governments have been taken over by invisible powers.

If we fail to identify the true players behind the scenes, however, we may be led into a conflict in which the blame is projected onto heads of state and countries are forced into conflicts so as to hide the crimes of global finance.

The loss of control of the Japanese government over the military the last time can be attributed in part to the assassinations of prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi on May 15, 1932 and of prime minister Saito Makoto on February 26, 1936.

But for the international community, the more relevant case is how the manipulations of an integrated global economy by the Rothschild, Warburg, and other banking interests created an environment wherein the tensions produced by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary on June 28, 1914 were funneled towards world war.

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Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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)

First published by global research on December 27, 2020

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It is important to focus on the history of experimental vaccines.

This article reviews the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in Macon County, Alabama that began in 1932 as well as other US government experiments that infected sick and vulnerable people with syphilis and other deadly diseases applied in Guatemala between 1946 and 1948.

In Macon County, Alabama, the U.S. government monitored more than 600 black sharecroppers including 399 who were already infected with syphilis while the remaining 201 who were not. 

Many people of color in the U.S. do not trust the medical establishment because of this troubling history of human experimentations. 

According to CNN who was there to witness the historical moment of the first Covid-19 vaccine given to a black woman but in reality, it was propaganda for Big Pharma

“A critical care nurse was the first person in New York and among the first people in the United States to get a shot of the coronavirus vaccine authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration.”

The US Government’s Human Experiments in Guatemala  

Image below: Female Patients at Psychiatric Hospital in Guatemala 1946-1948

The U.S. government under President Harry S. Truman, a Democrat from Missouri partnered with one of the poorest countries in Latin America, Guatemala, a U.S. puppet state with its President and lap dog, Juan José Arévalo and the rest of his criminal cohorts or shall we say his “health care officials” began experimenting directly with approximately 1,300 test subjects out of the 5,500 Guatemalans who were infected purposely without their informed consent.  They were infected with syphilis, gonorrhea and a bacterial sexual infection called chancroid that comprised of soldiers, prisoners, prostitutes and patients who had mental issues.  The experiments began in 1946 and ended around 1948.  In a report by the Boston Globe, Susan M. Reverby, a medical historian and professor at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts discovered that “US government scientists in the 1940s deliberately infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis and gonorrhea in experiments conducted without the subjects’ permission.”  Reverby discovered the documents about “four or five years ago while researching the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study” and discussed her findings with the US government.  The report said that “The US scientists — who had received the blessings of Guatemalan health authorities — were among the leading lights in the field of sexually transmitted disease research.” However, here is where the insanity was exposed:

Flush with optimism in the dawning era of antibiotic treatment, they decided to expose vulnerable subjects to further their understanding of the effectiveness of the new drugs in treating sexually transmitted diseases

The discovery happened while Reverby, who was at the University of Pittsburgh some years before conducting research for her book ‘Examining Tuskegee’ which she focused on Dr. Thomas Parran Jr’s archives.  Dr. Parran was a US surgeon general who was involved in studying methods in controlling the syphilis virus, but then Reverby discovered archives from another researcher who is deceased by the name of John C. Cutler who was a U.S. health service physician during the later years of Tuskegee syphilis study that began in 1932.

Cutler studied the effects and other different aspects such as the prevention and treatment of antibiotics called penicillin on individuals who were infected.  In a BBC article from 2011,

‘US scientists ‘knew Guatemala syphilis tests unethical’ said that “according to documents the commission had studied, at least 83 of the 5,500 subjects had died by the end of 1953.”

The article mentioned Dr Amy Gutmann, who was head of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues at the time and stated that the research was a “shameful piece of medical history” and that “It is important that we accurately document this clearly unethical historical injustice. We do this to honour the victims.”

It was reported that then-President Barack Obama, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and other U.S. government officials had apologized to the Guatemalan government and its people most likely to show the Guatemalan government and its people that they care, but it was really about keeping the long-time US-Guatemala relationship intact since the US government  and it’s CIA overthrew Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in 1954.

In the Name of Science: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study On Poor Black People

Image on the right: Tuskegee Syphilis Study 1932-1972

According to ‘The National Center for Biotechnology Information’ (NCBI)

“That study, long-recognized as unethical, committed abuses against 399 African-American sharecroppers in Macon Country, Alabama who were the subjects of a 40-year USPHS study of the effects of untreated syphilis in Black men.”  That legacy has had an impact on the black community thus creating a distrust of the U.S. government and its past actions.  “The phrase, legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, is sometimes used to denote the belief that Blacks are more reluctant than Whites to participate in biomedical research studies because of the infamous study of syphilis in men run by the U.S. Public Health Service from 1932-72.” 

What the NCBI report claims that they administered a questionnaire ‘The Tuskegee Legacy Project’ (TLP) among 826 black and white respondents and found that blacks did have “higher levels of general awareness” of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study with none of them willing to be guinea pigs for biomedical research:

We administered the Tuskegee Legacy Project (TLP) Questionnaire to 826 Blacks and non-Hispanic White adults in three U.S. cities. While Blacks had higher levels of general awareness of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, there was no association between either awareness or detailed knowledge of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and willingness to participate in biomedical research, either for Blacks or Whites observed in our survey

On July 25th, 1972,  a reporter by the name of Jean Heller of the Associated Press (AP) exposed the U.S. federal government for allowing hundreds of black men to live with the syphilis infections for more than 40 years without offering them any sort of treatment.  The report exposed the event as a shameful and immoral behavior of the American medical establishment.  The report ‘Black men untreated in Tuskegee Syphilis Study’ said that “during a 40-year federal experiment, a group of syphilis victims was denied proper medical treatment for their disease”, several participants had already died from the experiment.  The report went on to say that the experiment ” was designed to determine through autopsies what damage untreated syphilis does to the human body.”  

It is because of these historical events that distrust of the US medical system runs deep within the black and brown communities.  According to an article by Reuters, ‘Some U.S. Black pastors, key players in COVID education, are hesitating to push vaccine’ reported that A.R. Bernard who is the head of a Brooklyn mega church called the Christian Cultural Center was asked by a major healthcare organization to sit on a committee to propagandize the black and brown communities to accept Covid-19 vaccines as safe and effective.  Bernard said that “he turned down the offer because he worried some members of his congregation could view his participation as “joining forces with the system” to use African Americans “as guinea pigs” for vaccines that have been developed in record time.”  That was a powerful statement since his concerns rightfully goes back to the history of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in Macon County, Alabama:

“What we’re dealing with right now is the byproduct of … generations of distrust, suspicion and fear with regard to how medical systems work,” said Edwin Sanders, head of Metropolitan International Church in Nashville, Tennessee, who has been involved with public health education since HIV/AIDS struck in the 1980s.

The distrust is rooted in decades of unequal healthcare access and treatment, under-representation in clinical trials and a record of being used as unwitting test subjects, such as in the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study that continued through 1972 and withheld syphilis treatment from infected Black men without their knowledge.  Pastors said this history has fed fears that the COVID-19 vaccine may not work in Black Americans, or that they may be given a different shot than the rest of society

It’s was not just in Guatemala and Alabama, USA that people were used as experimental guinea pigs.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which funds the World Health Organization (WHO) has performed vaccine experiments with US-based non-profit organizations (NGOs) in India and Africa. For example, in 2009, an NGO called the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) based in Bill Gates home state of Washington began in India with the intention of testing experimental HPV vaccines that was developed by Big Pharma corporations such as Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Merck on more than 20,000 Indian girls aged 10-14 years-old.  In the experiment, the girls were vaccinated with the HPV vaccines leaving more than 1,200 of them with severe side effects.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation continued its experiments in 2010 when it funded GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine that killed more than 151 African infants and also caused severe side effects including seizures and what is known as febrile convulsions to more than 1,000 African children. (See NEJM)

Those were just a couple of examples of human experiments taking place in modern-day society.  But at least the people are starting to wake up to the fact that media propaganda promoted by the medical establishment is not working anymore, perhaps joining a large segment of the world’s population in already resisting Big Pharma’s overreach in pushing dangerous vaccines especially those that were developed in under a year by overriding crucial testing procedures that studies long-term effects.

Maybe the next vaccine will be developed in 6 months, hey why not in 2 weeks?

We will probably see a race for Big Pharma corporations to develop new vaccines for almost anything in the shortest period of time for profit and control.  It is a new business model that is engineering our society so that the establishment technocrats can achieve total dominance over the people with the implementation of the ID2020 initiative which is basically a digital identity system that keeps a computerized record of who has received their required vaccinations.  Big Pharma is at full speed and it is headed for a crash as more people all over the world are doubting that vaccines are safe and effective, especially those that were developed in less than a year.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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American officials are starting to admit Washington’s lies about Iran. William Burns, director of the CIA, said on Wednesday, July 20, that Iran has never resumed its nuclear weapons production program since it was interrupted, in 2004. The statement only confirms the suspicion of several analysts around the world, but it is truly impressive that it came from the head of American intelligence. Indeed, it reveals that Washington really bases its interventionist foreign policy on lies and distortions.

During his speech at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, Director Burns stated:

“Our best intelligence judgment is that the Iranians have not resumed the weaponization effort that they had underway up until 2004 and then suspended, so that’s something, obviously we at CIA and across the US intelligence community keep a very, very sharp focus on”.

Earlier, in December of last year, the Director had already stated something similar to these lines, indicating that there were insufficient reasons for the US to believe that Iran planned to produce nuclear weapons. However, on neither occasion did Burns clarify why the US government had repeatedly mentioned this hypothesis of resuming the program in recent years, even without any scientific basis to justify the narrative.

Interestingly, it was not just Burns who recently commented on this topic. Tamir Hayman, director of Israeli intelligence, has already stated that Tel Aviv has not found evidence that Tehran plans to develop nuclear weapons, despite the fact that there is a large process of uranium enrichment.

“To the best of our knowledge, the directive has not changed, and they are not heading toward a breakout. They are not heading toward a bomb right now: It may be in the distant future. (…) There is an enriched amount [of uranium] in volumes that we have not seen before and it is disturbing (…) At the same time, in all other aspects of the Iranian nuclear project, we see no progress – not in the weapons project, in the financial area, not in any other sector”, he said.

According to the official speech of the Iranian State, any research related to the nuclear weapons program was stopped in 2004, with no interest in converting the current nuclear program into an atomic weapons platform. More than a mere political attitude to avoid sanctions, the Iranian government has also stated on several occasions that the decision to abstain from producing nuclear weapons is a consequence of the Shiite religion itself, which has an official role in the country’s theocratic regime. For Shia Islam, producing and using weapons of mass destruction is considered a sin – and it would be unethical on the part of the Shia government to disobey the principles of its own religion.

However, the mere act of not possessing nuclear weapons is not exactly what interests the US in the Iranian case. The peaceful use of nuclear technology could also become “dangerous” to American interests. Peaceful and clean nuclear technology allows, for example, high levels of industrial and scientific development, in addition to boosting military power, even without the possession of warheads – as, for example, through the manufacture of propulsion submarines. Obviously, any form of material development of its geopolitical enemies is seen by the US as a “problem”, which is why Washington tries to completely neutralize the Iranian nuclear program.

However, the main point is that the narrative around the Iranian nuclear program has become a kind of “rhetorical weapon” for the US. With this speech, it became possible to mobilize the entire international society against the “nuclearization”, justifying sanctions, military operations and even terrorist-like attacks with the objective of assassinating Iranian officials. In fact, the Iranian nuclear program has functioned in terms of US-Iran tensions in a way similar to the narrative around the “invasion against Ukraine”, in terms of tensions with Russia. They are mere baseless narratives that serve as a basis for maneuvers on the international arena.

It remains to be seen what the practical result of all this scenario will be from now on. Burns did not comment on the case for nothing. He has tried to take a more pragmatic line with Iran, given his experience in the negotiations of the 2015 deal – later unilaterally abandoned by the US. The Director does not see the possibility of a conflict with the Persian country as positive and bets on some level of diplomacy to guarantee American interests, even if concessions have to be made.

But in order for diplomacy to really advance and to materialize in agreements, it is not enough to admit that the nuclear weapons narrative is false, it is necessary that all sanctions be banned, and that Washington removes the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from its list of terrorist organizations, in addition to establishing a truly neutral and impartial nuclear monitoring mechanism that does not act in an interventionist manner or violate Iranian sovereignty. Until this is achieved, there will be no concrete possibility of agreement.

*

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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.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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***

As government efforts to contain it fails even in rich nations, the world’s hunger and livelihoods crisis is rapidly escalating into an emergency. Western leaders and media have been blaming Russia and the war in Ukraine for this unfolding catastrophe, but the facts say otherwise.

A month ago, the Food and Work Network, a coalition of academics, community activists, and trade unions in the United Kingdom issued an open letter to the government, drawing its attention to an alarming issue:

“Britain is now currently experiencing a National Food Emergency…  As things stand, millions of people in the UK are today feeling insecure about food. Inflation is the highest it has been in forty years, with food prices, alongside energy costs, at record levels. Millions of people, including millions of children, are unable to meet their basic needs. Destitution is on the rise and reliance on food banks is normalized.”

They revealed some startling data – “7.3 million adults and 2.6 million children in UK households going without food or physically unable to get food in the past month” – and called for a National Food Emergency Summit to be convened urgently. The group has also issued proposals for remedying the situation, including the raising of minimum wage and universal free school meals, and ended with a call to enshrine the right to food in law, so that the British government is statutorily bound to ensure that none of its citizens go hungry.

An unprecedented crisis

The hunger and livelihoods crisis that has gripped the world since Covid-19 hit, exacerbated by the lockdown-related disruptions, has now positively ballooned into an emergency (see earlier articles by this writer here).

The crisis is manifesting at just about every level: steadily increasing prices of food, but also of fuel and fertilizer (both directly linked to food prices); growing shortages of food and fuel locally, disruption of global supply chains; increasing unemployment and poverty, and the resultant fall in incomes and purchasing power for the majority; conflict-related disruptions and uncertainty; looming financial crisis and recession; growing public protests directly linked to these; and topping it all, widespread political paralysis, enabled by media silence on the crisis. In sum, we are seeing a multi-pronged crisis unprecedented in its breadth and depth in recent history, and from which few nations seem exempt, as the UK’s case so starkly illustrates.

If we are to believe Western leaders and international organizations such as the United Nations, the crisis is primarily a product of Russia’s war in Ukraine. A U.N. task force report on the issue was titled ‘Global Impact of war in Ukraine: Billions of people face the greatest cost-of-living crisis in a generation.” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres was quoted as saying that the war was “supercharging” the crisis in poorer countries that were already struggling to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

Addressing the G7 summit in Germany this June, U.S. President Joe Biden too blamed the crisis on “Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine and the severe drought in the Horn of Africa region.” Not surprisingly, Biden’s statement came in the wake of what seems like a concerted campaign in mainstream Western media targeting Russia for the crisis (“Russia is weaponizing food supplies to ‘blackmail the world’”, a CNBC headline said).

Russian President Vladimir Putin denied the charge, in turn blaming the crisis on the crippling Western sanctions on his country, which have “created conditions that made it much more difficult” to deliver certain products internationally.” He also reportedly confirmed that Russia had not “put any restrictions on the export of fertilizers, nor on the export of food products.”

But is the Russia-Ukraine war really behind the present crisis? A closer look indicates otherwise. As a March 2022 World Bank report explained: “Here is a fact which may surprise you: Global stocks of rice, wheat, and maize – the world’s three major staples – remain historically high. For wheat, the commodity most affected by the war, stocks remain well above levels during the 2007-2008 food price crisis. Estimates also suggest that about three-quarters of Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports had already been delivered before the war started.” The report refers to the food security crisis as a “food price crisis,” emphasizing that it’s not caused by shortage of food.

Data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) monthly ‘Cereal Supply and Demand Brief’ confirms this. The FAO’s forecast for global cereal production in 2022 has been raised by 7 million tonnes in July from the previous month and is now pegged at 2,792 million tonnes and is only 0.6 percent short of the output for the same period in 2021. According to the FAO, the shortfall caused by the Russia-Ukraine war has not impacted global wheat stocks much, thanks to higher-than-normal harvests.

Source: Global cereal production. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

An assessment by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES), too confirms that there is currently no risk of global food supply shortages. The IPES too identifies it as a “food price crisis,” but goes on to identify the causes. Stating that “the failure to reform food systems has allowed the war in Ukraine to spark a third global food price crisis in 15 years,” the report points to “fundamental flaws in global food systems – such as heavy reliance on food imports and excessive commodity speculation – for escalating food insecurity sparked by the Ukraine invasion,” adding that “these flaws were exposed, but not corrected, after previous food price spikes in 2007-8.”

Yet another report, by Navdanya, the organization founded by environmental activist Vandana Shiva, goes even further: it points to the evidence outlined above and says that the present crisis is the direct outcome of a broken global food system that exists primarily to serve agribusiness giants.”

The report, titled Sowing Hunger, Reaping Profits – A Food Crisis by Design, traces the crisis to excessive financial speculation, increased commodity future pricing and increased volatility in the market, all of it adding up to bigger gains for corporate players, even as it drives up food prices globally. As Shiva puts it, “what the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has once again laid bare is just how fragile globalized food systems are, and how quickly a fluctuation in the market goes on to detrimentally affect the poorest. The current globalized, industrial agrifood system creates hunger by design.”

An analysis of global wheat prices by economists C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh reinforces this. Examining FAO data and projections from May 2021, much before the Russia-Ukraine war commenced, they find that the estimated global production of wheat in 2022 is likely to be lower than in 2021 by less than 1%, but around 2% higher than the average of 2018-20. Similarly, global trade in wheat is also projected to fall slightly when compared to 2021, but it will still remain higher than in 2018-20.

Global wheat production. Source: FAO Food Outlook June 2022, Appendix Tables 2A and 2B

The two major factors they have identified as driving the crisis are, “profiteering by major grain trading agribusinesses, which have already shown dramatic increases in profitability in January-March 2022 as they have raised their prices without being questioned, as everyone assumes that this is the result of war-driven supply shortages. The other is financial speculation in wheat futures markets, which can drive up prices even in spot markets.”

As a recent Rolling Stone magazine report summed up, “this crisis… is in some sense artificial, given that it is not driven by any actual shortage of food in the world,” adding, “Commodity traders make money off wild price swings, shippers make money off people desperate for grain, fertilizer manufacturers make money off farmers desperate to maximize their yields, and proto-fascist politicians are happy to exploit rising food prices as evidence of the failure of democracy.”

It’s important to note that a country like the UK, where civil society is calling for a food emergency to be declared, is not on the UN’s list of 107 severely affected nations, thus revealing the sheer gravity of the crisis in these nations. Multi-billion-dollar pledges apart, official efforts to tackle the crisis seem to be failing, even in rich nations.

The conclusion is stark. Without concerted efforts by citizens to force governments to act, the accelerating hunger and livelihoods crisis will engulf the majority of humanity, with grave and unforeseen consequences. Beyond that, it calls for a radical transformation of a global agricultural-industrial-financial system designed to reap windfall gains for a handful of big corporations and investors, even as it puts billions at risk.

*

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Sajai Jose is a freelance journalist and researcher.

All images in this article are from Countercurrents

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***

I was relaxing in our screened porch in our little cottage in the forest, feeling rather pleased with myself. It had been an arduous week of the usual combat for liberty, but there had been victories.

I was reading a decorating magazine (we all have our vices). The grass was dewy; birds were loud. The morning was glorious.

I was feeling pioneer-ish and independent. I was alone in the house; Brian was traveling. I enjoyed the narrative moment: “Lady in the woods.”

Then I heard a “thump” about eight feet away behind my head. It was an exasperated thump, like a teenager slamming the door to his room. Like, “Really??”

I glanced behind me and saw the enormous ears and forehead of a sizable brown bear, who was ducking insolently, clearly aware of me, to lower himself behind the trash cans.

I sped indoors, locking the door. I grabbed a weapon out of the hall closet. In my haste, I grabbed the weapon that looked like a rifle, instead of the actual rifle, which was in a case. Thus I found myself locked in an upstairs bathroom, cowering, armed with a BB gun.

I sort of knew this bear. Brian had captured on his trail camera about a year ago, what must have been this bear and his brother or sister, when the little ones were just adorable cubs. One of the cubs had nuzzled the trailcam til the mom had batted it away, urging her little ones to follow her deeper into the woods, far from the dangerous things of men. One of the cubs was now this massive creature, that bear-watchers call a “sub-adult.”

I saw, peering fearfully out of the window, that it was no longer cute and fat. It was was thin, but massively muscled, and looked disoriented. It must have been eight feet long.

I paced into the upstairs bedroom and secured the windows. The bear left the garbage cans, and followed me around the corner of the house. I could now see it pacing and sniffing directly opposite the bedroom windows, though on the ground level. There were windows all around the house on that level. Bears had been known to break into homes.

I looked under the bed: hiding there could not save me if the bear made it into the house. I realized I was holding a BB gun, and felt ridiculous. Even if I managed to shoot it, this would do nothing but enrage him. The thin bedroom doors that I had thought so rustic and charming, could be broken down by an angry animal of that size in no time.

My heart pounded as I realized that he was not leaving; he continued pacing and circling, no matter where I went.

I went back into the bathroom, and locked that door with its flimsy lock.

There he was again, outside on that side of the house, as if he was spotting me or as if he could scent me. Surely he could smell my fear.

I cowered behind the bathroom curtain. The bear paused in its ransacking of the trash, stood up again on hind legs, looked right at me — or smelled right at me — and bared its long, sharp yellow teeth.

If I had had sympathy for the hungry teenager abandoned by its mom (or “emancipated” by its mom, as the bear watching sites explain) it evaporated.

I was on the phone with Brian, frozen with fear.

“Make yourself big! Shout at him!” Brian instructed. That was impossible. I could not move. I could hardly breathe.

That would be it, surely, I thought, after he’d exhausted the trash bag. He’d leave now, surely. But no. He came back toward me again like a nightmare, and headed once more to circle the house.

I called the sheriff’s office.

Twice they told me that nothing could be done, and to stay inside. I don’t blame the Columbia County Sheriffs. They have issues to deal with more serious than a former city lady trapped in her house by a hungry bear.

But the bear kept circling right up against the walls of the house. This went on for an hour. Adrenaline poured through my bloodstream. I did wonder if I would die that day.

When I called back in spite of myself and begged the police for help, they told me to call again only if he managed to break into the house. (Thank you, ‘Defund the Police’ advocates…)

At certain points of extreme stress, I could not even bring myself any longer to look outside to see where the bear was. What if I looked and couldn’t see him because he was already in the house? I went right into a place that is familiar to those of us with PTSD – a traumatized place where you freeze, and where you engage in magical thinking.

If I don’t look at the bear he won’t be there. If I don’t meet his gaze he won’t see me or smell me. I am somewhere else. I am not really here.

Reader, after an hour I was saved when brave colleagues of mine, Craig Klein, Reinette Senum and Jamie Arrigo, who had been meeting nearby, drove down our wooded driveway, blowing their car horns. I raced down the steps, never so happy to see people in my life. Reinette laughed at the sight of me racing to open the door, still carrying my useless BB gun.

I think I was coherent, but I was in shock. An officer from the Sheriff’s department arrived at the same time, bless him. Humans saved me. The aggressor, the wild animal, had been scared away, and not by me. I’d been a wreck, hopeless.

For days, I ruminated about the sharp yellow teeth of that bear, exposed as he raised his snout into the air, sniffing, like a scene from a horrifying fairy tale.

Why do I tell this story?

Because – the bear had been growing more and more comfortable emerging from the woods; he grew more and more comfortable exploring our trash and then he took over territory in exploring our lawn; he was “habituated” ultimately, as bear watchers say; he had ownership of the lawn and was circling the house to mark his territory. He was comfortable at last in stalking the homeowners.

He was here because — I had done nothing to stop him. He was here because I let him slowly take over our home.

My not being able to look directly at the bear did not make me any safer. My denial put me in greater danger.

This all, of course, really happened. But that does not mean it is not also a metaphor.

The same week that this happened, I also finalized my reporting about the Pfizer vaccines, showing — what I knew for months I would eventually find.

The heart of the manufacture and distribution of millions of doses of the MRNA vaccines that are causing such a swath of death and destruction throughout North America and Western Europe, is enmeshed with the plans, methods and manufacturing infrastructure of our existential adversary.

The enemy is within our very bodies.

Since I first started reading the reports produced by the 3000 medical and scientific experts of the WarRoom/DailyClout Pfizer Documents Research Volunteers team, based on the 55000 Pfizer documents released under court order, I knew I was seeing not just medicine gone wrong, not just a greedy pharmaceutical company and a regulatory agency that was fully corrupted, but rather, or additionally, I was seeing a massive act of war. [See this]

When I saw the eighteen months’ worth of sudden deaths, slow deaths, encephalies, strokes, heart attacks, pericarditis, myocarditis, Guillain Barre, Bell’s palsy, MS, blood clots, lung clots, leg clots, blue-green breast milk, spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, neonatal seizures, neonatal multi-organ system failure, liver damage, kidney damage, suppressed lactation, suppressed sperm count, disrupted menses, all detailed the Pfizer documents; when I saw the fact that 34,000 plus of the 42000 plus adverse events “cases” itemized in the worldwide rollout of the Pfizer injections, were sustained in the US — with the next largest group being sustained in Western Europe – and that the 56 countries around the world that also had Pfizer injections rolled out, amounted for only a bit over 7000 adverse events total — I knew I was seeing not just medicine gone wrong on a massive scale, but rather that I was seeing an act of war.

When I saw the doubling of neonatal deaths in country after country, the rise of 34% above normal in stillbirths and spontaneous abortions for vaccinated versus unvaccinated mothers; when I saw that 3816 vaccinated women in the VAERS database lost their babies — 57% of all the neonatal deaths in all the time that VAERS records had been kept — [see this]; when I saw that of 36 pregnancies followed in the Pfizer documents, 28 of the babies died [see this]; when I saw the rise of 40 per cent in death rates and the shocking rise in cases of disability in the West [see this] I knew I was not seeing just medicine gone wrong on a massive scale, but that I was witnessing an act of war.

When I saw that you could boost the lethality or the damage caused by the injection by simply changing how dilute the solution is, or simply by reassigning which brand you use – with Moderna (100 mcg) far more damaging than Pfizer (30 mcg) — I knew that I was seeing not just medicine gone wrong on massive scale, but an act of war.

When I saw a study out of Hong Kong in 2021 — a study that, of course, was answerable to the CCP — that revealed that a second dose (a “booster”) into the bloodstreams of mice, resulted in visibly enlarged hearts with white patches that could be seen by the naked eye, as well as cytokine storms and liver damage, I realized that the two-dose regime and then the “boosters” were slow but progressive ways to damage and then destroy the health of Western patients. The study concluded: “Post-vaccination myopericarditis is reported after immunization with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines.”

And yet with this CCP-overseen finding, that by injecting mammals with the MRNA vaccine, their hearts were visibly damaged, the worldwide injection program kept going.

[See this; Intravenous Injection of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) mRNA Vaccine Can Induce Acute Myopericarditis in Mouse Model, Can Li, Yanxia Chen, Yan Zhao, David Christopher Lung, Zhanhong Ye, Wenchen Song, Fei-Fei Liu, Jian-Piao Cai, Wan-Man Wong, Cyril Chik-Yan Yip, Jasper Fuk-Woo Chan, Kelvin Kai-Wang To, Siddharth Sridhar, Ivan Fan-Ngai Hung, Hin Chu, Kin-Hang Kok, Dong-Yan Jin, Anna Jinxia Zhang, Kwok-Yung Yuen; Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 74, Issue 11, 1 June 2022, Pages 1933–1950, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab707]

We were told that Pfizer/BioNTech is a German company. But it is actually a German-Chinese company. Since I first found that Pfizer/BioNTech had an MOU with Fosun Pharmaceuticals, a major CCP-linked pharmaceutical company based in Shanghai, to make the Pfizer/BioNTech MRNA vaccines, I knew that with a bit more digging I would find China at the heart of these acts of war.

BioNTech’s SEC filing shows that the MOU with Fosun Pharmaceuticals includes an equity investment by Fosun in BioNTech. In other words, the CCP is an equity investor in BioNTech:

“As part of the strategic alliance with Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (Group) Co., Ltd (“Fosun Pharma”; Stock Symbol: 600196.SH, 02196.HK) whereby the two companies will work together on the development of BNT162 in China, Fosun agreed to make an equity investment which was received in mid-April 2020. The issuance of 1,580,777 ordinary shares with the nominal amount of k€ 1,581 was registered within the commercial register (Handelsregister) as of April 23, 2020.” Not only that but: “Ai-Min Hui, President of Global R&D, and Chief Medical Officer of Fosun Pharma said: ”We are closely working with BioNTech and regulatory authorities to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the vaccine candidate, in order to synchronize the development process in China with other countries, and to bring the vaccine to public as soon as possible, if the vaccine succeeds.” [See this]

Fosun is not separate from the CCP; it is the CCP: Fosun acquired almost half of Sinopharm:

“In 2003 Fosun Pharmaceutical acquired 49% stake of Sinopharm Group(Chinese: 国药控股). […] In 2008, a year before the initial public offering of Sinopharm Group, Fosun Pharmaceutical owned the direct parent company of Sinopharm Group, Sinopharm Industrial Investment (Chinese: 国药产业投资) instead; the majority owner of the joint venture was state-owned China National Pharmaceutical Group(Sinopharm).” 2003年年报 [2003 Annual Report] (PDF). Fosun Industrial. 24 April 2004. Retrieved 5 August 2018– via Shanghai Stock Exchange website. [^ 国药集团复星联合成立首家混合所有制药企. 企业观察报 (in Chinese (China)). 4 August 2014. Retrieved 5 August 2018 – via Sina; ^ 2009年年报 [2009 Annual Report] (PDF). Fosun Pharmaceutical. 25 March 2010. Retrieved 5 August 2018 – via Shanghai Stock Exchange website.; ^ “Connection Transaction” (PDF) (Press release). Shanghai: Fosun International. 20 June 2008.]

Sinopharm, of course, as you see above, of which Fosun owns almost half, is owned in turn directly by the Chinese State and thus reports directly to the CCP.

The initial BioNTech/Fosun MOU seems to imply that all of the BioNTech/Fosun joint ventures’ activity is in China, or in regions aligned with or close to China. But is that now the case? Fosun Pharma did not stay in China.

It came here. Fosun Pharmaceuticals is now also Fosun Pharmaceuticals USA, with branches for R and D and product formulation in Boston, MA and Princeton, NJ: [See this]

It is producing formulations and products in the US for distribution in the US and around the world. Fosun Pharma has built a “global operation strategy” for the manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines, COVID-19 PCR tests and COVID-19 antigen tests:

“Fosun Pharma has built a strong root in China and developed a global operation strategy, with pharmaceutical manufacturing and R&D being the largest and core business segment, […]”

“In 2021, the revenue from new and sub-new products including COMIRNATY® (mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, also known as BNT162b2), […] accounted for over 25% of the revenue in the pharmaceutical manufacturing segment;
· Revenue from regions outside Mainland China and countries overseas reached RMB13,599 million, accounting for 34.86% of the total revenue, marking a step forward on globalization.” [Italics mine].

And more:

“Continuously strengthening the global operation capability and making further enhancement for globalization, Fosun Pharma has formed a global operating system for R&D, manufacturing and commercialization, and continuously expands overseas markets. [..] Globalization capability is continuously strengthened. The second headquarters in the United States help to build a global business landscape with full coverage of R&D, manufacturing and commercialization.[…]

“By the end of 2021, Fosun Pharma’s overseas commercialization team with over 1,200 employees has built marketing platforms in the United States, Africa and Europe [italics mine] and has achieved direct sales of formulations to the U.S. market. […] The COVID-19 test kit by Fosun Diagnostics has been sold in over ten countries. […] Gland Pharma, a holding subsidiary in India, received approvals from the US FDA for 13 generic drugs in 2021.

“Leveraging the current global manufacturing capability and world-class manufacturing facilities […] Fosun Pharma has accelerated the acquirement of international GMP certification of domestic production lines, laying a solid foundation for exporting domestic products. In January and March 2022, Fosun Pharmaceutical Industrial obtained the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP)’s license to produce and supply the generic version of Merck’s oral COVID-19 treatment Molnupiravir and Pfizer’s oral COVID-19 treatment Nirmatrelvir, as well as the co-packaged product of Nirmatrelvir and Ritonavir of Pfizer [….]. The license includes both ingredients and the finished drug. Through this license, Fosun Pharma devoted itself further to fighting against the pandemic around the world.”

Fosun Pharma USA offers potential partners: “A global reach with a focus on the United States and China markets”. It offers “US Rights” and “Global Rights” as well as “China Rights.” [See this]

[See this].

The FDA Filing for the Fosun Pharma USA facility says the facility is authorized to “develop specifications,” including for the PCR tests and antigen tests it creates, and that the facility can also have US agents: [See this]

This is crucial. Fosun Pharmaceuticals does not just partner with Pfizer/BioNTech to make the COVID-19 vaccines: they make, as noted, the PCR tests that are the one primary metric that determine the scale of the pandemic in North America and Western Europe and thus the “lockdowns” of whole countries, whole industrial sectors.

A CCP-run company, and CCP-created product, thus, decides — who can go to work or school, who must close his or her shop, who can or cannot travel — in all of Europe and the US: [See this]. A CCP-run company decides the formulation of the PCR and antigen tests that go deep into the nasopharyngeal cavities of Westerners who are forced, week after week, to test and test and test with these products. This is what is on the Fosun Pharma USA’s product pages:

The following products are developed in the Princeton NJ Fosun Pharma USA facility:

So this CCP-owned hybrid entity is here now and it is creating the diagnostic instruments that determine the scale of the pandemic in the West. The CCP can thus dial it up or down.

It also makes: millions of the Pfizer/BioNTech MRNA injections, the Merck COVID-19 pill Molnupiravir, the Pfizer COVID-19 pill Paxlovid — for which Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla just signed a contract with the US government for 10 million doses and $5.29 billion dollars for 2022 [See this] — all this for the US and for ten other countries including the EU.

These are all formulated and distributed by a company leading directly to Chinese Communist Party.

When Pres. Biden does a deal with Pfizer/BioNTech in the millions of dollars, with our tax money, he is giving a substantial portion of the funds to China. When he spends a billion dollars via omnibus bills for PPE, including millions for PCR and antigen tests, he is writing checks to — China.

This is from Fosun Pharmaceutical USA’s website section “R and D”: look at the last three entries:

Is Fosun a squeaky clean CCP-run Pharma enterprise? In 2018 a whistleblower — and in China that is courageous thing to be — broke a scandal revealing that Fosun Pharmaceuticals had “massively” faked its data and also bribed regulators. Facilities were so chaotic that the US FDA sent the company a stern letter. [See this].

BioNTech’s SEC filing reports as 100 per cent achieved, a tech transfer to — China. Not to a “Chinese company” or a “Chinese individual” but to the country of — China:

Source

Further, the SEC filing explains that it will effect the “technology transfer with China” after marketing approval has been granted. I don’t know what “Technology transfer” or “tech transfer” means in this SEC filing; SEC filing experts who have reviewed it for me have suggested that this can mean IP, manufacturing methodologies, formulas, data, or all four. But surely it is significant that the company BioNTech has declared as 100 % complete or in process, a “Tech transfer” to CHINA. It is not “sharing” the tech or “licensing” the tech — it is transferring the tech. That means that in some capacity, China will be or is in charge of some aspect of BioNTech’s technology, however that is defined here.

So take all of the above, and map it against the 150,000 plus adverse events in the Pfizer documents, the deadly harms to reproduction, the Western baby die-off, the babies in seizures; map it against the population drop, the rise in disabilities, map it against the rigid, cruel vaccine mandates aimed at Western defense forces (Canada’s, and Australia’s and all of Western Europe’s, as well as at the most powerful military in the world, that of the United States) — map it against the vaccine mandates aimed at our police, our health care workers, our firefighters, our pilots, our first responders, our kids, our babies — all this done by a White House captive, via Hunter Biden’s laptop, to the CCP. Add to all of this the evidence of birth rates declining, especially in the West, by 12-20 per cent:

How better to cripple the world’s other superpower than by destroying our American front lines and our American next generation, with tainted, murderous vaccines, flowed easily enough into the West via (not even that many) shell companies and cutouts? How easy to do the same to Western Europe, to Canada and Australia, as a whole?

Take all of the above and consider that the virus originated in China; and now all of the testing apparatuses, as well as millions of the vaccines, the catastrophically damaging or lethal “solutions” to the virus, also all originate from the same folks; the same leadership cadre who brought the world forced abortions, citizens welded into their homes, Uighur concentration camps, and organ harvesting.

I made the case in my new book The Bodies of Others that a transnational group of bad actors – including the WEF, The WHO, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, tech companies and the CCP — used the pandemic to crush humanity and in particular to destroy the West.

With the provenance of the vaccines and tests, you can see yet another mechanism, yet another core methodology of this warfare.

Mapping these points of evidence, I think you may start to see what I see.

This all means, of course, that we are staring into the abyss right now.

Traumatized or not, we all need to snap out of denial.

We let our adversary come too close to us. Into our very bloodstreams.

We need to save each other.

We need to turn and face the ravening beast.

*

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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, Covid-19 and the War Against the Human

By Naomi Wolf

Publisher: ‎All Seasons Pr (May 31, 2022)

ISBN-10: ‎ 1737478560

ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1737478560

Reviews

“Naomi Wolf is one of the bravest, clearest-thinking people I know. The reason you hear the forces of repression so desperately trying to dismiss her is because she is right.” – Tucker Carlson

“The pandemic response is the biggest crisis of our time. It is going to make wars look small. There are very few books exploring the pandemic, its origins and the ramifications of the response. Dr. Naomi Wolf’s ‘The Bodies of Others’ focuses on the extremely important issue of bodily autonomy, that you decide what happens to your body. The greatest loss to our freedom is when our leaders makes decisions on the bodies of others. Buy this important book to understand the consequences.” – Dr. Peter McCullough, cardiologist, COVID-19 early treatment advocate, president, Cardio Renal Society of America

“Dr. Naomi Wolf’s book stands apart in a world of groupthink. It is an impeccable, thought-provoking compilation of the troubling and distressing consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, including censorship and the suppression of alternatives to the mainstream narrative.” – Dr. Paul Alexander, former WHO COVID pandemic evidence-synthesis advisor

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According to a report from Politico, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told Secretary of State Antony Blinken to designate Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” or else Congress would do it.

The Politico report cited two sources familiar with the call who said the conversation happened earlier this week. As secretary of state, Blinken has the authority to designate a state as a sponsor of terror, and Congress could also do it by passing legislation.

The designation is meant to expand sanctions on the targeted nation. Currently, only Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria are designated by the US as state sponsors of terror. Cuba’s designation was lifted by the Obama administration but was reimposed during the final days of the Trump administration.

Since the US has already hit Russia with so many sanctions, the designation would have little impact on Moscow. But designating a state as a sponsor of terrorism opens up sanctions on other countries that do business with them. The move would also signal that US-Russia relations won’t be repaired for years to come as such designations are usually difficult to reverse.

Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) are pushing for the designation and introduced a resolution that would call on Blinken to enact it. The two senators traveled to Kyiv earlier this month and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss the idea. While in Kyiv, the two senators expressed support for a “hand-to-hand insurgency” in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

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

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***

What do you do when you hear about a US F-18 Super Hornet getting blown off a carrier by the wind?  Naturally it got me wondering about a shortage of tiedowns, you know, because of the COVID global supply chain collapse.

Just kidding!  Pretty sure that wasn’t it; maybe the Navy is just being creative about getting rid of them.  It is – as we are seeing with domestic transportation infrastructure and power grid reliability, “explosions” on the nearly empty Hoover Dam, and a massive number of food industry mishaps, among other things –  a sign that the US is, shall we say, changing.

“Revealing” is a better word than “changing.”  Americans, and those who study the United States, are starting to see all the things that are really not there.  We are getting glimpses into the nature of the massive empire, domestic and international, and its fascistic international political leadership – and when we look closer we see it is hollow, inverted, vacant and empty.

We have, as Leonard Read noted, a kakistocracy – government of the worst.  Uncle Joe is not only a great president, he is our ideal president – an incoherent, senile grifter who cannot keep track of his location, his mouth, his history, or what part of the teleprompter screen he is supposed to be reading.  Those who supported Joe, as for those who supported The Donald in 2020, were in 100% agreement in what they thought about the opposition.  Yet, these were the choices offered to the 50 states and the 340 million people who live in those states.

Political vacancy aside, the US also has no economy!  The financialized economy that Dr Roberts describes – where “which consumer income is diverted by debt expansion away from the purchase of new goods and services into debt service and fees–interest on mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, student loan debt” – produces very little.  Franklin Sanders, of The Moneychanger, adds:

Dr. Roberts doesn’t mention the other thing that proves we have no economy:  50% of the  people in the US take their living from government in one form or the other, which means that actually 75% take their living from government, counting the half of the retail workers who serve them.  That’s right, half of the people take their living from government, either working for government or receiving welfare or pensions.  Of the 50% who live off government, about 3/5 live off of state or local government, the other 2/5 off the federal government.

You can look at US labor participation rates, or overhear anecdotes of people working two or three full time jobs online unbeknownst to their erstwhile employers.  When money is disconnected from productivity, why not?

The empty US economy is matched by an utterly void foreign and military policy.  We see a military that is so strapped for qualified volunteers that it is shrinking, despite a literal explosion of federal drawing rights.  Despite every effort since the 1940s to recruit via Hollywood fairytales, turns out that spitting on the culture and religion of military families, and destroying the middle class altogether isn’t a great recruiting approach.  Who knew?

Aside from shipwrecks and missile test failures, forced drug and vaccine testing on the previously healthiest age groups, the occasional aircraft blown overboard, mass murder, black sites, shrink-wrapped cash drops, and not winning a war in 70 years – I guess the US military is doing just fine.  Actually, it seems as if the Space Force is the only part of the service that is attracting recruits.  This in itself is revealing as the Space Force is an empty outfit doing absolutely nothing, by design.

All of the evidence is pointing not to a little man behind a curtain, but something far more insignificant.  The US “project” has become a centralized and oligarchical paper-mache pinata – with no candy, no prizes, and no delight.

One wonders if it would even be worth taking a whack at it.  Perhaps this is our real national defense strategy.

Inside the hollow empire, opportunities abound, as decentralization of power is uncheckable and individual innovation already required to get anything done.  An armed, innovative, citizenry taking responsibility for his and her own security and productivity are not just good Samaritans – we are 100 million John and Jane Galts living our lives despite, and outside, centralized institutions.  The hollow empire has no ability to force anyone to do anything, whether another country or a live shooter in a Texas elementary school.  Old Soviets  – like modern Americans – share the joke that “The government pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work.”  We may extract what may be extracted from the empty institutions, and build a world that is closer to our own value systems, as we wish, and many are already doing that. It’s worth celebrating on a daily basis.

As you listen to the federal agencies and their industrial satraps cry and whine about their failed vaccination programs, their inability to recruit soldiers, the mountain of debt and an international financial economy that is disconnected from the world of innovation and productivity – as these kakicrats complain about us, lecture us, lie to us and nag us – you may know we’ve already got them by their institutional short-hairs.

Neocon nutcase and truly average guy John Bolton gave us an illustration of where the empty empire is, as it sputters on what’s left in the tank, and looks over its shoulder nervously.  Bolton was speaking to a friendly CNN/government reporter about what it takes to overthrow a government.  In explaining why January 6^th had none of those attributes, Jake Tapper inadvertently insulted the mustachoied little parasite when he said, “One does not have to be brilliant to plan a coup.”  Chickenhawk Bolton demurred, “I disagree with that as someone who helped plan coups d’etat, not here, but in other places, it takes a lot of work,…”

Yes. Yes it does.  And no one in our government understands the definition of work, nor do they aspire to it.  Instead we have fake money, fake workers, fake defense, fake credentials, fake leadership, fake presidents, fake education, fake news, fake tolerance, fake medicine, and fake wars.  Looking at this list, it is indeed impressive in its own right, and worth little more than a chuckle as we go about our day.

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Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, farmer and aspiring anarcho-capitalist. She ran for Congress in Virginia’s 6th district in 2012.

Featured image is from wallswatchdog.com

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***

The world currently faces energy and food crises. Even before the war in Ukraine, there has already been a global energy shortage caused by supply-demand imbalances after the pandemic restrictions have been eased – as well as climatic and other natural reasons that have converged with the global supply chain crisis. The fact is that amid fuel wars in the Levant and elsewhere (made worse by US sanctions), a global food crisis, which threatens mostly African countries, has been aggravated by the Ukrainian conflict. Prices were already climbing internationally before, but the situation today is even worse. The two East Slavic countries indeed are major corn suppliers and also export almost a third of the world’s barley, and wheat.

Western discourse unjustly blames Moscow for this state of affairs, but the truth is way more complicated.

It is true that the confrontation currently prevents grains from leaving the so-called breadbasket of the world, and thus has made food more expensive globally. It is also true that ongoing negotiations on setting safe corridors up to allow grains to get out of Black Sea ports had been much to no avail until the recent talks in Turkey. Part of the grains has been rerouted through Europe (by rivers, rail, and road), but such routes cannot even compare with sea ones.

According to Joseph Glauber, a senior researcher at the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, grain now has to go “all the way around Europe to come back into the Mediterranean”, which adds “an incredible amount of cost” to it. The World Food Programme summed it up thusly, last month:

“A global food crisis fuelled by conflict, climate shocks and the COVID-19 pandemic is growing because of the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine driving rising prices of food items, fuel and fertilizer. Millions of people across the world are at risk of being driven into starvation”

Many Western voices thus blame the Russian blockades. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and European Council President Charles Michel all claim Moscow has weaponized food. Russian grain, however, is not getting out either. The Kremlin has been arguing that all the Western sanctions on its shipping industries – not to mention its banks – have made it almost impossible for Russia to export fertilizer and food as it did before, because the situation scares foreign shipping companies away.

Moreover, there is one crucial aspect missing from most coverages on the subject. The very fact that Ukraine itself has mined up all of its Black Sea ports, particularly Odessa, is not much discussed.

Ukrainian authorities in Kiev claim they have done so to prevent Russian warships from attacking their port cities. Exports, obviously, can only resume once Kiev has taken measures to ensure all such mines have been defused. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has repeatedly stated that, once this has been done, Moscow will take all necessary steps to “ensure that the ships can leave there freely”, not abusing its own naval advantage. Ukrainian and Western authorities  claim such promises cannot be trusted. In any case, the mines remain. And this fact alone makes any progress impossible.

There is no rational reason to believe Moscow would be against Ukrainian exports to Africa, for instance, or even to the EU. The truth is that foreign ships cannot sail safely when there is a real risk of being damaged by Ukrainian mines.

Finally, there is another aspect that cannot be overlooked. The Russian Federation is clearly concerned about the flow of weapons to Ukraine – and this is a matter that should concern Europeans too, as many of them end up in black markets, and thus risk being found in the hands of terrorists, not to mention far-right extremists. Therefore, Moscow wants all foreign ships to be checked and searched for weapons.

This is precisely what was discussed last week after meetings in Istanbul. On July 13, Turkey’s defense minister, Hulusi Akar, announced a deal with Moscow, Kiev, and the United Nations (UN) aimed at resuming grain exports. It has not been signed yet, but it involves joint controls for checking the ships. Russia has, once again, offered free passage.

On July 20, while in Tehran, Russian President Vladimir Putin said there has been “progress”, but added that “not all problems have yet been resolved.”

This is a very critical step forward, but whether the Ukrainian military possesses the technical capacity to diffuse all the mines it has installed on its own ports (or the will to do so) still remains to be seen.

One can of course be critical of the very Russian decision to launch what it describes as its military special operation in Ukraine or the way it has conducted it, but the fact that this unfortunate state of affairs is the result of a series of Western-backed Ukrainian provocations should not be forgotten in any serious analysis of the conflict.

NATO has been aggressively expanding, and Kiev, armed and aided by the West, has been waging war against Donbass for the last 8 years, and so things have escalated into this conflict.

At this point, the risk of global hunger is very real, but it is about time Ukraine too is held responsible for the current situation. It is up to Kiev to diffuse its port mines and to make concessions so that grain exports can resume.

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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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***

The Ukrainian parliament has passed two new radical measures on labour liberalisation, prompting fears of Ukrainians losing workplace rights permanently as Russia’s war puts huge pressure on the country’s economy.

In two laws passed on Monday and Tuesday, MPs voted to legalise zero-hours contracts and made moves towards removing up to 70% of the country’s workforce from protections guaranteed by national labour law.

The latter measure means the national labour code no longer applies to employees of small- and medium-sized enterprises; instead, it is proposed that each worker strikes an individual labour agreement with their employer. It also removes the legal authority of trade unions to veto workplace dismissals.

