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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from The Desert Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from Energy and Capital

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image on the right: Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Nkrumah

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

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

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

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

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

All images in this article are from the author

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***

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

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

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

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

Click here to order the book.

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

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

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

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

By Philip Giraldi, July 06, 2022

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

Syrian Troops and Civilians Chase Away US Occupation Convoy in Hasakah

By The Cradle, July 06, 2022

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

EU Economies Are Down on Their Knees

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, July 06, 2022

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

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

By Steve Kirsch, July 06, 2022

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

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

By Ken Meyercord, July 06, 2022

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

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

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

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

Russia and India Expand Cooperation on Modernizing Indian Air Force

By Drago Bosnic, July 06, 2022

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

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

By Black Alliance for Peace, July 06, 2022

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

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

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

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

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***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst. 

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

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 May 13, two days after the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli Occupation Forces, as her loss still dominated international news cycles, thousands of Palestinian mourners gathered to pay tribute to the woman who had given them voice for so long. They came to lay her body to rest.

Immediately, as the funeral procession was just starting, images emerged of Israeli forces attacking the pallbearers as they attempted to carry her coffin across the courtyard from the French hospital in East Jerusalem. One of the first reports came from British-Egyptian correspondent Emir Nader with BBC News investigations, who posted footage and said on Twitter (5/13/22):

“Horrible scenes as Israeli security forces beat the funeral procession for slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the crowd momentarily lose control of her casket.”

Al Jazeera carried the funeral live on air, and the footage showing the attack was widely shared over social media. One Twitter user (5/13/22) described the video, referring to the IOF, or Israeli Occupation Force:

Everyone switch on to Al Jazeera right now. This is one of the most horrifying things I’ve seen. IOF is attacking mourners carrying Shireen’s body from the hospital right now. They’re using stun grenades and tear gas and charging at them with horses and batons.

The Intercept (5/13/22) noted the footage that unfolded on live television, stunned viewers and only “intensified the outrage over her death.” Video was quickly remixed and shared, and the article linked a 45-second video on Twitter (5/13/22) posted by Rushdi Abualouf, a Palestinian journalist working for the BBC. Described as “the closest video” of the attack, it mixed Arab instrumental music over a slowed version that show helmeted, uniformed riot police singling out pallbearers and smashing bare arms with batons as mourners struggled to keep the casket upright.

The language of obfuscation

Mirroring the euphemism-dominated coverage of Abu Akleh’s killing (FAIR.org, 5/20/22), many of the first corporate press reports employed language that mystified what was happening at the funeral.

MintPressNews editor Alan MacLeod recognized the language of obfuscation, posting a series of news headlines on Twitter (5/13/22) that transformed black-clad Israeli riot squads wantonly beating pallbearers into “clashes.” Referring to an article he wrote for FAIR (12/13/19), MacLeod (5/14/22) observed that the word “clash” is used by media “when they have to report on violence, but desperately want to obscure who the perpetrators are.”

Violence comes from nowhere, it simply erupts: CBS‘s headline (5/13/22) was, “Shireen Abu Akleh Funeral Sees Clashes Between Israeli Forces and Palestinian,” updated later that day to report that “Violence Erupts” at the funeral as Israeli forces “Confront” mourners. The Times of Israel (5/13/22) had “Violence Erupts as Journalist’s Casket Emerges From Jerusalem Hospital.” And the BBC (5/13/22) went with “Shireen Abu Akleh: Violence at Al JazeeraReporter’s Funeral in Jerusalem.”

CBS‘s language prompted one Twitter user (5/13/22) to wonder about

the best term for lies by omission, untruths couched in deliberately obfuscating language. Perhaps “willfully misleading”? Denial of facts, even gaslighting, given the footage circulating of attacks on pallbearers….

An exception was a report from Jerusalem by Atika Shubert for CNN (5/13/22) headlined, “Video Shows Israeli Police Beating Mourners at Palestinian-American Journalist’s Funeral Procession.” It opened:

Israeli police used batons to beat mourners carrying the coffin of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh…. Tear gas was fired by Israeli forces and at least one flash bomb was used.

Mondoweiss (5/13/22) pointed out that the “White House says it ‘regrets the intrusion’ into Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral, but it doesn’t condemn Israeli police actions.”

Repression as retaliatory

Reporting went from bad to worse when the Israeli government issued an official statement claiming that police had to respond to Palestinian violence. Many Western news outlets repeated the claims.

Under an early BBC video (5/13/22), after “clashes broke out” and “violence erupted,” the text read, “Projectiles are seen flying towards the police, who also fired tear gas,” and then, “Israeli police said officers at the scene were pelted with stones and ‘were forced to use riot dispersal means.’”

In a later, longer version, the BBC text (5/13/22) opened with, “Police said they acted after being pelted with stones,” and repeated, “Police said officers ‘were forced to use riot dispersal means.’” The body of the text included on-the-ground reporting that accurately described what happened, only to be followed with more back-and-forth accusations.

The descriptive reporting on the funeral attack and Israeli brutality, followed with patched, confused “balance” between Palestinian and Israeli statements–contention often going back decades–began to characterize coverage. This style of journalism presents repression surrounded in a fog of inevitability, rendering even eyewitness accounts inexplicable, without context or solution.

As many reports repeated Israeli justifications for the attacks, presenting Israeli state repression as retaliatory, the Intercept (5/13/22) refuted the official Israeli version, showing how it fabricated Palestinian violence.

On Twitter (5/13/22), activist Rafael Shimunov explained how the Israeli police account used drone video to “prove” that two of the mourners had thrown rocks at police:

But a comparison of that video to ground-level news footage showed that the police video had been edited to remove the initial police charge and slowed down to make it seem as if a man who just waved his arms in frustration had thrown something at the officers.

Shimunov concluded that the mourner had no stone, his “action was putting his body between them and Shireen Abu Akleh’s casket.” He added: “To be clear, no stone justifies attacking mourners at a funeral of a journalist assassinated by your military.”

‘This isn’t a tussle’

All the media techniques come together on a CBS video posted on Twitter (5/13/22), with overlaid text saying police “clashed” with mourners, and that the “tussling” was so bad they almost dropped the coffin. “Projectiles could be seen flying through the air as Palestinians chanted anti-Israeli slogans,” the network declared.

The response on Twitter was outrage. One user (5/13/22) replied:

This isn’t a tussle or push back. This is an occupying force abusing its power. The sooner @CBSNews calls it how it is, the sooner we can pressure change. Do better.

Another “fixed” the headline, changing “clashes” to “attacking,” and switching Abu Akleh being “killed” to “assassinated.” Another Twitter used said, “These are violent occupiers (who killed journalists prior #ShireenAbuAkleh) invading a funeral… not a ‘tussle.’” Yet another asked:

Oh clashing was it? Clashing? Very interesting choice of words for being attacked by armored thugs during a peaceful memorial for a journalist those armored thugs also murdered.

Another tweeter was “imagining the headline ‘Ukrainians left dead in Bucha after clashes with Russian forces.’”

Posting an unedited video in response to CBS, a user asked: “Why was this clip cut?… to falsify the facts of course.”

In fact, the actual footage was stunning for its clear view of one-sided violence—beginning unmistakably when helmeted Israeli forces stormed the crowd and began to beat pallbearers with batons. The pallbearers stumble and are sometimes ripped from their positions, but they never retaliate. One tries to shield his head with his arm. A man wearing jeans, tennis shoes and a sleeveless shirt kicks at the helmeted, uniformed police, trying to stop them from hitting the pallbearers. Those carrying the coffin do all they can to prevent it from falling, ignoring the blows.

Al Jazeera (5/12/22) interviewed Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, who said that Israel has a track record of creating ambiguity over social media as a strategy to “muddy the waters,” knowing that many press accounts will repeat their claims.

‘Incitement’ or expression?

Explaining the funeral attacks, the Intercept (5/13/22) reported, Israeli police “said they attacked the procession because mourners waved Palestinian flags and chanted nationalist slogans.”

NPR (5/13/22) also reported, “Police said the crowd at the hospital was chanting ‘nationalist incitement,’ ignored calls to stop and threw stones at police.” It added, citing police, that “the policemen were forced to act.” NPR went on to explain why police raided Shireen’s family home, saying they “went” there “the day she was killed and have shown up at other mourning events in the city to remove Palestinian flags.”

The CBS video (5/13/22) posted on Twitter overlaid with text also read, “Al Jazeera said Israel had warned her brother to limit the size of the funeral and told him no Palestinian flags should be displayed and no slogans chanted.” They followed with, “The network said he neglected to take that guidance given the outpouring of grief and anger over the reporter’s killing.”

No comment is made about Israeli repression of Palestinian freedom of expression. “Neglected” and “guidance” are unlikely choices of words from Al Jazeera, given that the network published a scathing piece (5/12/22) slamming Western media coverage for obscuring and denying Israel’s murder of its journalist, calling it a “whitewash.” Al Jazeera has assigned a legal team to refer the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces to the International Criminal Court (Al Jazeera, 5/27/22).

Though CNN journalist Atika Shubert (5/13/22), reporting from the funeral, acknowledged Israeli attacks, she ended by saying that the family was “told not to display the Palestinian flag, that was a special request, but as you can imagine, it’s very difficult to control these crowds,” and the flags were flying. The “request” was a raid on Abu Akleh’s family home, where flags were forcibly removed. Restrictions on flying the Palestinian flag are normalized within these stories, not exposed as violations of human rights and freedom of expression.

When US media routinely repeat without comment Israeli “reasons” for “clamping down” on any display of support for Palestinian statehood, or that Palestinians were “chanting nationalistic slogans,” amounting to “incitement,” they condone the repression of Palestinian rights, which would cause other countries to be called dictatorships, or at least authoritarian regimes. Yet Israel is still listed as a democracy. As Nolan Higdon (5/28/22) pointed out, “You Can Kill and Censor Journalists or You Can have Democracy—You Can’t Have Both!” Such attitudes toward Israeli repression of Palestinian expression are a major contradiction by US media institutions, which themselves enjoy press freedoms and should be able to recognize when those freedoms are being violated.

Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian American and Columbia University professor, told FAIR that US media are “terrified of being attacked if they don’t repeat the Israeli versions of events. They live in constant fear. This happens on the ground, and during editing.” These practices were confirmed in an article published in Slate (5/22/21) last year, when a journalist admitted having trouble “reporting the truth” from Gaza.

‘System of domination’

There are rules for occupying forces articulated by the International Committee of the Red Cross on Occupation and International Humanitarian Law (4/8/04); these prohibit the collective punishment of occupied peoples. Violent repression of nationalist slogans and the Palestinian flag violates the International Declaration of Human Rights, rights which are established for those living under occupation.

Writing for Common Dreams (5/23/22), the Institute for Policy Studies’ Phyllis Bennis and Princeton’s Richard Falk noted that Israeli forces “threw Palestinian flags to the ground and violently beat mourners—including the pallbearers.” They placed the attacks into a context of “the structural nature of Israeli violence against Palestinians,” citing an Amnesty International report on Israeli violence in the Occupied Territories characterizing it as a “Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity.”

The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and the supposedly defensive attacks on mourners are part of a “pattern of repression…far more pervasive,” and in fact codified in the country’s Law of 2018, which grants only Jewish citizens the right of self-determination. Along with Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem, Bennis and Falk concluded that this “constitutes the crime of apartheid.”

This point was made visually online by Tony Karon (Twitter, 5/13/22) , a lead editorial writer at Al Jazeera, who set pictures of South African apartheid next to Israeli attacks on the funeral with the text:

African police in ‘87 attacking the coffin of Ashley Kriel to seize the ANC flag that draped it: Israeli police attacked the coffin of #ShireenAbuAkleh today, trying to seize Palestinian flags. Apartheid regimes waging war on their victims, even after death.

US responsibility 

For decades, the United States has unconditionally provided Israel with “political, diplomatic, economic and military support,” Bennis and Falk wrote. Military subsidies alone amount to about $3.8 billion every year, “most of it used to purchase US-made weapons systems, ammunition and more. This makes the US complicit in Israel’s criminal wrongdoing.”

With 20% of Israeli’s military budget supplied by the US, “the bullet or the gun used to kill Shireen could have even been purchased from US weapons manufacturers with our own money.” The use of US military aid for repression is a violation of US law:

The Leahy Law’s restriction on military aid is unequivocal: “No assistance shall be furnished,” it says, “to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”

To date, there have been six investigations into the killing of Abu Akleh, all that find conclusive evidence that the journalist was killed by Israeli Forces. “A reconstruction by the Associated Press lends support to assertions” from both the Palestinian Authority and Abu Akleh’s colleagues, the news service (5/24/22) reported, “that the bullet that cut her down came from an Israeli gun.” CNN (5/26/22) explained, “There were no armed clashes in the vicinity,” and the text over a map reads, “Footage from the scene showed a direct line of sight towards the Israeli convoy.”

Demanding the fatal bullet

Much has been made of the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, and the Israeli demands that it must be turned over to them (New York Times, 5/12/22). This offers a last talking point for Israeli’s claim that Palestinian fighters are responsible for shooting her.

For example, when Reuters (5/26/22) reported on the investigations into her killing, it added Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s response on Twitter(5/26/22): “Any claim that the IDF intentionally harms journalists or uninvolved civilians is a blatant lie.” Reuters also included his demand that the Palestinian Authority hand over the bullet for ballistic tests to see if it matched an Israeli military gun.

Palestinian tests, noted by Reuters (5/27/22), have determined that the bullet that killed Abu Akleh “was a 5.56 mm round fired from a Ruger Mini-14 semiautomatic rifle, which is used by the Israeli military.” But Reuters followed that with the Defense minister’s claim that the “same 5.56 caliber can also be fired from M-16 rifles that are carried by many Palestinian militants,” adding: “Al-Khatib did not say how he was sure it had come from an Israeli rifle.”

As Khalidi pointed out, “Anything the Israelis say, even about an investigation, will be repeated, you will still get the Israeli version—that in the name of balance.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (5/26/22) cited the numerous reports, including the findings of the Dutch-based Bellingcat Investigative Team, confirming Israeli culpability, and joined 33 other press freedom and human rights groups calling for an independent investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing.

‘The world knows very little’

Yet on June 3, 2022, the New York Times’ editorial board wrote, “The world still knows very little about who is responsible for her death.” The wordy piece repeated every Israeli talking point, including the justification of the funeral attack, saying Israeli police “appeared to want to prevent” the funeral from becoming a “nationalist rally,” and said the officers had acted against a mob “in violation of a previously approved plan.” In other words, pallbearers and mourners were attacked for expressing political opinions and allowing Palestinian society to participate in the burial of Abu Akleh.

The Middle East Eye (6/8/22) reported that when Abby Martin, host of the Empire Files, confronted Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, she asked why there has been “absolutely no repercussions” for Israel over Abu Akleh’s killing. Blinken responded that the facts had “not been established” in the killing of the veteran Al Jazeera journalist, yet no independent investigation has been started.

Washington Post reporters (6/12/22) reviewed the audio, video, social media and witness testimony of Abu Akleh’s killing, and confirmed that an Israeli soldier likely shot and killed her. Mondoweiss (6/12/22) reported the findings, expressing hope that the report would “add pressure on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to actually demand an independent investigation and accountability.”

Yet even though the Post’s editorial board (6/13/22) referred its its own reporter’s investigation as “impressive,” it still called on the Palestinian Authority to agree to a joint investigation with Israel, with US participation. In what amounts to an attempt to control the narrative about Abu Akleh’s killing, the Post editorial cited “emotional” reasons for refusing to back calls for an international investigation, saying, “We’re skeptical such an impartial inquiry is possible given the high emotions, and low trust, that permeate global discussion of the Middle East.”

On June 14, 2022, journalist Dalia Hatuqa, who covers Israeli/Palestinian affairs, told Slate’s Mary Harris (6/14/22) that Blinken had promised Shireen’s family that there would be a full investigation, then she continued: “But honestly, nothing’s happened. It’s been a month. It’s not that hard: There’s footage, eyewitnesses, all kinds of stuff. This isn’t a mystery.”

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Robin Andersen teaches media studies at Fordham University. (Follow her @MediaPhiled).

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***

GR Editor’s Note

US threatens the world with the unthinkable, blames Russia for Ukraine, etc., whilst illegally invading, inhabiting, recruiting terrorists, stirring, stealing, destabilizing, terrorizing in Syria.

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

According to local sources, a US convoy of five vehicles made an attempt to cross through the village towards one of its bases in the countryside of Hasakah on 5 July. It was intercepted by locals and SAA troops, who forced the occupation troops to turn tail.

On the same day, several protests were reported in the villages of Yusufiya and Al-Junaidah in Rmelan, Hasakah, with locals blocking roads and chanting slogans against the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

This is the second time in the span of a week that Syrian troops intercept US occupation forces, as another US convoy on 1 July was stopped as it tried to make its way through the village of Qabur al-Granja in the Qamishli area.

Discontent has been growing against the US army and its proxy militias across Syria, with many protests taking place over the past year.

Tuesday’s events came just one day after a large missile strike reportedly targeted a US occupation base in Deir Ezzor governorate.

Hours before the attack, a US convoy consisting of 55 tanker trucks smuggled stolen oil from Hasakah to the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

Hundreds of trucks filled with Syrian wheat and oil have been smuggled out of the war-torn country over the past 18 months alone, forcing Damascus to rely on the solidarity of regional powers to fulfill its needs.

The presence of US forces in Syria is illegal under international law, as troop deployment in the war-torn country was implemented without the consent of Damascus or the UN.

Earlier this year, The Cradle reported that US forces transferred dozens of ISIS detainees, including high-ranking commanders, to Deir Ezzor governorate, close to the Iraqi border.

This was reportedly an attempt to ‘revive ISIS’ for the purposes of destabilizing a region that had recently been liberated by the SAA, with the help of Russian troops.

A recent report also suggests that the CIA is actively working to recruit ISIS militants imprisoned by the SDF in northeast Syria to join the fight against the Russian army in Ukraine.

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Quite likely a majority of Americans would agree that it is wrong for the government or police to torture someone, though some would surely accept the “ticking time bomb” exemption, where a detainee is withholding information that could save many lives. It is in fact illegal to torture someone as well as it being morally wrong. Indeed, it could constitute a crime against humanity or a war crime depending on circumstances. The United States, which has signed the United Nations Convention Against Torture and is bound by it, has thereby accepted legal sanctions to back up the view that torture is never permissible. Under US law, torture committed by “government officials and their collaborators upon a person restrained by the government is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison, and its fruits are inadmissible in all courts.” Given that background, one is astonished to learn that some in the government have not taken the obligation seriously. To be sure, the US has been quick to react when lower ranking officials, contractors and ordinary soldiers have reportedly been involved in torturing prisoners, as occurred with Abu Ghraib prior to 2004, but the higher one goes up the ladder of power the less do laws apply to even the most egregious misbehavior.

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

The news that former Donald Trump appointed CIA Director Gina Haspel during her tour overseeing a prison in Thailand in 2002 personally observed at least one terrorist suspect being tortured by waterboarding, which simulates being drowned repeatedly until a confession is obtained. Waterboarding was used by the Japanese on prisoners of war in the Second World War and was subsequently considered to be torture, a war crime.

The new information came from one of the creators of the Agency’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” program, psychologist James E. Mitchell, who was testifying in a May pretrial hearing at Guantanamo Prison relating to the treatment of Saudi al-Qaeda linked terrorist suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who has been accused of being complicit in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 American sailors. Al-Nashiri, who was shipped to Gitmo in 2006 and who has been waiting sixteen years for his trial, could face the death penalty if he is convicted. His defense is seeking to demonstrate that the evidence against him was obtained by torture and should therefore be inadmissible.

Al-Nashiri was subjected to four months of waterboarding as well as to what have been described as “other coercive techniques” during his questioning in Thailand. According to testimony, the hooded interrogators repeatedly slammed al-Nashiri’s head into a wall and forced him naked into a small confinement box. When he briefly went on a hunger strike due to his treatment he was fed rectally. It is not known how frequently Gina Haspel, the senior officer in charge of the base, observed the torture, which she allegedly watched but did not participate in, but she drafted up the classified cables detailing what had occurred and what information had been developed. Oddly, al-Nashiri was freely answering the questions from the interrogators, who recommended that the extreme measures be stopped, but CIA Headquarters insisted that the torture continue in the belief that nothing is “true” until it is verified under torture. Rather than resigning to demonstrate her disagreement, Haspel allowed the process to continue, which is why in part some of her former Agency colleagues regularly refer to her as “Bloody Gina.”

Videotapes were made of the torture but they were subsequently destroyed. Haspel participated in the November 2005 destruction of hundreds of hours of recordings contained on 92 tapes showing at least two interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. She did so while serving as chief of staff to the Director of the National Collection Service Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. At her Senate confirmation hearing as Director in 2018, she said “I would also make clear that I did not appear on the tapes.” Rodriguez, who made the decision to destroy the tapes, also reportedly determined how to handle a suspected terrorist detainee Gul Rahman. Rahman was chained, nearly naked, to a concrete floor for an extended time and then froze to death. There was an internal CIA investigation but no officer on-site nor at the Agency headquarters was punished – let alone prosecuted. In fact, Rodriguez, who was in charge of the detention site, received a $2,500 bonus for his “consistently superior work.”

The Agency currently regards the existence of the black prisons and the procedures used to elicit information as a “state secret” even though the existence of the sites is widely known and has been reported on extensively. After serving as Director of Central Intelligence Haspel retired from CIA in January 2021. She currently works for a major Washington law firm King & Spalding L.L.P., a typical transition for senior officials who are able to exploit the revolving door between government and the private sector. She reportedly is part of the firm’s Government Matters practice where she “advise[s] clients on cybersecurity and information technology, among other issues.”

Every instance of torture by the federal government or its agents is by law a separate felony. Beyond that, what went on in the Agency’s black overseas prisons is shocking even in a Washington where no crime is too low to the contemplated by the governments we have unfortunately placed into power. Some might object that Gina’s actions amounted to oversight of a dreadful necessity, but there is something particularly loathsome about a powerful Administration intelligence officer finding time to watch the horrors performed on a suspect who undoubtedly was not afforded any due process before he arrived in his cell to be experimented on by a team of modern-day Torquemadas.

The unfortunate fact is the Gina Haspel is not alone. She committed what are undeniably felonies and now enjoys a well-paid sinecure with a law firm that deals extensively with the government. One might recall similar trajectories relating to the former CIA Director George Tenet who lied America into a war with Iraq that is regarded as the greatest foreign policy failure since the Second World War. He was rewarded with a professorship at Georgetown.

And then there is his partner in crime Paul Wolfowitz, he of the fabricated intelligence, who was named head of the World Bank only to subsequently step down after an unacceptable sexual relationship with a subordinate whom he rewarded with promotions was exposed. He is now a Senior Fellow at the neocon affiliated American Enterprise Institute think tank. George and Paul just might consider how the Nuremberg Trials regarded starting a war of aggression as “the ultimate war crime.” And they might suggest a bit of retrospection from their friends George Bush, Doug Feith, Scooter Libby, and Condi Rice, all of whom have been complicit in the same infamy. And then there is Donald Trump’s assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani based on a lie that he was seeking to kill Americans. They are all doing quite well, thank you, either still active or ensconced in highly respected retirement positions, shielded by their wealth and power.

As long as there is no accountability in Washington the farce of government “of the people, and for the people” will continue. That a government can use the “secrets privilege” to conceal and avoid any consequences when killing people without any due process is despicable. If you use government resources to murder someone, you should be tried and go to prison. If you start a war through deliberate lying, you should stay in prison forever. Those who make the decisions to commit crimes are wired into the system and are in a sense bullet-proof, while the public has been completely brainwashed and the beat goes on.

Another recent story tells how the CIA was apparently planning to kill currently imprisoned journalist Julian Assange in London. It reportedly included scenarios for a possible shoot-out in the heart of the city, the ramming of Russian diplomatic vehicles and the disabling of any airplane that might be involved in an escape attempt. Who came up with that one? It dates back to 2010, when the noted constitutional lawyer Barack Obama was president. Didn’t he or his advisers know that murder is against the law?

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

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

American gas exporters have positioned themselves accordingly to fill the gap as Europe turns away from Russian imports. FT reported recently that “US liquefied natural gas producers have announced a string of deals to boost exports as the industry capitalises on shortages that have left Europe with a mounting energy crisis.” 

The deals are so lucrative that Cheniere, America’s leading gas exporter, has taken an investment decision to push ahead with a project that will boost its capacity more than 20 per cent by late 2025, anticipating long-term supply deals and locked in purchases of US gas over the coming decades. The US producers of gas are reportedly running plants flat-out to increase supplies to the EU. 

The US has overtaken Russia for the first time as Europe’s top gas supplier. Although LNG from the US is sold to Europe at much higher costs than pipeline gas from Russia, EU countries have no choice. 

With Russian supply via Nord Stream at just 40% of capacity, and deliveries to be halted completely for annual maintenance on July 11-21, the outlook for near-term Russian gas supply to Europe appears bleak. 

Germany has warned of the risk that Nord Stream gas may not return at all following the maintenance. At any rate, Russian supply to Europe is at record lows and is “set to remain constrained through the third quarter,” per S&P Global.

Germany is heading for a major economic crisis. The head of the German Federation of Trade Unions has been quoted as saying in the weekend, “Entire industries are in danger of collapsing forever because of the gas bottlenecks — especially, chemicals, glass-making, and aluminium industries, which are major suppliers to key automotive sector.” Massive unemployment is likely. When Germany sneezes, of course, Europe catches cold — not only the Eurozone but even post-Brexit Britain. 

Welcome to the European Union’s “sanctions from hell.” The US literally hustled the Europeans into the Ukraine crisis. How many times did Secretary of State Antony Blinken travel to Europe in those critical months in the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to ensure that the door to any meaningful talks with the Kremlin remained shut! And American energy companies are today making windfall profits selling gas to Europeans. Won’t Europeans have the common intelligence to realise they have been had? 

Now, Biden has washed his hands off the gas crisis. He brusquely stated at a press conference in Madrid on June 30 that such premium on oil prices will continue “as long as it takes, so Russia cannot, in fact, defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine. This is a critical, critical position for the world. Here we are.  Why do we have NATO?” 

Biden’s counterfactual narrative is that the sanctions against Russia are going to work eventually and a long war in Ukraine would be Russia’s undoing. The US narrative is that if you look under the hood of the Russian economy, it may not be flexible and resourceful enough to develop an entrepreneurial bunker spirit and adopt new business models to neutralise the sanctions. Biden is convinced that Russian economy is in the grip of industrial mafias that are not very innovative and, therefore, there aren’t many options for Russia under the western sanctions. 

Biden said in Madrid:

“Look at the impact that the war on Ukraine has had on Russia… They’ve (Russians) lost 15 years of the gains they made in terms of their economy…  They can’t even — you know, they’re having — they’re going to have trouble maintaining oil production because they don’t have the technology to do it.  They need American technology. And they’re also in a simi- — similar situation in terms of their weapons systems and some of their military systems. So they’re paying a very, very heavy price for this.” 

But even if that’s the case, how does all that help the Europeans? On the other hand, President Putin’s strategic calculations with respect to the war remain very much on track. Russian forces made indisputable progress in establishing full control over Luhansk. On Monday, Putin gave the green signal to a proposal from the army commanders to launch “offensive operations.” Five months into the war, Ukrainians are staring at defeat and Russian army generals know it.

Russia didn’t wander into Ukraine unprepared, either. Evidently, it took precautionary steps both before and since the war to shield its economy. And this enables the Russian economy to settle down to a “new normal”. Washington’s options are quite limited under the circumstances. Fundamentally, western sanctions do not address the causes of the Russian behaviour, and therefore, they are doomed to fail to solve the problem at hand. 

To be sure, Putin has some nasty surprises in store for Biden closer to the November mid-term elections. Biden blithely assumes that he controls all the variables in the situation. Schadenfreude is never a rational basis for statecraft. 

Yesterday, the strategically important Kherson region bordering Crimea formed a new government with the First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia’s Kaliningrad region heading the cabinet and Russian nationals among his deputies. Now that HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, contrary to Biden’s promise, is blasting Russian cities, expect some major Russian retaliation. 

The pathway of Russia’s offensive operations is being relaid to include Kharkov and Odessa as well, apart from Donbass. The influential Kremlin politician and chairman of Duma Vyacheslav Volodin said on Tuesday, 

“Some people are asking what our goal is and when all this will end. It will end when our peaceful cities and towns no longer come under shelling attacks. What they are doing is forcing our troops not to stop on the borders of the Lugansk and Donetsk republics (Donbass) because strikes (on Russian regions) are coming from the Kharkov regions and other regions of Ukraine.”

How long does Biden think the Europeans will want to be involved in a protracted proxy war with Russia? Bild reported on Sunday that 75% of German respondents see recent price hikes as a heavy burden, while 50% said they feel their economic conditions are worsening; every second German fears a lack of heating this coming winter due to reduced Russian gas supplies and rising inflation in the European Union. 

Yet, Biden says war will go on “for as long as it takes” and fuel shortage will continue “for as long as it takes.” The European economy is expected to start contracting over the course of the second half of 2022 and the recession may continue until the summer of 2023 at least. 

Analysts at JP Morgan Chase, the US investment bank, said last week that Russia could also cause “stratospheric” oil price increases if it used output cuts to retaliate. It said, “The tightness of the global oil market is on Russia’s side.” Analysts wrote that prices could more than triple to $380 a barrel if Russia cut production by 5m barrels a day.

Putin’s decree last week is ominous — the Kremlin taking full control of the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in Russia’s Far East. State-owned Gazprom held a 50% plus one share stake in the project and its foreign partners included Shell (27.5%), Mitsui (12.5%), and Mitsubishi (10%). The decree stipulates that Gazprom will keep its majority stake, but foreign investors must ask the Russian government for a stake in the newly created firm within one month or be dispossessed. The government will decide whether to approve any request. 

An aerial view of the liquefaction plant, part of the Sakhalin-2 liquefied natural gas project in Sakhalin, Russia, described as one of the world’s largest integrated oil & gas project. (Source: Indian Punchline)

This will unsettle energy markets further and put more strain on the LNG market, and can be seen as a move to put more pressure on the West by concurrently restricting gas supplies to Europe and creating more demand for LNG in Asia that will draw off supplies currently going to Europe. Sakhalin-2 supplies circa 4% of the global LNG market! 

The only part of the US agenda that is going well seems to be the unspoken part of it: the very same Anglo-American objectives that Lord Ismay once predicted as the rationale behind the NATO’s existence —”to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”  

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***

When Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador meets with United States President Joe Biden on July 12, he plans to once again urge the US government to drop the charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Obrador is one of the few presidents in the world, who has expressed genuine support for Assange and even offered to engage in talks about asylum in Mexico.

“If they take him to the United States and he is sentenced to the maximum penalty and to die in prison, we must start a campaign to tear down the Statue of Liberty,” Obrador said, as he referred to Assange during a press conference on July 4.

According to El País, Obrador insisted that the Statue of Liberty would “no longer be a symbol of freedom” if Assange was extradited. He maintained there could be “no silence” on the matter.

The UK government authorized Assange’s extradition on June 17. Assange’s legal team appealed the decision.

While it is a welcome development that an ally and neighboring country is challenging the US to uphold press freedom, the remarks from Obrador apparently came while deflecting criticism of Mexico from Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Mexico is one of the more dangerous countries in Latin America for journalists. RSF, which also supports Assange, condemned Mexico after “Yesenia Mollinedo, the founder and editor of the Facebook news outlet El Veraz, and Sheila Johana García, a video reporter for El Veraz,” were “gunned down in broad daylight in Cosoleacaque, in the eastern state of Veracruz.”

“[RSF] is appalled by the murders of three more reporters in less than a week in Mexico, which—subject to confirmation by RSF’s investigations—will bring the total number of Mexican journalists killed in connection with their work since the start of the year to 11,” the press freedom organization declared.

With no evidence, Obrador suggested RSF’s statement was part of a “smear campaign against the government of Mexico.”

But Obrador is not alone when it comes to invoking the Assange case to deflect responsibility. Several leaders throughout the world, including in China, Russia, and Azerbaijan, have responded to Western criticism of how their governments treat journalists by asking how the US and United Kingdom can claim to support press freedom when Assange is in jail.

Additionally, supporting Assange is a way for the Mexico government to assert its independence and breakaway from a history of US meddling and destabilization in Latin America. After all, this is partly why Ecuador President Rafael Correa granted political asylum to Assange in 2012 and allowed the WikiLeaks founder to live in the country’s London embassy.

Obrador is recognized as Mexico’s first left-wing president in decades.

In the last week of June, Obrador contended that Assange is the “best journalist of our time, in the world. And he has been, I repeat, very unjustly treated, worse than a criminal. That is a shame for the world.” He added, “Mexico opens its doors to Assange.”

Obrador, as Ben Norton recounted for Multipolarista, paused during this press conference to show a clip from the “Collateral Murder” video, which was released by US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning to WikiLeaks. The video showed a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by US soldiers in Baghdad. The troops killed two Reuters journalists and a father who stopped his van to provide aid.

The Mexico leader took a firm stand in June and refused to attend the Summit of the Americas, which was hosted by the US State Department in Los Angeles. He boycotted the summit because the leaders of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua were barred.

Obrador’s boycott inspired the leaders of Bolivia, Guatemala, and Honduras to join Mexico in giving the US government the cold shoulder. It effectively ensured the so-called democracy summit was sparsely attended and would be an entirely inconsequential gathering for all involved.

To deal with the fallout, US officials invited Obrador to the White House.

One of the earliest statements of support from Obrador came on January 3, 2020. He highlighted the US diplomatic cables that Assange published, which also came from Manning.

“I don’t know if he has recognized that he acted against rules and norms of a political system, but at the time these cables demonstrated how the world system functions in its authoritarian nature,” Lopez Obrador said. “Hopefully consideration will be given to this, and he’s released and won’t continue to be tortured.”

Obrador asked President Donald Trump to pardon Assange, but Trump was too concerned with whether senators in the Republican Party would vote to impeach him. He declined to issue a pardon.

On January 4, 2021, Obrador cheered the initial decision by a UK district court to block Assange’s extradition. He also offered asylum.

The Crown Prosecution Service ruthlessly used Obrador’s asylum offer to keep Assange in jail.

Clair Dobbin QC, a prosecutor, claimed Assange had a history of attempts to evade extradition. He was willing to live in the Ecuador embassy and might “flee” to the Mexico embassy if he believed the US government would ultimately win their appeal, she argued.

The tactic helped to persuade District Judge Vanessa Baraitser. Bail was denied two days after ruling that incarceration in the United States would lead Assange to act upon a single-minded determination to take his own life, an impulse he could not control.

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Kevin Gosztola is Managing editor of Shadowproof, host of the “Dissenter Weekly,” co-host of the podcast “Unauthorized Disclosure,” and member of Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).

Featured image: Screen shot of Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador from MILENIO broadcast of press conference on July 4, 2022 (Source)

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Doctors are mystified by a rash of seizures, rashes, etc. happening to 2 and 3-year-old kids.

The only thing these kids have in common is that they were given the COVID vaccine just days earlier (two to five days earlier).

The doctors cannot figure out what is causing the seizures (since it couldn’t be the vaccine since those are safe and effective). The medical staff is not permitted to talk about the cases to the press or on social media or they will be fired.

One nurse posted something to the effect of “how is this legal????” I had to paraphrase to protect the poster.

This is why you are hearing these reports from me. They can’t fire me.

There is nothing on the mainstream media about this since the nurses and doctors aren’t allowed to talk about it.

This will all come out some day, but for now, everyone is keeping quiet about it and the doctors are instructed to convince the parents that it isn’t vaccine related and that they are the only ones having the problem.

Because that’s how science works.

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Allysia Finley, a member of Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, Monday called into question the motives behind the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decision to extend emergency use of Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines to infants and toddlers.

A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial board member Monday called into question the motives behind the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to extend Emergency Use Authorization of Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines to toddlers and infants as young as 6 months old, writing that the decision was motivated by politics and pressure rather than science.

In her WSJ opinion piece — “Why the Rush for Toddler Vaccines?” — Allysia Finley wrote:

“The FDA standard for approving vaccines in otherwise healthy people, especially children, is supposed to be higher than for drugs that treat the sick.

“But the FDA conspicuously lowered its standards to approve COVID vaccines for toddlers. Why?”

Finley started her piece with a quote from President Biden, which praised the FDA’s recommendation: “This is a very historic milestone. The United States is now the first country in the world to offer safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as six months old.”

She responded, writing, “In fact, we don’t know if the vaccines are safe and effective.”

She continued:

“The rushed FDA action was based on extremely weak evidence. It’s one thing to show regulatory flexibility during an emergency. But for children, Covid isn’t an emergency.

“The FDA bent its standards to an unusual degree and brushed aside troubling evidence that warrants more investigation.”

“Mr. Biden’s hypocrisy is hard to stomach,” she wrote, listing many reasons for caution in vaccinating young children against COVID-19, including:

• Children are at low risk of dying from COVID-19: Only 209 kids between 6 months and 4 years old have died from COVID-19 — about 0.02% of all virus deaths in the U.S. About half as many toddlers were hospitalized with COVID-19 between October 2020 and September 2021 as were hospitalized with the flu during the previous winter.
• The two children in Pfizer’s trial who got sickest with COVID-19 also tested positive for other viruses. It’s possible that many hospitalizations attributed to COVID-19 this winter were instigated or exacerbated by other viruses.
• The FDA authorized vaccines for toddlers based on a comparison of the antibodies they generated to the original Wuhan variant with those in young adults who had received two doses. But two doses offer little if any protection against Omicron infection in adults, and even protection against hospitalization is only around 40% to 60%.
• Vaccinated toddlers in Pfizer’s trial were more likely to get severely ill with COVID-19 than those who received a placebo. Most children who developed multiple infections during the trial were vaccinated.

“FDA granted the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for toddlers an emergency-use authorization allowing the agency to expedite access for products that ‘prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions,’” wrote Finley.

“While adult COVID vaccines clearly met this standard in late 2020, the toddler vaccines don’t.”

As to why the FDA “rushed” and “bent its standards,” Finley suggested, “perhaps [the FDA] felt pressure from the White House as well as anxious parents.”

White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha repeatedly told parents that he expected vaccines for toddlers would be available in June, she wrote.

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Susan C. Olmstead is the assistant editor of The Defender.

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“Baby, it’s Cold Outside” is a song from the 1950s where, in contrapuntal verses, a woman explains why she must leave (“I really can’t stay”) and a man counters with a reason she should stay (“But, baby, it’s cold outside”). In light of the disruption in the global trade in oil and natural gas ensuing from the conflict in Ukraine, the last line of the song (“At least there will be plenty implied / If you got pneumonia and died”) might be a premonition of what’s to come this winter. What would be implied today is that some country or group of countries should be held accountable, should millions in Western Europe or the United States or both freeze to death this winter for lack of ability to heat their homes.

Such a dire situation is widely predicted as Russia has been reducing the amount of natural gas supplied to many NATO member countries. Because natural gas is the primary fuel used to heat homes (either directly or through gas-fired electric power plants), we don’t have to wait till winter to gauge how likely the prediction is to come true. This precognition is made possible because of the way natural gas is produced, stored, traded, and consumed.

The demand for natural gas varies greatly over the course of a year, with peak demand coming in the colder months. For instance, in the United States consumption of natural gas in the winter is around 150 bcf (billion cubic feet) per day but less than 100 bcf per day in summer. For technical reasons, the supply of natural gas is more or less constant throughout the year, currently about 100 bcf per day in the US.

