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The head of what has been dubbed the Biden administration’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ previously compared free speech to “fairy dust” during testimony about social media censorship in front of the UK Parliament.

Yes, really.

Nina Jankowicz, recently appointed DHS ‘disinformation czar,’ made the comments while providing oral evidence regarding the implementation of the UK’s controversial Online Safety Bill, which will ban legal content which has “the potential to cause harm.”

After agreeing that the government should set minimum speech standards which ban “misogyny,” Jankowicz blasted alternative social media platforms for supporting “freedom of expression and fairy dust.”

She also said that government-connected communications regulators such as Ofcom should “be able to establish the minimum standards that would be applied to all platforms and incur fines.”

“That could be based, again, on the preexisting terms of service,” she added.

Jankowicz also endorsed empowering governments to demand data on individual users from social media cites for the purpose of implementing further censorship policies.

“The social media platforms can do that if they are compelled to,” she said.

Jankowicz also asserted that social media platforms should utilize algorithms that would “allow us to get around some of the free speech concerns” by demoting content so few people saw it.

“You can shout in the black void, but you do not get a huge audience to do that,” she stated.

The comments are in line with previously statements made by Jankowicz when she revealed that free speech made her “shudder” while also promoting the lie that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.

The disinformation czar also ludicrously cited Christopher Steele as an expert on disinformation. Steele was the author of the infamous Clinton campaign-funded Trump ‘peegate’ dossier’ that turned out to be an actual product of disinformation.

As we previously highlighted, Jankowicz previously demanded that “trustworthy verified people” like her be given the power to edit other people’s tweets, making Twitter more like Wikipedia.

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Joe Biden Intends to Escalate the War in Ukraine

May 13th, 2022 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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Once again, the US government seems to be the side most interested in taking the Ukrainian conflict to its ultimate consequences. A law recently signed by President Joe Biden threatens to escalate the dispute in Eastern Europe to extremely dangerous levels, increasing NATO’s support for Kiev in order for the Ukrainian forces to be able to continue fighting for a long time even without any material chance of real victory.

On May 9 the US president signed the “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022”, leading to a new phase in Washington-Kiev relations, in which Americans will be authorized to streamline and de-bureaucratize the process of sending military aid to Ukrainian forces. The objective of such a maneuver is to banish any procedural obstacle to the agility of bilateral military partnership, encouraging the systematic sending of material so that Ukrainian troops maintain their “resistance” against the Russian special operation.

Explicitly, the American objective with such an attitude is not to contribute to the achievement of peace, but to encourage further combat and promote war. The indiscriminate escalation of the hostilities became a central point of American strategy in Ukraine. Washington assumes the objective is simply to make Ukraine beat Russia. In practice, as there is no possibility of this happening, the objective of the American “aid” seems to be to provoke a “long-term defeat”, that is, to make Russia suffer in this conflict enough so that it does not start any other operation like this again. This could only be achieved by fueling the fighting with more and more weapons for Ukraine, as proposed by the new law.

Scott Ritter, military analyst and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer commented on the topic as follows:

“The stated policy of the United States at this point in time is to create the conditions for a strategic Russian defeat in Ukraine, one of the goals of which is to bleed Russia dry so that Russia can never again carry out an action such as it has undertaken in Ukraine, or anywhere else  (…) This is the opposite of achieving peace. This is about promoting war. And as such, yes, the lend-lease legislation is not just adding fuel to the fire, it’s pouring fuel all over the fire”.

In fact, this supposed “strategic objective” seems incoherent. For there to be any real harm to Russia, the aid would have to be strong enough that Moscow would be forced to mobilize its full offensive potential towards Ukraine – which evidently is not happening now. And for that to occur, it would be needed a level of help much higher than mere shipment of armaments. To reverse Ukraine’s current status of virtually strategic neutralization, the West would need to become more directly involved in the conflict, which would be interpreted as NATO intervention and would result in a Russian response – something the Americans certainly want to avoid.

So, the speech seems just an attempt to deceive public opinion: there is no real intention to “defeat” Russia, either in the short or long term. There is only the desire to carry the conflict forward in order to delay its consequences, which are the retreat of NATO in Europe and the geopolitical multipolarization. When victory becomes impossible, delaying defeat is the most strategic thing to do and that is precisely what the US is doing in Ukraine, to the detriment of the local people, who just want peace.