Draft law 5371 had previously been criticised by the International Labor Organization, as well as Ukrainian and European trade unions, on the basis that it could “infringe international labour standards”.

Ukraine’s ruling Servant of the People party argued that the “extreme over-regulation of employment contradicts the principles of market self-regulation [and] modern personnel management”.

Red tape in Ukraine’s HR laws, it suggested, “creates bureaucratic barriers both for the self-realisation of employees and for raising the competitiveness of employers”.

The Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine will now ask president Volodymyr Zelenskyi to veto draft law 5371 when it goes to him for signature – but will not make the same request over the proposed law on zero-hours contracts, Ukrainian MP Vadym Ivchenko told openDemocracy.

Nataliia Lomonosova, an analyst at Ukrainian think tank Cedos, warned that the two laws could further deteriorate an already difficult socio-economic situation for Ukrainians suffering from Russia’s military campaign.

According to the UN’s latest numbers, Russia’s invasion has led to at least seven million people becoming displaced inside Ukraine itself, which has been compounded by a severe economic crisis hitting families and individuals hard. At the same time, the World Bank has predicted that Ukraine’s economy will contract by 45% this year.

With these factors in mind, Lomonosova argued that Ukrainians have little choice or bargaining power when it comes to employers – the number of available vacancies is vastly disproportionate to the number of people now looking for work in the country. “People right now have no bargaining power, and trade unions cannot protect them,” she said.

Speaking to openDemocracy, Lomonosova expressed a fear that, as a result of the displacement, “many people will find themselves in the situation of Ukrainian migrant workers” in their own country – meaning, for instance, people will have little choice but to accept poor conditions and to be ever more dependent on their employers.

‘Window of opportunity’

A leading member of Zelenskyi’s party promised further liberalisation of Ukraine’s labour legislation earlier this month.

“These are draft laws that business is waiting for, draft laws that will protect the interests of all entrepreneurs. And workers, too, by the way,” wrote MP Danylo Hetmantsev on Telegram on 9 July.

“A worker should be able to regulate his relationship with an employer himself. Without the state,” noted Hetmantsev, who is head of the Ukrainian parliament’s finance committee.

“This is what happens in a state if it’s free, European and market-oriented. Otherwise, the country will be travelling with one leg on an express train to the EU, and with another inside a Soviet-era train going in the other direction.”

Ukrainian labour lawyer George Sandul previously told openDemocracy that MPs had used Russia’s invasion of the country as a “window of opportunity” in which to try to push through drastic changes to labour legislation.

Lomonosova, of Cedos, agreed with Sandul, arguing that deregulation and the stripping back of social guarantees was a long-term policy of the Ukrainian government even before the war, and was likely part of an effort to attract foreign investors.

She pointed to the fact that both of the laws passed this week date to an early attempt by the Zelenskyi administration and the ruling party to deregulate labour legislation in 2020-21. This attempt was beaten back as a result of a protest campaign by Ukrainian trade unions, a prospect now hard to imagine due to the war and martial law, Lomonsova said.

As she put it, the Ukrainian government and ruling party are also now increasingly talking about the fact that the state “cannot afford welfare, employment benefits or protection of labour rights” because of the war.

In contrast to the deregulation trend, Lomonsova says that there is clear support among the Ukrainian public for social democracy.

“Year on year, opinion surveys have shown that Ukrainians have strong social democratic attitudes, including in favour of welfare,” Lomonosova said. “They expect the government to protect their labour rights and offer a complete social package. Not even war can change this.”

Zero-hours contracts

Under Ukraine’s new zero-hours legislation, employers who choose to use the contract option will be able to call up workers at will, though contracts must define the method and minimum timeframe for informing an employee of work, and the response time of the worker to agree or refuse to work.

The legislation also says people employed on these new contracts must be guaranteed a minimum of 32 hours’ work a month, and that the percentage of employees on zero-hours contracts at company can’t be more than 10%.

In its explanation of the law, the Ukrainian government stated that people involved in irregular work are currently employed “without any social or labour guarantees”.

Therefore, it says, zero-hours contracts – a term the government used – will help “legalise the work of freelancers, who mostly work on short-term projects and are not limited to working for a single client”.

Labour lawyer and activist Vitaliy Dudin told openDemocracy that, as a result of the economic crisis caused by the war, Ukrainians are facing ever greater “economic risks” and poverty – and this means that Ukrainian employers “will be able to radically reduce labour costs”.

The new contracts proposed under zero-hours legislation, he suggested, could also lead to two-tier workplaces, where employers offer secure jobs to loyal or non-unionised staff, while others face precarious employment or immediate dismissal for reasons manufactured by the employers.

This could affect workplaces with hundreds of workers, including public sector jobs at risk of austerity policies, such as hospitals, railway depots, post offices and infrastructure maintenance, Dudin said.

“This is a disastrous step towards precarisation,” Dudin said, and one that “calls into question the very right of Ukrainians who have been affected by the war to get a means of living”.

What happens after the war?

European trade union groups have long criticised the growing trend towards labour liberalisation in Ukraine since Zelenskyi and his political party, Servant of the People, came to power in 2019.

On 14 July, as rumours of a new vote on draft law 5371 spread, three European trade union confederations expressed their concern that the Ukrainian government and ruling party “continue to reject the EU’s values of social dialogue and social rights” with its labour liberalisation programme.

“We are strongly concerned about regressive labour reforms continuing after the emergency of war is over,” the unions’ letter said, claiming the reforms “go in the opposite direction to EU principles and values”.

Ukrainian parliamentarians have previously criticised draft law 5371 as a potential danger to the country’s integration into the European Union. Ukraine was granted EU candidate status in late June.

Both Ukraine’s 2014 Association Agreement with the EU and its 2020 Political, Free Trade and Strategic Partnership Agreement with the UK contain provisions on ensuring workplace protections – including against attempts to attract international investment.

László Andor, a former EU commissioner for employment, social affairs and inclusion between 2010 and 2014, told openDemocracy that he believed this new legislation suggested that Ukraine was going in a “completely different direction” from EU norms on decent work.

“This case is a big dose of opportunism,” said Andor, now secretary general of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, a Brussels think tank.

“Ukrainian lawmakers need to understand better what the difference is between a continental European model and these moves towards a very precarious labour market.

“Ukrainian trade unions are not being listened to sufficiently. This would be elementary in the European Union.“

“There is an enormous amount of national cohesion in Ukraine, which the rest of the world admires,“ Andor continued. “But these moves, in my opinion, can also undermine national unity – something very much needed for resisting a foreign invasion.“

Proponents of the law consider Ukrainian trade unions’ efforts at defeating labour liberalisation an attempt to “preserve their influence“, and that ILO conventions on workplace protections are “out of step“ with the modern labour market and the needs of small and medium-sized businesses.

While ruling party MPs have suggested that draft law 5371 will passed as a temporary, wartime measure, MP Mykhailo Volynets, a member of the same Batkivshchyna party as Ivchenko, argued “it is clear that no one will be able to undo this situation later” in a post on Facebook.

“The labour code will no longer apply, collective agreements will be eliminated, and even those mechanisms of employee protection that are in place today will not work. This is a brazen violation of international norms and standards in the field of labour,” he said.

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Featured image: A Ukrainian soldier carries a Javelin anti-tank missile through a trench in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Photo courtesy the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine/Facebook.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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In early June 2022, the government of The Netherlands announced it would cut the size of livestock herds in the country by 30% to meet European Union nitrogen and ammonia pollution rules

According to Dutch Parliament member Thierry Baudet, the government is following the script of The Great Reset, which requires weakening the country, making it more dependent on food imports, and diluting nationalism by taking in more immigrants. To make room for immigrant housing, they need to take land from the farmers

The newly assigned Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy, Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink, is married to Piet van der Wal, who together with his brother are heavily invested in the major online grocery retailer Picnic. In September 2021, Bill Gates invested an estimated half-billion dollars into Picnic, thereby becoming one of its lead investors. Gates’ involvement has raised questions about government corruption

At the same time the Dutch government is preparing to radically restrict livestock farming and meat production, Gates is gobbling up farmland back home. Despite land prices being at a record high, Gates purchased a 2,100-acre potato farm in North Dakota in June 2022, bringing the total land share held by the Gates’ Red River Trust above 270,000 acres

Gates claims he intends to lease the farmland to farmers. Viewed from the perspective of The Great Reset, it would then appear Gates may be engaged in the same kind of wealth-shift scheme as BlackRock and other investment groups that are buying up single-family homes and turning them into rentals. The end goal is to eliminate all private ownership and turn the population into serfs

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Click here to watch the video.

In early June 2022, the government of The Netherlands announced it would cut the size of livestock herds in the country by 30% to meet European Union nitrogen and ammonia pollution rules.^1,2 As a result of this “green” policy, many farmers will be driven out of business³ and they have gathered in protest across the country.

This is important because many may not realize that even though The Netherlands is a small country, it’s the second-largest exporter of agriculture in the world, after the United States.⁴ As with current energy shortages, the forced reductions in farming and food production are said to be an “unavoidable” part of the Green Agenda to improve air, soil and water quality.⁵

In a public statement about the new emissions targets, the Dutch government even admitted that “The honest message … is that not all farmers can continue their business.”⁶ Those who do continue will have to come up with creative solutions to meet the new emissions restrictions.

A Clear Case of Corruption?

The restrictions on nitrogen for livestock farmers have befuddled many. Why would government restrict farming at a time when food shortages and famine loom on the horizon worldwide? Some claim to have discovered conflicts of interest within the Dutch government that can help explain this irrational move.⁷

The newly assigned Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy (who created the nitrogen regulations and is responsible for overseeing the cuts to farming), Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink, is married to Piet van der Wal, who together with his brother, Bouke van der Wal, own a massive supermarket chain called Boni.

As noted by The Conservative Treehouse,⁸ “when Dutch farmers sell product to Boni they are directly funding the wealth of the government minister who seeks to destroy their livelihoods.”

The van der Wal family is also heavily invested in a major online grocery retailer called Picnic. Picnic buys food at wholesale prices directly from Boni, which minimizes its operational costs. Picnic basically functions as a home delivery service for Boni.

In September 2021, Bill Gates entered the Dutch enterprise. He invested an estimated half-billion dollars into Picnic, thereby becoming one of its lead investors.⁹ Not surprisingly, Picnic focuses on selling the fake “food” that Gates is invested in and promotes, imitation beef in particular.

The CEO of Picnic, Michiel Muller, a Dutch climate change activist, has also publicly vowed to “change the entire food system” to be in line with sustainable goals,¹⁰ which falls right in line with Gates’ agenda.

The strong recommendation to replace beef with fake meat was made in Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need,” released in February 2021.¹¹ In an interview with MIT Technology Review, he also suggested that people could learn to like fake meat and, if resistance continues, regulations may be needed to force the switch.¹²

According to The Countersignal,¹³ “many participating in the ongoing farmers’ protests in Holland have openly stated they believe Gates may be partly responsible for pushing additional climate laws.” Curiously, July 10, 2022, a large Picnic delivery facility in Almelo, Holland, burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances.^14,15,16

Why Get Rid of Farmers Amid Rising Food Insecurity?

The attempt to rid The Netherlands of livestock farmers really only makes sense if seen from the globalists’ point of view, with an eye on The Great Reset, the Green New Deal, Agenda 2030 and related Sustainable Development Goals.

Indeed, according to Dutch Parliament member Thierry Baudet (video above), that’s really what the nitrogen restrictions are all about. The Dutch government is following the script of The Great Reset, he says, which requires weakening the country, making it less independent and more dependent on food imports.

The Great Reset script also calls for diluting nationalism and weakening borders by taking in more immigrants, and to make room for immigrant housing, they need to take land from the farmers. So, the new nitrogen rules are basically a precursor to a land grab. They intend to put farmers out of business so they can take their land and stack it full of low-income, government-assistance apartment buildings.

Aside from that, farmers also pose a threat to the technocratic elitists because they don’t need to rely on government for basics such as food and shelter, and they can allow those who buy their food to maintain their independence as well.

The globalists’ plan is to eliminate access to as much real food as possible, and replace natural foods with patented foodstuffs so that the population becomes entirely dependent on them for survival. At that point, they are easily controlled. Eliminating independent food producers — farmers — is therefore a key to the globalist cabal’s eventual success.

Gates Gobbles Up Farmland While Pushing Fake Foods

At the same time the Dutch government is preparing to radically restrict livestock farming and meat production — likely with Gates’ blessing, if not due to his influence — Gates is gobbling up farmland back home.

Despite land prices being at a record-high, Gates purchased a 2,100-acre potato farm in North Dakota in June 2022, bringing the total land share held by the Gates’ Red River Trust above 270,000 acres — up from about 242,000 acres in mid-September 2021.

The following map, from AgWeb,¹⁷ shows the distribution of his land holdings prior to his North Dakota acquisition. As you can see, the vast majority is farmland.

Gates Plan: Turn Farmers Into Modern Serfs

However, as reported by AgWeb at the end of June 2022, Gates didn’t get a warm welcome:¹⁸

“North Dakota hosts ‘corporate farming laws’ that barres [sic] corporations and limited liability companies from owning and leasing farms and ranches. With the Gates’s new $13.5 million farmland purchase, North Dakotans — including the attorney general — are concerned the sale violates the state’s law. The North Dakota attorney general’s office sent a letter to the Red River Trust on Tuesday, alerting the trustee of the North Dakota land law.

‘Our office needs to confirm how your company uses this land and whether this use meets any of the statutory exceptions, such as the business purpose exception,’ wrote Drew Wrigley, North Dakota attorney general.”

MoneyWise¹⁹ followed up on the story, reporting that by July 5, 2022, Gates had secured legal approval for his farm purchase — a decision that has raised the ire of many North Dakotans who don’t believe Gates has good intentions.

According to MoneyWise, “The anti-corporate farming law does allow individual trusts to own farmland if it is leased to farmers — and that’s what Gates’ firm plans to do.” Viewed from the perspective of The Great Reset, it appears Gates may be engaged in the same kind of subversive wealth-shift scheme as BlackRock and other investment groups that are buying up single-family homes.

They buy them, often sight-unseen and at above-market prices, with the intent of turning them into rentals. This too is part and parcel of The Great Reset and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The intent is to eliminate all private ownership and turn the population into modern serfs. “Serf” is a term that describes people who are required to work for the “lord” who owns the land they live on, or who are otherwise underpaid, overworked or exploited in some way.

That’ll be all of us, one day, if the world doesn’t wake up and refuse to go along with the globalist cabal’s Great Reset plans. The plight of the Dutch farmers is just the beginning.

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Notes

¹ Substack, The Freedom Corner with PeterSweden July 1, 2022

² Reuters June 10, 2022

³ Bloomberg June 28, 2022

⁴ WEF. November 27, 2019

^5, 6 Indian Express July 3, 2022

^7, 8, 10 The Conservative Treehouse July 12, 2022

⁹ USSA News July 10, 2022

¹¹ Market Watch February 16, 2021

¹² MIT Technology Review February 14, 2021

^13, 14 The Countersignal July 11, 2022

¹⁵ Newspunch July 11, 2022

¹⁶ Sott.net July 11, 2022

^17, 18 AgWeb June 28, 2022

¹⁹ Moneywise July 5, 2022

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Dr Peter Breggin MD is a lifelong reformer known as “The Conscience of Psychiatry” for his criticism of biological psychiatry and his promotion of more effective, empathic, and ethical forms of psychological, educational, and social approaches to people with emotional suffering and disability. He graduated from Harvard College with Honors and his psychiatric training included a Teaching Fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

Following his training, he became a Full Time Consultant in the U.S. Public Health Service at NIH, assigned to the National Institute of Mental Health. Since then, he has taught at several universities, including Johns Hopkins, George Mason, and the University of Maryland, as well as at the Washington School of Psychiatry.

Dr. Breggin gives his no-holds-barred view of why America’s children are so depressed, suicidal and homicidal.

*

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This interview was originally published on TNT Radio.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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“The straw that broke the camel’s back” … an undesirable event that makes it apparent a burdensome load can no longer be tolerated without collapse!

Introduction

29 Jun 2022 – For decades, the straws of human struggle and suffering have been added to World’s back. Each adding to a burden exceeding limits of human and natural endurance and survival. Like thousands of others, I rejected the lies and propaganda of those in power seeking to mollify and calm the visibly apparent collapse of the World, as yet new straws were added for personal benefit of those individuals and nations whose wealth, power, and position enabled them to act with egregious disdain and contempt of the consequences of their actions – the “Extinction of Life on Earth.”

Like thousands of others across the World, empowered only by word and voice, I have written and prophesied like Cassandra, daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of ancient Troy, sister of the noble hero Hector, gifted by Apollo with the powers to predict the future, yet ultimately denied acceptance of her words, regardless of their accuracy. And so, I write once again to call attention to the dire situation facing the world as its essential life resources are exploited, destroyed, and cast aside in favor corporate, military, and nationalistic profits, ideologies, and interests bent on the limited survival of a chosen few.

With little hesitancy, Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, spoke of a coming global crisis in starvation, an unprecedented global hunger crisis impacting hundreds of millions of people, most in developing nations, because needed resources for agriculture (e.g., seeds, fertilizers, arable land, energy, workers, harvesting and distribution systems) are currently unavailable. He called for a reintegration of Russia and the Ukraine into the food production network, tragically a most unlikely response.  (See this) Global starvation, of course is only one of a spectrum of challenges, constituting a historic burden to the World. Yet another “straw” heaped upon a World mired in accumulating crises.

A Panorama of Global Challenges

I am writing this article on a panorama of global challenges with the specific purpose of increasing knowledge, consciousness, and urgent attention to the global context of our lives our lives today, especially with respect to their pressing severity, frequency, and resistance to solution.

What is at stake in this moment of time is the question of the “Survival of Life on Earth!” This is not hyperbole! I am not a Luddite! I am, like so many others, acutely aware of the perilous consequences of the many rapid, dislocating, and destructive changes occurring across the world today.

Life on Earth is experiencing a spectrum of challenges eluding control. Most of these challenges are a function of anthropogenic (human) origin, exacerbation, and perpetuation. When combined with the many natural challenges the World is facing, the spectrum of Global Challenges reveals the destruction of human and nature resources required for sustaining life.

Under the pretext of normal and acceptable progress and evolution in emerging technological advances, changes in the social formation, and essential Western nation cultural values, political priorities, and noble intentions, Global Challenges exceed our capacity to prevent the “Extinction of all Life on Earth,” from the most microscopic, to that of every vast expression.

Widespread pollution and destruction of ocean, atmosphere, and Earth, resources for financial purposes, has sealed the World’s fate. Anthropogenic failure to acknowledge Earth’s complex resources, raises the prophetic reality of “Eschatological” end times. Historical predictions, prophecies, and realities. (e.g., cyclical, linear, messianic), proposed across time and location in past centuries, are now visible and apparent.

Figure 1 displays the range of anthropogenic destruction of nature and civilization over the course of the presence of modern human species  in the last 50,000 years, especially the last eleven thousand years when humans moved from a hunting/gathering species to collective agricultural and societal forms of survival creating awe-inspiring civilizations which rose and collapsed from internal and external limitations.

While there is debate between environmental sciences, who favor the termed “Anthropogenic Era,” and geological sciences who  favoring more scientific terminology consistent with past practices (e.g., “Holocene”), it is no longer questioned humanity’s evolutionary rise from primate roots to tribal, societal, and civilization levels, brought with it a destructive impulse threatening to extinguish all forms of existing life.  Tragically, this harsh reality denies and erases the magnificence of humanity’s achievements in advancing noble knowledge, wisdom, and moral codes. There cannot be any doubt of humanity’s creative talents and abilities, yet these must be weighed against the consequences of Life’s demise and destruction.

Figure 1: Anthropogenic Destructions 

List of Global Challenges

In a previous article, I composed a list of Global Challenges, summarizing and categorizing well-know and self-evident problems accruing across present times. (i.e., Marsella, 2022). In my prior article, I was initially more concerned with the human mind’s pursuit of meaning by its capacity to accommodate disparate information, yielding acceptable beliefs and actions.

Unfortunately, lost in this process was the very list of Global Challenges I had compiled as a trope for my existential explorations. It was only after, I recognized I had stumbled across a far more important issue for our times, and that was the magnitude and consequences of the Global Challenges.

As a result, I began collecting, collating, and organizing global events and forces occurring within a condensed period of time to reveal the immense burden the challenges are imposing on individual, societal, and national survival. Each day seems to bring a new or augmented past challenge, and with a sense of uncertainty, confusion, and panic. It is too much to grasp and understand, bringing with it despair, chaos, and a helplessness the limits of human coping have been exceeded, and “end times” are near.

The compiled list of “Global Challenges, which follows is overwhelming in their scope and magnitude, raising to a new priority and call for action, the most important challenge humanity faces, “Extinction of Life on Earth.”

While daily attention is given to the many crises and disasters humanity faces, “Extinction” looms as the most critical.

Within the last decade, there has been a dramatic increase in interest and publications about extinction, much of it stimulated by the publication of Elizabeth Kolbert’s (2014), Pulitzer Prize Award volume, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. Kolbert’s publication reminded the Humanity of the Earth’s past extinctions, their sources, and the many current disasters threatening a “Sixth Extinction.” Kolbert writes:

Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. (Kolbert, 2014, opening).

Robert Burrowes and Anita McKone (2016), in an essential article, entitled “Life on Earth Is Dying’” (Transcend Media Service, December 12, 2016), write:

The human onslaught to destroy life on Earth is unprecedented in Earth’s history. Planet Earth is now experiencing its sixth mass extinction event and Homo Sapiens is the cause. Moreover, this mass extinction event is accelerating and is so comprehensive in its impact that the piece meal measures being taken by the United Nations, international agencies and governments constitute a tokenism that is breathtaking in the extreme. You and I are on the brink of driving to extinction some of the most iconic species alive today. (Burrowes, 2016)

James Lovelock, called one of the most brilliant minds of our time,  proposed a captivating hypothesis in two of his books: The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity Paperback – June 5, 2007 NY: Basic Books, Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence (The MIT Press) Hardcover – August 27, 2019.  Lovelock suggested the Earth is a living planet, characterized by complex ecological interconnectedness in which all parts impact the whole, yielding an organic planetary existence.

Each day, there are “Challenges of the Day,” ranging from gun violence to romantic problems among banal celebrity lives. Too often, “Challenge of the Day,” has pushed other critical challenges aside. For example, Russia-Ukraine headlines, morph into economic issues of recession as consumer prices rise because of transportation, manufacturing problems, and supply lines. This is followed by the reality of mass starvation, especially in Africa and parts of Asia. This is followed by the perennial and enduring problem of violence, guns, and mass murders in the USA. The tragic Uvalde School massacre of 19 children and two teachers, became the focus of world attention, as nothing could bring comfort to shattered hearts and minds.

Within the span of a few weeks, my compiled List of Global Challenges had grown to Brobdingnagian proportion, characterized not only by number, but also by complexity and resistance to change. While many public and private (NGOs) have evidence admirable efforts to resolve entries, the harsh reality is people and the world are hurting. Amanda Gorman, USA Poet Laureate’ words, offer balm for our pain and suffering at this time when “everything hurts.”  Amanda’s moving poem is presented at the end of this article.

While there is a “Challenge of the Moment, occupying attention,” there is also an “accumulation burden” of Global Challenges constantly lurking in the background context.  This has critical implications for human stress and wellbeing, effective problem solving, and risks of extinction of all life on Earth. It is a harsh reality, but a reality nevertheless.

Of special note is the complex interaction and inter-relationship of the Global Challenges. Too many Global Challenges are dismissed “intentionally” by government, corporate, and military interests, keeping citizens in the “dark” about what is occurring, lest protests arise adding to the Challenges.

In many nations, protests now assume the form of national “populism” for governmental support, which is, in reality, denial, distortion, and a delusional reality. Humanity, through ignorance, greed, passivity, reliance, and acceptance, of unwarranted trust in corrupt public and private institutions, has forged its own demise, and the likely demise of other forms of life.

Because of their wealth, power, and position, some human elites may survive, by constructing alternatives to life on Earth. For example, elite corporate technocrats (e.g., World Economic Forum, Davos Cabal) believe a self-sufficient “Star-Wars” community in outer space will offer a solution for the privileged to survive. There are plans afoot to build a nuclear reactor on the Moon to support a human community. Their sins will follow them!

Global Challenges List: (Alphabetical Order)

• ABORTION RIGHTS (NATION VARIATION IN USE, ACCEPTABLE GESTATION TIMES, MORALITY ISSUES, RIGHT-TO-LIFE, ROE VS WADE, SUPREME COURT OVERTURN RESULTING IN MASSIVE PROTESTS)
• ACRONYMS OMNIPRESENT (USA, NATO, UN, FBI, MI5, MI6, CIA, KGB, WB, IMF, NSA, SCOTUS, WEF, UK, IRS, SOCSEC, NGO, AA, DARPA, MAGA, UDHR)
• AGING (AGING) (WORLD POPULATIONS ARE AGING PRESENTING NUMEROUS PROBLEMS REGARDING CARE AND COSTS. CULTURE CHANGES HAVE RESULTED IN LESS FAMILY CARE GIVERS
• AIRLINE TRAVEL (STAFF SHORTAGES, PASSENGER ABUSES, FUEL POLLUTION, LOST LUGGAGE, SAFETY, CRASHES, STEWARD PAY, INEBRIATED PILOTS, PILOT SHORTAGES AND STRIKES)
• ALCOHOLISM (ALCOHOL DEPENDENCE, ALCOCHOL ABUSE, ALCOHOL ADDICTION, BINGE DRINKING, FRATERNITY DEATHS, NIDA, FETAL ALCOHOL SYNDROME, BEER POPULARITY AS SOCIAL LUBRICANTS,           ADVERTISMENTS, NON-ALCOHOLIC BEERS)
• AMERICAN INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS (AMERICAN INDIAN TRIBES, NATIVE HAWAIIAN, PACIFIC ISLANDERS, SOME HISPANIC NEW REPORT OF MAJOR GENOCIDES, ABUSES, EXPLOITATION, BY USA GOVERNMENT, RELIGION GROUPS (CATHOLIC, PROTESTANT, MISSIONARIES, ESPECIALLY IN IRELAND AND CANADA)
• ASTROPHYSICS (AWESOME DISCOVERIES & ACHIEVEMENTS IN THIS FIELD OF STUDY OPENED MINDS TO THE ORIGINS AND NATURE OF EARTH, PLANETS, SOLAR SYSTEM, AND UNIVERSES. RISKS/VIRTUES          (MINING METALS) OF ASTEROIDS BECAME MOMENTARY HEADLINES, RISKS OF ASTEROID (BENTU), GOVERNMENTAL RESPONSES (E.G., SPACE FORCE, NEW TELESCOPES)
• ATHLETIC PREOCCUPATION, ADDICTION, COMPETITION ACROSS DIFFERENT SPORTS (SOCCER, CRICKET, RUGBY, LACROSSE, FOOTBALL, BASKETBALL, BASEBALL, TENNIS, GOLF, BADMINTON,           VOLLEYBALL, PING-PONG, BOWLING, OLYMPICS, PARA-OLYMPICS, TRACK & FIELD MARATHONS)
• BABY-FORMULA SHORTAGES (USA MANUFACTURES SHORTAGES, INFECTIONS, SUPPLY LINES PRESIDENTIAL INTERVENTION, DANGERS OF HOME PRODUCTS)
• CAPITALISM(PREDATORY, CORRUPT, EXPLOITIVE, CORPORATE, PHILANTHROPIC, CORPORATION RIGHTS, CITIZENS-UNITED POLITICAL DONATIONS, GREED, POWER. WALL STREET INVESTMENTS EXPERIENCE           DECLINE IN TECH STOCKS. INFLATION INCREASES, RISK OF GLOBAL DEPRESSION)
• CELEBRITIES (PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION WITH POLITICIANS, ATHLETES, MOVIE STARS, SINGERS. CELEBRITY WITH LOYALTY TO SYSTEM TO MAINTAIN THEIR STATUS; ISSUE OF PERSONAL IDENTITY)
• CHILD MENTAL AND PHYSICAL HEALTH (GROWING ATTENTION AND CONCERN FOR CHILD ABUSE, VIOLENCE, AND PERMANENT DISABILITIES, ORPHANS FROM COVID DEATHS, HEPATITIS C DEATHS)
• CHINA(LEADING COMPETITOR TO USA MONOLITHIC STATUS. YEN COMPETITOR FOR DOLLAR AS UNIT OF INTERNATIONAL CURRENCY. ABUSES OF MUSLIM POPULATIONS. HONG KONG RESISTANCE, FUTURE WAR WITH USA REGARDING TAIWAN AND ASIAN DOMINANCE, REPRESSION OF TIANAMEN SQUARE)
• CIA CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (INCREASING FACTUAL INFORMATION OF CIA INVOLVEMENT IN POLITICAL ELECTIONS IN USA, REGIME CHANGE AROUND THE WORLD, INCLUDING UKRAINE,           FOMENTING WARS AND CIVIL STRIFE.  EVIDENCE OF INVOLVEMENT IN TORTURE, ASSASSINATION OF INTERNATIONALS).
• CIVIL DISORDER, REBELLIONS, INSURRECTIONS, WARS (PALESTINE, ETHIOPIA, RUSSIA, AFGHANISTAN, SOMALIA, MYANMAR, HAITI, COLOMBIA, PAKISTAN, SOUTH AFRICA)
• CLIMATE CHANGE DEADLINES (CO2, METHANE, GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS FOR EVERYTHING ESSENTIAL TO SURVIVAL, 50% CHANCE OF MEETING WARMING DESTRUCTION MARK BY 2026. CONTINUED           INTERNATIONAL MEETS TO DISCUSS AND EVALUATE CARBON DISCHARGE LEVELS)
• COLONIALISM(LAND, SEA, SKY OWNERSHIP) (E.G., BALKANS, TAIWAN, AFRICA, RUSSIA-UKRAINE, ISRAEL-PALESTINE)
• COMMODIFICATION (ASSIGNING MONETARY AND FINANCIAL VALUE AND COSTS TO ALL PRODUCTS AND PEOPLE)
• CONSUMERISM (BUY, BUY, BUY! ADVERTISING, TRANSFERRING, SELLING SITE VISITS, ESSENCE OF ECONOMIES AT ALL LEVELS: LOCAL, NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL)
• CORPORATIONS (CITIZENS UNITED, EQUAL RIGHTS WITH INDIVIDUALS, OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL OF TECHNOLOGIES, CORPORATION-TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS – WEF/DAVOS)
• COVID (RECOGNITION OF ALTERNATIVE SOURCES, MUTATIONS, VARIANTS [OMICRON]). ISSUE OF DURATION [LONG, SHORT], SYMPTOMATOLOGY DISPLAYS AND TESTS. UNCERTAINTY ABOUT FREQUENCY, SEVERITY,           TREATMENT, AND PREVENTION. AUTHORITIES DISTRUSTED?], CONSPIRACIES, FINANCIAL PROFIT, LOCKDOWN CONSEQUENCES. ESTIMATED 5 (15) MILLION DEATHS, SIDE EFFECTS OF VACCINATION)
• CRIME/VIOLENCE/CARTELS/SYNDICATES/GANGS/NATIONS (MEXICO, COLOMBIA, EL SALVADOR, USA, HAITI, ITALY, INTERNATIONAL SOVEREIGN NATIONS, GOVERNMENTS, INTERPOL COOPERATION)
• CRYPTO CURRENCIES (BITCOIN, ETHER, LITECOIN, MONERO. INCREASING SCANDALS INVOLVING CELEBRITIES.)
• DIGITAL ID (MULTIPLE SOURCES OF DIGITIZING IPERSONL IDENTITY FOR RECORD PURPOSES.  SURVEILLANCE, MASS SOCIETY, CONTROL)
• DISEASE EPIDEMICS AND PANDEMICS (COVID VARIANTS, FLU, BIRD FLU FEVER, TUBERCULOSIS, OBESITY, DIABETES II, EBOLA, CHAGAS, MALARIA, MONKEY POD, LYME DISEASE)
• DISPOSAL OF NUCLEAR WASTE (WHERE, HOW, CONSEQUENCES, OFTEN SHIPPED TO DEVELOPING NATIONS, ENERGY NEEDS FAVOR NUCLEAR PLANTS)
• DISPROPORTIONATE MONOPOLISTIC CONTROL (BIG AG, BIG PHARM, BIG MEDIA, BIG ED, BIG FINANCE, BIG GOV, BIG BANKS, BIG PHILANTHROPIES)
• ECONOMY (GLOBAL RECESSION PRESENT OR PREDICTED. STAGFLATION WITH HIGH PRICES AND LOWER SALARIES. BILLIONAIRES INCREASE IN NUMBER)
• EDUCATION AT ALL LEVELS (PURPOSES, PROCESS, PROBLEMS – BULLYING, VIOLENCE, RACISM, DROPOUTS, CURRICULUM, TEACHER COMPETENCY, MASS SHOOTINGS IN SCHOOLS IN USA)
• EXTINCTION OF LIFE FORMS (MICRO-MACRO) (ACUTE & CHRONIC, ENDURING, PERMANENT). (INSECTS, BEES, BUTTERFLIES, PLANT SEED BANKS, TOXIC SPRAYS, HUMAN BEINGS, REGIONAL MINORITIES,           INDIGENOUS PEOPLES)
• EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS (TIME TRAVEL, SOURCE, CONTROVERSY, CONSPIRACY, SECRECY, EARLY PRESENCE IN ARCHEOLOGY, UFO, SKINWALKER RANCH)
• FINANCIAL PROBLEMS (SUPPLY CHAIN, IMBALANCE, INTEREST RATES, INFLATION, RECESSION, STAGFLATION.  RISKS OF COLLAPSE OF USA DOLLAR FOR WORLD TRADE [SWIFT]. FINANCIAL GIANTS: BLACK    ROCK, ROTHSCHILDS, CENTRAL BANKS CONTROL HUNDREDS OF TRILLIONS OF WEALTH; HIDDEN OR SECRET FREOIGN ACCOUNT (PANAMA PAPERS)
• FOOD-INSUFFICIENCY (WEATHER, WAR, POLITICS, TRANSPORTATION, SUPPLY CHAIN, COSTS, CLIMATE CHANGE IMPLICATIONS)
• FOREIGN AID (SELF-SERVING AID GIVEN WITH CONTIGENCIES, INADEQUATE, BIASED, WEAPONIZED, REGIME CHANGE)
• FOREVER CHEMICALS (PFAS, PERFLUOROOCTANOIC ACID (PFOA), A TYPE OF POLYFLUOROALKYL SUBSTANCE, OR PFAS – ALSO KNOWN AS “FOREVER CHEMICALS.” PFOA, A HIGHLY TOXIC MANMADE CHEMICAL, IS USED TO MAKE TEFLON)
• FRACTIONATION OF POPULATIONS (ALONG RACIAL, GENDER, ETHNIC, AGE, CULTURAL DIVISIONS, POLITICAL PARTIES. INEQUALITIES AND BIASES, PERSECUTIONS,   INJUSTICES, HATREDS ABOUND)
• GERRYMANDERING (UNETHICAL & ILLEGAL POLITICAL VOTING BOUNDARIES BASED ON RACE, POLITICAL PARTIES)
• GREED (THOUSANDS OF SCAMS (CRIMES) TO MAKE MONEY. MONEY ACQUISTION BECOMES ARBITER OF BEHAVIORS. EXPLOITATION OF  WILLS, ESTATES, INSURANCE FRAUD, ONLINE DATING, CORPORATE           PRICE CONTROLS AND MONOPOLIES)
• GUNS (AVAILABILITY, DISTRIBUTION, USE, MASS MURDER, PARTISAN POLITICS, SOME STATES PERMIT PEOPLE TO CARRY GUNS OPENLY IF REGISTERED, PARTISAN POLITICS. INADEQUATE LEGISLATION           FOCUSING ON AGE LIMITS NOT GUN AVALABILITY)
• HOUSING & HOMELESSNESS (MILLIONS HOMELESS, LACKING PROTECTION FROM ELEMENTS, REFUGEE CAMP INADEQUACIES, BLUE TENTS, RENTAL PAYMENTS VERY HIGH, CORPORATIONS BUYING HOUSES FOR RENTAL MONEY)
• HUMAN RIGHTS (UDHR, CONSTITUTIONS RIGHTS, UNENFORCED. WIDESPREAD GLOBAL-VIOLATIONS, REPRESSION)
• HYPOCRISY – HYPOCRACY (ACCUSATIONS OF OTHERS FOR DOING SAME USA IS PARTICULAR EXAMPLE OF ACCUSING OTHERS, INCLUDING RUSSIA OF INVASIVE ACTIONS. HYPOCRACY/DEMOCRACY, MANY)
• IDEOLOGICAL COMPETITION, ANGER, HATRED, VIOLENCE,  (ANARCHISM, NEOLIBERALISM, RACISM, CAPITALISM, THEISM, CONSERVATIONISM, FEMINISM, AGEISM, PATRIOTISM, NATIONALISM,           REGIONALISM). CPAC [Conservative Political Action Conference in Hungary led by Viktor Orban, Hungary Prime Minister, espouses Far Right Populist ideology: God, Nation, Family.]
• INCOME DISPARITIES (MEDIAN CEO PAY INCREASED 17% IN USA, WORKERS APPROXIMATELY 4%; EXCESSIVE DISPARITIES PROVOKING GLOBAL WORKER ANGER AMID RECESSION, FOOD COSTS)
• INSTITUTIONAL CORRUPTION (GOVERNMENT, MILITARY, CORPORATE, RELIGIOUS, LEGAL, SCHOOL BOARDS)
• INSTITUTION FAILURES (UNITED NATIONS, NATO, IMF, WORLD BANK, FOREIGN AID, MILITARY, CRIMINAL COURTS PROSECUTION, POLICE)
• INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR WAR (AT PRESENT, SEVEN NATIONS KNOWN TO POSSESS NUCLEAR WEAPONRY (E.G., USA, RUSSIA, UK, FRANCE, INDIA, CHINA, PAKISTAN, ISRAEL. MORE NATIONS SEEKING: NORTH KOREA)  
• INTERNET SEARCH ENGINE PROFILES MARKETING (PRIVATE, PUBLIC, SECRET, PRIVATE EYES, ACCESS TO SCHOOLS, HOSPITALS, MILITARY)
• JUSTICE/INJUSTICE (GLOBALLY, LOCALLY, VISIBLE CORRUPTION, NEPOTISM, RACIAL AND ETHNO-CULTURAL MINORITIES)
• LIFE STRESS BURDEN (GLOBAL STRESS LEVELS ARE HIGH FROM WAR, POVERTY, SOCIAL CHANGE, GOVERNMENT OPPRESSION AND FAILURE)
• LONGEVITY (STEM CELLS, CRISPR SEQUENCING, RNA, VACCINES, GENE THERAPY, TRANSPLANTS, PLASTIC SURGERY, CLONING, 3D REPRODUCTIONS)
• MASS SHOOTINGS (WORLDWIDE, NATIONWIDE, USA, LOCAL. BUFFALO, NY, 10 PEOPLE DEAD, UVALDE, TEXAS, 19 SCHOOL CHILDREN SHOT, PLUS 2 TWENTY MASS SHOOTINGS IN USA IN SINCE 2012 (E.G.           COLO, ATLANTA, VIRGINIA BEACH, EL PASO TEXAS, PITTSBURGH PA, PARKLAND, FL)
• MASS SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROCESSES (GLOBALIZATION, DIGITIZATION, URBANIZATION, WESTERNIZATION, REGIME CHANGE,  INSURRECTIONS, POPULATION GROWTH, DEMOGRAPHICS, AND           DISTRIBUTION, TECHNOCRACIES)
• MASS STARVATION (FOODS SUPPLIES ARE IMPACTED BY A COMPLEX ECOLOGY OF WAR, TRANSPORTATION, FERTILIZER, POPULATION)
• MEDICAL ADVANCES (NEW CELLS CAN HELP RESTORE LOST HEARING)
• MEDICAL AND HEALTH CARE (COSTS, AVAILABILITY, ACCESSIBILITY, ACCEPTABILITY, ROBOTIC PROCEDURES, QUALITY, EFFECTIVENESS, MEDICAL MALPRACTICE, FRAUD, PRIVATE, SOCIALIZED, GOVERNMENT ALTERNATIVES, DOMINANCE BY CERTAIN ETHNOCULTURAL AND NATIONAL GROUPS, RACISM IN TRAINING)
• MEMBERSHIP GROUPS (ORGANIZATIONS SERVING WEALTHY AND PRIVILEGED INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM [WEF], DAVOS FACTION, WORLD BANK, INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND, CENTRAL BANKING GROUPS, SECRET, QUASI-SECRET SOCIETIES, BILDERBERG GROUP, BOHEMIAN GROVE, FREE-MASONRY, KNIGHTS OF MALTA, ROSICRUCIAN’S, ROYALTY)
• “MENTAL HEALTH” AND WELL-BEING (THE REALITY AND SYMBOLIC BURDEN OF GLOBAL CHALLENGES HAS GIVEN RISE TO MANY INDIVIDUAL, SOCIETAL, AND NATIONAL PROBLEMS, DEMANDING             TRAGICALLY, INTERVENTIONS LOCATE THE PROBLEM IN THE HUMAN PSYCHE WITHOUT SERIOUSLY CHANGING EXTERNAL CONDITIONS. THIS MAY DO LITTLE TO RESOLVE PRESSING CHALLENGES.           PROFESSIONALS MAY LACK EFFECTIVE PERSONAL, PROFESSIONAL, AND TECHNICAL SKILL SETS, AND TREATMENT OPTIONS. EXCESSIVE RELIANCE ON PILLS.  MANY MEDICAL DISORDERS (E.G., LYME DISEASE,           COVID, OBESITY, DIABETES I & II) HAVE SERIOUS MENTAL HEALTH SEQUALAE).
• MILITARISM (MILITARIES ARE GROWING, SEEKING NEW WEAPONRY, TIES TO CORPORATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCES, USA HAS MORE THAN 750 KNOWN BASES WORLD WIDE. AFRICOM EXPANDING IN        MILITARISM IS INCREASING ARMS TO VARIOUS NATIONS [E.G. UKRAINE] WITH PERILOUS RISKS OF NUCLEAR WAR. POWERFUL MILITARY CULTURES ACTING INDEPENDLY OF GOVERNMENT CONTROL)
• MOVEMENT LABELS & TERMS (GREAT RESET, BUILD BACK BETTER, FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, NEW NORMAL, GREEN NEW DEAL, TECHNO-STATE, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN-MAGA)
• MIGRATION, IMMIGRATION, ACCULTURATION, ASSIMILATION (LOCAL, NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL, PLANETARY; MORE THAN FIFTY DIE IN SW USA IN TRUCK SEEKING ENTRY INTO USA)
• MIND & BEHAVIOR CONTROL (MICROWAVES, LASERS, INTERNET, INSERTS, NATIONAL POLICY, GOVERNMENTS, PRIVATE CORPORATIONS, MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE)
• NATIONAL DEBT ($30 TRILLION IN USA. EXCESSIVE USA NATIONAL EXPENDITURES ON MILITARY [$833 BILLION 2023] MORE THAN NEXT NINE COUNTRIES.  OTHER NATIONS BANKRUPT UNDER CENTRAL BANKS’           STUDENT TUITION DEBT OUT OF CONTROL)
• NATO (NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION) (MILITARY FORCE SUPPORTING USA FROEIGN POLICY. 30 MEMBER STATES, 28 IN EUROPE AND 2 IN NORTH AMERICA, ISSUE OF NEED, FINANCIAL PAYMENTS,           INVASION OF RUSSIA, CHINA; SWEDEN TO JOIN NATO, AFTER YEARS OF BEING A SILENT NATO STALWART; FINLAND IS JOINING NATO)
• NATURAL (NATURE) DISASTERS (INSECTS, EARTHQUAKES, TEMPERATURES, TYPHOONS, TORNADOES, FLOODS, TIDAL WAVES, VOLCANOES, FIRES)
• NURSE AND HEALTH CARE WORKER SHORTAGES (NUMBER, TRAINING, COMPETENCIES, PLACEMENTS, ROLES. URGENT NEED OF LPN, RN, BSN, MA, AND LICENSED MEDICAL ASSISTANTS.  HOME CARE PROFESSIONALS NEEDED FOR ELDERLY)
• NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL (BECAUSE OF HUNDREDS OF YEARS LIFE, NCULEAR WASTE DISPOSAL ON EARTH IS A SEVERE PROBLEM. USE OF NUCLEAR PLANTS FOR ENERGY CONTINUE TO INCREASE AMOUNT AND           DANGER OF NUCLEAR WASTE. DEPOSITS IN NON-WESTERN COUNTRIES FOR PAY)
• OLIGARCHIES, PLUTOCRACIES, PARTISAN POLITICAL PARTIES, DICTATORS, BILLIONAIRES, FINANCIAL CORPORATIONS, MILITARY CONTROL, DAVOS FACTION, WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, USA MONOLITHIC & MONOPOLAR DOMINANCE           
• ORGANIZED CRIME (SYNDICATES, CARTELS, GANGS, DRUGS [E.G., COCAINE, FENTANYL, PAIN PILLS, MARIJUANA] PROSTITUTION, KIDNAPPING, GAMBLING, PORNOGRAPHY)
• PARTISAN POLITICAL PARTY POLITICS (EXTREMISM, BLOCKING VOTES, THREATENING VOTERS, FILIBUSTER, VOTER IDENTIFICATION. DONALD TRUMP CRIMINAL CASE BUILDING)
• PERSONALITIES (TOO NUMEROUS TO MENTION. SITUATIONAL. MEDIA CREATES AND FLOOD THE WORLD WITH PERSONALITIES, INCLUDING ONEROUS DETAILS OF THEIR LIVES, MAGAZINES, FAN CLUBS)
• PHILIPPINES (PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS “BONG BONG MARCOS,” SON OF FORMER DICTATOR FERDINAND MARCOS, ELECTED VICE PRESIDENT ELECTED IS DUTERTE, DAUGHER OF CURRENT PRESIDENT OF PHILIPPINES UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS. PROTESTOR WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE)
• PLASTICS (PRESENCE AND PENETRATION OF ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE. INCREASING PATHOGENIC CONSEQUENCES; CANNOT AVOID USE AND NOW IN ALL DRINKING WATER)
• POLLUTION (AIR, WATER, EARTH, ATMOSPHERE, SPACE, HOUSE, OFFICE)
• POPULATION GROWTH (7.5B – 9B 2040; MALI AFRICA WOMAN GIVES BIRTH TO NINE INFANTS; ONE YEAR LATER ALL NINE DOING WELL)
• POPULISM: GLOBAL & NATIONAL (RESENTMENT, RESISTANCE, REBELLION OF “ORDINARY” PEOPLE AGAINST ELITE IMPOSITIONS OF VALUES, CONTROL, GOVERNMENT)
• POVERTY, MALNUTRITION, FOOD INSUFFICIENCY, FAMINE, STARVATION, DEATH (DEPRIVATIONS, KWASHIORKOR, PERMANENT DISABILITY, COSTS, RESPONSIBILITY, MARASMUS, DEATH,           DEHUMANIZATION)
• PRIVACY/PRIVATE (VIOLATIONS AND ABUSES OF INDIVIDUAL, ORGANIZATION, NATION, REGIONS PRIVACY)
• PROPAGANDA (TRUTH, ACCURACY MANAGEMENT, SOURCE, METHODS)
• RACIAL, ETHNIC, CULTURAL, AGE, GENERATION, RELIGIOUS, GENDER, TRIBAL, DISABILITY, HOMELESS, VETERANS, DISCORD AND PERSECUTION)
• REFUGEES & INTERNALLY-DISPLACED PEOPLE, ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES (NUMEROUS AND WIDESPREAD REFUGEE CAMPS. SOME CAMPS HAVE EXISTED FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS [E.G., KENYA REFUGEE           CAMP FOR SOMALIS, ETHIOPIANS]
• REGIME CHANGE (USA HAS BEEN SOURCE OF SCORES OF REGIME CHANGES)
• RENEWAL TERMS (4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, GREAT RESET, GREAT NARRATIVE, GREAT TRANSFORMATION, DAVOS AGENDA, GREEN REVOLUTION)
• ROBOTS (SMALLER THAN A FLEA ROBOT; REMOTELY CONTROLLED CRAB)
• RUSSIA/CHINA/EUROPE, USA, NATO ALLIANCES (STRIFE, RISK, VIOLENCE, WEST-EAST, NORTH-SOUTH, BOTH POLAR REGIONS)
• SANCTIONS (SOURCES: GOVERNMENT, ORGANIZATIONS, MILITARY, NGOS, VARIATIONS, FOOD, MEDICAL SUPPLIES, HARSH CONSEQUENCES, WEAPONIZATION, MORALITY)
• SPACE-OUTER (COLONIZATION OF MOON, PLANETS, INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT, COMMERCIALIZATION, OWNERSHIP, WEAPONRY, LASERS, SATELLITES)
• STATEHOOD FOR WASHINGTON, DC (CONSEQUENCES FOR VOTING RIGHTS, DEMOGRAPHICS, RACISM, PARTISAN CONTROL, COSTS)
• STATE-TERRORISM (ISRAEL-PALESTINE, INDIA-PAKISTAN, USA POLICY PREFERENCES, MYANMAR-ROHINGYA, NORTH KOREA, CHINA VS ISLAMIC GROUPS, NATO, SAUDI ARABIA VS YEMEN, RUSSIA-UKRAINE, USA-CUBA, USA-VENEZUELA)
• SUBSTANCE ABUSE (ALCOHOLISM, BEER, PAINKILLER, FENTANYL, COCAINE, HEROIN, ECSTASY, MARIJUANA, USA: 107,000 DEATHS IN 2021)
• SURVEILLANCE (GOVERNMENTS, POLICE & PRIVATE GROUPS GATHERING TOTAL INDIVIDUAL, GROUP, AND NATION INFO FOR STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL, EYE SURVEILLANCE PROMOTED)
• TECHNOLOGIES (A.I., ROBOTICS, GENETIC INTERVENTION, INFORMATION PROCESSING AMOUNTS, SPEEDS, STORAGE; WAR WEAPONRY, DARPA, 3D PRINTING)
• TERRORISM (TYPES [E.G., INDIVIDUAL, GROUP, NATION], METHODS, LOCATIONS, TARGETS, DEFINITION, CONTROVERSY)
• TOILETS (LACK OF HYGENIC TOILETS, WOMEN AT RISK IN PUBLIC TOILETS, SPREAD OF GASTROINTESTINAL DISEASES, LACK OF TOILETS IN MANY COUNTRIES)
• UFO (UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT (MANY REPORTS OF UFO SIGHTINGS BY GOVERNMENT WORKERS, GOVERNMENT SUPPRESSES REPORTS FOR NATIONAL SECURITY REASONS, USA AIR FORCE PROJECT BLUE BOOK, USA AREA 52 ROSWELL NEW MEXICO, DISCLOSURES, CONSPIRACIES, ET, DANGERS, SKINWALKER RANCH IN UTAH. USA CONGRESS HOLDS FIRST HEARINGS ON UFO IN 50 YEARS))
• UKRAINE/RUSSIA RISKS OF NUCLEAR WAR AND WAR CRIMES (USA TO SEND 39.8 BILLION DOLLARS OR MORE  TO UKRAINE; ISSUE OF MAY 2, 2014 MASSACRE IN ODESSA BY UKRAINE, UKRAINE USA-INSTALLED       RIGHT WING “NEO-NAZI GOVERNMENT AFTER REGIME CHANGE, UKRAINE BEOMES PROXY WAR BETWEEN USA AND RUSSIA, PROFOUND IMPLICATIONS FOR STARVATION IN AFRICA WHICH IMPORTS MOST OF ITS GRAIN FROM BOTH NATIONS. RUSSIA COMMITTING INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES)
• UNIONS LABOR & PROFESSIONAL (INCREASE IN UNION FORMATION AND MEMBERSHIP, STRUGGLES WITHIN UNIONS OCCURRING, SOME REJECTIONS OF UNIONS)
• UNIVERSITIES (TENURE, FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, LIMITS TO TOPICS)
• URBANIZATION (MAJOR CITIES IN USA ARE LOSING POPULATION [LOS ANGELES, CHICAGO, PHILA DELPHIA]. CITIES IN ARE GROWING IN   NEW NATIONS AS CITIZENS SEEK WORK)
• VETERANS MILITARY (PTSD, POOR CARE, HOMELESSNESS, SUICIDES, FAMILY VIOLENCE, FORGOTTEN)
• VILIFIED GROUPS PREJUDICES (TRANSGENDER, GAY, LBTGQ, MUSLIM, JEWS, PALESTINIANS)
• VIOLENCE (OMNIPRESENT AT ALL LEVELS, ISSUE OF INDIVIDUAL, GROUP, TYPES OF VIOLENCE; USA CULTURE OF VIOLENCE)
• WARS (LOCAL, CIVIL, INTERNATIONAL: PALESTINE-ISRAEL; INDIA-PAKISTAN; INDIA-CHINA, NATO/USA VS RUSSIA WITH UKRAINE AS PROXY SITE. BILLIONS OF DOLLARS BEING SPENT ON WARS WHILE BILLIONS OF           PEOPLE LACK FOOD, MEDICAL CARE, HOUSING, TRANSPORTATION, STUDENT DEBT, NO GUN CONTROLS. SOME WRITERS CONCLUDE THERE IS “NO WAY OUT!  IS THERE AN ADDICTION TO WAR IN USA FOSTERED BY WEAPONS MANUFACTURERS (LOCKHEED MARTIN, RAYTHEON, BOEING, GENERAL DYNAMICS, BAE, NORTHROP-GRUMMAN)
• WATER (LACK OF POTABLE WATER, REDUCTIONS IN USE FOR CALIFORNIA, STANDARDS FOR TOXICITY, LEAD AND MERCURY LEVELS, EAST-AFRICA DROUGHTS [KENYA] KILLING PEOPLE)
• WEALTH DISPARITIES & DISTRIBUTION (1% VS 99%; .01% VS HUMANITY, MEGA BILLIONAIRES, MEGA FINANCIAL CORPORATIONS)
• WEALTH EXCESSES DISPLAYED AMID GLOBAL POVERTY (CANNES FILM FESTIVAL, OPENING OF NYC MET, TV AWARD SHOWS, OSCARS, ROYALTY DISPLAYS AMID POVERTY)
• WORKPLACE STRESSES AND ISSUES (INCREASING NUMBER OF WORKPLACE DISSATISFACTIONS REGARDING EMPLOYEE OVERWORK, LOW SALARIES, UNHEALTHY MILIEU, DISRESPECT, VIOLENCE (GUNS), UNION BLOCKAGE, CUT-THROAT CULTURE).