Source: US Energy Information Administration

To handle the seasonal variation in the demand for natural gas, the industry stores excess gas in the warmer months, then taps the stored gas to meet the greater demand in winter. Natural gas cannot be stored in tanks like oil because of its diffuse, i.e., gaseous, nature (the tanks would need to be a degree of magnitude larger than those used to store oil). So, what the industry does is inject some of the gas they just extracted back underground during summer (using depleted fields as storage tanks) and taps the reserved gas as needed in winter.

The issue of volume does not arise with gas transported by pipeline, as the gas is pumped in its diffuse state, but it does in the case of gas transported by ship. So, for maritime transport, natural gas is converted to a liquid by lowering its temperature to -260° Fahrenheit (The volume of natural gas in its liquid state is about 600 times smaller than its volume in its gaseous state). The liquified natural gas (LNG) is converted back into a gas in regasification terminals at the tankers’ destinations.

Transport by ship is much more expensive than transport by pipeline. Hence, gas from Russia is sent to Germany through the infamous Nord Stream pipelines, not shipped across the Baltic Sea. If Europeans have to depend on LNG shipped from the United States or the Middle East this winter, it will cost them a lot more to heat their homes (Prior to the hostilities in Ukraine, Russian gas delivered by pipeline was about 40% cheaper for Europeans than LNG shipped from the United States).

More fundamental than price as to whether we or the Europeans will be freezing this winter is supply. Russia has curtailed deliveries of natural gas to several European countries and more curtailments are likely to follow if hostilities continue. The United States’ NATO allies are depending on the US to make up for any shortfalls, but is that possible? Only if the US increases production or cuts domestic consumption (so as to have more gas available for export). As to increasing production, the price natural gas is traded at on the global market has risen from around $4 last year to over $8 today. This should motivate our drillers to bring marginally profitable fields into production, though it’s unlikely that can be done in time to ameliorate any shortage this winter (Even if we had more LNG to send to Europe, the amount we could provide is constrained by a lack of enough regasification terminals there).  Reducing domestic consumption is fraught with the danger of sociopolitical turmoil (look at the chaos resulting from airlines reducing their flight schedules, which may have more to do with an unstated goal of reducing domestic consumption of jet fuel than a lack of pilots).

The interplay amongst the various factors which determine the provisioning of natural gas to consumers is too complex to go into here (even if I understood it!), but I do believe there is a simple, indicative metric which lies at the nexus of all these factors. This metric is the rate at which underground storage of natural gas is being replenished during the low demand season. Here’s a chart showing the amount of natural gas (in bcf) in underground storage in the United States over the last 3 1/2 years:

As can be seen, underground storage went from being depleted to being replenished around April 1^st this year, which is normal. However, the rate of replenishment is slower than all other years (e.g., 2095 bcf in the latest week, versus 2203 bcf in 2019). If the growth in stored gas is slower than normal, it means either production is not growing apace with consumption or domestic supplies are being diverted for export.

In 2014 the amount of gas in storage hit a low of 822 bcf (in March), which caused a number of public utilities to shutter some of their power plants for lack of fuel. One electric company executive warned that we had dodged “not a bullet, but a cannonball” that year. So, keep an eye on how fast underground storage is being refilled in the coming months here. If it’s significantly slower than the 5-year average listed on the right of the chart (2429 bcf for the latest week), then bundle up, baby, because it’s going to be cold outside—and inside, too—come winter.

Below is a chart of US exports of natural gas last year and for the first three months of this year (Source: US Energy Information Administration).

Some things of note are:

(1) The increase in our exports to NATO allies (France, Spain, Turkey, UK) this year, from less than 800 bcf/yr to 2200 bcf/yr (on a projected annualized basis). Note that the increase in our exports to these countries began before hostilities in Ukraine began on Feb. 24th (compare Jan 2021 to Jan 2022: France – 4 bcf vs. 50 bcf, Spain – 7 bcf vs. 49 bcf, etc.).

(2) Exports to Brazil, Chile, India, Japan, and South Korea have dropped over the same time period, from almost 2000 bcf to 800 bcf (on a projected annualized basis). Again, the decrease began before Russia invaded Ukraine (compare Jan 2021 to Jan 2022: especially China – 39 bcf vs. 0 bcf, Japan – 64 bcf vs. 22 bcf, South Korea – 56 bcf vs. 22 bcf). To what country are these countries turning to to make up the shortfall (Russia?).

(3) Total gas exports from the US have increased from 6653 bcf in 2021 to over 7000 bcf this year (projected), while production has remained constant at around 41,000 bcf/yr and withdrawals from underground storage have increased from 1547 bcf in the first three months of 2021 to 1816 bcf in the same period this year (see this), which hints at increased pressure on our natural gas supply.

An interesting graph from Bloomberg on the price of natural gas around the world:

Note that price had risen sharply even before Russia invaded Ukraine, raising the question “Which came first?”- the Russian gas cut-offs to Europe or a price rise which led the NATO countries to feel it was time for a showdown with Russia and so they provoked one?

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This article was originally published on Ken’s Blog.

Ken Meyercord is a retired computer type living in Reston, Virginia, where he fills his ample spare time with taking fitness classes at the Y; hiking, biking, and kayaking the USA; and maintaining a blog (kiaskblog.wordpress.com) for which he has cobbled together enough tall-tales, iconoclastic views, and misinformation to generate over 80 postings. Ken has self-published four books: a treatise on economic theory, “The Ethic of Zero Growth”; a memoir of the Vietnam War years, “Draft-Dodging Odyssey” (under the penname “Ken Kiask”); a eulogy to his starry-eyed, star-crossed son, “At the Forest’s Edge” (under the son’s name: Khaldun Meyercord); and a course teaching a simplified version of English, “Ezenglish” (all available online wherever fine books are sold). In pre-COVID times he haunted think-tank events to ask provocative, iconoclastic questions (see “Adventures in Think Tank Land” on YouTube) and produced a public access TV show, “Civil Discord”, on which discordant views on controversial topics were discussed in a civil manner (episodes of the show can be viewed on YouTube; search for “Civil Discord Show”). 

Featured image is from Food and Water Watch

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Introduction

Understanding the bizarre social and economic transformations afoot in the world today requires a considerably wider view of history than is presented in contemporary corporate media. In this present era of an emerging Bio-Nano Age, we can see, if we squint at history, the faint contours of ancient cultures practicing mystic rites, medicine, and alchemy. It is hardly a stretch of the imagination to witness traces of the mythological past expressed in the present and to see the use of symbols as integral to such practices.

Mass consent to these radical changes is due, in large measure, to powerful forms of propaganda and the effective use of key symbols working on populations terrorized consistently by authority figures issuing ominous warnings of certain societal doom. Why are signs and symbols in the hands of power structures so elemental to a particular social order?

Public consent in democratic societies necessitates that power and authority manufacture or maintain the significance of symbols that will, in the popular imagination, help regiment perception, thought, and behavior. The people must be conditioned to recognize and perceive in the symbol shared meanings, whether consciously or unconsciously, and think about or respond to them in the approved and appropriate ways. This is the job of integration and agitation propaganda — to agitate emotion and enfeeble human reason to sufficient degrees so as to integrate the mass public into approved plans of acceptable social practice.

“Because of their transcendent practical importance,” Walter Lippmann noted, “no successful leader has ever been too busy to cultivate the symbols which organize his following”. This article examines the history of the symbol as an organizing material principle of social control central to the purpose of propagandizing acceptable social practices and conditioning the masses to follow — in the present age — the dictates of an emerging bio-secure global economy. The aim is to show how symbols in ancient cultural practices wield significant influence in the new tyrannical normal and what this kind of social reproduction might portend for the future.

Ancient Concepts & Practices

Since nothing of productive value can come from chaos, efforts to organize social control are not always rooted in some hidden sinister scheme. “What privileges do within the hierarchy,” Lippmann observes, “symbols do for the rank and file. They conserve unity”. A unified people, however, can be both a blessing and a curse.

Some of the earliest recorded instances of a culturally unified response to symbols can be found in the Biblical record of Numbers. Here, it is recorded, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness of Sinai for years, and some — struck by pit vipers — were instructed to look upon a bronze serpent crafted by Moses as a symbol of Yahweh’s miraculous power to attend personally to the afflicted. Though the faithless masses had failed to see their own offence of unbelief — even as they had witnessed their own unlikely freedom from bondage — Yahweh made a way to atone. The overtly futile act of simply gazing upon a bronze serpent for an ailing Israelite, immensely humbled, served as a material lesson in the curative powers of repentance.

The symbol of the serpent in time became a powerful point upon which to focus attention for necessary healing. “From the totem pole to the national flag, from the wooden idol to God the Invisible King, from the magic word to some diluted version of Adam Smith or Bentham,” Lippmann says “symbols have been cherished by leaders, many of whom were themselves unbelievers, because they were focal points where differences merged”.

Over the years, however, the bronze serpent also became for the Israelites a mysterious expression of magic that, for them, morphed eventually into an idol of worship. The story of the cult of the serpent cautions us to consider today the claims of corruptible mortals who, with overweening pride, arrogate to themselves unassailable powers of complete healing.

In ancient Greek narratives, too, the serpent figured prominently in the development of medical practice. The Staff of Aesculapius, an ancient Greek symbol of healing and medicine, depicts a serpent entwined around a wooden sceptre. The symbol is associated with the Greek demigod Ascleplius, a master healer who, according to legend, acquired his powers through the whispering of snakes.

The medicinal power of snakes in myth and scripture is said to emanate from the dual ability of their venom to both kill and heal, just as drugs can poison or cure and incisions wound or repair. Biblically, whether the serpent exerted its deadly or curative power rested with the faith of the follower. According to Moses’ account, the snakes that plagued the Israelites served as chastisement for their loss of belief in Him who had called them out of captivity. Cure for the deadly snake bites came only by virtue of faith in Moses’ bronze serpent, which brought healing through the redemption of restored faith. Thus, the serpent’s medicinal power is historically infused with penance for sin, and salvation through a return to devotion.

In these ways, the serpent and the staff combine the authority of a king’s sceptre and the magic of a wand with the menacing creature whose deadly venom turns magically medicinal in the hands of a saintly healer. Together, the two symbols signify an alchemical transformation of the flesh from condemnation to redemption, poison to potion, curse to cure and death to life, through faithful belief in the anointed staff-bearer.

Current Concepts & Practices

Image on the right: Steffen Heilfort, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

As Lippmann notes, “the leader knows by experience that only when symbols have done their work is there a handle he can use to move a crowd. In the symbol emotion is discharged at a common target, and the idiosyncrasy of real ideas blotted out”. Consistent exposure to society’s key signs and symbols in education, advertising, and public discourse conditions us to heed the warnings offered by authorities who embody the associated “mythologies” of contemporary medical practice. In this sense, the individual’s psyche is subdued and with it each unique human perspective and idea subordinated to the plans and demands of leadership.

The Staff of Aesculapius is today an internationally recognised symbol of medicine. Just as Moses and the temple of Asclepius brought physical transformation and staved off death, so too do doctors in today’s medical temple — the hospital — whose powers of healing may appear equally as miraculous. We, as anesthetized patients, may be put to sleep in one broken physical state and awakened to another renewed. We enter a doctor’s office bearing suffering and exit with a recipe for relief. Our doctors fathom the mysteries of the invisible world inside our bodies, our cells, our organs, our brains, with nearly magical insights divined from arcane realms of knowledge known only to the initiated. They make us better, stronger, safer, and keep us alive. We sin. We eat too much, we drink too much, we sit too much, we become too stressed. Our doctors redeem us. They forgive us. Our only responsibility is to trust them and to do what they say without question. Follow doctors’ orders.

As a key symbol of medicine, the Staff of Aesculapius codes for these medicinal and healing powers, and for the roles and relationships that sustain them, with all the attendant expectations those roles require, on our doctors and ourselves. Doctors are expected to know and understand. The lay public are not. Doctors are expected to lead. We are expected to follow. Doctors are expected to be god-like. We are expected to place our life in their hands.

Under the current invocation of serpent and staff, since the advent of the COVID-19 narrative and the global medicalisation of politics, the roles and responsibilities of doctors have been fused with those of the state. Medical interventions have morphed into political expedients implemented by the world’s powerbrokers on a worldwide scale. The doctor-patient relationship has migrated from the interpersonal privacy of the doctor’s office to a geopolitical stage. Along with it, the archetypal good-liness and godliness of doctors (hand-selected by The State and The Plutocracy) has been projected onto our governing institutions and authorities. Whole societies are now cast in corporate media as vectors of infectious disease wards, and citizens as patients whose primary responsibility is not to be functioning members of society but merely potential carriers of pathogens. The new role foisted upon citizens is that of the perpetual patient who follows, without question, the doctor’s orders synthesized in the orders of the state.

Image below: World Health Organization, public domain

Thus, under the blue and white staff of Aesculapius, the citizen-patient’s unquestioning faith is summoned from on high by the World Health Organization. Of course, we cannot help but recall a corollary during the post-9/11 hysteria when Tucker Carlson claimed that David Ray Griffin’s critical analysis of the official 9/11 Report was “blasphemous and sinful.” Perhaps one of the main permutations of this present form of “unquestioned fealty to authority” is that it is now a call for global deference rather than a deification of nationalism.

With social interactions medicalised today, the social contract and the very nature of citizenship — and even human existence — has been radically restructured in the name of the pandemic, the virus, and the holy ‘case’. The high priests of politico-medical alchemy call all adherents to publicly signal the latest virtues of devotion to the state: “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science,” sayeth Anthony Fauci, posing as Moses.

Thus, the mere mortal, whose FDA and its brethren receive billions from, and enjoy patent and profit rights to, the pharmaceutical giants and products they purportedly oversee, elevates himself from a lowly human prone to greed, grandiosity and power-hunger, to a status on par with an infinite order underpinning reality itself: The Science™. Obedient disciples of the vaccination cult of COVID-19, with its official state-sanctioned rites and remedies for healing, can purchase devotional candles casting Fauci as a holy being, and even, reportedly, view the objects of veneration on his own bookshelf.

This cult of personality, as Mark Crispin Miller observes, is reinforced by the celebrity hero-worship of Anthony Fauci. Although public support for the cult appears to be waning somewhat, as of this writing, we suspect that its influence and presence will re-emerge during whatever “next one … will get attention”, just as Gates had forewarned.

Trump White House Archived, Public domain

In this reconfigured global order founded on governance-by-health-emergency and health czar, the politico-medical prescription is drawn not from the repository of medicine but from that of totalitarianism, in the form of social control, with the dispensaries our social institutions: schools, police, the military, the media and the courts. Heavy doses of censorship and oppression are administered daily; strict adherence to the political regimen in medical disguise is imposed. Questions, critical thought, debate, and dissent threaten to neutralise the prophylactic control mechanisms and are assessed as public health threats to be eradicated. The active citizen, the beating heart of democracy, is the noncompliant patient who must be restrained. For their own good. Only following doctor’s orders.

Symbolically and archetypally, to question the word of public health bodies in this context is to question the word of the Lord: it is a feeble uninformed attempt by the unwashed masses to strip the staff-bearer and serpent-tamer of their godly powers. Dissent, the currency of a vibrant democracy, becomes blasphemy. Curiosity and critical questioning become heresy. Disrobing the high priests of political medicine leaves the faithful forsaken and unprotected, at the mercy of certain death in the viral wilderness, as the Israelites plagued by serpents in the Sinai. By these symbolic mechanisms, the medical bureaucracy of today assumes the role of the Holy Roman Empire in Galileo’s age. Unbelievers who seek to hold their governing institutions accountable are sinners who must be shunned and excommunicated. Scientists bearing evidence and reason are heretics to be damned.

Future Concepts & Practices

That this fundamental restructuring of governance and citizenship unfolded in 2020 is worthy of note. 2020 is the year that had been earmarked by the national security state as the commencement of a Bio-Nano Age. This new Bio-Nano era was to be ushered in under social and economic disruption that would pave the way for innovations including tele-everything, genetic modification of human beings, AI, synthetic biology, smart dust, cyborgs, and nanotags, for “everything, everywhere”. The endeavour, outlined in a 2001 NASA document citing DARPA, the CIA, DIA, the Australian Defence Department, NASA itself, and others, amounted to a roadmap toward a transhumanist future.

If the serpent that beguiled Eve in the Garden of Eden was a key symbol of supernatural deception, it is ironic that the symbol serves today in this global movement toward a hyperrational transhumanism. The ideology, in fact, has an ancient past grounded in man’s wish to live forever — to transcend by his own power the physical limitations of the flesh. To reach this unattainable goal, faithful adherents believe the human body must be “upgraded”  through technological innovations. Transhumanism can be understood today as a global scientific and social movement focused on the development of technologies aimed at enhancing the human condition. Practitioners summon the alchemical powers of biotech to integrate human beings with new technologies that “upgrade” sense perception, cognitive capacity, and to solve issues in maintaining constant connectivity to the “global central nervous system” — the internet.

As the head of the World Economic Forum has suggested consistently over the years, we must all prepare for a future that sees the convergence of biological life, synthetic technologies, and digital currencies.

This sort of future, however, is unfolding now. In the context of COVID-19 ‘vaccines’, Broudy and Kyrie trace the connections between COVID-19 and NASA’s Bio-Nano blueprint. They note that the mRNA technology rolled out in response to SARS-CoV-2 bears transhumanist footprints, from its origins with DARPA, the US Defense Department’s R&D arm, and NASA’s Bio Nano collaborator, to mRNA technology’s transhumanist applications in genetic engineering and nano-biology, to the fact that key actors behind both transhumanist research and COVID-19 interventions are one and the same.

Should 2020 have delivered on the national security state’s roadmap for social disruption, heralding a new Bio-Nano transhumanist age, the compliant patient-citizen is today’s perfect creature made fit for a post-human tomorrow. Primed for worship and blind faith, the all-too-human devotees offer up their arms, and those of their children, in a self-sacrificial ritual of obeisance and virtue. No questions asked. For the betterment of humankind. In the name of Pfizer.

The good patient-citizen takes their politico-medical sacrament by donating their body to science, shot by shot, booster by booster in infinitude for purification and atonement. Practicing the rite of receiving a piercing puncture and risking a life-altering injury atones for the original sin of an unclean, diseased, infectious bodily state. The infusion with state-of-the-art nanoparticle gene-based agents cleanses, at the molecular level, all biochemical traces of selfish human indulgence from the sins of social intercourse: travel, work, friendship, love, conversation, affection, sex, reproduction. Thus, man as a carbon-based life form can practice in self-righteous faith the new state rituals of self-loathing and self-denial by despising, as he is instructed to do, his own carbon footprint. Furthermore, the pain of the injection site, the fatigue, the headaches, the nausea, the blood clots, the heart attacks, the strokes, all hallowed suffering — marks of martyrdom — punish the flesh to chase out the demons of infectiousness.

The needle in this context becomes the instrument of a holy flagellant act, a symbol of the virtue of self-sacrifice and the miracle of medicine. Smallpox, polio and diphtheria all exorcised by the magic of the jab. The ultimate real-world impact of the vaccination campaign against COVID-19 matters not, even as it is revealed to be snake oil in the premier medical journal the Lancet. It is the act of submission to the needle that keeps the faith alive, the magic of medicine intact, and viral damnation at bay. The mask, in all its futility and discomfort, symbolises the humiliation and shame of the perpetually fallen and infectious human state.

As a first psychological step toward transhumanism, the imposition of regular and routine genetic nanoparticle-based injections may seem like a small step for humankind, but it is a giant leap for synthetic biology. The zealous disavowal of natural immunity in response to COVID-19, contrary to evidence and pure reason, has not only fuelled the Cult of Vaccinatus, but has opened the door to perpetual improvement upon the natural human state, via synthetic immunity, in genetic bio-nano form.

The underlying psychological erasure of our human biology (natural immunity) has fostered mass consent to a foundational shift toward perpetual (six monthly) injectable technological, bio-nano upgrades, in the guise of vaccines. Thus, the symbol of Aesclepius has served its global masters by mobilising emotions capable of nudging humanity ever closer to a transhumanist existence. The staff and serpent have, thereby, functioned as a symbolic camouflage of sorts, behind which those directing bio-nano tyranny can hide: the refuge of mad scientists.

Conclusion

As we suggested at the outset, symbols are central to the organization of disparate peoples pursuing conflicting interests. Stanley Milgram had famously contemplated the symbolic powers of fascist authority embodied in official lab coats calmly handling clipboards, taking notes, and issuing insights on how to conduct this or that experiment or examination. He had wondered how perfectly ordinary people, seemingly possessed of sound mind and intellect, could obey orders to participate explicitly or tacitly in the slaughter of millions of their fellow human beings.

Milgram’s experiments were horrifying because they confirmed not just the banality of evil, but the power of symbols to embody the connotations of accepted authority. When used in the right situations among people sufficiently primed to receive directions or commands, symbols represent key focal points of attention where the masses can direct shared emotions at material forms of official power or disgust.

As with Nazi Germany when Jewish people were recast in public discourse as vermin to be marginalized then eradicated, so too do we see today in state-corporate propaganda the casting of recalcitrant masses as infectious rodents rejecting mandates with untested mRNA platforms. Like the serpent’s venom, the lauded mRNA technology comes with the threat of death. It is only, however, the positive connotations associated with the WHO’s ubiquitous serpent and staff that are reinforced daily in corporate media.

The aim in this purposeful repetition is to organize a global following under the banner of the WHO, with the compliant passivity of a medicalised social order. As history shows, because symbols serve to organise and subordinate people to a common cause, and because they are so common to human experience, their significance to our willing submission goes largely unnoticed, leaving the subliminal imagery to whisper, instead, to our unconscious mind, like the somnambulance of a hypnotist’s trance.

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This article was originally published on Propaganda in Focus.

With a doctorate in applied psycholinguistics and experience as an imagery analyst, Daniel Broudy lectures in areas ranging from communication theory to visual rhetoric and from composition to rhetorical grammar. His research focuses on sounds, symbols, signs, images, and colors as tools deployed by centers of power to shape knowledge and influence human perception and emotion. Selections of his scholarly work can be found at ResearchGate. Daniel is an Associate Researcher with the Working Group on Propaganda and the 9/11 Global ‘War on Terror’.

Working in the areas of political psychology, the psychology of atrocity, and psychological operations, Valerie Kyrie holds a doctorate in psychology on the topic of reality-perception and its manipulation. She has contributed to work in the areas of international human rights, media, advocacy and policy, focusing on the deceptions, tactics and machinations underpinning collective violence and atrocity. Her most recent work analyses bio-tech intrusions on human biology. Valerie is an Associate Researcher with the Working Group on Propaganda and the 9/11 Global ‘War on Terror’.

Featured image: Eugène Roger, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

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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Russia’s contribution to India’s reestablishment as one of the world’s great powers cannot be overstated. This is especially true when it comes to the Asian giant’s military, which according to various estimates uses up to 85% of Soviet and Russian weapons and equipment in its massive arsenal. This close strategic partnership has been going on for decades and has survived the end of the (First) Cold War. Even throughout the troublesome 1990s, Russia provided critical technology transfers, ensuring India’s military and technological lead in the Global South. One of the most prominent examples (and one of the cornerstones) of this cooperation is the Su-30MKI multirole fighter jet, forming the backbone of the Indian Air Force, the fourth largest in the world, operating approximately 2,200 aircraft.

The Su-30MKI is based on Russia’s legendary Su-27 “Flanker” air superiority jet. Started as a joint venture between Russian Sukhoi (now part of the United Aircraft Corporation) and Indian Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, a state-owned aerospace corporation, the jet is being manufactured in India under license in one of the production facilities of the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), where the Indian state-owned corporation receives preproduction parts, better known as “completely knock downed” (CKD) kits produced in Russia’s Irkutsk aircraft plant. The joint project is being carried out under the successful “Make in India” program, which has seen numerous technology transfers and helped India’s domestic military-industrial sector grow exponentially.

Russia has been the first to accept India’s requests in the framework of the “Make in India” program and has supported the Asian giant in establishing a robust domestic military production and design capability. Technology transfers between Russia and India include everything from assault rifles to advanced aircraft and missile technology, including the latest hypersonic weapons. This [М1]  cooperation has been instrumental in not just ensuring India’s security, but also establishing the Asian giant as one of the premier global military powers. Thus, India chose to continue the close cooperation, despite ongoing attempts to diversify its arms procurement and create an even more independent domestic Military-Industrial Complex.

Russia and India are also continuing their close cooperation and will carry out joint work on modernizing the multirole jet, including the integration of the latest weapons and avionics. According to various reports, India is planning to upgrade its Su-30MKI fighters with Russian Phazotron Zhuk-AE AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radars and other next-generation advanced sensors. Although the details of any upgrade negotiations and possible agreements are a state secret, a number of reports indicate that the upgrades may also include the Saturn AL-41F1S afterburning turbofan 3D thrust-vectoring jet engines, used on the advanced Russian Su-35S air superiority/multirole fighter jets. Other upgrades are likely to include the integration of various air-to-air, air-to-ground and anti-ship missiles, giving the Su-30MKI multirole capabilities which are unrivaled anywhere in the Global South.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the maiden flight of the Su-27 fighter prototype developed by the legendary Pavel Osipovich Sukhoi himself, founder of the Sukhoi Design Bureau, paving the way for the emergence of not just the Su-27 and its variants, but also the Su-30 and Su-35 air superiority/multirole fighter jets, in addition to the Su-34 fighter-bombers. The Su-30 itself has been one of the most successful jets in the world in recent decades, seeing the development of multiple variants and international orders from Latin America to Southeast Asia. In addition to the Russian Aerospace Forces, the Su-30’s global customers include India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Algeria, Angola, Uganda, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Venezuela, with Iran and Argentina reportedly showing interest in acquiring the advanced jet.

Since the early 2000s, Sukhoi has delivered approximately 700 Su-27/Su-30 fighter jets to the global market, with avionics, engines, sensors, systems, weapons and other components all produced in Russia. According to Alexander Mikheev, Director General of Rosoboronexport, Russia’s main weapons export agency, over the past 10 years, “the share of aircraft supplies in Russia’s total arms exports has stood at 40-50%, and even exceeds this figure today.” Due to its “open architecture” design, the Su-30 can integrate foreign-made avionics and weapons systems, with customers being able to integrate locally-made weapons and other systems to customize the fighters in accordance with their requirements.

This is especially useful for India and its “Make in India” program, which has integrated a number of domestically designed and produced components on its Su-30MKI jets, in addition to French and Israeli systems, subsystems and avionics. No other jet in the world comes even close to the modularity of the Su-30, making it a very sought-after weapons platform, ensuring the customer’s sovereignty and independence. What’s more, the Russian jet comes with no political baggage and blackmail, unlike many other weapons designed and produced in the countries of the political West, which is precisely what countries like India need, as they are working to establish a more optimized and independent military production capabilities.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

Video images captured the horrific actions of Moroccan security forces armed and trained by the United States through the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and working on behalf of the Spanish government, systematically beating and slaughtering African migrants on June 24, 2022. The migrants’ only crime was attempting to cross from Morocco to Europe via the Spanish held enclave of Melilla. For that, at least 39 human beings were beaten to death, as recorded by the NGO Walking Borders. This racist barbarism by a U.S.-backed neo-colonial regime and the lack of swift and unambiguous condemnation by the U.S. State demonstrates, yet again, that human life, especially African lives hold no value for U.S. officials. 

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) denounces first, the Moroccan government’s security forces and the Spanish government for their collaboration in this massacre and their ongoing dehumanizing treatment of African asylum seekers. We must note that, as the Moroccan police were beating and hog-tying the African migrants, AFRICOM was carrying out “Operation African Lion” – military exercises in Morocco with more than 7,500 troops from Western nations and African neo-colonies. Soon after, NATO nations (the coterie of U.S. minions) held their meeting in Spain, with no acknowledgement of the massacre.

We especially condemn the United States government for its unmitigated hypocrisy in claiming that its presence and policies in Africa are to “promote regional security, stability, and prosperity.” The only securing and stabilizing AFRICOM and U.S. policy are doing in Africa are for the prosperity of international finance capital and hegemony of U.S. interests. We know that U.S. militarism – which guarantees European imperialism on the African continent, while giving cover to the repressive actions of neo-colonial states such as Morocco – will continue to be the main cause of escalating violence for the African people.

“All evidence suggests that U.S. militarism and training of police, and other repressive forces in Africa has only intensified death and destruction;” says Netfa Freeman, Co-Coordinator of BAP’s Africa Team 

BAP extends solidarity to all the African migrants and their families, victims of the brutal racist attack. We also demand a full independent investigation and indictment of the actions of Morocco, Spain, and the U.S. And we demand, once again, that the U.S. get out of Africa and that NATO and AFRICOM be shut down!

The Black Alliance for Peace calls on all anti-imperialists to join the U.S. Out of Africa Network to help us achieve this imperative.

U.S. Out of Africa!

Shut Down AFRICOM!

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***

“No one should get used to their rights. Predicting with certainty which ones, if any, will go, or when, is impossible.”—Mary R. Ziegler, legal historian

The Supreme Court has spoken: there will be no consequences for cops who brutalize the citizenry and no justice for the victims of police brutality.

Although the Court’s 2021-22 rulings on qualified immunity for police who engage in official misconduct were largely overshadowed by its politically polarizing rulings on abortion, gun ownership and religion, they were no less devastating.

The doctrine of qualified immunity was intended to insulate government officials from frivolous lawsuits, but the real purpose of qualified immunity is to ensure that government officials are not held accountable for official misconduct.

In Egbert v. Boule, the Court gave total immunity to Border Patrol agents who beat up a bed-and-breakfast owner, in the process carving out a massive exception to the Fourth Amendment for border police (and by extension, other federal police) who unconstitutionally use excessive force. As journalist Ian Millhiser concludes, “Egbert v. Boule is a severe blow to the proposition that law enforcement must obey the Constitution.”

In Cope v. Cogdill, the Court let stand a Fifth Circuit ruling that granted qualified immunity to jail officials who watched a suicidal inmate strangle himself without intervening or calling for help. Likewise, in Ramirez v. Guadarrama, the Court let stand a lower court ruling granting qualified immunity to police officers who fired their tasers at a suicidal man who had doused himself in gasoline, causing the man to burst into flames.

Both Cope and Ramirez move the goal posts for the kind of misconduct that merits qualified immunity, suggesting that even sheer incompetence is excusable when it involves a cop.

It’s a chilling reminder that in the American police state, ‘we the people’ are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”

This is how unarmed Americans keep dying at the hands of militarized police.

Under the guise of qualified immunity, there have been no consequences for police who destroyed a private home by bombarding it with tear gas grenades during a SWAT team raid gone awry, or for the cop who mistakenly shot a 10-year-old boy after aiming for and missing the non-threatening family dog, or for the arresting officer who sicced a police dog on a suspect who had already surrendered.

Qualified immunity is how the police state stays in power.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982) that suing government officials for monetary damages is “the only realistic avenue” of holding them accountable for abusing their offices and violating the Constitution, it has ostensibly given the police and other government agents a green light to shoot first and ask questions later, as well as to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts.

Whether it’s police officers breaking through people’s front doors and shooting them dead in their homes or strip searching motorists on the side of the road, these instances of abuse are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to virtually every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution.

Make no mistake about it: this is what constitutes “law and order” in the American police state.

These are the hallmarks of a police state: where police officers, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

Unfortunately, we’ve been traveling this dangerous road for a long time now.

A review of critical court rulings over the past several decades, including rulings affirming qualified immunity protections for government agents by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order, protecting the ruling class, and insulating government agents from charges of wrongdoing than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Indeed, as Reuters reports, qualified immunity “has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights.” Worse, as Reuters concluded, “the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police.”

For instance, police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless searches. In Anderson v. Creighton, the Supreme Court ruled that FBI and state law enforcement agents were entitled to qualified immunity protections after they were sued for raiding a private home without a warrant and holding family members at gunpoint, all in a search for a suspected bank robber who was not in the house.

Police can claim qualified immunity for using excessive force against protesters. In Saucier v. Katz, the Court ruled in favor of federal law enforcement agents who forcefully tackled a protester as he attempted to unfurl a banner at Vice President Gore’s political rally. The Court reasoned that the officers acted reasonably given the urgency of protecting the vice president.

Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a fleeing suspect in the back. In Brosseau v. Haugen, the Court dismissed a lawsuit against a police officer who shot Kenneth Haugen in the back as he entered his car in order to flee from police. The Court ruled that in light of existing case law, the cop’s conduct fell in the “hazy border between excessive and acceptable force” and so she did not violate clearly established law.

Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a mentally impaired person. In City of San Francisco v. Sheehan, the Court ruled in favor of police who repeatedly shot Teresa Sheehan during the course of a mental health welfare check. The Court ruled that it was not unreasonable for police to pepper spray and shoot Sheehan multiple times after entering her room without a warrant and encountering her holding a knife.

Police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits. In Plumhoff v. Rickard, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that police officers who used deadly force to terminate a car chase were immune from a lawsuit. The officers were accused of needlessly resorting to deadly force by shooting multiple times at a man and his passenger in a stopped car, killing both individuals.

Police can stop, arrest and search citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. In a 5-3 ruling in Utah v. Strieff, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively gave police the go-ahead to embark on a fishing expedition of one’s person and property, rendering Americans completely vulnerable to the whims of any cop on the beat.

Police officers can stop cars based on “anonymous” tips or for “suspicious” behavior such as having a reclined car seat or driving too carefully. In a 5-4 ruling in Navarette v. California, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that police officers, under the guise of “reasonable suspicion,” can stop cars and question drivers based solely on anonymous tips, no matter how dubious, and whether or not they themselves witnessed any troubling behavior. Then in State v. Howard, the Kansas Supreme Court declared that motorists who recline their car seats are guilty of suspicious behavior and can be subject to warrantless searches by police. That ruling, coupled with other court rulings upholding warrantless searches and seizures by police renders one’s car a Constitution-free zone.

Americans have no protection against mandatory breathalyzer tests at a police checkpoint, although mandatory blood draws violate the Fourth Amendment (Birchfield v. North Dakota). Police can also conduct sobriety and “information-seeking” checkpoints (Illinois v. Lidster and Mich. Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz).

Police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime. In Maryland v. King, a divided U.S. Supreme Court determined that a person arrested for a crime who is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty must submit to forcible extraction of their DNA. Once again the Court sided with the guardians of the police state over the defenders of individual liberty in determining that DNA samples may be extracted from people arrested for “serious” offenses. The end result of the ruling paves the way for a nationwide dragnet of suspects targeted via DNA sampling.

Police can use the “fear for my life” rationale as an excuse for shooting unarmed individuals. Upon arriving on the scene of a nighttime traffic accident, an Alabama police officer shot a driver exiting his car, mistakenly believing the wallet in his hand to be a gun. A report by the Justice Department found that half of the unarmed people shot by one police department over a seven-year span were “shot because the officer saw something (like a cellphone) or some action (like a person pulling at the waist of their pants) and misidentified it as a threat.”

Police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes.” In Florida v. Harris, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court determined that police officers may use highly unreliable drug-sniffing dogs to conduct warrantless searches of cars during routine traffic stops. The ruling turns man’s best friend into an extension of the police state, provided the use of a K-9 unit takes place within a reasonable amount of time (Rodriguez v. United States).

Not only are police largely protected by qualified immunity, but police dogs are also off the hook for wrongdoing. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a police officer who allowed a police dog to maul a homeless man innocent of any wrongdoing.

Police can subject Americans to strip searches, no matter the “offense.” A divided U.S. Supreme Court actually prioritized making life easier for overworked jail officials over the basic right of Americans to be free from debasing strip searches. In its 5-4 ruling in Florence v. Burlington, the Court declared that any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials, which involves exposing the genitals and the buttocks. This “license to probe” is now being extended to roadside stops, as police officers throughout the country have begun performing roadside strip searches—some involving anal and vaginal probes—without any evidence of wrongdoing and without a warrant.

Police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home. In an 8-1 ruling in Kentucky v. King, the U.S. Supreme Court placed their trust in the discretion of police officers, rather than in the dictates of the Constitution, when they gave police greater leeway to break into homes or apartments without a warrant. Despite the fact that the police in question ended up pursuing the wrong suspect, invaded the wrong apartment and violated just about every tenet that stands between us and a police state, the Court sanctioned the warrantless raid, leaving Americans with little real protection in the face of all manner of abuses by police.

Police can use knock-and-talk tactics as a means of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment. Aggressive “knock and talk” practices have become thinly veiled, warrantless exercises by which citizens are coerced and intimidated into “talking” with heavily armed police who “knock” on their doors in the middle of the night. Andrew Scott didn’t even get a chance to say no to such a heavy-handed request before he was gunned down by police who pounded aggressively on the wrong door at 1:30 a.m., failed to identify themselves as police, and then repeatedly shot and killed the man when he answered the door while holding a gun in self-defense.

Police can carry out no-knock raids if they believe announcing themselves would be dangerous.Police can perform a “no-knock” raid as long as they have a reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence, under the particular circumstances, would be dangerous or futile or give occupants a chance to destroy evidence of a crime (Richards v. Wisconsin). Legal ownership of a firearm is also enough to justify a no-knock raid by police (Quinn v. Texas). For instance, a Texas man had his home subject to a no-knock, SWAT-team style forceful entry and raid based solely on the suspicion that there were legally-owned firearms in his household. The homeowner was actually shot by police through his closed bedroom door.

Police can recklessly open fire on anyone that might be “armed.” Philando Castile was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop allegedly over a broken taillight merely for telling police he had a conceal-and-carry permit. That’s all it took for police to shoot Castile four times in the presence of his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter. A unanimous Supreme Court declared in County of Los Angeles vs. Mendez that police should not be held liable for recklessly firing 15 times into a shack where a homeless couple had been sleeping because the grabbed his BB gun in defense, fearing they were being attacked.

Police can destroy a home during a SWAT raid, even if the owner gives their consent to enter and search it. In West v. Winfield, the Supreme Court provided cover to police after they smashed the windows of Shaniz West’s home, punched holes in her walls and ceilings, and bombed the house with so much tear gas that it was uninhabitable for two months. All of this despite the fact that the suspect they were pursuing was not in the house and West, the homeowner, agreed to allow police to search the home to confirm that.

Police can suffocate someone, deliberately or inadvertently, in the process of subduing them. “I can’t breathe” has become a rallying cry following the deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd, both of whom died after being placed in a chokehold by police. Dozens more have died in similar circumstances at the hands of police who have faced little repercussions for these deaths.

Clearly, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the system is rigged.

Because the system is rigged, because the government is corrupt, and because the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently chosen to protect the police at the expense of the people, we are dealing with a nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat.

This is how “we the people” keep losing.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image is from Medical Extremism

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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***

An Emirati-Israeli group brought a delegation to Israel in May that included Pakistani nationals and Pakistani Americans.

Israel and Pakistan have no formal relations. Every Pakistani passport bears the inscription, “This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel.”

Still, the 15-member delegation appears to be part of an effort to pressure Pakistan into recognizing Israel – something that would violate one of Pakistan’s core political principles since its founding.

Trip to promote Israel

The trip was organized by Sharaka, a shadowy group that says it has offices in the United Arab Emirates and Israel that was formed after the so-called Abraham Accords.

These are the deals brokered by the US between Israel and several Arab states since 2020 – despite the popular opposition of citizens of those countries to normalizing relations with Tel Aviv.

The Washington-based American Muslim and Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council (AMMWEC) also helped arrange the junket.

Anila Ali, president of AMMWEC and now a board member of Sharaka, led the delegation.

A Pakistani-born US citizen, Ali describes herself as a “centrist Democrat” who previously served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

She is a long-time defender of Israel who has repeatedly characterized Palestinians as “terrorists.”