Here it is! A compilation of events and forces gathered in a brief time period from various information sources (i.e., alternative media, internet, reading, conversations, professional and academic listservs). The compilation is the reality of our time, and scores of writers have offered learned and opinion commentaries regarding the future of all Life on Earth. Please add any further. Human mind under overload.

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This article was originally published on Transcend Media Service.

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D. is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Emeritus Professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa Campus in Honolulu, Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu.  He is known internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 21 books and more than 300 articles, tech reports, and popular commentaries. He can be reached at [email protected].

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***

Governor of the Russian Kursk region claimed that the Russian military had begun combat missions on the border of the Glushkovsky district with the Ukrainian Sumy region. Fighting was carried out within the Russian military operation in the neighboring country.

Thus, it can be supposed that the Russian military launched an offensive in the Sumy region, inflaming new front lines in Eastern Ukraine. The operation is likely aimed at repelling the Armed Forces of Ukraine from their positions in the border areas from where they are shelling the Russian territory.

At the same time, Russian artillery units carried out a number of strikes on the Ukrainian military positions in the Sumy region. The areas of Zarutsky, Starikovo, Budivelny and Esmani were hit.

The Ukrainian military in the city of Kharkov is also struck by Russian forces. One of the targets on July 17th was reportedly the Khartron plant, where foreign instructors were reportedly stationed.

So far, no advances by any of the warring sides were reported in the Sumy and Kharkov regions. But Ukrainian attacks on the Russian territory did not stop.

In the evening, explosions were reported on the western outskirts of the Russian city of Kursk. No casualties were reported and the damage caused by the attacks was not revealed.

The governor called on the locals to keep calm explaining the explosions by the ongoing operations on the border.

In the past days, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have carried out several artillery raids on the territory of Russia. The border villages of Zernovo and Tetkino in the Bryansk and Kursk regions were shelled. There was no significant damage or injuries. In the Belgorod region, some unidentified targets were intercepted by air defense systems.

DPR and LPR forces as well as civilians in the Donbass region are also shelled by Ukrainian forces, including with the weapons supplied by the Kiev’s foreign partners.

US-made MLRS HIMARS hit the town of Alchevsk in the LPR. An ammunition depot in the town Stakhanov was also damaged by Ukrainian artillery. Chaotic fire continued in the city of Donetsk and its outskirts.

The Kiev regime has claimed its readiness to use the US-made HIMARS to attack the Crimean peninsula. Despite the Kiev’s promises not to shell the Russian territories with their HIMARS, they claim Crimea a perfect targets as it is not recognized as the Russian territory by Kiev, or by Washington. Moscow has already warned of a terrifying response for Ukraine in the event of such an attack.

So far, the Russian military has destroyed three Ukrainian HIMARS out of 12 systems supplied by the West.

The third one was hit by Russian missiles in the Krasnoarmeysk region on July 17.

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***

The German Government publicly acknowledged on Wednesday that the Covid vaccines cause serious side effects for one in every 5,000 doses.

A tweet from the Ministry of Health stated (via Google translate): “One in 5,000 people is affected by a serious side effect after a COVID19 #vaccination. If you suspect #sideeffects, get medical attention and report your symptoms to @PEI_Germany.”

It later added a correction that the figure related to the reporting rate and to doses rather than individuals: “Correction: According to @PEI_Germany, the reporting rate for serious reactions is 0.2 reports per 1,000 vaccine doses.” Subsequently, the original tweet was deleted and a corrected version put up.

0,2 Verdachtsmeldungen pro 1.000 Impfdosen beträgt die Melderate ans @PEI_Germany für schwerwiegende Reaktionen. Sollten Sie den Verdacht auf #Nebenwirkungen haben, holen Sie sich ärztliche Hilfe und melden Sie Ihre Symptome: https://t.co/ajsedbBO7o pic.twitter.com/pfkP4cAL53

— Bundesgesundheitsministerium (@BMG_Bund) July 21, 2022

This is an unusual and welcome admission from a Government, and perhaps the beginning of governments properly acknowledging the scale of injuries caused by the novel Covid vaccines.

However, the one in 5,000 figure is certainly on the low side. The correction tweet clarified that it was a reporting rate of serious reactions, and it appears from the PEI website to refer to the rate of adverse event reports to the German equivalent of the Yellow Card and VAERS passive reporting systems. Assuming this is right, then we might expect an under-reporting factor of around 10, meaning the true number of serious side-effects may be 10 times higher.

The Germans are actually very good at monitoring vaccine safety. In addition to their passive reporting system, the German medicines regulator, the PEI, runs an active vaccine safety monitoring app called SafeVac 2.0. The data from this monitoring app were included in a Europe-wide report on vaccine safety published last month and showed that 0.3% of vaccine recipients in Germany reported at least one serious adverse reaction to the first dose of the vaccine. The report states:

Of the 520,076 participants from Germany who had received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 1,838 (0.3%) reported experiencing at least one serious adverse reaction. A total of 1,191 (0.2%) and 39 (0.2%) participants receiving BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna respectively reported experiencing a serious adverse reaction while 608 (0.7%) receiving AstraZeneca reported a serious reaction.

These German figures are in line with the overall rates across Europe, according to the report: “Across the sites 0.2-0.3% reported at least one serious adverse reaction after receiving the first and/or the second dose.”

However, note that a rate of 0.3% is 15 times higher than the rate of 0.2 per 1,000 (i.e., 0.02%) quoted in the tweet. If the figure in the tweet comes, as I suspect, from a passive reporting system (which seems likely as the tweet directs readers to the PEI’s passive reporting portal), this would be an under-reporting factor of 15, which is about what we expected.

But why, then, is the German Government using the 0.02% figure instead of the 0.3% figure from its state-of-the-art vaccine safety monitoring tool when drawing attention to vaccine side effects? I’d like to think that question didn’t answer itself.

I should add that it wasn’t easy to find the SafeVac 2.0 data. I searched in vain for them on the PEI website; if they’re there then they are nowhere obvious. In the end I could only find them, via a general web search, embedded in the Europe-wide study cited above.

Worries about high rates of serious vaccine side effects have been raised before in Germany. In May, Professor Harald Matthes, a scientist leading a separate study into the safety of the vaccines, said that according to his data around 0.8% of vaccinated people in Germany were struggling with serious side-effects. This was in line with international evidence, he said, and much more needs to be done to help them.

The number is not surprising. It corresponds to what is known from other countries such as Sweden, Israel or Canada. Incidentally, even the manufacturers of the vaccines had already determined similar values ​​in their studies… Most side effects, including severe ones, subside after three to six months, 80% heal. But unfortunately there are also some that last much longer.

In view of around half a million cases with serious side effects after Covid vaccinations in Germany, we doctors have to take action. We have to come to therapy offers, discuss them openly at congresses and in public without being considered anti-vaccination.

A board member of a large German insurance company also spoke out in February, saying that his company’s data showed serious vaccine injuries running at around 10 times the rate reported by the German Government.

Elsewhere, an Israeli Government survey found that 0.3% of vaccinated people reported being hospitalised as a result of their Covid vaccination, while a U.S. CDC survey found 0.9% of vaccinated people reported seeking medical care as a result of their vaccination.

The evidence is consistent, then: 0.3-0.9% of vaccinated people (the percentage partly depending on the number of doses) suffer a serious reaction to the vaccine that leads them to require medical care or hospitalisation.

These data should be much more widely publicised as part of obtaining informed consent. Everyone who receives a Covid vaccine should have been told in writing that the rate of serious side effects is around one in 300 doses (with variations for age and sex). Note that such a frequency is properly termed ‘uncommon’, rather than ‘rare’ as per the current labelling. This is an extremely high frequency for a vaccine of course, and raises serious questions about whether the vaccines should be approved at all, especially for younger age groups.

As it is, hardly anyone knows that these are the Government’s own data on serious vaccine reactions, and governments are making no obvious effort to tell them.

So, it’s one cheer for the German Government for actually doing something to raise awareness of serious vaccine side effects. But next time, maybe use the actual data, rather than a figure that’s 15 times smaller.

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***

This video presents a commentary by Prof. Anthony Hall on aspects of the continuing effort advanced by the Trudeau government and its funded agencies, including many regime media outlets, to smear the Canadian Truckers’ movement.

The video highlights especially the suspicious character of the charges against four men facing murder charges in the course of an episode where no murders have actually taken place.

Chris Carbert, Anthony Olienick, Jerry Morin, and Christopher Lsak are being set up for a show trial in Lethbridge Alberta.

This show trial is scheduled to take place in June of 2023. The spectacle will be based on the Crown’s allegation that some of those accused of crimes at the border crossing at Coutts Alberta “conspired to commit the murder” of RCMP officers.

None of the targeted individuals have been granted bail. Although they have been convicted of nothing, the four accused will have spent a year and a half in jail by the time they meet a judge and jury.

This maltreatment, together with abuses of the criminal justice system in related cases including those of Tamara Lich, Patrick King, and Pastor Arthur Pawlowsky, puts in the forefront the allegation that the Trudeau government is guilty of transforming some of its political opponents into political prisoners.

The effort to associate the Truckers’ movements with the imagery of violent terrorism is aided and abetted by organizations including the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. With Bernie Farber at its helm, this organization receives $250,000 annually from the Canadian government. This so-called anti-hate organization is being given wide access to Canadian media in order to depict the Coutts group as so-called “accelerationists” intent on the violent overthrow of the US and Canadian governments in order to create a new polity, “Diagolon.”

This very extravagant fiction is helped along by mud-slinging media reports, including Global News, whose role in generating systemic disinformation is highlighted in the Global Research essay on which the video here is based.

Global News conducted an interview with David L. Long, US Ambassador to Canada. In a really absurd comparison, Long grouped the Canadian Truckers’ movement with the governments of Russia and China. Ambassador Long accused all three entities of being meccas of authoritarianism and enemies of democracy.

The essay and the video which flows from it point to the close interactions between the politics of Global News along with its founders, and the genesis of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.

The CMHR has failed to defend the human rights and civil liberties of Canadians against the deeply damaging incursions of the COVID restrictions and injection mandates.

As emphasized recently by the former Newfoundland Premier, Brian Peckford, this  failure of protection has taken the form of the malevolent sidelining of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The CMHR has done nothing to challenge this curtailment of the Charter and the human rights it is meant to safeguard. This curtailment was met, however, by the proactive and democratic creation of the Freedom Convoy and its subsequent pilgrimage to Ottawa and to the Montana-Alberta border crossing.

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***

Think tanks across Australia, tanked with cash from US sources and keen to think in furious agreement, are all showing how delighted they are with the AUKUS security pact and what potential it has for local, if subordinated industry.  The United States Studies Centre, a loudspeaker for Washington’s opinions based at the University of Sydney, has added its bit to the militarising fun with a report on what AUKUS will be able to do.

The author of the report, non-resident fellow of the US Centre’s Foreign Policy and Defence program Jennifer Jackett gushes about the “more consequential” nature of various “technological developments in quantum, cyber, artificial intelligence, undersea, hypersonics and electronic warfare” than nuclear-powered submarines. The latter are, after all, slated to appear much later on the horizon.  In the meantime, warring potential could be harnessed in other realms.

Jackett stresses the urgency of appreciating these fields, given that Australia faces “a more hostile Indo-Pacific”.  No ironic reflection follows that such hostility has been aided, in no small part, by the AUKUS security pact that has put countries in the region, with China being the primary target, on military notice.

In dealing with such threats, the AUKUS partners – the US, UK and Australia – had to “understand areas of comparative advantage, complementarity, and potential gaps or overlaps, between the three industrial bases.”

Reading, at points, like an intelligence comb through of local assets and wealth resources by a future colonising power, the report is revealing about what Vince Scappatura called that “loose networks of elites and institutional relationships” that nourish Australia’s umbilical cord to Freedom Land.

Australia’s population is described in glowing terms, with some nose-turning suggestions for improvement for the happily compliant subjects.  “Australia stands out for the quality of its educational institutions and skilled workforce.  Australian scientists are renowned for the global impact of their research in fields such as quantum physics and artificial intelligence.”  There is, however, a belated admission that Australia’s STEM workforce, with 16 per cent of qualifications in the field, come behind that of the United States, “where around 23 per cent of the total workforce has a university-level or below STEM qualification.”

Then comes a mild rebuke in terms of Australian approaches to venture capital.  One can see Jackett shaking her head in disapproval in writing this: “Australia remains an attractive destination for foreign direct investment, but the venture capital industry – the sort of financial entities willing to make riskier investments on unproven technology – remains small, less than half of the OECD average.”  (Come on Aussies, whole frontiers of lethal technology await your dosh.)

This is not a meditation about peace, about miracle responses to climate change, poverty or wretched disease.  It has nothing to do with harnessing the technological potential to aid good causes.  This is the paid-up chit-chat of imperial militarisation, and how “innovation” aids it.

Similar remarks have been made by Admiral Mike Rogers, former chief of the US National Security Agency, who has given a stirring performance on his visit to Australia in praising his hosts.

“I applaud Australia’s willingness to make that sort of commitment [to acquiring nuclear-powered submarines] and to speak about it so frankly,” he told Australia’s premier Murdoch rag, The Australian.

What troubles Rogers, as with those at the US Studies Centre and similar groupies, is a concern about what to do before those white elephants of the sea make their ponderous appearance.  He cites various other weapons capabilities as “alternatives in the interim”.  There are, for instance, options in “autonomous vehicles, robotics, sensors, situational awareness technologies”.  AUKUS was, and here, the warning is clear to us all, “much more than submarines”.  AUKUS needed to be used “to drive change.”

The disconcerting blindness to local security elites in turning Australia into something even more of a fortress for foreign military operations is palpable.  Its corollary is the idea that the United States does not get into the empire business.  The mechanism of kitting out Canberra as yet another appendage of US strategic operations and interests was already well underway with such fora as the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, which makes it very clear who the leaders are.

As things stand, the current makeup of the AALD features appropriately qualified vassals for the US mission.  There is Tony Smith, former Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives, who is the CEO of the group.  On being appointed to the position, he claimed it would “enable me to continue my service to our democracy and our nation in this vitally important, unique, bipartisan, private sector diplomatic endeavour”.  Grovelling journalists wondered if Smith got along with his future masters.  “Pretty good, I think,” came his response.

The newly appointed Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Glyn Davis, also appears as a prominent member on the advisory board, linking one of the most important civil service roles in Canberra to the US administration.  The grouping is secretive and observes non-disclosure rules that would make any official in Beijing proud.

From the Australian Strategic Policy Institute to the US Studies Centre, we are meant to celebrate the prospect of Australia as a military annexe to US power in the Asia-Pacific, its sovereignty status subsumed under the ghastly guff of freedom lovers supposedly facing oriental barbarians.  The analysis is then crowned by the praise of former US defence and security officials who ingratiatingly speak of Australian potential as they would mineral deposits.  The lie, packaged and ribboned, is duly sold for public consumption.  Australian sovereign capability becomes the supreme fiction, while its subservience is hidden, only to be exposed by heretics.

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

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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Catastrophic Covid Experience in New Zealand. The Derogation of Human Rights and “The Basic Principles of Medicine”. The Protest Movement

Dr. Emanuel Garcia, July 18, 2022

COVID-19 Vaccines: Proof of Lethality. Over One Thousand Scientific Studies

SUN, July 9, 2022

The West Against Russia: The Strategy Is Being Played Out in Ukraine. “Socio-Economic Suicide” in the EU. Peter Koenig

Peter Koenig, July 18, 2022

Video: The Plan. WHO Plans to Have 10 Years of Pandemics (2020-2030). “Proof that the Pandemic was Planned with a Purpose”

Stop World Control, July 17, 2022

The Top Ten Creepiest and Most Dystopian Things Pushed by the World Economic Forum (WEF)

Vigilant Citizen, July 16, 2022

“Climate Change”, Food Shortages: Coordinated Destruction of Humanity by the World Economic Forum and Its “Elite Cult”

By Peter Koenig, July 21, 2022

The heat plus the fires is not only destroying human lives – and massive livestock! – and properties, but also vital crops through drought and now the fires. Food crops are ”vital” in a time when the mass media narrative 24/7 brainwashing the public at large with the woes of the Russian aggression on Ukraine, that is causing energy and food shortages in the west, particularly in Europe for most countries, and in the Global South.

The Multipolar “Iran-Russia-Turkey Troika” Overshadows “Unipolar Joe Biden” in West Asia. Pepe Escobar

By Pepe Escobar, July 21, 2022

The Tehran summit uniting Iran-Russia-Turkey was a fascinating affair in more ways than one. Ostensibly about the Astana peace process in Syria, launched in 2017, the summit joint statement duly noted that Iran, Russia and (recently rebranded) Turkiye will continue, “cooperating to eliminate terrorists” in Syria and “won’t accept new facts in Syria in the name of defeating terrorism.”

“Yankee Go Home!” Russia, Iran, Turkey Agreement: US Troops Must Leave Syria

By Steven Sahiounie, July 21, 2022

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran held talks yesterday in Tehran at the 7^th Astana summit for peace in Syria, stressing the need for respecting Syria’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Will Enlightenment and Psychological Education Push Back the “Domination of Man Over Man” and Inspire the Quest for Love of Freedom?

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, July 21, 2022

The psychological questioning must begin at this point and provide clarity as to why man of our time is still prepared to kill his fellow man beyond the national borders in a barbaric manner and how it becomes possible for a ruling minority to let the majority of the people live, work and die for their aims and purposes. Or to put it more precisely: How is the oppression of man by man possible?

Video: The War of Corporations on Our Children, “Seeking to Control Their Values”

By Emanuel Pastreich, July 21, 2022

It is assumed that for reasons unknown, somehow, young people are less capable, less attentive, less motivated and less concerned with planning for their careers and their futures. This argument makes the previous generation feel somehow more worthy and superior and that is precisely the hook that is lodged in the sweet treat.

America’s “Nuclear Primacy” Strategy: It Is Only a Nano-second to Armageddon

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, July 21, 2022

The U.S. Government’s “Nuclear Primacy” meta-strategy says that there are “acceptable” levels of destruction of America in a nuclear war against Russia and/or China, so long as America “comes out on top” globally, at the end.

Protest Movement Rejects the Parliamentary Appointment of Sri Lankan President

By Abayomi Azikiwe, July 21, 2022

The shortages of food have caused many Sri Lankans to reduce their diets to consuming only one meal per day. Schools have been shut down due to transportation issues. As a result of the high rate of inflation, the value of the national currency, the rupee, has continued to slide downwards. This set of circumstances has drained the country’s foreign reserves to just over $US1 billion.

The India-Russia-Iran Geopolitical Axis: Eurasia’s New Transportation Powerhouses. The International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC)

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, July 21, 2022

No longer just an ‘alternative route’ on a drawing board, the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) is paying dividends in a time of global crisis. And Moscow, Tehran and New Delhi are now leading players in the Eurasian competition for transportation routes.

Digital Authoritarianism: AI Surveillance Signals the Death of Privacy

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, July 21, 2022

Nothing is private. We teeter on the cusp of a cultural, technological and societal revolution the likes of which have never been seen before. While the political Left and Right continue to make abortion the face of the debate over the right to privacy in America, the government and its corporate partners, aided by rapidly advancing technology, are reshaping the world into one in which there is no privacy at all.

Hollywood 1940s Pro-Soviet Movies: “Social Realism Cinema in America”

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, July 21, 2022

There was a brief moment in time in the 1940s, when the USA was at one with Russia or as it was known then, the Soviet Union. During the Second World War, America entered into the war on the same side as the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, and Hollywood was rallied to the cause of victory against fascism.

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***

The Tehran summit uniting Iran-Russia-Turkey was a fascinating affair in more ways than one. Ostensibly about the Astana peace process in Syria, launched in 2017, the summit joint statement duly noted that Iran, Russia and (recently rebranded) Turkiye will continue, “cooperating to eliminate terrorists” in Syria and “won’t accept new facts in Syria in the name of defeating terrorism.”

That’s a wholesale rejection of the “war on terror” exceptionalist unipolarity that once ruled West Asia.

Standing up to the global sheriff

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his own speech, was even more explicit. He stressed “specific steps to promote the intra-Syrian inclusive political dialogue” and most of called a spade a spade: “The western states led by the US are strongly encouraging separatist sentiment in some areas of the country and plundering its natural resources with a view to ultimately pulling the Syrian state apart.”

So there will be “extra steps in our trilateral format” aimed at “stabilizing the situation in those areas” and crucially, “returning control to the legitimate government of Syria.” For better or for worse, the days of imperial plunder will be over.

The bilateral meetings on the summit’s sidelines – Putin/Raisi and Putin/Erdogan – were even more intriguing. Context is key here: the Tehran gathering took place after Putin’s visit to Turkmenistan in late June for the 6^th Caspian summit, where all the littoral nations, Iran included, were present, and after Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s travels in Algeria, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, where he met all his Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) counterparts.

Moscow’s moment

So we see Russian diplomacy carefully weaving its geopolitical tapestry from West Asia to Central Asia – with everybody and his neighbor eager to talk and to listen to Moscow. As it stands, the Russia-Turkey entente cordiale tends to lean towards conflict management, and is strong on trade relations. Iran-Russia is a completely different ball game: much more of a strategic partnership.

So it’s hardly a coincidence that the National Oil Company of Iran (NIOC), timed to the Tehran summit, announced the signing of a $40 billion strategic cooperation agreement with Russia’s Gazprom. That’s the largest foreign investment in the history of Iran’s energy industry – badly needed since the early 2000s. Seven deals worth $4 billion apply to the development of oil fields; others focus on the construction of new export gas pipelines and LNG projects.

Kremlin advisor Yury Ushakov deliciously leaked that Putin and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in their private meeting, “discussed conceptual issues.” Translation: he means grand strategy, as in the evolving, complex process of Eurasia integration, in which the three key nodes are Russia, Iran and China, now intensifying their interconnection. The Russia-Iran strategic partnership largely mirrors the key points of the China-Iran strategic partnership.

Iran says ‘no’ to NATO

Khamenei, on NATO, did tell it like it is:

“If the road is open for NATO, then the organization sees no borders. If it had not been stopped in Ukraine, then after a while the alliance would have started a war under the pretext of Crimea.”

There were no leaks on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) impasse between the US and Iran – but it’s clear, based on the recent negotiations in Vienna, that Moscow will not interfere with Tehran’s nuclear decisions. Not only are Tehran-Moscow-Beijing fully aware of who’s preventing the JCPOA from getting back on track, they also see how this counter-productive stalling process prevents the collective west from badly needed access to Iranian oil.

Then there’s the weapons front. Iran is one of the world’s leaders in drone production: Pelican, Arash, Homa, Chamrosh, Jubin, Ababil, Bavar, recon drones, attack drones, even kamikaze drones, cheap and effective, mostly deployed from naval platforms in West Asia.

Tehran’s official position is not to supply weapons to nations at war – which would in principle invalidate dodgy US “intel” on their supply to Russia in Ukraine. Yet that could always happen under the radar, considering that Tehran is very much interested in buying Russian aerial defense systems and state of the art fighter jets. After the end of the UN Security Council-enforced embargo, Russia can sell whatever conventional weapons to Iran it sees fit.

Russian military analysts are fascinated by the conclusions Iranians reached when it was established they would stand no chance against a NATO armada; essentially they bet on pro-level guerrilla war (a lesson learned from Afghanistan). In Syria, Iraq and Yemen they deployed trainers to guide villagers in their fight against Salafi-jihadis; produced tens of thousands of large-caliber sniper rifles, ATGMs, and thermals; and of course perfected their drone assembly lines (with excellent cameras to surveil US positions).

Not to mention that simultaneously the Iranians were building quite capable long-range missiles. No wonder Russian military analysts estimate there’s much to learn tactically from the Iranians – and not only on the drone front.

The Putin-Sultan ballet

Now to the Putin-Erdogan get together – always an attention-grabbing geopolitical ballet, especially considering the Sultan has not yet decided to hop on the Eurasia integration high-speed train.

Putin diplomatically “expressed gratitude” for the discussions on food and grain issues, while reiterating that “not all issues on the export of Ukrainian grain from the Black Sea ports are resolved, but progress is made.”

Putin was referring to Turkiye’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, who earlier this week assured that setting up an operations center in Istanbul, establishing joint controls at the port exit and arrival points, and carefully monitoring the navigational safety on the transfer routes are issues that may be solved in the next few days.

Apparently Putin-Erdogan also discussed Nagorno-Karabakh (no details).

What a few leaks certainly did not reveal is that on Syria, for all practical purposes, the situation is blocked. That favors Russia – whose main priority as it stands is Donbass. Wily Erdogan knows it – and that’s why he may have tried to extract some “concessions” on “the Kurdish question” and Nagorno-Karabakh. Whatever Putin, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev may really think about Erdogan, they certainly evaluate how priceless is to cultivate such an erratic partner capable of driving the collective west totally bonkers.

Istanbul this summer has been turned into a sort of Third Rome, at least for expelled-from-Europe Russian tourists: they are everywhere. Yet the most crucial geoeconomic development these past few months is that the western-provoked collapse of trade/supply lines along the borders between Russia and the EU – from the Baltic to the Black Sea – finally highlighted the wisdom and economic sense of the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INTSC): a major Russia-Iran-India geopolitical and geoeconomic integration success.

When Moscow talks to Kiev, it talks via Istanbul. NATO, as the Global South well knows, does not do diplomacy. So any possibility of dialogue between Russians and a few educated westerners takes place in Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the UAE. West Asia as well as the Caucasus, incidentally, did not subscribe to the western sanctions hysteria against Russia.

Say farewell to the ‘teleprompter guy’

Now compare all of the above with the recent visit to the region by the so-called “leader of the free world,” who merrily alternates between shaking hands with invisible people to reading – literally – whatever is scrolling on a teleprompter. We’re talking of US President Joe Biden, of course.

Fact: Biden threatened Iran with military strikes and as a mere supplicant, begged the Saudis to pump more oil to offset the “turbulence” in the global energy markets caused by the collective west’s sanction hysteria. Context: the glaring absence of any vision or anything even resembling a draft of foreign policy plan for West Asia.

So oil prices duly jumped upward after Biden’s trip: Brent crude rose more than four percent to $105 a barrel, bringing prices back to above $100 after a lull of several months.

The heart of the matter is that if OPEC or OPEC+ (which includes Russia) ever decide to increase their oil supplies, they will do it based on their internal deliberations, and not under exceptionalist pressure.

As for the imperial threat of military strikes on Iran, it qualifies as pure dementia. The whole Persian Gulf – not to mention the whole of West Asia – knows that were US/Israel to attack Iran, fierce retaliation would simply evaporate with the region’s energy production, with apocalyptic consequences including the collapse of trillions of dollars in derivatives.

Biden then had the gall to say,

“We have made progress in strengthening our relations with the Gulf states. We will not leave a vacuum for Russia and China to fill in the Middle East”.

Well, in real life it is the “indispensable nation” that has self-morphed into a vacuum. Only bought-and-paid for Arab vassals – most of them monarchs – believe in the building of an “Arab NATO” (copyright Jordan’s King Abdullah) to take on Iran. Russia and China are already all over the place in West Asia and beyond.

De-Dollarization, not just Eurasian integration

It’s not only the new logistical corridor from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Astrakhan and then, via the Caspian, to Enzeli in Iran and on to Mumbai that is shaking things up. It’s about increasing bilateral trade that bypasses the US dollar. It’s about BRICS+, which Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are dying to be part of. It’s about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which formally accepts Iran as a full member this coming September (and soon Belarus as well). It’s about BRICS+, the SCO, China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) interconnected in their path towards a Greater Eurasia Partnership.

West Asia may still harbor a small collection of imperial vassals with zero sovereignty who depend on the west’s financial and military ‘assistance,’ but that’s the past. The future is now – with Top Three BRICS (Russia, India, China) slowly but surely coordinating their overlapping strategies across West Asia, with Iran involved in all of them.

And then there’s the Big Global Picture: whatever the circumvolutions and silly schemes of the US-concocted “oil price cap” variety, the fact is that Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela – the top powerful energy-producing nations – are absolutely in sync: on Russia, on the collective west, and on the needs of a real multipolar world.

*

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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

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran held talks yesterday in Tehran at the 7^th Astana summit for peace in Syria, stressing the need for respecting Syria’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The summits date from January 2017, and are named for the Kazakhstan capital they were first held at.  The trio of leaders decided the next meeting will be held in Moscow before the end of the year.

The Syrian Foreign Minister, Faisal Mekdad, arrived in Tehran late on Tuesday to be briefed about the latest decisions following the meeting of the presidents.

The joint conclusions

Many important issues were discussed by the trio concerning the situation in Syria, which has developed into a stalemate.  Global media has stopped covering Syria since 2019 when the battlefields went silent, but a political solution has been elusive.

One point that Turkey, Russia and Iran agreed upon was the need for the US occupation troops to leave Syria, and their unified opposition to the Biden administration policy in Syria, which includes the need to lift US sanctions on Syria which are oppressing the Syrian people.

“We have certain differences concerning what is happening on the Euphrates eastern bank. But we have a shared position that American troops must leave this territory,” Putin said while adding, “They must stop robbing the Syrian state, Syrian people, illegally exporting oil from there.”

The trio affirmed that there was “no military solution” to the conflict in Syria, and agreed on the need to eliminate terrorism and opposed any attempts to divide the country.

The three leaders also jointly condemned Israel’s ongoing attacks on civilian targets in Syria, and agreed that the crisis in Syria could only be resolved peacefully and by the Syrians themselves.

Raisi said,

“The international community bears the responsibility to solve the crisis of the displaced and Syrian refugees, and we will support any initiative to do so.”

The Turkish position

For at least two months, Erdogan has threatened to conduct a fourth military invasion into northern Syria.  Analysts had thought the summit would be used by Iran and Russia to convince Turkey a new attack on the US-sponsored SDF in the northeastern Kurdish region would be a destabilizing event for the region. It appears that Turkey was able to get assurances from Iran and Russia that the SDF would not present a border terrorist threat to Turkey.

The US, Russia and Iran had all shared the view that Turkey should not begin a new military attack in northern Syria.

Turkey and the US are NATO members and allies.  But, the US chose to partner with the SDF, which is a separatist group in Syria led by Kurds who are following a socialist political ideology based on the  framework of the PKK, an internationally outlawed terrorist group.

The trio agreed that terrorism must be eradicated everywhere, and there cannot be “good terrorists” who are used by the US, while others are deemed “bad terrorists” such as ISIS and Al Qaeda.

US President Obama began the US-NATO attack on Syria in 2011 for ‘regime change’.  He failed.  The US used the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East, as well as global Al Qaeda branches which were transported into northern Syria from their base in southern Turkey, were the CIA operated a terrorist headquarters which was finally shut down in 2017 by President Trump.

Erdogan is a Muslim Brotherhood follower, and his AKP party is aligned with the international terrorist group banned in Egypt, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The US position

The Biden administration has made no changes to US policy in Syria since taking office.  The US is not present in any Syrian peace talks.  Obama started the destruction in Syria, but Biden is not offering any solution.  The US sanctions have prevented any reconstruction from beginning, and the Syrian people have been struggling under hyper-inflation, with no end in sight.

Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed the US-EU sanctions should be lifted and described them as being “in contravention of international law, international humanitarian law and the UN Charter including, among other things, any discriminatory measures through waivers for certain regions which could lead to this country’s disintegration by assisting separatist agendas.”

Trump had ordered the withdrawal of US troops from Syria, but the Pentagon insisted that they stay in support of the SDF who steal the oil from the main oil field in Syria and sell the oil to support their socialist administration.  That oil is the property of Syria, and because they are refused access to the oil, the Syrian people live with just two hours of electricity per day.

Damascus considers the US troops in Syria as a military occupation force which destabilizes the country and is against the UN charter and international law.

US raids on terrorists in Idlib

Idlib is the last remaining terrorist controlled area in Syria.  Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is the Radical Islamic terrorist group who keep about three million persons as human hostages.  Turkey protects the terrorists and keeps Russian and Syrian military from attacking Idlib, while the UN and other humanitarian groups keep the terrorists, their families, and civilians fed.  The US has also been very vocal and has accused the Syrian and Russian military for attacking terrorists in Idlib.

In a double-faced US policy in Idlib, the US has continued to kill ISIS leaders in Idlib, including the first assassination of the ISIS Calipha Baghdadi ordered by Trump. Since then, another five ISIS leaders have been killed by the US in Idlib.  The US know that the terrorists in control in Idlib are allies of ISIS, and yet they US policy is to protect Idlib from being cleared of terrorists.

In 2015, Russia was asked to enter Syria as the Al Qaeda affiliate Jibhat al-Nusra was threatening to create an Islamic State in Syria.  Putin recalled at the summit, “We broke the backbone of international terrorism there.”

Grain crisis discussion

Putin and Erdogan discussed the supply of grain from Russia and Ukraine to world markets.  Putin thanked Erdogan for his efforts “to mediate by providing Turkey with a platform for negotiating food issues and grain exports across the Black Sea.”  Putin called on the US to lift all restrictions on grain exports from Russia to improve the global food market situation.

Erdogan has been leading efforts to broker a deal to allow thousands of tons of grain to leave Ukraine’s ports. Turkey has responsibility under the 1936 Montreux convention for naval traffic entering the Black Sea, and is proposing that Russia allow Ukrainian grain ships to leave Odessa on designated routes.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Guest: Golan Ashton, Human Rights Attorney based in Israel, specialized in Civil Law & Labour Law.

In this session, Golan shared that during the last years, he was part of a group of activists that fought against the tyranny of the laws that made workers and citizens take injections to be able to work and support themselves.

He got a group of about 300 workers of a military-industrial company to successfully stand up against the COVID vaxx mandate.

Now, he is suing, in numerous cases, people who, for example, made medical treatment dependent on vaccination status when that was still illegal.

*

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***

Ein Blick auf die Situation der Welt und die Menschheit gibt wenig Anlass zu Optimismus. Der historische Lockdown vom 11. März 2020 löste weltweit „wirtschaftliches und soziales Chaos“ aus und war ein „Akt der Wirtschaftskriegsführung, ein Krieg gegen die Menschheit“ (1). Inzwischen werden wir von der siebten Covid-19-Welle „heimgesucht“, was deutlich macht, dass „unsere Politiker betrügerisch, mitschuldig und inkompetent“ sind (2).

Zudem führt der US-Westen in der Ukraine seit Monaten einen verheerenden Stellvertreter-Krieg beziehungsweise einen Welt-Krieg gegen Russland (3) mit der „Aussicht“ auf ein „Jüngstes Gericht“ (Armageddon). Doch es ist nicht recht, die „Völker“ für ihre Kriege verantwortlich zu machen; es waren und sind immer nur die herrschenden Schichten, die sich befehden und wechselseitig zu unterjochen versuchen. Deshalb kann der Krieg nicht auf die menschliche Natur zurückgeführt werden: Die Natur des Menschen ist friedlich. Nur die Machtgier derer, die innerhalb der Völker als Obrigkeit fungieren und durch ihre soziale Stellung vom Geist der Gewalt durchdrungen sind, führt immer wieder zu kriegerischen Auseinandersetzungen, in denen die Völker zugunsten ihrer Herren und Ausbeuter verbluten. Die psychologische Fragestellung muss an diesem Punkt einsetzen und Klarheit darüber verschaffen, wieso der Mensch unserer Zeit immer noch bereit ist, seinen Mitmenschen jenseits der Landesgrenzen in barbarischer Weise umzubringen und wie es einer herrschenden Minderheit möglich wird, die Mehrheit des Volkes für ihre Ziele und Zwecke leben, arbeiten und sterben zu lassen. Oder präziser formuliert: Wie ist die Unterdrückung des Menschen durch den Menschen möglich?

Aufklärer betonten Freiheit und Gleichheit aller Menschen

Der Mensch im Mittelalter, der in einer ständisch gegliederten Welt lebte, nahm die Ungerechtigkeiten der Welt noch fatalistisch hin und ordnete sich den weltlichen und geistlichen Obrigkeiten ohne Widerspruch unter. Erst durch die Philosophie der Renaissance und noch mehr durch diejenige der Aufklärung wurde der Glaube an die „angeborenen Unterschiede“ zwischen den Menschen erschüttert: Herrschaft und Knechtschaft erschienen nun als geschichtlich gewordene Tatsachen, die sich lediglich durch die nackte Gewalt der Machthaber aller Zeiten aufrechterhalten konnten.

a

Die Freiheit und Gleichheit aller Menschen wurden von den Aufklärern immer wieder ins Gedächtnis gerufen. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, einer der größten unter ihnen, zeigte den Gegensatz zwischen Naturzustand und gesellschaftlicher Entartung, indem er seinen „Contract social“ (Gesellschaftsvertrag) mit den berühmten Worten einleitete: „Der Mensch wird frei geboren, und überall liegt er in Ketten.“

Diese Lehre gab dem Geiste der Auflehnung sein theoretisches Fundament. Die staatsphilosophischen Erörterungen mündeten schließlich in die glorreiche Französischen Revolution ein, die die „Rechte des Menschen und Bürgers“ erklärte und damit den Grundstein zur modernen Demokratie legte.

Obwohl der demokratische Gedanke in der Vergangenheit auch positive Entwicklungsschritte verzeichnete, ist die Idee der Freiheit im Bewusstsein der Welt nur wenig verankert. Zahlreiche Länder werden diktatorisch regiert und unterstehen einer offenen oder heimlichen Tyrannei, von der Wirtschaft her wird der Gleichheit und Brüderlichkeit aller Menschen Hohn gesprochen und bis zum heutigen Tage ist es dem Menschen nicht gelungen, eine gerechte Gemeinschaftsordnung zu verwirklichen und den Krieg – dieses uralte Menschheitsübel – aus der Welt zu bannen.

Wie ist die Unterdrückung des Menschen durch den Menschen möglich?

Wie bereits erwähnt, muss uns die psychologische Fragestellung Klarheit darüber verschaffen, wie es einer herrschenden Minderheit gelingt, die Mehrheit des Volkes für ihre Ziele und Zwecke leben, arbeiten und sterben zu lassen. Oder schärfer formuliert: Wie ist die Unterdrückung des Menschen durch den Menschen möglich?

„Macht“ allein scheint nicht auszureichen, um die Völker in Botmäßigkeit zu halten, da die Macht des Volkes immer größer wäre als diejenige seiner Herrscher, sofern sich die Bürger dazu entschließen würden, diese Macht in die Waagschale zu werfen. Es sind ideologische Hilfsmittel, die die Hörigkeit der Völker sicherstellen und es den Machthabern aller Zeiten ermöglichen, ein Regime der Privilegien und Ungerechtigkeit aufzurichten: Zum einen ist es die ideologische Verblendung des Menschengeistes im Sinne einer Verwirrung der Sinne oder einer Blindheit des Geistes, die dazu führt, den Menschen seine Liebe zur Freiheit vergessen zu machen. Sie bringt es sogar fertig, ihn die Ketten verherrlichen zu lassen, unter deren Last er zusammenbricht.

Doch über die massenpsychologische Ebene hinaus benötigt die Erörterung der Kriegsursachen und der Herrschaft des Menschen über den Menschen eine individualpsychologische Ergänzung: Welche Mentalität unterscheidet „Herr“ und „Knecht“? Wie muss die Seele eines Mitgliedes der herrschenden Schichten strukturiert sein, damit es bereit sein wird, über den Mitmenschen zu herrschen? Welche Gefühlsregungen müssen in den Angehörigen unterdrückter oder ausgebeuteter Volksklassen vorhanden sein, damit sie die Unterdrückung über sich ergehen lassen? Damit sich ein geschlossenes Bild ergibt, muss der massenpsychologische Befund durch denjenigen der Individual-Psychologie abgerundet werden.

Die ideologische Verblendung des Menschengeistes macht es möglich, den Menschen seine Liebe zur Freiheit vergessen zu machen

Eine der wichtigsten Stützen der ungerechten Sozialordnungen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart ist der Glaube des Menschen, dass das Diesseits eine nur bedeutungslose Etappe ihres Daseins wäre und sie ihre wahre Existenz und ihr wahres Glück im Jenseits finden würden. Für diese Gleichgültigkeit gegen das irdische Schicksal erwarteten die Gläubigen reichen Lohn und unterließen es, sich gegen die Tyrannei aufzulehnen. Fügsam ergab sich ihr Fatalismus jeder Unterdrückung und der durch die Ausrichtung auf das Jenseits eingeschränkte Lebenswille brachte weder Mut noch Kraft zur Revolte auf.

Die Kirche, die stets auf der Seite der Mächtigen steht, bestätigte König und Adel als „von Gottes Gnaden“ inthronisiert. Sich gegen die Zustände in Staat und Gesellschaft zu erheben, wäre darum ein Verstoß gegen die göttliche Weisheit und Vorsehung gewesen. Diese Verklärung der Knechts-Mentalität schuf die Voraussetzungen für absolutistische Herrschaftsformen, in denen die Menschen ein willenloses Werkzeug ihrer Obrigkeit wurden und ihnen in Krieg und Frieden vorbehaltlos Gefolgschaft leisteten.

Ein weiteres Moment ist die nationale oder rassistische Ideologie, deren epidemischer Charakter uns in der Vergangenheit drastisch veranschaulicht worden ist – und in jüngster Zeit eine Renaissance erlebt.

Der Mythos der Nation und der Rasse schafft eine vorgegaukelte Einheit zwischen Herrschenden und Beherrschten. Die Beherrschten sollten glauben, sie gehörten zusammen mit ihren Herren einer geheimnisvollen und ruhmreichen Körperschaft an, an deren Glanz und Größe auch der geringste Knecht seinen Anteil hat. Der Knecht wird durch diese Täuschung veranlasst, über seine Knechtschaft hinwegzusehen: sind die anderen, die nicht zu seiner Rasse oder Nation gezählt werden, doch noch weniger als er. Dadurch wir es ihm erträglich, dass er selber wenig oder gar nichts gilt. Für Ruhm und Ehre der Nation war der Knecht bereit, sein Leben zu opfern.

Nationalismus und Rassenlehrer sind Geisteshaltungen des Stolzes und der Überheblichkeit, in denen immer auch ein Stück Aggressivität gegen Nachbarvölker oder benachbarte Rassen mitschwingt. Die gesellschaftlichen Missstände, durch die Ungerechtigkeit der Herrschenden entstanden, wurden und werden somit immer auf die Gegen-Nation oder Gegen-Rasse abgewälzt.

Als Sklave kam der Knecht nicht auf die Idee, sich mit den Sklaven jenseits der Landesgrenzen zu solidarisieren, um sich gegen die gemeinsamen Bedrücker zu wenden. Der Groll, der gegen seinen eigenen Tyrannen in ihm hätte entstehen sollen, wurde abgeleitet auf jene, die, wie er selber, unter dem Joch der Tyrannei seufzten. In diesem teuflischen Mechanismus liegt der Schlüssel zu den Minderheitenproblemen wie etwa dem der Neger in den USA oder der Juden in Europa. Die Herrschenden von einst und jetzt beweisen damit, dass sie die „Psychologie des Sündenbocks“ zur Sicherung ihrer Herrschaft vortrefflich auszunützen wissen.

Mentalitäten von Herrschenden und Beherrschten unterscheiden sich

Die Erörterung der Kriegsursachen und der Herrschaft des Menschen über den Menschen, die bisher auf massenpsychologischer Ebene durchgeführt wurde, bedarf der individualpsychologischen Ergänzung. In einer Gesellschaftsordnung, die Herrschende und Beherrschte kennt – bis heute gibt es keine andere! –, entstehen zweierlei Mentalitäten, zweierlei Ideologien, die im Wesentlichen gleich ausfallen: Überall, wo es Ober- und Unterschicht gibt, entwickeln sich Mentalitäten von Herren und Knechten.

Die hervorstechendsten Merkmale des Menschentypus, der in gesellschaftlich begünstigter Position aufwächst, sind die Gefühle der Selbstsicherheit und der Überlegenheit. In dieser Beziehung können Kinder des Bürgertums und der Arbeiterschaft nicht verwechselt werden. Ein Kind, das in Wohlstand oder Überfluss erzogen wird, das eine angemessene Pflege erhält und dem eine Großzahl von Wünschen erfüllt werden kann, nimmt eine andere seelische Haltung an als Kinder der Armut, der Not oder eingeschränkter wirtschaftlicher Verhältnisse.

Das Kind der herrschenden Volksschichten tritt mit der Grundstimmung an das Leben heran: „Mir gehört die Welt!“. Im Umgang mit Dienstboten im Elternhaus bekommt es früh den Eindruck, dass sich die Menschen in „Herren“ und „Diener“ unterscheiden, wobei letztere dazu da sind, für die Herrschaft zu leben und zu arbeiten. Die Beobachtung des Verhältnisses von Vater und Mutter in unserer patriarchalischen Welt führt dazu, dass das Kind mit der „Männlichkeit“ zugleich auch angeborene Auserwähltheit und Herrschaftsanspruch zu verbinden lernt.

Kein Wunder, dass in seiner Seele der Drang entsteht, auch einmal oben zu sein wie die Autorität und an dem von ihr geübten Regiment teilzuhaben. Unter dem Einfluss dieses Machtstrebens werden die Gemeinschaftsgefühle nur kümmerlich ausgebildet. Hinzu kommt, dass die verzärtelnde Erziehung Menschen hervorbringt, die der Welt mit einem Auserwähltheitsanspruch gegenüberstehen und nicht geneigt sind, anderen Menschen gleiche Ansprüche zuzubilligen.

Diese Mentalität des Ehrgeizes, des Stolzes und der reduzierten Mitmenschlichkeit ermöglicht es, „Chefs“ zu werden, in Wirtschaft, Militär oder Politik die leitenden Positionen einzunehmen, in denen die Herrschaft des Menschen über den Menschen vorgesehen ist. Auf dieser Grundlage werden Vorgesetzten geprägt, die als Politiker im Einverständnis mit Vertretern der Großindustrie und des Militarismus imstande sind, im Interesse der herrschenden Schichten einen völkermordenden Krieg zu beginnen. Das gesellschaftliche Gefüge, das auf dem Geiste der Gewalt aufbaut, bringt einen Menschenschlag hervor, für den die Aggression „prima et ultima ratio“ bedeutet.

Doch auch der Knecht bedarf einer Ideologie, um in der Knechtschaft zu verharren. Denn der Mensch erträgt die Gewalt schlecht; etwas in ihm lehnt sich gegen sie auf. Die Gewaltanwendung erweckt das Verlangen nach Abwehr, sie will durch Gewalt beantwortet werden. Somit liegt es im Interesse der Herrschenden, dem Knecht Ideologien zu vermitteln, die ihn dazu bewegen, sich mit seinem Schicksal abzufinden. So muss er unter anderem glauben, dass Gott oder die Natur in ihrer Allmacht sein Knechtsdasein vorgesehen haben.

Der Knecht krankt ebenso sehr an der Machtgier wie der Herr. Die Unterwürfigkeit wirkt wie ein ständiger Stachel, der die Bereitschaft zur Aggression hervorbringt. Der kleinste Dienstbote sucht noch jemanden, auf den er herabschauen und an dem er seinen Groll ausleben kann. Das betrifft auch das Verhältnis des Arbeiters zu seiner Frau und seinen Kindern, seinen „Herrschaftsbereich“.

Das Arbeiterkind fühlt sich frühzeitig in eine Welt hineinversetzt, in der es Bevorrechtete und Benachteiligte gibt. Sobald es Kleidung, finanzielle Mittel und gesellschaftliche Stellung zu vergleichen lernt, entwickelt es ein sozial bedingtes Minderwertigkeitsgefühl. Hieraus erwächst dann das Streben, mehr zu sein als die anderen. Dies kann nur dann gemildert werden, wenn die Erzieher den Gemeinschaftsgedanken pflegen, sodass das Kind seinen eigenen Freiheitsdrang mit dem anderen Menschen zu verbinden lernt.

Wo dies nicht der Fall ist und eine autoritäre und individualistische Erziehung dem Kind die ersten Lebenseindrücke vermittelt, wird es aus seiner sozialen Benachteiligung den Schluss ziehen, dass es einzig und allein sich selbst „in die Höhe“ bringen muss. Seine vom Bazillus der Machtgier infizierte Seele wird dann für rassische und religiösen Vorurteile anfällig sein, mit deren Hilfe in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart die Gesellschaftsordnung der Ungerechtigkeit aufrechterhalten wird. Der Traum des Knechts ist nicht, „Herren“ und „Knechte“ aus der Welt zu schaffen, sondern er wünscht, selber Herr zu werden. Die Gewalt hat ihn vergiftet und er besitzt nicht mehr die Kraft, den Traum der allgemeinen Freiheit zu träumen.

Es besteht kein Zweifel, dass die Fehlschläge der sozialen Bewegung auf diesen psychologischen Zusammenhang zurückzuführen sind. Die Wortführer des sozialen Fortschritts kranken am selben Geist der Gewalt, den sie zu bekämpfen vorgeben. Angesichts großer Entscheidungen verrieten sie die Idee der Freiheit immer wieder an die Autorität, der sie trotz kühner Parolen und Schlagworte hörig blieben.

Aufklärung und Erziehung

Der Sinn der aufklärerischen Bemühungen ist die Reinigung des menschlichen Bewusstseins von den oben beschriebenen individuellen und kollektiven Vorurteilen. Der „aufgeklärte Verstand“ ist fähig, gesunde Lebensziele ins Auge zu fassen. Die Zukunft unserer Kultur wird wesentlich davon abhängen, ob es genügend „Aufklärer“ geben wird, die imstande sind, den breiten Volksmassen jene Vorurteile zu nehmen, die der ideologische Hintergrund der Menschheitskatastrophen sind.

In einer Zeit, in der durch die Atombombe die Selbstvernichtung der Menschheit möglich erscheint, brauchen wir mehr denn je freie Geister, die uns lehren, was Wahrheit und was Lüge ist. Intellektuellen hätten die Pflicht, für die anderen Menschen zu denken (Romain Rolland) und mit der Freiheit des Denkens die Freiheit überhaupt zu verkünden.

Wichtiger noch als die Aufklärung aber ist die Erziehung, die nach Jean Paul der eigentliche Hebelarm der Kultur ist. Die tiefenpsychologische Einsicht hat die Erziehung in ihrer ungeheuren Tragweite deutlich gemacht. Das autoritäre Prinzip, jahrhundertelang als fraglos-gültige Grundlage des erzieherischen Verhaltens angesehen, drosselte bereits in den Kindheitsjahren das Gemeinschaftsgefühl der Menschen.

Heute wissen wir, dass wir durch psychologische Erziehungsmethoden Menschen heranbilden können, die gegen die Verstrickungen des Machtwahns gefeit sein werden. Indem die Pädagogik in Elternhaus und Schule auf unangemessenes Autoritätsgebaren und Gewaltanwendung verzichtet und sich mit wahrem Verständnis dem kindlichen Seelenleben zuwendet, wird sie Menschen hervorbringen, die keine „Untertanen-Mentalität“ besitzen und darum für die Machthaber in unserer Welt kein gefügiges Werkzeug mehr sein werden. Die Achtung vor der kindlichen Persönlichkeit und freundschaftliche Zuwendung des Erziehers zu seinem Zögling werden einen der wertvollsten Beiträge zum Aufbau einer humanen Gesellschaftsordnung zu leisten.

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Lehrer (Rektor a. D.), Doktor der Pädagogik (Dr. paed.) und Diplom-Psychologe (Schwerpunkte: Klinische-, Pädagogische-, Medien- sowie Individual-Psychologie). Als Pensionär arbeitete er in Lindau am Bodensee viele Jahre als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und pädagogisch-psychologischen Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung und eine Erziehung zum Gemeinsinn und Frieden.

Noten 

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-covid-19-engineered-destruction-of-civil-society-prof-michel-chossudovsky/5774749

2. https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-covid-19-crisis-and-the-seventh-wave-our-politicians-are-fraudulent-complicit-and-incompetent/5787031

3. https://de.rt.com/international/143552-vucic-es-tobt-weltkrieg-und/

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

A look at the state of the world and humanity gives little cause for optimism. The historic lockdown of 11 March 2020 triggered “economic and social chaos” worldwide and was an “act of economic warfare, a war against humanity” (1). Meanwhile, we are being “afflicted” by the seventh Covid-19 wave, making it clear that “our politicians are fraudulent, complicit and incompetent” (2).

Moreover, the US West has been waging a devastating proxy war or world war against Russia (3) in Ukraine for months with the “prospect” of a “Last Judgement” (Armageddon). But it is not right to hold the “peoples” responsible for their wars; it was and is always only the ruling classes that feud and try to subjugate each other. Therefore, war cannot be attributed to human nature: Human nature is peaceful. Only the lust for power of those who function as authorities within the peoples and are imbued with the spirit of violence through their social position repeatedly leads to warlike conflicts in which the peoples bleed to death in favour of their masters and exploiters.

The psychological questioning must begin at this point and provide clarity as to why man of our time is still prepared to kill his fellow man beyond the national borders in a barbaric manner and how it becomes possible for a ruling minority to let the majority of the people live, work and die for their aims and purposes. Or to put it more precisely: How is the oppression of man by man possible?

Enlightenment thinkers emphasised freedom and equality of all people

People in the Middle Ages, who lived in a world divided into estates, still fatalistically accepted the injustices of the world and subordinated themselves to the secular and spiritual authorities without protest. It was not until the philosophy of the Renaissance and even more so that of the Enlightenment that the belief in the “innate differences” between people was shaken: domination and servitude now appeared as facts that had become historical, which could only be maintained by the naked violence of the rulers of all times.

The freedom and equality of all people were recalled again and again by the Enlightenment thinkers. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the greatest among them, showed the contrast between the state of nature and social degeneracy by introducing his “Contract social” (Social Contract) with the famous words: “Man is born free, and everywhere he lies in chains.”

This doctrine gave the spirit of revolt its theoretical foundation. The discussions on the philosophy of the state eventually led to the glorious French Revolution, which declared the “rights of man and citizen” and thus laid the foundation for modern democracy.

Although the democratic idea also recorded positive developmental steps in the past, the idea of freedom is only little anchored in the consciousness of the world. Numerous countries are ruled by dictators and are subject to open or secret tyranny, the economy makes a mockery of the equality and brotherhood of all people, and to this day man has not succeeded in realising a just community order and banishing war – this age-old evil of mankind – from the world.

How is the oppression of man by man possible?

As already mentioned, the psychological question must provide us with clarity about how a ruling minority succeeds in making the majority of the people live, work and die for its aims and purposes. Or to put it more sharply: How is the oppression of man by man possible?

“Power” alone does not seem to be sufficient to keep peoples in bondage, since the power of the people would always be greater than that of their rulers, provided the citizens decided to bring that power to bear. It is ideological tools that ensure the bondage of peoples and enable rulers of all times to establish a regime of privilege and injustice: On the one hand, it is the ideological delusion of the human spirit in the sense of a confusion of the senses or a blindness of the mind that leads to making man forget his love of freedom. It even manages to make him glorify the chains under whose weight he collapses.

But beyond the mass-psychological level, the discussion of the causes of war and the domination of man over man needs an individual-psychological supplement: What mentality distinguishes “master” and “servant”? How must the soul of a member of the ruling classes be structured so that he will be willing to rule over his fellow man? What emotions must be present in the members of oppressed or exploited classes of people so that they will allow oppression to prevail over them? In order for a coherent picture to emerge, the findings of mass psychology must be rounded off by those of individual psychology.

The ideological blindness of the human spirit makes it possible, to make people forget their love of freedom

One of the most important pillars of the unjust social orders of the past and present is man’s belief that this world is only a meaningless stage of their existence and that they will find their true existence and happiness in the hereafter. For this indifference to earthly fate, the believers expected rich rewards and refrained from rebelling against tyranny. Docilely, their fatalism surrendered to every oppression and the will to live, limited by the orientation towards the hereafter, did not muster the courage or strength to revolt.

The Church, always on the side of the powerful, confirmed king and nobility as enthroned “by the grace of God”. To rise up against the conditions in state and society would therefore have been a violation of divine wisdom and providence. This transfiguration of the servant mentality created the conditions for absolutist forms of rule, in which people became a will-less tool of their authorities and gave them unreserved allegiance in war and peace.

Another moment is the national or racist ideology, whose epidemic character has been drastically illustrated to us in the past – and has recently experienced a renaissance.

The myth of the nation and the race creates an illusory unity between rulers and ruled. The ruled are supposed to believe that they belong, together with their masters, to a mysterious and glorious body in whose splendour and greatness even the least servant has his share. The servant is induced by this deception to overlook his servitude: are the others, who are not counted among his race or nation, still less than he? This makes it bearable for him that he himself counts for little or nothing. For the glory and honour of the nation, the servant was prepared to sacrifice his life.

Nationalism and race teachers are attitudes of pride and arrogance, which always include a touch of aggression against neighbouring peoples or races. Social grievances, caused by the injustice of the rulers, were and are thus always passed on to the counter-nation or counter-race.

As a slave, it did not occur to the servant to show solidarity with the slaves beyond the country’s borders in order to turn against the common oppressors. The resentment that should have arisen in him against his own tyrant was diverted to those who, like himself, groaned under the yoke of tyranny. In this diabolical mechanism lies the key to minority problems such as that of the Negroes in the USA or the Jews in Europe. The rulers of the past and present prove that they know how to exploit the “psychology of the scapegoat” to secure their rule.

Mentalities of rulers and ruled differ

The discussion of the causes of war and the domination of man over man, which has so far been conducted on the level of mass psychology, needs to be supplemented by individual psychology. In a social order that knows rulers and ruled – until today there is no other! –, two kinds of mentalities, two kinds of ideologies emerge that are essentially the same: Wherever there are upper and lower classes, mentalities of masters and servants develop.

The most salient characteristics of the type of person who grows up in a socially favoured position are the feelings of self-assurance and superiority. In this respect, children of the middle class and the working class cannot be confused. A child who is brought up in prosperity or affluence, who receives proper care and who can have a large number of desires fulfilled, assumes a different mental attitude from children of poverty, hardship or restricted economic conditions.

The child of the ruling classes approaches life with the basic mood: “The world belongs to me!”. In their dealings with servants in the parental home, they get the impression early on that people are differentiated into “masters” and “servants”, the latter being there to live and work for the rulers. Observing the relationship between father and mother in our patriarchal world leads to the child learning to associate “masculinity” at the same time with innate chosenness and a claim to dominance.

No wonder that the urge arises in his soul to be on top like the authority for once and to participate in the rule exercised by it. Under the influence of this striving for power, feelings of community are only poorly developed. In addition, a pampered upbringing produces people who face the world with a claim to chosenness and are not inclined to grant other people the same claims.

This mentality of ambition, pride and reduced fellow humanity makes it possible to become “bosses”, to take the leading positions in business, the military or politics, where the domination of man over man is envisaged. On this basis, superiors are shaped who, as politicians in agreement with representatives of big industry and militarism, are able to start a genocidal war in the interest of the ruling classes. The social structure, which is built on the spirit of violence, produces a breed of people for whom aggression means “prima et ultima ratio”.

But the servant also needs an ideology to remain in servitude. For man bears violence badly; something in him rebels against it. The use of violence arouses the desire to defend oneself, it wants to be answered by violence. Thus it is in the interest of the rulers to impart ideologies to the servant that make him resign himself to his fate. Among other things, he must believe that God or nature in their omnipotence have provided for his servitude.

The servant suffers as much from the lust for power as the master. Submissiveness acts as a constant sting that breeds a readiness for aggression. The smallest servant is still looking for someone to look down on and to vent his resentment on. This also affects the worker’s relationship with his wife and children, his “domain”.

At an early age, the working-class child feels placed in a world where there are privileged and disadvantaged people. As soon as he learns to compare clothes, financial means and social position, he develops a socially conditioned feeling of inferiority. This then gives rise to the striving to be more than the others. This can only be alleviated if the educators cultivate the idea of community so that the child learns to combine its own desire for freedom with that of other people.

Where this is not the case and an authoritarian and individualistic upbringing gives the child its first impressions of life, it will draw the conclusion from its social disadvantage that it must “raise itself up” alone. His soul, infected by the bacillus of the lust for power, will then be susceptible to racial and religious prejudices, with the help of which the social order of injustice is maintained in the past and present. The servant’s dream is not to eliminate “masters” and “servants” from the world, but he desires to become master himself. Violence has poisoned him and he no longer has the strength to dream the dream of universal freedom.

There is no doubt that the failures of the social movement are due to this psychological connection. The spokesmen of social progress suffer from the same spirit of violence that they claim to fight against. In the face of great decisions, they betrayed the idea of freedom again and again to the authority to which they remained in bondage despite bold slogans and catchwords.

Enlightenment and education

The purpose of enlightenment efforts is to purify human consciousness from the individual and collective prejudices described above. The “enlightened mind” is capable of envisaging healthy life goals. The future of our culture will largely depend on whether there will be enough “enlightened minds” capable of removing from the broad masses of people those prejudices which are the ideological background of the catastrophes of humanity.

At a time when the atomic bomb seems to make the self-destruction of humanity possible, we need free spirits more than ever to teach us what is truth and what is a lie. Intellectuals have the duty to think for other people (Romain Rolland) and to proclaim freedom in general with the freedom of thought.

More important than the Enlightenment, however, is education, which, according to Jean Paul, is the real lever of culture. Depth-psychological insight has made education clear in its immense scope. The authoritarian principle, for centuries regarded as the unquestionably valid basis of educational behaviour, already throttled people’s sense of community in their childhood years.

Today we know that through psychological educational methods we can train people who will be immune to the entanglements of power madness. By renouncing inappropriate authority and the use of violence in the parental home and school and turning to the child’s soul with true understanding, pedagogy will produce people who do not have a “subject mentality” and who will therefore no longer be docile tools for those in power in our world. Respect for the child’s personality and the friendly attitude of the educator towards his pupil will be one of the most valuable contributions to the building of a humane social order.

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a teacher (retired headmaster), doctor of education (Dr. paed.) and graduate psychologist (specialisations: Clinical, educational, media and individual psychology). As a retiree, he worked for many years as a psychotherapist in his own practice in Lindau on Lake Constance. In his books and educational-psychological articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral education in values and an education for public spirit and peace.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-covid-19-engineered-destruction-of-civil-society-prof-michel-chossudovsky/5774749

(2) https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-covid-19-crisis-and-the-seventh-wave-our-politicians-are-fraudulent-complicit-and-incompetent/5787031

(3) https://de.rt.com/international/143552-vucic-es-tobt-weltkrieg-und/

Featured image is from Pixabay

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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

***

The older generation takes a strange pleasure in reiterating comments about the absence of responsibility, the lack of focus and the indulgence of young people, using these arguments as a means of excusing the bleak future that their children and grandchildren face. Those arguments are rarely original, but rather they are force-fed to baby boomers by the media as a means of relieving them of all responsibility and of distracting them from the true causes of the tragic shifts that they observe obliquely.

It is assumed that for reasons unknown, somehow, young people are less capable, less attentive, less motivated and less concerned with planning for their careers and their futures. This argument makes the previous generation feel somehow more worthy and superior and that is precisely the hook that is lodged in the sweet treat.

Nowhere in the discussion about the challenges youth face is any mention made of how corporations have targeted them and exploited them, from cradle on, or of how the fundamental structure of government has shifted since the end of the Cold War so that it no longer plays the role of defending or of protecting the citizen, the child, against the vultures and jackals of the corporate world, but rather serves as a marionette with a smiling face through which arguments to justify the dictatorship of finance are promulgated and made to seem scientific, authoritative, and even ethical to the public.

To be sure, the breakdown of a sense of community, of the concepts of personal responsibility and of ethical commitment among youth is a sad reality. It is accompanied by isolation, loneliness, and uncertainty about the future that undermines all aspects of life.

But the problems that our children face are not brought on by themselves, but rather the result of a brutal assault on their childhood by corporations that seek to dominate their values and their thinking from the cradle on so that they are unable to think for themselves, unable to create their own communities, or their own lives, and dependent on content, and on relations, supplied by those corporations, and the investment banks that lurk behind them.

When our children should be playing outside, catching frogs in the woods, building forts out of tree branches, or helping their parents to plant lettuce and carrots—and thereby understand the relationship between humans, water, soil and nature, they are encouraged, compelled, to get all information from the television or internet which is dominated by these multinational corporations, organizations that see our children not as future citizens, or as the building blocks for a constitutional democracy, but as consumers to be mined and manipulated so as to increase profits.

When our children should gain wisdom and insight from their own experiences, from their interactions with friends and teachers, and should learn first from their parents and grandparents, uncles, aunts and neighbors, they are forced to watch television, to surf the internet and to play various video games from an increasingly young age. Their parents are told that exposure to technology will make their children competitive and modern—it is a sickening lie.

The purpose of getting children connected with images presented by television, movies and the internet from an early age is addict them to a consumption economy, to reduce their ability to think for themselves, and to encourage superficial thinking dominated by excitement and quick action that destroys their capacity to understand complex issues, and their ability to concentrate.

The bombarding of our children with commercial images that suggest how they should behave, and what is of value, is a direct assault on the Constitution because it intentionally undermines the capacity of the individual to be a citizen. That is to say that the advertising and public relations employed in the commercial media and entertainment is illegal.

Also, the assault on our children through the commercial media cannot be detached from pornography. Even in the most innocent cartoons, corporations insidiously insert messages suggesting that we should evaluate others in terms of how they please us, that humans are commodities and that we must market ourselves, and our sexuality, in order to be successful.

This subtle attack on the core values in children feeds into real pornography, starting with boys. Corporations plant sick images of violence and humiliation of women in the minds of young boys in an attempt to addict them to a false, violent and perverse sexuality which can only be purchased, and that is incompatible with love for women.

If boys have their sexuality torn away from love, and attached to competition and narcissism, girls will be the clear victims. Whether they end up with boys who can no longer express affection, or are compelled to behave like the women in pornographic movies so that they can get attention, girls are sacrificed to profit in this debased culture.

This whole process of degrading and destroying our children must stop now.

We must understand that the commercial advertising with which our children are bombarded is not primarily aimed at selling products. The primary agenda of what had degenerated into brainwashing and propaganda is to inculcate in them a passive, dependent, reactive and flippant attitude that will render them incapable of thinking for themselves, of searching for solutions on their own. They are indoctrinated to turn to the media, controlled by corporations, for solutions to every aspect of their personal lives.

It is a scientific fact that the use of social media and internet surfing remaps the connections between brain cells, training the individual to favor short-term stimulation, constant changes, and exciting and stimulating scenes.

As a result of such behavior modification, the capacity of the individual to read and comprehend long and complex texts, to understand multidimensional problems in the economy and society, and to engage others in meaningful dialog is destroyed. A few years soaking in the narcissistic consumer culture forced on youth produces people incapable of anything other than working to feed themselves and releasing accumulated stress by indulging in self-centered video games, pornography, food consumption, or action films.

For those marinated in this consumption culture, what does not appear on TV, or on the internet, seems unreal, insubstantial. By contrast, the falsehoods propagated through commercial media are assumed to be real, more substantial than the reality that surrounds them.

When this political crisis, this social disaster, is brought up in polite conversation, the knee-jerk response is that we must make our messages brief and dumb them down so that youth will listen. No one in the room suggests that we need to create a culture so as to protect our youth from this war, to allow them to focus, to concentrate, to read and digest books, to enjoy art and music, and to create it themselves.

Children assaulted by the commercial media from infancy have no chance to preserve their own liberty. They are not permitted to develop their own metaphysical compass. No moral or scientific forces exist for them other than what can be seen, and especially can be seen in the commercial media.

Many are left incapable of evaluating the impact of forces that are not explicitly visible. They do not even realize that the smartphone that they hold in their hand does not belong to them at all, but is constantly updated and changed so as to manipulate them by multinational corporations pursuing agendas about which they understand little.

The commercial media, advertisers and entertainment moguls have intentionally created a culture of forgetfulness. We are trained by the media to forget what happened yesterday, to lack any historical perspective on politics, culture, society and technology. But if we cannot remember our past, other than the slick images fed to us by the media, then we cannot establish our own interpretations, and democracy becomes impossible.

So also, we forget what happens to the plastic that we dispose of. We forget what the implications for the world of foreign wars are. We forget what will happen to future generations if we continue to destroy the ecosystem in the pursuit of a narcissistic consumption culture.

The commercial media also wants to crush our imaginations, our creativity.

Of course commercials suggest that somehow using your Iphone will make you more creative, more innovative. A closer look reveals that what is called “innovative” and “imaginative” is the manipulation of images and symbols supplied by the multinational corporation. There is no freedom and no autonomy to be found anywhere in that world.

Imagination means also the ability to imagine things that are not visible. That is a skill that the corporations wish to crush. They do not want us to be able to imagine the hidden powers that shape our world for profit. They do not want children to have the imagination to see how the cynical players on Wall Street and Madison Avenue set out to destroy their minds, how the brutal road ahead is decided for them by invisible powers.

The Constitution defends freedom of speech for the citizen. It does not grant corporations the right to brainwash and destroy the minds of citizens from childhood, rendering them incapable of making their own decisions.

As long as this criminal operation is tolerated, we will have no democracy and no government. This criminal operation must end now and the kings of advertising and public relations must face jail terms for their criminal actions against our youth, their use of technology and marketing to enable the “rape of the mind.”

Corporations, banks and the advertising and public relations firms that they fund are destroying our minds, and our ability to perceive reality. Because they attack stealthily the means by which we perceive, we are unaware of the tremendous damage that they do. Just as the brain does not feel pain, so also our schemata for perception of the world are blind to how they are undermined by false narratives and stimulation aimed at behavior modification.

Nothing less than a revolution can end this war on our children, this extermination campaign against our future.

The War of Corporations against our Children from Emanuel Pastreich on Vimeo.

*

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

(Originally published November 19, 2022)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.ca

a

***

“The changes needed are not going to come from the inside, from politicians trying to change things from the inside where everyone else has failed to do so earlier. I believe that right now the changes that we need are so big that we need massive pressure from the outside, and that is done by organizing on grossest levels. So that’s what we are doing!” 

–Greta Thunberg (November 2, 2022) [1]

“I have come to the conclusion to start with the fact that there are various “C“-crises at the same time – Climate, CO2, Corona, Capital – and more – that force us to “connect the dots” of the “bigger picture.” What is the common cause of all these crises? In the background there is the great transformation of modern civilization that is needed in order to save it – from the point of view of its inventors who want to prevent it from failing.”

– Dr Claudia von Werlhof  

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“Ain’t no power like the power of the people and the power of the people won’t stop!”

On Wednesday Nov 16, dozens of environmental activists staged demonstrations from inside the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) venue held this year in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. [2]

One of these protests involved medical workers from countries around the globe staging a “die-in,” trying to give CPR to a rubber globe of the planet and having the words “1.5” and “to survive” written in red on the palms of opposing hands. They were trying to communicate the health impacts of not meeting the environmental targets stated in the previous agreement signed in Paris. [3]

This coincides with other notable and innovative strategies, including groups staging actions of eco-vandalism against paintings in museums to get people to prioritize the fate of the planet above our love of the arts. And the group Extinction Rebellion has peacefully staged sit-ins at public locations threatening the ability to get to work or anywhere until the concerns of future generations are addressed. [4][5]

As the conference is now delayed for one more day, one could get the impression that the Davids of the world are forcing the hands of the big Goliaths in the developed Global North not considering the mighty slingshots the people united can wield. [6]

“Ain’t no power like the power of the people and the power of the people won’t stop!”

The unfortunate reality behind these protests is that the very demands they are making are nicely aligned with the interests of elites! This principle is profiled on the website Wrongkindofgreen.org on which it states:

“The articles in this section have been collected to show the hollowed-out reality of groups like 350.org, WWF and Greenpeace who are run from the top down and have one overriding policy: to keep the industrial system running at any cost, even if it means salvaging the reputations of corrupt politicians (all of them), inviting corporations to come and play (and making sure the water’s nice and warm), lying to the public about how much power they have (none under this system), and ignoring the simple fact that industrial civilization is terminally unsustainable and has to end (the truth).” [7]

With that in mind, one could ask what the specific intentions of these gatherings of world leaders are achieving in the name of “saving the planet” from catastrophic climate change. This will be the subject of this episode of the Global Research News Hour.

In our first half hour, we are joined by the investigative journalist, environmental activist and author Cory Morningstar who will discuss some of the goals of this year’s UN Climate summit and the realities of the economic transition that are being made supposedly for the betterment of the globe. This interview is followed by Dr Claudia Von Werlhof who goes beyond in mentioning that the robust science detailing climate change being instituted by increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a hoax and that military engineering in the form of ionospheric heating and solar radiation management is ultimately the culprit.

Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation and Counterpunch.

Dr. Claudia von Werlhof is Prof. Emerita of Political Science and Women’s Studies at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. She is the author of many books and has worked hard to make Rosalie Bertell’s important book Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War on Geoengineering available in German, Spanish, Italian, French and English again. Claudia was the founder of the Planetary Movement for Mother Earth (PMME) in 2010. She recently edited and contributed to the book Global War-ning: Geoengineering Is Wrecking Our Planet and Humanity.

She is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

(Global Research News Hour episode 369)

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Transcript of Dr Claudia von Werlhof, November 14, 2022

Global Research: Claudia Von Werlhof is Professor Emerita of Political Science and Women’s Studies at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Claudia was the founder of the Planetary Movement for Mother Earth in 2010 and she is a research associate of the Centre for Research on Globalisation. Before we get into the details, you could provide us with the broad outline of your thesis because clearly this is more than a matter of mistaken science. I mean, there’s a conscious effort to mislead the public. What purpose does this conscious and very sophisticated distraction serve?

Claudia von Werlhof: Well, from my point of view, this civilization, has arrived at a crossroads, because you know what, capitalism is transforming nature into capital. And so, nature has gone, afterwards. This problem cannot be solved in the long run, because nature is gone, and you cannot transform anything anymore. So, this is the case we are living in now, and this society has to find a solution. The solution is not supposed to be a human and nature-friendly solution. But they are looking for how to continue with their system without having to give it up. This is the main problem we have today. And I think all these crises we are in now, from Corona crisis and the climate crisis and the crisis of capital have the same – or are provoking a response from above. So, we even have studied the problem in earlier years, coming to the conclusion that only an alternative economy and society could solve the problem of capitalism. And as you mentioned it already – patriarchy – which is the background of it all. But instead of liberating people from this horrible system, they are now going to transform it. It is what they call “The Great Transformation,” and what is called “The New World Order,” which is a system that is going to be implemented from above, or like “The Great Reset.” This is the formula by the World Economic Forum. The system has to be reset, which means it has to start again but maintaining its main characteristics. This means what is needed now – I mean, you cannot just go on with it.

So, the first thing – what I see is, the system is going to be quantitatively reduced. This means – and this is what is one of the main propaganda issues of the whole world climate question – is to reduce consumption, to reduce production, and to reduce population. So, this will be the quantitative changes we are expecting. And on the other hand, you will have a qualitative change, and this is the technological one. So, there are a lot of new technologies developed since a hundred years or within the 20^th Century, and they are going to be applied now, called The Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is a very interesting point, because in the climate question, for instance, this will be – play a major role because people are supposed to identify and to be integrated into the machinery, the system of the mega machine, as it is called. And this will be the second step they are approaching, and they are preparing. This is the most interesting step besides the reduction of the system, as such.

So, I think the climate change question is approaching all the subjects and issues in saying that people are responsible for the climate problem, because they consume too much, and they breathe too much, so to say. And they have chosen this ideal formula of the CO2 question, the so-called “climate killer,” because it is applicable to all these questions at once.

So, you can say that all those who produce CO2 have to be abolished, so to say. I mean, the industry, normal civil industry, based on the second industrial revolution using all these fossil fuels, et cetera, which have to be avoided because they have to be spared. I think the reduction of consumption is also related to the reduction of energy, the normal energies we had since the second industrial revolution is coal and gas and oil, and later nuclear power which will be maintained as a so-called renewable energy form, which is not true. Not even for the other new renewable energies, but this we can discuss later.

Well, this is based on the idea that CO2 is important for the climate. And this is one of the lies that are propagated in order to have this program realized, because the climate especially, the climate is nothing you can change because it depends on the sun and on the solar system. The only thing you can change is the weather, as the regional and local conditions you find on Earth. But they call it climate change because maybe otherwise they would have to relate to the many experiments and technologies that exist already in relation to weather control and weather modification and other technologies that are, for example, explained by the UN in the ENMOD Convention which is the Environmental Modification Convention of 1977 in which all these problems are explained already. So, very strange that the UN in her own conference does not relate to its own knowledge.

GR: The vast majority of climate scientists, well into the thousands, are saying that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the leading culprit in weather changes we’ve witnessed over decades. Approximately 97.5 percent, according to an estimate I saw recently. You wrote letters to Greta Thunberg  [SIC] I think her – explaining how —

CVW: Greta Thunberg, yes.

GR: Yeah, how she was mistaken about what’s ailing the planet. And she never responded, but I imagine if she could, she would say that the scientists are telling us that we need to reduce fossil fuel emissions. It always comes down to what scientists are saying. So, how can you say so confidently that all these scientists —

CVW: No, but —

GR: — are wrong?

CVW: But it’s not true. This is what the IPCC is saying, the International Panel on Climate Change. This is a political institution, it’s not a scientific one, and it excludes every member who would not agree with the findings of the IPCC which are really the ones you are quoting. But the rest of the scientific community, and there is even an agenda of about 30,000 scientists who claim that CO2 can never be any important question in the climate. Even in the climate, not even in the weather, because CO2 has only 0.04 percent importance in the atmosphere. And 80 percent of this is simply vapour. So, the human contribution to CO2 is something so tiny that you cannot even see it. I mean, it is really ridiculous to use CO2 as the climate killer. It’s not even a weather killer, not to speak of the climate. The scientific community, the really scientific community, is against this idea of CO2. It’s only the political institutions and the —

GR: Well, —

CVW: — UN-driven IPCC that claim for – I mean, I —

GR: Well, —

CVW: — know that —

GR:— I really —

CVW: — in the meantime, everybody – excuse me?

GR: Yeah, I was just saying that, like, in a previous interview, a guest —

CVW: Yes.

GR: — was talking a lot about the IPCC and how it is actually more, you know, conservative of a political body, and so on. But what is known, is through the peer-reviewed literature and how are these efforts to legitimate science including —

CVW: But —

GR: — peer-reviewed studies being manipulated to the point of delivering what —

CVW: Well, —

GR: — you’d think is a false message of the truth.

CVW: Well, you know, the peer-reviewed studies, it’s long ago that they have any value. For example, Marvin Herndon, this is one of the scientists from San Diego. He has written a large essay on that, of the corruption of the sciences. And I must say, I’m – as a political scientist and a social scientist, I have my own experiences. I mean, please don’t tell me that science is science. I mean, it would be nice if it were, but it isn’t.

So, the corruption has grown always more. And the IPCC is an institution that has nothing to do with the truth. Nothing. It is a political institution, and it serves these interests who try to transform the world into a new world order which is totally different from what we know now. These are all agents of a revolution from above that is going to be dismantled now.

 I mean, if it is going to be realized or dismantled is the question we have to solve. It really is a ridiculous – I mean, there are a lot of even Nobel Prize winners who laugh about this idea of CO2. It is really strange how it is possible. And it’s only explicable by corruption, by a world-wide corruption that this thesis could spread so widely.

So, I think we can really leave that with history. Because, I mean, this is what I learned from Rosalie Bertell. We do not have to just run around not knowing anything, because geo-engineering, the military geo-engineering, not the civil one, or – this is all a part of it. These have developed technologies since a hundred years that are changing the weather – not the climate, this cannot be changed – but the weather in many parts of the world. And what we see now, all these catastrophes of flooding, of heat, et cetera, they are all – can all be produced. There are technologies for that. And even the ENMOD Convention of the UN, you can read of what they can produce. They can produce earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and they can even change ocean currents; you can change the jet stream. You can have all these catastrophes we have now on Earth nearly, every –

GR: Yeah.

CVW: — day.

GR: What you’re referring to —

CVW: You don’t need any CO2 to explain this. Yes?

GR: You’re talking about geo-engineering, I believe, and its use.

CVW: Exactly.

GR: I mean, it’s seen by the general public as a conspiracy theory. So, maybe you could help us understand what forms of —

CVW: Well, it’s —

GR: — geo-engineering —

CVW: Okay.

GR:— do you know for a fact have been —

CVW: I mean – yes.

GR: — manipulated or experimented —

CVW: Yeah.

GR: — with historically from the ‘50s to the present.

CVW: I mean, the UN would be a conspiracy institution because the UN in the ENMOD Convention, which was finalized after the Vietnam War, because in the Vietnam War, many of these environmental modification technologies as they were called then were applied, like Agent Orange, et cetera. So, after the Vietnam War, the UN made this convention and wanted to prohibit any hostile use of these technologies. It declared them existing – as existing technologies, so in this – in 1977. And we are speaking today of a conspiracy theory – excuse me.

When you look at the many documents, for example, it starts a hundred years ago with rainmaking and cloud seeding, et cetera. These were the first attempts. And then you had, especially during Second World War, the whole Manhattan Project and the development of the Atomic Bomb. This was used after the Second World War until the end of the ‘90s, the atomic industry and atomic bombs, even hydrogen bombs were used to explore the atmosphere until – up to the Van Allen Belt which is part of the magnetic field of the Earth, which was partly destroyed then and did not recover from that attack.

You have to imagine that more than 2,000 atomic bombs were released in the atmosphere and underwater and on the ground during 50 years after the Second World War. And this was the first phase after the Second World War of real geo-engineering, military geo-engineering. So, you cannot say this didn’t happen or this is a conspiracy theory. This was the basic – a basic experiment to know what the atmosphere is about. I mean, the stratosphere, the troposphere, and the ionosphere. And now, you have these technologies that directly attack the ionosphere.

 We saw the ionosphere heaters, I mean like HAARP et cetera, there are about two or three dozens in the world today. Which are the most important instruments for climate change or weather change, so to say, in the world. And they can produce all these effects which are already explained in the ENMOD Convention. And the next book was about – from the – was for the Air Force, the US Air Force. It’s title was “Owning the Weather in 2025,” and using “Weather as a Force Multiplier.” And this is now, so in two years, we will have the – the Army will own the weather world-wide. I mean, it is not a conspiracy theory, it is real. Only that people don’t look at that, they don’t look at it.

They think it does not exist if you can’t – even when you go to the social engineers or people who speak of a civil geo-engineering which is about ten years that exists now, they say they have no relationship to the military side and history and background of this technology. They simply deny it, you see. This is not scientific. Scientifically, you have first to look at the origins of your science. And this is what they deny. They even tell us that geo-engineering, what they call the civil – geo-engineering – will save the planet, whereas it is, instead, destroying. I mean, this is really the funny thing, it’s all —

GR: Yeah.

CVW: — been corrupted. The whole debate is inverted.

GR: What you’re saying – there’s a huge blotting out of a huge section of their data and their analysis. And that’s the military which is doing geo-engineering and that’s not on their radar screens —

CVW: Yes.

GR: — at all, right?

CVW: As Rosalie Bertell has really explained everything. They shoot – really it’s billions of watts – they shoot their electro-magnetic waves into the ionosphere where they turn them back to the Earth. And where they arrive at Earth, there you have earthquakes, you have volcanic eruptions, et cetera. This is a destructive forces of a magnitude. A normal scientist would never expect – and all this due to the research of Nikola Tesla, who is never – who was not even taught at the university. Nikola Tesla invented the use of electro-magnetism on Earth and he invented all these possibilities, and they are patented. You have I don’t know how many hundreds of patents, US patents in which the use of these electro-magnetic waves and the ionospheric heat, et cetera, is explained. So, —

GR: Mm-hmm.

CVW: — it is nothing you – I mean, you – and this is changing the conditions, of the weather conditions and weather modifications on Earth. So, if you are on the climate front, you have to look at that, you cannot say it’s not existing. This is ridiculous. I mean —

GR: You know, in —

CVW: — this is what is happening.

GR: — your book – in your book, The Global Warning – WAR-NING —

CVW: Yes, —

GR:— you mention —

CVW: — uh-huh.

GR: — some local forest fires that the media used as examples of climate change in recent years, however indications, suggestions were considerably different from what one would expect from more CO2 in the atmosphere and that some hidden hand was maybe —

CVW: Yeah.

GR: — testing out or using some form of geo-engineering to cause the damage. Take us through the anomalous discoveries you mentioned in the book.

CVW: We have this phenomenon, you have that in California, you have it in Portugal, in Greece, in Australia. Everywhere you have these so-called forest fires where the forest around do not burn out, burn down, but the houses. I mean, this is totally different technology is used to provoke these fires. And the reasons for doing it, this is a really criminal story around, but the possibility to produce fires is nothing new. I mean, this is one of the geo-engineered methods since long.

So, you have to research on why these fires are breaking out and not saying, “Well, this is CO2, this is ridiculous.” CO2 is a plant gas, and it is related to every living process, rotting, living materials, rotting produce CO2. So, this is coming out of breathing, of – you know, animal production, of every material that is dying and the plants need it to produce oxygen.

So, what is so difficult and criminal and killing about this gas? It is just the other way around. This gas doesn’t do anything to anybody. It is needed to have a green without any plants?– biologists and there are all these people should say something to it. I think they are. I don’t know in the moment, but I mean – all these things cannot be explained by a 0.04 part of the atmosphere that cannot change anything. It is very funny that people believe in that. It shows that they don’t know anything about the Earth, about what life is.

They even had an experiment, by the way, in the middle west [SIC], it’s about a year ago, where they tried to suck all CO2 out of the air. And the result was that everything was dying. We need that for life, and the attack on life is the attack on CO2 is an attack on life as the whole thing. Like geo-engineering as well, and as Corona as well, these are all attacks on life. This is just totally perverted and inverted the whole debate. But because people – and it is so difficult, because people are not used to seeing geo-engineering as a technology they didn’t see, for example, the vaccine, which is not a vaccine, but an injection of genetic modification which is a new technology nobody knew about. You see that the whole thing is different than what people think about it or are supposed to think about it.

GR: I know that a person you mentioned, Rosalie Bertell is her name.

CVW: Yes.

GR: I know of her work on depleted uranium. But she was the first person to mention the broad outline of what’s happening to the planet due to —

CVW: Yes.

GR: — inaction. Though not CO2 emissions. Talk about the importance of her work and how it informs you on this subject.

CVW: I knew her name always because she’s an eco-feminist, I am too. And I always knew that there is a book called “Planet Earth,” but nobody had read it because – as I knew, afterwards – the publisher went bankrupt after it published this book. It was in the year 2000. And then we had this problem with Haiti and the big earthquake in Haiti. And I found out that there were people who said that this earthquake was not a normal one, but a produced and manufactured one like in China and in Venezuela and in the Douma, they discussed this.

I mentioned that, in an interview with the press here, with the newspaper, and then the whole world broke down around me, because ‘She’s a conspiracy theorist, and she blames –’ I don’t know what. So, they were active against me. And so, I found Rosalie in the internet. And she said, ‘Oh, this is okay.’ This was with Haiti. Possibly it was really an artificial earthquake. I didn’t know at that time that this could exist even. So, she said, ‘Yes, it can be,’ because there was this stripe, plasma stripe in the air which can be seen when the ionospheric heaters are active and – in a region. This cannot be proved, et cetera, but she said, ‘Yes, this can be,’ and she sent me her book.

So, I could read it. And this book explained the whole history of geo-engineering in all it’s aspects, including this solar – what they call solar radiation management today. All the histories, the military history, and the civil history. And so, I learned it from her, I had no idea because I’m not a natural scientist, and I had to fight with this book terribly because it made me sick. I went to Hell, I was ill and it was horrible, because this – to read how they are attacking the whole planet and not only certain regions, or – you know – certain animals, plants, but the whole planet, to transform it into a mega-weapon of war.

I mean, to have control over the whole planet. This was her perspective, and she explained it especially why are the ionospheric heating technologies. And so, I learned about it, you know. And we became friends, et cetera, and I made the – and I organized our planetary movement so that we could distribute her knowledge, and translate her work, et cetera.

GR: Okay.

CVW: So, this is how we came together. And her motive was she loves the planet Earth, so she’s in love with this cosmic being, you know. It hurts her, and she was offended to know that they were destroying it or part of it. This was our common eco-feminist, so to say, motivation to work together. But then, she died. It’s already ten years now that she died.

GR: Okay.

CVW: So, —

GR: Well, —

CVW: — I’m something like her heir.

GR: Okay. Is there anything more you’d like to say or emphasize on the subject before we close the interview?

CVW: Let me see. I mean, the method, how they introduce all these catastrophes we are experiencing now, it’s always from above and it’s all new technologies that people don’t know. So, people are confused, they don’t know how to judge it. And it goes along always with a lot of corruption and a lot of forcing people to agree. You know, a lot of money is flowing, et cetera. So, the whole science, the academic world, has come to its knees, really.

 I mean, I’m an academic myself, so I see this around me, also. And this is so tragic, I mean how to teach people to look at what is happening and not to believe in the propaganda and in the ideology of the new world order.

It’s so important, because even when we look at what I call patriarchy there’s what Rosalie also was interested in is that the patriarchal part of the society is that which wants to transform life into this life as born by mothers or by mother nature, into something that is invented by men and invented as a new creation. And this ends in the technology of the machine. The machine is supposed to be the new life and the better life instead of real life or natural life. And we have that now with trans-humanism, the new technology that includes or tries to include the human as such into the machinery which is also the program of the WEF, the World Economic Forum.

So, people should know that this machinery is going to be always more like a weapon. It’s the weaponization – but also Rosalie was saying – the weaponization of the world, not only of the technology but of everything that happens. Even the vaccine is weaponized now with these strange injections in the Corona cases. And the same is true for the climate question with geo-engineering. This is a weapon, a weapon of mass destruction in any sense. People don’t see that, because they love the machine and they think it’s progress and development, and it’s better than – so, we live with the machine, and without it – or to be even, to be integrated into the machine via the new technologies of trans-humanism. So, —

GR: Okay.

CVW: — yeah, I mean, there is so much to explain to the public they have no idea about, so…

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Notes:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufERA6HzP6E
2. https://www.africanews.com/2022/11/16/cop27-protestors-push-for-capping-global-heating-to-15-celsius/
3. ibid
4.  https://abcnews.go.com/International/climate-activists-throw-paint-gustav-klimts-tod-und/story?id=93335435
5. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48607989
6. https://www.africanews.com/2022/11/18/cop27-climate-talks-extended-to-saturday/
7. https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/symbolic-action-you-came-to-the-wrong-place/

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***

This year marks exactly 50 years since the establishment of ties between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. US President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972 and initiated an unprecedented thaw in relations, the first ever between a Communist power and a leading capitalist one. It was a very unusual occurrence, especially as the (First) Cold War was reaching its zenith precisely at that time. Although Mao Zedong himself and Nixon paved the way for the establishment of this relationship, it was only after Deng Xiaoping took power that the modern Sino-American relationship grew and in many ways shaped the economic and geopolitical realities of our time.

At the time, China was still recovering from the last 200 years of decline which pushed probably the most powerful country in human history to the verge of collapse. This was followed by what can only be described as a semi-colonial status, culminating in the 1930s and 1940s, when Japan used China’s weakness to occupy large swathes of Chinese land, often taking areas of utmost economic importance.

It was only with the establishment of the PRC in 1949 that this chaos ended, with extensive and crucial help coming from the USSR. By the 1980s, China became stable enough, but was still nowhere near its full potential. Deng Xiaoping focused almost entirely on the economy, realizing it was essential for China’s full recovery and return to great power status.