Her organization lists among its “partners” the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, several police departments and Hillel, a national US Jewish organization which boasts that Israel, an apartheid state, “is at the heart” of all of its work.

While claiming to offer a welcoming home to Jews on American campuses, Hillel boycotts Jews and non-Jews who disagree with its hardline pro-Israel positions.

AMMWEC also partners with the Anti-Defamation League, an Israel lobby group that plays a major role in attacking and smearing Palestinians and supporters of their rights.

The delegation Ali led met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, to whom Ali gifted a book written by her father – a biography of Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a staunch opponent of Zionism.

I’m honored to be the first Pakistani & American to present a book, an eyewitness account of the #Pakistan movement written by my father, Qutubuddin Aziz, to the President of Israel, @Isaac_Herzog. The president’s warmth & grace humbled me. @ammwecofficial @sharakango pic.twitter.com/TY6qe2xRYX

— Anila Ali (@anilaali) May 12, 2022

“The delegates spoke to the president about their efforts to develop relationships with Israel,” AMMWEC said.

It “was an amazing experience because we haven’t had a group of Pakistani leaders in Israel ever in such scope,” Herzog later told the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“And that all stemmed from the Abraham Accords, meaning Jew and Muslim can dwell together in the region, of course with Christians who live in the region and Druze and other religions.”

The delegation went to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

Thank you @AmbDaniDayan for speaking to our historic American-Pakistani delegation at @yadvashem pic.twitter.com/tx07K41kJm

— Sharaka – شراكة (@sharakango) May 10, 2022

They also visited the al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem – a frequent site of attacks by Israeli forces on Palestinian worshippers.

The tour guide who took us to Masjid #Aqsa, Dome of the Rock, Wailing Wall, Church of Holy Sepulcher was a #Palestinian #Muslim Arab. Since maj of us were Muslims he’s sharing history. ⁦@sharakango⁩ ⁦@ammwecofficial⁩ ⁦@VOANews⁩ ⁦⁦@washingtonpost⁩ pic.twitter.com/rNqq8K5Cmn

— Anila Ali (@anilaali) May 31, 2022

Fury in Pakistan

The trip caused outrage in Pakistan, where solidarity with Palestine has always been a foundational principle.

The delegation included Pakistani journalist Ahmed Quraishi and Jewish Pakistani Fishel BenKhald.

Beautiful to see a Pakistani Jew ✡️ Fishel BenKhald @Jew_Pakistani finally praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. This was a dream come true for this man. Religious freedom is a basic right. Good work Pakistan 🇵🇰 , great work @sharakango and @ammwecofficial 👍🏼 pic.twitter.com/1XbCdRwoYo

— حسن سجواني 🇦🇪 Hassan Sajwani (@HSajwanization) May 19, 2022

Quraishi was fired from his position at state broadcaster PTV for making the trip.

“Persons indulging in cheap publicity should have thought of their national interests first and last,” PTV stated.

“In lieu of unacceptable actions, Pakistan Television has terminated the contract of an individual who proceeded to travel to a specific country out of his own accord.”

Although Quraishi, who was born and raised in Kuwait, claimed the junket was “private,” he told Ellie Cohanim, a broadcaster and formerly the Trump administration’s deputy special envoy for anti-Semitism, that he hoped the controversy would help persuade his fellow Pakistanis of the case for relations with Israel.

“This is the moment really for us to finally have peace with Israel and deal directly with Israel,” Quraishi said.

Quraishi also revealed himself to be a Muslim Zionist. “As a Muslim, I think we need to own what’s written also in the Quran about the story of Israel and the Israelites and the people of Israel,” he asserted, “and there’s a claim, a very strong one, that the Jewish people have to their historical homeland.”

In a resolution passed after the trip, the Senate of Pakistan condemned recent Israeli attacks against worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem.

And a Pakistani senator called for the revocation of the citizenship of those who went to Israel.

What is Sharaka?

Sharaka – which means “partnership” in Arabic – also led a delegation of young Arabs and Muslims to Auschwitz, the site of the World War II German government death camp in Poland earlier this year.

Although it claims to be motivated by pursuing interfaith harmony, Sharaka has the stated goal of “realizing the tremendous potential of the Abraham Accords.”

Sharaka’s website presents the group as a grassroots, non-governmental initiative “founded by young leaders from Israel and the Gulf in order to turn the vision of people-to-people peace into a reality.”

Sharaka’s Israeli co-founder, Amit Deri, is also the founder of Reservists on Duty, a group of Israeli soldiers dedicated to combating the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – a campaign promoting Palestinian freedom and equality.

David Brog, former executive director of the fanatically anti-Palestinian group Christians United For Israel, and pro-Israel lobbyist Arsen Ostrovsky, are also on Sharaka’s board.

And although Sharaka claims to be nongovernmental, its Emirati co-founder Majid al-Sarrah says in a Sharaka video promoting Israel that “I consider myself a representative of the Emirati state and its policies.”

The reality is that no such organization would be permitted in the United Arab Emirates – where there is no freedom of speech or association – without government approval.

Though it solicits donations through its website, Sharaka is silent about where it obtains the substantial funding that would be needed to finance the various delegations it sponsors. Its website provides no information about where the organization is registered.

Sharaka did not respond to a request for comment regarding where it is registered as a nonprofit organization and whether it receives any government funding.

Notably, Jared Kushner, the adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, was personally present in December when Sharaka signed a cooperation agreement with the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, a US-based group with a similar pro-Israel mission.

Normalization under the banner of religion

The Abraham Accords were brokered by the Trump administration and are supported by the Biden administration to formalize diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab states. They aim to consolidate military, economic and political cooperation between Israel and other local American client regimes while putting an end to the Palestinian national liberation struggle.

These efforts are often marketed as promoting “interfaith” cooperation – relying on the misrepresentation that the violence arising from Israel’s belligerent occupation and colonization of Palestinian land is really rooted in religious strife.

Promoting the myth that Muslim-Jewish disharmony is the root of conflict is a common tactic used by Israel propagandists.

Similarly, Israel has long promoted the falsehood that commemoration of the German-led European genocide of millions of European Jews during World War II is inextricably linked to the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

“Israeli Zionists have appropriated events in Jewish history, including the Holocaust, for propagandistic purposes to assert their ‘right’ to Palestine – a land to which they had laid their suspect colonial claim half a century before the genocide,” Columbia University professor Joseph Massad recently wrote in relation to the Sharaka-sponsored trip to Auschwitz.

“Palestinians and other Arabs were called upon to accept the linkage between the Holocaust and Israel’s ‘right to exist as a Jewish state’ as a package deal.”

The bid to “engage Palestinians and other Arabs with the history of the Holocaust is an attempt to deflect Palestinian and Arab engagement away from the Zionist Jewish and Israeli present and an attempt to justify Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people,” Massad adds.

“Israeli demands that Palestinians and Arabs commemorate the Holocaust are not about the Holocaust at all, but about the other part of the formula, namely recognizing and submitting to Israel’s ‘right to exist’ as a settler-colonial, racist Jewish state,” Massad concludes.

US-Pakistan “reset”

It is clear that bringing Pakistani nationals to Israel is an attempt to push Pakistan – a Muslim state with a population of 220 million people and an arsenal of nuclear weapons – towards recognition of and normalization with Israel.

Indeed, this issue may be at the heart of recent political turmoil in the country. An April no-confidence vote removed Imran Khan as Pakistan’s prime minister.

Analysts saw Khan’s unwavering solidarity with Palestinians and refusal to warm up to Israel as key motivators for what was effectively a US-backed putsch against him.

Rumors emerged last year that Saudi Arabia had been pushing Pakistan to normalize relations with Israel after Khan was asked about such pressure in a November 2020 interview with local broadcaster GNN.

Saudi Arabia is both a key – though informal – ally of Tel Aviv and a major source of financing for Islamabad.

Pakistani PM Imran Khan being pressured to recognize Israel pic.twitter.com/6E9gryf5zR

— LifeRacer (@LifeRacer_1) November 13, 2020

“How much pressure is on you to recognize Israel?” the interviewer asked the then-prime minister.

“The pressure is because Israel has a big influence on America,” Khan said, adding that this had increased under the Trump administration.

“Now, it was never in our thinking that we can recognize Israel,” Khan said.

He added that since Pakistan’s founding, its policy has been that until Palestinians “get their rights and a just settlement,” there can never be recognition.

Pakistan’s refusal to cut ties with Russia following the latter’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year may also explain the American animosity towards Khan.

Khan went to Moscow just hours after Russian forces entered Ukraine in late February.

Although the visit had been pre-planned, the Pakistani leader rebuffed Washington’s efforts to persuade him to cancel it.

Khan also revealed his willingness to buy Russian gas and grain just as the US and EU were pressuring the rest of the world – albeit unsuccessfully – to impose sanctions on Moscow.

Following Khan’s removal from office, his replacement as prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, expressed enthusiasm for “deepening” Pakistan’s relationship with the United States.

Imperial courtiers in Washington also view Khan’s downfall as a golden opportunity to “reset” the US relationship with Pakistan.

Writing for the Brookings Institution think tank, CIA veteran Bruce Riedel and Brookings fellow Madiha Afzal denounce Khan as an “anti-American” ideologue who was “leaning away from America toward Russia and China.”

Though they acknowledge the legendary corruption of the Sharif family – Shehbaz’s brother Nawaz was prime minister several times before being barred from office due to corruption – Riedel and Afzal view them as “pragmatic men” with whom Washington can do business.

Similarly, pro-Israel Pakistanis may view this moment as a golden opportunity to fulfill the dream of seeing the Israeli flag fluttering over a Zionist embassy in Islamabad.

*

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Tamara Nassar is associate editor and Ali Abunimah is executive director of The Electronic Intifada.

Featured image: A delegation including Pakistani nationals visits the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in May. (via Twitter)

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***

Introduction

Many millions of families in Western nations have been internally stressed, if not broken, as a result of the global Covid-19 infection and the policies surrounding it.

Note that I do not refer to Covid as a pandemic. The definition of “pandemic” was changed in July 2008, soon before the swine flu “pandemic”, which fizzled. Neither infection would qualify under earlier definitions.[1]

However, the widespread divisiveness that remains in its wake is a pandemic.

During the early months of “flatten the curve,” few would have disputed or resisted the public health instructions to wear masks, keep a distance of six feet, wash hands frequently, and stay home if possible.

During the first year, with many small businesses failing, governments eased financial disruption with handouts, as most people pulled together to put the disease behind them.

Throughout much of 2020, while the vaccines were still in development, prominent epidemiologists were presenting high-level evidence that early treatment protocols could save millions of lives.[2] This evidence was ignored and/or ridiculed in the media.[3]

Cracks in public confidence began to emerge in December 2020 with the arrival of the mRNA vaccines, along with passports to monitor vaccination status.

Suddenly there was a rift in society between the willing and the unwilling.  The latter were not only socially restricted and unemployed, but were systematically prevented from using alternative early treatments by the ubiquitous, media-backed policy of preventing “vaccine hesitancy”.

Social media discipline followed, with any discussion of early treatments causing suspensions and banishments from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

But what was happening between the willing and the unwilling in families and friendships across the land?

My Own Case

I am a retired career medical librarian who served public health executives in a large government agency for 25 years. I have written many articles tracking and analyzing Covid policy as it developed.[4]

As a health information professional, accompanied by other health professionals close to the situation, I opted to stock up on early treatment medications rather than to choose one of the new mRNA vaccines, which have had FDA emergency use status only.

When the national US, UK, and European databases started blinking red about Covid vaccine injuries in the spring of 2021, I pointed this out to people in my family, and to my husband’s family, and also reported some of the database evidence on Twitter (from which I was permanently suspended on March 1, 2022).

A member of my immediate family and two of my closest long-time friends have been dismayed at my position – one indicating that it was based on a character flaw. These relationships are on hold, with no contact.

My husband’s family opted for vaccination. Although the incessant drumbeat tested our relationships, we chose to keep them strong and loving.

Others, whom I know more casually, have withdrawn their warmth and in the street simply nod to me.

What is at the Heart of this Divisiveness?

Everyone within reach of a news source on this planet has heard the singular narrative that Covid-19 is a frightening 100-year pandemic with only one solution: vaccination.

This has been repeatedly emphasized every day for more than two years.

Its effect on populations has been analyzed by Belgian clinical psychologist and professor, Dr. Mattias Desmet.

Desmet has identified the population effect as mass formation psychosis. He says that about 30% of people are solidly hypnotized by the public health media barrage. A further 40% go along with it, and only 20-30% remain free of its power.[5]

So there is great divisiveness. Within this divisiveness, two important things may be constructively discussed between people who are in conflict:

1.     Sources of Information:

Often when people are arguing, they have been influenced by different sources. The argument is most primarily between the sources, rather than between those who read them. This is why the alternative sources have been suppressed and censored:  So that many people will believe there is no argument.

Thus it is very important to start the discussion by considering the sources that each has read or listened to.  Ultimately, it is the sources that disagree, and if people want to preserve their relationships, they should trust each other to look at each other’s sources together.

This is challenging because the most qualified sources that disagree with the singular narrative have been actively suppressed and censored by the Trusted News Initiative,[6] and by social media.  Many health professionals know this, and their family and friends really should be open to what they have to say.

2.     The Need to be Right:

Most families were already subject to the ordinary pressures of life before Covid came along. Even before Covid, basic family dynamics under the pressures of life kept psychologists, antidepressants, and divorce lawyers in business.

Underneath it all has been the fragility of self-worth, which inevitably looms up when people are in disagreement or conflict.

Disagreements and conflicts always point to the possibility of being wrong.

Being wrong is something no one wants to be.  In competitive argument it is a losing position. Being right, on the other hand, is a dominant position. Conflict is about winner over loser, about strength over weakness, about being admired over being disdained.

So it is no wonder that the two positions during a reportedly lethal global pandemic – being vaccinated or unvaccinated – have become so utterly contentious and divisive.

The unvaccinated are constantly aware of their pariah status among Desmet’s completely hypnotized 30%.

Meanwhile, if the new mRNA injections are indeed causing unprecedented adverse effects, acknowledgement of this puts some of Desmet’s 40% who went along with vaccination into a state of unsettled anxiety.

Not to mention those among Desmet’s independently aware 20-30%, who feared the new injections but capitulated to save their jobs, marriages, and social status.

It’s an ugly situation – an ongoing divisiveness across society unlike any other we have experienced as a culture.

How can we Heal this Situation?

This is perhaps the most important question we are facing.

How can people who are on opposite sides of what they have been led to believe is a life-and-death issue, resolve their positions without losing face?

These questions, in this order, might be useful to ponder:

1.     Were there already unresolved stresses in your relationship(s) before the pandemic, which then became worse?

2.     Do you trust the character of the persons/people you are at odds with?

3.     If yes, do you want to have the relationship(s) restored to good faith?

4.     If yes, are you willing to examine the information sources that those you disagree with have been trusting?

5.     Overall, do you embrace the idea that the Spirit is in each one of us, that everyone is born good and wants happy relationships?

6.     If so, are you willing to try to rise above conflict by encouraging transactions among the various personality types, based on the “I’m OK; You’re OK” approach to peace?[7]

Negative Emotion: We Must Find Another Way of Being

Many of us are addicted to negative emotion.

Indeed, negative emotion has increasingly captured society as a whole through the incessant media preoccupation with fear, fear, fear – and panic.

Recently, Canadian Members of Parliament were issued with “panic buttons” in case members of the public threatened them. What would Winston Churchill have said about the implied “panicky” Members of Parliament?  Do we have frightened people running the country?

Perhaps we do. Philosopher P.D. Ouspensky in his book, “The Fourth Way,” notes that “there is not a single useful negative emotion, useful in any sense. Negative emotions are all a sign of weakness.”

As one author has summarized him:

Many of us dwell on the negative far past the time when it is relevant, allowing it to diminish the joy of the present. In politics, in jobs, in personal life, we take great liberties in imposing our negative emotions on others, and we often derive a great deal of pleasure from it. Ouspensky points out that “almost all of our personal negative emotions are based on accusations, somebody else is guilty,” but if we realize “we are the cause of all that happens to us, that changes things…” He goes on to say that “You do not realize how much you lose by these spontaneous manifestations of negative character. They make so many things impossible.”[8]

Most specifically, they make love impossible.

And as the world’s great religions agree — and which Martin Luther King’s grandfather observed:

In conclusion, it’s time to consciously acknowledge and overcome the spiritual weakness that has been revealed in the West — by its panicked, divisive response to a virus with a very high infection survival rate:

*

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This article was originally published on Lizzy’s Newsletter.

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

Notes

[1] Ron Law, “WHO Changed Definition of Influenza Pandemic,” BMJ, 06 June 2010 (https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/02/who-changed-definition-influenza-pandemic ). See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic

[2] U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, “Early Outpatient Treatment: An Essential Part of a COVID-19 Solution,” 19 November 2020, (https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/early-outpatient-treatment-an-essential-part-of-a-covid-19-solution ).

[3] Ashish Jha, “The Snake-Oil Salesmen of the Senate,” New York Times, 24 November 2020 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/opinion/hydroxychloroquine-covid.html ).

[4] https://muckrack.com/elizabeth-woodworth/articles

[5] Mattias Desmet, “How To END The Phenomena Of Mass Formation Psychosis, 2 November 2021

[6] Elizabeth Woodworth, “COVID-19 and the Shadowy ‘Trusted News Initiative’

How it Methodically Censors Top World Public Health Experts Using an Early Warning System,” 22 January 2022

(https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-shadowy-trusted-news-initiative/5752930). See also short video, “What is the Trusted News Initiative,” 2 January 2022, 3:55 min

[7] “I’m OK, You’re OK – How to Develop Your Attitude,” (https://ta-course.com/im-ok-youre-ok/ )

[8] Jessica’s blog, “Ouspensky’s ‘The Fourth Way’ and Negative Emotions,” 14 September 2012 (https://searchingforthegracefulmuse.blogspot.com/2011/07/ouspenskys-fourth-way-and-negative.html ).

All images in this article are from the author

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CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION

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Guest: Dr. Hedley Rees – Managing Director of Pharmaflow, author and advocate for modernisation of the pharmaceutical industry. He held senior positions at Bayer UK, British Biotech, Vernalis and others. He is also author of Taming The Big Pharma Monster: by Speaking Truth to Power (2019).

In this session, the panel discusses that there is evidence that the drugs were rushed to market, taking significant shortcuts to make money rather than offering the safest and most effective product possible. Further in the discussion are:

• How MHRA/EMA did not follow its own rules and guidelines described in its Orange Guide. They did not meet
  their very own terms for conditional approval of the injections.
• How -70°C (ultra-frozen) injections were a gross contravention of GMP, as they were not fully finished as unit doses on leaving the factory, and they had to circumvent pharmaceutical wholesalers (licensed to comply with GDP) because they were not equipped to handle those temperatures.

*

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

Former Pfizer Exec Believes Leaky Vaccine Was Intentional: Dr. Michael Yeadon

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, July 05, 2022

Yeadon is uniquely positioned to speak on this topic, as he has degrees in biochemistry and toxicology, and studied respiratory pharmacology. You have likely seen Yeadon being interviewed many times previously, but I strongly encourage you to watch this one as he explains items I have never heard him previously discuss. He is one of the sharpest guys out there in this area and you will be glad you took the time to listen.

AUKUS Submarines: Beasts of Nuclear Proliferation

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, July 06, 2022

Members of the nuclear club engage in an elaborate ceremonial in claiming that their nuclear weapons inventory will eventually be emptied.  Non-nuclear weapons states allied to such powers go along with appearances, taking comfort that nuclear weapons states will offer them an umbrella of security.

The COVID Lockdown, “Controlled Demolition” of the Air Travel Industry. The Derogation of the “Right to Travel”

By Joachim Hagopian, July 05, 2022

This presentation will focus on the apparent controlled demolition of just one highly important, critical industry slated allegedly for sacrificial destruction – the airline industry as part of the elites’ lockdown control agenda potentially even forbidding our right to travel.

Pentagon Agency Wants to Send Weapons Inspectors to Monitor Arms Transfers to Ukraine

By Marcus Weisgerber, July 05, 2022

Pentagon leaders should consider sending weapons inspectors to Ukraine to monitor the billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. arms flowing to the country, a top Defense Department official said.

“Religious Precepts” Sustained by the COVID Crisis: The UN “Sustainable Development” Project Serves the Interests the Financial Elites

By Dr. T. P. Wilkinson, July 05, 2022

I am skeptical about what sustainability really means. I am also skeptical about the knowledge claims underlying the so-called Global Sustainable Development Goals (GSDG or simply SDG). I especially do not believe that we should rely on models— at least not the models that have been used to justify the seriously misguided and destructive policies asserted to support those goals.

The Federal Reserve’s Policy Is Mistaken: Supply Disruptions Lead to Inflation

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, July 05, 2022

The likely cause of the current inflation in US consumer prices is supply disruption.  The Covid lockdowns and mandatory closing of businesses disrupted and destroyed supply chains. Shipping disruptions, which certainly reduce the supply of goods in an economy such as the United States, a country that has offshored so much of its manufacturing for internal markets, further reduced supply.

Saudis Unwilling to Upset Putin as Biden Begs for More Crude

By Tsvetana Paraskova, July 05, 2022

The world’s largest crude oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, continues to keep close ties with Russia while the top oil consumer, the United States, pleads with major producers—including the Kingdom—to boost supply to the market and help ease consumers’ pain at the pump.

Game Changer: Russian MoD Confirms Luhansk ‘Fully Liberated’ – Here’s What It Means

By Patrick Henningsen, July 05, 2022

Make no mistake: this latest development is a major blow to the Zelensky regime, but it will be even more devastating for the geographically-challenged boffins in Washington and London, who are still determined to paint every resounding defeat for Kiev as a ‘strategic pause’.

$3.2 Billon Taxpayer-Funded Deal with Pfizer Will ‘Enrich Shareholders of Most Profitable Industry in History’

By Megan Redshaw, July 05, 2022

The Biden administration on Wednesday announced a $3.2 billion deal to purchase 105 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for a fall vaccination campaign, with options to buy up to 300 million doses.

Regime Change Comes to Uzbekistan. Part of a Broader Agenda of Political Destabilization of the Russian Federation?

By Gavin OReilly, July 05, 2022

On Saturday, a month-long state of emergency was declared in the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, to address the violent protests in response to government plans to revoke the autonomy of the north-eastern republic of Karakalpakstan, a decision which Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev would later drop following a visit to the region.

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***

When faced with the option of acquiring nuclear technology, states have rarely refused.  Since the splitting of the atom and the deployment of atomic weapons in war, the acquisition of a nuclear capacity has been a dream.  Those who did acquire it, in turn, tried to restrict others from joining what has become, over the years, an exclusive club guarded by self-justified psychosis.

Members of the nuclear club engage in an elaborate ceremonial in claiming that their nuclear weapons inventory will eventually be emptied.  Non-nuclear weapons states allied to such powers go along with appearances, taking comfort that nuclear weapons states will offer them an umbrella of security.

This insane hypocrisy underlines such arrangements as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.  Central to the document is the discouragement of non-nuclear weapons states from weaponizing nuclear technology as long as members of the nuclear club pursue “good-faith” disarmament negotiations. While it is true to say that the NPT probably prevented a speedier, less infectious spread of the nuclear virus, it remains a constipated regime of imperfections that has merely delayed proliferation.

Most tellingly of all, most non-nuclear weapon states have complied with their undertakings.  Nuclear weapons states have not, disregarding serious multilateral nuclear disarmament.  Nor do they have an incentive to alter current arrangements, given that any changes to the NPT can only take place with the unanimous support of the three treaty depositories: Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The NPT supporters pour scorn at alternative approaches to nuclear weapons, such as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which had its first meeting of state parties in Vienna from June 21 to 23.  While the Albanese government did send Susan Templeman MP to the meeting as an observer, Canberra has remained consistently opposed to the TPNW as a threat to the accepted disarmament and NPT framework.  Dated and spurious concepts such as extended nuclear deterrence and the interoperability of Australian and US military systems tend to be common justifications.

The AUKUS security partnership that was announced in September 2021 by Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, has muddied the pool of non-proliferation.  A central component of the agreement is a promise to share nuclear propulsion technology with Australia, enabling it to acquire eight nuclear submarines to be supposedly built in Adelaide, South Australia.  While much of this is wishful thinking (Australia has no expertise in the field, and will have to rely wholeheartedly on expertise from the other two), the glaring problem in the arrangement is what it does to non-proliferation arrangements.

While the previous Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was ignorantly confident that the agreement would comply with Australia’s own non-proliferation commitments, such confidence is misplaced.  For one thing, Article III of the NPT exempts naval reactors from nuclear safeguards, which threatens a pillar of the regime, namely, limiting the production and use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) which can be used, in turn, to make nuclear weapons.

Non-proliferation experts have not been enthusiastic with these promised new beasts for the Royal Australian Navy. Daryl G. Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, notes the salient difference between deepening defence cooperation on the one hand with allies and proliferating “sensitive HEU nuclear propulsion tech in contravention of US and global nonpro principles.”

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, greeted AUKUS with much gloom when it was announced.  Its provisions on nuclear technology would “further intensify the arms race in the region and the dynamics that fuel military competition.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi is visiting Australia to discuss the issue of safeguards regarding nuclear material used for naval propulsion.  This is nothing short of problematic, given that IAEA inspectors are unable to inspect such material for extended periods of time when the vessel is at sea.

Grossi, in mild understatement, calls this “quite complex”, though is keen to accommodate Australian commitments to non-proliferation alongside the acquisition of nuclear technology.  “There is a period of 18 months which was given by the three partners – the United States, United Kingdom and Australia – to define how the project is going to be implemented but, already we have started this interaction, this joint work of technical levels so that we can reconcile both things.”

In a statement made prior to Grossi’s visit, Foreign Minister Penny Wong reiterated Australia’s “longstanding” support of the “IAEA’s mission to harness the peaceful use of nuclear technology in areas like medicine, industrial processes and environmental monitoring, as well as upholding the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.”

This world as described by Senator Wong is distinctly pre-AUKUS.  Despite promises of “open and transparent engagement with the IAEA on nuclear safeguards”, the whinnying horse of proliferation has bolted from the stable.  Assurances to avoid the future development of an Australian nuclear weapons capability or a national nuclear fuel cycle also ring hollow.

The precedent of permitting Australia to be the only non-nuclear weapons state with HEU-propelled technology is also seismic on another level.  There will be nothing stopping China and Russia doing what the United States and the UK promise to do: proliferate naval reactor technology and long-range missiles with a nuclear capability.

*

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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

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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This presentation will focus on the apparent controlled demolition of just one highly important, critical industry slated allegedly for sacrificial destruction – the airline industry as part of the elites’ lockdown control agenda potentially even forbidding our right to travel.

With the COVID pandemic outbreak in early 2020, by mid-April 2020, the US government committed a $25 billion bailout to the air travel industry after the pandemic banned virtually all international travel. Despite the compensation package, the airline industry has been floundering ever since. In February 2022, the World Economic Forum reported the industry suffered its “worst year in history”:

International passenger demand dropped 75.6 percent and domestic demand fell 48.8 percent below 2019 levels.

Just as declared pandemics facilitate elites’ centralized authoritarian lockdown control keeping the human population literally isolated, largely cut off inside their homes, unable to assemble in groups, preventing crucial face-to-face contact with friends and loved ones in a devastating assault to destroy our basic human need for social bonding and regular social interaction, the elimination of our capacity for air travel constitutes a derogation of freedom of movement and “mobility rights”.

With the manipulative, pathological manufacturing of mass fear and assorted dangers of sheer nonstop crises designed for societal collapse, social impoverishment and life-threatening globalized poverty on an immobilized, traumatized human population, already fully beta tested from the elites’ globally orchestrated COVID pandemic, national governments are allegedly planning to limit, if not totally prohibit, human travel both near and far altogether.

A July 2^nd ZeroHedge article written by Alex Kramer entitled “The Coming Collapse of the Air Travel Industry” addresses the very real probability that planetary controllers are not only engineering the collapse of both the food production and fossil fuel industries, but also the airline industry as well.

Based on the author’s recent Zoom conversation with German member of European Parliament Christine Anderson and three insiders working in the air travel industry (one a pilot), Alex Kramer’s shocking takeaway was that the globalists are very likely planning to soon eliminate the commercial airline industry entirely for public use and access. According to every person on this conference call “in no uncertain terms, the industry is now being systematically and deliberately demolished.”

MEP Christine Anderson shared her disgust after her European Parliament piggybacking off the European Commission voted on June 23^rd to renew the EU Digital Covid Certificate for another year, despite 99%+ of their constituents strongly opposing it. The 453 in favor versus only 119 against (with 19 abstentions) only confirms what we already pathetically know. Members of governments today are merely following the orders dictated by their powerful puppet masters.

Amidst government mandates illegally coercing citizens to take their kill shot, in June 2021 the EU’s digital certificate originally adopted for “safe” travel amongst the EU nation-states, quickly morphed into the illegal digital ID and worldwide digital passport granting the vaxxed easy unobstructed access to the otherwise restricted venues to enter food stores, shopping malls, restaurants, concert halls, all deemed off limits to the lowly vexed and forsaken unvaccinated crowd.

This illegal apartheid, divide and conquer form of governance, promoted by three out of four European Parliament members in their June 23^rd plenary session without as much as a debate, signed off on the digital passport in direct obedience to their bloodline masters for at least another year, if not permanently.

With the Hegelian dialectic “problem, reaction, solution,” the elites’ proven winning formula repeatedly uses their fake carrot stick illusion of “security” to galvanize their endgame of social subordination. When the European Commission disingenuously launched its “Have Your Say” constituent feedback loop from February 3^rd to April 8^th, asking whether to renew the certificate, going through the “democratic” pretense of offering choice, virtually the entire public feedback voted resoundingly against renewing the certificate. French Parliament member Virginie Joron posted on Twitter:

I read hundreds of responses at random with my team. I did not find any in favor of extending the QR code [i.e. the digital certificate]. Based on this large survey, it seems obvious that virtually all the responses were negative.

Despite the Commission unanimously receiving virtually all 385,000 no votes from the public reacting so vociferously against renewal, did this overwhelming response to their fake feedback gesture in any way alter or change the final outcome renewing the “vere-ah-yoe-paypurs?” prison planet policy? Hell no.

Today, governments merely pay lip service falsely pretending to value or care about your opinion, your vote, your well-being, while busily slitting your throat. After all, actions speak louder than empty words, false promises and fake pretenses.

Be it the US federal government or the EU or the European Parliament, all these supposed Western democratic governmental bodies in name only as defined by their overt actions are bonafide oligarchies, not representing the interests of citizens they ostensibly serve, but strictly the special interests of the globalist elite controlling them. The actual truth that does “follow the science,” thoroughly debunks the COVID threat and “safe and effective vaccines” as complete criminal fraud. Therefore, voting to continue to endorse this totally fraudulent hoax in order to justify continual despotic restrictions, clearly signifies that the centralist cabal agenda that defies both science and our well-being, is misusing its irrefutably exposed health dictatorship to push yet more authoritarian, draconian measures to come, in lockstep with the pandemic architects Gates and Fauci continuously sounding the alarm of yet more pandemics arriving.

Citing “the wave of dysfunction” within the “energy industry, oil production, supply chains and healthcare,” Alex Kramer questions all the sudden chaos at airports reported around the globe as odd if not downright suspicious, after listing links to a half dozen articles from May 31 through June 27, he summarily observes:

All of a sudden, we have thousands of flights cancelled or delayed, luggage handling process stalling, hours’ wasted in check-in and security checks, and all this happening pretty much everywhere? Coincidence theorists will swallow the official explanations with a shrug of acceptance, but I do find all this extremely strange.

Alex then points out that one of the conference call participants claiming to have closely scrutinized “the WEF documents and all of UN’s Agenda 2020/30/50,” insisted that the systemic chaos and dysfunction we are now witnessing in today’s air travel is the elites’ specific, explicit objective, in so many words, concluding:

The ultimate intent is to do away with travelling and to establish a feudal arrangement where people remain fixed in place and all travel is banned. 

The official explanation reported by the same scripted mainstream media headlines is that the airline industry after two straight years of layoffs and downsizing due to the severe pandemic impact, the commercial airlines were caught off guard with the lifting of restrictions and as a result, are severely understaffed to keep up with the sudden public demand to fly this summer. Again, as always, this is complete nonsensical BS. A June 19^th USA Today with the “Travel Armageddon” headline specified:

Travel issues continued piling up for fliers on Sunday as weekend flight delays and cancellations topped 10,000 — a tumultuous weekend for holiday travel blamed on staffing shortages, packed planes and the ripple effects from previous bad weather. 

These are sorry ass, ultra-minor, insignificant excuses designed to obscure the blatant truth, dictated to the monopolizing MSM corporate giants to all claim the same false narrative reasons.

Yet simple logic sees the deceptive fallacy in this lame argument. The airline industry clearly foresaw the Covid-19 health threat finally winding down by late last year, leaving many, many months in advance of this summer’s busiest flying season to adequately prepare.

Yet having had such ample opportunity to reasonably rehire or hire and train thousands of new industry employees to meet the expected demand, all the major airlines chose not to. Why?

Partially because of the insanely malicious industry-wide mandates imposed on staff last year to retain employment, they were forced to submit to receiving death jabs against their free will that no doubt did injure and kill thousands, placing the safety and well-being of both their enormous number of employees and even larger public in harm’s way. Of course, many of the more prudent employees that did their due diligence and checked out the medical facts, chose to quit their jobs before risking injury and/or death. Among those numbers, many would undoubtedly return to the aviation workforce in a heartbeat if given the chance to (minus any more insane criminal mandates).

Like all the large sized population of workers throughout the healthcare, governments from local, state to federal, the US armed forces and larger companies with over 100 employees (illegally shot mandated by Biden), virtually all the highest management leaders in all major critical infrastructure industries had plenty of access to the explicit scientific information conveying the dire warning of life and death danger associated with the poisonous vaccines.

The airline CEOs, the imposter US president, his Secretary of Defense and virtually the entire leadership of all the major industries had to know full well that the experimental “Warp Speed” Covid-19 vaccinations carried high risk that was detrimental to human health. (hundreds of thousands of victims (morbidity and mortality) within the public and private sectors).

 Few within top leadership positions could honestly pretend ignorance. If nothing else but for the sake of corporate profit, it’s their job and responsibility to ensure their employees are healthy, safe and productive.

Therefore, the elephant in the room explanation as absolutely the biggest glaring reason to account for today’s air travel industry’s widespread chaos and dysfunction has to be by willfull, malicious design to destroy the airline industry. No doubt a sizeable segment of those having received the lethal jab is indeed too unhealthy now to work, but if by June top heymanagement failed to hire and train replacement staff, especially by the end of last year when the proverbial writing had already been clearly on the wall for months, today’s airline industry implosion breakdown has to be have been both preplanned and clearly avoidable…

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Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate, former Army officer and author of “Don’t Let the Bastards Getcha Down,” exposing a faulty US military leadership system based on ticket punching up the seniority ladder, invariably weeding out the best and brightest, leaving mediocrity and order followers rising to the top as politician-bureaucrat generals designated to lose every modern US war by elite design. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In Los Angeles he found himself battling the largest county child protective services in the nation within America’s thoroughly broken and corrupt child welfare system.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from BigPharmaNews.com

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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Introduction

How does one measure the health of a society?  

When scholars from across the world are given the same society to analyze, they often come up with discordant, even diametrical conclusions. Why is that? Although a rare occurrence in natural science, such discordance is, unfortunately, a common scene in social science. The main reason is that those scholars often use different metrics. Social scientists have yet to come up with a unified set of metrics to objectively evaluate societal health—one that is independent of their individual ideologies. Our world has many versions of ideology metrics, which are all based on peoples’ belief systems, such as religious preferences and social-political predispositions. These are biased, by nature. The social sciences desperately need a set of metrics with objective qualities similar to those in natural science. 

The social sciences include disciplines like sociology, politics, and anthropology. The natural sciences include physics, chemistry, and biology. By and large, those in the latter group have universally accepted principles (such as gravity, chemical reactions, microorganisms) that can be objectively and repeatedly demonstrated. These are known as proven truths. Where such demonstrations cannot be done, there are usually working theories that are constantly being refined. If natural scientists happen to disagree, they are confident that through perseverance in experimentations, truth will in due time emerge and dissolve the disagreement.

On the contrary, social scientists are in constant disagreement. This is because they do not have any universally accepted principles. No social science theories can be put to objective and repeated testing; therefore, proven truths cannot be developed. “Truth” becomes a matter of opinion, and different scholars often hold different opinions. Thus, says Canadian sociology professor Kenneth Westhues of the University of Waterloo, “Different sociologists have different principles—assumptions, predispositions, basic ideas underlying what they say and write on specific subjects.”

Since social science has no unified principles, does that mean there is no way to objectively evaluate how well a society is doing? This article would argue that there is a way. Embedded in every modern society are four basic human conditions that originate from natural science, which can serve as objective metrics of societal health. Primarily, these metrics arise from the natural science disciplines of psychology and biology.

Knowledge arisen in any given discipline must be compliant with that of a more fundamental discipline. For a theory (a proposed new knowledge) in a discipline to be considered credible, it has to be compliant with the already established principles (or working theories) of a more fundamental discipline. For example, it would be difficult to consider a physics theory credible, if it disobeys algebra (a principle of mathematics, a discipline more fundamental than physics). By the same token, one would more likely consider the discovery of a new virus (a biology theory) credible when it comes supported by a corresponding new RNA sequence (a principle of biochemistry, a discipline more fundamental than biology).

Here, our topic is about how best to evaluate society.

Since sociology is all about how human beings behave in communities, we should start by exploring the principles and theories of human behavior, namely psychology (a branch of natural science and a discipline that is more fundamental than sociology).

Using the above premise, we are now ready to derive a natural-science based method to objectively evaluate society. In this method, four human conditions (wealth, population, health, education) will be identified as manifestations of established principles/theories of human psychology and biology, which function effectively like the guts and backbones of society. If just one of them falters, the entire society can potentially collapse. How well each of them is functioning reveals clues about which “organs” of the society are thriving and which are failing.  Effectively, we can consider them as the society’s vital signs.

By focusing on these vital signs, we should be able to assess the health of our society more accurately, thereby developing public policies more effectively, as well as conducting cross-cultural dialogues more meaningfully.

Knowledge hierarchy and compliance with fundamentals 

As mentioned above, there is a hierarchy among the knowledge disciplines, each ranking according to its predecessor, with the predecessor always being the one that is more fundamental.  Here, a picture is worth a thousand words. The graph depicted below (top graph) is from the 19th century French philosopher, Auguste Comte, and that below is from the 21st century Australian communications scholar, JT Velikovsky, PhD.

Aside from the addition of a few modern terminologies (such as psychology, anthropology), the overall structure of this hierarchy has not changed significantly in two hundred years, with mathematics still being the most fundamental discipline. Note that the discipline that is next to but more fundamental than sociology is psychology, followed by biology.

As alluded to in Introduction, the knowledge obtained from each discipline depends on that of its predecessor, though the reverse is not needed. For example, in order for a physics theory to be credible, it must obey the principles of mathematics. But, those mathematical principles will remain, irrespective of the validity of the physics theory. Therefore, it is always the discipline that is less fundamental that needs to be compliant with the one that is more fundamental. Every credible biology theory must obey the principles of biochemistry; every credible psychology theory must obey biology; and so forth. Hence, for our proposed sociology theory to be credible, it must obey psychology and biology.