China, the world’s most populous country, offered the largest labor force on the planet, which (by American standards) was also cheap, making it the perfect choice for outsourcing entire sectors of the US economy, especially its industrial production. Although the Sino-American relationship went through a serious crisis in the 1990s, economic cooperation was booming and continued unabated into the 2000s. However, in recent years, this relationship has become burdened with geopolitical rivalry, particularly coming from the US, which has started meddling more aggressively in China’s internal affairs, especially the issue of Taiwan.

Realizing the huge risks of any sort of cooperation with the belligerent thalassocracy in decline, particularly in light of sanctions against Russia, including the illegal freezing of Russia’s forex reserves, Beijing is actively looking for alternatives. This is especially true in regards to China’s holdings of US debt, which have been hovering around $1 trillion for over a decade. In order to avoid problems Russia faced after it was forced to intervene in Ukraine, China reduced the US Treasuries holdings from $1.003 trillion in April to $980.8 billion in May, the lowest it has been since 2010. With the US having to deal with high inflation, as well as strained bilateral ties with China over trade, technology and Russia, Beijing has decided to start dumping its share of US debt.

“It’s essentially a matter of China-US relations,” said Tan Yaling, head of the Beijing-based China Forex Investment Research Institute, further adding: “The large holdings in the past were due to the good bilateral ties, but now China needs to avoid the risk of a possible conflict with the United States.”

The reduction for the sixth straight month came at a time when Chinese academics and policy circles have held heated discussions over de-dollarisation amid the US strategic rivalry, including technological containment and the threat of decoupling, South China Morning Post reported.

Former central bank adviser Yu Yongding told a forum in Beijing in May that China should adjust its overseas asset portfolio, explicitly calling for cuts in holdings of US Treasuries, citing low returns and increasing worries over their safety, particularly in the context of illegal freezing of Russia’s assets.

According to data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, China has been working on diversifying its foreign exchange assets for decades, with the USD share dropping from around 70% in 1995 to 58% in 2015. China’s current US Treasuries holdings have been reduced by approximately 25% from the $1.32 trillion peak (November 2013) and 10.4% since Joe Biden took over office. US Treasuries now stand at 31.4% of China’s $3.07 trillion forex reserves, the lowest share in the last nearly 15 years.

According to Tan, China is very likely to focus on buying gold, further implementing projects under its Belt and Road Initiative and resolving domestic issues amid the rising risks of a global recession. Between October 2018 and November 2019, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) increased its gold holdings by 105.75 metric tonnes, pushing the total to 1,948.

Short-term issues, including sharp rate increases and planned balance sheet downsizing by the US Federal Reserve, also weighed on the decision to cut holdings of US Treasuries, the analyst said. Japan, which took China’s place as the largest holder of US debt also trimmed its holdings by nearly $6 billion at the end of May. It now stands at approximately $1.2 trillion, the lowest since January 2020. The UK, Switzerland and Belgium all reported net purchases in May, with London being the third-largest holder of US Treasuries at $634 billion at the end of June after adding US$21.3 billion.

As the world’s largest production economy, China will continue to adjust monetary policies to domestic needs while taking into account external factors, as policymakers in Beijing are closely monitoring the US Federal Reserve’s actions. Speaking at the G20 meeting over the weekend, Chinese central bank governor Yi Gang said the PBOC would provide more powerful support for the national economy.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

The U.S. Government’s “Nuclear Primacy” meta-strategy says that there are “acceptable” levels of destruction of America in a nuclear war against Russia and/or China, so long as America “comes out on top” globally, at the end.

Brian Berletic walks us through the Rand Corporation’s plan for the Pentagon to attack China during the narrow window until 2025 and perhaps 2030 (3 to 8 years from today) when the US is assumed to still have superiority capable of winning a war that is “unlikely” (undefined and little more than a wishful assumption) to go nuclear. 

In other words, the assumption on which Washington’s planned  military attack on China rests is that China will accept defeat rather than use nuclear weapons.  

Would a sane government start a war on such a risky assumption?

There are two other highly risky assumptions in the Pentagon’s war plans.  One is that the US can dominate the seas from which via airplanes or missiles the US can cause destruction to Chinese industry and social infrastructure.  Apparently no attention has been paid to long-range Chinese missiles that make US carrier fleets obsolete.

The other risky assumption is that Russia stays out of it.  Considering the confusion in the Kremlin, the inability of the Russian government to give up hope of peaceful cooperation with the West, and the inability of the Kremlin to regard the neoconservative doctrine of US hegemony over the world as anything but a fantasy, and most certainly not an operative doctrine, it is possible that the Kremlin would strand aside and watch a US/China war.

The Kremlin misses many opportunities, but it is difficult to believe that Putin would be so stupid as to not gang up with China on the US.  In which case the US is history.

You can read Berletic’s analysis here.

As for the Pentagon’s concern for Americans in the event that the assumption that Washington can conquer China without nuclear weapons being used is mistaken, if such weapons are employed,

“the U.S. Government’s ‘Nuclear Primacy’ meta-strategy says that there are ‘acceptable’ levels of destruction of America in a nuclear war against Russia and/or China, so long as America ‘comes out on top’ globally.”

The Pentagon’s doctrine doesn’t say how many American cities and how many millions of Americans are among the “acceptable levels of destruction.”  But it is enough to show that Americans are regarded as canon fodder by their rulers.

You see, the only importance in the ruling neoconservative doctrine is US hegemony, not your life.  For the neocons, as long as America rules over a wasteland devoid of life, we have won.  Neocons are truly insane people, and they are in control of US foreign and military policy.  

That should scare you and wake you up.  But it won’t. The young can’t stop scrolling their cell phones long enough to have any idea of the reality around them.  They already live in a virtual world, disconnected from all reality.  Older Americans say they have heard fears of nuclear war all their lives and it is never going to happen because there can be no winners.  This is a very unsophisticated understanding, especially in the face of a US war doctrine that says Washington can win a nuclear war as long as it doesn’t wait beyond 2025 or 2030.

Eric Zuesse, stimulated by Berletic, writes that Washington intends to conquer both China and Russia. See this. The opening battlefield of WW III is the war Washington arranged in Ukraine. 

There is no doubt in my mind that the Russian military is very formidable and is capable of sweeping through NATO in an instant.  The problem for Russia is in the Kremlin where hesitancy and confusion rule.  The Kremlin is unable to get its mind around the fact that Washington is insane.  Putin actually thought that Washington would accept Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine as it was limited to the  protection of the Donbass Russians.  Putin and his foreign minister are so insouciant that they believed Washington would allow them to conduct a limited operation confined to cleansing Donbass of Ukrainian Nazis.  

How does the world’s most predominant military power make such a mistake?  The only answer I can come up with is that America’s  brainwashing of the Russian intellectual class during the Yeltsin years has made Russian leadership, deaf, dumb, and blind. One is tempted to add stupid.  Russia’s leaders–Putin, Lavrov–correctly describe the situation, but they cannot bring themselves to do anything about it.  Talk is plentiful but action is rare. Apparently the Kremlin is going to continue to sell the energy to NATO countries so that NATO can continue the war on Russia.  To paraphrase Alain de Lille in the 11th century, not sovereignty now, but money is all. This appears to hold for Russia.

Zuesse who is as as honest as a leftlwinger can be, is not always reliable. The left have their own myths about Reagan, and here is Zuesse’s statement of one of them:

“I have documented that the plan by America’s Government was instead to fool Russia’s Government [Gorbachev] to believe that America ended the Cold War on our side at the same time when Russia ended its side of the Cold War in 1991, but that the U.S. Government was actually planning instead to surround Russia by increasing NATO, right up to Russia’s borders.”

I suppose the truth of Zuesse’s statement depends on who is the US government.  Is it the President or the neoconservatives and the military/security complex?

If the government is the President as the representative of the people, I know for a fact that President Reagan’s intent was to end, not win, the cold war.

He told us this over and over. He formed a top secret presidential committee  with authority over the CIA in order to have independent opinion of the CIA’s assertion that the US would  lose an arms race if used to bring Russia with her broken economy to the negotiating table. Reagan’s plan was that once his supply-side policy had eliminated America’s stagflation, America’s restored economy would bury Russia’s broken and unrepairable economy in an arms race.  The point of the threatened arms race was to bring Gorbachev to the negotiation table to end the Cold War, not to win an arms race.

We investigated the CIA’s documents and reported to President Reagan that it was a case of the CIA protecting its budget and its power.  If Reagan dismantled the Cold War, without an enemy the CIA’a budget along with that of the Military Security Complex’s budget would be defenseless at their high levels.

Ronald Reagan was an outsider to the Republican Establishment, represented at that time by George H. W. Bush, vice president and former director of the CIA. Reagan was seen as a challenge to the Republican Establishment’s control of the Republican Party.  Eight years of Reagan followed by eight years of Jack Kemp meant the end of the Republican Establishment that serves organized interests.  Political parties are concerned with power and control, not with the national interest. Here was Reagan, and his few supporters in his administration, challenging the power and profit of the vested interests for the sake of world peace.

The American media, whores to the CIA, started on us.  But it didn’t fit. The narrative wasn’t yet constructed. James Baker, the principal operative of George H. W. Bush, admitted that he promised Gorbachev no movement east of NATO.  But there is no written signed document, so the story was changed by later Washington administrations. 

Zuesse misses the true story, because he succumbs to ideology and is unable to understand that Reagan, like Trump, was an outsider who brought hope that the political system could be restored to the people’s control.

The American media and the American leftwing made sure that this did not happen.

Consequently, we now face nuclear Armageddon.  It is only a tick away unless Putin decides to surrender.

The Republicans are helpless.  Their goal is to make America great again, which plays into the neoconservatives’ agenda of US hegemony.

To deal with the challenges America faces requires awareness of the facts, but facts are no longer politically correct. They don’t fit the narratives and, therefore, are untrue and dismissed as misinformation.

In my lifetime I have watched my country descend into degeneracy, ignorance, and evil.  The nation into which I was born does not exist except as a geographical location.

*

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Stop the War Coalition

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***

Sri Lanka, an island-nation of 22 million people, has been the center of political and economic turmoil since the United National Party government defaulted on $51 billion in foreign debt during May.

For months the country has experienced severe shortages of fuel, food and other commodities amid an inflationary spiral.

Motorists have lined up for blocks to get fuel and cooking oil. A failed agricultural fertilizer policy has been cited as the cause behind the decline in agricultural production.

The shortages of fuel have hampered the production and marketing of agricultural products such as tea which is exported from Sri Lanka. Due to the lack of fuel, trucks which transport these agricultural commodities for internal marketing and export have been drastically reduced.

Workers and small business operators have lined up sometimes for two days in order to purchase limited amounts of fuel. On June 28, the now ousted government of President Rajapaksa placed a ban on the distribution and purchase of fuel for reasons considered non-essential. However, people in the urban areas continued to queue for extended periods of time. Some were eventually given a token promising to fulfill their needs for gasoline and cooking oil at some future date.

The shortages of food have caused many Sri Lankans to reduce their diets to consuming only one meal per day. Schools have been shut down due to transportation issues. As a result of the high rate of inflation, the value of the national currency, the rupee, has continued to slide downwards. This set of circumstances has drained the country’s foreign reserves to just over $US1 billion.

Earlier in July, thousands of angry protesters stormed the residences of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, taking over control of the palace while helping themselves to food, luxurious furniture and a swimming pool. Rajapaksa, a member of a powerful political family in Sri Lanka, fled to Singapore where he later resigned the presidency with an e-mail to the parliament.

Rajapaksa appointed Ranil Wickremesinghe, the prime minister, as temporary president. Wickremesinghe’s home was also entered and subjected to arson attacks which did extensive damage.

On July 20, through a parliamentary secret ballot, Wickremesinghe was elected as the new president pledging to work with other political forces to improve the economic plight of the people. Wickremesinghe had served on five other occasions in the position of prime minister of Sri Lanka.

Several hundred demonstrators soon gathered in the commercial center of Colombo to express their dismay towards the actions of the parliament. Some of the protesters demanded the immediate resignation of Wickremesinghe who has for many years maintained political ties with the Rajapaksa family.

In a report on the installation of Wickremesinghe published by the Associated Press, one activist was quoted as saying:

“’We are very sad, very disappointed with the 225 parliament members who we elected to speak for us, which they have not done,’ said Visaka Jayawware, a performance artist in the crowd. ‘We will keep fighting for the people of Sri Lanka. We have to ask for a general election.’… ‘The struggle will continue until our demands are met. Wickremesinghe ‘doesn’t have a mandate to rule the country,’ said Nemel Jayaweera, a human resources professional. ‘We will oppose him.’” ()

The current social and economic conditions in Sri Lanka provide a strong indication of the extent of the world capitalist crisis. As a developing post-colonial state having gained its independence from British colonialism in 1948 after 133 (1815-1948) years of imperialist domination, Sri Lanka has struggled to overcome the divisions based upon ethnicity and the class structures inherited from Britain.

Several states throughout Africa and Asia are facing similar challenges in their attempts to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequent economic distresses. Even the leading industrialized countries of Western Europe and North America are undergoing sharp rises in inflation and the threat of yet another recession.

In the capitalist states of Britain and the U.S., the administrations of President Joe Biden and outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson have failed to win a favorable opinion rating by the majority of the electorate in these countries. Divisions within the legislative and judicial branches of government in the U.S. have rendered the Democratic Party program of limited social reforms null-and-void.

Consequently, it should not be surprising to witness the unraveling of administrations in developing countries. These economic factors combined with the threat of a protracted war between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation on one side against Washington and its NATO allies on the other, has resulted in the escalation of international uncertainty and insecurity.

Sri Lanka has experienced tumultuous conflicts throughout its history. Formerly called Ceylon, the British colonialists deliberately created divisions between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamil population which largely resides in the north and east of the island. Tamils, who are mainly Hindu, were more exposed in the colonial era to Christianity and missionary education. These colonial policies shaped the social class structure of Sri Lanka after independence in 1948.

By July 1983, these simmering tensions exploded leading to a civil war which continued until 2009 when the Sri Lankan army crushed the bases of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant organization seeking the creation of Tamil state in the northeastern region of the island. As a result of the civil war, hundreds of thousands of Tamils fled Sri Lanka taking up residence in other regional and faraway countries.

The Role of the International Monetary Fund

Wickremesinghe in his inaugural address in the Sri Lankan parliament spoke of his desires to negotiate with the IMF over a “bailout” package which could ease the severe economic problems in the country. However, the history of the IMF in such circumstances where developing states are undergoing a major economic recession or depression, has brought about the implementation of austerity measures which adversely impact the workers, poor, women and youth disproportionately.

Many post-colonial states at the time of independence quite often continued the cash crop economic production and trade models developed under imperialist rule. Therefore, the major consuming states in the West which purchase their commodities in hard currencies, can wield tremendous sway over the domestic policies of a given country.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in a June 28 article emphasized:

“Last week, an International Monetary Fund team arrived in Sri Lanka for talks over a $3bn (£2.4bn) bailout deal. The government is also seeking assistance from India and China to import essential items. New Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (now president) said earlier this month the country needed at least $5bn over the next six months to pay for essential goods such as food, fuel and fertilizer. In recent weeks, ministers also called on farmers to grow more rice and gave government officials an extra day off a week to grow food, amid fears of shortages.”

Sri Lanka’s major exports include manufactured garments, tea and other agricultural commodities. The country also relies heavily on tourism which has been down since the pandemic beginning during the early months of 2020.

One source which monitors the Sri Lankan economy says:

“The latest available country-specific data shows that about two-thirds (66.3%) of products exported from Sri Lanka were bought by importers in: United States of America (24.8% of the global total), United Kingdom (8.9%), India (6.1%), Germany (5.7%), Italy (4.5%), Belgium (2.93%), Netherlands (2.87%), China (2.4%), Canada (2.11%), Turkey (2.1%), United Arab Emirates (2%) and Japan (1.9%)…. Another key indicator of a country’s economic performance is its unemployment rate. Sri Lanka’s unemployment rate averaged 5.3% for 2021 down from an average 5.5% in 2020, according to metrics from the International Monetary Fund. Sri Lanka’s administrative capital city is Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, while the island country’s commercial capital is Colombo.”

Whatever structural adjustment plans that are imposed on Sri Lanka by the IMF will not satisfy the needs of the majority of working people, youth and national minorities. The inevitable failure of this approach to the escalating world crisis within the capitalist states will be replicated in other geopolitical regions of the world.

The opposition parties in Sri Lanka are divided over which course to take in the crisis. Several left-oriented parties have in the recent period worked in alliances which have won a small number of seats in parliament. Although the country during the 1950s and 1960s played a significant role in the non-aligned and socialist-oriented movements, in recent years Sri Lanka has been dominated by neo-liberal political interests as represented by the Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe UNP administrations, who have maintained close ties with the military.

Facing a similar crisis, within the Southern African state of Zambia, a major producer of copper, the government defaulted in late 2020 on its international obligations to the global financial interests. The recent change of government inside the country has not impacted the need to seek relief from the IMF. See this.

People throughout the world should pay special attention to the situation in Sri Lanka since its outcome will portend much for both industrialized and developing countries. The deepening contradictions within the capitalist system are resulting in horrendous conditions for working and oppressed peoples globally. Consequently, an international movement is required to respond based upon the interests of the majority of people throughout the world.

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

Featured image: People taking selfies in Gotagogama. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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***

No longer just an ‘alternative route’ on a drawing board, the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) is paying dividends in a time of global crisis. And Moscow, Tehran and New Delhi are now leading players in the Eurasian competition for transportation routes.

Tectonic shifts continue to rage through the world system with nation-states quickly recognizing that the “great game” as it has been played since the establishment of the Bretton Woods monetary system in the wake of the second World War, is over.

But empires never disappear without a fight, and the Anglo-American one is no exception, overplaying its hand, threatening and bluffing its way, right to the end.

End of an order

It seems no matter how many sanctions the west imposes on Russia, the victims most affected are western civilians. Indeed, the severity of this political blunder is such that the nations of the trans-Atlantic are heading towards the greatest self-induced food and energy crisis in history.

While the representatives of the “liberal rules-based international order” continue on their trajectory to crush all nations that refuse to play by those rules, a much saner paradigm has come to light in recent months that promises to transform the global order entirely.

The multipolar solution

Here we see the alternative security-financial order which has arisen in the form of the Greater Eurasian Partnership. As recently as 30 June at the 10th St Petersburg International Legal Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin described this emerging new multipolar order as:

“A multipolar system of international relations is now being formed. It is an irreversible process; it is happening before our eyes and is objective in nature. The position of Russia and many other countries is that this democratic, more just world order should be built on the basis of mutual respect and trust, and, of course, on the generally accepted principles of international law and the UN Charter.”

Since the inevitable cancellation of western trade with Russia after the Ukraine conflict erupted in February, Putin has increasingly made clear that the strategic re-orientation of Moscow’s economic ties from east to west had to make a dramatically new emphasis on north to south and north to east relations not only for Russia’s survival, but for the survival of all Eurasia.

Among the top strategic focuses of this re-orientation is the long overdue International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).

On this game-changing mega-project, Putin said last month during the plenary session of the 25th St Petersburg International Economic Forum:

“To help companies from other countries develop logistical and cooperation ties, we are working to improve transport corridors, increase the capacity of railways, trans-shipment capacity at ports in the Arctic, and in the eastern, southern and other parts of the country, including in the Azov-Black Sea and Caspian basins – they will become the most important section of the North-South Corridor, which will provide stable connectivity with the Middle East and Southern Asia. We expect freight traffic along this route to begin growing steadily in the near future.”

The INSTC’s Phoenix Moment

Until recently, the primary trade route for goods passing from India to Europe has been the maritime shipping corridor passing through the Bab El-Mandeb Strait linking the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, via the highly bottlenecked Suez Canal, through the Mediterranean and onward to Europe via ports and rail/road corridors.

Following this western-dominated route, average transit times take about 40 days to reach ports of Northern Europe or Russia. Geopolitical realities of the western technocratic obsession with global governance have made this NATO-controlled route more than a little unreliable.

The International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC)

Despite being far from complete, goods moving across the INSTC from India to Russia have already finished their journey 14 days sooner than their Suez-bound counterparts while also seeing a whopping 30 percent reduction in total shipping costs.

These figures are expected to fall further as the project progresses. Most importantly, the INSTC would also provide a new basis for international win-win cooperation much more in harmony with the spirit of geo-economics unveiled by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013.

Cooperation not competition

Originally agreed upon by Russia, Iran and India in September 2000, the INSTC only began moving in earnest in 2002 – albeit much more slowly than its architects had hoped.

This 7,200 km multimodal megaproject involves integrating several Eurasian nations directly or indirectly with rail, roads and shipping corridors into a united and tight-knit web of interdependency. Along each artery, opportunities to build energy projects, mining, and high tech special economic zones (SEZs) will abound giving each participating nation the economic power to lift their people out of poverty, increase their stability and their national power to chart their own destinies.

Beyond the founding three nations, the other 10 states who have signed onto this project over the years include Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Oman, Syria and even Ukraine (although this last member may not remain on board for long). In recent months, India has officially invited Afghanistan and Uzbekistan to join too.

While western think tanks and geopolitical analysts attempt to frame the INSTC as an opponent to China’s BRI, the reality is that both systems are extremely synergistic on multiple levels.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)

Unlike the west’s speculation-driven bubble economy, both the BRI and INSTC define economic value and self-interest around improving the productivity and living standards of the real economy. While short term thinking predominates in the myopic London-Wall Street paradigm, the BRI and INSTC investment strategies are driven by long-term thinking and mutual self-interest.

It is no small irony that such policies once animated the best traditions of the west before the rot of unipolar thinking took over and the west lost its moral compass.

An integrated alternative

The INSTC’s two major bookends are the productive zone of Mumbai in India’s Southeast region of Gujarat and the northern-most Arctic port of Lavna in Russia’s Kola Peninsula of Murmansk.

This is not only the first port constructed by Russia in decades, but when completed, will be one of the world’s largest commercial ports with an expected capacity to process 80 million tons of goods by 2030.

The Lavna Port is an integral part of Russia’s Arctic and Far East Development vision and is a central piece to Russia’s current Comprehensive Plan for Modernization and Expansion of Main Infrastructure and its Northern Sea Route which is expected to see a five-fold increase of Arctic freight traffic over the coming years. These projects are integrally linked to China’s Polar Silk Road.

Between these bookends, the INSTC moves freight from India into Iran’s Port of Bandar Abbas where it is loaded onto double-tracked rail to the Iranian city of Bafq and then to Tehran before coming to the Anzali Port on the southern Caspian Sea.

‘Be like water’

Because the INSTC is based on a flexible design concept capable of adapting to a changing geopolitical environment (very much like the BRI), there are a multitude of connecting lines that branch off the main North-South artery before goods make it to the Caspian Sea.

These include an eastern and western corridor branching off from the city of Bafq towards Turkey and thence Europe via the Bosporus and also eastward from Tehran to Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and thereafter into Urumqi in China.

Railway is still relevant

From the Anzali Port in the north of Iran, goods may travel by the Caspian Sea towards Russia’s Astrakhan Port where it is then loaded onto trains and trucks for transport to Moscow, St Petersburg and Murmansk. Inversely goods may also travel over land to Azerbaijan where the 35 km Iran Rasht-Caspian railway is currently under construction with 11 km completed as of this writing.

Once completed, the line will connect the Port of Anzali with Azerbaijan’s Baku, offering goods a chance to either continue onwards to Russia or westward toward Europe. A Tehran-Baku rail route already exists.

Additionally, Azerbaijan and Iran are currently collaborating on a vast $2 billion rail line connecting the 175 km Qazvin-Rasht railway which began operations in 2019 with a strategic rail line connecting Iran’s Rasht port on the Caspian to the Bandar Abbas Complex in the south (to be completed in 2025). Iran’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Rostam Ghasemi described this project in January 2022 saying:

“Iran’s goal is to connect to the Caucasus, Russia, and European countries. For this purpose, the construction of the Rasht-Astara railway is in the spotlight. During the Iranian president’s visit to Russia, discussions were conducted in this regard, and construction of the railway line is expected to begin soon with the allocation of needed funds.”

In recent months, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has lobbied to incorporate the joint Iran-India built Chabahar Port into the INSTC which will likely occur since another 628 km rail line from the port to the Iranian city of Zahedan is currently under construction.

Once completed, goods will easily move onward to the city of Bafq. While some critics have suggested that the Chabahar Port is antagonistic to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port, Iranian officials have constantly referred to it as Chabahar’s twin sister.

Since 2014, a vast rail and transportation complex has grown around the co-signers of the Ashkabat Agreement (launched in 2011 and upgraded several times over the past decade). These rail networks include the 917.5 km Iran-Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan route launched in 2014, and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan rail/energy project launched in 2016 which is currently seeing extensions that could easily go into Pakistan.

In December 2021, the 6540 km Islamabad to Istanbul rail line (via Iran) recommenced operationsafter a decade of inaction. This route cuts the conventional sea transit route time of 21 days by half. Discussions are already underway to extend the line from Pakistan into China’s Xinjiang Province linking the INSTC ever more closely into the BRI on yet another front.

Islamabad to Istanbul rail line (via Iran)

Finally, June 2022 saw the long-awaited unveiling of the 6108 km Kazakhstan-Iran-Turkey rail linewhich provides an alternative route to the under-developed Middle Corridor. Celebrating the inaugural 12 day voyage of cargo, Kazakhstan’s President Kasym-Jomart Tokayev stated: “Today, we welcomed the container train, which left Kazakhstan a week ago. Then it will go to Turkey. This is a significant event, given the difficult geopolitical conditions.”

Despite the fact that the INSTC is over 20 years old, global geopolitical dynamics, regime change wars, and ongoing economic warfare against Iran, Syria and other US target states did much to harm the sort of stable geopolitical climate needed to emit large scale credit requisite for long term projects like this to succeed.

Caspian Summit Security breakthroughs

As proof that necessity truly is the mother of invention, the systemic meltdown of the entire post-WW2 edifice has forced reality to take precedence over the smaller-minded concerns that kept the diverse nations of Sir Halford John Mackinder’s “World Island” from cooperating. Among these points of endless conflict and stagnation which has upset great economic potential over the course of three decades, the Caspian zone stands out.

It is in this oil and natural gas rich hub that the five Caspian littoral states (Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) have found a power to break through on multi-level security, economic and diplomatic agreements throughout the June 29-30, 2022 Sixth Caspian Summit in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

This summit placed a high priority on the INSTC with the region becoming both a north-south and east-west transportation hub. Most importantly, the leaders of the five littoral states made their final communique center around the region’s security since it is obvious that divide-to-conquer tactics will be deployed using every tool in the asymmetrical warfare tool basket going forward.

Chief among the agreed-upon principles were indivisible security, mutual cooperation, military cooperation, respect for national sovereignty, and non-interference. Most importantly, the banning of foreign military from the land and waters of the Caspian states was firmly established.

While no final agreement was reached over the disputed ownership of resources within the base of the Caspian, the stage was set for harmonization of partner states’ security doctrines, a healthy environment was established for the second Caspian Economic Summit which will take place in Autumn of this year and which will hopefully resolve many of the disputes pertaining to Caspian resource ownership.

Although geopolitical storms continue to intensify, it is increasingly clear that only the multipolar ship of state has demonstrated the competence to navigate the hostile seas, while the sinking unipolar ship of fools has a ruptured hull held together by little more than chewing gum and heavy doses of delusion.

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This article was originally published The Cradle.

Matthew Ehret the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas trilogy. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Cradle

The Clash of the Two Americas

Vol. 1 & 2

by Matthew Ehret

In his new two volume series The Clash of the Two Americas, Matthew Ehret introduces a new analysis of American history from the vantage point that the globally-extended supranational shadow government that managed the British Empire was never fully defeated and has acted within the USA itself since 1776 as a continuous multi-generational fifth column managing every significant event and assassination of American presidents for the next 250 years.

Click here to order.

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Philip Giraldi recently wrote a piece on Joe Biden’s secret war in Ukraine which can be read here.

He quoted US President Joe Biden, talking to US troops belonging to the 82^nd Airborne division in Poland, saying “You’re going to see when you’re there, and some of you have been there, you’re gonna see —” and argued that it was

“an admission that US forces are already in place inside Ukraine even though the White House quickly did damage control, asserting that the president continues to be opposed to American soldiers being directly engaged in the fighting.”

Watch his interview below.

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This video was originally published on Judge Napolitano – Judging Freedom.

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.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

Big Pharma Wants to Put an End to Vitamins and Supplements

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, July 20, 2022

One of the latest attempts to thwart your ability to access nutritional supplements comes in the form of draft legislation that would require premarket approval for dietary supplements. In short, it would require supplements — which are food — to undergo the same approval process as drugs.

The Joe Biden MBS Crown Prince Confrontation: Biden’s Failed Attempt to Turn Saudi Arabia Against Russia

By Ahmed Adel, July 20, 2022

During his visit to Jeddah on July 15, American President Joe Biden tried to convince his Saudi partners to increase oil production and delivery in order to inflict economic damage on Russia and turn the Arab country towards an anti-Moscow policy. Instead, Biden’s visit to the Red Sea city was a complete disaster, just as his administration’s foreign policy has been.

Rescuing Authentic and Peace-Loving Islam from the Hijacking of Violent Religious Extremism

By Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu, July 20, 2022

Factually speaking, the current global terrorism that is presently sponsored by so-called “Islamist” extremists and violent “jihadists” are targeted towards both the non-Muslims and the Muslims alike. Muslims who do not adhere to the extremists’ violent ideology are considered enemies of this so-called “Islamist” extremists.

A Strategy for “Them” by Tony Blair

By Keith Lamb, July 20, 2022

Blair then moved to the recommendation of propping up a transatlantic strategy, with the US at the head, against China which he believes threatens Western systems and is competing against the West aggressively. First, why should any proud European submit to the US? Second, it’s not China sending a flotilla of warships through the English Channel. Where then is this China threat?

Damascus and the Kurds Align Militarily to Face the Turkish Threat

By Steven Sahiounie, July 20, 2022

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeastern region of Syria have raised up the Syrian flag which represents the government in Damascus for the first time in years.  The SDF have been partnered with the US military in the fight against ISIS, but are now facing an even bigger and existential threat from Turkey.

The Assange Persecution: British Courts and Media… Guilty! Free Julian Assange!

By Brett Redmayne-Titley, July 20, 2022

The months-long extradition hearings of Julian Assange, a trial that will forever define modern journalism, have been shamelessly whitewashed by British media.  Too few news agencies reported on the utter abrogation of judicial Due Process and The Rule of Law exhibited in a British courtroom against an innocent fellow journalist.

The Future of Food? Genetic Engineering, Value Capture and Dependency

By Colin Todhunter, July 20, 2022

GM crops are required to feed the world is a well-worn industry slogan trotted out at every available opportunity. Just like the claim of GM crops being a tremendous success, this too is based on a myth.

Famine in Africa: Millions on the Verge of Starvation? What Are the Causes?

By Abayomi Azikiwe, July 20, 2022

There has been a deteriorating situation within various African states related to the impact of drought and the consequent lack of food for hundreds of millions of people. These events on the continent cannot be analyzed separately from the broader international economic and security crises which has impacted the ability of the existing global markets to provide adequate food to the peoples of the world.

An Overview of the Asia-Pacific War 80 Years Ago, Japan Headed for Total Defeat

By Shane Quinn, July 20, 2022

Eight decades ago, the Asia-Pacific War officially began on the morning of Sunday 7 December 1941, with Japan’s military attack on the American-controlled Pearl Harbor naval base at Oahu, Hawaii. This region is located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 2,400 miles away from the nearest point of the United States mainland coast, at San Francisco, California.

History: ‘A Possible Coup’ Against the Labour Government?

By Richard Norton-Taylor, July 20, 2022

Allegations that MI5 officers and sections of the media sought to bring down Britain’s Labour government in the 1960s and 70s have resurfaced, raising fresh questions about plots that remain hidden behind a wall of official secrecy.

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Assistant Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade tells Sky News that his crews are battling fires across the Capital.

It comes after the UK recorded a temperature above 40C for the first time ever.

What are the underlying causes? 

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During his visit to Jeddah on July 15, American President Joe Biden tried to convince his Saudi partners to increase oil production and delivery in order to inflict economic damage on Russia and turn the Arab country towards an anti-Moscow policy. Instead, Biden’s visit to the Red Sea city was a complete disaster, just as his administration’s foreign policy has been.

Following the US president’s three-day tour of Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which began on July 13 with an emphasis on restoring relations with the important Middle Eastern power and world’s largest oil exporter, commentators and experts noted Biden’s failure.

Washington attempted to get Middle Eastern countries to oppose Moscow over its military operation against Ukraine, but this was to no avail. The US’s traditional partners did not support its policy towards Kiev; not only did Saudi Arabia refuse Biden’s recent demands, but it is recalled that the UAE abstained and did not vote for the anti-Russian resolution proposed by the US in the UN Security Council.

Biden wanted the Middle East, especially the Saudis and the Emiratis, to increase oil supplies at low prices. The US president​ and G7 countries hoped that a lack of Russian oil would be compensated by oil from these countries.

In addition, Biden hoped that his Middle East tour would signal his promise that the US would remain active in the region so as not to allow Russia, China and even Iran to take its place. Following the Donald Trump administration, the US felt that its presence in the Middle East was weakened and that Russia, China and Iran have advanced.

Along with the American military bases dotted all across the Middle East, Washington provides significant financial support to a number of key countries, primarily Israel, but also Egypt. As Egypt is a crossroads between Africa and Asia, Egypt has continued to receive significant US support. The US also promised support to Jordan in the shape of weapons and training of military personnel. But this has not translated into anti-Moscow policies by these states.

What was evident though is that Biden did not prepare correctly for his Middle East tour. The American president went to a country that he promised would be ostracised on the international stage, and then accused Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS) of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

MBS, who will inevitably become the king of Saudi Arabia in the near future, denied responsibility for Khashoggi’s 2018 killing at the Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul despite Biden claiming that US intelligence contradicted his claims. The Crown prince countered Biden with the sexual and physical abuse of prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison by US military personnel and the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank by Israeli forces.

In even greater damage to Biden’s failed visit to Saudi Arabia, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, said:

“The Crown Prince responded to President Biden’s remarks on … Khashoggi after quite clearly — that this crime, while very unfortunate and abhorrent, is something that the kingdom took very seriously (and) acted upon in a way commiserate with its position as a responsible country. These are issues, mistakes that happen in any country, including the US. The Crown Prince pointed out that the US has made its own mistakes and has taken the necessary action to hold those responsible accountable and address these mistakes just as the kingdom has.”

What Biden’s failed visit to Saudi Arabia showed to many in the Middle East is that the current US administration is incapable of conducting foreign policy.

Biden’s failures are obviously mirrored in the US, where Biden’s popularity is crashing. According to the latest CNN poll conducted by SSRS, Biden has reached the lowest ratings in his political career. His current approval rating, according to CNN, is 38%, with disapproval standing at 62%.

Given Biden’s own unpopularity in the US, partly because he insults the intelligence of American citizens by falsely claiming that Russia is to blame for soaring inflation and living costs, it is unsurprising that non-Americans are also finding the American president intolerable.

It is recalled that Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir stated that an agreement on oil had not been reached and that the OPEC countries will make a decision in their early August meeting based on the market, “not on speculations, not on hysteria, not on geopolitics.” Effectively OPEC announced that it will not be turned into anti-Russia vehicle for the US to use.

Biden was advised not to go to the Middle East, but his administration is desperate to restore relations with Saudi Arabia. This Middle East trip should be the biggest wake up call to Biden that the extremely short-lived unipolar world order is over and that states are not only capable of acting independently now, but are more boldly willing to do so.

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

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A measurable unit of true geopolitical power is assessed through economy, finances, military, technologies and other parameters. Being able to exert more power than others has always been the driving force behind all changes in human history. Resources are essential for a (super)power to be able to portray its system as superior (and impose it elsewhere). Whoever gets the largest amount of resources nearly always comes on top. Depending on how these resources are then redistributed, leading powers can be seen as beneficial or malignant for the world. Naturally, there are many gray areas in-between.

Our planet has been through many global and regional stages, which modern-day historians classify using the prefix “Pax” to describe times when certain powers dominate(d) regions or even the world. Thus, in historiography, we regularly use terminology such as “Pax Romana” (Ancient Roman dominance), “Pax Mongolica” (Mongol), “Pax Hispanica” (Spanish), “Pax Britannica” (British), etc. The term itself in this context can be rather confusing at times, as it literally means “peace” in Latin. This usually doesn’t include actual peace, as most of the aforementioned empires engaged in policies which often led to the death, destruction and genocide of indigenous societies they targeted for conquest. Additionally, the power of imperial entities usually didn’t extend beyond their immediate region, making it possible for them to coexist, with little to no interaction (i.e. the Roman Empire and Ancient China).

However, with the rapid technological advances of the last two centuries, empires have become more powerful, seeking dominance beyond regional borders, paving the way for the rise of true global (super)powers. The British Empire is often considered the first global empire, as it was able to control much of the world through its naval power. Although the “Pax Britannica” effectively collapsed after WWII, many think it survived in the form of “Pax Americana”, the US global dominance. Although the belligerent thalassocracy in Washington DC rejects the term, seeking to distance itself from the negative connotations of the extremely damaging Western colonialism, it’s nearly impossible to escape this analogy, no matter how many layers of apparent “independence” America gives to its numerous satellites.

The “benefits” of “Pax Americana” are felt all across the globe on a daily basis, as the US has invaded and dismantled dozens of sovereign countries, leaving death, destruction and chaos in its wake. To defend themselves, many countries resorted to building strong militaries, often at the expense of socio-economic development. Others renounced their sovereignty, completely or partially, to get a better standing within “Pax Americana” or even get “their piece of cake”.

This is how “Pax Americana” differs from other stages of imperial dominance. Entities under occupation usually aren’t part of the US legally speaking, but it’s quite clear who’s in charge. This also explains why these formally “independent” countries often employ internal and foreign policies which not only aren’t in their interest, but actively go against it, causing long-term damage. The imperial metropole doesn’t care what happens to its vassals, as long as it profits.

With this predatory system behind most world problems, a need for a fairer and more stable global system emerged. Instead of having “one master to rule them all”, this new system allows the existence of multiple power poles which get to keep their respective value systems and vision of future development. This certainly doesn’t exclude cooperation on the highest level, but it does protect the true diversity of our planet – the diversity of civilizations, ideas and peoples coexisting peacefully.

As we all know, it’s called multipolarism, practically embodied in the form of BRICS+. Encompassing the vast majority of the world population, along with actual, measurable economic power, BRICS isn’t simply a rival to the political West. Most alarmingly for the imperialist power pole, it offers clear alternatives (economic, financial, technological, security, etc.), as well as a level of strategic independence the political West would never accept.

In this regard, Russia’s military might or China’s economic power aren’t the only perceived existential threats to the political West. The true threat is precisely the alternative they can offer, shielded by their power, ensuring sovereignty and independence, two of the greatest geopolitical challenges for the so-called “rules-based world order”. Middle Eastern trips by Putin and Biden clearly show which system is preferable to the world. As Biden failed to accomplish anything in Saudi Arabia, Putin signed a massive $40-billion gas deal with Iran, in addition to other agreements, including complete dedollarization of Russia-Iran trade.

For its part, the US is openly threatening Iran with yet another war in the Middle East. The excuse is Iran’s nuclear program, but the real reason is precisely the BRICS+ alternative which would nullify sanctions. To make matters worse for the imperialist thalassocracies, this alternative is spreading like wildfire to countries whose socio-economic development has been hampered by the political West. Once this happens, the multipolar world will negate any possibility of aggression against these countries, depriving the political West of its plunder-based system.

While countries like Russia, Brazil, Iran, etc. offer essential commodities and natural resources, China and India offer manufactured goods which make our world work. In stark contrast to this stands the political West, with its incessant wars, coups and instability on the global level, all done to sustain what Russian President Vladimir Putin defined as “the economy of imaginary entities”. This is certainly true, as the political West produces very little in terms of actual value for the world. Quite the opposite, it keeps printing its fiat currencies and using this effectively worthless paper to obtain actual commodities which others need to extract and/or build. And any attempt to break the chains may cost entire countries their sovereignty or even existence. Precisely BRICS+ is neutralizing this system as we speak.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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Factually speaking, the current global terrorism that is presently sponsored by so-called “Islamist” extremists and violent “jihadists” are targeted towards both the non-Muslims and the Muslims alike. Muslims who do not adhere to the extremists’ violent ideology are considered enemies of this so-called “Islamist” extremists. Religious extremists have killed thousands and thousands of innocent lives, both Muslims and non-Muslims without conscience and without humane compassion. These extremists are hijacking the basic tenets of the peaceful and universal religion of Islam and seek to destroy its 1,443 glorious years of cosmopolitan, multicultural, pluralistic and tolerant Islamicate civilization.

We need to move away from Samuel Huntington’s skewed and erroneous scenario of “clash of civilizations” between non-Muslims and Muslims since these different terrorist groups of so-called “Islamist extremists” and violent jihadists do not represent the peace-loving religion of Islam as presented in the Qur’an and in the exemplary conduct of the founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad. Terrorists are simply terrorists and they do not represent the religion they self-identify with; no matter how these terrorists vehemently declare themselves as protectors of these religions. Religious extremism of all types is an enemy to all peace-loving human beings. Truthfully speaking, so-called “religious” terrorists have no religion since their murderous actions strongly belie their own self-identification to belong to a particular religion.

Religious extremism, specifically the so-called “Islamist” type has a naïve, simplistic and violent-prone bifurcated worldview. Religious extremists partition the world into “Dar-ul-Islam” (Realm of Islam) and “Dar-ul-Harb” (Realm of War) in which there is unending conflict between these two realms. However, in their terroristic acts, even the so-called Realm of Islam is likewise the domain of the extremists’ commission of murder, violence and wanton destruction. Innocent civilian Muslims living in Islamic countries are not immune from attacks by violent extremism. Observing news depicting terroristic attacks worldwide, one can notice that most of the victims of terroristic attacks done by extremists who call themselves mujahidins (jihadists) were innocent Muslim civilians in predominantly Muslim countries.

Many violent religious extremist and jihadist groups justify their attacks on Muslims in predominantly Islamic countries by saying that these Muslims have become kafirs (unbelievers) and the government as well as leaders of these countries are purveyors of kufr (apostasy) since these regimes in these Muslim countries do not adhere to the violent-prone ideology of these religious extremists. This is why religious terrorists target progressive, secular and socialist leaders of Islamic countries who adhere to a view of Islam that is peace-loving, cosmopolitan, pluralistic, inclusive and tolerant: the genuine Islam of the Qur’an and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad.

It is really very sad to note that religious extremists and jihadists have threatened to destroy the wholesome fabric of Islamic civilization and the cosmopolitanism characterizing the tolerant and diversified Islamicate heritage of worldwide Muslims. These violent religious extremists are destroying the enlightened classical Sunni Islamic civilization famous in world history for its culture of synthesis, universal education, progressive pioneering of development in the sciences, literature, mathematics, philosophy and arts, as well as its advocacy of pluralism and tolerance. These extremist groups have totally thrown-out the regulative Qur’anic principles governing just and defensive warfare, the peace-loving Islamic ethics and the Islamic civilization’s history of tolerance and toleration. These violent extremist groups who claim to be Muslims victimize the vast majority of peace-loving Muslims by committing terroristic acts against innocent Muslim civilians in many Muslim countries who do not subscribe to religious violence and terrorism.

The true goal of any authentic faith-tradition is ultimately geared towards universality, tolerance, amity and harmony. Authentic religion awakens in its adherents the feelings of well-wishing and goodwill towards other human beings. Its exponents strive peacefully to pass on the truth that they have discovered for the benefit of their fellow humans. Such religion, far from causing harm to society, becomes a driving force towards ethical and social development of all humanity if utilized for beneficial ends (Cf. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, The Age of Peace. New Delhi: Good Word Books, 2015; pp.1-26.). 

However, when a particular faith-tradition is hijacked into becoming a violent movement based on pure animosity and hatred, the adherents of this violent movement would consider those who are not like-minded to be enemies. They have an overpowering desire to exterminate the religious “other”. They hold that the “others” are the obstacles to their avowed goal of global hegemony and they seek to destroy religious “otherness” so that they can put their own belief-system as replacement. As a result of this negative thinking, they divide humanity into two camps: one consisting of their enemies, and the other of their allies. The moment they have made this distinction between “us-and-them”, right thereafter, they permit their avowed hatred for the “other” to conflagrate into virulent and bloody violence against the religious “other” (See Marc H. Ellis. Unholy Alliance: Religion and Atrocity in our Time. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997; pp. xi-xvii.). 

To make matters worse, the hatred felt by religious militancy or violent extremism has become inseparable from its theology and ideology. They hate others who think differently from themselves because they hold them to be ideologically in error and theologically heretical. Experience shows that of all kinds of hatred that is based on an ideology, more particularly those that are based on religious dogmatism or fanaticism are the most destructive—and its target is the total annihilation of enemies. Not until this very end is achieved will violence ever die down. This is the reason why ideological hatred always assumes the shape of violence and destruction. When it is found that peaceful means of persuasion are showing no results, arms are then resorted to, so that all enemies may be removed from its path. (Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, What Is Islamic Fundamentalism?. Op.cit., pp.19-20.). 

According to the contemporary renowned Islamic pacifist of India, the late Maulana Wahiduddin Khan Sahib (1925-2021), any religious extremism is a threat to peace since due to religious fanaticism, its proponents do not stop short of resorting to destructive activity both to others and to themselves such as suicide attacks and indiscriminate bombings of civilian areas. While it is a fact that in these violent activities only a small group is involved, however this small group has indirect or “quasi support” of the majority, who remained silent and did not raise any outcry against such inhumanities in the name of Islam (Cf. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. Islam and Peace. New Delhi: Good Word Books, pp.164-168.).

Peace-loving Muslims must therefore disown these violent people who simply utilize and hijack Islam to further hatred and political-religious extremism. If the majority of peace-loving Muslims will disown these violent extremists, withdraw their indirect support and outrightly condemn religious extremism and jihadism, these fringe groups will lose their mass base of indirect or “quasi-support”. Consequently, this will be the starting point when religious extremists who are directly involved in violent activities will hopefully begin to abandon the path of violence altogether and embrace the path of peace and amity (Cf. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. Islam and Peace, Ibid.p.170.).

It is therefore a very urgent task for the Islamic World and for global Muslims to undertake proper information and educational campaign as to the genuine and pristine teachings of Islam by making use of the independent media on a full scale in order to make people aware of the fact that this violent interpretation of Islam—as capitalized by both extremist groups and by Western mainstream media in describing the terroristic activities of so-called Islamic extremists—is absolutely devoid of basis either in the Qur’an or in the examples (As-Sunnah) set by the Prophet Muhammad. As opposed to this misinterpretation, the true values of authentic and peaceful Islam, based on global amity, universal fraternity, goodwill and sincere well-wishing for one-and-all should be presented to the general public by the international independent media, the academe, religious scholars, clergies and international peace advocates. 

If this authentic interpretation of a peace-loving Islam can be brought to the attention of the general masses through responsible international independent media news outfits in cooperation with peaceful Muslims and authentic Islamic groups (jamaat) all over the world, then there is great hope that those who have been espousing violent extremist ideology in the name of Islam will eventually abandon the path of hatred and violence and come back to the genuine Islam of peace and harmony—“to the home of peace” (See Qur-an 6:127 and 10:25) as described in the Qur-an and in the exemplary practice of the Prophet Muhammad. May it be so!

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Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu is Associate Professor-7 of Philosophy and Asian Studies at the University of the Philippines (UP), Cebu City, Philippines. He was Academic Coordinator of the Political Science Program at UP Cebu from 2011-2014,  and Coordinator of Gender and Development (GAD) Office at UP Cebu from 2015-2016 and from 2018-2019.

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Recently, Sir Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, gave a speech at the transatlantic banking-funded “Ditchley Foundation”. In this speech, he focused on how a Western strategy should deal with Russia and China in light of the Ukraine conflict.

However, his criticisms and prescriptions are muddied not only by the fact that his conscience should be stained with the worst human rights atrocities of the twenty-first century but also by the fact that his transatlantic elitist outlook is detached from the democratic pulse.

Blair’s actions previously led the world to ruin. He sent Britain’s soldiers to their deaths in the illegal invasion of Iraq which led to the fatality of even more Iraqis. Tragically, as this disaster still plays out, Blair nevertheless finds it conscionable to offer another dose of his “statesmanship”.

Since leaving office, for Blair’s services to “hyper-imperialism” he has been showered with millions. Cocooned by “advisory” jobs with multinational banks and raking in “speaking fees” of over £300,000 per speech it’s easy to see why his worldview is so removed from the masses., Indeed, polls showed only a paltry 14 percent of the British public support his knighthood.

These days at times Blair looks fraught. Perhaps it is the face of a man consumed with repressed guilt. Though, considering the content of Blair’s speech, if there is any guilt, it hasn’t surfaced. Blair’s “clanger” of calling Russia a “member of the UN security council” out over the conflict in Ukraine a “democratic European state” was a prime example of this.