Psychology 

Psychology has few established principles, and there is none regarding what motivates human beings to behave the way they do. However, there is a resounding theory. First introduced by American psychologist Clark Hull in the 1930s, the Drive-Reduction Theory remained the dominant theory of human behavior for three decades. By the mid 1970s, proponents of the theory became somewhat disappointed that it could not fully explain all human behaviors. The zeal of many psychologists who thought they had found an all-encompassing human behavior theory started to cool. Yet, to this day, psychologists still have not developed a theory with enough all-encompassing qualities to replace it. Although seemingly fallen out of favor, Hull’s theory has had a primordial influence on later theories all through the remaining 20th century and into the early 21th. For example, the prominent 20th century Discrimination of Learning Theory by Spence and Hierarchy of Learning Theory by Marslow both have roots in Hull’s theory. By the same token, the 21th century Homeostasis Reinforcement Theory by Keramati and Gutkin, as well as the artificial intelligence theory of Self-Referential Model-Building Control Systems by Schneider and Adamy are both based significantly on the theory of Hull. Therefore, the Drive-Reduction Theory is still very much alive and is the topic of our following discussion.

Drive-reduction theory 

Drives are the internal forces that motivate people to maintain homeostasis (stable physiological-mental state), which are categorized as primary and secondary.

Primary drives aim to maintain physiologic balance. Essentially, primary drives comprise thirst, hunger, and sex. The first two are for sustenance, and the third is for procreation.  Overall, these drives ensure species survival.

Secondary drives come into play once primary drives are satisfied. These are learned behaviors that human beings believe will bring about mental satisfactions in life. Their propensity to fulfill such satisfactions is so strong that it has become a “necessity,” in order to maintain a mental form of homeostasis, analogous to the physiological homeostasis in primary drives. However, as learned behaviors, these can vary considerably, influenced by factors such as tradition and religion.

This theory has many finer details, such as behavior prediction by motivation computations. However, we shall not belabor with these. Our aim here is only about how to apply the theory’s most basic concepts to better understand society. In a nutshell, primary drives are about what we humans need, while secondary drives are about what we want.

What we need (primary drives)

As alluded to above, in order to maintain sustenance homeostasis, each human being (as a terrestrial mammal) is constantly trying to ensure enough supplies of fresh water and food, motivated by the drives of thirst and hunger.  Furthermore, to be fit for survival, he must also be successful in procreation. Thus, in order to maintain procreation homeostasis, he is constantly engaging in activities leading to offspring, motivated by sex drive. It is on the basis of primary drives that the first two metrics are derived: wealth as a measure of sustenance and resources, as well as population as a measure of procreation.

1. Wealth

In the cave dwelling days of our early history, the drives of thirst and hunger motivated us to be constantly finding fresh water and food. When we evolved to living in early societies, finding fresh water and food transformed into securing territories with such natural resources. By the time we started to live in complex societies (including most modern societies), territorial control further transformed into acquisition of money. Therefore, through the evolution of societal complexity, securing wealth has become today’s manifestation of the primary drives of thirst and hunger. Hence, the wealthier the people in a society, the closer that society is to sustenance homeostasis. By the same token, the poorer the people in a society, the more distant that society is from such homeostasis. In terms of societal health, the former is thriving and the latter is stressed.

2. Population

Unlike the drives of thirst and hunger, sex drive for procreation has not significantly changed through the evolution of societal complexity. For the individual, procreation homeostasis is measured by one’s offspring and his capacity to generate more offspring. For society, it is measured not just by the society’s population size, but also its collective capacity to maintain and potentially increase it. For example, while comparing two societies with the same population size, the one with an optimal childbearing demographic is thriving, whereas that with an aging demographic is stressed.

Here, we can see that our social-science compliance with the fundamentals goes beyond psychology, reaching one level further to biology. In the biologic laws of survival and natural selection, a population whose genetic representation in the world is increasing is biologically more fit, whereas one whose such representation is decreasing is less fit. If the latter is allowed to persist for too long, that population will risk being extinct. For this reason, population is the most important of the four vital signs of societal health (this will be elaborated on later).

What we want (secondary drives)

When our needs (primary drives) are met, we turn our attention to what we want, which is by and large guided by pleasure. However, pleasure can be learned, and the list of pleasures we can learn is endless. Consider food seeking as a behavior. On the surface, it seems to be a matter belonging to primary drive; however, seeking food that is cooked in certain ways would elevate the matter to secondary drive. A person who used to like bread baked one way can learn to enjoy it baked in several other ways. Through learning, people have greatly expanded the scope of their pleasurable wants to encompass vast areas, such as cooking, clothing, music, sports, religions, social systems, concepts of heroism, and many more.

Because people are by nature very different across the world, so are their wants. These wants can vary tremendously not only from person to person, but also from society to society, as well as from time to time in a given person or society. A persona adored at one time could become abhorred two decades later. A religion loved by one society could be loathed by another. A political system valued by one country could be despised by another. There are so many different wants, coming from so many different societies, as well as from different peoples within each society, that finding a common denominator among them to objectively measure secondary drives might be an impossible task.

Health and education

Fortunately, this vast commotion of human wants is only confined to the surface. Below that surface, anchored deep in the human psyche, are two common denominators that have remained unperturbed through time and across cultures. What we humans want the most in life are health and education. This is evident in modern-day polls as well as ancient scrolls.

1. Modern-day polls: 

In a 2017 PEW research, when Americans were asked what factors they considered to give life most satisfaction, they named four and ranked health at the very top. Ranking second was spousal partnership, which in our discussion belongs to the primary drive of sex. Ranking third was job/career.

In a separate PEW report in 2016, Americans expressed how much they value the college diploma, as it often results in higher earnings and lower unemployment, suggesting that they consider education to be essential to ensuring job satisfaction.

That modern-day human beings highly value health and education should come as no surprise. These have been the forefront of what people want across the world for thousands of years.

2. Ancient cultures of Asia:

Although our world has many ancient cultures, only some of them have developed literature (an effective means to pass on knowledge to future generations).  Among those, many have suffered significant interruptions (such as Egypt, Greece and Persia), mainly due to having been conquered by other powers. Fortunately, two of them have survived to this day more or less intact. The most well preserved is China. Although India had been colonized by the British for some 200 years, Hinduism as a religion and philosophy has survived essentially unscratched.

China

What Chinese people have been wanting for centuries can be seen overtly displayed in their homes, as well as at the front doors of businesses and shops in Chinese societies across the world. They are the symbols of the triad gods.

According to Mary H. Fong, art history professor of the University of California, Davis: “Of all the popular gods in Ming-Qing China, Fu Lu Shou were among the greatest favourites of the people. Although they first appeared as a triad in art and literature produced for the upper echelons of society, they were soon accepted by all social classes, the literary elite as well as the working masses.”

In the picture above from left to right are the gods of Fu, Lu, and Shou. Fu grants happiness/joy, who is often depicted carrying offspring (secondary drive bridging over to primary drive). Lu grants social prestige (the kind that is attained through knowledge). The scepter on his right hand symbolizes high social status. The scroll on his left hand symbolizes the esteemed level of education he has acquired to achieve that status. Shou grants longevity/good health. His right hand holds the peach of immortality, while his left holds a staff on which is tied a gourd containing the elixir of life.

Interestingly, these three desires (Joy, Knowledge, Longevity) of the Chinese are similarly reflected in Hindu philosophy (the essence of Indian culture for thousands of years).

India

Among the seven major religions of the world, Hinduism stands out as the only one that confronts the question: “What do people want in life?” While searching for what they want, it describes, people are initially guided by The Path of Desire and then by the Path of Renunciation, eventually coming to realize that what they really want in life are:

1. Being–we don’t want to die; we want life.
2. Awareness–existence is not enough; curiosity and knowledge is more important.
3. Joy–the feeling of well-being

The embodiment of good health, Being here represents our desire to live on. According to Huston Smith, professor of religion: “ Everyone wants to be rather than not to be…None of us take happily the thought of a future in which we shall have no part.”  As for Awareness, continues the professor: “Whether it be scientists probing the secrets of nature, a typical family watching the nightly news, or neighbors catching up on local gossip, we are insatiably curious. Experiments have shown that even monkeys will work longer and harder to discover what is on the other side of a trapdoor than they will for either food or sex. ” Joy is simply the feeling described above.

Now, let us analyze the three elements of Joy/Happiness, Being/Longevity, Awareness/Knowledge closely to see how to properly incorporate them into our metrics to evaluate societal health, the kind of metrics with standards of objectivity similar to those in natural science. Although Joy/Happiness is truly part of what people want, it is also intangible and thus not quantifiable; therefore, we cannot objectively include it in our metrics.

Furthermore, as hinted by professor Smith, Awareness/Knowledge can come in various forms, ranging from neighborhood gossip to the daily news, to laboratory scientific research. Because many of these are not quantifiable, for the most part, they should also not be incorporated into our metrics. However, peoples’ educational statuses are quantifiable in most societies; therefore we shall choose Education to be the metrics for Awareness/Knowledge.

Being/Longevity is best represented by the metrics of Health. In most societies, information about their peoples’ state of health is regularly measured and reported.

In concluding our analysis of what we want (secondary drives), the metrics we have derived are Health and Education. When the people in a society are healthy and well educated, the society is thriving. When the people are not healthy and/or deficient in education, the society is stressed.

Metrics

In compliance with the principles and theories of psychology and biology, we now have a natural-science based methodology to better understand society through the four metrics of Wealth, Population, Health, Education.  Next, we need to compile the actual data needed to compute these metrics.

In all developed and most developing countries, the following data are reasonably obtainable.

Wealth: various measurements of the economy, which are recognized by most economists, such as GDP, GDP per capita, NNDI, DINA, and PPP GDP

Population: size, age and gender demographics at national, provincial, and local levels

Health: life expectancy, infant mortality, successful births from desired pregnancies

Education: literacy rate, high-school-student rank in international competitions, percentage of population with university degrees or higher, Nobel Prizes received

The above measurements are examples only. They do not represent all or the only measurements that can or should be used. Different societies in different circumstances may wish to modify such measurements according to their specific needs. For example, in a society with a low literacy rate, measurements of Nobel Prizes and PhD degrees might not be meaningful, whereas measurements of pre-university education might be more useful.

Government, attitude, and social priority

Since wealth, population, health, and education are four human conditions that can reliably serve as metrics of societal health, we can consider them as the society’s vital signs. When these conditions are thriving (not stressed), it can be said that the vital signs are normal—the society is homeostatic. When a sign deviates from normal, the society veers from homeostasis and is feeling stressed in the corresponding condition. By attentively monitoring these signs, the government can efficiently identify areas where the society is not homeostatic and promptly institute remedies to resolve the corresponding stress.

Furthermore, since it is clear that we can evaluate societal health objectively, it would be unfruitful (probably also unwise) for us to insist on evaluating it subjectively. When criticizing societies, we should refrain from using language with ideology overtones, such as conservative, liberal, secular, fanatic, authoritarian, oppressive, and so forth.  As mentioned in Introduction, because such criticisms are construed based on ideologies (not based on objective metrics), they are inherently biased.

It is not to say that ideologies do no matter in society. The point is that every modern society has certain basic issues that matter a lot more.

Consider the treatment of a patient in the emergency room. From first glance, the evaluating physician has already noticed that the patient is obese and has a large black mole on her left forearm. However, he would not allow these observations to distract him. He must prioritize his attention to reviewing her vital signs. In this case, her blood pressure is abnormally low and rapidly dropping, which he must treat immediately; otherwise, she could go into shock and potentially die. Concerns regarding her obesity and mole, while important in their own rights, can wait to be addressed later.

Likewise, in managing societal health, we should keep our priorities straight and always focus first on the four vitals. Only when every one of them is normal, do we have the luxury to consider venturing into some other social interests (ideology-based or otherwise). Furthermore, we must safeguard ourselves from overindulgence in these “luxury” interests, constantly making sure that such ventures do not end up costing us our vitals.

Example societies

Now, we shall assess the health of some existing societies. We will always begin by analyzing the vital signs, followed by noting any significant luxuries (nonessential social programs), ending with suggestions regarding how to help the society decrease stress and become more homeostatic.

This is simply a conceptual exercise to illustrate how the proposed methodology can be applied. The exercise is not intended to be all-inclusive, accounting for all the relevant variables that exist in these societies.  Of course, in real-life situations, the more inclusive the better. By the same token, the way the four vitals are applied here is also not the only applicable way.  Different societies may wish to fine tune the methodology to suit their specific needs according to circumstances.

The United States

1. Wealth:  Because its GDP has been the highest in the world since 1871, one might think that it has been thriving. However, the income of the lower half of the nation has been stagnant for half a century; at least half of people are stressed.
2. Population: Given its geography, its population is relatively sparse and can afford to significantly increase. Indeed, it has been growing and is therefore thriving.
3. Health: For a rich country, its infant mortality record is appalling. According to the 2017 CIA report, it ranks behind 55 countries, including over ten positions behind Poland and Cuba. Its adults are not faring any better. Among thirteen comparable countries, the US life expectancy ranks the lowest and is still decreasing. Stress level is high.
4. Education: It has won more Nobel Prizes than any other in the past 100 years. However, its high school students are not up to par, often scoring poorly in international competitions. Some aspects here are thriving, while others stressed.
5. Luxuries: It has the largest military in the world and is still trying to grow it. In fact, the US spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined.
6. Suggestions: If all four vitals were normal and the Americans chose to spend more money in the military, that would be fine. In reality, the vitals are far from normal. There is severe stress in Health, as well as moderate stress in Wealth and Education. Therefore, some of the military budget should be diverted to help boost K-12 education, elevate the living standards for the poorer half of the country, and overhaul the healthcare system.

It is absurd that when it comes to healthcare for children, wealthy Americans are losing out to needy Poles and Cubans.

Japan

1. Wealth: In the past two decades, its GDP has ranked among the top three in the world, indicating a steady long period of thrive. However, its economy has contracted in the past few months. If this contraction continues, it will likely generate stress.
2. Population: The Japanese have been aging for half a century, with its population in steady decline for the past decade. By 2013, diapers for adults already started to outsell those for babies. The stress level is high.
3. Health: The life expectancy of its people has ranked among the top for decades. Its infant mortality rate ranks among the lowest in the world. This has been thriving.
4. Education: Japan’s high school students score among the highest in the PISA competitions, and the country ranks number six in the world in the number of Nobel Prizes won, testifying that its entire education system is of good quality. Like that in Health, this is also thriving.
5. Luxuries: If Population were thriving, immigration (as a social program) might be less important.  In reality, Population is severely stressed, where immigration can be a game changer. Unfortunately, Japan has been reluctant to accept immigrants.
6. Suggestions: An all out effort is needed to halt (preferably reverse) the population decline. As mentioned above, Population is the most important of the four vitals. As long as a society still has enough people, it can in due time improve the inadequacies of any or all of the other three vitals. However, no matter how well it is thriving in these three, if it does not have enough people, the society will soon die. Given the best available in-vitro fertilization technology of date, no country in the world can technologically (or ethically) mass produce human babies. Unless Japan can open its doors to rapidly and massively attract immigrants, the advancing age of its population could soon reach a critical point after which race extinction would become unavoidable.

Population decline is a serious (potentially fatal) societal stress, and Japan is not experiencing it alone. Many countries in the world, notably those in eastern Europe, have been experiencing similar stress. According to the 2019 World Population Prospects published by the United Nations, Ukraine, Lithuania, Bulgaria are each projected to lose more than 20% of its population by 2050.

Conclusion

The above discussion illustrates that Wealth, Population, Health, and Education are objective and reliable natural-science based metrics that can and should be used to evaluate societal health. Effectively, they serve as the four vital signs of society. When these signs are normal, the society is in homeostasis, meaning that it is thriving and experiencing no significant stress. If any of them deviates from normal, the society is stressed because it is no longer homeostatic. The more severe a sign is deviated, or the more number of signs that are deviated, the more stressed is the society. As the society’s guardian, the government should proactively monitor these signs and keep them as normal as possible. It should also alert its people about any undue indulgence in (or prejudice toward) nonessential social programs. As we have seen in the above examples, even societies with supreme wealth and esteemed level of education can neglect some of their most basic needs. Therefore, the use of national resources should be prioritized to safeguard the country’s most vital interests.

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Stephen E. Ling, MD is an internist from Santa Clara, California. Visit his website: www.forestgrace.net. 

Featured image is from Mercola

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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Guest: Margaret Anna Alice – Writer/Blogger, Substack: Margaret Anna Alice Through the Looking Glass. “Examining media narratives, propaganda, mass control, politics, psychology, history, philosophy & health with a focus on COVID to unmask totalitarianism.”

She is an author of books and articles (selection):

• The Vapor, the Hot Hat, & the Witches’ Potion (2021): is a COVID/New Normal/Great Reset fairy
  tale [Book]
• A Mostly Peaceful Depopulation (2022) [P1 of an article series]

This session is about:

• Introduction: Synopsis of the past 2 years formulated as why questions, the answers to which can only be 1) profit; 2) power; and 3) democide
• The definition and nature of a philanthropath (like Bill Gates): a socio/psychopath masquerading as a philanthropist.
• The reality of the unfolding democide and progression to one-world dictatorship: Evidence documenting the depopulation agenda dating back to the Club of Rome 1971 Predicament of Mankind Project and 1974 Kissinger Report and up through the present-day “prophecies” of Yuval Noah Harari.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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This informative Defense One report confirms the Pentagon’s involvement in monitoring the massive transfer of U.S. weapons to Ukraine.

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Pentagon leaders should consider sending weapons inspectors to Ukraine to monitor the billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. arms flowing to the country, a top Defense Department official said.

All U.S. officials can do now is review receipts of the arms transfers from other locations in Europe and take Ukrainian officials’ word that the weapons are being properly used and stored.

“Over time, we would like to be able to extend our insights with greater presence on the ground,” said Jed Royal, deputy director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arm of the Pentagon that oversees U.S. arms sales.

Royal spoke as U.S. lawmakers push to create a new U.S. government watchdog to oversee the more than $6 billion in security assistance sent in the wake of Russia’s February invasion.

Royal said senior administration officials, outside of DSCA, will decide if and when weapon inspectors enter Ukraine.

If such teams are sent in, they would not be “some kind of operational detachment or anything along those lines,” he told reporters on a Thursday conference call.

Read Complete article

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Featured image: US Department of Defense photo

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Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., a former vice-president and chief scientific adviser for the drug company Pfizer, shares why he believes that the narratives around COVID-19 are false and were put into place deliberately to exert control over society

Yeadon says you’ve been lied to about the magnitude of the threat represented by this entity called SARS-CoV-2 and the disease COVID-19

The 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic was a “dress rehearsal” for the COVID-19 pandemic

The use of the spike protein in the shot was a diabolical mistake, as 90% of the immune response mounted after natural COVID-19 exposure is not to the spike protein

Spike protein is also toxic and mutates rapidly, which essentially destroys virtually any protection that the shot provides shortly after it’s given

The fact that virtually every country worldwide followed suit in imposing ineffective lockdowns and other COVID-19 mandates suggests a coordinated, supranational effort was underway

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Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., a former vice-president and chief scientific adviser for the drug company Pfizer and founder and CEO of the biotech company Ziarco, now owned by Novartis, has become one of the most prominent critics of COVID mandates and COVID-19 shots.

In this riveting interview with British radio presenter Maajid Nawaz, he shares why he believes that the narratives around COVID-19 are false and were put into place deliberately to exert control over society.

Yeadon is uniquely positioned to speak on this topic, as he has degrees in biochemistry and toxicology, and studied respiratory pharmacology. You have likely seen Yeadon being interviewed many times previously, but I strongly encourage you to watch this one as he explains items I have never heard him previously discuss. He is one of the sharpest guys out there in this area and you will be glad you took the time to listen.

In the film, he says: “So, I understand … inside of cells and how cells and tissues talk to each other, and how dangerous chemicals can affect and injure humans and others.”¹ Not only does Yeadon explain why COVID-19 shots aren’t effective, but he details why using spike protein in the vaccine was one of the most diabolical mistakes made.

“First,” Yeadon says, “you’ve been lied to about the magnitude of the threat represented by this entity called SARS-CoV-2 and the disease COVID-19. Been lied to about that, in every way, shape and form … the bottom line is, we’ve been lied to and it’s deliberate, and they knew it, and no action was needed whatsoever, other than if you’re sick, stay home.”² Further, the wheel may have been set into motion in 2009, during the swine flu pandemic.

The 2009 Swine Flu Was the Final Dress Rehearsal for COVID

During the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic, secret agreements were made between Germany, Great Britain, Italy and France with the pharmaceutical industry before the H1N1 pandemic began, which stated that they would purchase H1N1 flu vaccinations — but only if a pandemic level 6 was declared by the World Health Organization.

Six weeks before the pandemic was declared, no one at WHO was worried about the virus, but the media were nonetheless exaggerating the dangers.³ Then, in the month leading up to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the WHO changed the official definition of pandemic, removing the severity and high mortality criteria and leaving the definition of a pandemic as “a worldwide epidemic of a disease.”⁴

This switch in definition allowed WHO to declare swine flu a pandemic after only 144 people had died from the infection worldwide. In 2010, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, then head of health at the Council of Europe, accused pharmaceutical companies of influencing WHO’s pandemic declaration, calling swine flu a “false pandemic” that was driven by Big Pharma, which cashed in on the health scare.⁵

According to Wodarg, the swine flu pandemic was “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century,”⁶ — and it shares many similarities with the COVID-19 pandemic. Yeadon explained:⁷

“He [Wodarg] was public health officer and a politician during the swine flu pandemic in 2009. And some very similar things that happened in COVID were happening in 2009. There’s a very interesting experience here and I think 2009 was the final dress rehearsal for COVID.

They misused PCR, they overdiagnosed cases, they twisted the arms of governments all around the world to pay for billions of dollars’ worth of vaccines, and not very good antivirals.

And then they all ran off. And Wodarg was the one that managed to point out in the second season that it was a false positive pseudo epidemic. It was all bad PCR testing. And as soon as they fix the PCR, it all went away. All went away.”

PCR Tests Labeled Healthy People Sick

For the first time in history, during the COVID-19 pandemic the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests were used to dictate whether someone was healthy or sick. If the test was positive, then you’d be labeled as sick and counted as a case, even if you had no symptoms.

The PCR tests used for COVID-19 use a powerful amplification process that makes them so sensitive they can even detect the remains of a dead virus, long after infection.⁸

Wodarg said COVID-19 “was a ‘test’ pandemic. It was not a virus pandemic,”⁹ because PCR tests may give a positive result when it detects coronaviruses that have been around for 20 years.¹⁰ PCR tests weren’t meant to be used for clinical diagnoses, according to their inventor, the late Kary Mullis, Ph.D. Yeadon explained:¹¹

“And the reason is … that the PCR test has a theoretical lower limit, that is, what’s the smallest amount it might detect and give a positive result, the smallest amount is one, one virus, one piece of a virus.

… And then basically, every time you run a cycle of this polymerase chain reaction, like cranking a handle, it gets hot and cold, hot and cold, and it goes through basically a doubling, every cycle is a doubling …

So basically, if there’s an infinitesimally tiny amount of a piece of a virus, or the sequence you allege is a virus, in the sample, and then you run it 40 cycles, you could get a positive result even though there’s only one piece of one virus — not enough to make you ill, not enough to make you infectious.”

The same strategy was used in COVID as deaths characterized as being COVID related, but only because they had been falsely lumped into that category due to a positive test being recorded within 28 days of death. “If you die from something entirely unrelated but you’ve tested positive by a PCR test, and you die within that 28 days that’s counted as a COVID death,” Nawaz noted.¹²

90% of COVID Immune Response Is Not to Spike Protein

Yeadon stresses that there are “design errors” in COVID-19 shots. “The main problem with them is there’s no dose where you can get obvious signs of benefit without attendant harms, that are much greater at a population level than any possible benefit.” Further, the use of the spike protein was a mistake, as it’s been known for more than 10 years that it causes adverse effects in humans:¹³

“There are no gene based vaccines on the market for very good reasons. And that’s one of the problems. But let’s see, you could like pull it pull it apart, you can pull the spike off, you could pull the ball in the middle of this virus, which bit would you give to people? … what you would do is ask, what’s the toxicity of the bit I’m going to give to a person?

So if I told you that the spike protein, like a floating landmine in … the sea with the spikes sticking out, I told you that we’ve known for more than a decade that the spike bits from related viruses had unwanted biology that could cause blood to coagulate and activate platelets and make blood clots. That’s true.

And if you knew those things, you’d think well, probably a bad idea then to give them the spike to train on … So the fact that they chose spike protein, gene for spike protein, make your body become a manufacturing center briefly to make that virus spike protein — that’s the first mistake.”

Further, according to Yeadon, the human body mounts its best immune responses after natural COVID-19 infection, not exposure to the spike protein in the shots. He states, “90% of the immune response to COVID are two bits of the virus that are not spike protein. So I think I am right that that was not the best bit to give, because it’s not the thing your body likes to respond to.”¹⁴

Spike Protein Mutates Rapidly, Destroying Shots’ Protection

By choosing the spike protein on which to base COVID-19 shots, scientists picked a protein that was known to be toxic to humans and that was not the part of the virus that prompted the best immune response. On top of that, spike protein mutates rapidly, which essentially destroys virtually any protection that the shot provides shortly after it’s given. The end result is a seemingly never-ending series of annual shots and boosters.

COVID-19 shots have been found to have dismally low effectiveness rates of 12% in children, according to research conducted by the New York State Department of Health.¹⁵ Among adults, within four to five months post-booster, protection against emergency department and urgent care visits due to COVID-19 decreased to 66%, then fell to just 31% after five months or more post-booster.¹⁶ Yeadon explained:¹⁷

“What you should do is pick the bits of the virus that’s genetically most stable. Now, I don’t know that we knew it at the beginning, but it’s certainly true now that the thing that undergoes variation most quickly is the spike protein … now you’ve picked something that’s going to rapidly go out of focus to rapidly evolve to a different variant, new vaccine won’t work anymore.”

Further, because the spike protein is similar to “lots of bits in humans,” it can prompt your body to make an immune response to human proteins — “that’s called an autoimmune response,” Yeadon says. Yet, scientists chose the spike protein anyway — even though it violated all of the “rules” when it comes to creating a safe and effective product. Yeadon believes this wasn’t a mistake at all; it was intentional:¹⁸

“So just to say, again, you deselect things that are toxic in their own right, you pick things that are genetically stable, and you pick things that are most different from humans, all three of those, in the words of patents, they teach away, they will teach you away from picking spike protein.

But guess what? Moderna picks spike protein and so does Pfizer, and AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson. So I put it to you, colleagues, any scientists out there or just logical people. How the hell would they pick?

No team I was ever part of would ever have picked bloody spike protein for this vaccine. And you know, what, if we did, and we have competing groups, we would not, all four of us, make the same mistake. Not possible. It’s collusion and malfeasance. The did it on purpose, knowing it would hurt you.”

For the Next Pandemic Understand Vaccines Are Not the Answer’

Bill Gates has made it plain the next pandemic is inevitable, by stating publicly that COVID-19 was “pandemic one” and “pandemic two” is coming. “We’ll have to prepare for the next one. That will get attention this time,” he said — while smiling.¹⁹ The implication is that “next time” another experimental mRNA shot will be available much quicker with which to inject the population. But Yeadon wants the public to learn from COVID-19 and understand that the shots aren’t the answer:²⁰

“It’s really important that you listen to me here, that if there’s another respiratory virus, you must know this time that whatever however they design, the damn vaccine is the wrong answer. It’s the wrong answer for loads of reasons. One is, you will generate an immune response in your blood that cannot possibly affect infection, it doesn’t matter what it is, it won’t affect infection.

Secondly, if you if you design it using spike protein from some other virus, then if it has that same property of causing toxicity, it will cause toxicity because when you inject these gene based vaccines, it’s like launching a go kart that has an accelerator, no steering wheel and no brakes … there’s nothing in the design of these vaccines that limits where they go.

Some of it will go into your brain, the back of your eyes, your ovaries or testes, your blood vessels or your heart … you can’t develop rapid vaccines, and then give them to billions of people, because you will never have enough safety data to allow you to know whether that was a good bet or not. And without that data, it’s reckless. Don’t do it.”

What else can be learned from the COVID-19 fiasco, Yeadon says, is that the nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) — things like masks, lockdowns, border closures and mass testing of the population — were also useless in curbing the spread of the disease, and world leaders knew this in 2019, when a paper by WHO scientists showed that most NPIs were ineffective in stopping the spread of respiratory viruses.

“Of course, many of them have really serious side effects on the economy, psychology, social relationships and so on,” he noted.²¹

Evidence of Supranational Coordination

“Public health officials knew perfectly well those things didn’t work,” Yeadon said, but the fact that virtually every country worldwide followed suit nonetheless suggests a coordinated effort was underway. “I think it’s the strongest evidence of supranational coordination, something happening above the level of country,” Yeadon said, and he wants to get the word out:²²

“They were doing it because there was pressure to do it … They did not oppose what was happening. That’s the most disappointing and frightening thing that why, why none of the scientists from Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Britain, why none of them, said, ‘You know, this is absurd.

I’m not doing this. And if you’re going to do it, I’m resigning, and then I shall go to the media.’ Either that didn’t happen or they tried to try this and BBC … said, ‘Well, we’re not interviewing you.’ That’s possible.

… There was a supranational agreement or pressure to do it. I don’t know whether that pressure was instantiated in spring of 2020, or whether they had already agreed to do it a few months ago, but either way, nobody spoke up. And as far as I know, nobody resigned even though what was being imposed on all of those countries was … ineffective and would damage their economies. That’s the kindest thing you can possibly say.”

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Notes

¹ Odysee, Radical w/Maajid Nawaz June 12, 2022, 7:24

² Odysee, Radical w/Maajid Nawaz June 12, 2022, 33:30

³ BitChute, TrustWHO

⁴ Wayback Machine, WHO Pandemic Preparedness September 2, 2009 (PDF)

⁵ Daily Mail January 17, 2010

⁶ The Times of Israel May 14, 2020

⁷ Odysee, Radical w/Maajid Nawaz June 12, 2022, 1:08

⁸ The Fat Emperor, Podcast, December 11, 2020

⁹ Rumble, Planet Lockdown, Wolfgang Wodarg, Full Interview, October 18, 2021, 14:02

¹⁰ Rumble, Planet Lockdown, Wolfgang Wodarg, Full Interview, October 18, 2021, 9:40

¹¹ Odysee, Radical w/Maajid Nawaz June 12, 2022, 55:29

¹² Odysee, Radical w/Maajid Nawaz June 12, 2022, 44:05

¹³ Odysee, Radical w/Maajid Nawaz June 12, 2022, 1:05

^14, 17, 18 Odysee, Radical w/Maajid Nawaz June 12, 2022, 1:09

¹⁵ medRxiv February 28, 2022

¹⁶ The New York Times February 11, 2022

¹⁹ Rumble, The Plan May 4, 2022, 0:37

²⁰ Odysee, Radical w/Maajid Nawaz June 12, 2022, 1:17

²¹ Odysee, Radical w/Maajid Nawaz June 12, 2022, 1:22

²² Odysee, Radical w/Maajid Nawaz June 12, 2022, 1:33

Featured image is from Arshad Ebrahim / YouTube

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Thirty years ago I organized an International Congress on Environmental Consciousness and Mass Media, held in Dresden at the Deutsche Hygiene Museum.[i] The central concern of that conference attended by journalists, PR and advertising experts, corporate communications officers and artists from more than 23 countries, was what does the mass media do to shape our awareness of issues and the importance we assign to them? (It took several years after the 1991 Gulf War for people to realize that what they thought was live combat reporting was in mainly televised “video game” footage.) The question was also asked what is the relationship between consciousness and action? Does the awareness of something always motivate and define action? After some thirty years of observing the way environmentalism has been transformed from a marginal fetish of opposition politics to a central dogma of multinational corporations and government policy.[ii] I believe the past thirty years and especially the past three years have provided me the experience to justify an empirical skepticism regarding the sincerity of this transformation.

Empirical Skepticism

The title expresses that skepticism. I am skeptical about what sustainability really means. I am also skeptical about the knowledge claims underlying the so-called Global Sustainable Development Goals (GSDG or simply SDG). I especially do not believe that we should rely on models— at least not the models that have been used to justify the seriously misguided and destructive policies asserted to support those goals. I believe much of our present misery— not yet fully appreciated in its scope— is due to a superstitious belief in ”Science” and its models and a refusal or at least a severe hesitance to observe and act on the basis of what we can find at the empirical frontier.

The most recent UN report on sustainability is the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report, entitled The Future is Now: Science for achieving sustainable development. Written by the “independent group of scientists appointed by the Secretary General (UN)”, the report focuses on “how science can best accelerate the achievement of the sustainable development goals”.  The authors call for “sustainability science”. The authors add that, “science and technology are at the heart of the 2030 Agenda, included as one of the means of implementation under Goal 17.”[iii]

This raises the question “what is science?” I believe most people would answer this question with the admission that “science is what scientists do”. There are sciences, like physics, chemistry, biology, that are called the natural sciences, sometimes the “hard” sciences.

Then there are those relatively new fields like psychology and sociology or economics, which are frequently called human, or social, or “soft” sciences. The distinction implies that physical or natural sciences are somehow more scientific—by which people generally mean experimentally based, tested, fact-oriented while social sciences are not really experimental, not very accurate or lacking in universally accepted methods. I do not want to open this debate here. However I think it is very important to recognize that even under normal conditions there is no universal answer to the question what constitutes science.

What is meant by sustainable, especially sustainable development? The UN definition says this is development that “meets then needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” So if we accept this definition—at least for the sake of argument—then what does science tell us about sustainable development and how best to accelerate its achievement?

I want to argue here that “science” actually does two things. One, it provides models for interpreting reality. Two, it provides the rhetorical foundation for what must be believed, that is what we call Truth.

At the end of the 19^th century there was a change in economic theory and in the structure of the sciences as a whole. In what has been called the Marginal Revolution, led by economists like Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, Léon Walras and Alfred Marshall, economics ceased to be the study of the allocation of surplus and became the study of scarcity.[iv] At the same time economists shifted their attention from the real economy and industrial development to mathematical models of the economy. This was the time when mathematics became the language of science. Science defined reality in mathematical terms and therefore reality was supposed to be the most logical, coherent and efficient mathematical formula. Today that mathematical modeling is also computer-based modeling. We are supposed to assume that the model is not just a selection or a hypothesis about reality—but that it is identical with reality.

In the 1970s there was a series of high-level international meetings at which the human environment was debated.[v] All of these meetings focused on the claim that the world was overpopulated and that this overpopulation was causing all the social and economic disruption that had been increasing since the end of the Second World War. Then as now, supposed overpopulation and scarcity of resources was made the central policy issue to be governed by global action. However the only way one could possibly claim that population was excessive was to build a mathematical model. Any such model requires assumptions—which cannot be proven—and a choice of parameters from a potentially infinite number of factors. The main assumption, better said concern, by those attending these international meetings was: after the world war and the independence of many European and American colonies, population was growing again. These people would want to live at least at the same level as their former colonial masters did. This problem was defined as overpopulation. A cottage industry emerged producing mathematical models to show that such development would lead to disaster—leaving it rather vague as for whom.

Already at the 1972 Stockholm conference the People’s Republic of China objected to the population model proposed. China was justified in its objection at least because, like the Soviet Union, it had lost about 20 per cent of its population due to World War II and the subsequent civil war (fought also to prevent re-colonisation of the country as had occurred in Korea and Indochina after 1945). While world population has grown since 1945, this growth has not been uniform. While consumption has expanded, that too has not been distributed uniformly. US diplomat and “Cold Warrior” George Kennan advised the US government in the immediate post-war era that it would take military and economic coercion to assure that the US – with approximately 20 per cent of the world’s population—could continue to consume about 60 per cent of the world’s resources. In short, the main assumption of the overpopulation model was the equilibrium needed to preserve the status quo for now and “for future generations”. The model for population growth treated the non-while (including China and the Soviet Union) like a rabbit infestation. It assumed that such rabbits would naturally consume more resources and reduce that 60 per cent claim. Just as the marginal revolution seems to have coincided with the abolition of slavery in the 19^th century, the basis of population science and its peculiar form of environmentalism emerged with the end of European colonialism.

Moreover the insistence that a necessarily finite series of factors were isomorphic with the earth’s environment requires a political decision and the power to impose it. The choice to eliminate all natural phenomena, e.g. solar or lunar influences or the movement of the Earth in the solar system (or universe) from any calculations is based on limited and in part erroneous assumptions—foremost of which is that the model is identical with reality. Add to this some of the factual absurdities like “zero carbon” or “net zero carbon dioxide emissions”. All aerobic animals—of which humans are just the most conspicuous—produce carbon dioxide by metabolizing oxygen from the atmosphere. At the same time nearly all plant life depends on the absorption of carbon dioxide. Carbon is not the foundation of fossil fuels but the foundation of life itself on this planet. Hence “carbon neutral” is just another euphemism for an equilibrium in which the status quo—for the ownership/ ruling class—is preserved at the expense of respiration for the rest of the planet and osmosis for the Earth’s plant life. Systems theories also emerged together with cybernetics at the same time as these population reduction models. Why was that? It was surely no coincidence that the leading edge systems theory acolytes joined the military-industrial complex. Probably the most notorious system developed was the counter-insurgency program in Vietnam known as Phoenix. Systems theory together with CIA –funded social anthropology were developed to manage emerging populations that had previously been managed by missionaries and the colonial services. Cybernetics as well as artificial intelligence (AI) continued where Taylorism finished in the reorganization of factory labour. Despite extravagant scientific assertions and miraculous claims for improvement of work processes, the real scientific value produced by “compulsive calculators” is not beyond dispute.[vi]

All these models purport to predict the future (because they claim to represent the real world) but are in fact only tools for social management, like Tarot cards. Fortune reading can influence behavior and perceptions but that is not the same as predicting the future. That should be obvious once we ask what our particular future would mean for someone on another continent whom we do not even know. Scientists respond with statistics and measurements but these too are only structured guesses. One can only measure something one already assumes exists. We do not know therefore the possible importance of all the things we are not measuring!

The universe or the planet might be treated as a system but there is absolutely no way to know whether it is a system or whether the description of such a system in mathematical or computer simulation is accurate. The only thing that a model can do is provide instructions for people to behave in certain ways. Thus a policy based on a model is no different from a policy based on arbitrary command or fantasy.

The next problem we have is “the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. If these needs are truly—their own—how can we know what they are or how they could be met? What we really mean is – assuming that the future will be like the present, preserving the ability to meet needs perceived today in some unknowable future will lend ability to those who actually live in the future. That is if they are like us. That is what “the science” tells us.

Essentially since 1945, when the largest industrial science project in the world (at that time) the Manhattan Project, established the US as the world’s single biggest funder of all scientific activity, Science has been transformed into a new religion, complete with priests and an ecclesiastical hierarchy.[vii]

This was possible not only because of the enormous amounts of money spent to produce the atomic bombs but because everyone involved at any level of scientific management was sworn to secrecy and loyalty. These priests in this religion of science also claim to know the Truth.

That is they claim the right to tell us what must be believed– even if it contradicts lived experience. The church of Science is based on that access to power first obtained by the ability to make terrible weapons of mass destruction. The flows of money and privilege to universities, research centres, publications, hospitals, schools, in short everywhere where knowledge is produced or transmitted, also mean the capacity to control access to those resources and institutions.[viii] We are talking in other words not about the science that tells us how to build a house or a car but the Science that tells us what we have to believe about the world and about ourselves.

Sustainability is not a rational question, nor is it a scientific question. It is a political question.