Aside from the bigoted overtones, where he contrasted a European war with ones that occur far away, in presumably more barbaric lands, there was no contemplation on the destruction of Ukraine’s democracy by the US since 2014. There was no mention that NATO was actively sponsoring neo-Nazis, and there was no reflection on Iraq where the very UN members that carried out this atrocity were through NATO edging their way towards Moscow.

Blair then moved to the recommendation of propping up a transatlantic strategy, with the US at the head, against China which he believes threatens Western systems and is competing against the West aggressively. First, why should any proud European submit to the US? Second, it’s not China sending a flotilla of warships through the English Channel. Where then is this China threat?

For Western transatlantic elites, China’s threat is through structures like the Belt and Road Initiative which will develop the world and so decrease the effectiveness of Western military hegemony. For Western citizens, without real democracy, their living standards will continue to decrease. In the short term, Western capitalism competing with rising powers like China may resort to war as a source of distraction, profits, plunder, and geopolitical domination. However, this will spark more trouble at home especially as competing ideologies from rising civilizations show that win-win cooperation through infrastructure development offers a better future for mankind.

Blair wants a united Western front against China to protect democracies. However, this has nothing to do with protecting democracy. The aforementioned united strategy against the Middle East, which Blair advocated in his speech for maintaining control of – “not for the oil” he said – was distinctly undemocratic then as it is now. Likewise, the strategy against China will continue to be in the service of a small transatlantic ruling elite who Blair serves.

In service of this united front, Blair advocates for more military spending where the US maintains its technological military supremacy. Thus, evidently, aside from working for the “banksters”, Blair also has a “side-hustle” shilling for foreign weapons manufacturers who profit from past, present, and future wars.

Despite advocating for an aggressive stance against China, Blair, mentioning a bi-polar world order, did at least say that “China’s place as a superpower is natural and justified.” However, despite this concession, we must consider two things. First, the bi-polar nature of Blair which was evident throughout his barefaced speech. What does the rise of the rest of the world and China mean for Blair when he continues down the line of asserting Western superiority through the barrel of a gun?

Second, China doesn’t want to be a unipolar or bipolar superpower in the conventional Western sense. Indeed, China doesn’t regard this as bringing about the optimum world order which is why China seeks a future of multipolarity where other regions rise too.

Stuck in the elitist Western echo chamber, this basic conceptual difference is lost on Blair. For example, over the last decade, China has been heavily engaged in building infrastructure in the Global South. It is this quest for global development that also leads to multipolarity. In contrast, besides invasion, the West has maintained exploitative unequal economic relations. Despite this, Blair believes the Global South “admire the Western system more than we realize.”

Being a European I am proud to say there are many good things about Western culture, its people, and institutions. For example, through workers’ movements, the West has been at the vanguard of developing welfare systems and its early development led to many inventions.

However, Blair is not representative of “us” he cashed out to “them” long ago. Furthermore, he has used Western technological superiority for immense harm. As such, when he calls for a “Western strategy” he does so not in the name of “us” the Western democratic whole but for “them” a small transatlantic elite.

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Keith Lamb is a graduate from the University of Glasgow, Staffordshire University and the University of Oxford. His primary research interests are the international relations of China, neoliberalism and China’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Despite the sanctions that have been illegally imposed on Russia, the West is gradually beginning to realize that to ensure international food security it will be necessary to review the measures implemented so far. Apparently, the European Union is already starting to announce some steps in this direction. According to reports, the European bloc plans to unfreeze some sanctioned Russian funds to allow food and fertilizer transactions to be carried out.

In a recent report, mentioning documents and internal sources, Reuters’s journalists said that Brussels plans to unfreeze some funds from Russian banks to enable trade of food and fertilizers. There is also information about a possible project to promote the facilitation of food exports from Russian ports that have had services to the West suspended due to the packages of sanctions. With this, Europe hopes to secure its part in the trade of the 37 million tons of grain that Moscow plans to export in 2022.

So far, the European bloc has implemented six packages of sanctions against Moscow in response to the recognition of the Donbass’ republics and the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine. Among the coercive measures are financial and banking restrictions that include freezing Russian banks’ funds. European authorities estimate that more than 300 billion dollars in Russian Central Bank’s assets have already been “immobilized” as a result of the sanctions. In addition, Didier Reynders, EU justice commissioner, claims that another 13.8 billion euros belonging to Russian individuals and entities have also been blocked.

These measures obviously harmed the interests of the Europeans. The trade flow between the EU and Moscow is large, intense and dynamic, in addition to including extremely strategic sectors such as energy and agriculture. However, the European bloc, as part of NATO’s military umbrella which is led by the US, has great difficulties in acting sovereignly when its interests collide with those of Washington. In fact, Europe only adhered to the radical anti-Russian economic sanctions because it was not efficient in handling the pressure exerted by its American allies. And it is in this same sense that the situation can now be reversed.

The Europeans are considering reviewing the sanctions just because they have been given a sort of “carte blanche” to do so, as the US recently also authorized a partial review. In early July, the US government eased some anti-Russian coercive measures, authorizing transactions related to fertilizers, seeds and other agricultural items. Deputy Treasury Secretary Ramin Toloui expressed concern about what he called “overcompliance” with the sanctions, which could impact food supplies. Without this precedent, the EU would certainly not have “freedom” to also ease sanctions, despite the fact that the bloc’s leaders have already expressed this desire several times – having their plans frustrated by the geopolitical submission of the Union to the US.

With regard to the US itself, however, it is curious to think about the reasons that led the government to ease the measures. Obviously, there is no such thing as an “overcompliance”. Measures are imposed to be complied with. If the effects of compliance are negative, then it means that the measures themselves are negative and should be banned. The US government always knew that these would be the effects, but in its fanatical anti-Russian campaign it chose to accept the side effects and go ahead with plans to boycott Moscow. The problem is that international society would not be able to afford it at all.

The words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres at the General Assembly well illustrate the global dissatisfaction with the sanctions: “We face a real risk of multiple famines this year (…) But we can avoid this catastrophe if we act now”. In fact, the food supply crisis is a problem that cannot be fully stopped. To some degree, grain supplies will be reduced, both because Ukraine has had its export system collapsed and because sanctions against Russia have already stopped trade for five months. The situation, however, can be managed and the effects remedied if there is immediate action in order to stop sanctions and precisely because of this the issue has become a common global agenda, forcing Washington – and then Europe – to cancel some of its measures.

But it is an illusion to think that the mere act of unfreezing some bank assets can solve the problem. Europe is acting as if this is some kind of “diplomatic gentleness”, in the sense of easing the measures to reestablish trade in return. In fact, this approach is absolutely wrong. Unilateral sanctions against Russia are illegal and need to be banned. There is no type of Western “charity” in this relationship, as Moscow is the only party that can refuse to sell its grain and fertilizers, if it deems it inappropriate to maintain trade with nations that illegally sanction it.

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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.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

One of the latest attempts to thwart your ability to access nutritional supplements comes in the form of draft legislation that would require premarket approval for dietary supplements. In short, it would require supplements — which are food — to undergo the same approval process as drugs

In the past, the drug industry and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has tried to ban certain supplements, including vitamin B6 and N-acetylcysteine (NAC), by reclassifying them as new drugs

Another strategy the drug industry has been using to gain a monopoly over the supplement industry is to buy up supplement brands. Just 14 mega corporations — many of them drug companies — now own more than 100 of the most popular supplement brands on the market

This monopoly over the supplement industry gives drug companies enormous regulatory influence, and that’s a way by which they could eliminate independent supplement makers who can’t afford to put their products through the drug approval process. Indeed, it seems that’s what the Durbin-Braun premarket approval proposal is trying to accomplish

Take action to protect widespread access to dietary supplements. Contact your Senators and urge them to oppose the Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2022, and its inclusion in the FDA Safety Landmark Advancements Act

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In the video above Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director for the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), interviews Gretchen DuBeau, the executive and legal director for the Alliance for Natural Health, who in addition to being a lawyer also has a master’s degree in applied healing arts, talk about Big Pharma’s efforts to eliminate one of its greatest competitors, namely nutritional supplements.

One of the latest attempts to thwart your ability to access nutritional supplements comes in the form of draft legislation that would require premarket approval for dietary supplements. In short, it would require supplements to undergo the same approval process as drugs.

The Durbin-Braun Premarket Approval Proposal

A discussion draft of the legislation was released by the United States Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) in mid-May 2022. As reported by Vitamin Retailer:¹

“On May 17 [2022], the United States Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) released a discussion draft of its legislation to reauthorize FDA user fees for drugs, biologics and medical devices package, which includes the controversial and divisive Durbin-Braun premarket approval concept and more that would be damaging to the industry, according to the Natural Products Association (NPA).²

‘The NPA is significantly concerned with Chair Murray and Republican Leader Burr who failed to reject the radical and dangerous legislation from Senators Durbin and Braun that would require premarket approval for dietary supplements and weaken key privacy protections of the Bioterrorism Act, which protects the dietary supplement supply chain,’ said Daniel Fabricant, Ph.D. president and CEO of the NPA.

Groups who [sic] have supported this legislation, have stated there are protections for technical disagreements with the FDA like those with hemp, CBD, NAC, and several other products. However, if this legislation were to pass, it is abundantly clear these products would be eliminated from the market.'”

For years, the drug industry, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s support, has tried to get nutritional supplements off the market. One of the most often used tactics has been to try to reclassify them as drugs.

Usually, they would target specific nutrients that stood in their way of profits, but legislation such as the Durbin-Braun premarket proposal would allow the drug industry to monopolize the market in one fell swoop.

Big Pharma Tried to Ban Vitamin B6

The fight over vitamin B6 (pyroxidine) is one example of how Big Pharma tried to eliminate a natural substance that stood in the way of a drug patent. In 2007, Medicure Pharma submitted a citizen’s petition to the FDA in which it argued that any dietary supplement containing pyridoxal 5′-phosphate — vitamin B6 — were “adulterated” under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, article 402(f).³

In essence, Medicure wanted all vitamin B6 products banned, because they undermined the company’s incentive to continue development of it’s drug version of B6.

Medicure had gotten wise to vitamin B6’s effectiveness against ischemia (inadequate blood flow), and decided to make a drug out of it by simply renaming the vitamin “MC-1.” They entered it into the drug bank and then argued that B6 supplements contained “their” MC-1. The drug bank even admits the renamed vitamin B6, i.e., MC-1, is:⁴

“… a biologically active natural product which can be regarded as a chemical entity that has been evolutionarily selected and validated for binding to particular protein domains.”

The main reason why drug companies engage in this kind of sleight of hand is because once a substance is classified as a drug, you can jack up the price by 1,000% over the supplement’s typical retail.⁵

FDA Cracking Down on NAC

Perhaps the most recent example of the FDA trying to shut down easy access to nutritional supplements was its 2020 attack on N-acetylcysteine (NAC). NAC has been a widely-used dietary supplement for six decades, yet the FDA suddenly decided to crack down on it in late July 2020 — right after it was discovered how useful it was for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.⁶

According to the FDA, NAC was excluded from the definition of a dietary supplement because it had been approved as a new drug in 1963.⁷ But if that was the case, why did they wait until 2020 to take action?

As reported by NPI at the time,⁸ there were more than 1,170 NAC-containing products in the National Institutes of Health’s Dietary Supplement Label Database when the FDA started sending out warning letters⁹ to companies that marketed NAC as a remedy for hangovers.

Members of the Council for Responsible Nutrition also worried the FDA might start to target NAC more widely. So far, that hasn’t happened, but Amazon immediately stopped selling all NAC products after those warning letters went out, whether the sellers marketed it as a hangover remedy or not.

Also, the selection of “hangover” for those warning letters seemed arbitrary at best. The fact is that several scientists had called attention to NAC’s benefits against COVID, and shortly afterward, the FDA came up with this ridiculous excuse to limit the availability of it. It just smacked of conflict of interest.

Another Way Big Pharma Is Seeking to Take Over

Another strategy the drug industry has been using to gain a monopoly over the supplement industry is by simply buying up supplement brands. Nestlé Health Science, for example, has acquired Garden of Life, Vital Proteins, Nuun, Pure Encapsulations, Wobenzym, Douglas Laboratories, Persona Nutrition, Genestra, Orthica, Minami, AOV, Klean Athlete and Bountiful.¹⁰

Bountiful, in turn, owns brands like Solgar, Osteo Bi-Flex, Puritan’s Pride, Ester-C and Sundown, all of which are now under Nestlé’s control. The Bountiful brands alone generated net sales of $1.87 billion in the 12 months ending March 31, 2021, so the $5.75 billion agreement to acquire a majority stake, signed in August 2021, didn’t necessarily burn a big hole in Nestlé’s pocket. According to J.P. Morgan analyst Celine Pannuti, quoted by Natural Products Insider:¹¹

“Through the acquisition of The Bountiful Co., Nestlé can build a ‘leading position’ in the ‘fragmented category’ for vitamins, minerals and supplements, which ‘has delivered the highest and most consistent growth in consumer health care over the past 10 years.'”

The ‘Free Market Competition’ Lie

In all, a mere 14 mega corporations — many of them drug companies — now own more than 100 of the most popular supplement brands on the market. The graphic below is from Neal Smoller, PharmD, the holistic pharmacist’s website.¹²

It doesn’t show the ownership of all available brands, but it gives you an idea of just how small the ownership circle has become. As noted by Smoller, many competing brands are even owned by the same corporation, rendering the notion of free market competition null and void.

Importantly, owning the lion’s share of supplement companies puts the drug industry in a unique position to get rid of them whenever they so desire. They could intentionally make the company tank simply by cutting advertising, for example. Cutting quality could have a similar effect, while simultaneously cheating customers who rely on dietary supplements for optimal nutrition and health.

Most important of all, however, this monopoly over the supplement industry gives drug companies enormous regulatory influence, and that’s a way by which they could eliminate independent supplement makers who can’t compete financially. Indeed, that seems to be what the Durbin-Braun proposal is all about.

Supplements Have Phenomenal Safety Profiles

This new proposed legislation would technically ban most supplements, as few supplement makers have the financial resources required to meet drug approval requirements. The only ones with pockets deep enough to do that would be the mega-corporations.

Putting vitamins and nutrients through the drug evaluation and approval process would automatically eliminate many supplements from the market and result in higher retail prices for whatever remains. It would also allow drug companies to rename basic nutrients, label them drugs, and jack up the price even further.

We cannot let this happen. Dietary supplements are FOOD, plain and simple. They should not be treated as drugs, which must undergo rigorous testing to evaluate effects and safety. Supplements have a long history of near-spotless safety and don’t need drug-style testing.

Supplements Are the Safest Foodstuffs Available

Deaths associated with use of dietary supplements are extremely rare compared to the death toll from prescription drugs, yet supplements are routinely singled out as being potentially dangerous,^13,14 either due to lack of testing, lack of regulation or both. The thing is, supplements don’t need safety testing, as they are food, and they are, in fact, fully regulated.

In 2015, CBC News published a Marketplace report¹⁵ in which they claimed a number of supplement makers had ripped off customers by failing to live up to the claims on their labels. Two months later, they had to retract the report,¹⁶ when it was proven their tests were inaccurate. That’s just one example of how the pharma-owned media tries to give supplements a bad rap.

Meanwhile, in the real world, not a single death has ever been reported as a direct result of taking a supplement. On the contrary, data provided in a 2012 report by the UK-based Alliance for Natural Health International (ANHI), showed nutritional supplements are the safest foodstuffs available.

Your risk of dying from an herbal product or dietary supplement is less than 1 in 10 million, comparable to your risk of being killed by lighting. ANHI also calculated that adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs are 62,000 times more likely to kill you than nutritional supplements.¹⁷

So, the one thing that can be conclusively said about supplements is that they may be the safest category of any consumable product. On the whole, junk food and drugs are FAR more likely to harm or kill you.

What’s more, lack of human trials does not mean supplements are unregulated. They’re regulated by both the FDA¹⁸ and the Federal Trade Commission¹⁹ (FTC). The FDA regulates the finished product and individual ingredients, while the FTC regulates the advertising of supplements. So, while not regulated as drugs, but rather as a food, they are fully regulated.

Take Action NOW to Protect Your Supplements From Disappearing

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***

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeastern region of Syria have raised up the Syrian flag which represents the government in Damascus for the first time in years.  The SDF have been partnered with the US military in the fight against ISIS, but are now facing an even bigger and existential threat from Turkey.

On Jul 18, in the northern countryside of Aleppo, two terrorist mercenaries working for Turkey, were wounded which resulted in clashes between militias working for Turkey against the united forces of SDF and Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

Ilham Ehmed, chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, stated recently in Raqqa that the SDF had “become a force to be reckoned with”. This speech showed the SDF was weighing a political solution that would integrate the SDF and the SAA given the new Turkish threat of further invasion and occupation of the Kurdish northeast.

The SAA and the SDF are coordinating together on permits to pass through checkpoints held between the two groups.

The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANE) is called Rojava by the Kurds. To prevent the total collapse of the institutions there, the only option remaining is to repair its relationship with the Syrian government in Damascus, which could protect the AANE from a threatened increased Turkish incursion. The leaders of the AANE know that the US sees Turkey as its ally, and are not going to drop Turkey as an ally in favor of the SDF.

On Saturday, the SAA sent military reinforcements to Manbij through al-Tayha crossing, and an eyewitness from Abu Kahf village, 30 km north of Manbij, said that eight vehicles loaded with two field artillery, rocket launchers, ammunition and personnel entered from al-Tayha crossing and headed towards the front lines in Manbij.

The reinforcements come within the coordination between the SDF and the SAA, with Russian backups, to deploy government forces along the front lines extending from al-Hoshariya village, northeast of Manbij, to al-Arima district, west of Manbij.

Hours later, the SAA brought in reinforcements to the border strip with Turkey in the countryside of Derbasiyah north of Hasakah.

In 2019, Turkey invaded Syria, but later signed two ceasefire agreements, one with Russia and the other with the US stipulating ceasing all hostilities and the withdrawal of the SDF 32 km away from the Turkish border. The SDF did withdraw from the border areas according to the agreement, but Turkey continued targeting the area.

Turkey sent more forces to both the northern and eastern countryside of Aleppo, in preparation for their threatened new invasion. On July 8 a Turkish military convoy passed through al-Rai crossing in the northern countryside of Aleppo, heading towards the city of al-Bab east of Aleppo.

On July 15, the SDF Commander in Chief, Mazloum Abdi, said “We accepted that the SAA fortifies its posts in Kobani, Manbij and border areas in order to carry out its task to protect Syrian border, and we will do what is needed to avoid war against our areas.”

“We are eagerly awaiting the tripartite meeting that will bring together Turkey, Russia, and Iran on July 19, and we believe that other parties will not allow Turkish forces to launch their attacks against our areas,” he said.

Experts agree that Biden will not accept a new Turkish incursion into Syria, because at this time he stresses the importance of coherence in NATO.

Turkish forces with support of Radical Islamic militias have launched four major military operations in northern Syria since the Syrian war started in 2011, taking control of areas along the border in what it says is a bid to “protect its national security” and its frontier.

Hours after the statement of General Abdi, the SAA were stationed near al-Arima, on the al-Sajour line in the Manbij countryside, east of Aleppo. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported heavy weapons took up positions, and 3 tanks and 3 rocket launchers were deployed to protect SDF areas from Turkish assault.

General Abdi said on Friday,

“We have given the forces of the Damascus government to deploy in our areas, and they have quality and heavy weapons, and it is their duty to defend the Syrian territories.”

Turkey has launched two offensives against Kurdish fighters in Syria since 2018. It alleges that Syria’s main Kurdish militia – the People’s Protection Units, or YPG – are allied with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group fighting for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey and viewed as a terrorist organization by Ankara. The YPG, a backbone of the SDF, has led the fight against Islamic State (ISIS) militants in partnership with the US.

The Iran-Turkey-Russian summit today in Tehran

A trilateral summit has brought the presidents of Russia, Iran and Turkey together in the Iranian capital Tehran, and will focus on the Syrian issue and the Turkish planned military operation against Syria’s Kurds.

Mazloum’s statement about SAA

In June, the SDF said they were ready to coordinate with the SAA forces to protect Syrian territories against Turkish attacks.  The meeting was chaired by General Abdi of the SDF. “The meeting… confirmed the SDF’s readiness to coordinate with the forces of the Damascus government to thwart any potential Turkish attack and protect Syrian territories,”

James Jeffrey statement on US policy

In late 2018, US Special Representative for Syria James Jeffrey said they goal of the SDF should be “to become part of the fabric of a changed Syrian society.”  He urged them to repair their relationship with Damascus, because “we do not have permanent relationships with sub-state entities.”

In 2019, Jeffrey told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “We don’t have a political future that we offer for [Kurds].”

“The political future we offer for them is the political future we offer for everybody in Syria” – a stake in “a democratic, peaceful government” based in Damascus, Jeffrey added.

The Turkish threat of expansion of their previous invasion

President Erdogan claimed that Turkish forces would ethnically cleanse Manbij and Tel Rifaat in the eastern countryside of Aleppo of Kurds, and create a 30-kilometer-deep security zone. Turkey uses Radical Islamic terrorists as mercenaries in Syria.  Residents faced with this threat have asked the Damascus government to protect them from Turkish attack.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from MD

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***

The months-long extradition hearings of Julian Assange, a trial that will forever define modern journalism, have been shamelessly whitewashed by British media.  Too few news agencies reported on the utter abrogation of judicial Due Process and The Rule of Law exhibited in a British courtroom against an innocent fellow journalist.

This sham trial exposed a fundamental British truth: That the UK courts and its press are really America’s concubines, willing to fellate any US interest on command.

With the number of courtroom seats set at only sixteen, the few in attendance at Westminster Magistrate’s Court provided the only reporting from the trial to the world. Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murry reported daily the courtroom torture of Julian Assange. However,  world media quashed the story!

Wrote Murry in outrage,

 “… I simply cannot believe the blatant abuse of process that is unfolding before my eyes in this courtroom…. A complicit mainstream media has ensured those of us who know what is happening are very few…”                               

Extradition effectively began after Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy on April 11, 2019, and sentenced on May 1 to fifty weeks in jail for jumping bail for the safety offered by then-president Rafael Correa. The bell tolled when incoming president Lenin Moreno rescinded his asylum due to US pressure.

The judge for the extradition was Vanessa Baraitser, who was selected by Chief Magistrate Lady Arbuthnot whose husband James has substantial interests with UK and US defence and security contractors and has condemned Assange publicly.

This travesty of justice began at Baraitser’s opening gavel when she first denied bail and ordered Assange to be placed each day in a plexiglass box with one bailiff on each side of him at the back of the courtroom where he could not communicate with his attorneys.

Baraitser’s order brought defence councils QC Edward Fitzgerald and QC Mark Summers together with prosecutor QC James Lewis in stipulating to allow Assange to sit, as normal, with his council. Baraitser denied the request.

Assange was punished before and during the hearings. Always handcuffed, he was moved between five isolation cells on his way to his plastic box. In Belmarsh Prison he has not been allowed proper medical attention, denied his books, writing supplies and access to his court documents, while being kept in solitary confinement.

When Trump became US president his Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that it was suddenly “a priority for the Justice Department” to arrest Julian Assange.

Later William Barr as AG, in May 2019 issued a new superseding indictment — sealed and ignored since 2013 — that added seventeen counts related to the 1917 Espionage Act. This had been an abandoned attempt by Obama AG, Eric Holder who refused to indict Assange using the Espionage Act. Yet the allegations were the same in 2018 as they had been in 2013.

Assange’s fate may have been sealed, however, when in the last weeks of the Trump/Clinton presidential election campaign, Wikileaks provided to the American voter documentary emails that plainly showed that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) led by Donna Brazile, John Podesta, and Amy Wasserman Schultz were not promoting democracy at all, but instead a two-year conspiracy to elect only Hillary Clinton regardless of rising national support for Bernie Sanders. Days later…Hillary lost.

Abuse of Process by the prosecution gave many reasons for an impartial judge to summarily dismiss the extradition request. Bariatser’s court ignored the wiretap of Assange’s embassy office and of his privileged conversations with his attorneys, the US discussion of having him assassinated using poison and that much of the evidence produced by the prosecution was false and that QC Lewis knew it.

Baraitser on many days brought a laptop from which she read an obviously prepared ruling at the end of the day’s proceedings.

QC David Lewis spoke for the American interests while a team of four unknown Americans sat behind him each day passing him notes.

The prosecution’s case hung on four main points: Assange was not a journalist nor protected by Free Speech or Political Prisoner statutes; Assange had committed crimes when he allegedly helped Chelsea Manning obtain a password for her leaked classified material; that Wikileaks put lives at risk by failing to redact important names when publishing the 2010 leak; and that Assange would certainly receive fair treatment in a US Gulag after being found guilty.

For testimony, the prosecution relied substantially on the written affidavit of US Assistant Attorney Gordon Kromberg who was the man who crafted the 2018 US superseding indictment against Assange. Kromberg provided many assurances of Assange’s guilty.

For the defence, QC Edward Fitzgerald and QC Mark Summers countered every allegation using expert witnesses with impeccable credentials. Baraitser again knee-capped the defence by not allowing more than thirty minutes to introduce each expert and their statements to the court. Rather, she allowed QC Lewis four and one-half hours for each of his cross-examinations.

The very legality of the US extradition request was first in question because the 2004 US/UK extradition treaty provided a specific exemption for Political Prisoners. A separate UK treaty, not specific to the US/UK treaty however, did not contain this prohibition. Baraitser ultimately favoured the prosecution, ignoring the exemption for political dissidents.

The defence produced experts with knowledge with working conditions of Alexandria City Jail, and the Florence, CO SuperMax- Assange’s fate. Twenty-three hours a day in isolation with one hour of exercise per day while shackled, two phone calls and one family visit a month and restricted access to his attorneys.  Gordon Kromberg by affidavit, “assured” the court that Assange would not likely suffer these conditions.

With the hearing already underway, on June 20, 2020, the prosecution suddenly announced that it was introducing a brand new subsequent indictment. Evidence showed that the US prosecution had planned this move for months despite the de fence’s preparations. No matter. Bariatser gave the defence a mere six weeks to prepare to challenge the new allegations that the US had kept secret from the court and the defence for months.

Regarding the allegations of Assange helping Manning gain a password for access to classified information the defence and its witnesses showed that no password was required to gain access; that a journalist aiding a source is constitutionally protected and that Assange had gone to great lengths to redact sensitive information with Wikileaks working directly with US officials to do so.

As to the Manning leak becoming public, the defence showed that it was two journalists from The Guardian newspaper, Luke Harding and David Leigh, who published the security code in their tell-all book, “Wikileaks.” The code created by Wikileaks was to keep the Manning tranche safe while redacting.  When Assange got word of Harding and Leigh’s treachery he alerted US officials. Yet, quietly the Guardian failed to comment. Publicly they let Assange swing instead of Harding or Leigh.

On June 26, 2021, the man the FBI used as its main informant in Iceland regarding Assange helping Manning break the non-existent password, Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson recanted his testimony saying it was coerced. His claim is bolstered by Iceland’s expulsion of the FBI because it was fostering Thordarson to frame Assange.

After the many weeks in court, as expected Baraitser ignored virtually the entire defence and ruled that the US/UK treaty prohibition did not apply, Assange was not a journalist, nor a political refugee, he did help Manning access a code that did not exist, and he had not redacted national security information.

Unfathomably, Baraitser next ruled that Assange could not be extradited since incarceration American-style would likely force his eventual suicide.

Any celebration was momentary. Baraitser remanded Assange back into custody pending a US appeal. In Appeals, the UK High Court on Dec 10, 2021, ruled that renewed American “assurances” regarding Assange’s treatment in US prison could legally negate Baraitser’s inconvenient decision otherwise.

Assange next appealed to the UK Supreme Court but they refused him standing leaving Home Secretary Pritti Patel to twist the knife and approve Assange’s extradition on June 16.

The extradition, a Kangaroo court twelve years in the making will now return before the High Court in a last desperate appeal of Abuse of Process. But first, the Union Jack will be dutifully lowered from sight in the courtroom, to again being replaced…in favour of the Stars and Stripes.

Call the UK High Court now.  +44 (0) 20 7947 6010.  “Free Julian Assange!”

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Brett Redmayne-Titley has spent the last decade travelling and documenting the “Sorrows of Empire.” An archive of his many articles can be found at watchingromeburn.uk. He can be contacted at live-on-scene ((@))gmx.com. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The purpose of vaccination is behavioural control of the population and eugenic control.

There is no mRNA in vaccines, only nanotechnology and reduced graphene oxide.

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Allegations that MI5 officers and sections of the media sought to bring down Britain’s Labour government in the 1960s and 70s have resurfaced, raising fresh questions about plots that remain hidden behind a wall of official secrecy.

A file released on Tuesday by the National Archives, titled “Allegations concerning a possible coup in 1968”, reveals how rattled MI5 and the Home Office were many years later about conspiracies that have never been properly investigated.

The declassified file refers to discussions about how to topple the then Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson. Wilson was smeared by right-wing groups aided by sections of the media suggesting that he was a security risk because some of his acquaintances had  links with former KGB officers.

The document contains a “background note” written by a Home Office official in 1981 referring to “recent revelations” that “a possible ‘coup’ was discussed between Lord Mountbatten, Mr Cecil King and Lord Zuckerman in May 1968”.

Mountbatten was a former chief of the defence staff and the Queen’s cousin, Cecil King was chair of the International Publishing Corporation (IPC), which owned the Daily Mirror newspaper, and Solly Zuckerman was the government’s former chief scientific adviser.

In an attempt to brush off their significance, the revelations were “not new”, the official noted.

The file also contains a carefully-drafted response to a letter Ted Leadbetter, a Labour MP, had written to the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in April 1981 following newspaper reports referring to plots to get rid of Wilson.

The response to Leadbetter, approved by the head of MI5, Sir John Jones, and Sir Brian Cubbon, the top official at the Home Office, stated: “There is nothing to suggest anything that came even remotely near to being a serious conspiracy to undermine or overthrow Parliamentary democracy”.

However, the file has been heavily redacted by Whitehall “weeders” and withheld, either in whole or in part, by the notorious section 3(4) of the Public Records Act that allows government departments and agencies to keep official papers secret without having to give any reason.

State of the country

Tuesday’s file contains a Times newspaper report, dated 3 April 1981, revealing an unpublished entry in Cecil King’s private diary, under the headline, “Mountbatten and the coup that wasn’t quite”.

King had recorded in the entry for 8 May 1968 that he saw Lord Mountbatten “at his request’. King was accompanied by Hugh (later Lord) Cudlipp, the editorial director of the Mirror Group.

Mountbatten had asked Lord Zuckerman, described by Mountbatten as “a man of invincible integrity”, to be present at the meeting. In what Zuckerman later described as “rank treachery”, Cecil King said the Queen was said to be worried about the state of the country, the low morale of the armed forces, and the prospect of “bloodshed on the streets”.

In his private diary, Mountbatten dismissed King’s ramblings as “dangerous nonsense”.

A few days later, King signed an article across the Mirror’s front page in a devastating attack on Wilson under the banner headline: “Enough is Enough”.

“Cecil King said the Queen was said to be worried about the state of the country.”

The newly-released file includes a handwritten letter King wrote in October 1981 to the cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong. In it he refers to newspaper accusations that he had planned a coup, “military perhaps”, to overthrow the government.

King insisted they had “no foundation in fact”, despite the concerns expressed by Zuckerman and Mountbatten and, later, by Wilson himself.

In his letter to Armstrong, King referred to his sudden sacking from the IPC board following his front page article attacking Wilson. “It now occurs to me”, King wrote, “that Wilson was so disturbed that the Daily Mirror “had cooled towards him” that he “decided to remove me.”

King continued that perhaps Wilson had told his colleagues he had evidence that King was planning a coup. King told Armstrong: “My coolness was due to the fact that Wilson was no prime minister, that he would lose the 1970 election”.

A recent book claimed the Queen had to talk Mountbatten out of leading the plot to overthrow Wilson.

Secrecy

In the preface to his official history of MI5 published in 2009 the historian Christopher Andrew referred to redactions he was asked to make. “The most difficult part of the clearance process has concerned the requirements of other government departments”, he wrote.

He added: “One significant excision as a result of these requirements in Chapter E4 is, I believe, hard to justify. This and other issues relating to the level of secrecy about past intelligence operations…would, in my view, merit consideration by the Intelligence and Security Committee”.

Chapter E4 is titled “The ‘Wilson Plot’. The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) is a Parliamentary body that has legal powers to scrutinise MI5.

I asked Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former defence and foreign secretary and then chair of the ISC, whether he would take up Andrew’s invitation. He declined.

I made a Freedom of Information Act request to the Cabinet Office asking them to tell me what Andrew was referring to. It refused, saying “Intelligence” material was exempted under the Act.

MI5 ’will have to consider our position’

The episode was not the only plot to subvert the Labour leader. Prompted by claims that Wilson’s network included individuals with past links to the KGB, MI5 had been building up a file on Wilson, under the pseudonym “Henry Worthington”, that was kept in a safe in the office of the agency’s director general.

In the 1970s, after Wilson was elected prime minister for a second term, George Kennedy Young, a former vice chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, set up what he called a “Unison Committee for Action” with, among others, the retired general, Sir Walter Walker.

Although this was initially directed at Heath, the Tory leader they regarded as far too soft on trade union leaders, Wilson was its main target.

MI5 had been building up a file on Wilson, under the pseudonym “Henry Worthington”.

A steady stream of media reports, combined with talk in Westminster and Whitehall talk about MI5 and other plots to destabilise him led Wilson in 1975 to summon the head of MI6, Maurice Oldfield, and ask whether he knew about them. Oldfield said he did.

“There was a section of MI5 that was unreliable”, journalist David Leigh wrote in his book, The Wilson Plot.

Leigh says that following Wilson’s decision to resign in 1976 for a mixture of personal and medical reasons – his formidable memory was going in what seemed to be the onset of alzheimer’s – Michael Hanley, then head of MI5, was asked what the implication would be if the left winger, Michael Foot took over as Labour leader.

Hanley replied: “I and every other officer in the service will have to consider our position”

Stopping Corbyn

Many years later, another elected Labour leader came under attack by a senior member of the Intelligence establishment, this time in the open. Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 at the time of the invasion of Iraq, intervened at the height of the 2019 general election campaign to deliver a blistering attack on Jeremy Corbyn.

“For what conceivable reason should voters now risk giving Corbyn actual control of our national security policy by electing him to prime ministerial office?”, he told readers of the Mail on Sunday.

Corbyn has told Declassified about attacks on him by elements in the British establishment. He gave as an example the Sunday Times quoting a “senior serving general” who warned that the armed forces would take “direct action” to stop a Corbyn government.

The anonymous general added: “There would be mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny.”

When Declassified asked the Ministry of Defence if it had looked into the general’s threat, the department said it held no records of any investigation.

In his official history, Andrew points to Wilson’s successor, James Callaghan’s reference to Wilson’s “paranoia”. If this is what he suffered from, it was understandable. As Joseph Heller observed in Catch 22, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you”.

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Richard is a British editor, journalist and playwright, and the doyen of British national security reporting. He wrote for the Guardian on defence and security matters and was the newspaper’s security editor for three decades.

Featured image: Harold Wilson (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Dr Peter Breggin MD is a lifelong reformer known as “The Conscience of Psychiatry” for his criticism of biological psychiatry and his promotion of more effective, empathic, and ethical forms of psychological, educational, and social approaches to people with emotional suffering and disability. He graduated from Harvard College with Honors and his psychiatric training included a Teaching Fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

Following his training, he became a Full Time Consultant in the U.S. Public Health Service at NIH, assigned to the National Institute of Mental Health. Since then, he has taught at several universities, including Johns Hopkins, George Mason, and the University of Maryland, as well as at the Washington School of Psychiatry.

Dr. Breggin gives his no-holds-barred view of why America’s children are so depressed, suicidal and homicidal.

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This interview was originally published on TNT Radio.

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The following is an abridged version of the second chapter of the author’s short (free-to-read) e-book Food, Dispossession and Dependency (2022) 

GM crops are required to feed the world is a well-worn industry slogan trotted out at every available opportunity. Just like the claim of GM crops being a tremendous success, this too is based on a myth.

There is no global shortage of food. Even under any plausible future population scenario, there will be no shortage as evidenced by scientist Dr Jonathan Latham in his paper “The Myth of a Food Crisis” (2020).

However, new gene drive and gene editing techniques have now been developed and the industry is seeking the unregulated commercial release of products that are based on these methods.

These new techniques can cause a range of unwanted genetic modifications that can result in the production of novel toxins or allergens or in the transfer of antibiotic resistance genes. Even intended modifications can result in traits which could raise food safety, environmental or animal welfare concerns.

The European Court of Justice ruled in 2018 that organisms obtained with new genetic modification techniques must be regulated under the EU’s existing GMO laws. However, there has been intense lobbying from the agriculture biotech industry to weaken the legislation, aided financially by the Gates Foundation.

Various scientific publications show that new GM techniques allow developers to make significant genetic changes, which can be very different from those that happen in nature. These new GMOs pose similar or greater risks than older-style GMOs.

In addition to these concerns, a paper from Chinese scientists, ‘Herbicide Resistance: Another Hot Agronomic Trait for Plant Genome Editing’, says that, in spite of claims from GMO promoters that gene editing will be climate-friendly and reduce pesticide use, what we can expect is just more of the same – GM herbicide-tolerant crops and increased herbicide use.

By dodging regulation as well as avoiding economic, social, environmental and health impact assessments, it is clear that the industry is first and foremost motivated by value capture and profit and contempt for democratic accountability.

Bt cotton in India 

This is patently clear if we look at the rollout of Bt cotton in India (the only officially approved GM crop in that country) which served the bottom line of Monsanto but brought dependency, distress and no durable agronomic benefits for many of India’s small and marginal farmers. Prof A P Gutierrez argues that Bt cotton has effectively placed these farmers in a corporate noose.

Cotton harvest in India (Source: Flickr)

Monsanto sucked hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from these cotton farmers, while industry-funded scientists are always keen to push the mantra that rolling out Bt cotton in India uplifted their conditions.

On 24 August 2020, a webinar on Bt cotton in India took place involving Andrew Paul Gutierrez, senior emeritus professor in the College of Natural Resources at the University of California at Berkeley, Keshav Kranthi, former director of Central Institute for Cotton Research in India, Peter Kenmore, former FAO representative in India, and Hans Herren, World Food Prize Laureate.

Herren said that “the failure of Bt cotton” is a classic representation of what an unsound science of plant protection and faulty direction of agricultural development can lead to.

He argued that a transformation of agriculture and the food system is required; one that entails a shift to agroecology, which includes regenerative, organic, biodynamic, permaculture and natural farming practices.

Kenmore said that Bt cotton is an aging pest control technology:

“It follows the same path worn down by generations of insecticide molecules from arsenic to DDT to BHC to endosulfan to monocrotophos to carbaryl to imidacloprid. In-house research aims for each molecule to be packaged biochemically, legally and commercially before it is released and promoted. Corporate and public policy actors then claim yield increases but deliver no more than temporary pest suppression, secondary pest release and pest resistance.”

Recurrent cycles of crises have sparked public action and ecological field research which creates locally adapted agroecological strategies.

He added that this agroecology:

“…now gathers global support from citizens’ groups, governments and UN FAO. Their robust local solutions in Indian cotton do not require any new molecules, including endo-toxins like in Bt cotton”.

Gutierrez presented the ecological reasons as to why hybrid Bt cotton failed in India: long season Bt cotton introduced in India was incorporated into hybrids that trapped farmers into biotech and insecticide treadmills that benefited GMO seed manufacturers.

He noted:

“The cultivation of long-season hybrid Bt cotton in rainfed areas is unique to India. It is a value capture mechanism that does not contribute to yield, is a major contributor to low yield stagnation and contributes to increasing production costs.”

Gutierrez asserted that increases in cotton farmer suicides are related to the resulting economic distress.

Presenting data on yields, insecticide usage, irrigation, fertiliser usage and pest incidence and resistance, Kranthi said an analysis of official statistics (eands.dacnet.nic.in and cotcorp.gov.in) shows that Bt hybrid technology has not been providing any tangible benefits in India either in yield or insecticide usage.

Cotton yields are the lowest in the world in Maharashtra, despite being saturated with Bt hybrids and the highest use of fertilisers. Yields in Maharashtra are less than in rainfed Africa where there is hardly any usage of technologies such as Bt hybrids, fertilisers, pesticides or irrigation.

It is revealing that Indian cotton yields rank 36th in the world and have been stagnant in the past 15 years and insecticide usage has been constantly increasing after 2005, despite an increase in area under Bt cotton.

Kranthi argued that research also shows that the Bt hybrid technology has failed the test of sustainability with resistance in pink bollworm to Bt cotton, increasing sucking pest infestation, increasing trends in insecticide and fertiliser usage, increasing costs and negative net returns in 2014 and 2015.

Herren said that GMOs exemplify the case of a technology searching for an application:

“It is essentially about treating symptoms, rather than taking a systems approach to create resilient, productive and bio-diverse food systems in the widest sense and to provide sustainable and affordable solutions in it’s social, environmental and economic dimensions.”

He went on to say:

“We need to push aside the vested interests blocking the transformation with the baseless arguments of ‘the world needs more food’ and design and implement policies that are forward-looking… We have all the needed scientific and practical evidence that the agroecological approaches to food and nutrition security work successfully.”

Those who continue to spin Bt cotton in India as a resounding success remain wilfully ignorant of the challenges (documented in the 2019 book by Andrew Flachs – Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India) farmers face in terms of financial distress, increasing pest resistance, dependency on unregulated seed markets, the eradication of environmental learning,  the loss of control over their productive means and the biotech-chemical treadmill they are trapped on (this last point is precisely what the industry intended).

In general, across the world the performance of GM crops to date has been questionable, but the pro-GMO lobby has wasted no time in wrenching the issues of hunger and poverty from their political contexts to use notions of ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as lynchpins of its promotional strategy. There exists a haughty imperialism within the pro-GMO scientific lobby that aggressively pushes for a GMO ‘solution’ which is a distraction from the root causes of poverty, hunger and malnutrition and genuine solutions based on food justice and food sovereignty.

The performance of GM crops has been a hotly contested issue and, as highlighted in a 2018 piece by PC Kesavan and MS Swaminathan in the journal Current Science, there is already sufficient evidence to question their efficacy, especially that of herbicide-tolerant crops (which by 2007 already accounted for approximately 80% of biotech-derived crops grown globally) and the devastating impacts on the environment, human health and food security, not least in places like Latin America.

In their paper, Kesavan and Swaminathan argue that GM technology is supplementary and must be need based. In more than 99% of cases, they say that time-honoured conventional breeding is sufficient. In this respect, conventional options and innovations that outperform GM must not be overlooked or side-lined in a rush by powerful interests like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to facilitate the introduction of GM crops into global agriculture; crops which are highly financially lucrative for the corporations behind them.

In Europe, robust regulatory mechanisms are in place for GMOs because it is recognised that GM food/crops are not substantially equivalent to their non-GM counterparts. Numerous studies have highlighted the flawed premise of ‘substantial equivalence’.

Both the Cartagena Protocol and Codex share a precautionary approach to GM crops and foods, in that they agree that GM differs from conventional breeding and that safety assessments should be required before GMOs are used in food or released into the environment. There is sufficient reason to hold back on commercialising GM crops and to subject each GMO to independent, transparent environmental, social, economic and health impact evaluations.

Regardless, global food insecurity and malnutrition are not the result of a lack of productivity. As long as food injustice remains an inbuilt feature of the global food regime, the rhetoric of GM being necessary for feeding the world will be seen for what it is: bombast.

Take India, for instance. Although it fares poorly in world hunger assessments, the country has achieved self-sufficiency in food grains and has ensured there is enough food (in terms of calories) available to feed its entire population. It is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables, fruit and cotton.

According to FAO, food security is achieved when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

Large sections of India’s population do not have enough food available to remain healthy nor do they have sufficiently diverse diets that provide adequate levels of micronutrients.

People are not hungry in India because its farmers do not produce enough food. Hunger and malnutrition result from various factors, including inadequate food distribution, (gender) inequality and poverty; in fact, the country continues to export food while millions remain hungry. It’s a case of ‘scarcity’ amid abundance.

Where farmers’ livelihoods are concerned, the pro-GMO lobby says GM will boost productivity and help secure cultivators a better income. Again, this is misleading: it ignores crucial political and economic contexts. Even with bumper harvests, Indian farmers still find themselves in financial distress.

India’s farmers are not experiencing hardship due to low productivity. They are reeling from the effects of neoliberal policies, years of neglect and a deliberate strategy to displace smallholder agriculture at the behest of the World Bank and predatory global agri-food corporations. Little wonder then that the calorie and essential nutrient intake of the rural poor has drastically fallen. No number of GMOs will put any of this right.

Nevertheless, the pro-GMO lobby, both outside of India and within, has twisted the situation for its own ends to mount intensive PR campaigns to sway public opinion and policy makers.

Golden Rice 

The industry has for many years been promoting Golden Rice. It has long argued that genetically engineered Golden Rice is a practical way to provide poor farmers in remote areas with a subsistence crop capable of adding much-needed vitamin A to local diets. Vitamin A deficiency is a problem in many poor countries in the Global South and leaves millions at high risk for infection, diseases and other maladies, such as blindness.

Some scientists believe that Golden Rice, which has been developed with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, could help save the lives of around 670,000 children who die each year from Vitamin A deficiency and another 350,000 who go blind.

Image on the right: Source is Flickr

Meanwhile, critics say there are serious issues with Golden Rice and that alternative approaches to tackling vitamin A deficiency should be implemented. Greenpeace and other environmental groups say the claims being made by the pro-Golden Rice lobby are misleading and are oversimplifying the actual problems in combating vitamin A deficiency.

Many critics regard Golden Rice as an over-hyped Trojan horse that biotechnology corporations and their allies hope will pave the way for the global approval of other more profitable GM crops. The Rockefeller Foundation might be regarded as a ‘philanthropic’ entity but its track record indicates it has been very much part of an agenda which facilitates commercial and geopolitical interests to the detriment of indigenous agriculture and local and national economies.

As Britain’s Environment Secretary in 2013, the now disgraced Owen Paterson claimed that opponents of GM were “casting a dark shadow over attempts to feed the world”. He called for the rapid roll-out of vitamin A-enhanced rice to help prevent the cause of up to a third of the world’s child deaths. He claimed:

“It’s just disgusting that little children are allowed to go blind and die because of a hang-up by a small number of people about this technology. I feel really strongly about it. I think what they do is absolutely wicked.”

Robin McKie, science writer for The Observer, wrote a piece on Golden Rice that uncritically presented all the usual industry talking points. On Twitter, The Observer’s Nick Cohen chimed in with his support by tweeting:

“There is no greater example of ignorant Western privilege causing needless misery than the campaign against genetically modified golden rice.”

Despite the smears and emotional blackmail employed by supporters of Golden Rice, in a 2016 article in the journal Agriculture & Human Values Glenn Stone and Dominic Glover found little evidence that anti-GM activists are to blame for Golden Rice’s unfulfilled promises. Golden rice was still years away from field introduction and even when ready may fall far short of lofty health benefits claimed by its supporters.

Stone stated that:

“Golden Rice is still not ready for the market, but we find little support for the common claim that environmental activists are responsible for stalling its introduction. GMO opponents have not been the problem.”

The rice simply has not been successful in test plots of the rice breeding institutes in the Philippines, where the leading research is being done. While activists did destroy one Golden Rice test plot in a 2013 protest, Stone says it is unlikely that this action had any significant impact on the approval of Golden Rice.

Stone said:

“Destroying test plots is a dubious way to express opposition, but this was only one small plot out of many plots in multiple locations over many years. Moreover, they have been calling Golden Rice critics ‘murderers’ for over a decade.”

Believing that Golden Rice was originally a promising idea backed by good intentions, Stone argued:

“But if we are actually interested in the welfare of poor children – instead of just fighting over GMOs – then we have to make unbiased assessments of possible solutions. The simple fact is that after 24 years of research and breeding, Golden Rice is still years away from being ready for release.”

Researchers still had problems developing beta carotene-enriched strains that yield as well as non-GM strains already being grown by farmers. Stone and Glover point out that it is still unknown if the beta carotene in Golden Rice can even be converted to vitamin A in the bodies of badly undernourished children. There also has been little research on how well the beta carotene in Golden Rice will hold up when stored for long periods between harvest seasons or when cooked using traditional methods common in remote rural locations.

Claire Robinson, an editor at GMWatch, has argued that the rapid degradation of beta-carotene in the rice during storage and cooking means it is not a solution to vitamin A deficiency in the developing world. There are also various other problems, including absorption in the gut and the low and varying levels of beta-carotene that may be delivered by Golden Rice in the first place.