It is a question we have to ask ourselves in real time in real space. If we use a model we must remember that it is just a model. The CAD/CAM image is just an image and not the product. The ingredients on the package are not identical with what you eat or drink. Science cannot tell us what we need, let alone what future generations will need. These are political decisions and not scientific ones. Of course if one abandons political criteria using real data in real time and space for whatever some authority claims is “the science” then it should be clear that any decisions that result are based on what we are told to believe not on what we know.

The GSDGs claim to be based on Science because that has become our universal faith. Science has changed from the techniques of knowing, e.g. experimental feedback, trial and error, into the model for Truth, as religious dogma.[ix] Science has become just another way of saying “the word of god”. This does not mean that everything discussed or proposed under the Sustainable Development Goals lacks empirical sense. However the goals can really only make sense if they are subject to empirical testing and reflect the real living conditions of the people in the places where action is contemplated. In fact careful reading of the UN documents shows a plan to convert people to a vision and persuade them to apply this vision just the way the missionaries did since exploration and colonial expansion began some 500 years ago. The stakeholder is either a financial beneficiary or someone who will be burned at the stake for the benefit of the former.

The central premise of the official version of sustainable development—as promoted by the UN—has always been that nothing could be modified in the surviving system that could jeopardize the survival and growth of the victors in the Great War against socialism. To put it in a vulgar but more sincere form, sustainability meant (and means) sustainable profits and growth of the victors‘ system, the capitalist system, in particular finance capitalism— concentrated in the US and EU, but dominated by the tandem financial hubs, Wall Street and the City of London. Since 2000 and again 2008 and again 2020, the rhetoric of the Sustainable Development Goals, although attributed to the UN, is really verbatim the language of the World Economic Forum, the ecumenical council of finance capitalism.

The SDG and the repeated proposals for their implementation are religious precepts. As such they lack both historical and empirical perspectives. They are dogmatic assertions. The policies and eventual laws, rules and regulations proposed or already adopted do not rely on life experience, history or local reality. While lip service is paid to participation and admissions that there is no “one size fits all” policy, the actual imposition of these dogmas has no basis in the observed empirical frontier. It is like so many other clerical dogmas, a top down regime. There is no real feedback loop or interest in what happens in daily life.

To illustrate my point: in 2020 almost the entirety of small and medium-sized business was ordered to halt. Computer models were used to produce absurdly exaggerated projections of mortality and healthcare system risk. At the highest international level, so-called scientific experts claimed that they knew what would happen to the health and survival of the world‘s population. In fact the historical record shows that these models were rehearsed repeatedly over the past 20 years.[x]

Yet these experts at no time were able to construct a model for the survival of the SME sector. There was no risk management plan to preserve the critical employers and producers. In fact these issues were never substantive elements of the tabletop exercises of which there were more than 20 held since 2001. We know here in Portugal how important the SME sector is for employment and survival of many families. This was not a discovery of 2020. If we are honest we know that many people had to work covertly for fear of incurring serious financial penalties. We know that under such conditions another “illness” is promoted, corruption. The SME sector is vulnerable to the corruption regime by which one has to find favors from the local police or administration— just to work or do business. We can only guess how much it cost or would cost when people who need to work for survival are forced to pay protection to do jobs that are completely lawful.

Although global systems planning anticipated the use of the mass media and other centrally controlled facilities in the event of a “health emergency”, none of the models and none of the policies derived from them in any way addressed the local economic conditions. Moreover while there were constant reports of alleged cases, there were no details available for how many people were unemployed (sacked) or businesses that closed permanently. There was enormous concern for the supply of medical products. However the obvious disruption of supply chains— attenuated by virtue of years of “just in time” (JIT) downsizing and outsourcing— were disregarded— at least for the SME sector. What was clear — no later than the end of 2020– is that the global online distribution cartel had no such problems moving goods or money.[xi]

On the SDG website one can watch the short video introducing the 2019 GSGD Report. The narrator explains what an opportunity was created by the 2020 “pandemic”. It is praised as an opportunity to destroy much of the economy to “build it back better”.[xii]  So if you think that the SDG are a United Nations project, supported by an international consensus of people who want to sustain a decent quality of life for humans wherever they live, then you will find you are mistaken. The SDG are a project of the most powerful business corporations in the world: it is a project to manage their risks by transferring them entirely to you.

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Notes

[i] See Gerhard de Haan, (Ed.) Umweltbewußtsein und Massenmedien: Perspektiven ökologische Kommunikation, Berlin, 1995.

[ii] T.P. Wilkinson, “The Temperature Movement: The Reincarnation of a Perennial Anglo-American Obsession”, www.dissidentvoice.org  29 October 2019

[iii] In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: “Science for sustainable development is the focus of Chapter 32 of Agenda 21. It calls for: strengthening the scientific basis for sustainable management; enhancing scientific understanding; improving long-term scientific assessment; and building up scientific capacity and capability. (www.sdgs.un.org)

[iv] See Nuno Ornelas Martins, „Interpreting the capitalist order before and after the marginalist revolution“ in Cambridge Journal of Economics(2015), 39, 1109-1127.

[v] The 1970s were an era of great unrest, the US war against Vietnam, independence wars in Africa, domestic protests, the first “oil shocks”. In 1972, the Club of Rome issued its report The Limits to Growth. Based on the World 3 computer model the authors insisted that the world’s resources would be exhausted by continued population growth.

[vi] See Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason, New York, 1976.

[vii] The Manhattan Project started in 1939. By the time the atomic bombs were deployed the project was employing more than 130,000 people and spending the equivalent of approximately USD 23 billion. The project’s secrecy was so great that long after the project had formally ended the US government executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 for allegedly supplying the Soviet Union information about the atomic bombs. One of the project’s leading scientists, Robert Oppenheimer, was purged and deprived of his security clearances for opposing the development of the hydrogen bomb. Already “Big Science” had emerged as a combination of huge research budgets and political power.

[viii] Another example is the US National Institutes of Health, originally part oft he US military. The subunit National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, headed by Dr Anthony Fauci since 1984, has a budget of more than USD 8 billion per year to dispense as research grants, making it one of the world’s largest single funders of scientific research. A substantial portion of that money comes from the US military budget, too.

[ix] See Morse Peckham, Explanation and Power, New York, 1979 and Stanley Aronowitz, Science as Power: Discourse and Ideology in Modern Society, Minneapolis, 1988.

[x] See Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, New York, 2021.

[xi] “The 13 top consumer-focused e-commerce businesses increased their revenues sharply during the pandemic. In 2019, these companies made sales worth USD 2.4 trillion. Following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, this rose sharply to USD 2.9 trillion, and a further increase followed in 2021, taking total sales to USD 3.9 trillion … Alibaba, Amazon, JD.com and Pinduoduo increased their revenues by 70% between 2019 and 2021 and their share of total sales through all these 13 platforms rose from around 75% in 2018 to over 80% in 2020 and 2021.“ www.unctad.org This does not take profits into account.

[xii] See Klaus Schwab (World Economic Forum), Covid-19 The Great Reset, 2020. “The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine and reset our world.” For a critical discussion of the real economics behind the past thirty years, in particular the fallout from the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis which is irradiating the world economy to this day, see the work of economist Michael Hudson, starting with Superimperialism (first published in 1968) and subsequent work: www.Michael-Hudson.com

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On June 18 the government of Lithuania acted on a decision by the European Commission that goods and cargo subject to European Union sanctions could be prohibited from transiting between one part of Russia to another, so long as they passed through E.U. territory.

Almost immediately Lithuania moved to block Russia from shipping certain categories of goods and materials by rail to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, encompassing the former East Prussian Baltic port city of Konigsberg and its surrounding environs. They were absorbed into Russia proper as a form of war reparations at the end of the Second World War.

Lithuania cited its legal obligation as an E.U. member to enforce E.U. sanctions targeting Russia. Russia, citing a 2002 treaty with Lithuania which ostensibly prohibits such an action, has called the Lithuanian move a blockade and has threatened a military response.

Lithuania, as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, is afforded the collective security guarantees spelled out in Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which stipulate that an attack against one member is an attack against all. Through its actions, Lithuania risked bringing Russia and NATO to the brink of armed conflict, the consequences of which could be dire for the entire world given the respective nuclear arsenals of the two sides.

From the moment Russia initiated its so-called “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine, the nations that comprise NATO have been engaged in a delicate dance around the issue of how to support Ukraine and punish Russia without crossing the line of committing an overt act of war that could prompt Russia to respond militarily, thereby triggering a series of cause-effect actions that could lead to a general European conflict, and perhaps World War III.

A formation of NATO fighter jets flying over Lithuania in 2015. (NATO)

In retrospect, the early debates in the European halls of power about whether to provide Ukraine with heavy weaponry seem almost innocent when compared to the massive infusion of weaponry that is taking place today.

Even Russia has softened its hardline stance going in, where it had threatened unimaginable consequences for any nation that interfered with its military operation in Ukraine.

Today the situation has evolved to the point where NATO is engaged in a de facto proxy conflict with Russia on Ukrainian soil which is designed, frankly speaking, to kill as many Russian soldiers as possible.

Russian Objectives  

Russia, for its part, has adapted its posture into one that is designed to absorb these NATO-linked blows while pursuing its stated military and political objectives in Ukraine with a single-minded purpose.

Ukraine has used NATO-provided weapons and NATO-provided intelligence to lethal effect on the battlefield, killing several Russian generals, sinking the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and killing and wounding thousands of Russian soldiers while destroying hundreds, if not thousands, of vehicles and pieces of military equipment.

The relative restraint of the Russian approach is evident when contrasted with the hysteria of the United States during its two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Qassem Suleimani, an Iranian general who oversaw an Iraqi resistance against the U.S. occupation of Iraq in the mid-2000’s that was purportedly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. servicemen, was assassinated by the U.S. government more than a decade after his alleged activities. And it was only a year ago that the U.S. media was in an uproar over allegations (subsequently proven false) that Russia was offering bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers stationed in Afghanistan.

The latter claim best illustrates the hypocrisy of the U.S. today. The “bounty” claim was premised on a single attack that left three U.S. servicemen dead. The U.S. today openly brags about killing hundreds of Russians in Ukraine.

Red Lines

Russia’s red lines in Ukraine have evolved to encompass two basic principles — no direct military intervention by NATO forces on Ukrainian soil/airspace and no attack against Russia proper.

Even here, Russia has displayed great patience, tolerating the presence of U.S. special operations forces in Ukraine and holding back when Ukrainian forces, most likely supported by NATO-provided intelligence, engage in limited attacks on targets inside Russia.

Rather than respond by attacking the “decision making centers” outside Ukraine responsible for supporting these actions, Russia has engaged in a graduated campaign of escalation inside Ukraine, striking the very weapons being delivered under the oversight of U.S. commandos and the Ukrainian forces who use them.

It is in this context that the Lithuanian decision to impose a rail blockade on Russia seems to be a stark departure from current NATO and E.U. policy.

Russia immediately made its ire known, indicating that it viewed the Lithuanian actions as an overt act of war which, if not reversed, would result in “practical” measures outside the realm of diplomacy to rectify the situation.

The rhetoric was ratcheted up to high, however, when Andrey Klimov, a Russian senator who chairs the Commission for the Defense of State Sovereignty, called the Lithuanian action “an act of aggression” which would result in Russia seeking to “solve the problem of the Kaliningrad transit created by Lithuania by ANY means chosen by us.”

The Suwalki Gap

Close-up at the Suwalki Gap. (Jakub Luczak, Wikimedia Commons)

For years, NATO has worried about the possibility of a war with Russia in the Baltics. Much of NATO’s attention has been focused on defending the “Suwalki Gap,” a 60-mile-long stretch of border between Poland and Lithuania that separates Belarus from Kaliningrad. Western military experts have long speculated that, in the event of any conflict between Russia and NATO, Russian forces would seek to advance on the Suwalki Gap, joining Kaliningrad with Belarus and severing the three Baltic nations from the rest of Europe.

But while NATO has focused on defending the Sulwaki Gap, a Russian lawmaker has suggested that any Russian military attack in the Baltics would avoid involving Belarus. Instead, it would focus on securing a land bridge between Kaliningrad and Russia by driving north, along the Baltic coastline, to Saint Petersburg.

A series of wargames conducted by RAND around 2014 showed that NATO was, at the time, not able to adequately defend the Baltics from a concerted Russian attack. According to the wargame results, Russian forces were able to overrun the Baltics in about 60 hours.

Similar projections of Russian offensive prowess against Ukraine — where some military officials, including U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Miley, predicted that Russian forces would take Kiev within 72 hours — proved wrong. But the reality is that the militaries of the three Baltic nations are not on par with those of Ukraine, either in quality or quantity, and there is little doubt Russia, even distracted in Ukraine, could deliver a fatal blow to the militaries of the three Baltic nations.

Escalating Rhetoric

The rhetoric out of Russia continues to escalate. Vladimir Dzhabarov, a deputy head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the lower house of Russia’s Parliament, has threatened that any continued blockade of Kaliningrad “could lead to an armed conflict,” noting that “the Russian state must protect its territory and ensure its security. If we see that a threat to our security that is fraught with a loss of territory, we will certainly take extreme measures, and nothing will stop us.”

If there is one take away from the Russian military operation in Ukraine, it is that Russia doesn’t bluff. NATO and the rest of Europe can rest assured that unless a solution is found that brings an end to Lithuania’s blockade of Kaliningrad, there will be a war between NATO and Russia.

With this reality in mind, the E.U. is working on a compromise arrangement with Lithuania that seeks to have the Russian rail connection  with Kaliningrad returned to normal in the near future. This deal, however, must work to Russia’s satisfaction, an outcome which is yet uncertain.

Unlike the Ukrainian conflict, a war in the Baltics will have existential aspects for both sides which brings the possibility — indeed probability — of nuclear weapons being used. This is an outcome that benefits no one and threatens everyone.

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Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

Featured image: Lithuanian government building in Vilnius. (Pofka, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

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***

Normally, recessions are the result of a reduction in liquidity by the Federal Reserve, the central bank, which is signaled by a rise in interest rates.  Normally, recessions are short-run affairs of 6 to 9 months. Unemployment, which is as costly in its way as inflation, causes the Federal Reserve to relent and to increase liquidity, which is signaled by a reduction in interest rates.

This approach assumes that inflation is a monetary phenomenon–too much money chasing too few goods.  But is the current inflation a monetary inflation?  The Federal Reserve’s response to the financial crisis of 2008-2009, itself caused by the deregulation of the banking system, was to create $8.2 trillion in new money with which to purchase troubled bank investments that threatened the large  banks’ balance sheets and transfer the troubled instruments to the Federal Reserve.  This money did not go into consumer prices. Instead it drove up stock, bond, and real estate prices.  The Fed stayed with this policy, which drove up the prices of financial assets, for over a decade, concentrating wealth in few hands.  

The likely cause of the current inflation in US consumer prices is supply disruption.  The Covid lockdowns and mandatory closing of businesses disrupted and destroyed supply chains. Shipping disruptions, which certainly reduce the supply of goods in an economy such as the United States, a country that has offshored so much of its manufacturing for internal markets, further reduced supply. Economic sanctions against Russia have destroyed business relationships.  When too much money chasing too few goods is the consequence of supply reductions, not monetary growth, the problem needs to be addressed from the supply-side.  Higher interest rates actually raise costs and further restrict supply.  

According to the Atlanta Federal Reserve bank, the US economy is in a second quarter of negative economic growth, that is, the economy is declining, not growing. Deutsche Bank supports this view.  Other large banks forecast a decline in growth.  Recession will worsen supply shortages if it is accompanied by the normal reduction in domestic spending and layoffs of employees.  In other words, the problem the US and associated economies face is not recession per se, but the Fed’s misunderstanding of the cause and utilization of a mistaken policy. 

Even in its own terms, the Federal Reserve’s policy of restricting aggregate demand through higher interest rates will fail if it is offset by federal deficit spending, such as to finance Ukraine’s ability to wage war.

The Federal Reserve’s policy not only worsens supply aspects, but also threatens the accumulated wealth from years of high liquidity, as evidenced by the recent decline in stock and bond prices.  If these reductions in the prices of financial assets threaten the banking, insurance, pension, and real estate sectors, the Federal Reserve will be forced to abandon its program of raising interest rates.  If the supply issues are not addressed, fear that the Federal Reserve has lost control of inflation could result in financial panic that would be self-intensifying.

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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.

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***

It’s easy to see why, according to a new Harris poll, 71 percent of Americans said they do not want Joe Biden to run for re-election. As Americans face record gas prices and the highest inflation in 40 years, President Biden admits he could not care less. His Administration is committed to fight a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine and Americans just need to suck it up.

Last week a New York Times reporter asked Biden how long he expects Americans to pay record gasoline prices over his Administration’s Ukraine policy. “As long as it takes,” replied the president without hesitation.

“Russia cannot defeat Ukraine,” added Biden as justification for his Administration’s pro-pain policy toward Americans. The president has repeatedly tried to deflect blame for the growing economic crisis by claiming Russia is solely behind recent inflation. “The reason why gas prices are up is because of Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia,” he said in the same press conference.

But Biden has a big problem: Americans do not believe him. According to a Rasmussen poll earlier this month, only eleven percent of Americans believe Biden’s claim that Russian president Vladimir Putin is to blame for high prices.

When it comes to disdain for the average American hurt by higher prices, there is more than enough in the Biden Administration to go around.

Brian Deese, Director of President Biden’s National Economic Council, was asked in a recent CNN interview, “What do you say to those families that say, listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years?”

His answer? “This is about the future of the Liberal World Order and we have to stand firm.”

Has there ever been an Administration more out of touch with the American people? If you asked working Americans whether they’d be happy to suffer poverty for the “liberal world order,” how many would say “that sounds like a great idea”?

President Biden’s attempts to bring down gasoline prices are bound to fail because he does not understand the problem. He can beg the Saudis to pump more oil, he can even threaten the US oil companies as he did in a Tweet yesterday. He can buy and sell from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in attempt to give the impression that prices are lowing. None of it will work.

The strangest part of this idea that Americans must suffer to hurt the Russians is that these policies aren’t even hurting Russia! On the contrary: Russia has been seen record profits from its oil and gas exports since the beginning of the Ukraine war.

According to a recent New York Times article, increasing global oil and gas prices have enabled Russia to finance its war on Ukraine. US sanctions did not bring the Russian economy to its knees, as Biden promised. They actually brought the American economy to its knees while Russian profits soared.

As Newsweek noted last week, Russian television pundits are joking that with the financial windfall Russia has seen since sanctions were imposed, “Biden is of course our agent.”

Washington’s bi-partisan foreign policy of wasting trillions on endless wars overseas has finally come home. Biden is clearly out of touch, but there is plenty of blame to go around. The only question is whether we will see an extended recession…or worse.

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***

On July 3, Aleksandr Lukashenko claimed that Ukraine had tried to attack his country, with the missiles launched being neutralized in time by the Minsk’s defense forces. The case would be another of Kiev’s repeated attempts to internationalize the conflict in order to obtain more Western support. Minsk has already made it clear that if it is attacked it will be forced to enter the conflict and declare war on Kiev, but the Ukrainian government still prefers this scenario to accepting the peace terms requested by the Russians.

“They are still trying to drag us into the war in Ukraine. The goal is the same – to deal with both Russia and Belarus in one fell swoop. […] Ukrainian politicians and the president have one policy: the more Ukrainians die, the more they will cry out about the atrocities of ‘fascists’ from Russia and Belarus”, said President Lukashenko during a statement last Sunday. In the same speech, Lukashenko reported that the Minsk military had detected and neutralized several Ukrainian missiles in the previous week. The interception was made by the Pantsir S-1 air defense system and prevented Belarusian targets from being hit.

As can be seen, according to Lukashenko, there is a clear objective with these attacks, which is to provoke military reactions on the part of Minsk, in order to strengthen the discourse that Ukrainians are “victims of Russian and Belarusian violence”, thus increasing the Kiev’s chances of getting more Western support in the conflict. It is not by chance that the Ukrainian attacks are not announced, being carried out in a secret way, so that possible reactions from Minsk sound like “unjustified aggression” in the face of a Western public opinion that is not aware of what is actually happening in the region.

The Belarusian president emphasized in his words that Minsk has no interest in participating in the conflict and that so far no Belarusian soldiers have been sent to the Ukrainian territory, with the country maintaining absolute military neutrality. However, he reaffirmed what he had said on other occasions: if it continues to be attacked, Belarus will have no choice but to enter the conflict in order to defend its citizens. According to him, Moscow and Minsk must be ready for this type of situation, considering that the Western-backed Ukrainian aggressiveness could generate victims in both countries at any moment.

Lukashenko also said that the Belarusian military forces are already maintaining in its crosshairs Ukrainian targets considered decision-making centers. The country’s intention is still to avoid responses, which demonstrates a real diplomatic willingness. According to what had been previously stated, Minsk would reserve the right to respond militarily to any attack. The Ukrainian attack has already taken place, but the Belarusian government is not considering responding immediately, as it managed to intercept the missiles and avoid casualties. So, in other words, one more chance is being given to Ukraine to avoid involving Belarus in the conflict.

In fact, given the current situation in the conflict, the West is interested in prolonging the fighting as long as possible, as it is a way of delaying the inevitable Russian victory and the consequent reconfiguration of the European geopolitical map. In addition, it is a way of generating profits for the Western military-industrial complex, which will continue to send money and weapons to Kiev, to be charged with interest in the coming years. Obviously, this is not in the benefit of the Ukrainian people, who are suffering more and more in this the conflict, but, on the other hand, it interests the government of the Maidan Junta, which acts in the service of the West and not of the Ukrainian citizens.

And there is no simpler way to prolong the current situation than by attracting new agents, which is why Kiev is constantly trying to promote the internationalization of the war. Despite Belarusian neutrality, Zelensky repeatedly and unjustifiably accused Minsk of “aggression” simply because the country is a strategic ally of Russia – and there are many intelligence reports by Minsk’s forces saying that Kiev plans an invasion against the country based on this fallacious allegation of “aggression”. It is also necessary to remember that previously Kiev had already directed attacks against Transnistria, which is an autonomous region in Moldova where Moscow maintains peacekeeper troops. All these measures are desperate attempts to internationalize the conflict and garner international support.

The Western media obviously omits reporting on the Ukrainian aggressions but would be quick to inform on the responses of the attacked nations, speaking of “new unjustified invasions”. This would encourage the public opinion – which is already tired of this scenario of war and crisis – to support the sending of new billion-dollars military packages to Kiev, maintaining the strategy of prolonging the conflict.

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

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***

There is no doubt that Poland is and has been the leading voice in NATO and in the European Union advocating for a more aggressive approach to Russia in the context of the war in Ukraine. Apart from the daily reproaches of the Polish government and president against Moscow and in its perversely subservient line of support for Kiev, two recent developments are a clear testimony that Warsaw’s Eastern policy is becoming more and more of an aberration.

On May 9th, the ambassador of the Russian Federation in Poland, Sergey Andreev, was doused with red paint while on a visit to a Soviet war cemetery in Warsaw by Ukrainian activists. Iryna Zemlana, who was personally responsible for the attack, was not apprehended by the police, and what is more, was able to escape Warsaw.

This egregious act, which should have been prosecuted, was even mildly praised by the Polish Minister of the Interior, Mariusz Kamiński, on Twitter. Worth mentioning here is that active assault or insult of a representative of a foreign state is regulated in Article 136 of the Polish Criminal Code. This provision states in the first paragraph that “whoever, on the territory of the Republic of Poland, commits an active assault on a head of a foreign state or an accredited head of diplomatic representation of such a state or a person enjoying similar protection under laws, agreements or generally recognized international customs, shall be subject to the penalty of deprivation of liberty for a term of between 3 months and 5 years.”

Paragraph two states the following:

“Whoever, on the territory of the Republic of Poland, commits an active assault on a person who is a member of the diplomatic staff of a foreign representation or a consular official of a foreign state, in connection with the performance of their official duties, shall be subject to the penalty of deprivation of liberty for up to 3 years.”

In light of this, to say Zemlana abused her status as a guest in Poland is an understatement. The total lack of any interest on the part of the Polish authorities to prosecute is in itself a criminal act.

A few days later, on May 10th, Britain’s The Telegraph published an article by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the opening lines of which declare: “Russia’s monstrous ideology must be defeated. It is the equivalent of 20th-century communism and Nazism—and it poses a deadly threat to Europe.” It’s hard to imagine Morawiecki actually saying this with a straight face and yet, here we are. Leave it to the current Polish Prime Minister to try and out-neocon the neocons!

To an outside observer it would seem that Poland wants nothing more than to enter the fray in Ukraine, while at the same time explaining away the economic woes already being experienced by the great majority of Poles, due to the radical nature of the anti-Russian sanctions, as something insignificant. Thankfully, dissident voices are growing louder by the day. I decided to reach out to three representatives of the diplomatic, academic and media worlds respectively to demonstrate to the international reader, to paraphrase the opening lines of the Polish national anthem, that “Poland is not yet lost!”

The Polish Authorities should pursue Polish Interests

Dr. Jacek Izydorczyk served as Poland’s ambassador to Japan from 2017 to 2019, and he currently teaches law at the University of Łódź. The esteemed professor was one of the first former diplomats to openly criticize the Polish government’s pro-war agenda after hostilities began in Ukraine.

Izydorczyk is blunt and to the point:

“It is in the interest of Poland to end the war as soon as possible, because whether it is a full-scale World War III or just a local war with Polish participation, it means the destruction of our country and the death of thousands, if not millions of our citizens.”

The former diplomat believes that Polish and U.S. interests are not identical in Ukraine, despite the massive media propaganda campaign claiming the contrary. And while not advocating for totally abandoning the formal alliance with the United States, Izydorczyk does see the need for an immediate rebalancing towards “a minimum of assertiveness and defense of one’s position.” The Polish citizenry, Izydorczyk points out, should not hesitate to put pressure on the current government of the Law and Justice party, whose members “have been brought up on blind hatred of Russia and such absurdities as the cult of Napoleon and his expedition to Moscow.”

The Academic Community in Poland has its Freedom of Speech severely Limited

The conservative political scientist, Professor Adam Wielomski, in our exchange expanded on the themes raised by Ambassador Izydorczyk. When asked about the evident unanimity among the Polish academic elite regarding the situation in Ukraine, Wielomski pointed to two main factors responsible for such a state of affairs. “One part of the academic community repeats what they hear on television, and the other part is afraid to speak out. The academic community in Poland has its freedom of speech severely limited because a habit has developed of writing letters of complaint against professors for expressing views in the media that differ from the banal ones. Professors are afraid of being summoned by the rector’s office and having to explain themselves. The community prefers not to speak out on any controversial issue, unless it is in line with the media. Paradoxically, those who are knowledgeable about the political situation remain silent, and the main ‘experts’ are the undereducated journalists.” In essence this means that “professors have limited civil rights in Poland in relation to ordinary people. They have been terrorized by the liberal media, and the university is no longer a place of free debate.”

Wielomski believes that in the current geopolitical situation, Poland has two options: either to be a transmission and trade-belt on the Beijing-Moscow-Berlin-Paris axis and benefit from it, given its geographical location, or become nothing more than “a spoiler of the United States in Eurasia.” The Polish elites chose the second option. “They may be right; but I, for one, was not convinced. To be frank, they didn’t even try to convince anyone, because after 1989 there was no debate on this issue in Poland. The government was taken over by people who had been in opposition until 1989 and who took money from the CIA for their activities, pacifying not only opposing views but even calls for a debate on this issue.”

This lack of a serious debate on such critical issues as Poland’s geopolitical orientation “enforces unanimity on every issue of importance.” Warsaw should strive to emulate the moderately cautious approach of Paris and Berlin and possibly even the openly anti-war position of Poland’s supposed ally in Budapest.

When asked to assess the chances for the emergence of political forces focused on realism in Eastern policy and more assertive formulation of Polish national interests, without interference from Washington or Berlin, Wielomski is pessimistic. “In Poland, there is little chance of this happening. Even the ‘populist’ right-wing Confederation party, which holds anti-systemic views, as they say in the U.S., practically collapsed because of the dispute whether Poland gets to define its own raison d’être, or whether it is defined by the American embassy. Most of Confederation’s members, as it turned out, entered the Sejm under anti-system slogans only to knock on the System’s door and report their readiness to serve it.” This is all attributable to what Wielomski calls a peculiar “disease of the Polish soul,” which manifests itself predominantly not only in the lack of realism in foreign policy, “but also in some irrational pride in not pursuing such a policy.” Wielomski frames the choice facing Warsaw in the following words: “In politics you either defend your own interests or act in the interests of others.”

No Nuance Allowed

Dr. Wojciech Golonka is a Catholic philosopher and a regular columnist at Poland’s premium center-right weekly Do Rzeczy (DR). DR has remained one of the very few mainstream venues where dissent from the politically correct line on Ukraine is tolerated. This no doubt is due to Paweł Lisicki’s, impeccable free speech credentials, and who manages the editorial side of the publication.

Thanks to such a praise worthy modus operandi, Golonka was able to publish an interview with retired colonel Douglas Macgregor, an American voice which needed to be heard in Poland. “Adopting a zero-sum narrative, which is unopposed, is very conducive to internal politics and also allows for a temporary cover-up of current problems—the grilling of Poland by Brussels, galloping inflation, the refugee crisis, social discontent. Any criticism of the government can therefore now be shouted down with the imperative to fight Putin, and in Polish conditions no major political party will allow itself to put reason above the aforementioned atmosphere of systemic Russophobia”—says Golonka. He believes attempts to censor in Poland Russian outlets, which present a different perspective on the war in Ukraine, are “ridiculous.”

The banning of Russia Today in the early days of the conflict was a clear example of government overreach. According to Golonka, “solutions that seek to restrict civil liberties should, on the one hand, be under the control of the courts, and on the other, be appropriate for emergency situations, the framework of which is defined by the Polish Constitution. Every arbitrary decision of the executive power using purely rhetorical justification corrupts the rule of law and creates precedents for government arbitrariness that is dangerous to citizens.”

Golonka points out that “people who feel hunger for diverse information or analysis already use the so-called alternative media.” However, these venues still remain relatively marginal in Poland in terms of impact and influence. In his view, this dire situation stems from the fact that “Polish society did not have an appropriate period in its contemporary history, in which it could mature to the mechanisms of democracy, without being an object of foreign external factors and internal factional struggles for power.”

“Television lies” used to be the famous slogan in the halcyon days of the Solidarity movement. No more, seems to be the view of the young columnist.

The late professor Andrzej Walicki, one of Poland’s greatest scholars of Russia and Russian political thought, in one of his last interviews defined the grand logic animating Warsaw’s hubris in foreign policy, in the following words: “Mainly an inferiority complex towards the West, offset by a superiority complex towards the East.”

In the current circumstances, the voices of dissent quoted above, among many others (thankfully!), give courage to ordinary Poles, who prefer not to succumb to either of the complexes.

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Michał Krupa is a Polish historian and commentator. He has published in various Polish and American media outlets, including The American Conservative, Consortium News, Chronicles Magazine and the Imaginative Conservative. His Twitter handle is: @MGKrupa.

Featured image:  “Polish Hamlet. Portrait of Aleksander Wielopolski,” by Jacek Malczewski; painted in 1903.

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***

The world’s largest crude oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, continues to keep close ties with Russia while the top oil consumer, the United States, pleads with major producers—including the Kingdom—to boost supply to the market and help ease consumers’ pain at the pump.  While the U.S. and its Western allies are sanctioning Moscow and banning oil imports from Russia, U.S. President Joe Biden is also turning to Saudi Arabia to ask it to pump more oil as Americans pay on average $5 a gallon for gasoline.  

The Saudis prefer to keep close ties with Russia in oil policy as the OPEC+ pact and the control over a large portion of global oil supply has benefited both OPEC+ leaders—the Kingdom and Russia—over the past half a decade. Saudi Arabia, however, could use a little thaw in Saudi-U.S. relations under President Biden, who is no longer talking about the world’s top crude exporter as a “pariah” state.

The Saudis are carefully maneuvering to keep Russia as an ally in the OPEC+ group and possibly improve relations with the United States.

President Biden—desperate to see relief for American drivers ahead of the midterm elections—has made a U-turn on Saudi Arabia and is expected this month to visit the Kingdom, which he said on the campaign trail would be treated as a “pariah” state during his presidency. But U.S. gasoline prices at $5 a gallon and the loss of part of the Russian supply have made President Biden reconsider and meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Saudi Arabia has publicly reiterated its “warm” ties with Russia on several occasions since Putin invaded Ukraine, and considers keeping Russia in the OPEC+ alliance an important part of its oil policy. With Russia leading a dozen non-OPEC producers in the pact, Saudi Arabia has more sway over global oil markets with the larger OPEC+ group than with OPEC alone.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have discussed their countries’ cooperation in the OPEC+ oil production pact in a few telephone conversations since February, and have vowed to continue their cooperation.

Last month, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that Russia could continue its participation in the OPEC+ agreement even after it officially expires at the end of this year. Novak was speaking after a meeting in St Petersburg with Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who made a surprise appearance at a Russian economic forum.

During that meeting, the Saudi minister said that Saudi-Russian relations were “as warm as the weather in Riyadh.”

Two weeks before that meeting, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Riyadh and met with his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud. The two ministers said that the OPEC+ alliance is solid, with the level of cooperation within it strong.

The recent OPEC+ decision to accelerate the production increase and roll back all cuts in August, a month earlier than initially planned, was pushed by Saudi Arabia amid U.S. pressure. But the Kingdom had to check with Russia first before proposing the redistribution of the September increase in July and August, sources with knowledge of the behind-the-scenes diplomacy told Reuters this week.

Both the Saudis and Russia benefit from the OPEC+ deal, so Riyadh wants to keep Russia on board, the sources say.

“The Saudis are enjoying high prices while the Russians need guaranteed support from OPEC+ in the current circumstances,” a source familiar with Russian thinking told Reuters.

“No one is interested in a market collapse,” added the source.

After the production cuts are completely rolled back next month, a more difficult decision for OPEC+ looms: what to do next as Russia is more than 1 million bpd behind target and could lose more supply as the EU embargo on its oil begins at the end of this year.

Neither is OPEC+ as a group anywhere close to reaching its target production, nor has Saudi Arabia much spare capacity left to boost production further, as the U.S. and other major consumers want. Per the OPEC+ deal, the Saudi target (as well as Russia’s) is at 11.004 million bpd for August. The Kingdom has rarely reached this level, and not for a sustained period of time. So, it’s not certain that the Saudis have the ability to pump 11 million bpd or more on a sustainable basis. It’s even less certain that the Kingdom can quickly tap—if it wanted to—into the 12.2 million bpd production capacity it claims it has.

*

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

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***

In Gdańsk one of the squares was officially named in honour of “heroic Mariupol”. Well, although it is hard to believe, there are circles in Poland that can raise toasts to the SS-men killed during attack on the Reich Chancellery in 1945 as “defenders of European civilization”. The worship of the “heroes of Mariupol”, i.e. bandits from Azov, cowardly hiding behind the backs of civilians imprisoned in Azovstal, is another example of the progressive Nazification of political consciousness in contemporary Poland.

Deniers of the Polish Genocide

Along with the destruction of the monuments of the Polish-Russian brotherhood in arms, cases of fights against the liberating Red Army are exposed.  Books expressing regret that Poland did not become Hitler’s close ally are published on a mass scale.  The one and only case of cooperation between the Polish anti-communist underground and the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgence Army, nazi, Banderist terrorist organisation) against the Polish army, in present propaganda grows to the size of a great alliance with Ukrainian Nazism.

The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not properly reacted to the scandalous Ambassador Andrij Melnyk interview, in which he had questioned and even praised the Volhynia Massacre, in which nearly 200,000 Poles were killed by the Banderites.  The state authorities order this year to refrain from organising the celebration of the anniversary of the culmination of these events, when on the night only, Bloody Sunday of 11th July 1943, 99 Polish villages in Volhynia were attacked with the slogan “Death to Poles!”.  The monument commemorating the victims of the Banderite genocide, which the local government wanted to set up in a small village in Podkarpacie, near the border with Ukraine, was arrested and censored, when elements as a figure of a boy pierced by a Banderites’ pitchfork and the heads of children punched on fences were removed. “In the current geopolitical situation, should not go back to those events” – repeats the Polish Government, but the crimes of the UPA looked exactly so extremely cruel.

All remainders of fight of Polish partisans against Ukrainian Hitler’s collaborators are fiercely removed from the public space. Not only the Ukrainian minority in Poland and new immigrants, but many Polish politicians demand, for example, a change of street named in honour of the legendary Major Stanisław Basaj, “Lynx”, during the Second World War a hero of the fights against German and Ukrainian Nazis, in 1945 murdered by the UPA. So, many Poles ask: is it still Poland, or already Nazi Ukraine?

Polish civilian victims of March 26, 1943 massacre committed by Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) assisted by ordinary Ukrainian peasantry (so called “chern”, pol. czerń) in the village of Lipniki (Kostopol County), Reichskommissariat Ukraine. (Licensed under the public domain)

Polonisation or Banderisation

These are not random events.  We are dealing with the acceleration of preparations for the establishment of Polish-Western Ukrainian federation. Thus, Poles are being prepared for a compromise, which would be the acceptance of the Stepan Bandera’s[1] cult.  In order to return to Lviv – Poland must therefore become at least a bit Banderish, it is explained to the Poles. The problem is that in such a scenario there are not the former eastern lands that would return to Poland, but Poland would join the Nazi-Banderite Reich…

It sounds scary, but we, Poles seem to accept it. After all, there is no harm to those willing…. However, organising ourselves, we could even turn the strategy used against us towards our national benefits.  And when we come back to Wołyń, to Stanisławów, Równe, Tarnopol – we can always replace the heads of Bandera’s monuments and transform them into Marechal Piłsudski’s ones. Or even Jeremy Wiśniowiecki (the conqueror of the Chmielnicki’s Kozaks Uprising in the 17th century). As long as we do not let to Nazificate us.

*

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

Note

[1] Stepan Bandera (1909 – 1959) – leader of Ukrainian Nazi Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Hitler’s collaborator, responsible for genocide and mass murders of Jews, Poles and Ukrainian opponents. After the WW2 agent of the British Intelligence. Assassinated by KGB agent.

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***

Make no mistake: this latest development is a major blow to the Zelensky regime, but it will be even more devastating for the geographically-challenged boffins in Washington and London, who are still determined to paint every resounding defeat for Kiev as a ‘strategic pause’. 

Over the weekend, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke to President Vladimir Putin, informing the leader that Luhansk region has been “liberated.”

Yes, that means all of Luhansk.

This is true game changer on many fronts. Firstly, it brings Russia one step closer to securing one of its primary strategical objectives: securing the administrative borders of the newly independent Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR). Militarily, the significance of this is self-evident – breaking a protracted stalemate which saw many thousands killed and maimed in an eight-year long civil war between residents and Kiev’s radical nationalist battalions. Western politicos and punditry can invoke ‘international law’ ad nauseam, but the path ahead for Russia and its allies is now clear; the legal and political implications of securing these regions will ballast any future negotiations, especially in regard to any aspirations for statehood, or in holding a referendum to join the Russian Federation.

This shouldn’t come as any surprise to those observers who’ve been actually following the daily bulletins and reports coming out of Moscow, along with a number of Russian bloggers and Telegram channels which have established a near unblemished record in terms of accuracy since this conflict began.

Still, despite all this, spinmeisters in Kiev have not yet confirmed Moscow’s claim of the liberation of Luhansk. In the last 48 hours, the shuddering propaganda shop in Kiev (much of their ‘information operations’ are being micromanaged by Uncle Sam’s Disinfo HQ in Stuttgart and Langley) has been busy throwing up sunbursts claiming that Russia is actually losing in the town of Lysychansk.