In the meantime, as the development of Golden Rice creeps along, the Philippines has managed to slash the incidence of Vitamin A deficiency by non-GM methods.

The evidence presented here might lead us to question why supporters of Golden Rice continue to smear critics and engage in abuse and emotional blackmail when activists are not to blame for the failure of Golden Rice to reach the commercial market. Whose interests are they really serving in pushing so hard for this technology?

In 2011, Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, a senior scientist with a background in insect ecology and pest management asked a similar question:

“Who oversees this ambitious project, which its advocates claim will end the suffering of millions?”

She answered her question by stating:

“An elite, so-called Humanitarian Board where Syngenta sits – along with the inventors of Golden Rice, Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and public relations and marketing experts, among a handful of others. Not a single farmer, indigenous person or even an ecologist or sociologist to assess the huge political, social and ecological implications of this massive experiment. And the leader of IRRI’s Golden Rice project is none other than Gerald Barry, previously Director of Research at Monsanto.”

Sarojeni V. Rengam, executive director of Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific, called on the donors and scientists involved to wake up and do the right thing:

“Golden Rice is really a ‘Trojan horse’; a public relations stunt pulled by the agribusiness corporations to garner acceptance of GE crops and food. The whole idea of GE seeds is to make money… we want to send out a strong message to all those supporting the promotion of Golden Rice, especially donor organisations, that their money and efforts would be better spent on restoring natural and agricultural biodiversity rather than destroying it by promoting monoculture plantations and genetically engineered (GE) food crops.”

And she makes a valid point. To tackle disease, malnutrition and poverty, you have to first understand the underlying causes – or indeed want to understand them.

A complex of policies that pushed the Philippines into an economic quagmire over the past 30 years is due to ‘structural adjustment’, involving prioritising debt repayment, conservative macroeconomic management, huge cutbacks in government spending, trade and financial liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation, the restructuring of agriculture and export-oriented production.

And that restructuring of the agrarian economy is something touched on by Claire Robinson who notes that leafy green vegetables used to be grown in backyards as well as in rice (paddy) fields on the banks between the flooded ditches in which the rice grew.

Ditches also contained fish, which ate pests. People thus had access to rice, green leafy veg and fish – a balanced diet that gave them a healthy mix of nutrients, including plenty of beta-carotene.

But indigenous crops and farming systems have been replaced by monocultures dependent on chemical inputs. Green leafy veg were killed off with pesticides, artificial fertilisers were introduced and the fish could not live in the resulting chemically contaminated water. Moreover, decreased access to land meant that many people no longer had backyards containing leafy green veg. People only had access to an impoverished diet of rice alone, laying the foundation for the supposed Golden Rice ‘solution’.

The effects of IMF/World Bank ‘structural adjustments’ have devastated agrarian economies and made them dependent on Western agribusiness, manipulated markets and unfair trade rules. And GM is now offered as the ‘solution’ for tackling poverty-related diseases. The very corporations which gained from restructuring agrarian economies now want to profit from the havoc caused.

In 2013, the Soil Association argued that the poor are suffering from broader malnourishment than just vitamin A deficiency; the best solution is to use supplementation and fortification as emergency sticking-plasters and then for implementing measures which tackle the broader issues of poverty and malnutrition.

Tackling the wider issues includes providing farmers with a range of seeds, tools and skills necessary for growing more diverse crops to target broader issues of malnutrition. Part of this entails breeding crops high in nutrients; for instance, the creation of sweet potatoes that grow in tropical conditions, cross-bred with vitamin A rich orange sweet potatoes, which grow in the USA. There are successful campaigns providing these potatoes, a staggering five times higher in vitamin A than Golden Rice, to farmers in Uganda and Mozambique.

Blindness in developing countries could have been eradicated years ago if only the money, research and publicity put into Golden Rice over the last 20 years had gone into proven ways of addressing Vitamin A deficiency.

Value capture 

Traditional production systems rely on the knowledge and expertise of farmers in contrast to imported ‘solutions’. Yet, if we take cotton cultivation in India as an example, farmers continue to be nudged away from traditional methods of farming and are being pushed towards (illegal) GM herbicide-tolerant cotton seeds.

Researchers Glenn Stone and Andrew Flachs note the results of this shift from traditional practices to date does not appear to have benefited farmers. This is not about giving farmers ‘choice’ where GM seeds and associated chemicals are concerned (another much-promoted industry talking point). It is more about GM seed companies and weedicide manufactures seeking to leverage a highly lucrative market.

The potential for herbicide market growth in India is enormous. The objective involves opening India to GM seeds with herbicide tolerance traits, the biotechnology industry’s biggest money maker by far (86% of the world’s GM crop acres in 2015 contained plants resistant to glyphosate or glufosinate and there is a new generation of crops resistant to 2,4-D coming through).

The aim is to break farmers’ traditional pathways and move them onto corporate biotech/chemical treadmills for the benefit of industry.

Calls for agroecology and highlighting the benefits of traditional, small-scale agriculture are not based on a romantic yearning for the past or ‘the peasantry’. Available evidence suggests that smallholder farming using low-input methods is more productive in overall output than large-scale industrial farms and can be more profitable and resilient to climate change. It is for good reason that numerous high-level reports call for investment in this type of agriculture.

Despite the pressures, including the fact that globally industrial agriculture grabs 80% of subsidies and 90% of research funds, smallholder agriculture plays a major role in feeding the world.

At the same time, agri-food oligopolies externalise the massive health, social and environmental costs of their operations.

But policy makers tend to accept that profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be owners and custodians of natural assets (the ‘commons’). These corporations, their lobbyists and their political representatives have succeeded in cementing a ‘thick legitimacy’ among policy makers for their vision of agriculture.

Common ownership and management of these assets embodies the notion of people working together for the public good. However, these resources have been appropriated by national states or private entities.

Those who capture essential common resources seek to commodify them – whether trees for timber, land for real estate or agricultural seeds – create artificial scarcity and force everyone else to pay for access. The process involves eradicating self-sufficiency.

International bodies have enshrined the interests of corporations that seek to monopolise seeds, land, water, biodiversity and other natural assets that belong to us all.

Technocratic meddling has already destroyed or undermined agrarian ecosystems that draw on centuries of traditional knowledge and are increasingly recognised as valid approaches to secure food security.

Under the guise of ‘climate emergency’, we are currently seeing a push for the Global South to embrace the Gates’ vision for a one-world agriculture (’Ag One’) dominated by global agribusiness and the tech giants. But it is the so-called developed nations and the rich elites that have plundered the environment and degraded the natural world.

To say that one model of agriculture must now be accepted by all countries is a continuation of a colonialist mindset.

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

The author receives no payment from any media outlet or organization for his work. If you appreciated this article, consider sending a few coins his way: [email protected] 

Featured image is from NaturalNews.com

Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

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

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

Click here to read.

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***

Guest: Bobbie Anne Flower Cox, Attorney at Law in New York with focus on representing New Yorkers on matters pertaining to over-reaching government agencies or departments.

This session is about a report on her recently won lawsuit.

Background:

During this year, she has been in a lawsuit against Governor Kathy Hochul and the NY Dept of Health over their illegal “isolation and quarantine camp” regulation.

This regulation allowed the government to take someone out of their home, quarantine them just because they assumed they have been exposed to a disease, and they didn’t even have to prove that the person really has a. disease.

They could have even removed just one person from a family unit!

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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

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

***

Eight decades ago, the Asia-Pacific War officially began on the morning of Sunday 7 December 1941, with Japan’s military attack on the American-controlled Pearl Harbor naval base at Oahu, Hawaii. This region is located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 2,400 miles away from the nearest point of the United States mainland coast, at San Francisco, California. 

In Western historical annals, Japan’s raid on the Pearl Harbor base is often regarded as an attack on American soil itself, neglecting to mention that the US, for no just cause, had occupied and annexed Hawaii in the late 19th century. Russia has a much greater claim to the Crimea, which is historically Russian, than America ever had to Hawaii or Cuba, etc.

In a matter of minutes the Japanese aerial bombing of Pearl Harbor had wiped out the US Pacific Fleet stationed there. This gave Japan naval dominance in the Pacific Ocean, for the time being. Japan’s warplanes had failed to destroy the huge oil tanks in the dockyard, while Pearl Harbor’s installations like its submarine pens and signals intelligence units were undamaged; most importantly, the three US aircraft carriers (Lexington, Enterprise and Saratoga) were by chance out to sea at the time of the Japanese assault. By far the closest of the three was the Enterprise, which at dawn on 7 December 1941 was positioned around 215 miles west of Pearl Harbor.

Japan’s military leaders were, on the whole, contented indeed with the damage inflicted on the US Armed Forces at Pearl Harbor, which was greater than Tokyo had expected. In south-east Asia, a few hours before the bombing of Pearl Harbor even started, the Japanese 25th Army, led by Japan’s formidable commander Tomoyuki Yamashita, landed in northern British Malaya in the early hours of 7 December 1941. Mark E. Stille, a retired US Navy commander, wrote that “Of all the armies fielded by Japan during the war, the 25th Army was the best led and equipped”. By evening of the first day of the Japanese amphibious landings, the whole of northern British Malaya had been lost by the British, almost without a fight.

In the latter part of December 1941, the Japanese 25th Army successfully pushed down the Malayan peninsula coastlines, and the British withdrew before them. Having advanced over 200 miles southward, on 11 January 1942 General Yamashita’s divisions captured the Malayan capital city, Kuala Lumpur. By late January 1942 the British had retreated into Singapore island slightly further south, meaning that in 7 weeks the Japanese had cleared the entire Malayan mainland of enemy soldiers.

On 8 February 1942, an amphibious assault established the Japanese 25th Army on Singapore, considered a jewel in the British Empire’s crown. Despite General Yamashita’s troops being outnumbered, his men captured Singapore a week later on 15 February. More than 80,000 troops fell into Japanese hands, which on paper ranks as the largest capitulation in the history of British arms. Japan’s capture of Singapore signalled the end for the British Empire in the Eastern hemisphere.

British forces surrender Singapore to the Japanese, February 1942 (Licensed under the public domain)

Four hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor finished, the Japanese 14th Army (commanded by Lieutenant-General Masaharu Homma) assailed the Philippines in south-east Asia, a US colony since the late 19th century. On 10 December 1941 Japanese soldiers landed at Luzon, the Philippines’ biggest and most populous island in the north of the country. On that same day, 10 December, the Japanese 55th Infantry Division (Major-General Tomitaro Horii) captured from the Americans the Pacific island of Guam, located almost 1,500 miles to the east of the Philippines. Another 1,500 miles further east again in the Pacific a US territorial possession, Wake Island, was captured by Japanese marines on 23 December 1941.

The decorated American general, Douglas MacArthur, was commander of US Army Forces in the Far East. He was foiled in his plan to defeat the Japanese on the beaches of the Philippines. General MacArthur decided to abandon Manila, the Philippines’ capital city, and to retire not far west to another part of the country called the Bataan peninsula. Manila, now an open city, was taken by the Japanese on 2 January 1942.

Japan’s assault on Bataan had already started on 29 December 1941, but was repulsed by MacArthur’s troops with heavy losses for the attackers. Over the next 5 weeks, the Japanese could make no progress against the American and Filipino soldiers; their offensive was postponed in early February 1942. However, towards the end of February president Franklin Roosevelt in Washington ordered MacArthur to leave the Philippines, so that the general could assume command of fresh American forces being prepared in Australia.

On 11 March 1942, MacArthur reluctantly left the Philippines by motor torpedo boat and he had vowed, “I shall return”. MacArthur was much criticised at home, and by the American troops he had left behind in the Philippines, for having abandoned them; but to be fair to MacArthur on this occasion, there was little point in his remaining in the Philippines, and he could hardly disobey for long a direct order from president Roosevelt.

By now, Roosevelt had decided there was no possibility of relieving Bataan, and Japan’s hierarchy reinforced the Bataan area with 2 more Japanese divisions. On 3 April 1942, a new Japanese offensive in Bataan succeeded. Six days later on 9 April 1942, the US Major-General, Edward P. King Jr., chose to surrender along with 12,000 American troops and more than 60,000 Filipino troops.

While Filipino soldiers bore the brunt of the calamity in the northern Philippines, and subsequently the brutal Bataan Death March, the Battle of Bataan ranks as the largest overseas surrender of forces in American history; and the biggest surrender of US troops since September 1862 in the American Civil War, when 12,419 Union soldiers gave themselves up to the Confederates during the Battle of Harpers Ferry. After Bataan, complete defeat for US-led divisions was a matter of time in the Philippines, and on 8 May 1942 the country came under Japan’s total control.

Surrender of US forces at Corregidor, Philippines, May 1942 (Licensed under the public domain)

On 16 December 1941 Borneo, Asia’s largest island and positioned fewer than 1,000 miles south of the Philippines, was attacked by Japanese units consisting primarily of the 35th Infantry Brigade (Major-General Kiyotake Kawaguchi). The British-led forces managed to hold out in Borneo’s jungle-covered mountains until 1 April 1942, when they surrendered on that date.

Further north, Hong Kong, in south-eastern China, a British possession from the days of London’s narcotrafficking wars, was assailed by Japan on the morning of 8 December 1941, led by the Japanese 23rd Army (Lieutenant-General Takashi Sakai). During the Battle of Hong Kong, the Japanese advanced rapidly and captured at least 10,000 Allied troops. On Christmas Day 1941 Mark Aitchison Young, the British Governor of Hong Kong, surrendered in person to Lieutenant-General Sakai.

Concurrently with Japan’s campaign in British Malaya, about 1,000 miles to the north the Japanese began a large-scale assault to capture Burma (Myanmar), a south-east Asian state bigger than France which since 1824 had been under British rule. On 16 January 1942 the Japanese 15th Army, under the command of Lieutenant-General Shojiro Iida, cut into Lower Burma from neighbouring Thailand; the latter country, which until then was never colonised, had capitulated to the Japanese on 8 December 1941, and 2 weeks later Thailand signed a formal alliance with Japan.

On 31 January 1942, the Japanese captured the southern Burmese city of Moulmein from the British. Japan’s forces were enjoying significant help from Burma’s inhabitants, who strongly desired independence for their country. Much of the Burmese population were amazed to see Asian troops (the Japanese) outperforming white soldiers, and because of this the locals received a lot of encouragement. A myth had persisted in colonised nations that the white man was invincible.

The British withdrew from Lower Burma in February 1942. On 8 March 1942 the Japanese captured Rangoon, the capital city of Burma. Two days later on 10 March, the Japanese 55th Infantry Division started pursuing the departing British from Rangoon. These setbacks for the Allies in Burma caused a serious rupture in British-Australian relations. The Australian government had resisted great pressure from British prime minister Winston Churchill, who wanted the Australians to divert to Rangoon one of its two divisions that was returning from the Middle East, for the defence of Australia itself.

The Japanese had also gained a foothold in the petroleum-rich Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), which for decades was among the world’s biggest oil producing countries. The Dutch East Indies was designated by Tokyo as a vital target. Japan’s conquest of the Dutch East Indies was swift, as they advanced through its islands of Sumatra, Java and Celebes in late January, February and early March 1942. The Dutch East Indies’ capital city, Batavia (Jakarta), was taken by the Japanese on 5 March 1942. The Netherlands sued for peace 4 days later.

By the end of March 1942, Japan’s military had achieved each of its pre-war goals as outlined shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor. After less than 4 months of fighting against the Western Allies, the Japanese had captured Hong Kong, British Malaya and Singapore, Thailand, Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Guam and Wake Island, along with Rabaul on the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea.

All of this was accomplished with just 11 Japanese divisions, quite clearly a remarkable feat of arms, equal to that of the 1940 German defeat of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark and Norway. Unlike with Germany, Japan has seldom been given credit in the West for its military triumphs, and the Japanese have generally been treated with contempt; which one can only assume, at this stage, is due at least in part to a lingering racism.

By March 1942 Japan’s forces, as highlighted earlier, had also firmly established themselves in the Philippines and in Burma. The above Japanese victories had come on top of their other recent conquests, such as taking an enormous swathe of eastern China by 1939, which altogether brought about 170 million Chinese under Japan’s rule; along with Tokyo’s capture by mid-1941 of all of French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia).

Britain’s colonial authorities believed that “all Japanese soldiers were very short-sighted and inherently inferior to western troops”, military author Antony Beevor wrote. Ordinary British soldiers on the frontline were better acquainted with the reality, and less likely to hold racist views. Almost 30 years after the war Gilbert Collins, a gunner in the British 14th Army, said that “The Japanese was a good soldier. He was a good soldier. When he was told to do a job, he would stop there until he died”. Captain Neville G. Hogan of the British 14th Army described the Japanese as “great fighting soldiers. Their battle drill was fantastic, you couldn’t help but admire them”.

Crucially, Japan’s troops had adapted very well to jungle warfare. Teruo Okada, an officer in the Japanese 15th Army recalled, “I liked the jungle, and it did not have the fear it seems to have had for some of the Allied soldiers. It was a friendly place, dark, where you could cover yourself and camouflage yourself. In the jungle, fortunately, the Burmese jungle, there are many bamboo groves, you see, and in Japan we all eat bamboo shoots, so that there is a lot of natural food in the form of bamboo shoots all over the place. Apart from that, we all know that what a monkey can eat, we can eat too. So if you watch the monkeys and avoid what the monkeys also avoid, you are fairly safe. There are such creatures as bandicoots, snakes, jungle lizards and tokays, small lizards, you cut off the head and chop them up and make it into curry. Mixed with pepper it can make a good curry”.

Freddie Tomkins, a sergeant in the British 14th Army, remembered how “I’d never seen a jungle, I’d seen a forest, but I hadn’t seen a jungle. We went in there, it was dark, dirty, damp, rain, all sorts of animal noises we never heard before. In actual fact it was really scary. We have our meats and our Yorkshire puddings and so forth. They [Japanese troops] lived on rice. Now you can’t get meat and Yorkshire pudding and greens and potatoes out there. So we had to reorganise ourselves and lived on the things that the army could produce for us. Like corned beef, and it’s the only place [Burmese jungle] that I know where you can open up a tin of corned beef and pour it out like a liquid”.

The Japanese, in early April 1942, captured from the Australians the Papua New Guinean islands of Buka and Bougainville, located not too far north of Queensland. Japan was attempting here to cut off Australia from American aid. That same month, in April, the Royal Navy had to abandon the Indian Ocean. Everything seemed to be going Japan’s way.

The Bombing of Darwin, Australia, 19 February 1942 (Licensed under the public domain)

By April 1942 the Japanese leadership had a decision to make. To rest on its gains, or to ambitiously extend the area of Japan’s supremacy through more military conquests. They chose the latter option. Tokyo decided to neutralise Australia and Hawaii, by targeting those areas with land-based Japanese bomber aircraft.

Also in April 1942, the new perimeter of the Empire of Japan was enlarged on maps by Tokyo’s strategic planners – in order to include the capture of the Aleutian Islands (North Pacific), Midway (North Pacific), Samoa (south-central Pacific), the Fiji Islands (South Pacific), New Caledonia (south-western Pacific) and Port Moresby (south-western Pacific).

Elsewhere, in south-east Asia the Japanese advance northwards through Burma was continuing. The British commander, Harold Alexander, was forced to retreat with his soldiers to the town of Prome in central Burma. General Alexander was unable to hold on to Prome, which was taken by Japan’s soldiers on 2 April 1942. Just over 2 weeks later, on 18 April Japanese forces had advanced 115 miles north of Prome to capture the city of Yenangyaung, on the famous Irrawaddy River, Burma’s largest river. The final remnants of Britain’s troops withdrawing from Yenangyaung destroyed the city’s power station, so as to prevent its use by the enemy.

On the following day, 19 April 1942, the Japanese 55th Infantry Division took the town of Pyinmana, 95 miles east of Yenangyaung. The day after that, Japan’s troops captured the city of Taunggyi, 140 miles east of Yenangyaung. On 22 April, the British decided to fall back to Meiktila, a city located on the Meiktila Lake.

On 25 April 1942 the Anglo-American commanders in Burma, Harold Alexander, William Slim and Joseph Stilwell, decided to pull all Allied troops out of the country. Nearly a week later, on 1 May the Japanese 18th Infantry Division captured Mandalay, Burma’s 2nd biggest city, while they also cut the Burma Road. The following week, on 8 May the Japanese took the city of Myitkyina in northern Burma.

By mid-May 1942, British-led forces had retreated out of Burma north-westwards to neighbouring India, where they found refuge in the city of Imphal. Military historian Donald J. Goodspeed wrote, “The rains then came and brought another disastrous campaigning season to a close. British casualties in Burma had been about three times higher than the Japanese loss of forty-five thousand men”.

To the east in the North Pacific Ocean thousands of miles away, a greater catastrophe was to unfold for Japan during the Battle of Midway (4–7 June 1942). Their defeat in this engagement, against the Americans, saw Japan’s military lose 4 of their aircraft carriers, 1 heavy cruiser, 275 planes along with the deaths of 3,500 men, including many experienced pilots. In spite of their past victories and huge territorial expansion, Japan’s reverse in the Battle of Midway made certain their utter defeat in World War II. The American admiral Chester W. Nimitz said, “Midway was the most crucial battle of the Pacific War, the engagement that made everything else possible”.

The Americans were assisted in their defeat of the Japanese at Midway, by their having previously cracked Tokyo’s codes. English historian Andrew Roberts wrote, “Intelligence was key to the American victory at Midway, both the accurate and timely information that Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the Commander-in-Chief in the Pacific, was given by his code-breakers, and the halting and inaccurate reports that Admirals [Isoroku] Yamamoto and [Chuichi] Nagumo got from their intelligence officers, who did not have the luxury of reading their enemy’s signals”.

How had it come to this for the Japanese? The fact is that a bloody conflict had ensued in the Eastern hemisphere between two imperial powers, America and Japan, for control over sections of the globe, and Japan would ultimately lose. America had boasted the world’s largest economy since 1871, and was becoming richer as the decades passed. The US was a significantly wealthier and stronger nation than Japan, possessing greater industrial power and manpower.

In 1941 the US was easily the planet’s largest oil producing country. That year the Americans manufactured more than 5 times more oil than the Soviet Union in 2nd place. By the end of World War II, the Americans had in total built an incredible 296,000 aircraft, 86,333 tanks and 952 warships. The German-Axis armies had invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 with 4,400 warplanes and 4,000 tanks.

On 26 July 1941, in response to Japan’s occupation of southern French Indochina, the Roosevelt administration froze all Japanese assets in America, and instituted an oil embargo against Tokyo. Drastic actions like this by Roosevelt’s government, which were the driving force behind the Asia-Pacific War erupting, immediately resulted in 90% of Japan’s oil imports being wiped out along with 75% of its foreign trade. These were grave issues for a resource-poor nation like Japan. Their oil supply could last only until the end of January 1943; that is, unless Japan’s forces embarked upon more military adventures.

By November 1941, a month before Pearl Harbor, the American demands on Japan had become so severe that, according to US historian and analyst Noam Chomsky, “Japan would have had to abandon totally its attempt to secure ‘special interests’ of the sort possessed by the United States and Britain, in the areas under their domination, as well as its alliance with the Axis powers, becoming a mere ‘subcontractor’ in the emerging American world system. Japan chose war – as we now know, with no expectation of victory over the United States but in the hope ‘that the Americans, confronted by a German victory in Europe and weary of war in the Pacific, would agree to a negotiated peace in which Japan would be recognized as the dominant power in Eastern Asia’.”

Japan’s foreign policy was undoubtedly expansionist, up to a point. There was no Japanese presence at all in the Western hemisphere or the Middle East, nor would it have been tolerated by the Americans short of war. Much more serious from Japan’s viewpoint, Washington was not prepared either to grant Japan hegemony within its own spheres of interest in east Asia. Summarising Tokyo’s predicament, the Japanese Foreign Affairs Minister Yosuke Matsuoka asked, “Is it for the United States, which rules over the Western hemisphere and is expanding over the Atlantic and Pacific, to say that these ideals, these ambitions of Japan are wrong?”

President Roosevelt from the outset of World War II was “aiming at United States hegemony in the postwar world”, historian Geoffrey Warner wrote. After 1939, top-level US State Department officials highlighted which regions of the globe the US would control, titled by Washington planners as the Grand Area. In the early 1940s, the Grand Area of US hegemony was designated to consist of the entire Western hemisphere, the Far East (at the expense of Japan) along with the former British Empire, which contained the Middle East’s oil and gas reserves. England was to be assigned a junior partner role subordinate to the American boss, a status which has held true ever since.

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Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Sources

Naval History and Heritage Command, “Pearl Harbor Attack, 7 December 1941, Carrier Locations”, 1 April 2015

Mark E. Stille, Malaya and Singapore 1941–42: The fall of Britain’s empire in the East (Osprey Publishing; Illustrated edition, 20 Oct. 2016)

Peter Chen, “Invasion of Burma”, World War II Database, October 2006

Antony Beevor, The Second World War (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012)

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

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

Noam Chomsky, On The Backgrounds of the Pacific War, Liberation, September-October 1967, Chomsky.info

The World At War: Complete TV Series (Episode 14, Fremantle, 25 April 2005, Original Network: ITV, Original Release: 31 October 1973 – 8 May 1974)

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

Oil production by country, 1900 – 2018, Youtube.com

Featured image: USS Arizona burned for two days after being hit by a Japanese bomb in the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Licensed under the public domain)

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The follow text is the Preface to the Japanese print Edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s E-Book entitled: 

The 2020-22 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset” which is currently in E-Book format.

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My thanks to the Publisher and to the translator Tatsuo Iwana.

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この原稿を書いている今日、私は日本の皆さまに思いを寄せています。新型コロナウイルス感染症の危機は、人々の生活を破壊しています。著者としての私の責任は、真実を明らかにし、メディアの偽情報の流れを断ち切り、世界中のできるだけ多くの人々に働きかけることです。

本書は、新型コロナウイルス感染症危機の原因と結果について、2年以上にわたる詳細な調査の結果です。出版社と翻訳者には、この努力をする中で、献身的な支援をしていただき、大変感謝しています。

私の研究結果は、著名な科学者や医師たちの報告に裏打ちされたものです。その研究結果から見ても、mRNAワクチンを含め、各国政府が打ち出した新型コロナウイルス感染症を巡る強制的な施策はまったく無効だということがわかります。

この序文では、以下のことに簡単に焦点を当てます。

・日本に関する新型コロナウイルス感染症の危機の年表。

・2021年2月に日本の厚労省が開始したmRNAワクチンの接種指示。

・2020年の東京夏季オリンピック。

新型コロナウイルス感染症の年表

2020年1月30日（ジュネーブ時間）、WHO事務局長テドロス・アダノム・ゲブレイエソス博士は、中国国外で確認されたPCR検査陽性者83人という数を基に、世界保健緊急事態を宣言しました。83人は、緊急事態を宣言するには、いくら何でも数が少なすぎます。

「新型コロナウイルス感染症確定症例」に分類されたこの83例は、WHOの「国際的に懸念される公衆衛生上の緊急事態（PHEIC）」を発動するための正当な根拠とされました。(詳細は、第１章、第２章を参照）。

WHOのこの歴史的な決定に先立ち、安倍晋三（元）首相はすでに新型コロナウイルスへの懸念を表明していました。内閣総理大臣を本部長とする新型コロナ対策本部（NCRH）が設置されました。

WHOの発表の前日、国会で開かれた新型コロナ対策本部の会合で、安倍晋三首相は次のように述べました。

現在、8人の患者が確認されています … また、昨日帰国された方のうち、3名　　が集団検診検査で陽性となりました。現在、この方々は入院中です。そのうち2名は症状が出ていません。このように、症状がないにもかかわらず陽性となった方がいることを踏まえ、検疫を含めた対応を段階的に進めていくことが必要であると考えています。 (強調は著者)¹

この馬鹿馬鹿しいほどの低い数値は、いかなる事情があろうとも伝染病の発生の証拠とはなりません。検疫措置は必要ありませんでした。さらに、これは基本的なことですが、いわゆる「陽性例」を生み出すのに使われた方法はポリメラーゼ連鎖反応（PCR検査）です。このPCR検査については、後にWHOと米国疾病管理予防センター（CDC）が、誤解を招くものであり、無効なものであることを認めました。(詳細は第３章付録参照）。

その後、SARS-CoV-2検出のためのポリメラーゼ連鎖反応（PCR）法とSARS-CoV-2検出のための他の迅速な検査法が、日本の主要地域で活発に使われました。

検査　検査　検査

このPCR検査による大規模な検査は、いわゆる「サイン型コロナウイルス感染症確定症例」の数を2020年12月に30万人の「累積症例」にまで押し上げることに大いに役立ちました。また、恐怖をあおる政策のの先陣を切ることにも役立ちました。 本稿執筆時点の2022年3月に記録された最新の数字は、「累積症例数」550万件の規模でした²。

私は何ヶ月もかけてPCR検査とその結果を検証してきました。私が明確に断言できることは、PCR検査から導きだされる数値は誤りであり、誤解を招くものであることです。科学的な根拠がないのです。(詳細は第３章を参照）。

このことが意味するのは、2020年3月のパンデミック発生以来、感染症の進行を抑制するために日本の行政当局が適用したすべての新型コロナウイルス感染症の政策の命令が無効であるということです。これには、さまざまな非常事態措置、学校の臨時休校、マスク着用、大規模な社会的集まりの中止などが含まれています。

これらの措置が容易になったのは、「2012年の新型インフルエンザ対策特別措置法」の改正案によります。これにより「新型コロナウイルス感染症を含むインフルエンザが発生した場合」にも緊急措置が適用されることになりました。

「安倍晋三首相が突然、全国の学校の臨時休校を要請したり、大規模なイベントの中止を呼びかけたりしたことは、法的根拠がないとして問題視されています。現行の特別措置法を改正すれば、…これらの要請は法的根拠を持つことになります」。（強調は著者）^３

皮肉にも、2020年3月13日に国会で採択されたこの改正案は、SARS-CoV-2がマスコミが描くような危険な「殺人ウイルス」ではなく、季節性インフルエンザと同様の特徴を持つものとして分類されるという（政府の）認識を意味するものでした。 WHOのSARS-CoV-2の定義によると、「新型コロナウイルス感染症の最も一般的な症状は、発熱、乾いた咳、および疲労感です。…これらの症状は通常、軽度であり、徐々に始まります。中には、感染してもごく軽い症状で済む人もいます。 ほとんどの人（約80％）は、病院での治療を必要とせずに病気から回復します。新型コロナウイルス感染症に感染した人の5人に1人程度が重症化し、呼吸困難に陥ります」。 ⁴（第３章参照）。

WHOが定義した新型コロナウイルス感染症が「季節性インフルエンザに類似」しているということは、日本のマスコミの大見出しになりませんでした。もし、それが明らかになっていたら、安倍晋三首相の緊急対策は、間違いなく日本国民から疑問視され、反対されていたでしょう。

一方、安倍晋三首相の緊急対策に正当性を持たせるために、恐怖をあおる政策が使われました。

この特措法改正は、2020年3月11日（ジュネーブ時間）に国連加盟193カ国に送信された封鎖指示の翌日に、急遽国会で採択されました⁵。これは、一連の抜本的経済措置を採るための、安倍晋三にとって時宜にかなった都合のよい「ゴーサイン」でした。その一連の措置には、 危険なウイルスSARS-CoV-2の拡散への対策として、労働力のロックダウン・閉じ込めが含まれていました。

安倍晋三が実施したこうした強力なロックダウンの手続きは、どのような結果をもたらしたのでしょうか。

その2カ月後（2020年5月28日）、安倍晋三首相は閣僚懇談会で次のように認めました（5月の月例経済報告から引用）：

「新型コロナウイルスにより、日本経済は急速に悪化し、極めて厳しい状況にある」。

さらに、短期的な見通しについては、「当面、感染症の影響により極めて厳しい状況が続くと見込まれる… 」と報告書には記載されています。  (強調は著者) ^６

安倍晋三首相は、巧みに「コロナ・ウイルス氏」（V the Virus）に責任を押し付けていました。誤った発言です。「ウイルス」には 「人の手」はありません。経済や金融の変数に影響を与えることはできません。

（訳注）「コロナ・ウイルス氏」（V the Virus）：新型コロナウイルスを擬人化した著者の造語

「新型コロナウイルスの感染拡大」（PCR検査の間違った数値を基にしている）に、安倍晋三政権によって引き起こされた日本経済の低迷の責任を押しつけることはできません。

この（現在も継続中の）「厳しい経済状況」は、2020年3月に政府が発動したコロナ政策の命令の結果です。

最近の報告が確認しているのは、このような経済対策が市民社会を弱体化させ、社会関係を混乱させ、日本の家庭生活の構造そのものを破壊していることや、特に青年や幼い子どもの自殺の引き金となっていることです。(この問題については第６章で分析しています）。

mRNAワクチン

この原稿を書いている間にも、新型コロナウイルス感染症に関する命令に対する大規模な抗議活動が、主にｍRNAワクチン接種の影響に焦点を当てて、いくつかの国で進行中です。

日本では、存在しない「殺人ウイルス」から日本国民を守る手段として、2021年2月にmRNAワクチン接種が始まりました。すでに2億600万人分以上が投与されています。 日本の国民は、mRNAワクチンの危険性に関して知らされていたのでしょうか？

2021年12月、日本の厚労省は「心筋炎などの副作用の発生率が低い」と指摘し、モデナとファイザーのワクチンのブースター[追加]接種を許可しました。この評価（英国のデータを引用している）は、重大な誤りです。 しかも、このブースターショット[追加接種]は免疫に壊滅的な影響を与えることになります^７。

日本の厚労省の発表によると、「政府は、ワクチン接種の利点が副反応のリスクよりも大きいので、人々にワクチン接種を推奨しています」。 この言い方は誤解を招くものであり、正しくありません。

この原稿を書いている時点で、岸田文雄内閣はそれまでの姿勢を一転させました。コロナワクチンのラベル表示を率先して命じました。「心筋炎などの危険で死に至る可能性のある副作用を警告するため」です。さらに、日本国は起こりうるすべての副作用を確実に記録するために、有害事象報告の義務付けを再確認しています。⁸

さらに、日本の厚労省は、このワクチンを推奨しながらも、新型コロナウイルス感染症のワクチンは「強制・義務ではない」という趣旨の勧告を出しています。

「同意がない場合は、接種を行いません。職場や周囲の人に接種を強要したり、接種していない人を差別するようなことはしないでください」。 ⁹

この規定が、コロナワクチン計画の中止に向けた第一歩となることを願っています。 

ワクチン関連死と有害事象

ワクチンに関連する死亡率と疾病率が世界的に上昇傾向にあることを、証拠が示しています。これは完全に裏付けされています。この公式データは入手可能です。(第７章参照）。

また、情報公開（FOI）手続きにより公開されたファイザー社の機密報告書も適切なものです。ファイザー社は、自社の機密報告書で、ワクチンが危険で安全でないことを認めています。(第７章参照）。また、ファイザー社が米国司法省で犯罪歴があることを、日本の人々が認識することも重要です。(詳細は、第7章参照）

2020年東京夏季オリンピック

2021年8月、延期された東京夏季オリンピックに参加するため、世界を代表する運動選手たちが東京に到着しました。 選手たちのために検疫や検査業務が設けられましたが、これらの手続きは全く不要でした。

日本国民や外国人観光客は、基本的人権を無視した形でオリンピック競技への参加を拒否されました。日本国民は皆、テレビでオリンピックを観戦しました。これらの広範囲に及ぶ決定は、人命を救い、ウイルスの蔓延に対抗する手段として国民に提示されました。

2020年夏季オリンピックの延期と、その後の2021年8月の無観客試合の決定は、RT-PCR検査による「新型コロナウイルス感染症確定症例」の誤った推定に基づいています。

ウイルスの増殖を推定するために適用されていたPCR法は、8月の東京オリンピックの半年以上前の2021年1月20日にWHOによって無効と宣言されていました。(第３章、第３章付録参照）。 さらに、米国疾病管理予防センター（CDC）は2021年7月21日、2021年12月31日まで有効のPCR検査の撤回を求める指示を出しました。(第３章参照)

2021年8月のオリンピックを無観客で実施することは、全く不必要なことでした。日本人の東京オリンピックへの参加を妨げる科学的根拠はありませんでした。

このような政策決定の失敗による財務上の損失は、筆舌に尽くしがたいものがあります。

ミシェル・チョスドフスキー

モントリオール、2022年3月

*

注

1 Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, January 30, 2020. Novel Coronavirus Response Headquarters. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/98_abe/actions/202001/_00034.html

2 WHO, n.d. Japan: WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard. https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/jp

3 The Mainichi, March 5, 2020. Revised influenza law to allow Japan PM to declare state of emergency over coronavirus. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200305/p2a/00m/0fp/011000c

4 WHO, March 8, 2020. Media Statement: Knowing the risks for COVID-19. https://www.who.int/indonesia/news/detail/08-03-2020-knowing-the-risk-for-covid-19

5 Kyodo News, March 13, 2020. Japan’s Diet gives Abe power to declare emergency amid viral fears. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/03/57cfa56d5ecc-urgent-japans-diet-gives-abe-power-to-declare-emergency-amid-viral-fears.html

6 Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, May 28, 2020. Ministerial Council on the Monthly Economic Report and Other Relative Issues. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/98_abe/actions/202005/_00027.html

7 Osamu Tsukimori, December 15, 2021. Health ministry formally approves Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for a booster shot. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/12/15/national/science-health/health-ministry-backs-moderna-vaccine-booster/

8 Amy Mek, December 10, 2021. Alert: Japan Places Myocarditis Warning on ‘Vaccines’ – Requires Informed Consent. https://rairfoundation.com/alert-japan-places-myocarditis-warning-on-vaccines-requires-informed-consent/

9 Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, n.d. COVID-19 Vaccines. https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/covid-19/vaccine.html

Video: Foreign Mercenaries in East Ukraine. Appeal of Alexander Drueke, US Fighter Captured in DPR

By South Front, July 19, 2022

My name is Alexander Drueke. I’m a U.S. citizen from Alabama. On June 9th, I was captured outside Kharkof. And I’ve been held in captivity since then. During my captivity I’ve been treated very well. I have food and water. I have access to legal help and medical care if needed. But, of course, I would much rather be back home with my family.

Inside Australian Labor’s Assange Game Plan

By Kellie Tranter, July 20, 2022

“Quiet diplomacy”, a “soft approach”, a “loud approach” and “avoiding megaphone diplomacy” have all been floated as strategies to “bring to an end” the case against WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. In situations like his, the best form of diplomacy is that which produces results most favourable to the citizen involved and at the same time keeps them safe and in good health.

Fifth Generation (5G) Directed Energy Radiation Emissions in the Context of Contaminated Nanometal COVID-19 Vaccines with Graphite Ferrous Oxide Antennas

By Mark Steele, July 20, 2022

Cyber Command USA had been made aware of my expertise and specifically requested my advice with regard to an unusual 5G antenna design deployed across the USA. I have been extremely fortunate that most (but not all) of my research and product development work has been carried out outside of the Official Secrets Acts (OSA) legislation. I have acted as a witness and provided statements in several court cases, exposing the lack of any credible evidence that the 5G light-emitting diode (LED) network and planned neural connection to the 5G grid are safe.

The UK Government’s Official Data Shows They Are Killing Our Children

By Steve Kirsch, July 19, 2022

The UK government seems to be not including the most interesting metrics to assess safety and efficacy. The Expose points this out; it seems when the numbers work against them, they either stop reporting the data entirely, stop breaking it out, or in this case, not doing the calculation of the deaths per 100K person years so that only more motivated people will take the time and see that there is a huge problem.

The COVID Crisis in Japan: Lockdown, Economic Crisis, the mRNA Vaccine, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 19, 2022

Today at the time of writing my thoughts are with the people of Japan. The COVID-19 crisis is destroying people’s lives. My responsibility as an author is to reveal the truth, break the tide of media disinformation and reach out Worldwide to as many people as possible. This book is the result of more than two years of detailed research on the causes and  consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. I am much indebted to the publisher and translator for their commitment and support throughout this endeavor.

Joe Biden’s Secret War in Ukraine. The Imminent Danger of a Large Scale US-Russia War

By Philip Giraldi, July 19, 2022

The White House keeps insisting that it will not directly involve American soldiers in the war in Ukraine, but it keeps taking steps that will inevitably lead to a large-scale open combat role for the US against Russia.

Video: The Persecution of Julian Assange: Crimes Upon Crimes Within Crimes

By Kristina Borjesson, July 19, 2022

In this Whistleblower Newsroom editorial, host Kristina Borjesson discusses the illegal actions to which Assange has, and continues to be, subjected to by three nations—the US, UK and Sweden, working to fulfill the American government’s aim to get him to the US to face espionage charges.

The United States Does Not Have an Economy

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, July 19, 2022

The US financial sector has long looted other countries.  A number of participants have described the process.  First a country is enticed with bribes to the leaders to take out loans that cannot be serviced or repaid.  Then in comes the IMF. Austerity is imposed on the population. Public services and employment are cut to free resources for debt service, and public assets are sold to repay the loan. 

U.S. Public Health Agencies Aren’t ‘Following the Science,’ Officials Say

By Dr. Marty Makary and Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, July 19, 2022

The calls and text messages are relentless. On the other end are doctors and scientists at the top levels of the NIH, FDA and CDC. They are variously frustrated, exasperated and alarmed about the direction of the agencies to which they have devoted their careers.

Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, July 19, 2022

This book looks at the philosophy, politics and history of many different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. In recent times Enlightenment ideas have been characterised as cold, hard science, while Romanticism has been perceived as the ‘caring’ philosophy.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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On Monday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered Russian troops to target Ukraine’s long-range weapons and artillery after Ukrainian forces said they used US-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) against Russian targets.

“Army General Sergey Shoigu … instructed the commander to use surgical strikes and crush the enemy’s long-range missile and artillery means,” the Russian Defense Ministry said, according to Tass.

Last week, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukrainian forces had used HIMARS to launch 30 strikes against Russian targets. Ukraine said the HIMARS were used to destroy two ammunition depots deep inside Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, while Russia said the strikes hit civilian infrastructure.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that Ukraine has used long-range weapons “to shell the residential areas of Donbas and continue the intentional incineration of wheat fields and grain storage facilities.” As Ukraine has been using the Western-provided arms, Russia has stepped up missile attacks across Ukraine.

The HIMARS the US provided Ukraine have a range of 50 miles, although they could be outfitted with munitions to reach longer ranges. When the US sent Ukraine the HIMARS, Biden administration officials said they received “assurances” that they won’t be used to target Russian territory.

The State Department on Sunday implied that under the deal with Kyiv, Ukrainian forces could use HIMARS on Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014. When asked by Antiwar.com if the ban on Ukraine using HIMARS on Russian territory applies to Ukraine, the State Department replied, “Crimea is Ukraine.”

A Ukrainian intelligence official said Saturday that Ukraine could use HIMARS to hit Ukraine. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev responded and said such attacks could lead to “doomsday” for Ukrainian leadership and said it’s a “systemic threat” to Russia that Ukraine and NATO countries don’t recognize Crimea as Russian territory.

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

Featured image is from TASS

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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The COVID-19 Lockdown Triggers Worldwide Poverty

Poverty and chronic undernourishment is a pre-existing condition.

First, there is a long term historical process of macroeconomic policy reform under IMF-World Bank auspices which has contributed to depressing the standard living Worldwide in both the developing and the developed countries.

Second, these preexisting historical conditions of mass poverty have been exacerbated and aggravated by the imposition of the Covid lockdown.

With large sectors of the World population already well below the poverty line prior to the March 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, the recent hikes in the prices of basic food staples are devastating. 

Millions of people around the World are unable to purchase food for their survival.  And this is by no means limited to the “developing countries”. 

According to the ILO (2020 report), over two billion people representing 62 percent of the global labor force, are employed in the informal economy.  This population group is impoverished beyond description, with “millions of people facing a growing risk of hunger”.

Earnings of informal sector workers are estimated to have declined by 82 percent as a result of the covid lockdown, “with Africa and Latin America to face the largest decline.” (ILO data quoted by (FAO, p. 6). 

The FAO’s July 2020 report points to 27 countries facing so-called “acute food insecurity”.

Global Famine

The World Food Program (WFP) (November 2021) report points to Global Famine and “Acute Hunger in 80 Countries”:

Global hunger continues to rise at an alarming rate: our latest estimates show that 282.7 million people across 80 countries are experiencing extreme levels of acute hunger. This represents an increase of around 110 percent compared to 2019 (when 135 million people in 58 countries were classified as acutely food insecure).

This “guesstimate” of 287.7 million cases of acute hunger borders on ridicule and “fake statistics”. The real numbers are much higher. Mass poverty is extensive Worldwide. The “estimate” is based on the following concept, which is put forth by the World Food Program (a UN body) as a humanitarian and compassionate criterion:

“one meal a day, the basic needed to survive – costing US$0.43 per person per day”. (WFP, p. 1)

Combined with the spike in the price of oil (which is manipulated), the recent hikes in food prices are contributing in a very real sense to “eliminating the poor” through “starvation deaths” as well as destabilizing the nation-state.

In the words of Henry Kissinger:

“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”

In this regard, Kissinger had intimated in the context of the 1974 “National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests”, that the recurrence of famines could constitute a de facto instrument of population control. It’s part of the WEF’s eugenics agenda.  

***

“The Benefits of World Hunger”

The text below was initially published by the United Nations Chronicle. It was subsequently withdrawn. 

“…how many of us would sell our services so cheaply if it were not for the threat of hunger? When we sell our services cheaply, we enrich others, those who own the 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 their wealth.” (emphasis added)

Is this text a carefully formulated satire?

While the (satirical?) statements in this article published by the UN appear reprehensible, they reveal and document the Neoliberal consensus which consists in minimizing labor costs Worldwide.

Hunger is the source of enrichment by a social minority. 

It’s the Globalization of Poverty.  

Poverty and cheap labor are good for business.  

And the Covid-19 Mandates contribute to spreading poverty worldwide. 

— Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 19, 2022

The Benefits of World Hunger

by Professor George Kent

United Nations Chronicle

***

Emphasis added

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. Indeed, it is fundamental to the working of the world’s economy. Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is a need for manual labour.

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 our services cheaply, we enrich others, those who own the 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 their wealth.

The conventional thinking is that hunger is caused by low-paying jobs. For example, an article reports on “Brazil’s ethanol slaves: 200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom”.1 While it is true that hunger is caused by low-paying jobs, we need to understand that hunger at the same time causes low-paying jobs to be created.

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? 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 people. Yes, people who are well nourished have greater capacity for productive physical activity, but well-nourished people are far less willing to do that work.

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,2 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 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 own 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.

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This article was taken down from the UN Website, the text above has been republished from IFZ.

George Kent is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaii. 

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

Transcript

One of the most emerging methods for connecting our brains to computers is optogenetics. More than 1,000 labs worldwide are working on this technology. Optogenetics can use LED light to erase memories as well as precisely control and influence thoughts and behaviors.

Is this why advocates of a New World Order are raving about it?

Efforts are in full swing worldwide to install wireless interfaces in the human brain: so-called communication tools, between brain and computer. One of the fastest emerging methods for this is optogenetics. There are now more than 1,000 laboratories worldwide, including those of government organizations, working on various optogenetic methods.

So what is optogenetics?

Optogenetics is a combination of genetic and optical methods to induce events in target cells, tissues or complex organisms using LED light.

Optogenetics is already used worldwide for a wide variety of purposes, such as for biomedical applications and the treatment of neuronal diseases.

One advantage of optogenetics is that it potentially requires no surgical intervention, only a gene-manipulating injection. In this process, certain light-sensitive proteins are packaged in a virus and via injection transmitted to the intended site in the brain, where it infects various cells. These light-sensitive proteins can then be used to specifically excite or even shut down individual neuronal networks using LED light.

In other words, LED light can be used to erase and overwrite memories and to quickly and precisely control and influence brain and muscle cells – and thus feelings, thoughts, body movements and behaviors.

Accordingly, optogenetics requires only LED light that irradiates neurons in the brain. The irradiation takes place, for example, through the brain cover or through nano-LEDs implanted in the body.

Parallel to the optogenetics research, an LED Forum is held every year, where personalities from the international lighting industry meet. Topics at this forum are, for example, the use of micro-LEDs, which are important to improve the light output for optogenetics. Or the Internet of Things and the goal of building a sensor into every LED lamp to provide digital data transmission via LED light. Interestingly, speakers at the LED Forum include people very close to both the World Economic Forum WEF and the Club of Rome. In 2019, for example, Andreas Huber, the current managing director of the Club of Rome Germany, gave a talk.

The Club of Rome is considered the largest think tank of the elite for a New World Order, which sees the solution to global problems in a drastic population reduction. It was this club that supported the founding of Klaus Schwab’s WEF. The WEF, in turn, is pushing a New World Order with its planned “Great Reset.”