It’s almost surreal seeing the stark difference in coverage between the two sides in this conflict. You can almost hear the infighting going on behind the scenes between Kiev’s version of Terry Gilliam’s two super bureaucrats played by Michael Palin and Jonathan Pryce, arguing between the departments of ‘information retrieval’ and ‘information dispersal.’ Lost amid the reams of cables and ‘intel’. So much Intel knocking around at the moment, especially on US cable news.

Relax says the BBC, ‘Do not listen to the Kremlin – we’re winning!’ 

Putting aside for a moment President Zelensky’s daily celebrity photo-ops, it’s become apparent that Kiev’s information operations have descended into a complete farce. Everyone can see it, except for hopelessly loyal western media operatives who still hang on their every word. Hence, western MSM reporting will remain 48 to 72 hours late on pretty much everything.

So Allied forces of Russia, DPR, and LPR have taken control of the entire Luhansk region, in what is fast becoming former eastern Ukraine (as painful as that may sound, it’s true). This key milestone was declared after capturing the final Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) holdout in the town of Lysychansk.

“After successful military operations, Russian forces and the Luhansk People’s Militia established full control over the city of Lysychansk and a number of nearby settlements,” said Shoigu.

The other reason this is a game changer is that Allied forces can now shift their battlefield focus to the neighbouring Donetsk region, making the encirclement of any remaining entrenched AFU positions a practical fait accompli.

This also means that Kiev’s tenuous hold over Kharkov, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is now in jeopardy. For the most part, this is largely a Russian city, although currently controlled by radical Ukrainian nationalist military units. However, as soon as residents there sense that their city is becoming a focal point of the conflict, you could see a rejection of radical militants’ governing authority in much the same way that the people in Mariupol began rejecting the Nazi Azov battalion occupation of that city, resulting in a pitch battle between Ukrainian militants and a vastly superior Russian-led coalition. It’s just a question of time now – time which the Allied forces fortunately have, but which a flagging regime in Kiev and its NATO controllers unfortunately do not.

By now, it would be hard not to underscore what an epic failure the western propaganda effort has been. It’s becoming embarrassing to watch, and it comes with some very real consequences. While it’s understandable why a US-UK dominated NATO would want to brainwash its own populations about how ‘the war’ is going (that’s what governments normally do anyway, especially with proxy wars), the real problem arises when western politicians, ministers and military experts – all start to repeat and believe the fanciful propaganda that’s being churned out by their own official sources. History shows that this is a surefire recipe for defeat. We’ve entered that warped phase in the conflict now, where western policy vis-à-vis Ukraine is being based upon overly optimistic and completely false reporting, both of which is further contorting the West’s military, economic and political positions, not to mention Ukraine’s own increasingly precarious predicament.

For instance, the following script line has been dutifully inserted in nearly every single western news release on the Ukraine war; you can always locate it halfway down any article, something along the lines of, “Russia was driven back from the Ukrainian capital Kiev following its Feb. 24 invasion…”, by now a mandatory caveat for every Ukraine report, specifically designed to hammer home the impression that Russia was somehow caught by surprise and beaten back by a “brave Ukrainian resistance,” and thus finds itself in a state of perpetual retreat. Victory for Zelensky must be right around the corner then. Goebbels always said, “Repeat, repeat, repeat,” although today it’s more like “copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste.”

That’s what our mainstream press and government do incessantly. The reality is something completely different: Russia’s initial feint of encircling Kiev early on effectively tied most of Ukraine’s primary military forces which were moved to fortify the capital while Russian and DPR forces swiftly took control of key strategic nodes around the country, including the port city of Mariupol, and begun the encirclement of AFU divisions in Donbass. After pulling back from Kiev, the Allied forces have systematically routed NATO-backed AFU regiments in what looks like one of the most decisive military movements of the modern era. You can see the results of this by looking at any of the up-to-date battle maps. That’s the reality of the situation, and no amount of creative wordsmithing by the battery of professional propagandists embedded in western media outlets can change that.

One has to wonder though: do western journalists and the legion of TV ‘military experts’ even read the daily Russian battle maps? Judging by the lack of quality and accuracy in western reportage and punditry, it doesn’t seem like they do. But who really knows. Perhaps they’re afraid of succumbing to the nefarious influence of “dangerous Russian disinformation,” or worse yet – maybe they are being blocked by their own government censors, who decided to ban the likes of RT International, Sputnik, and Southfront from their airwaves and ISPs. We’re told this is because we need to protect vulnerable western minds from undue influence abroad.

Indeed, any student of history will tell you that at various junctures in history, depending on which side of the iron curtain you find yourself on, facts can be very dangerous.

When it comes to geopolitical commentary, this shouldn’t be a question of favoring one side or the other. It’s about calling balls and strikes. If the Braves are beating the Astros 8-1 in the bottom of the eight, it shouldn’t be a faux pas to report that you’re watching an epic blow-out in the making.

Our media and government officials refuse to call it as it is, but they do so at everyone’s peril. Not least of all the poor Ukrainians who are presently losing circa 300 soldiers per day, and with many more injured. Hardly Slava Ukraini! (Glory to Ukraine!), but more likely they’re needlessly dying for the sake of this latest NATO vanity project. It’s hard to see the glory in that, something the people of Libya can certainly attest to.

How many more of its young men, and how much more territory will Ukraine have to lose before NATO’s brain trust finally says ‘enough’?

That’s to say nothing about the western economy, battered by western sanctions that were supposed to cripple Russia. We’re still trying to work that one out.

None of it makes sense anymore, unless you’re in the defense industry. Then it all makes perfect sense.

*

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This article was originally published on 21st Century Wire.

Author Patrick Henningsen is an American writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, and is host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR). He has written for a number of international publications and has done extensive on-the-ground reporting in the Middle East including work in Syria and Iraq. See his archive here.

Featured image: Russian President Putin meets with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. (Source: 21st CW)

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***

The Biden administration on Wednesday announced a $3.2 billion deal to purchase 105 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for a fall vaccination campaign, with options to buy up to 300 million doses.

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

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday advised COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers to produce the updated booster vaccine — which has not yet undergone human clinical trials — for this fall.

“This agreement will provide additional doses for U.S. residents and help cope with the next COVID-19 wave,” Sean Marett, chief business and chief commercial officer of BioNTech, said in a statement. “Pending regulatory authorization, it will also include an Omicron-adapted vaccine, which we believe is important to address the rapidly spreading Omicron variant.”

The announcement followed Tuesday’s meeting of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which recommended including an Omicron component in future COVID-19 booster vaccines.

“Vaccines have been a game-changer in our fight against COVID-19, allowing people to return to normal activities knowing that vaccines protect from severe illness,” said Xavier Becerra, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to doing everything we can to continue to make vaccines free and widely available to Americans — and this is an important first step to preparing us for the fall.”

However, U.S. taxpayers will fund the $3.2 billion campaign, just as they also paid $1.95 billion for the original 100 million doses obtained under Operation Warp Speed, and $19.50 per dose for 500 million more doses obtained through the government’s option contract.

“Earlier this month, in the absence of additional COVID-19 funding from Congress, the Administration was forced to reallocate $10 billion in existing funding, pulling billions of dollars from COVID-19 response efforts in order to pay for additional vaccines and treatments,” HHS said in a statement. “The funding for this new Pfizer contract is being paid for with a portion of that reallocated funding.”

“The White House has dropped all pretense that this is about protecting public health,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman and chief legal counsel for Children’s Health Defense. “This is an unsheathed, corporate welfare project to further enrich the shareholders of the most profitable industry in history.”

“It’s almost as if these states — and their citizens — are paying for these vaccines twice over: once to bankroll much, or nearly all, of the research itself, then again to buy back the products of this public-funded research,” Quartz reported last month. “Pharma corporations benefit hugely from this model.”

Pfizer said in May it expects about $32 billion in COVID-19 vaccine sales for 2022, but the figure was based on agreements signed before the new contract announced this week.

Pfizer on June 23 approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.40 per share.

Under the new Pfizer deal, the U.S. government is set to pay more than $30 per dose on average, which is significantly higher than the $19.50 it paid in its initial Pfizer contract.

As early as Feb. 26, 2021, Pfizer was planning for a “potential rapid adoption” of its COVID-19 vaccine to allow for the development of booster vaccines within weeks. This “regulatory pathway” is already established for other infectious diseases, such as  influenza, Pfizer said in a statement.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the company was “making the right investments and engaging in the appropriate conversations with regulators” to help position the company to “potentially develop and seek authorization for an updated mRNA vaccine or booster if needed.”

During a February 2021 earnings call, Bourla told analysts, big banks and investors the company could make significant profits as demand for its COVID-19 vaccine subsidies by charging higher prices and implementing routine booster doses for new variants of the virus.

During the Barclays’ Global Health Conference in March 2021, former Pfizer CFO Frank D’Amelio said the company doesn’t see this as a one-time event, but “as something that’s going to continue for the foreseeable future.”

“Every year, you need to go to get your flu vaccine,” Pfizer CEO Bourla said. “It’s going to be the same with COVID. In a year, you will have to go and get your annual shot for COVID to be protected.”

*

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

Featured image is from CHD

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***

On Saturday, a month-long state of emergency was declared in the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, to address the violent protests in response to government plans to revoke the autonomy of the north-eastern republic of Karakalpakstan, a decision which Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev would later drop following a visit to the region.

Despite the current disturbances only starting several days ago, their sudden escalation to extreme violence, as well as the coordinated coverage of the situation by corporate media outlets, including the US government-funded Radio Free Europe, already bears all the hallmarks of a CIA regime change operation.

Indeed, such a situation was predicted by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in January of this year, when a similar regime change attempt was taking place in Uzbekistan’s larger northern neighbour Kazakhstan.

This attempt, carried out in line with a May 2020 document published by neoconservative think tank the RAND Corporation, sought to destabilise the central Asian Republic in order for the after-effects to spill over into neighbouring Russia, with the 7,000km land border shared between both nations being the second largest in the world after Canada and the US.

Following the deployment of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to Kazakhstan however, at the request of Nur-Sultan, the Western-backed colour revolution attempt was quelled in the space of two weeks, with the military alliance withdrawing from the central Asian country soon after.

Belarus itself had experienced a colour revolution attempt in August 2020, when following Lukashenko’s Presidential electoral victory over opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a Euromaidan-style colour revolution was launched against Minsk, the former Soviet Republic being a long-time target for the regime change lobby owing to it being Moscow’s sole European ally, having highly-nationalised state industries, and the instalment of a pro-Western government resulting in Russia’s entire Western border being composed solely of NATO-members and allies.

Indeed, the encirclement of Russia was a motivating factor in the aforementioned Euromaidan colour revolution launched in response to then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s November 2013 decision to suspend an EU trade deal in order to pursue closer ties with Moscow.

Violent protests would rock the eastern European nation in the aftermath, centring on Kiev’s Maidan Square, where neoconservative US Senator John McCain would infamously address demonstrators.

This violence would eventually culminate in the predominantly ethnic Russian Donbass region in the east of the country breaking away to form the independent Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in April 2014, the catalyst for which being the anti-Russian far-right sympathisers who would take part in the Maidan movement, and who would also play a key role in the post-coup Western-backed coalition government of Petro Poroshenko.

An eight-year long war on both Republic s would follow, involving the use of neo-Nazi paramilitaries such as Right Sector and Azov Battalion, and leading to an estimated 14,000 deaths.

Despite attempts by the Kremlin to diplomatically resolve the situation via the Minsk Agreements, which would see both Republics granted a degree of autonomy whilst still remaining under the rule of Kiev, Moscow’s hand would ultimately be forced in February of this year when a military intervention was launched into Ukraine.

Almost five months of global condemnation and sanctions towards Russia have since followed, however this has done little to hinder Moscow’s goals of removing the neo-Nazi elements involved in the ethnic cleansing campaign in Donbass, and destroying any Ukrainian military infrastructure that would ultimately have been used by NATO had Kiev gone on to become a member, the alliance having failed to honour a post-Cold War agreement not to expand eastwards.

Indeed, less than 24 hours after Uzbekistan’s state of emergency announcement, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced that the Luhansk People’s Republic had come fully under Russian control, highly coincidental timing that suggests that the current strife in Uzbekistan has been orchestrated as a means to eventually lead to further destabilisation along Russia’s southern border, just as Lukashenko predicted.

*

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Gavin O’Reilly is an activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism. Secretary of the Dublin Anti-Internment Committee, a campaign group set up to raise awareness of Irish Republican political prisoners in British and 26 County jails. His work has previously appeared on American Herald Tribune, The Duran, Al-Masdar and MintPress News. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. Support him on Patreon.

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***

Pfizer classified almost all severe adverse events that occurred during its Phase 3 trials as unrelated to the injection. A 2,566-page document catalogues serious adverse events and six deaths during the trial. These events were all classified as “toxicity level 4,” which is the most serious, yet none of them was deemed related to the injection

Examples of Level 4 adverse events — all of which were written off as “not related” to the mRNA injection — include acute respiratory failure, cardiac arrest, brain abscess, adrenal carcinoma (adrenal cancer) and chronic myeloid leukemia (blood and bone marrow cancer)

Most Level 3 adverse events were also dismissed as unrelated to the shot. Only a small number were listed as related. Examples of Level 3 side effects include tachycardia (disruption of the normal electrical impulses that control your heart rate — the very problem that underlies most cases of “sudden adult death syndrome” or SADS) and ventricular arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm that makes the lower chambers twitch rather than pump — another underlying cause of SADS)

A reanalysis of data from the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccine trials found that, combined, Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 jabs were associated with a risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest of 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated. Meanwhile, the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalization was only 2.3 per 10,000 participants for Pfizer and 6.4 per 10,000 for Moderna

Whether intentional or not, mounting evidence now indicate the COVID-19 injections will result in depopulation through premature death and adverse effects on fertility in women and men alike. Research from Israel reveals the shot deteriorates sperm count and sperm motility in men for about three months post-jab

*

As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues to release Pfizer’s clinical trial documentation,¹ we’re finding more and more evidence that very little has been done on the up-and-up, and the COVID jab trials may be among the most fraudulent in medical history.

Can All Serious Adverse Effects Be Written Off?

Importantly, Pfizer classified almost all severe adverse events that occurred during its Phase 3 trials as unrelated to the injection. As reported by The Defender, June 21, 2022:²

“The latest release by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine documents reveals numerous instances of participants who sustained severe adverse events during Phase 3 trials. Some of these participants withdrew from the trials, some were dropped and some died.

The 80,000-page document cache includes an extensive set of Case Report Forms (CRFs) from Pfizer Phase 3 trials conducted at various locations in the U.S., in addition to other documentation pertaining to participants in Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine trials in the U.S. and worldwide …

The CRFs included in this month’s documents contain often vague explanations of the specific symptoms experienced by the trial participants. They also reveal a trend of classifying almost all adverse events — and in particular severe adverse events (SAEs) — as being ‘not related’ to the vaccine.”

The Defender article includes 11 examples³ of trial participants who experienced severe adverse effects that were classified as “unrelated” to the experimental gene transfer technology they’d received just days or weeks earlier.

A 2,566-page document⁴ catalogues the serious adverse events and six deaths that occurred during the trial. These events were all classified as “toxicity level 4,” which is the most serious, yet none of them were deemed related to the injection.

This simply isn’t believable. It’s completely unrealistic, especially when serious events occur in multiple participants. A handful of examples of Level 4 adverse events listed in this document — all of which were written off as “not related” to the mRNA injection — include:⁵

• Acute respiratory failure
• Cardiac arrest
• Brain abscess
• Adrenal carcinoma (adrenal cancer)
• Chronic myeloid leukemia (blood and bone marrow cancer)

The six deaths reported were listed as being caused by arteriosclerosis, cardiac arrest, hemorrhagic stroke and myocardial infarction.⁶ Many participants also dropped out or were excluded from the trial due to serious side effects involving the heart, cardiovascular system, cancer, stroke, hemorrhage and neurological impacts.

Examples of Level 3 Adverse Events

Most Level 3 adverse events were also dismissed as unrelated to the shot. As reported by The Defender, only a “small number” were listed as being related to the injection. Examples of Level 3 side effects include:⁷

• Deafness/hearing loss
• Tachycardia (disruption of the normal electrical impulses that control your heart rate — the very problem that underlies most cases of “sudden adult death syndrome” or SADS)
• Ventricular arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm that makes the lower chambers twitch rather than pump — another underlying cause of SADS)
• Neutropenia (low neutrophil level in your blood; neutrophils are a type of white blood cell made by your bone marrow that fight infections by destroying viruses and bacteria)
• Vertigo

45% Experienced One or More Adverse Events

Another document⁸ that raises suspicions of bias is one admitting that “40% to 45% of participants who received BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 across age groups and across dose levels reported one or more AEs [adverse events] from Dose 1 through 28 days (i.e., 1 month) after Dose 2.”

BNT162b2 was the candidate injection that went on to receive Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the FDA. Among those who got the highest dose (30 micrograms) of BNT162b2, 50% of younger participants 25% in the older age group reported one or more adverse events.

The most common adverse events were nervous system disorders, followed by musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders. Yet despite high rates of side effects across dose levels, this document also insists that “most AEs were considered by the investigator as not related to study intervention.”

During the open-label period of the study, 12,006 participants were followed for a minimum of six months, and among those, 28.8% reported at least one adverse event at some point during that follow-up, and 2.1% reported one or more severe adverse events.

Incidence Rate in Treatment Group FAR Higher Than Placebo

As reported by The Defender:⁹

“The review provides data for participants from dose 3 … to the data cutoff date. The severe adverse event incidence rate (IR) was 6.0 per 100 PY (patient-years), with specific conditions reported including pulmonary embolisms, thrombosis, urticaria, a cerebrovascular accident and COVID-19 pneumonia.

Here, the review adds that the IR for original placebo participants who had at least 1 life-threatening AE from Dose 3 to the data cutoff date was 0.5 per 100 PY.

Only one such life-threatening event, an instance of anaphylactoid reaction, was considered to be related to the vaccination. Other life-threatening, serious adverse events included cardio-respiratory arrest, gastrointestinal necrosis, deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism …

Notably, according to the review, ‘all … events of facial paralysis were considered by the investigator as related to study intervention.” [Editor’s note: these specifically refer to events that occurred during the open-label follow-up period when BNT162b2 Dose 3 or Dose 4 was offered to both placebo and initial treatment groups.]

Young Children Have Extremely Low Risk of Death From COVID

In the end, we all know what happened. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Pfizer concluded the shot was safe and effective for everyone and the FDA went along with it. The vaccine manufacturers and the FDA have decided it isn’t even worth invoking the precautionary principle for the very youngest of children, which is nothing short of reprehensible, criminal maleficence.

In mid-June 2022, against strong objections from physicians, scientists and researchers, the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel — the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) — unanimously agreed to grant EUA to both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s COVID shots for infants and young children.^10,11

Pfizer’s EUA is for a three-dose regimen (3-microgram shots) for children 6 months to 5 years old, while Moderna’s EUA is for a two-dose regimen (25-microgram shots) for children 6 months to 6 years.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,¹² an estimated 75% of American children ages birth to 11 already have some level of immunity, having been exposed to one of the several variants that have come into circulation over the past two-plus years.

This immunity level alone makes EUA for COVID shots questionable. CDC data also prove young children have a very low risk of hospitalization and death from COVID, which makes the EUAs even more questionable.

Data¹³ published in mid-March 2022 suggest babies and young children under the age of 4 have had a peak hospitalization rate for COVID of 14.5 per 100,000. That peak occurred after Omicron became predominant. The hospitalization rate for the Delta variant in this age group was 2.9 per 100,000.

In all, since March 2020, a total of 2,562 infants and young children (6 months to 4 years) have been hospitalized WITH COVID. Of those, 2,068 had COVID listed as the primary reason for admission (84.7% of the total), and only 624 required ICU admission.

The median length of hospital stay was 1.5 days (range: one to three days). Of the 2,562 children with suspected COVID infection, 16 of them (0.6%) died in the hospital. Death certificate data push that number a bit higher. The Vaccine Reaction notes,¹⁴ “According to death certificate data,¹⁵ 202 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 among children 6 months to 4 years of age through May 11, 2022.”

While any death is tragic, it’s worth noting that 923 (35.8%) of the children hospitalized with suspected COVID also had one or more underlying medical conditions.¹⁶ We don’t know for sure, but it’s quite possible that those who died with a COVID diagnosis actually died from whatever underlying condition was present or had brought them to the hospital in the first place.

What I’m trying to say is that 16 to 202 deaths over two-plus years aren’t cause for panic, and that’s true even if COVID was the primary cause of those deaths. The likelihood of your child getting injured by the mRNA shot is undoubtedly significantly greater than their risk of dying from COVID.

Jab More Likely to Put You in the Hospital Than Keep You Out

The same is true for adults, by the way. A June 2022 analysis^17,18 of Pfizer and Moderna trial data found the shots are more likely to put you in the hospital than keep you out of it. As reported by The Daily Sceptic:¹⁹

“A new paper²⁰ by BMJ Editor Dr. Peter Doshi and colleagues has analyzed data from the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccine trials and found that the vaccines are more likely to put you in hospital with a serious adverse event than keep you out by protecting you from COVID.

The pre-print (not yet peer-reviewed) focuses on serious adverse events highlighted in a WHO-endorsed ‘priority list²¹ of potential adverse events relevant to COVID-19 vaccines.’ The authors evaluated these serious adverse events of special interest as observed in ‘phase III randomized trials of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines’ …

Dr. Doshi and colleagues found that the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an increased risk of serious adverse events of special interest of 10.1 events per 10,000 vaccinated for Pfizer and 15.1 events per 10,000 vaccinated for Moderna …

When combined, the mRNA vaccines were associated with a risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest of 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated … The authors note that this level of increased risk post-vaccine is greater than the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalization in both Pfizer and Moderna trials, which was 2.3 per 10,000 participants for Pfizer and 6.4 per 10,000 for Moderna.

This means that on this measure, the Pfizer vaccine results in a net increase in serious adverse events of 7.8 per 10,000 vaccinated and the Moderna vaccine of 8.7 per 10,000 vaccinated.”

Doshi’s team wasn’t the first to reanalyze Pfizer’s trial data. The Canadian COVID Care Alliance has also published a clear and easy-to-read summary²² of the Pfizer trial results, and the many questions raised by it. As noted by Dr. Robert Malone:²³

“The bottom line is that the Pfizer Phase 3 trial which was used by NIAID [the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases], FDA and CDC to justify the emergency use authorization is pretty much a junk clinical trial which was inappropriately halted long before it even got close to meeting the intended follow up period, did not provide a sufficiently long follow up analysis of vaccination-associated adverse events, and in which the control group was intentionally eliminated.

This resulted in basically erasing any opportunity to ever get to the bottom of what the major true risks of the Pfizer mRNA inoculations were. In terms of more minor risks, the study was not powered (not big enough) to evaluate those.”

FDA and CDC Have Neglected Important Duties

Doshi and his coauthors also note the FDA also watered down results by including “thousands of additional participants with very little follow-up, of which the large majority had only received one dose.”

They then further diluted the appearance of risk by counting only the number of people affected rather than counting the total number of individual adverse events. This makes a big difference, as twice as many people in the treatment group reported multiple serious adverse events, as compared to the placebo group.

The FDA and CDC have both also failed to produce promised follow-up investigations. In July 2021, now a full year ago, the FDA said it would investigate four “potential adverse events of interest following Pfizer vaccination,” namely pulmonary embolism, acute myocardial infarction, immune thrombocytopenia and disseminated intravascular coagulation, but to date, no update has been issued.

Similarly, in early 2021, the CDC published a protocol on how to use proportional reporting ratios to detect signals in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), but no study or report showing what that protocol might have found has ever been published.

As it turns out, the CDC hasn’t been looking for safety signals in VAERS — not with the proportional ratios protocol or any other. So, while they’ve publicly claimed they haven’t seen any signals of concern, the reason they haven’t seen any signals is very simple: They never looked at the data!²⁴

That’s how ridiculous things are now. When a drug company or health agency claims they haven’t found a problem, you actually have to ask them, “where, when, how and how often did you look?” But of course, virtually no one would ever ask such questions because they would assume these agencies are competent, which of course is a false assumption.

Their Fraudulent Behavior Could Be Their Undoing

As you probably know, the makers of the COVID shots are indemnified against legal liability for any injuries and all deaths stemming from their products. No one is able to sue them for damages.

The only way to hold them responsible is to prove they’ve committed fraud. This would remove their liability immunity. As detailed at the beginning of the article, their consciously choosing to miscategorize adverse events during the initial trials and concealing the harms should be a slam dunk to convict them of fraud.

But there is also another fact they concealed: There’s evidence showing they knew the mRNA doesn’t stay in the injection site but, rather, distributes throughout the body,²⁵ and this too could be a smoking gun that proves fraud. If convicted of fraud, Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen would likely face liabilities in the trillions of dollars in damages.

When I exposed Merck’s Vioxx scandal in 1999 in this newsletter, before they even released their drug on the market, I thought that was huge. Their drug killed more than 60,000 people, and they could have been liable for $25 billion in damages, but their clever lawyers reduced it to $5 billion.

Well, that catastrophe is a drop in the bucket compared to the COVID scam, which has likely killed between 600,000 and 750,000 Americans, disabled as many as 5 million, and injured an estimated 30 million Americans in one way or another.^26,27 That’s just the estimated toll in the U.S., so you can imagine what the global numbers might be. It’s a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. A June 2022 survey by Steve Kirsch also found:²⁸

• 6.6% of COVID jabbed respondents suffered heart injury (about 10 million Americans, based on the national vaccination rate)
• 6.3% had to be hospitalized for their side effects (another 10 million Americans)
• 9.2% of those who took the jab had to seek medical help for their injury, which translated over the whole country would be about 18 million doctor’s visits
• People who got the shot were more likely to die from COVID than the unvaccinated
• 2.63% of the responders had lost someone in their household to COVID infection, and 2.03% had lost someone in their household to the COVID jab

Expect Depopulation

Whether intentional or not, mounting evidence now indicates the COVID-19 injections will result in depopulation through premature death and adverse effects on fertility in women and men alike. I’ve previously discussed the risk of pregnancy loss and infertility in women who get the shot, as the mRNA has an affinity for accumulating in the ovaries²⁹ (as well as the adrenals, liver and bone marrow).

Research^30,31 from Israel now also reveals the shot deteriorates sperm count and sperm motility in men for about three months. Considering the multidose mRNA shots are recommended at three-month intervals, you can see how this can really decimate a man’s prospects of fathering a child.

Fertility has been on a steady decline for decades in most parts of the world,³² but the worldwide COVID jab campaign may massively speed that up. Germany recently released data showing a 10% decline in birth rate during the first quarter of 2022.³³

Source: Mercola

Other countries are also seeing a drop in birth rate, nine months after the start of the mass vaccination campaign against COVID. Between January and April 2022, Switzerland’s birth rate was 15% lower than expected, the U.K.’s was down by 10% and Taiwan’s was down 20%.³⁴

What punishment could possibly be appropriate for company heads and health agency leaders responsible for causing massive depopulation worldwide through products that were based on fraudulent science and fictional claims? I doubt if there’s enough money in the world to set that right.

Future Trials To Be Skipped Altogether

As if matters weren’t already beyond horrible, the FDA is considering allowing manufacturers to reformulate their COVID injections in perpetuity without conducting any additional clinical trials!³⁵ In other words, they’d allow drug companies to change the mRNA and/or other ingredients without any safety or efficacy testing whatsoever. As reported by Toby Rogers, Ph.D., in a June 27, 2022, article in The Defender:³⁶

“FDA released a briefing document³⁷ in connection with this scheme to end science as we know it in connection with future COVID-19 shots … The briefing document is 18 pages of text, 1.5 line spacing, with just 19 references — 9 of which are pre-prints or from the CDC’s in-house newsletter Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) which means they are not peer-reviewed.

Any true believer in The Narrative(TM) could have written this in a few hours. To base the entire future of COVID-19 shots on this glorified undergrad term paper is madness …

The core argument of the briefing document is hilarious (or rather, it would be hilarious if it was not a plan to permanently institutionalize genocide and hide the evidence). In several places the FDA argues (colloquialisms mine):

1. These COVID-19 shots work great … Boosters too, total home run, the Israelis even have 10-weeks of data showing that they might help old people. What more evidence could you want?

2. Okay, well, it depends on what you mean by ‘work.’ These shots do not stop infection, transmission, hospitalization, or death, even though that’s why we licensed them. Any protection wears off fairly quickly, but It’s Not Our Fault(TM) because This Wily Virus(TM) mutates too fast and no one told us that it would ever mutate.

3. So these shots must be reformulated but we cannot possibly ask Lord Pharma to do proper clinical trials ever again because we already know that these shots work great (see point #1)!”

In short, the FDA argues that since there are time constraints, evaluation of effectiveness must rely on “measures other than actual health outcomes.” In other words, whether the shots actually lower your risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death will have no bearing.

The only measure they’ll take into account is whether or not the jab triggers a rise in antibody levels, which has never been proven to be beneficial. If anything, the increase in COVID antibodies actually increases your risk of infection. This also means that as long as antibody levels are through the roof, the death rate could be just about anything, because it’s not part of the safety equation.

Faith in Magic Has Officially Replaced Science

As noted by Rogers,³⁸ “The ‘Future Framework’ is a plan to base the entire COVID-19 vaccine program on magical thinking rather than science.” Indeed, Dr. Deborah Birx recently confirmed that the whole vaccine push has been based in faith in magic.³⁹

June 23, 2022, Birx answered questions from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked whether the government was lying or guessing when they stated that vaccinated individuals couldn’t catch or spread COVID. At first, she claimed she didn’t know, but when pressed, she replied, “I think it was hope that the vaccine would work in that way.”⁴⁰

So, the government issued mandates and made unequivocal, absolute statements that were not allowed to be questioned because they HOPED the shots would work a certain way — all while insisting they were the ones following and trusting the science and anyone who questioned their logic was a dangerous nut job. Let that sink in. Hope is literally the diametrical opposite of science.

It’s an Insiders’ Plot

As explained by Rogers, the same old players are behind this brazen attempt to eliminate the need for clinical trials: CDC staffers, academics who are in the pockets of Bill Gates and the NIAID, the drug companies themselves and the World Health Organization. Rogers writes:⁴¹

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

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

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

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

No doubt, we live in unprecedented, precarious times. Logic, reason, science and sanity itself has been tossed aside by those who claim the right to make decisions for all mankind. If the FDA goes forward with this “Future Framework” scheme, the only safe assumption is that COVID shots will become more and more dangerous.

Worse, we can expect other vaccines and drugs to be allowed on the market without clinical trials as well. It truly could change the science of medicine as we know it.

Of course the WHO also wants to seize control over health care worldwide, which would eliminate medical rights everywhere. It’s a nightmare scenario with no end in sight as of yet. All we can do is continue to push back, to inform ourselves, to speak out, share facts and data, and refuse to comply with unscientific recommendations based on little more than hope in fabricated conclusions.

*

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Notes

¹ PHMPT.org Pfizer Documents Released by FDA

^{2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9} The Defender June 21, 2022

⁴ PHMPT.org 16.2.7.1 Adverse Events Legend

⁸ PHMPT.org 2.5 Clinical Overview for BNT162b2

¹⁰ The Defender June 15, 2022

^11, 14 The Vaccine Reaction June 21, 2022

¹² CDC MMWR April 29, 2022; 71(17): 606-608

^13, 16 CDC MMWR March 18, 2022; 71(11): 429-436

¹⁵ FDA. Briefing Document on EUA amendment request for Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use in children 6 months […]. VRBPAC Meeting June 15, 2022

^17, 20 SSRN June 23, 2022

^18, 23 Robert Malone Substack June 22, 2022

¹⁹ The Daily Sceptic June 22, 2022

²¹ SPEAC October 26, 2021

²² Canadian COVID Care Alliance, More Harm Than Good

²⁴ Jackanapes Substack June 16, 2022

^25, 29 Paul Alexander Substack June 27, 2022

²⁶ the New American June 27, 2022

^27, 28 Steve Kirsch Substack June 25, 2022

³⁰ Andrology June 17, 2022 DOI: 10.111/andr.13209

³¹ Expose June 26, 2022

³² Bloomberg June 21, 2022

³³ Twitter Jikkyleaks June 26, 2022

³⁴ SWPRS June 2022

^{35, 36, 38, 41} The Defender June 27, 2022

³⁷ FDA Briefing Document June 28, 2022

^39, 40 Daily Caller June 23, 2022

Featured image is from Mercola

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An open letter to the MHRA:

Below is a letter signed by 76 doctors in the UK, to the Medical and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and other U.K. Government officials. This letter lays out comprehensive reasons why the recent U.S. FDA decision authorizing COVID vaccinations in infants and young children must not happen in the UK. The letter is well-sourced and accurate. Let us hope that main-stream media here in the USA and in the UK report on this letter in an unbiased fashion.

(the letter continues)

We are writing to you urgently concerning the announcement that the FDA has granted an Emergency Use Authorization for both Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines in preschool children.

We would urge you to consider very carefully the move to vaccinate ever younger children against SARS-CoV-2, despite the gradual but significant reducing virulence of successive variants, the increasing evidence of rapidly waning vaccine efficacy, the increasing concerns over long-term vaccine harms, and the knowledge that the vast majority of this young age group have already been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 repeatedly and have demonstrably effective immunity. Thus, the balance of benefit and risk which supported the rollout of mRNA vaccines to the elderly and vulnerable in 2021 is totally inappropriate for small children in 2022.

We also strongly challenge the addition of COVID-19 vaccination into the routine child immunization program despite no demonstrated clinical need, known and unknown risks (see below) and the fact that these vaccines still have only conditional marketing authorization.

It is noteworthy that the Pfizer documentation presented to the FDA has huge gaps in the evidence provided:

• The protocol was changed mid-trial. The original two-dose schedule exhibited poor immunogenicity with efficacy far below the required standard. A third dose was added by which time many of the original placebo recipients had been vaccinated.
• There was no statistically significant difference between the placebo and vaccinated groups in either the 6–23-month age group or the 2-4-year-olds, even after the third dose. Astonishingly, the results were based on just three participants in the younger age group (one vaccinated and two placebo) and just seven participants in the older 2–4-year-olds (two vaccinated and five placebo). Indeed, for the younger age group the confidence intervals ranged from minus-367% to plus-99%. The manufacturer stated that the numbers were too low to draw any confident conclusions. Moreover, these limited numbers come only from children infected more than seven days after the third dose.
• Over the whole time period from the first dose onwards (see page 39 Tables 19 and 20), there were a total of 225 infected children in the vaccinated arm and 150 in the placebo arm, giving a calculated vaccine efficacy of only 25% (14% for the 6-23 months, and 33% for 2-4s).
• The additional immunogenicity studies against Omicron, requested by the FDA, only involved a total of 66 children tested one month after the third dose (see page 35).

It is incomprehensible that the FDA considered that this represents sufficient evidence on which to base a decision to vaccinate healthy children. When it comes to safety, the data are even thinner: only 1,057 children, some already unblinded, were followed for just two months. It is noteworthy that Sweden and Norway are not recommending the vaccine for 5-11s and Holland is not recommending it for children who have already had COVID-19. The director of the Danish Health and Medicines Authority stated recently that with what is now known, the decision to vaccinate children was a mistake.

We summarize below the overwhelming arguments against this vaccination.

A.  Extremely low risk from COVID-19 to young children

• In the whole of 2020 and 2021, not a single child aged 1-9 died where COVID-19 was the sole diagnosis on the death certificate, according to ONS data.
• A detailed study in England from March 1st 2020 to March 1st 2021 found only six children under 18 years died with no co-morbidities. There were no deaths aged 1-4 years.
• Children clear the virus more easily than adults.
• Children mount effective, robust, and sustained immune responses.
• Since the arrival of the Omicron variant, infections have been generally much milder. That is also true for unvaccinated under-5s.
• By June 2022 it is now estimated that 89% of 1-4-year-olds had already had SARS-CoV-2 infection.
• Recent data from Israel show excellent long-lasting immunity following infection in children, especially in 5-11s.

B.  Poor vaccine efficacy 

• In adults, it has become apparent that vaccine efficacy wanes steadily over time, necessitating boosters at regular intervals. Specifically, vaccine efficacy has waned more rapidly against the latest Omicron variants.
• In children, vaccine efficacy has waned more rapidly in 5-11s than in 12-17s, possibly related to the lower dose used in the pediatric formulation. One studyfrom New York showed efficacy against Omicron falling to only 12% by 4-5 weeks and to negative values by 5-6 weeks post second dose.
• In the Pfizer 0-4s trial, the efficacy after two doses fell to negative values, necessitating a change to the trial protocol. After a third dose there was a suggestion of efficacy from 7-30 days but there is no data beyond 30 days to see how quickly this will wane.

C. Potential harms of COVID-19 vaccines for children

• There has been great concern about myocarditis in adolescents and young adults, especially in males after the second dose, estimated at one per 2,600 in active post-marketing surveillance in Hong Kong. The emerging evidenceof persistent cardiac abnormalities in adolescents with post-mRNA vaccine myopericarditis, as demonstrated by cardiac MRI at 3-8 months follow up, suggests this is far from ‘mild and short-lived’. The potential for longer term effects requires further study and calls for the strictest application of the precautionary principle in respect of the youngest and most vulnerable children.
• Although post-vaccination myocarditis appears to be less common in 5-11-year-olds than older children, it is, nonetheless, increased over baseline.
• In the Pfizer study, 50% of vaccinated children had systemic adverse events, including irritability and fever. Diagnosis of myocarditis is much more difficult in younger children. No troponin levels or ECG studies were documented. Even a vaccinated child in the trial, hospitalized with fever, calf pain and a raised CPK, had no report of D-dimers, anti-platelet antibodies or troponin levels.
• In Pfizer’s 5-11s post-authorization conditions, it is required to conduct studies looking for myocarditis and is not due to report results until 2027.
• Of equal concern are, as yet unknown, negative effects on the immune system. In the 0-4s trial, only seven children were described as having “severe” COVID-19 – six vaccinated and one given placebo. Similarly, for the 12 children with recurrent episodes of infection, 10 were vaccinated against only two who received placebo. These are all tiny figures and much too small to rule out any adverse impact such as antibody dependent enhancement (ADE) and other impacts on the immune system.
• Also unanswered is the question of Original Antigenic Sin. It is of note that in a large Israeli study, those infected after vaccination had poorer cover than those vaccinated after infection. In the Moderna trial, N-antibodies were seen in only 40% of those infected after vaccination, compared with 93% of those infected after placebo.
• There is evidence of vaccine-induced disruption of both innate and adaptive immune responses. The possibility of developing an impaired immune function would be disastrous for children, who have the most competent innate immunity, which by now has been effectively trained by the circulating virus.
• Totally unknown is whether there will be any adverse effect on T-cell function leading to an increase in cancers.
• Also, in terms of reproductive function, limited animal bio-distribution studiesshowed lipid nanoparticles concentrate in ovaries and testes. Adult sperm donors have showed a reduction in sperm counts particularly of motile sperm, falling by three months post-vaccination and remaining depressed at four to five months.
• Even for adults, concerns are rising that serious adverse events are in excess of hospitalizations from COVID-19.

D. Informed consent

• For 5-11s, the JCVI, in recommending a “non-urgent offer” of vaccination, specifically noted the importance of fully informed consent with no coercion.
• With the low uptake in this age group, the presence of ‘therapy dogs’, advertisements including superhero images and information about child vaccination protecting friends and family all clearly run contrary to the concept of consent, fully informed and freely given.
• The complete omission of information explaining to the public the different and novel technology used in COVID-19 vaccines compared to standard vaccines, and the failure to inform of the lack of any long-term safety data, borders on misinformation.

E. Effect on public confidence 

• Vaccines against much more serious diseases, such as polio and measles, need to be prioritized. Pushing an unnecessary and novel, gene-based vaccine on to young children risks seriously undermining parental confidence in the whole immunization program.
• The poor quality of the data presented by Pfizer risks bringing the pharmaceutical industry into disrepute and the regulators if this product is authorized.

In summary, young healthy children are at minimal risk from COVID-19, especially since the arrival of the Omicron variant. Most have been repeatedly exposed to SARS-CoV-2 virus, yet have remained well, or have had short, mild illness. As detailed above, the vaccines are of brief efficacy, have known short- to medium-term risks and unknown long-term safety. Data for clinically useful efficacy in small children are scant or absent. In older children, for whom the vaccines are already licensed, they have been promoted via ethically dubious schemes to the potential detriment of other, and vital, parts of the childhood vaccination program.

For a tiny minority of children for whom the potential for benefit clearly and unequivocally outweighed the potential for harm, vaccination could have been facilitated by restrictive licenses. Whether following the precautionary principle or the instruction to First Do No Harm, such vaccines have no place in a routine childhood immunization program.

(Signed):

Professor Angus Dalgleish, MD, FRCP, FRACP, FRCPath, FMed Sci, Principal, Institute for Cancer Vaccines & Immunotherapy (ICVI)

Professor Anthony Fryer, PhD, FRCPath, Professor of Clinical Biochemistry, Keele University

Professor David Livermore, BSc, PhD, Retired Professor of Medical Microbiology, UEA

Professor John Fairclough FRCS FFSEM retired Honorary Consultant Surgeon

Lord Moonie,  MBChB, MRCPsych, MFCM, MSc, House of Lords, former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State 2001-2003, formerCconsultant in Public Health Medicine

Dr Abby Astle, MA(Cantab), MBBChir, GP Principal, GP Trainer, GP Examiner

Dr Michael D Bell, MBChB, MRCGP, retired General Practitioner

Dr Alan Black, MBBS, MSc, DipPharmMed, Retired Pharmaceutical Physician

Dr David Bramble, MBChB, MRCPsych, MD, Consultant Psychiatrist

Dr Emma Brierly, MBBS, MRCGP, General Practitioner

Dr David Cartland, MBChB, BMedSci, General practitioner

Dr Peter Chan, BM, MRCS, MRCGP, NLP, General Practitioner, Functional medicine practitioner

Michael Cockayne, MSc, PGDip, SCPHNOH, BA, RN, Occupational Health Practitioner

Julie Coffey, MBChB, General Practitioner

John Collis, RN, Specialist Nurse Practitioner, retired

Mr Ian F Comaish, MA, BM BCh, FRCOphth, FRANZCO, Consultant Ophthalmologist

James Cook, NHS Registered Nurse, Bachelor of Nursing (Hons), Master of Public Health

Dr Clare Craig, BMBCh, FRCPath, Pathologist

Dr David Critchley, BSc, PhD in Pharmacology, 32 years’ experience in Pharmaceutical R&D

Dr Jonathan Engler, MBChB, LlB (hons), DipPharmMedDr Elizabeth Evans, MA (Cantab), MBBS, DRCOG, Retired Doctor

Dr John Flack, BPharm, PhD, retired Director of Safety Evaluation at Beecham Pharmaceuticals and retired Senior Vice president for Drug Discovery SmithKline Beecham

Dr Simon Fox, BSc, BMBCh, FRCP, Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine

Dr Ali Haggett, Mental health community work, 3rd sector, former lecturer in the history of medicine

David Halpin, MB BS FRCS, Orthopaedic and trauma surgeon (retired)

Dr Renée Hoenderkampf, General Practitioner

Dr Andrew Isaac, MB BCh, Physician, retired

Dr Steve James, Consultant Intensive Care

Dr Keith Johnson, BA, DPhil (Oxon), IP Consultant for Diagnostic Testing

Dr Rosamond Jones, MBBS, MD, FRCPCH, retired consultant paediatrician

Dr Tanya Klymenko, PhD, FHEA, FIBMS, Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Sciences

Dr Charles Lane, MA, DPhil, Molecular Biologist

Dr Branko Latinkic, BSc, PhD, Molecular Biologist

Dr Felicity Lillingstone, IMD DHS PhD ANP, Doctor, Urgent Care, Research Fellow

Dr Theresa Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD, Director, Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy Ltd, Bath

Katherine MacGilchrist, BSc (Hons), MSc, CEO/Systematic Review Director, Epidemica Ltd.

Dr Geoffrey Maidment, MBBS, MD, FRCP, Consultant physician, retired

Ahmad K Malik FRCS (Tr & Orth) Dip Med Sport, Consultant Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgeon

Dr Kulvinder Singh Manik, MBBS, General Practitioner

Dr Fiona Martindale, MBChB, MRCGP, General Practitioner

Dr S McBride, BSc (Hons) Medical Microbiology & Immunobiology, MBBCh BAO, MSc in Clinical Gerontology, MRCP(UK), FRCEM, FRCP (Edinburgh). NHS Emergency Medicine & Geriatrics

Mr Ian McDermott, MBBS, MS, FRCS(Tr&Orth), FFSEM(UK), Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon

Dr Franziska Meuschel, MD, ND, PhD, LFHom, BSEM, Nutritional, Environmental and Integrated Medicine

Dr Scott Mitchell, MBChB, MRCS, Emergency Medicine Physician

Dr Alan Mordue, MBChB, FFPH. Retired Consultant in Public Health Medicine & Epidemiology

Dr David Morris, MBChB, MRCP(UK), General Practitioner

Margaret Moss, MA (Cantab), CBiol, MRSB, Director, The Nutrition and Allergy Clinic, Cheshire

Dr Alice Murkies, MD FRACGP MBBS, General Practitioner

Dr Greta Mushet, MBChB, MRCPsych, retired Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy

Dr Sarah Myhill, MBBS, retired GP and Naturopathic Physician

Dr Rachel Nicholl, PhD, Medical researcher

Dr Christina Peers, MBBS, DRCOG, DFSRH, FFSRH, Menopause specialist

Rev Dr William J U Philip MB ChB, MRCP, BD, Senior Minister The Tron Church, Glasgow, formerly physician specialising in cardiology

Dr Angharad Powell, MBChB, BSc (hons), DFRSH, DCP (Ireland), DRCOG, DipOccMed, MRCGP, General Practitioner

Dr Gerry Quinn, PhD. Postdoctoral researcher in microbiology and immunology

Dr Johanna Reilly, MBBS, General Practitioner

Jessica Righart, MSc, MIBMS, Senior Critical Care Scientist

Mr Angus Robertson, BSc, MB ChB, FRCSEd (Tr & Orth), Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon

Dr Jessica Robinson, BSc(Hons), MBBS, MRCPsych, MFHom, Psychiatrist and Integrative Medicine Doctor

Dr Jon Rogers, MB ChB (Bristol), Retired General Practitioner

Mr James Royle, MBChB, FRCS, MMedEd, Colorectal surgeon

Dr Roland Salmon, MB BS, MRCGP, FFPH, Former Director, Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre Wales

Sorrel Scott, Grad Dip Phys, Specialist Physiotherapist in Neurology, 30 years in NHS

Dr Rohaan Seth, BSc (hons), MBChB (hons), MRCGP, Retired General Practitioner

Dr Gary Sidley, retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist

Dr Annabel Smart, MBBS, retired General Practitioner

Natalie Stephenson, BSc (Hons) Paediatric Audiologist

Dr Zenobia Storah,MA (Oxon), Dip Psych, DClinPsy, Senior Clinical Psychologist (Child and Adolescent)

Dr Julian Tompkinson, MBChB MRCGP, General Practitioner GP trainer PCME

Dr Noel Thomas, MA, MBChB, DCH, DObsRCOG, DTM&H, MFHom, retired doctor

Dr Stephen Ting, MB CHB, MRCP, PhD, Consultant Physician

Dr Livia Tossici-Bolt, PhD, Clinical Scientist

Dr Carmen Wheatley, DPhil, Orthomolecular Oncology

Dr Helen Westwood MBChB MRCGP DCH DRCOG, General Practitioner

Mr Lasantha Wijesinghe, FRCS, Consultant Vascular Surgeon

Dr Damian Wilde, PhD, (Chartered) Specialist Clinical Psychologist

Dr Ruth Wilde, MB BCh, MRCEM, AFMCP, Integrative & Functional Medicine Doctor

*

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***

Ever since Operation Warp Speed was launched by Donald Trump, rates of disability across America have skyrocketed.

A shocking number of people who were previously healthy are now permanently damaged, the only thing that changed in their lives being that they took the “clot shots,” also known as Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) “vaccines.”

From 2016 to 2020, the disability rate among people 16 years of age and older living in the United States remained stable. Then, right after Fauci Flu shots were unleashed, there was a sharp uptick in serious injuries that have left millions unable to work and live as normal.

A Twitter page that monitors all-cause mortality across the U.S. posted a graph recently showing a direct correlation between increased jab compliance and rising disability rates. In early 2021, the disability rate soared from 30 million Americans to nearly 33 million Americans, it showed.

Within hours of posting this graph, the Twitter account in question was flagged for spreading “disinformation,” even though it was backed by data. The same account was also locked and comments on and sharing of the post were disabled.

Officially, there were 14,181 people with permanent disabilities stemming from Chinese Virus injections as of May 27, 2022. But the true number, since only a tiny fraction of vaccine injuries ever gets reported, is likely far higher. (Related: Covid injections are also linked to the destruction of men’s sperm.)

After each vaccination spike, there was a subsequent disability spike

The aforementioned Twitter account flat-out asked the question: Are covid injections responsible for the nearly three million-case increase in disabilities post-Operation Warp Speed? The answer to this question seems obvious.

Even just insinuating it, though, is a prohibited offense on social media because it calls into question the “safety and effectiveness” of the jabs. This is never supposed to happen, we now know.

Going by the metric that suggests only about one percent of vaccine injuries ever make it into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the official 14,181 figure makes sense.

“Seeing this … without a rise in disability reports would be surprising,” reported el gato malo. “[W]e see 14k permanently disabled in VAERS. [A]nd we see a rise in the disabled rolls of 1.8 million.”

“[T]hat’s pretty close to the 1-2% capture rate (more like 1%, but also likely capturing other categories as well, so hard to be precise) for reporting we’ve seen around other VAERS issues (besides death which seems to get better counted) so it feels like we’re in a ballpark here.”

Additional data collected from FRED and OWID (Our World in Data) suggests that disability rates really started spiking around April 21 of last year, right as Trump’s Operation Warp Speed mass jab campaign really started coming into full force for the first time.

When vaccination uptake first peaked around May, it was followed by a massive disability peak in June. When vaccination uptake peaked once again in August, disability rates spiked once again come October.

As 2021 came to a close, vaccination started to flatten out, followed by a flatting in rates of disability come March. Each time, there was a direct correlation between the shots and permanent injuries.

“2 month lag, 1 month lag, 2 month lag, 2 month lag. 4 separate inflections all tracked in near identical and highly plausible timeframes for vaccine injury. [W]e’re starting to get past ‘suggestive’ here,” el gato malo added.

“[T]his zigs, zags, then zigs again, then zags again all as predicted if it were causal and all with the sort of lag you’d associate with reporting, 1-2 months. (all 2 mo save may – jun 21).”

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***

Former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx revealed that the federal government was relying on “hope” that COVID-19 vaccines would prevent infection when officials publicly stated that Americans who received the jab would become immune to the virus.

The admission came during a line of questioning by Rep. Jim Jordan, who inquired to the former Trump administration official: “When the government told us that the vaccinated couldn’t transmit it, was that a lie or is it a guess?”

“I think it was hope that the vaccine would work in that way,” she replied.

Dr. Birx’s comments follow a host of studies determining that the COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t confer protection as comprehensively as natural immunity. Data during the Omicron surge also showed that vaccinated people in Germany comprised the overwhelming majority of individuals contracting the variant.

“You were part of this effort when you were in the previous administration. And you’re saying in this administration that you can’t rule out the fact that our government was lying to us when they told us the vaccinated could not get the virus,” Rep. Jordan continued.

“I don’t know about their discussions that they had in the task force. So I can’t tell you that,” she began, adding “I can tell you as a family member who had individuals that were susceptible, of course, we got everybody vaccinated. But we still used layered protection during surges.”

Despite being vaccinated, Dr. Birx took additional precautions “because I knew potentially vaccine immunity would wane like natural immunity waned.”

“There was evidence that every four months, reinfection was occurring in South Africa.”

Revelations about the questionable efficacy of the vaccine come amidst the White House, Democratic governors, and left-wing companies attempting to mandate the jab for employees and customers. Users sharing data highlighting the weakness of the vaccine on social media platforms such as Facebook have also been hastily censored by left-wing “fact-checking” organizations.

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Natalie Winters is the Lead Investigative Reporter at the National Pulse and co-host of The National Pulse podcast.

Canada’s National Police Force Admits Use of Spyware to Hack Phones

By Maura Forrest, July 04, 2022

In a “remarkable” disclosure, Canada’s national police force has described for the first time how it uses spyware to infiltrate mobile devices and collect data, including by remotely turning on the camera and microphone of a suspect’s phone or laptop.

Ukraine in the EU and NATO? The Two Europes

By Konrad Rękas, July 04, 2022

Does Ukraine have any chance to join European structures, and if so… which ones and how? Well, the simplest is the situation of Western Ukraine (i.e. the former Polish Borderlands).  That area can become a part of EU simply in effect of loudly proposed union with Poland.

Geopolitical Bombshell: Saudi Arabia in Discussion with China to Join BRICS+ Coalition. What Impacts on the Energy Market and the Global Economy?

By Sundance, July 04, 2022

We have been closely monitoring the signs of a global split around the energy sector taking place.  Essentially, western governments’ following the “Build Back Better” climate change agenda which stops using coal, oil and gas to power their economic engine, while the rest of the growing economic world continues using the more efficient and traditional forms of energy to power their economies.

A Chaotic Upside Down World: Endless Wars, Food Shortages, Eugenics and the “Digitization of Everything”: The WEF Agenda 2030

By Peter Koenig, July 04, 2022

A chaotic upside-down world, where injustice is justice, war is peace and good and bad are reversible at will, has been emerging over the last decades. Gradually. But ever more severely, to the point where most everyone is confused, preferring holding on to his / her comfort zone, also called cognitive dissonance.

America’s “Holy War” to Conquer Russia and China Declared by Mike Pompeo

By Eric Zuesse, July 04, 2022

On June 24th, at the think tank, the Hudson Institute, U.S. President Trump’s CIA chief and Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, delivered a 5,000+-word speech, suggesting that America has an essentially God-assigned mission to control the world, so as to preserve freedom and democracy for everybody, and that victory against Russia and China is therefore obligatory for the United States and its allies, not only to serve God but also to serve God’s People, because “central to the economic wellbeing of American families is a United States that leads.

What the Flag Means to Me. Brian Willson

By Brian S. Willson, July 04, 2022

It wasn’t until many years later, while reading an issue of the armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes in Vietnam, that I began thinking and feeling differently about the flag and what it represents. There was a story about an arrest for flag burning somewhere in the United States.

Ukraine Is Losing the War. What Is the Next Phase? The Planning of a Covert “Insurgent War” Against the Russians

By Kurt Nimmo, July 04, 2022

As of Sunday, the Russian armed forces captured Lysychansk, a large city in the Luhansk region of the Donbas. The Russian objective is to prevent the Ukrainian military and its ultranationalist component from ethnically cleansing the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic.

West Closes Ranks for Battle with Russia: US-NATO, G7 “Deploys All Its Weapons” to Maintain World Dominance

By Manlio Dinucci, July 04, 2022

Two summits in a row, those of the G7 and NATO, show that the West is deploying all its weapons – military, political, economic – to maintain the dominance it is losing in a world that is becoming increasingly multipolar, as evidenced by the growing development of the BRICS: the economic organization that brings together Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, which Iran, Argentina and other countries want to join.

Something to Think About on the Fourth of July: “The Nazification of America”

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, July 04, 2022

July 4th flag waving cannot restore our liberty.  Americans, of course, will stick their heads in the sand and go into denial, as they always do when faced with uncomfortable facts about their country.  Consequently, nothing will be done to stop the Nazification of America.

Bill Gates Granted Authority to Buy 2100 More Acres of North Dakota Farmland

By Steve Watson, July 04, 2022

Bill Gates, who already owns close to 270,000 acres of land in the U.S., has been granted the legal authority to buy another 2100 acres in North Dakota despite protests by local residents. Gates, already the largest farmland owner in the country, has secured the go ahead to buy the land for $13.5 million under his ‘Red River Trust’ company.

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***

The status of a candidate for membership in the European Union is currently maybe not the greatest of Ukraine’s problems, but it is also certainly not a reason for joy for ordinary Ukrainians.  In practice, the association with the EU, and then the candidate period are sometimes more important – and destructive – than the final accession.  This is a time when the most important changes in the economy of the aspiring country take place, and usually after the final absorption there is nothing left to protect or to participate with in the so-called common economic policy.  This is confirmed by the experience of the Central European members of the EU doomed to peripherality.

Two Europes

However, does Ukraine have any chance to join European structures, and if so… which ones and how?

Well, the simplest is situation of the Western Ukraine (i.e. the former Polish Borderlands).  That area can become a part of EU simply in effect of loudly proposed union with Poland.  How be it this part is economically underdeveloped, less attractive for the West.

Therefore, the point is to get more time to grab Central Ukraine agricultural and energy resources.  Especially the Anglo-Saxons order Kiev to prolong the fight so that Ukrainian potential, energy sector and land can be exploited longer.

Although finally Ukrainians must be aware that the issue of further European integration, also with their participation, is more than doubtful when Europe is increasingly divided into two blocs.  Countries of the former Coal and Steel Community, then the EEC, and now mainly the euro-zone – under the aegis of Germany and France accelerate and deepen creation of a single federal European state.  At the same time, under British leadership there are visible attempts to withdraw from the EU at least some of the Central European countries, including Poland and Baltic States.  Of course this operation is provided not in economic, by only military and political purpose.  After all, no one would allow Ukrainians to join the developed zone of close integration, so they can only count on a Brit-Union with Poland, Lithuania and Romania, which means permanent sharing of common poverty and eternal war.

Russian-European cooperation

Importantly, granting of the candidate status to Ukraine was quite calm, and even … kindly received in Moscow, emphasising that the EU is a political and economic, not a military alliance.  In fact, there are no conflicting interests between Russia and Europe (the European Union).  Especially in the field of economy and energy policy, cooperation turned out to be mutually beneficial.  Paradoxically, getting rid of the Atlantis Trojan Horses from the EU could only facilitate a return to cooperation, because its necessity is obvious to Western economic circles.

Regardless of what energy technologies are to be developed in the EU and how ambitious climate targets are set – none of them can be achieved in the real perspective without the full resumption of gas import from Russia.  Neither France, nor Germany, nor Italy are willing and able to support mindless sanctions and an endless trade war sustainably and sincerely. Europe can and should become one of the full-fledged centres of the multipolar World, but that status could be achieved only by doing business with natural Eurasian hinterland.  If Ukraine, sovereignly, i.e. without the oligarchs, Nazis, the comprador class and neo-colonialism, would see itself in such an environment, then this should not be a problem for Russia.  Obviously, Russian-European relations will always sooner or later turn to cooperation again, even the hard one.  Only Anglo-Saxon Atlantism / Imperialism would prefer war and aggression, but hopefully the Ukrainians have already noticed that their country does not lie on the Atlantic Ocean …

Vilnius like Sarajevo?

This does not mean, however, that the risk of the Ukrainian war spilling over to other countries no longer exists.  Unfortunately, we can still hear not only Kiev (increasingly quieter), but also Polish and Baltic calls to arm race and continuing fight against Russia.  And yet no one in our countries, especially after the Ukrainian experience, should have any illusions about the “guarantees of help and defence” given by the Westerners.  For the sake of clarity, if anything happens – Poles and Lithuanians will fight and die for the Americans and the English, not opposite. As the Ukrainians do today.  The Anglo-Saxons bravely encourage them to resist, declaring their support, but these are the Ukrainians who are to perish.  This has always been the case in history and geopolitics.  Our nations are needed as cannon fodder and cheap labour force, but no one has ever intended to defend us.

Meanwhile, the greatest war risk is slowly shifting from Ukraine to Lithuania.  Vilnius declaration of the Kaliningrad Oblast blockade seems to be coordinated with increasing British Army presence in Estonia to 3,000 soldiers and sending HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales carrier strike groups to the Baltic Sea.  In turn, in Poland war-propaganda focuses on the alleged Russian-Belarusian threat to the so-called “Suwałki Corridor”, that is the territory separating Kaliningrad from Belarus.  Under the pretext of defending this area, there is more than probable action against Belarus, in order to draw it into a conflict with the participation of NATO countries.  The fact that neither Poland, nor Lithuania are now in any way ready for such a clash would obviously have no meaning, because decisions would most likely be taken in London, and not in Warsaw or Vilnius.

Summit for peace or globalism?

Stabilization in Ukraine?

First of all, more and more Kiev soldiers are fed up and decide to surrender.

Secondly there is almost nothing left to fight with, when all the advanced military equipment that is handed over (in fact sold) to Ukraine in front of the cameras actually ends up in US terrorist camps in Albania and Syria.

Thirdly, the Zelensky’s gang itself is withdrawing from NATO aspirations so far.  Even officially reported public support for joining the Pact is falling in Ukraine.  Well, better late than never, but Ukrainians could have been spared a lot of trouble by taking such a course a few months ago…

At the same time, however, London is not giving up, and the English, not the Americans, are now the main opponents of peace in Ukraine.

The United Kingdom clearly raises its voice, as we could hear when General Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of the British Army General Staff, explicitly announced the British participation in the war, calling for intensified preparations for the full-size conflict.

Boris Johnson at the G7 summit unexpectedly toned down this jingoistic outburst, but it confirms the continued increase of influence of the military-industrial complex in Anglo-Saxon politics.  When the acting high general announces that the army will “defend a threatened democracy” – it always smells like an escalation of fascism and militarism…

Even if the majority of NATO countries maintained the vision of the Pact’s Strategic Concept which would not exclude a return to partnership relations with Russia – we can be sure that the British, Canadians and Americans will torpedo every such possibility, of course bringing to the fore the noisy anti-Russian protests of Poles, Balts and Romanians.  NATO has never been a defence pact, but now it is openly acting as an organ of the Anglo-Saxon military complex interested in the Third World War.

That became real, so to speak, when the Anglo-Saxons brought their Far Eastern domains to the Madrid summit.

Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Korea fit into NATO like Israel for the Eurovision Song Contest, but Washington and London want to keep all leashes together.

The anti-Russian and anti-Chinese policy are to be coordinated jointly.

The only question is whether the Western European members of the Pact, who are keenly interested in peace, will be able to draw conclusions.

If not, Anglo-Saxon tyranny, militarism and imperialism could lead to a global catastrophe.

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

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***

It is very curious timing in this article from Newsweek, containing massive geopolitical implications, using identified Saudi Arabia sources, would come in advance of Joe Biden’s visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Is this strategic geopolitical pressure from Saudi leader Mohamed Bin Salman (MbS) ahead of the meeting with Biden; or is this a genuine possibility that looms as likely?  If the former, then Joe Biden is being geopolitically slow roasted by Saudi Arabia for his previous disparagements and ideological hypocrisy in his visit.  If it is the latter, well, then the tectonic plates of international trade, banking and economics are about to shift directly under our American feet.

We have been closely monitoring the signs of a global split around the energy sector taking place.  Essentially, western governments’ following the “Build Back Better” climate change agenda which stops using coal, oil and gas to power their economic engine, while the rest of the growing economic world continues using the more efficient and traditional forms of energy to power their economies.

This article from Newsweek is exactly about this dynamic with Saudi Arabia now potentially joining the BRICS team.

NEWSWEEK – Finland and Sweden’s green light to join NATO is set to bring about the U.S.-led Western military alliance’s largest expansion in decades. Meanwhile, the G7, consisting of NATO states and fellow U.S. ally Japan, has adopted a tougher line against Russia and China.

In the East, however, security and economy-focused blocs led by Beijing and Moscow are looking to take on new members of their own, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, two influential Middle Eastern rivals whose interest in shoring up cooperation on this new front could have a significant impact on global geopolitical balance.

The two bodies in question are the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS. The former was established in 2001 as a six-member political, economic and military coalition including China, Russia and the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan before recruiting South Asian nemeses India and Pakistan in 2017, while the latter is a grouping of emerging economic powers originally consisting of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) upon its inception 2006, and including South Africa in 2010.

Here is the money quote:

[…] “China’s invitation to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to join the ‘BRICS’ confirms that the Kingdom has a major role in building the new world and became an important and essential player in global trade and economics,” Mohammed al-Hamed, president of the Saudi Elite group in Riyadh, told Newsweek. “Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is moving forward at a confident and global pace in all fields and sectors.”

[…] “This accession, if Saudi joins it, will balance the world economic system, especially since the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest exporter of oil in the world, and it’s in the G20,” Hamed said. “If it happens, this will support any economic movement and development in the world trade and economy, and record remarkable progress in social and economic aspects as Saudi Arabia should have partnerships with every country in the world.” (read more)

That would essentially be the end of the petrodollar, and -in even more consequential terms- the end of the United States ability to use the weight of the international trade currency to manipulate foreign government.  The global economic system would have an alternative.  The fracturing of the world, created as an outcome of energy development, would be guaranteed.

Keep in mind, in early June Federal reserve Chairman Jerome Powell stated, “rapid changes are taking place in the global monetary system that may affect the international role of the dollar.”  {LINK}

The western alliance (yellow) would be chasing climate change energy policy to power their economies.  The rest of the world (grey) would be using traditional and more efficient energy development.  The global cleaving around energy use would be complete.

This is not some grand conspiracy, ‘out there‘ deep geopolitical possibility, or foreboding likelihood as an outcome of short-sighted western emotion.  No, this is just a predictable outcome from western created events that pushed specific countries to a natural conclusion based on their best interests.

You can debate the motives of the western leaders who structured the sanctions against Russia, and whether they knew the outcome would happen as a consequence of their effort, but the outcome was never really in doubt.  Personally, I believe this outcome is what the west intended. The people inside the World Economic Forum are not stupid – ideological, yes, but not stupid. They knew this global cleaving would happen.

For a deep dive on BRICS, as predicted by CTH, {SEE HERE}.  The bottom line is – the 2022 punitive economic and financial sanctions by the western nations’ alliance against Russia was exactly the reason why BRICS assembled in the first place.

Multinational corporations in control of government are what the BRICS assembly foresaw when they first assembled during the Obama administration.  When multinational corporations run the policy of western government, there is going to be a problem.

In the bigger picture, the BRICS assembly are essentially leaders who do not want corporations and multinational banks running their government. BRICS leaders want their government running their government; and yes, that means whatever form of government that exists in their nation, even if it is communist.

BRICS leaders are aligned as anti-corporatist.  That doesn’t necessarily make those government leaders better stewards, it simply means they want to make the decisions, and they do not want corporations to become more powerful than they are.  As a result, if you really boil it down to the common denominator, what you find is the BRICS group are the opposing element to the World Economic Forum assembly.

The BRICS team intend to create an alternative option for all the other nations. An alternative to the current western trade and financial platforms operated on the use of the dollar as a currency.  Perhaps many nations will use both financial mechanisms depending on their need.

The objective of the BRICS group is simply to present an alternative trade mechanism that permits them to conduct business regardless of the opinion of the multinational corporations in the ‘western alliance.’

The BRICS team, especially if Saudi Arabia, Iran and Argentina are added creating BRICS+, would indeed be a counterbalance to the control of western trade and finance.  This global cleaving is moving from a possibility to a likelihood.  If Saudi Arabia joins BRICS the fracture becomes almost certain.

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***

In the wake of the COVID jab rollout and additional boosters, a number of health conditions are on the rise, including cancer, most notably cancers of the uterus, endometrial cancers, and very aggressive blood and brain cancers

Cancer has been on the rise for decades, thanks to dietary factors, but the COVID jabs appear to dramatically accelerate the disease process. Many doctors report cancer patients with stable disease, and those who have been in remission for years, will suddenly and rapidly develop Stage 4 disease

A military whistleblower has come forward with data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) database showing dramatic increases in medical visits for cancers and other conditions, post-jab

For neurological side effects of the shot, four remedies that can be very helpful are fluvoxamine (an antidepressant that blocks cytokine production in neural tissues), pharmaceutical grade methylene blue (improves mitochondrial respiration and repair), near-infrared light (triggers production of melatonin in your mitochondria) and hyperbaric oxygen therapy (boosts mitochondrial function, decreases inflammation and much more)

The COVID jabs also downregulate toll-like receptors 7 and 8, which allows latent viruses such as herpes EBV4 — Epstein-Barr, aka, mononucleosis — to flourish that would otherwise have been kept in check

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Dr. Ryan Cole, an anatomic clinical pathologist with a subspecialty in skin pathology and postgraduate Ph.D. training in immunology, has been on the frontlines exposing the fraudulent COVID narrative.

Since 2004, he’s been operating his own business, a pathology laboratory, which gives him rare freedom and flexibility to comment on what he’s seeing. Most others would lose their jobs for speaking out the way Cole has.

Truth Telling Is a Risky Business

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t paid a price for speaking out about and defending real science though. He’s triple board certified and has 12 state licenses, and because of his stance against COVID recommendations, some of the credentialing organizations have taken action against him.

“I’ve seen 500,000 patients diagnostically in my career through the microscope. So, I have a long track record of diagnostics. I have not had a patient care complaint against me in 26 years of being a physician,” he says. “I still don’t, and this is what’s fascinating.

Of those 12 licenses, four were under attack, three are still under attack — in Washington, Arizona and Minnesota — [yet there’s] not a single patient care complaint. All the attacks against me have been political complaints to boards of medicine, which is not legal for them to do. Not a single one of those complaints is from a patient.

And then — really the most egregious thing — was ex parte, without me being present, without even sending a certified letter, the College of American Pathologists removed my fellowship status, which is defamatory.

He’s also lost about half of his business, as two insurance companies canceled him for “unprofessional behavior,” i.e., for sharing and discussing the science of COVID, and one of his best friends, whom he’s worked with for 12 years, canceled their business relationship as he didn’t want Cole’s outspokenness to affect his business. “All because of the defamation by the media, so to tell the truth in this day and age is a dangerous thing,” he says.

Suspicions Arose Early On

From his Ph.D. work in immunology, Cole was very aware of SARS-CoV-1 and MERS, having studied both, so when the warp speed program to develop a pandemic SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was announced, he became immediately suspicious.

“I thought, wait a minute, you can’t vaccinate against corona viruses!” he says. “This family of viruses is not amenable to vaccination, based on mutation rates. So, my concern was very high, early on.”

Cole’s lab ramped up PCR testing, using a cycle threshold (CT) of 35, rather than the recommended 40 to 45, as he knew that high a CT would result in 98% false positives. On a side note, pathologists not only assess tissue samples and biopsies, they’re also in charge of testing. The head of every major clinical lab is a pathologist. They’re basically in charge of quality control.

“As pathologist, we’re constantly looking at patterns, be it under the microscope or be it in lab data. We’re looking at blood reports. We’re looking at what’s out of range on blood reports. We’re looking at microbiology. We’re looking at molecular biology. We’re looking at cultures. We’re looking at pap smears. We’re looking, across the board, at those clinical parameters in addition to tissue biopsies,” he explains.

“I have 70 employees, and if there’s a blood smear that looks unusual, they bring it to me. If there are parameters on a test that look widely out of range, they bring it to me. And I call and talk to the clinician — [I’m the] doctor to the doctor. We have a consultation practice with the clinicians so I can help them understand what’s happening with their patient, and then they can make clinical decisions going forward.”

Post-Jab Cancer Explosion

One of the apparent side effects of the COVID jab that Cole has been warning and talking about is cancer. He explains:

“Obviously, during COVID, we saw some parameters change in blood tests. There was a concern about clotting. We saw elevated clotting factors. We know that the early variants were pretty severe in terms of inducing clotting, which was a shame because the whole world should have been simply using anti-inflammatories, steroids and anti-clotting agents, and so many more people would’ve lived.

My colleague, Dr. [Shankara] Chetty in South Africa, was having phenomenal success with antihistamine steroids and anti-clotting agents. So anyway, that first year, we saw drops in white blood cell counts, we saw decreases in certain subsets of T-cells. But when the shots rolled out, things changed.

At first I noticed kind of an innocuous little bump that we see usually in children. It’s a little virus called molluscum contagiosum [that causes] a little white bump.

Usually, by the time you’re a tween or early teen, you’ve built immunity to that and you never get them again, or rarely get them again. But after the shots rolled out, all of a sudden, in 80-year-olds, 70-year-olds, 60-year-olds, 50-year-olds, I started seeing literally a 20-fold increase in this little innocuous viral bump. And I thought, ‘Uh oh, this means they’ve lost immune memory’ …

Those subsets of T-cells that keep viruses in check are very important for keeping cancer in check. And this is where immunology jumps into the picture. All of us have some atypical cells, and we have the ‘Marines’ of our immune system, our natural killer (NK) cells. They’re on the frontline circulating. We have about 30 billion T-cells circulating in our blood, many of which are killer cells and NK cells.

Our other innate cells are our macrophages, monocytes and dendritic cells. They’re on that frontline. They’re shaking hands with every cell in your body all day long saying, ‘Friend or foe? Friend or foe? Oh gosh, this one has some mutations, it’s now a foe.’ They’ll poke a little hole in it, throw in a little enzyme called a grandzyme — a ‘hand grenade’ — blow up that cell, and we’re good.

But what happened after these shots rolled out is that many of those cell subsets started decreasing in number. The first cancer I saw uptick was cancers of the uterus, endometrial cancers. Usually, I would see maybe two endometrial cancers a month. All of a sudden, a few months after the rollout of the shots, I was seeing two or three a week.

Another subspecialty area of focus for me is melanoma. And I started seeing melanomas, not only in younger patients, as the shots dropped down in age cohort, but they were thicker. The other fascinating thing was they’re more aggressive in terms of how many dividing cells was present in each tumor. I’m still seeing this.

Beyond that … I’ve been traveling the country and the world quite a bit … and wherever I go now, I have doctors and nurses approach me saying, ‘What you’re saying, we’ve been seeing.’

I was having a conversation with a chair of a large oncology department in Tallahassee, and he said, ‘I usually see an aggressive brain cancer in a young patient maybe every decade.’ After the boosters rolled out, he saw five astrocytomas, five aggressive brain cancers, in one month.

Then, I’m in Jacksonville the next day, having a conversation with a family doctor. He said, ‘Gosh, it’s strange, I usually see a kidney cancer in a young patient every decade or so. I’ve seen five in the last month.’

Then I was in the UK a couple weeks ago. I had a doctor from Ireland who’s been a practicing family doc, GP, for 36 years, and he said, ‘I have seen more cancer in my young patients ever since the shots rolled out, and the booster, than I have ever seen in my entire career.’

Same thing, a nurse that works emergency department in the UK, [said she’s seen] not only the heart inflammation in young children, but cancers in young patients and aggressive leukemias. So everywhere I go, I have doctors confirming my observations … I’ve had many of them approach me and say, ‘Hey look, I’m seeing what you’re saying, but I can’t say it because I’ll get fired.'”

Cancer Spike Is Being Covered Up

Aside from what Cole has seen in his own lab, a military whistleblower has also come forward with data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) database showing dramatic increases in medical visits for cancer, neurological diseases, infertility, autoimmune diseases and several other conditions, post-jab.¹

The DMED is one of the best databases in the world, as the Department of Defense keeps very close tabs on what’s happening with our troops. This DMED data was presented during a hearing led by Sen. Ron Johnson. A week after that hearing, the DoD froze access to the DMED, and when it reopened a week later, the data were all changed to eliminate the data spikes.

“That’s what was really shocking,” Cole says. “I think this is basically fraud to the level of Watergate, in terms of [there being] somebody behind the scenes, and then the private company that actually manages that database … manipulated it.”

The DoD has tried to explain this suspicious activity claiming a “bug” in the system had resulted in underreporting of medical conditions in the five years prior to 2021. The number of cancers and other health problems were actually higher in 2015 through 2020 than initially indicated, they said.

However, how can a program error cause data corruption for five consecutive years and then self-correct, resulting in perfect numbers for 2021? And how did they not notice the error earlier? Again, this is one of the best-kept databases in the world. And how come this “bug” only affected conditions that also just so happen to be known and/or suspected side effects of the jab?

Future Prognostication

Clearly, cancer has been on the rise for decades, thanks to dietary factors, but the COVID jabs appear to dramatically accelerate the disease process. There are no published studies to help us foretell the future, but based on what Cole has found so far, how long does he think it’ll be before conditions like cancer spiral out of control?

“That’s a great question,” he says. “One of the important findings I’ve heard from many of these clinicians is that many of their patients who have been cancer-free for three, four, five years, their PET scan looks great, no detectable disease, and after that second or third shot, all of a sudden there’s Stage 4 disease. It’s like wildfire.

And this goes back to immune suppressive mechanisms, the damage that the persistent spike protein and the persistent modified RNA (mRNA) cause. So, aggressive cancers arising very quickly are one thing we’re seeing. Because it’s a dose-dependent poisoning curve — in terms of the more spike you have circulating, the worse your immune system seems to be doing — the No. 1 thing is, don’t get another shot.

Because it is causing that immune suppression that’s allowing those cancer mechanisms. Over time … I would say we’re going to see a consistent twofold to threefold increase in certain cancers, endometrial cancers, breast cancers, cancers of the prostate, cancers that are testicular or ovarian, neurologic cancers.

This spike protein has a propensity to cross the blood brain barrier and invade neural tissues. We know what it does to mitochondrial activity in terms of inhibiting it, blocking it, ruining cytochrome C oxidase systems, decreasing ATP.

Cancer is a hypoxic state. When you don’t have good cellular activity and cellular respiration and hypo-oxygenation, you end up with mechanisms that can induce more aggressive cancer. So, I think, at a minimum, [there’ll be a] two- to threefold [increase] … over the next year or two.

We can only hope that the immune system can normalize and we come up with enough interventions and treatments that will reverse some of this, what some people call spikeopathy, or the different diseases that are being caused by this persistent spike. ‘I don’t know’ is the honest answer, but that would be my projection based on I’ve seen.”

Excess Mortality Has Dramatically Increased

Abnormal blood clotting is another commonly reported side effect of the jabs. Post-mortem investigations have revealed thick, extremely long rubbery clots, including in the arteries, which is rare. The longest Cole has seen was about two feet. We’re also seeing a lot of micro-clotting, heart inflammation (myocarditis), strokes and heart attacks — all of which can have lethal consequences.

In early January 2022, OneAmerica, a national mutual life insurance company, announced² the death rate of working-age Americans (18 to 64), in the third quarter of 2021, was 40% higher than prepandemic levels. And this excess mortality was not due to COVID infection. Many of those deaths were in fact cardiac deaths and strokes, which fits the injury profile of the COVID shots.

“After they came forward, additional insurance companies said, ‘We’re seeing anywhere from 30% to 50% increase in claims as well.’ They have no horse in the race. They’re just observing. And I say that as a pathologist too. Look, I don’t create disease. I don’t prevent disease. I’m a reporter at the scene of the crash.

My job is simply to report patterns, and then we can scientifically confirm those data patterns. And the all-cause death is increased in those who’ve gotten two, three shots. Again, it’s a dose-dependent curve. The more spike your body is making, the worse people tend to do over time.