According to this, the WEF sees optogenetics as one of the most important technologies. On their homepage, we find this quote:

“Our brains are made up of billions of cells called neurons, and these neurons communicate with each other through neural circuits. Optogenetics allows us, for the first time ever, to manipulate the messages these neurons send to each other. The technique could potentially be used to manipulate memories, emotions and thoughts…”

With senior politicians from the European Commission, such as Ursula von der Leyen, on friendly terms with the WEF, it is no surprise that the European Commission is also raving about optogenetics:

“Although we may not realize it, neurons are central to our ability to understand and interact with our environment. Thanks to optogenetics, these cells can now be controlled by light with high precision.”

It was also the EU Commission that introduced the controversial ban on incandescent light-bulbs in 2009, making seamless LED use possible in the first place.

Dear viewers, it is extremely alarming that circles like the Club of Rome or the WEF are raving about technologies like optogenetics. These are groups of people who see population reduction or the “Great Reset” as the solution to world problems.

A “Great Reset” with the goal that, according to the WEF, by 2030 we will own nothing and still be happy.

Possibly happy through applied manipulative optogenetics?

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„Ich bin Ökonom und geopolitischer Analyst und versuche so gut wie möglich die sich immer verändernden „heutigen“/ resp. „morgigen“ Lagen zu analysieren. Mit anderen Worten, die Punkte zu verbinden: die Punkte zwischen Covid, dem Ukrainekrieg, dem Reset, dem sich immer mehr aufdrängenden QR-Code, der geplanten „4. Industriellen Revolution“ von Klaus Schwab. Diese beinhaltet den Plan der Digitalisierung von allem, inklusiv dem menschlichen Gehirn usw. usw.“

„Dieser persönliche QR-Code, der wird dann eben ausgebreitet über oder weiter verwendet über ein App in deinem Cellphone. Und diese App wird natürlich verbunden mit einer Zentrale, da können wir überhaupt nichts machen, die Telefone, diese Mobile Phones, die sind alle bereits so ausgerichtet, dass sie von überall her, selbst wenn man das GPS ausschaltet, wissen sie genau, dass es uns begleitet, auch ohne GPS – das ist mal ganz klar. Dann müsste man es wegschmeißen oder zuhause lassen.“

„Deshalb wissen sie gar nicht, dass sie, bereits vermutlich ihren QR-Code irgendwo im Körper mit sich tragen. Und die es noch nicht tun, die haben es auf ihrem Cellphone. Und da müssen wir irgendetwas dagegen machen.“

Sendung

Kla.TV: Peter König war als Ökonom über 30 Jahre bei der Weltbank tätig und hat Wasserprojekte in den Entwicklungsländern auf verschiedenen Kontinenten realisiert. Es freut mich, Peter König bei Kla.TV begrüßen zu dürfen. Können Sie uns etwas über Ihre heutige Tätigkeit sagen?

Peter König: Erstens: Vielen Dank, dass ich bei Ihnen sein darf und mit Ihnen sprechen darf. Ich bin Ökonom und geopolitischer Analyst und versuche so gut wie möglich die sich immer verändernden „heutigen“/ resp. „morgigen“ Lagen zu analysieren. Mit anderen Worten, die Punkte zu verbinden: die Punkte zwischen Covid, dem Ukrainekrieg, dem Reset, dem sich immer mehr aufdrängenden QR-Code, der geplanten „4. Industriellen Revolution“ von Klaus Schwab. Diese beinhaltet den Plan der Digitalisierung von allem, inklusiv dem menschlichen Gehirn usw. usw. Es gibt also jede Menge Punkte, die man verbinden kann und muss, um zu verstehen, was zur Zeit läuft und was geplant ist. Wir müssen wissen, dass im Prinzip nichts stagnant ist und stagnant bleibt, außer dem großen Ziel im Moment: The Great Reset, UN-Agenda 2030, und die 4. Industrielle Revolution. Das sind verschiedene Beschreibungen für dasselbe Ziel. Das muss man wissen. Die sind vielleicht so gemacht worden, um zu verwirren. Aber im Prinzip ist es dasselbe.

Kla.TV: Wie würden Sie denn die heutige Finanzlage beschreiben? Für den Otto Normalverbraucher ist ja immer noch – ja – so alles einigermaßen im Lot. Es geht ihm ja eigentlich noch ganz gut.

Peter König: Ja, stimmt. Der Otto Normalverbraucher, der in der Schweiz lebt, dem geht’s verhältnismäßig noch ganz gut. Aber auch hier in der Schweiz hat die Armut zugenommen, und zwar beträchtlich. Nur hier in der Schweiz redet man nicht davon. Es ist tabu, arm zu sein. Die offiziellen Ziffern über Arbeitslosigkeit in der Schweiz waren im Mai dieses Jahres bei 2,1%, im April noch 2,3%, während Ende Dezember letzten Jahres war sie fast 5%. Diese Zahlen sind meines Erachtens mächtig manipuliert. Das ist übrigens überall im Westen so. Man müsste auch die Kriterien wissen: Was wird als Arbeitslosigkeit eingestuft und angesehen? Wie wird Tagesarbeit, Teilzeitarbeit beurteilt? Wie werden die verschiedenen „Klassen“ von Arbeiten – Bauarbeit, Büroarbeit, Management- / Elite-Arbeit usw. – wie werden die eingeschlossen in die Statistik? Die sind nicht uniform. Und ich nehme an, ich gehe davon aus, das wird eben auch nicht gesagt – diese Analysen sind zwar vorhanden, das ist ganz klar (in der Statistik) – aber die werden nie publiziert. Und es würde mich gar nicht verwundern, wenn sich eine ganze Menge Leute heute mit Teilarbeit beschäftigen müssen und die als Vollangestellte und als Vollarbeitende eingestuft würden. In 2020 – die letzten Zahlen, die man offen finden kann – waren es offiziell 8,5% der Leute, die arm waren. Wie wird Armut definiert? Eine vierköpfige Familie, die unter 4.000 Franken Einkommen im Monat hat, ist in der Schweiz arm. Dieses Kriterium wird aber in der Schweiz nicht offiziell angewandt. Inoffiziell ja. Aber es gibt, glaube ich, nur im Kanton Genf – seit Kurzem – wurde das als offizielle Zahl benannt. Ich schätze heute – das ist meine Schätzung aufgrund vieler Beobachtungen – schätze ich, dass die Zahl mindestens 50% ist, wenn man eben von der Manipulation absieht.

Kla.TV: Sie sagen, dass wir uns in der Endphase eines dämonischen Plans befinden. Sie setzen dies mit der UN-Agenda 2030, dem sogenannten ‚Great Reset‘ oder eben der ‚4. Industriellen Revolution‘ gleich. Können Sie uns sagen, was Ihrer Meinung nach die Ziele dieses Plans oder eben vom ‚Great Reset‘ sind?

Peter König: Ja, ich möchte ganz kurz vielleicht einleitend sagen: Der gesamte ‚Great Reset‘ – der Ukraine-Krieg ist übrigens ein integraler Teil davon. Nur merkt man es nicht. Er ist typisch ein weiteres, … – ein Menschenteiler. Zwar kann der Krieg nie gerechtfertigt werden, so wenig wie irgendeine Art von Töten. Man kann aber erklären, wie es so weit gekommen ist: Die stete Provokation der NATO, die sich gegen das Versprechen der Alliierten beim Kollaps der Sowjetunion „Not One Inch Further East than Berlin“ – das hat der US-Secretary of State, damals James Baker, gesagt und eigentlich versprochen. Und das hat niemand eingehalten. Dagegen, wenn man auch nur ein halbwärtiges Argument für Putin erwähnt, ist man verpönter und gehasster Putin-Freund. Es gibt sogar Schweizer Offiziere, die das gemacht haben, die in der Ukraine gearbeitet haben, die bei der Nato waren und die Sache klar sehen. Die haben sich so geäußert. Die werden jetzt zensiert. Man muss sich das mal vorstellen. Man nennt das auch „Teilen und Herrschen“. Die Menschen spielen eine mächtige Rolle in der Indoktrination der Bevölkerung mit Lügen, praktisch 24 x 7 und die während der letzten – mehr als zwei Jahre – sind sie sehr erfolgreich gewesen. Die werden buchstäblich mit Milliarden subventioniert, diese Lügen. Das heißt also, die Medien, die ich anspreche.

In Kürze, was der Westen, vor allem das Reich USA, schon immer wollte, ist eine Kontrolle über das größte und reichste Land der Welt. Mit weitaus den meisten Bodenschätzen der Welt. Alles Bodenschätze, die der Westen braucht, nicht zuletzt für ihre Kriegsindustrie. Die komplexen, die kleinen „rare earth“ (seltene Erden), also das sind Metalle, die gebraucht werden vor allem in der Elektronik. Der größte Verbraucher in der Elektronik ist die Kriegsindustrie und natürlich unser westlicher Luxuslebensstil. Um den aufrecht zu erhalten, brauchen wir ebenfalls diese Rohmaterialien, die vorwiegend Russland und China liefern können.

Der‚ Great Reset‘ hat meines Erachtens drei gleichwertige und verheerende, aber verbundene Ziele:

Erstens: Depopulation: Das heißt massive Entvölkerung. Die Eugenisten sind am Werk. Das war schon vor 50 Jahren ein Plan des‚ Club of Rome‘. Und war klar ausgesprochen in ihrem Report „Limit to Growth“ von 1972. Der war auch ein Teil der Unterlage für die ersten Formulierungen für die Europäische Union. Covid-19 war die gezielte und psychologische raffinierte Einschüchterungsmethode mit einem Virus, den man nicht sieht natürlich, der nie als solcher existiert. Ein neuer Virus, der nie identifiziert wurde. Er ist grippeähnlich und hat eine Sterblichkeitsrate, die ungefähr derjenigen der jährlichen Grippe entspricht. Etwa 0,07 bis 0,1 Prozent der Infektionen. Und das betrifft vor allem ältere Personen, die ohnehin bereits unter anderen Co-Morbiditäten leiden. Aber die Angstmacherei hat bewirkt, dass sich meist unter Druck und Erpressung zwischen 60 und 80 % der westlichen Bevölkerung hat „impfen“ lassen. Und ich setze also „Impfen“ in Anführungszeichen, denn es ist ja keine Impfung. Und deshalb nenne ich es eher, sie haben sich vaxxen lassen. Mit einer Substanz, oder verschiedenen Substanzen, die genetisch veränderbare Komponenten mRNA enthalten, plus verschiedene Giftstoffe, die die schweren Krankheiten wie Herzinfarkte, verschiedene Krebsarten, Nierenversagen und so weiter auslösen. Und in vielen Fällen, wie wir das gesehen haben, offensichtlich zum Tod führen. In der Tat sind bis jetzt weit mehr Leute an den Folgen der sogenannten Impfung gestorben, als an den Folgen von Covid. Zudem gibt es nicht eine Impfung, es gibt verschiedene Injektionen mit verschiedenen biochemischen Zusammensetzungen. Und das müssen wir uns vor Augen halten: Es gibt nicht nur eine Impfung, eine Art von Chemikalien, die da eingespritzt werden, sondern verschiedene. Ich glaube, Wissenschaftler haben mal darauf hingewiesen, dass es mindestens fünf verschiedene Arten gibt. Aber vermutlich noch mehr. Und zum Teil werden die auch gezielt eingesetzt in gewissen Ländern und gewissen Gesellschaften. Also Angst ist des Feindes größte und stärkste Waffe, das müssen wir uns immer vor Augen halten.

Zweitens: Also der zweite Grund, der dahinter steckt hinter dieser Trilogie, ist die Verschiebung von privatem und öffentlich-privatem Kapital, also die Kombination von öffentlich und privat, von unten und der Mitte nach oben. Durch künstlich hervorgerufene Wirtschaftskrisen, Bankrotte usw., wird Kapital von unten und von der Mitte nach oben zu einer relativ dünnen Schicht von kontrollsüchtigen, ich würde sie sogar kriminellen Eliten nennen, verschoben. Man kann diese Gruppen auch einen Kult nennen. Und ich denke tatsächlich, die leben nach gewissen Normen eines Kults. In den Kulten werden ja gewisse Gewohnheiten und gewisse Gruppen von Leuten als Kult eingeteilt, weil sie eben diese Normen befolgen müssen, um Erfolg zu haben. Gemäß Forbes, also der ökonomische Analyst, gab es am 5. April diesen Jahres (2022) 2.668 Milliardäre. Ein Elon Musk ist scheinbar Nummer Eins mit 219 Milliarden. Man sieht klar, während die Weltbevölkerung ärmer geworden ist, hat sich der Reichtum der Reichen und vor allem der Superreichen vervielfacht. Der Reichtum von Bill Gates, nur ein Beispiel, hat sich von 96 Milliarden in 2019 auf 129 Milliarden gesteigert im April dieses Jahres (Anmerkung: 2022). Das sind etwa 34 Prozent mehr. Während er teilverantwortlich für diese Plandemie ist – ich nenne sie Plandemie, weil die keine Pandemie, sondern eine geplante Pandemie war – für die er für zig-Tausend Vaxx-Tote verantwortlich ist. Vielleicht gibt es einmal ein Nürnberg 2 der einigermaßen Gerechtigkeit bringen würde, also so ein Prozess. (Anmerkung: Nürnberger Prozess).

Dazu kommen die Finanzgesellschaften wie BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street und auch Fidelity und noch viele andere. Und vor allem die ersten drei BlackRock, Vanguard und State Street, die als Co-Aktionäre miteinander verflochten sind – schätzungsweise kontrollieren sie etwa zwischen US$ 20 und US$ 25 Billionen (1 Billion = 1 mit 12 Nullen). Die haben eine „Leverage Power“ – Hebel Kraft (Anmerkung: Hebelwirkung) von über 100 Billionen US$. Dem entgegen gesetzt entspricht das Welt-Bruttosozialprodukt etwa US$ 95 Billionen, das war am Ende letzten Jahres (Anmerkung: 2021). Und mit dieser Macht können sie buchstäblich jedes Land, jede Regierung, jede Gesellschaft unter Druck setzen und erpressen. Und wir haben das schon gesehen. Wer da nicht mitmacht, wird so genannt, neutralisiert. Es gibt schon einige davon, vor allem in Afrika. Das sind Leute oder Finanzorganisationen – zusammen mit anderen Milliardären – die man mit gutem Gewissen – ich würde sagen, krank nennen kann. Deshalb müssen sie, die über solche Kapitalmächte verfügen, …– das gibt ihnen natürlich Macht über den Menschen, aber eigentlich, – das können wir uns nicht vorstellen, ich wenigstens nicht, – was das einem bringen kann.

Das ist die heutige Lage der Welt und wir sind erst am Anfang der Agenda 2030. Solange die Menschen, die Mehrheit der Menschen, unter sogenannter kognitiver Dissonanz leidet, werden wir weiterhin beherrscht und manipuliert werden, bis es zum nächsten Schritt kommt. Und das hat sich bis jetzt bewahrheitet. Es gibt so viele Leute, Psychologen sagen, dass diese Art von Affektion, also von Krankheit kann man es nennen, die die sogenannte kognitive Dissonanz, etwas vom Schlimmsten psychologisch ist, weil es kaum wegzubringen ist.

Kla.TV: Was ist Ihrer Meinung nach der nächste Schritt dann?

Peter König: Das ist genau der dritte Punkt dieser teuflischen Trilogie, des ,Resets‘. Das ist die totale Digitalisierung. Geld, Mensch, Überwachung und Kontrolle von allem. Aus Menschen werden Transhumans. Das hat Klaus Schwab mal sogar schon in einem Interview und im westschweizerischen Fernsehen in 2016 gesagt. Dazu kommt noch – und deshalb brauchen wir in erster Linie den sogenannten QR-Code. Und QR steht für „Quick Response“, also schnelle Antwort. Und die dazugehörende Technologie, die es erlaubt, von jedem Individuum mindestens – bis jetzt, und das kann erhöht werden – mindestens bis jetzt 30.000 Daten zu speichern. Was und wo du bist, kaufst, wohin du gehst, mit wem du zirkulierst, mit wem du redest, dein Gesundheitsstatus, dein Bankkonto, dein Polizeirapport – alles, alles, alles unentweichlich wird gemächlich und langsam und immer wieder auf diesem QR-Code, den jeder hat, gespeichert.

Das wichtigste Instrument für die Volldigitalisierung ist 5G. Also wo wir schon überall Antennen finden. Und in gewissen Kantonen ist es bereits aktiv. Ich war neulich im Tessin, da hat es an meinem Telefon effektiv bereits 5G angezeigt. Hier in der Genfer Umgebung noch nicht. Und vermutlich kommt es auch bald zu 6G. Denn der einzige Grund, der weitaus größte Hauptgrund dafür ist eben die Digitalisierung von allem und vor allem des Menschen.

Die zentrale Kontrolle – also die Kontrolleure, der Kopf der Elite…, so wie die zentralen Kontrolleure meist aus Algorithmen bestehen… – kennen uns besser, als wir uns selber kennen. Leider kümmert sich kaum jemand um den heimlich über das Finanzsystem eingeschleusten QR-Code. Heute ist er überall. Aber selbst aufgeweckte Leute in der Schweiz und im übrigen Europa sehen offenbar keine Gefahr. Ich habe mit verschiedenen meiner Kollegen, die gleichdenkend darüber sind, geredet. Die finden, es ist nicht schlimm, wenn ab dem 01. Oktober alle Banken – Zahlungen über Banken – über einen QR-Code laufen müssen. Ich finde, das ist eine Katastrophe. Und ich glaube auch – ich habe bis jetzt noch keine festen Beweise – ich glaube auch, dass das die Regierung über die Banken einführen will. Weil: wir hatten ja eine Abstimmung vor ein paar, ich glaube sechs, Jahren über die Einführung der sogenannten Agenda 2020. Das wäre eine Identifikation gemäß Bill Gates – und die wurde abgelehnt.

Also: der QR-Code und der daraus abgeleitete sogenannte VC – also der „Vaccine Code“ oder „Vaccine-Certificate-code“ („Vaccination Certificate“ auf englisch) sind das Gefährlichste, was uns droht, was uns bevorsteht, wenn wir nichts dagegen tun. Denn das bedeutet die totale Überwachung. Und wenn wir da sind, dann ist es sehr, sehr schwierig, da raus zu kommen.

Kla.TV: Aber ich sag mal: Der QR-Code ist ja heute aus dem Alltag nicht mehr wegzudenken. Den haben wir halt überall. Und Sie sehen darin das Gefährlichste, was uns passieren kann. Können Sie uns die Gefahr von diesem QR-Code noch etwas näher beschreiben?

Peter König: Über den QR-Code können wir gar zum Verhungern verurteilt werden. Wieso? Dazu muss der QR-Code – oder sein Nachfolger, wie auch immer das genannt wird – auf eine Art den Menschen eingepflanzt werden. Und das hat ja schon Klaus Schwab damals in diesem kurzen Interview mit dem Schweiz-Französischen Fernsehen in Genf gesagt, und das vor sechs Jahren – hat er gesagt: Bei 2025 bis 2030 werden wir alle einen Chip entweder in unserer Kleidung tragen oder unter der Haut. Na, das war, das ist zwar vielleicht sein Traum, ich hoffe nicht, dass es so weit kommt, aber das hat er bereits angekündigt. Und damit sind wir in einem elektro- …, werden wir zu einem elektromagnetischen Feld. Wir Menschen. Es gibt bereits in Schweden Versuchsgruppen, Volontäre-Versuchsgruppen, die haben so einen Chip in der Hand eingepflanzt, ungefähr die Größe eines Reiskorns. Im Moment sind das eben wie gesagt, nur Volontäre, die da mitwirken. Und die brauchen also diesen Code, also diesen Chip, vorwiegend für digitalen Zahlungsverkehr. Aber da kann natürlich erweitert werden, praktisch unbeschränkt. Nicht wahr?

Und das ist dann die Basis für eben diesen QR-Code, eingepflanzt im menschlichen Körper, und deshalb auch manipulierbar mit 5G oder 6G. Man kann sich also vorstellen, dass jemand, der sich nicht systemgetreu verhält, aus dem Zahlungsverkehr, das heißt Nahrungsmittel kaufen und mehr, ausgeschlossen werden kann. Man kann ihm auch sein digitales Bankkonto blockieren oder sein Guthaben konfiszieren. Das macht der Westen ja bereits, das sehen wir, und zwar bis jetzt vielleicht weniger an Individuen – oder wenigsten noch nicht in Europa oder in der Schweiz – aber angetrieben von den USA findet das bereits statt, in dem eben die Regierung, die amerikanische Regierung gefolgt von der europäischen, von Brüssel und von all den Ländern die sich da anschließen – werden die Verhalten von Ländern – wie im Moment Russland ist das beste Beispiel, aber es gibt jede andere Menge davon – die sogenannt sanktioniert werden. Das heißt also, es werden ihre Guthaben blockiert im Ausland, mit anderen Worten gestohlen, und dazu gehören China, Nordkorea, Iran, Venezuela, Syrien und so viel, usw. Also – aber Russland im Moment am meisten.

Kla.TV: Herr König, Sie haben gesagt, dass einen QR-Code heute mittlerweile jeder hat, wie muss man das verstehen?

Peter König: Ja, also ich geh mal davon aus, dass jeder irgendeinmal eine Rechnung bezahlt hat, auf der ein QR-Code ist. Selbst wenn man den nicht braucht, um die Rechnung zu bezahlen, hat man doch den Namen, also seinen eigenen Namen mit diesem QR-Code in Verbindung gebracht, und die Rechnung bezahlt, denn das ist ein integraler Teil des Einzahlungsscheins, den man über die Bank bezahlt oder am Postschalter bezahlt. Aber noch wichtiger ist, dass wahrscheinlich alle von uns – oder fast alle nehme ich mal an – einen PCR-Test gemacht haben, entweder weil sie reisen wollten oder weil sie irgendwo ein Theater besuchen wollten, oder irgendetwas … In den letzten zwei Jahren konnte man ja kaum in ein Restaurant gehen oder in viele Restaurants konnte man überhaupt nicht gehen hier in der Gegend, ohne entweder geimpft zu sein oder einen QR-Test zu haben. Da hat dann jeder, der irgendetwas brauchte einen PCR-Test, hat einen QR-Code, und zwar einen persönlichen QR-Code. Und dieser persönliche QR-Code, der wird dann eben ausgebreitet über oder weiter verwendet über eine App in deinem Cellphone. Und diese App wird natürlich verbunden mit einer Zentrale, da können wir überhaupt nichts machen, die Telefone, diese Mobile Phones, die sind alle bereits so ausgerichtet, dass sie von überall her, selbst wenn man das GPS ausschaltet, wissen sie genau, dass es uns begleitet, auch ohne GPS – das ist mal ganz klar. Dann müsste man es wegschmeißen oder zuhause lassen. Und das machen die wenigsten.

Aber abgesehen davon: Irgendeinmal braucht man dieses Cellphone wieder und dann ist man mit dem verbunden, und wenn man eben wie gesagt, wir haben vorher von der Einspritzung gesprochen, die Graphenoxid enthält und Graphenoxid ist sehr, sehr elektronisch, elektromagnetisch, das ist die Substanz, die gebraucht wird, wahrscheinlich einer der Substanzen, vielleicht die wichtigste, die gebraucht wird, um uns zu manipulieren mit 5G, wenn das mal eingesetzt wird dafür. Und das muss nicht mehr lange dauern. Ich weiß nicht, wenn das geschieht, aber das kann ohne weiteres…, vielleicht hat es schon begonnen für gewisse Leute.

Und dann, wenn das geschieht, dann haben wir praktisch diese Substanz eines QR-Codes bereits in unserem System eingebaut. So funktioniert das. Und da können wir dagegen nichts machen, wir wissen es gar nicht mehr. Die meisten Leute… – ich nehme an, die wenigsten wissen, dass sie mit einem Impfstoff, sogenannten Impfstoff, geimpft worden sind, der aus Graphenoxid besteht, aus einer hoch magnetisierbaren und elektronisch manipulierbaren Substanz, das wissen die wenigsten. Und deshalb wissen sie gar nicht, dass sie bereits vermutlich ihren QR-Code irgendwo im Körper mit sich tragen. Und die es noch nicht tun, die haben es auf ihrem Cellphone. Und da müssen wir irgendetwas dagegen machen, ich glaube, das wäre, es gibt Leute, es gibt effektiv Leute, die sagen: Wir sollten versuchen, zurück zu gehen, kein Mobile Phone mehr zu brauchen, und Festlinien [= Festnetz-Telefone] zu brauchen und uns von dieser ganzen Elektronik entfernen.

Das ist heutzutage, das wurde so langsam… – das heißt, es ist so gemächlich und so gescheit, klug, wurde das in unser Leben infiltriert, dass wir uns ein Leben, vor allem die jüngeren Leute, die jüngere Generation, ohne dieses Cellphone gar nicht mehr vorstellen können. Die meisten finden diesen QR-Code, wenn ich mit Leuten spreche, vor allem mit Jüngeren, die finden den toll, weil damit bezahlt man mit dem Telefon direkt eine Rechnung im Supermarkt oder im Restaurant, fahren sie einfach drüber und die Rechnung ist bezahlt – die finden das toll. Die haben gar keine Ahnung, was damit bezweckt wird, gar keine Ahnung, die wollen auch nicht zuhören. Wenn ich ihnen das erkläre, dann bin ich ein Spinner. Tut mir leid, das ist leider unsere Welt heute.

Und das wird natürlich voran getrieben mit einer unheimlichen Lügenpropaganda. Wenn sie wissen, wie viel selbst die Schweizer Regierung, die Medien, die Mainstream-Medien in der Schweiz subventionieren, sogenannt subventionieren oder kaufen oder korrumpieren mit Geld, mit wie viel Geld, das ist unglaublich. Ich glaube in der Schweiz ist der Betrag pro Kopf – wir haben ja nur 8,4 Millionen Einwohner – bedeutend höher als in den USA. Also der Betrag. Ich habe mal von einer Zahl von 1,7 Milliarden Franken gehört über eine Periode, ich glaub von zwei bis drei Jahren, die den Medien zur Verfügung gestellt wird, eben damit sie sagen, was die Regierung und sehr wohl wahrscheinlich die WHO zu sagen hat.

Kla.TV: Wäre das so die Umwandlung von „human“ zu „transhuman“, wie es von Klaus Schwab irgendwo mit vorgegeben war oder auch von seinem diabolischen Top-Berater, dem Autor und Historiker Yuval Noah Harari, vorgeschrieben oder angepriesen wird? Harari redet davon, wie in Zukunft „humans“ gehackt werden …?

Peter König: Harari nennt uns Menschen buchstäblich „animals that can be hacked“. Das sind seine Worte, also „Tiere, die gehackt werden können“. „Gehackt“ also im Sinne von „elektronisch infiltriert“ und manipuliert werden können. „Tiere, die gehackt werden können“ sind wir. Ich geh davon aus, dass diese arrogante Art der Unverschämtheit von Harari von Klaus Schwab ausgenützt, wahrscheinlich sogar aufgefordert wurde, um den Menschen Angst zu machen. Erstes Motto der Abwendung, der Resistenz, ist keine Angst haben – NIE. Das habe ich schon gesagt und das wiederhole ich immer wieder. Keine Angst haben. Die Angst ist deren größte Waffe. Das ist das Schlimmste. Mit anderen Worten, viele der bereits Geimpften, also sogenannten Geimpften, die haben Graphenoxid gespritzt gekriegt. Und Graphenoxid funktioniert sehr gut als Material, um elektronisch manipuliert zu werden. Und bereits mit dieser Manipulation wird dann ein gewisser Transhumanismus vorbereitet, schon mit der Einspritzung. Die meisten Leute wissen das gar nicht. Aber daraus kann man dann mit 5G ohne weiteres ferngesteuerte Transhumane machen. Das wäre die totale Versklavung der Überlebenden, und ich sage der Überlebenden, die eben die Reduktion der Weltbevölkerung überlebt haben. Von mir aus gesehen ein nicht mehr lebenswertes Leben, aber wir würden davon vermutlich kaum etwas spüren, denn wir sind im Banne von Artificial Intelligence (AI) [= Künstliche Intelligenz (KI)], Algorithmen oder eben wie Klaus Schwab das genannt hat „Du wirst nichts mehr besitzen, aber glücklich sein.“ Das Ziel des dunklen Cabals oder Kults, wie ich das eben immer nenne, diesen Stand zu erreichen bei 2030, nach Erfüllung, nach Implementation der UN-Agenda 2030 – also es fehlen noch 8 Jahre – oder auch bei der Erfüllung vom ,Great Reset‘, oder der Erfüllung der ,4. Industriellen-Revolution‘. Wie schon vorher genannt, das sind eben Ziele, die sich identisch sind in den drei synonymen Programmen, die Terminologien sind eben verschieden, um uns zu verwirren.

Kla.TV: Ja, sehen Sie eine Möglichkeit, dass diese Ziele der totalen Versklavung noch verhindert werden können?

Peter König: Ja, es fehlt zwar noch einiges um die Menschen wirklich aufzuwecken, um die Großzahl aufzuwecken. Aber es muss dazu kommen. Wir müssen aufwachen. Und ich glaube, ich sehe Ansätze dazu, dass das geschieht. Wie lange die dauern, weiß ich leider nicht. Aber es muss geschehen und es wird kommen. Es ist unmöglich, dass sich die Natur von solchen Leuten – Ich kann sie kaum mehr Leute nennen, das sind ja nicht mehr Humane – einschüchtern lässt.

Also: Bewusstsein auf ein höheres Niveau setzen, um der Manipulation des dunklen Kults zu entgehen. Das ist eine Priorität. Um das zu bewerkstelligen, dürfen wir – deshalb wiederhole ich es, – dürfen wir keine Angst haben. Die Anerkennung der Lüge, der wir vermutlich ein ganzes Leben lang ausgesetzt waren, müssen wir akzeptieren. Denn das ist die Überwindung der sogenannten kognitiven Dissonanz. Und sehr wichtig, sehr wichtig ist, wir dürfen keinen Hass spüren oder ausdrücken gegenüber diesen Tätern. Denn wenn wir das tun – das wollen die im Prinzip, wenn sie uns Angst machen oder uns einschüchtern, dann ist ihr Ziel, Hass zu verursachen. Dann setzen wir uns auf dasselbe tiefe Niveau, wie sie selber sind. Das dürfen wir nicht. Also nach dem Motto – „We shall overcome“ – wir werden die Situation beherrschen – OHNE ANGST, ich wiederhole nochmal, OHNE ANGST, dem Licht entgegenleben und in Frieden für die Menschheit entscheiden. Und so können wir uns – ich bin überzeugt – retten.

Kla.TV: Ja, Peter König, Vielen Dank für das Interview. Vielen Dank für die Zeit die Sie sich genommen haben. Und ja, wir werden zusammen überwinden. Vielen Dank.

Peter König: Nichts zu danken. Ich bin Ihnen dankbar, dass Sie mich auf Ihrem Programm haben sprechen lassen und hoffentlich erreicht diese Mitteilung einige, die bereit sind, da mitzumachen, – auch geistig mitzumachen. Vielen Dank.

*

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Peter König ist Ökonom, geopolitischer Analyst und war über 30 Jahre bei der Weltbank tätig. Im Interview mit Kla.TV spricht Herr König über die aktuelle Finanzlage in der Schweiz, über den ,Great Reset‘ und in diesem Zusammenhang über die Kontrolle jedes Einzelnen. Dabei erläutert er, was es mit dem QR-Code auf sich hat.

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The Syrian conflict is in a stalemate, and wasn’t even mentioned on US President Biden’s recent Middle East trip.  The proxy war in Syria features the US, NATO, EU, Turkey, Iran and Russia all playing roles which vary from conflicting, to competing, and complementing.

While the international media is focused on events in Ukraine, the Syrian people are suffering from the aftermath of war, US-EU sanctions, and an economy near collapse.

Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Dr. Ahmad Alderzi, the noted microbiologist and political activist.  The questions range from Aleppo, to Turkey, to the Kurds, to Qatar, and Iran to delve into the backstory of what is the current situation on the ground in Syria.

*

Steven Sahiounie (SS):  The Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has recently paid a visit to Aleppo for the first time in almost a decade.  Meanwhile, Turkish President Erdogan is threatening to start a military operation in northern Syria.  In your opinion, does Al-Assad’s visit to Aleppo constitute a political message to Erdogan?

Ahmad Alderzi (AA):  Al-Assad’s visit to Aleppo took place in highly grave and complicated international and territorial circumstances for Syria. It was intended to carry a set of local, territorial, and international messages. Locally, it was intended to imply the return of the pre-war policies, in which Aleppo constituted a central concern for the president, Al-Assad, that made it claim its ordinary position as the most important economic city in Syria, and that the aftermath of the war policies, that prevented Aleppo and its industrial men from reclaiming their positions have come to an end. It also denoted that the next phase will witness a dramatic change concerning how to deal with the doomed city and that suitable circumstances and conditions for this return will be achieved, which made the people of Aleppo grasp that message and rush, as they are full of hope, to receive him.

Territorially, the message to Erdogan’s Turkey, which is still working on taking over Aleppo again, is clear; any new attempt to reoccupy Aleppo should witness a different way of military dealing, based on the positions of the Russian and Iranian allies, who firmly stood together with it against any new Turkish military movement.

Internationally, the sent message to the United States and the European Union, is that Syria’s position towards them will not change and that the Aleppo region, through which the Arab gas pipeline was supposed to pass in 2010, will not let the Israeli gas pipeline pass through it as well.

SS:  The international coalition in eastern Syria warns the Kurds against any talks with the Syrian government and the Russians, meanwhile, it does not prevent Erdogan from launching a military operation against the Kurdish militias.   In your opinion, what would the Kurds do to protect themselves?

AA:  The Kurdish leaders are confused as they shifted from the phase of being caressed, where temptations and promises were given by the international powers in case they aligned with them, to the phase of the biggest loser in the international and territorial conflict. They turned to be the weakest party in the international and territorial conflict having their choices reduced dramatically, where they found themselves obliged to align with either the west or the east, either Russia, China, Iran, India, Shanghai, and the Brics system, or with the US, who disappointed and conspired against them, and the European Union states who give up to Turkey, who is a NATO member, for invading the north in exchange for aligning with them in NATO. The last and only safe choice to remain was heading towards Damascus, with the assistance of the Russians and the Iranians, with a different mentality, in return for agreed rights by all parties. However, this is the sole way to protect themselves following the bitter experience they had with the Americans and the Turks.

SS:  A photo that went viral on social media showed cleaning and restoring the Qatari embassy in Damascus.  Will Qatar reopen its embassy in Damascus?

AA:  What Qatar is doing, the restoration of the embassy, does not deviate from the stick and carrot policy. After all, it does not deviate from the US higher policies in exchange for getting American protection and a regional role much larger than its actual size. It’s a clear message that Damascus’ choice about aligning either with the currently hegemonic international order or with the upcoming international one is what would identify the future of Syria and its political system. That is, aligning with Washington would open the doors for reconstruction, restoration of role, and economic prosperity for Damascus; that is what the carrot policy of restoring the embassy represents. As for the stick policy, it would be represented by the Qatari position in the Human Rights Council, which called for opening an investigation and holding the Syrian officials on trial for violating human rights.

SS:  The Iranian foreign minister was in Turkey in an attempt to restore the ties between Ankara and Damascus.   Following this visit, he headed to Damascus and met President Bashar Al-Assad.  In your opinion, will this attempt be fruitful, and is there any progress?

AA:  The Iranian attempts of restoring the ties between Ankara and Damascus set out based on the Iranian policy concerns about what is being hatched over against it internationally and regionally on the one hand, and to protect its allies and partners in a highly dangerous and complicated area from conspiracies on the other hand. This requires screwing up what is being planned by the regional powers; more importantly, working on neutralizing Turkey, which has all the cards that can destabilize the region nationally, religiously, and on the sectarian level, from the direct involvement in the American-Zionist project. However, judgments cannot be passed on this attempt now, they require building trust bridges between the two parties, Turkey’s confession of the unity of the Syrian territory and withdrawing from the areas it occupied, and disbanding terrorist organizations that it harbored, trained, and protected. This requires the Turkish leadership to be aware and realize that its exits from and around the inside and outside can only be achieved by moving towards cooperation policies, as an alternative to rough and violent control attempts.

SS:  Recently in the UN session, Russia vetoed extending the humanitarian aid corridors to Idlib. In your opinion, how will that have an effect on the last area controlled by the terrorists in Syria?

AA:  It’s early to judge the effect of the Russian position in the security council on the future of the terrorist groups. It has nothing to do with them, rather, it has to do with the American sponsor of these groups. The Russian and Chinese vetoes are just one step in a long course to turn the threats into cumulated opportunities on the course of changing the current international order. Therefore, the resolution duration was reduced to only six months, to monitor American promises of dealing differently with the legitimate Syrian government, and we have no choice but to wait to know the trends of international politics and their impact on Syria.

*

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Guest: Renate Holzeisen is an attorney at law and economist in Italy.

This session is about a report on a remarkable Cautelar order (urgent proceedings due to imminent irreparable damage) of an Italian judge on COVID-19 injection (inaudita altera parte). The Florence Regional Court overturned the suspension of a psychologist (who was subject to mandatory vaccination) on excellent grounds.

The judge explicitly identifies the mRNA injections as experimental substances that, according to current data, are not likely to break the chains of infection. 

The actual trial is set for September.

*

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Introduction

We are in an era of Pax Americana where peace supposedly exists under the hegemony of the global superpower, the United States. But the years of American leadership have rather brought more wars, hostilities and chaos than one can remember. Rampant state surveillance, military alliances (against an imagined threat and enemy), international law violations, war crimes, etc. define the current state of nature.

The US, self-proclaimed bastion of democracy and freedom, deprives its citizens of their individual rights and personal freedom. Is this the future we want for our kids and grandkids? Decide on the future by acting on the present.

On Global Research, it is our intention to continue to relentlessly promote independent and authoritative voices that speak out on issues which are deliberately neglected or distorted by the corporate media.

To deliver on this intention, we need your help. Please support us: donate or become a member now by clicking below.

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Thanks for supporting independent media.

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***

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The follow text is the Preface to the Japanese print Edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s E-Book entitled: 

The 2020-22 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset” which is currently in E-Book format.

***

My thanks to the Publisher and to the translator Tatsuo Iwana.

Today at the time of writing my thoughts are with the people of Japan. The COVID-19 crisis is destroying people’s lives. My responsibility as an author is to reveal the truth, break the tide of media disinformation and reach out Worldwide to as many people as possible.

This book is the result of more than two years of detailed research on the causes and  consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. I am much indebted to the publisher and translator for their commitment and support throughout this endeavor. 

The results of my research, backed up by reports by prominent scientists and medical doctors, confirm that the COVID-19 policy mandates put forth by national governments worldwide, including the mRNA vaccine, are totally invalid.  

In this preface, I will focus briefly on 

• The chronology of the COVID-19 crisis with reference to Japan,
• The mRNA vaccine mandate launched by Japan’s Ministry of Health in February 2021,
• The 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. 

COVID-19 Chronology  

On January 30th, 2020 (Geneva Time), the Director General of the WHO Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared a Global Health Emergency based on 83 PCR positive cases outside of China. A ridiculously low number.

These 83 cases categorized as “COVID-19 confirmed cases” were used as a justification to launch the WHO’s Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). (For more details, see chapters I and II). 

Prior to the WHO’s historic decision, (former) Prime Minister Shinzo Abe [who passed away in July 2022] had already expressed concern regarding the novel corona virus.

A Novel Corona Response Headquarter (NCRH) chaired by the Prime Minister was created.

On the day prior to the WHO announcement, at an NHRH meeting held at the Diet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stated: 

“… There are currently eight patients confirmed … In addition, among those who returned to Japan yesterday, three tested positive in the screening. Currently these individuals are hospitalized …  Two of them show no symptoms. Taking into consideration the fact that individuals have tested positive for the virus despite exhibiting no symptoms, it is necessary for us to phase up our responses including quarantine measures.” (emphasis added)¹

These ridiculously low numbers did not under any circumstances provide evidence of an epidemic. The quarantine measures were not required nor justified. 

Moreover and this is fundamental, the methodology used to generate the so-called “positive cases” was the polymerase chain reaction (PCR test) which was subsequently acknowledged as misleading and invalid by both the WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (See Chapter III, Appendix to Chapter III for details)

In subsequent developments, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR test) methodology coupled with other rapid tests for detecting SARS-CoV-2 were activated in all major regions of Japan.

Test, Test, Test

This process of extensive testing using the PCR test indelibly contributed to hiking up the numbers of so-called “COVID-19 confirmed cases” reaching 300,000 “cumulative cases” in Japan in December 2020. It also contributed to spearheading the fear campaign. The latest figures recorded in early March 2022 at the time of writing were of the order of 5,5 million “cumulative cases”.² 

I have spent months on end examining the PCR test and its results and can state unequivocally that these estimates are erroneous and misleading. They have no scientific basis. (See details in Chapter III) 

What this implies is that all the COVID-19 policy mandates applied by the Japanese authorities since the outset of the pandemic in March 2020, allegedly to curb the progression of the infectious disease are invalid. These include the various state of emergency measures, the temporary closure of schools, the face mask, social distancing, the suspension of large-scale social gatherings, etc.  

These measures were facilitated by a draft amendment “to the Special Measures Act to Counter New Types of Influenza of 2012” which allowed for the extension of emergency measures to “an influenza outbreak which would include COVID-19”.

“Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s abrupt request for all schools in Japan to temporarily close down and his call to cancel large events have been called into question as they have no legal basis. Revising the existing special measures law would … give these requests legal ground.” (emphasis added)³

Ironically, this amendment adopted by the Diet on March 13, 2020 implied the recognition (by the government) that SARS-CoV-2 was not a dangerous “killer virus” as portrayed by the media, it was categorized as having similar features to seasonal influenza. According the WHO’s definition of SARS-CoV-2:

“The most common symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, dry cough, and tiredness. … These symptoms are usually mild and begin gradually. Some people become infected but only have very mild symptoms. Most people (about 80%) recover from the disease without needing hospital treatment. Around 1 out of every 5 people who gets COVID-19 becomes seriously ill and develops difficulty breathing.”⁴ (See Chapter III) 

The WHO definition of COVID-19 “similar to seasonal influenza” did not hit the headlines of the Japanese media. Had it been revealed, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s emergency measures would no doubt have been questioned and opposed by the Japanese people.

Moreover, according to the WHO, the number of “Covid-19 confirmed case” in Japan recorded on March 16, 2020 was 266. *See WHO Japan 

Meanwhile, the fear campaign was used to provide legitimacy to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s emergency measures.

This amendment to the Special Measures Act was hastily adopted by the Diet, one day after the March 11, 2020 (Geneva time) lockdown instructions transmitted to 193 member states of the United Nations.⁵ It provided a timely and convenient “green light” to Shinzo Abe to adopt a series of drastic economic measures including the lockdown and confinement of the labor force allegedly as a means to combating the spread of a dangerous virus SARS-CoV-2. 

What was the outcome of these forceful lockdown procedures implemented by Shinzo Abe? 

Two months later (May 28, 2020), Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a meeting of the Ministerial Council acknowledged (quoting the May Monthly Economic Report) that:

“The Japanese economy is worsening rapidly in an extremely severe situation, due to the Novel Coronavirus.”

Furthermore, concerning short-term prospects, the Report states that, “an extremely severe situation is expected to remain due to the influence of the infectious disease for the time being….”  (emphasis added)⁶

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had casually placed the blame on “V the Virus”.

A microscopic virus does not have a “human hand”. It cannot influence economic and financial variables. 

The alleged spread of the virus (based on faulty estimates of the PCR test) cannot be held responsible for the engineered slump of the Japanese economy instrumented by the Shinzo Abe government. 

This “severe economic situation” (which is still ongoing) is the result of the COVID policy mandates first instigated by the Abe government in March 2020. 

Recent reports confirm that these ongoing economic measures have undermined civil society, disrupted social relations not to mention  the very structures of family life in Japan, while also triggering a wave of suicides, particularly among adolescents and young children. (This issue is analyzed in Chapter VI)

The mRNA Vaccine

At the time of writing, mass protests against the COVID-19 mandates are ongoing in several countries largely focusing on the impacts of the mRNA vaccine inoculations. 

In Japan, the mRNA vaccine was launched in February 2021 as a means to protect the Japanese people against a non-existent “killer virus”. More than 206 million doses have already been administered. Was the Japanese population informed regarding the dangers of the mRNA vaccine?  

In December 2021, Japan’s Ministry of Health authorized booster shots of  Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, pointing to the “low rate of side effects such as myocarditis”. This assessment (which quotes UK data) is mistaken. Moreover, the booster shots will have a devastating impact on immunity.⁷

According to Japan’s Ministry of Heath’s earlier advisory:

“The Government recommends that people get vaccinated because the benefits of vaccination are greater than the risk of side reactions.” (emphasis added)

The foregoing statement is misleading and incorrect.

At the time of writing, the Fumio Kishida government has reversed its earlier stance. It has taken the initiative to order the labeling of COVID vaccines:

“to warn of dangerous and potentially deadly side effects such as myocarditis. In addition, the country is reaffirming its commitment to adverse event reporting requirements to ensure all possible side effects are documented.⁸

Moreover, Japan’s Ministry of Heath, while recommending the vaccine, issued an advisory to the effect that the Covid-19 vaccine “is not compulsory or mandatory”.

“No vaccination will be given without consent. Please do not force anyone in your workplace or those who around you to be vaccinated, and do not discriminate against those who have not been vaccinated.” (emphasis added)⁹

Hopefully this provision constitutes a first step towards the cancellation of the COVID-19 vaccine programme.

Vaccine-Related Deaths and Adverse Events

The evidence points to a worldwide upward trend of vaccine-related mortality and morbidity which is fully corroborated.

This official data is available. Prominent medical doctors and scientists have called for the immediate repeal worldwide of the COVID-19 vaccine programme. (See Chapter VII)

Also of relevance is the confidential report by Pfizer which was released under a Freedom of Information (FOI) procedure. Pfizer acknowledges in its own confidential report that the vaccine is dangerous and unsafe. (See Chapter VII)

It is also important that people in Japan take cognizance of the fact that Pfizer has a criminal record with the US Department of Justice. (For details, see Chapter VII)

The 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics

The world’s leading athletes arrived in Tokyo in August 2021 to participate in the rescheduled Tokyo Summer Olympics.  Quarantine and testing services were established for the athletes. These procedures were totally unnecessary. 

The people of Japan as well as foreign visitors were refused access to the Olympic events in derogation of their fundamental rights. Everybody in Japan viewed the Olympic Games on TV. These far-reaching decisions were presented to public opinion as a means to saving lives and combating the spread of the virus.

The decision to postpone the 2020 Summer Olympic Games coupled with the subsequent decision to conduct the Olympic games without spectators in August 2021 were based (as outlined above) on erroneous estimates of “COVID-19 confirmed cases” using the RT-PCR test.

The PCR methodology applied to estimate the progression of the virus, was declared invalid by the WHO on January 20th, 2021, more than six months prior to the August Tokyo Olympic Games. (See Chapter III and Appendix to Chapter III).  Moreover, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a directive on July 21, 2021 calling for the withdrawal of the PCR test effective December 31, 2021. (See Chapter III) 

The conduct of the Olympic Games in August 2021 without spectators was totally unnecessary. There was no scientific basis for preventing the Japanese people from attending the Tokyo Olympics. 

The financial losses resulting from these failed policy decisions are beyond description.

Michel Chossudovsky,

Montreal,  March, 2022

Endnotes

1 Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, January 30, 2020. Novel Coronavirus Response Headquarters. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/98_abe/actions/202001/_00034.html

2 WHO, n.d. Japan: WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard. https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/jp

3 The Mainichi, March 5, 2020. Revised influenza law to allow Japan PM to declare state of emergency over coronavirus. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200305/p2a/00m/0fp/011000c

4 WHO, March 8, 2020. Media Statement: Knowing the risks for COVID-19. https://www.who.int/indonesia/news/detail/08-03-2020-knowing-the-risk-for-covid-19

5 Kyodo News, March 13, 2020. Japan’s Diet gives Abe power to declare emergency amid viral fears. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/03/57cfa56d5ecc-urgent-japans-diet-gives-abe-power-to-declare-emergency-amid-viral-fears.html

6 Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, May 28, 2020. Ministerial Council on the Monthly Economic Report and Other Relative Issues. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/98_abe/actions/202005/_00027.html

7 Osamu Tsukimori, December 15, 2021. Health ministry formally approves Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for a booster shot. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/12/15/national/science-health/health-ministry-backs-moderna-vaccine-booster/

8 Amy Mek, December 10, 2021. Alert: Japan Places Myocarditis Warning on ‘Vaccines’ – Requires Informed Consent. https://rairfoundation.com/alert-japan-places-myocarditis-warning-on-vaccines-requires-informed-consent/

9 Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, n.d. COVID-19 Vaccines. https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/covid-19/vaccine.html