Even Walgreens came out a couple weeks ago and showed their data. Individuals that got shots are getting COVID at higher rates. Even the mainstream media finally, last week — I think it was Good Morning America — said, ‘It’s looking like the boosters are a bad idea because it’s immune suppressing people.’

So, we’re finally making some progress and getting traction in the mainstream where at least the narrative is cracking. There’s a crack in the dam and it’s starting to leak. Hopefully it’ll rush forward and people will go, ‘Whoa, this was a bad idea. Let’s stop this chaos.’ But the FDA is trying to roll it out on [infants] of all things now … It’s really tragic.”

Why Was the Most Toxic Part of the Virus Chosen?

Considering autopsies have shown spike protein is still present at least four months after their last shot, it seems reasonable to assume that severe health problems can arise months or even years down the road. In fact, we still don’t know if the body ever stops producing spike protein once this genetically modified mRNA is injected.

“We know the spike is the inflammatory aspect of the virus, and our cells are made into spike toxin factories,” Cole says. “Studies out of the Salk Institute show that the spike is the cytotoxic aspect of [COVID-19], so we’re giving a shot that makes the toxic part of the virus, and it’s persisting.

That’s why I think we’re going to see this consistent elevation of different diseases related to the spike, be it cardiac, strokes, chronic clotting conditions, individuals dying from pulmonary emboli … It’s highly concerning that we have regulatory agencies allowing the most dangerous medical product ever released on humanity to persist in the marketplace.”

Neurological and Vascular Chaos

As predicted by MIT researcher Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., we’re now also starting to see reports of Creutzfeldt-Jakob — human mad cow disease — which is a prion disease that basically destroys the brain.

Strokes in young people and children are also on the rise. Media are now trying to convince you that this is “normal,” but it is anything but. Historically, children and teens do not die from strokes. This is a brand-new phenomenon, courtesy of the COVID jabs.

Microvascular clots (microvascular infarcts) are also a known contributing factor, in the long term, to early onset dementia. So, that’s yet another potential health avalanche in the making.

Four Helpful Remedies

I’ve quickly become a fan of pharmaceutical grade methylene blue, as it’s been shown to improve mitochondrial respiration and aid in mitochondrial repair. At 15 to 20 milligrams a day, it could potentially go a long way toward resolving some of the fatigue many suffer post-jab and post-COVID. It may also be helpful in acute strokes. The primary contraindication is if you have a G6PD deficiency (a hereditary genetic condition), in which case you should not use methylene blue at all.

Another important remedy is near-infrared light. It triggers production of melatonin in your mitochondria³ where you need it most. By mopping up reactive oxygen species, it too helps improve mitochondrial function and repair. Natural sunlight is 54.3% near-infrared radiation,⁴ so this treatment is available for free.

For neurological side effects of the shot, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant called fluvoxamine may be helpful. Cole explains the mechanism behind it:

“[Fluvoxamine] upregulates a receptor called sigma-1, which blocks another receptor called inositol-requiring enzyme 1, which is a precursor for cytokines. So, fluvoxamine will block cytokine production in neural tissues. And that’s why [it works]. It’s not because of its antidepressant effects. It’s a cytokine precursor blocker. So, you actually are decreasing a cytokine storm in neural tissues.

This is why one uses fluvoxamine. There are other SSRIs, but this mechanism is very specific to fluvoxamine. It’s a tough to tolerate drug for some people. It makes some people anxious and agitated, but if you can tolerate it for two weeks, you can really turn down those inflammatory pathways in many patients. I’m not going to say everybody, but I’ve seen it work in many patients.”

A fourth treatment suggestion is hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). This too can be phenomenally helpful for strokes, heart attacks, autoimmune diseases and neurodegenerative disorders. To learn more, see “Hyperbaric Therapy — A Vastly Underused Treatment Modality.”

IMPORTANT: COVID Shots Are Not Pharmaceutical Grade

Seneff also warned about potential unknowns arising from fragmented mRNA and impurities, as tests have shown these jabs really are NOT pharmaceutical grade, as you’d expect. Cole comments:

“These aren’t pure products, and I think this is a very important point. When Pfizer submitted vials to the European Medicines Agency to look at purity … they were in the 50% range … The TGA in Australia looked at it and said, ‘Look, these are only about 60% pure.’

This means you have a lot of fragmented sequences of mRNA that don’t have a stop or a start code on. They’re not coding for what you think they’re coding for. They’re coding for other tinier, shorter fragments. Are those mitogenic? Probably, but we don’t know. Can those reverse transcribe into our own DNA? Studies out of Sweden … show yes, they can …

And then, when they manufacture, they can’t spin and agitate these, so you get all these lipids that collect at the top of these big vats. So now you get some batches that are hyperconcentrated and some are hypoconcentrated. It appears about 5% of the batches are responsible for about 80% of the harms.”

Autoimmune Diseases of All Kinds Are To Be Expected

As explained by Cole in the interview, there’s a reason there’s never been a successful mRNA gene therapy product brought to market, despite 20 years of research effort. The persistence of synthetic mRNA with pseudouridine always caused too many problems in the animal trials to move into human trials. It caused autoimmune disease. It caused mutations. The manufacturers don’t even know if the nanolipid used to protect the mRNA is safe in humans.

“Based on the animal trials, we know there were problems and we can only predict that that’s going to happen in humanity. I want to be wrong, but from a basic immunology point of view, I don’t think I am,” Cole says.

“The nanolipid particles vary in size, interestingly. I’ve looked at some under the microscope. Some of them congeal and some of them stay tiny. But because of the fatty nature of them, they will carry their little mRNA and fractionated mRNA package to any cell in the body. And that’s the biggest concern. Now it has turned any cell in your body to a potential target [for your immune system].

An important paper came out in the European Journal of Immunology just about a month ago by Dr. Hagemann. There’s a condition called antibody dependent cellular cytotoxicity. What that means is that [the mRNA] sequence gets into your cell [and] that cell now becomes the spike factory.

That spike is on the surface of your cell. Now your NK cells that I talked about earlier say, ‘We better blow that cell up.’ So now, because there’s that spike on the surface, your immune system will destroy your own cells. This is another one of the detrimental effects.”

Pipeline Now Filled With Risky mRNA Shots

Making matters worse, even though the COVID shots have been shown to be a complete disaster, the drug industry is already working on dozens of different mRNA “vaccines,” thinking they now have carte blanche to put out whatever they want using this platform.

And the reason for this continued insanity is because our health and regulatory authorities are corrupted to the core. They are completely dishonest. They’re covering up the shocking harms, and unless something radically changes, they will allow dozens of equally dangerous mRNA gene transfer injections to be put out.

Reactivation of Latent Viruses

The COVID jabs also downregulate pattern receptors in your body called toll-like receptors. Specifically, toll-like receptors 7 and 8 are downregulated by the mRNA and pseudouridine in these shots. What does that do? It allows latent viruses to flourish that would otherwise have been kept in check.

“We’ve seen a big uptick in herpes family viruses, especially herpes EBV4, which is Epstein-Barr virus [aka] mononucleosis,” Cole says. So, for those with post-COVID or post-jab fatigue, long-COVID and those with MS-like symptoms, he recommends checking for Epstein-Barr.

About 80% of MS patients have high Epstein-Barr titers. “You will find that a lot of these individuals will have reactivated mono,” he says. For reactivated mono, methylene blue, HBOT and nebulized peroxide would all be indicated.

Fertility Under Attack

In the interview, Cole also reviews the potential impacts of the COVID jabs on the reproductive system. Menstrual dysregulation appears extremely common, as is the inability to become pregnant, despite trying for months, and spontaneous abortions are off the charts. The DMED database also showed a strong signal for fetal malformation before it was frozen and altered.

“What we’re doing to society and humanity with a previously never before used modality and product is causing horrendous harm to the human race, with no regard for science, with no regard for scientific integrity. It’s a machine gone amuck,” Cole says.

“There are darker forces behind it. A lot of people are making billions, but they’re killing people to do it. And it’s just so unethical what we’re experiencing societally. Yes, we’re causing infertility. Yes, we’re causing mutations in cancers. Yes, we’re causing heart attacks and strokes. Yes, we’re destroying the longevity of a younger generation. It is horrendous.

There’s no justification for any doctor who can look themselves in the mirror and say, ‘I feel comfortable giving this experimental product to my patients all day long.’ They need to reflect and realize they’ve lost their mind, [their] critical thinking skills.”

More Information

Sadly, almost everyone who’s credible and trustworthy has been censored and deplatformed at this point, so finding them can be a challenge. To follow Cole’s work, be sure to bookmark his website, RColeMD.com. You can also find him on the GlobalCovidSummit.org forum.

If you are vaccine injured, the Global COVID Summit has a blockchain-based forum where you can share your experience and it will never be taken down. You can’t be censored or deplatformed. Cole is available to answer questions in that forum.

They’re also starting up another website to compete with WebMD and similar pharma-run medical sites. It will eventually be available on DMED.com, which stands for “decentralized medicine.” This site is not yet live, but you can try it later. Cole will have a page there as well.

Other thought leaders worth tracking down and following include Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Paul Marik, Dr. Richard Urso, Dr. Paul Alexander, and Dr. Kirk A. Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist, and his wife, Dr. Kim Milhoan, just to name a few.

“These have been wonderful leaders in this movement for truth and sharing science,” Cole says. “All of us are part of the Global COVID Summit. We are 17,000 doctors strong and it’s very important that people understand that.

I mean, that’s more doctors than they have at the CDC or the FDA or the NIH. This is a group of critical thinking people standing up for your health, your freedom and your right to your own bodily autonomy.

I think, going forward, as people are starting to wake up and part of this narrative is cracking, let’s come back together, let’s communicate, let’s be kind, let’s help each other get back to a more loving, peaceful, communicative society. I think if we can forgive — obviously, there are things we don’t want to forget, because we don’t want this to happen again — but try to forgive people and try to help people ‘come to’ again.

Just come back together in community. I think it’s important that we really try to circle the wagons again as humanity, and hopefully come back to our senses. That’s a hopeful message I would like to share.”

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Notes

¹ Steve Kirsch Substack February 5, 2022

² The Center Square January 1, 2022

³ Physiology February 5, 2020 DOI: 10.1152/physiol.00034.2019

⁴ Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology February 2016; 155: 78-85

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In a “remarkable” disclosure, Canada’s national police force has described for the first time how it uses spyware to infiltrate mobile devices and collect data, including by remotely turning on the camera and microphone of a suspect’s phone or laptop.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police says it only uses such tools in the most serious cases, when less intrusive techniques are unsuccessful. But until now, the force has not been open about its ability to employ malware to hack phones and other devices, despite using the tools for several years. Between 2018 and 2020, the RCMP said it deployed this technology in 10 investigations.

“This is a kind of capability that they have done everything possible to keep incredibly quiet,” said Christopher Parsons, senior research associate at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

“This is a remarkable finding and, for the first time, publicly reveals that the RCMP is using spyware to infiltrate mobile devices, as well as the broad capabilities of their spyware,” he said.

The RCMP says the increasing use of encrypted communication means police need new tools to keep up. But critics say the advent of the digital era means police have access to vastly more information than ever before. They say there needs to be a public discussion about what limits to place on the use of malware and other intrusive tools.

…

The RCMP can use spyware to collect a broad range of data, including text messages, email, photos, videos, audio files, calendar entries and financial records.

The police can also gather “audio recordings of private communications and other sounds within range of the targeted device” and “photographic images of persons, places and activities viewable by the camera(s) built into the targeted device,” the document says.

Click here to read the full article.

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In early June, some news media outlets reported on an interview General Paul Nakasone, the head of US Cyber Command, had with Sky News, where he openly admitted the United States is conducting offensive cyber operations against Russia. General Nakasone explained:

“‘Hunt forward’ operations are allowing the US to search out foreign hackers and identify the tools they use against America.” Back then, Nakasone, who is also director of the NSA, stated he is “concerned every single day about the risk of a Russian cyberattack” and that the “hunt forward” activities were an “effective way of protecting America.”

He confirmed for the first time the US is conducting offensive cyber-ops against Russia in order to “support” Ukraine. “We’ve conducted a series of operations across the full spectrum; offensive, defensive, [and] information operations,” US general stated. He didn’t give any specifics, but claimed the activities of US military hackers were allegedly “lawful, conducted with complete civilian oversight of the military and through policy decided at the DoD,” adding that his job is to “provide a series of options to the secretary of defense and the president, and so that’s what I do,” declining to give any further details.

“Hunt forward is a key aspect of the Cyber Command’s partnerships. It is so powerful… because we see our adversaries and we expose their tools. Cyber Command specialists have been deployed abroad to 16 other nations where they can seek intelligence from the allies’ computer networks – always on a consensual, invitation basis,” General Nakasone said during a speech at CyCon, a conference on cyber conflict, hosted by NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence (CCDCOE) in Tallinn.

“Crucial to how hunt forward works is Cyber Command sharing the intelligence they find with the host nation. If you’re an adversary, and you’ve just spent a lot of money on a tool, and you’re hoping to utilize it readily in a number of different intrusions, suddenly it’s outed and it’s now been signatured across a broad range of networks, and suddenly you’ve lost your ability to do that,” the general said. “In one such hunt forward deployment, US military specialists had been present in Ukraine very close to the date of the invasion. We went in December 2021 at the invitation of the Kiev government to come and hunt with them. We stayed there for a period of almost 90 days,” he added.

The revelation didn’t catch much attention from Western state-run mass media, or at least not as one would expect for such a groundbreaking admission. What garnered even less attention was a statement by Zhao Lijian, China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman. When asked about the US cyber aggression against Russia, he responded:

“We have noticed relevant reports and are concerned over the dangerous and irresponsible US behavior. The US needs to explain to the international community how these ‘offensive hacking operations’ are consistent with its professed position of not engaging directly in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The US and NATO have said cyber-attacks can be considered an ‘armed attack’. The US also declared earlier that it could respond to cyber-attacks with conventional means or even nuclear weapons. According to its own logic of policy-making, the above-mentioned US operations could lead to the possibility of escalating the Russia-Ukraine conflict situation and even triggering a nuclear attack.

It’s quite obvious that the US is conducting a dangerous experiment in the context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The US believes that with an unrivalled military cyber capability, it is able to unilaterally control the scale and consequences of offensive hacking operations. However, the reality might not necessarily follow the US’s design. If the situation gets out of control, it will end up harming the common interests of the international community, the US included. Besides, the US has also declared repeatedly about ‘Forward Deployment’ of cyber military forces in some small and medium-sized countries. These countries need to keep their eyes wide open and beware whether such deployment could embroil them in a conflict they don’t seek.

Cyberspace is the common space of activities for mankind. We urge the US to change its dangerous and irresponsible behavior and join the international community in safeguarding peace and security in cyberspace.”

Indeed, NATO is contemplating the inclusion of cyber warfare in the controversial Article 5, the “collective defense” clause considered to be its cornerstone. The sheer hypocrisy of the political West’s actions and statements is nearly impossible to overstate. This has become so obvious that the world is plainly speaking sick and tired of it. Prior to the West’s escalating actions which forced Russia’s hand and the aggressive moves and rhetoric in regard to China, Mr. Lijian’s statements were usually very reserved. However, ever since, China has become more direct in criticizing US aggression against the world.

This also includes Russia’s former president and head of its Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, who has lashed out at the West multiple times so far, including a call for Russia to stop negotiating with the political West, which has broken nearly all international treaties and laws.

In addition to Russia, NATO and its numerous vassals have openly targeted China during the already infamous Madrid summit. The new policy will certainly result in further destabilization of the world. However, for the political West this is not merely an acceptable consequence, but also desirable, as their long-obsolete “purely defensive alliance” will finally get the “much-needed” reinvigoration.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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On June 24th, at the think tank, the Hudson Institute, U.S. President Trump’s CIA chief and Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, delivered a 5,000+-word speech, suggesting that America has an essentially God-assigned mission to control the world, so as to preserve freedom and democracy for everybody, and that victory against Russia and China is therefore obligatory for the United States and its allies, not only to serve God but also to serve God’s People, because “central to the economic wellbeing of American families is a United States that leads.

It leads all across the world, both in military and in economic power”; and, so,

“We must act in concert with our allies to affect strategic clarity, unmistakable to both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. We must prevent the formation of a Pan-Eurasian colossus incorporating Russia, but led by China. To do that, we have to strengthen NATO.”

Furthermore, “The AUKUS Union [the recently U.S.-UK-created Asian military alliance] should be folded into this expanded security alliance,” so that NATO will become a global alliance against Russia and China, in order to preserve America’s world leadership.

His basic argument was that it’s either us or them, and they must be conquered, because God wants it, and we serve Him.

Pompeo did not argue that World War III will entail sacrifices for any of God’s People, but instead that winning this war will be necessary for the future safety and prosperity of the peoples of America, and of all countries that it will be leading, to conquer Russia and China.

The current U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Binken, or even President Biden himself, could have delivered this speech for themselves, with remarkably little modification, because the beliefs that it expresses are mainstream — and not ONLY in the U.S., but also in UK, and even in most of Europe (except for Russia and Belarus).

Pompeo’s personal background is a fundamentalist Christian whose entire life has been spent in the military-industrial complex and oil industries, and politics. He was first in his class at West Point, an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and cofounded Thayer Aerospace, before entering politics in 2011.

Here are highlights from his speech (including, without comment, its many historical falsehoods, because this is the ordinary way he writes (and extemporaneously speaks). These excerpts are taken from the text that he himself wrote, before he delivered the complete address, from his lectern, at that military-industrial-complex institution, on June 24th.

America and the nations of the world cannot continue the pretense that the war in Ukraine can end in a negotiated peace, which mollifies Russia. For such a peace cannot be negotiated with Vladimir Putin. Ukraine must win this war. It must win this war decisively if it is to realize peace, independence and freedom. Same goes for Europe. …

This war, Putin’s war, is to expunge Ukraine as a sovereign nation and as a people. Ukraine is to be folded into the new Russian Empire that seeks to become a rump of the Soviet Union. Nine, count them, nine American presidents from each of our political parties. Nine American presidents dismembered the Soviet Empire at enormous great human costs, to allow it to even begin to be reconstitution unthinkable.

Putin’s illegal assault of war represents a planned genocide, which is deliberate obliteration of a people, as defined by the 1948 United Nations. Though each genocide is different and unique as John mentioned, the one taking place in Xinjiang. This genocide that we’re seeing today is like the Holodomor engineered by Stalin that murdered millions of Ukrainians and it must be named to be fought. …

Putin may or may not be ill, but what is certain, what is certain is that he cannot contain his murderous fury. That he still leads a country exemplifies Russia’s decline into the abyss of madness. …

Both a mass murderer and a serial killer. Putin is that. I pray that Russia will reclaim its soul, its country’s soul. But it cannot do so as long it is led by a man who does not evince any concern for the horrific carnage he has wrought, or any concern for his own people.

Putin has this dream, to reestablish a lost empire. If America behaves properly, it will not occur. And we know this, we know that the dreams of dictators quickly become nightmares. …

It is my conviction that America and the West must acknowledge the centrality of hydrocarbon energy to the world geopolitics and indeed to man’s ability, humanity’s ability to adapt a cornerstone of life. …

Had the current administration maintained American energy dominance rather than prostrate itself to radicals, America could have led the way in securing the world’s hydrocarbon needs during this war. But because America’s abdicated this vital role, the war in Ukraine is compounding the pain that consumers are feeling today to cool their homes and to drive their vehicles. …

These nations were unchained in 1991 because of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And we dare not let any of them be recaptured by Russia. …

I believe Ukraine has found it’s [George] Washington in the embodiment of a single man. His name is Volodymyr Zelenskyy. …

America and the nations of the world cannot continue the pretense that the war in Ukraine can end in a negotiated peace, which mollifies Russia. For such a peace cannot be negotiated with Vladimir Putin. Ukraine must win this war. It must win this war decisively if it is to realize peace, independence and freedom. Same goes for Europe. …

This war can be won if America and our allies supply a range of our most capable conventional weapons to Kyiv. Dauntlessness is needed to end the war in Ukraine, seriousness of purpose. NATO solidarity is essential Germany and France must not defer to any of the Kremlin’s wishes. America and Britain have supplied multiple launch rocket systems. …

We must not give heat to Russia’s false claim that it believes its borders are threatened. This is silliness. …

I believe deeply that the weakness that was expressed in America’s undisciplined withdrawal from Afghanistan was interpreted by Vladimir Putin as a green light. …

As Secretary of State, I built upon my work as the director of the CIA to aid President Trump in formulating concrete terms that would’ve allowed for force reductions and withdrawal from Afghanistan but without the debacle. …

We know China’s intention. It’s intent on dominating global infrastructure development through its Belt and Road Initiative. But this is subterfuge. It hides. It’s a deceit. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a form of imperialism. It is the manifestation of a corrupt intent to entrap less developed countries with promises of loans and infrastructure improvements. …

Every president since Truman believed Taiwan’s existence is crucial to America’s defense. I believe that with all my heart. The 1970 Taiwan Relations Act requires that we maintain Taiwan’s defensive abilities to thwart an attack, but we’re now in danger of becoming complacent. The capture of Taiwan would grant the following objectives to Beijing: it would severely reduce American influence in the Indo-Pacific. …

Our relationship with Taiwan should be reinforced at every turn. It’s become a shining example in Taiwan of democracy, democracy for Asian peoples, and a hope to all of Asia. …

Central to the economic wellbeing of American families is a United States that leads. It leads all across the world, both in military and in economic power. …

I hope that my words today will galvanize American support for Ukraine and for Europe, for such aid is essential if we’re to enforce the national security policies that place American public interest as of paramount importance. …

We must act in concert with our allies to affect strategic clarity, unmistakable to both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. We must prevent the formation of a Pan-Eurasian colossus incorporating Russia, but led by China. To do that, we have to strengthen NATO. …

Moving past our current geo-strategic focus, the United States must help in building of the three lighthouses for liberty. These beacons should be centered on nations that have great strife: Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. They can be the hubs of new security architecture that links alliances of free nations globally, reinforcing the strengths of each member state, in time, linking these three bastions with NATO, as well as the new and expanded security framework for the Indo-Pacific will form a global alliance for freedom. This will benefit America.

“The need for this network of alliances is patent and cannot come too soon. The world has become too small for free countries to not be part of something greater, which will forestall armed conflict rather than react to it. …

The people of America are committed to seeing Ukraine emerge from this war as an undivided nation which will be a beacon to all, to show the world the primacy of freedom, determination, and of love. Thank you, and God bless you. …

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is a screenshot from this video

I was probably seven years old before it really sunk in that everybody in my town was not celebrating my birthday on July 4. It was an exciting day with parades, picnics, fireworks and, in my case, special birthday parties and gifts. I lived much of my young life with the extra boost of having been born on the day that our earliest political framers signed the Declaration of Independence, an historical act of defiance against monarchial colonial rule from distant England.

I remember proudly carrying the U.S. American flag in one of the July 4th parades in my small, agricultural town in upstate New York. And for years I felt goosebumps looking at Old Glory waving in the breeze during the playing of the national anthem or as it passed by in a parade. How lucky I was to have been born in the greatest country in the history of the world, and blessed by God to boot. Such a blessing, such a deal!

It wasn’t until many years later, while reading an issue of the armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes in Vietnam, that I began thinking and feeling differently about the flag and what it represents. There was a story about an arrest for flag burning somewhere in the United States.

I had recently experienced the horror of seeing numerous bodies of young women and children that were burned alive in a small Delta village devastated by napalm. I imagined that since the pilots had “successfully” hit their targets, they were feeling good and probably had received glowing reports that would bode well in their military record for promotions. I wondered why it was okay to burn innocent human beings 10,000 miles from my home town, but not okay to burn a piece of cloth that was symbolic of the country that had horribly napalmed those villagers. Something was terribly wrong with the Cold War rhetoric of fighting communism that made me question what our nation stood for. There was a grand lie, an American myth, that was being fraudulently preserved under the cloak of our flag.

It took me years to process this clear cognitive dissonance between the rhetoric of my cultural teachings and the reality of my own personal experiences. I had to accept that, either there was serious distortion in how I was interpreting my personal realities, or the cultural rhetoric was terribly distorted. Hmm. A dilemma! If I accepted the former, I could relax and feel good about being an “American.” If I accepted the latter, I would experience a serious identity crisis, perhaps a nervous breakdown. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not ignore what my own conscience was continually telling me

I began a serious reflection that included careful study of U.S. and world history. When I was a teenager living near Seneca Indian reservations in western New York State I occasionally heard Seneca acquaintances utter “jokes” about how the “White man speaks with forked tongue.” We thought it funny at the time. But then I discovered how my country really was founded. There were hundreds of nations comprised of millions of human beings–yes, human beings–living throughout the land before our European ancestors arrived here in the 1600s. The U.S. government signed over 400 treaties with various Indigenous nations and violated every one of them. And over time these original peoples were systematically eliminated in what amounted to the first genuine American holocaust.

When I reread the Declaration of Independence I noted words I hadn’t been aware of before: “He [the King of Great Britain] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” Honest history reveals that the very land upon which our founding fathers began this new experiment in freedom had been taken by violence and deceit, ironically using the same diabolical methods the framers accused of those already living here.

It became obvious after extensive reading that my European ancestors did not believe that Indigenous Americans were human beings worthy of respect, but despicable, non-human creatures, worthy only of extermination. The pre-Columbus population of Indigenous in the Western Hemisphere is estimated to have been at least 100 million (8-12 million north of the Rio Grande). By 1900 this population had been reduced to about 5 percent of its former size. An Indigenous friend of mine, a Seneca man who had served the U.S. military in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, and then after retiring, discovered his ancestral roots as a native American, once remarked to me: “I call the American flag ‘Old Gory,’ the red representing the blood, and the white, the bones, of my murdered ancestors.”

>When adding to our first holocaust the damage done to African cultures through forcefully seizing human beings to be slaves in order to build our early agricultural and industrial base, and the carnage from nearly 300 U.S. overt military and thousands of covert interventions in the Twentieth Century to acquire access to markets and resources on our selfish terms, we see there are actually three holocausts that have enabled the “glorious American civilization” to be what it is today. It is now estimated that Africa lost 50 million of its population to the slave trade, at least two-thirds of whom were killed resisting capture or died during the horrors of transit; an estimated 20 to 30 million people in the Third World have been killed as a result of U.S. interventions. Note that when other peoples all over the globe have attempted to emulate the spirit of our Declaration of Independence (a proclamation of self-determination), such as Vietnam explicitly did in 1945, our government not only has turned a deaf ear, but has done everything in its power short of dropping Atomic bombs to destroy their efforts to obtain independence. This is the foundation upon which we have built “America.” Quite the karma!

The founding of our Republic was conducted in secrecy by an upper class who insisted on a strong national government that could assure a successful but forceful clearing of western lands, enabling the safe settlement and economic development of previously inhabited Indigenous territory. Our Founding Fathers did not represent the common people. Some historians believe that if the Constitution itself had been subjected to a genuine vote of all the people it would have been resoundly defeated. Subsequently, what evolved is a political system run by plutocrats who perpetuate an economic system that protects the interests of those who finance their campaigns (a form of bribery). The U.S. government is a democracy in name only. Never have we had a government that seriously addresses the plight of the people, whether it be workers, minorities, women, the poor, etc. Whatever has been achieved in terms of rights and benefits for these constituencies, i.e., the people, has been struggled for against substantial repression, and the constant threat the gains will be subsequently lost. Intense pressures are applied by the selfish oligarchy which seeks ever increased profits, rarely, if ever, considering the expense to the health of the majority of people, their local cultures, and the ecology.

What the West calls capitalism is nothing like what Adam Smith had in mind with his views of decentralized networks of small entrepreneurs working in harmony with the needs and forces of others in their own communities. What we have is a savage system of centrally institutionalized greed that is unable to generalize an equitable way of life for the majority of people here in the U.S., or in the rest of the world. It requires incredible exploitation of human and other natural resources all over the globe with the forcible protection of military and paramilitary forces financed or sanctioned by governments. It thrives on its own sinister version of welfare where the public financially guarantees–through tax loopholes, subsidies, contracts, and outright bailouts–the profitable success of the major corporations and financial institutions, especially, but not exclusively, in the military-industrial complex. Additionally, our monopoly capitalism defines efficiency by totally ignoring the true costs of its production and distribution.

It conveniently forgets the huge ecological and human exhaustion costs (both being our true wealth). If these costs were included, the system would be finished in a second. The reality, upon honest examination, is that the economic system we call capitalism, now neoliberal, global capitalism, is cruelly based on a very fraudulent set of assumptions that justify massive exploitation. The reality, upon honest examination, is that our political system was founded, and has been maintained to this very day by substantive plutocracy, not democracy. So when I see the flag and think of the Declaration of Independence, instead of the United States of America, I see the United Corporations of America; I see the blood and bones of people all over the globe who have been dehumanized, then exterminated by its imperialism; and I see a symbol that represents a monstrous lie maintained by excessive, deadly force. It makes me feel sick, and ashamed. And I know that my opinions being expressed here will not be popular, even among some of my closest friends. But I cannot ignore the reality as I now understand it.

I believe we are living one of the most incredible lies in history, covered over by one of the most successful campaigns of public rhetoric, ignoring empirical reality. It is truly amazing! I hope that one day we will end our willful ignorance and be able to see our transgressions, and beg, on our knees, for forgiveness, and then wail as we begin to feel the incredible pain and anguish we have caused the world as well as our own bodies, minds, souls, and culture.

S. Brian Willson, Vietnam war veteran, renowned peace activist, human rights lawyer and award winning author, Granada, Nicaragua, Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez has accused Boris Johnson of contempt for international law regarding statements he made over the Falkland Islands.

Mr Fernandez raised the issue of his country’s longstanding claim over the islands, known in Argentina as Las Malvinas during a brief meeting at the G7 summit of world leaders in Germany.

Mr Johnson compared the situation with that of Ukraine and said that the islanders had exercised the right to self-determination and that the matter had been decisively settled 40-years ago.

But his response drew the ire of Argentina’s secretary for Malvinas, Antarctica and the South Atlantic, Guillermo Carmona.

He pointed out that Britain had occupied the islands in 1833 and forcibly expelled its Argentine inhabitants.

More recently, it had ignored 10 UN resolutions calling for a negotiated settlement to the disputed territories, the diplomat said.

Mr Carmona said that by making reference to the 1983 war, the British PM was effectively stating that barbarism and aggression are a legitimate part of international law, unless of course they are committed by Russia.

In addition, the principle of self-determination has been rejected by Mr Johnson in Donetsk and Crimea, not to mention the Chagos Islands, so to invoke it in the case of the Malvinas is nothing more than hypocrisy, he added.

Sovereignty over the islands, which lie around 300 miles off the Argentinian coast, has never been conceded by Buenos Aires.

The Argentinian government insists that the natural resources around the islands, including large oil reserves discovered in 1998, “belong to 14 million Argentinians.”

Britain is accused of constantly ignoring UN resolutions which call for renewed negotiations over sovereignty, with its military presence there branded illegitimate.

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While there’s always the chance of events temporarily spiraling out of control, the odds are drastically stacked against anyone whether local or foreign who hopes to successfully weaponize perceptions about Uzbekistan’s constitutional reforms for Color Revolution ends related to waging a Hybrid War on Russia, China, and/or Iran in Central Asia by proxy through Karakalpakstan.

The Uzbek Interior Ministry dispersed an illegal rally in the western region of Karakalpakstan on Friday that they claim was organized in response to a “misunderstanding of the constitutional reforms that are conducted in the republic.” That gigantic but sparsely populated and largely impoverished swath of this doubly landlocked country is formally an autonomous republic with the constitutional right to secede via a referendum, though a draft of Uzbekistan’s many proposed legal changes suggests that it’ll lose that mostly symbolic prerogative and stipulate that its constitution mustn’t contradict national laws instead of only just not contradicting the constitution as is now the case. Additionally, a local blogger was reportedly detained too, which altogether prompted unauthorized protests in the capital of Nukus.

Previously stable Central Asia has been on edge since the unexpected Hybrid War of Terror on Kazakhstan broke out in early January, during which time terrorists almost took control of this former Soviet Republic prior to a decisive Russian-led CSTO peacekeeping operation saving the region’s largest country. Moscow concluded that regional terrorist networks were involved in this attempted regime change operation, but little else has been officially revealed thus far about the origin of that incident. In any case, it drew renewed attention to the pernicious role of non-state actors operating between Central Asia and Afghanistan, the latter of which is getting messy againand thus catalyzing closer military integration between those former Soviet Republics – including Uzbekistan—and Russia.

Having explained the backdrop to Friday’s unrest, it’s now time to say a few words about Uzbekistan. This country used to be casually described by Western observers as “the North Korea of Central Asia” because former President Islam Karimov pretty much closed it off from most of the world. His successor, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has gone in the opposite direction by gradually opening it back up to the international community. This has seen some cosmetic political reforms along with comparatively more substantive economic and socio-cultural ones related to positioning Uzbekistan as a regional connectivity hub and the role of religion in everyday life respectively. Nevertheless, the military-intelligence services still remain ubiquitous and omnipotent behind the scenes.

The May 2005 Andijan Incident, which occurred just a month after neighboring Kyrgyzstan’s “Tulip Revolution”, can be considered a Color Revolution attempt that was forcefully put down and reportedly resulted in a large number of ostensibly civilian casualties. Its importance in the bigger picture is that it represents the US’ first serious effort to capture control of Central Asia’s most geostrategically significant country, which borders the region’s four other former Soviet Republics and Afghanistan. In the years since President Mirziyoyev came to office, however, Uzbek-American relations have noticeably improved. Even so, speculation continues to abound that the US still remains committed to destabilizing Central Asia, both due to the New Cold War context as well as the region’s growing role in multipolarity.

Central Asia is located in the Eurasian Heartland, which makes it the convergence point of Russian, Indian, Chinese, and Iranian interests, especially in terms of geo-economics. It therefore naturally follows that its stability or lack thereof will impact the rest of the supercontinent and therefore influence the global struggle between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the BRICS-led Global South. Primarily for this reason as well as the background that was explained in the preceding paragraph, some multipolar-friendly observers in the Alt-Media Community (AMC) were quick to speculate that Karakalpakstan’s latest protests against the draft constitutional reforms’ reported impact on their sub-state polity’s autonomy were a Color Revolution, or the US’ weaponization of protests for strategic ends.

It’s too early to arrive at that conclusion, however, though that also doesn’t mean that this interpretation should also be entirely dismissed either since it’s possible that events might move in that direction after some time. To elaborate, the Uzbek military-intelligence services still command immensely powerful influence in the country behind the scenes, which means that it’s very unlikely that there was any considerable financial, informational, and/or militant/terrorist infiltration into its western autonomous region whose hitherto constitutionally enshrined right to referendum-driven secession already made it a predictable Hybrid War target. It might of course be the case that corruption and/or incompetence crippled their professionalism in recent years, though that still seems very unlikely.

On the regional level, it’s difficult to get an accurate sense of Karakalpakstan’s demographic balance but reports suggest that the titular ethnicity and Kazakhs collectively form the majority. Whatever the true ratio might be, there’s no doubt that a statistically significant number of ethnic Karakalpaks inhabit this autonomous republic otherwise it wouldn’t have been given the largely symbolic political rights that it was shortly after Uzbekistan’s independence. With this in mind, it’s understandable why some of them might take to the streets to protest despite not receiving authorization to do so upon reports of their region’s official right to secede via referendum possibly being removed upon the promulgation of the proposed constitutional reforms.

Even though it was never realistic in any practical sense that they’d ever be able to successfully employ this right, it might still have had a psychological calming effect of sorts for folks to always consider in the ultimate worst-case scenario of full-on state dissolution. Despite that also being pretty much improbable due the military-intelligence services’ ubiquity and omnipotence in everyday life behind the scenes, it could nonetheless have remained in local Karakalpaks’ subconsciousness (especially “simpler” folks’) considering the presently chaotic phase of the global systemic transition to multipolarity brought about by the Ukrainian Conflict. Reports about its potential loss, amplified as they might have been by the local blogger who was recently detained, could thus have incited them to protest.

This insight means that most of the participants in Friday’s unauthorized rally almost certainly weren’t paid agents of a foreign intelligence service like many in the AMC naively generalize all those who participate in suspected Color Revolutions as being. It’s indeed possible that there might have been some foreign-connected elements among them, such as those plugged into “NGO”-disguised intelligence and/or terrorist fronts, who could have manipulated crowd psychology (including through disinformation, fake news, and weaponized rumors) in order to provoke violence. They, however, would be a statistically insignificant minority keeping with the core mechanics of all Color Revolutions. Be that as it may, such forces exert major influence over events, again, in alignment with the core mechanics.

Presuming that there likely were some foreign-connected elements either directly or indirectly involved in Friday’s incident, this in and of itself also doesn’t make the unauthorized protests a Color Revolution per se. All that it does is suggest an intent by some shadowy forces to provoke events towards that scenario, which to clarify, would be the weaponization of protests for political ends through the catalyzation of a self-sustaining cycle of unrest whereby civil-state violence spirals out of control and thus destabilizes the country as part of a plot to coerce some degree of unilateral concessions from its leadership. The last-mentioned include regime tweaking (legal reforms or reversal thereof), regime change, and/or regime reboot (far-reaching constitutional change intended to “Balkanize” the country).

For any of these outcomes to materialize, there must be simultaneous bottom-up pressure from the population (particularly those who participate in weaponized protests hatched as part of a foreign power’s Color Revolution plot) as well as top-down pressure from the same state behind the unrest as well as their international partners. Furthermore, this same two-front pressure must be severe enough to make the targeted government believe (whether rightly or wrongly) that capitulating to whatever the demand may be is “less painful” than continuing to push back against it (including through increasingly forceful means). Seeing as how China, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey are Uzbekistan’s top trade partners by far as of March 2022, it’s impossible for the US-led West to pressure it with sanctions.

On the military-security front, Karakalpakstan is largely rural, which means that urban disturbances can be contained comparatively easier than if most of the population lived in cities. Even in the worst-case scenario that the regional capital near the Turkmen border was temporarily captured by insurgents/rebels/terrorists/etc., it can immediately be isolated from the rest of the country prior to the commencement of a law-and-order/liberation operation that could also include Russian/CSTO back-end logistical/intelligence/technical support. The same state of affairs is in place with regards to its many scattered rural localities as well, which very strongly suggests that any incipient Color Revolution in Karakalpakstan (if that’s even what happened on Friday, which is debatable) is doomed to fail.

For these reasons, it’s premature for the AMC to speculate that Friday’s incident in Nukus was a Color Revolution, let alone one that poses any serious threat to Uzbekistan’s stability and especially that of the larger region. While there’s always the chance of events temporarily spiraling out of control, the odds are drastically stacked against anyone whether local or foreign who hopes to successfully weaponize perceptions about that country’s constitutional reforms for Color Revolution ends related to waging a Hybrid War on Russia, China, and/or Iran in Central Asia by proxy. Not all protests, including illegal ones, are proof of a Color Revolution since the socio-political dynamics in Karakalpakstan connected to Uzbekistan’s latest reforms convincingly appear to be genuinely grassroots for now.

That’s not to say that there aren’t “sleeper cells” in the region and beyond who hope to exploit the situation that was inadvertently triggered by the proposed constitutional changes and the way in which some forces interpreted them (whether sincerely or not) prior to sharing their understanding (whether accurate or not) with the public, but just that the chances of Uzbekistan becoming the latest Hybrid War battlefield in the New Cold War between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the BRICS-led Global South are close to nothing for the time being. Granted, there might be some factors behind the scenes that aren’t yet publicly known which could dramatically change this assessment, but the arguments presented in this analysis for why that likely isn’t the case should be seriously considered by the AMC.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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