An important point to be commented on is the fact that the bill approved by Biden this week is not new. Despite its recent approval, the project had already been introduced by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) in January 2022. This means that the intention of US lawmakers is old and has no specific relationship with Russian military operation. It was already the goal of the US to promote an unrestrained militarization of Ukraine, which demonstrates that Moscow’s justification for the need to demilitarize Kiev is valid. Had the operation not started, Kiev would now be receiving these weapons in the same way – and possibly using them against civilians in Donbass.

The first consequences of the Act are about to come. May 10 the House approved a new budget of more than 33 billion dollars in military aid to Kiev. With the new Act, approval by the Senate must take place as quickly as possible, without further discussions or bureaucracies. Direct private transactions with Ukraine will also take place without regulation in the US. Of course, this will also be a precedent and the US is expected to force European countries to pass similar laws to reduce bureaucracy in military trade with Kiev.

Now the scenario is set for an escalation that is sure to further complicate the situation for Ukraine.

The Russians clearly do not want to use their full military potential in this operation, but they are willing to tolerate it only up to a point. If necessary, Moscow will not hesitate to increase its fighting force to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. Both the Ukrainian government and the West know this but prefer to maintain the narrative that it is possible to “defeat Russia”, perpetuating a situation that harms more and more the civilian population and only benefits the West and its military industry.

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

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The NOPEC Bill Could Send Oil Prices to $300

May 13th, 2022 by Tsvetana Paraskova

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If the U.S. passes the NOPEC bill, a bill designed to pave the way for lawsuits against OPEC members for market manipulation, the oil market could face even more chaos. OPEC’s most influential energy ministers warned against passing the legislation, suggesting it could send oil prices soaring by 200% or 300%.   “The last thing we want is someone trying to hinder that system,” the UAE’s Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei said at a conference in Abu Dhabi, referring to the system OPEC has had in place for decades to ensure supply to the market is adequate (adequate according to OPEC’s view). 

“If you hinder that system, you need to watch what you’re asking for, because having a chaotic market you would see … a 200% or 300% increase in the prices that the world cannot handle,” al-Mazrouei said at a panel at the World Utilities Congress hosted by CNBC’s Dan Murphy.

As gasoline prices in America hit record highs, some lawmakers are looking to resurrect the NOPEC legislation that would allow the U.S. Attorney General to sue OPEC or its member states for antitrust behavior.

Forms of a NOPEC bill have been considered in Congress committees for nearly two decades, but they have never moved past committee discussions.

Now OPEC is warning of greater market chaos if NOPEC becomes law. But it’s not only OPEC that has been warning about the implications for America in setting a precedent to remove sovereign immunity. The most powerful oil lobby in the United States, the American Petroleum Institute (API), is also against such legislation, arguing it would bring unintended harm to America’s oil and gas industry and American interests in the world. So is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, while the White House expressed “concerns” about the potential implications of such a law.

Last week, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee approved the so-called No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act (NOPEC).

Forms of antitrust legislation aimed at OPEC were discussed at various times under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, but they both threatened to veto such legislation.

This time, it’s unclear if the bill would be moved for discussion at the Senate, or then to President Joe Biden’s desk, and it’s unclear whether he would sign such legislation into law.

Commenting on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval of the NOPEC bill, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last week:

“I don’t have an official position on this legislation right now, but we do believe that this potential — the potential implications and unintended consequences of this legislation require further study and deliberation, particularly during this dynamic moment in the global energy markets brought about by President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.”

“So, we’re taking a look at it and certainly have some concerns about what the potential implications could be,” Psaki added.

Major trade groups have already expressed opposition to the bill, arguing it could backfire on America’s oil and gas industry and U.S. interests.

The bill could have an unintended negative impact on America’s oil and gas industry, the API said in a letter seen by Reuters.

The API has opposed NOPEC legislation during previous discussions of a bill. In 2019, under President Donald Trump, the institute told the then-members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, “We see this legislation as creating significant detrimental exposure to U.S. diplomatic, military and business interests while having limited impact on the market concerns driving the legislation.”

“The legislation threatens serious, unintended consequences for the U.S. natural gas and oil industry,” and it “represents a political act aimed at removing a sovereign nation’s litigation immunity from certain U.S. laws and opens the opportunity for reciprocal or even additional action on the part of those impacted countries,” the API said more than two years ago.

Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce addressed the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, saying it opposes the bill known as S. 977.

“Although S. 977 is intended to be limited to restraint of trade in oil, natural gas or petroleum products, the Committee should be wary of the precedent it would create. Once sovereign immunity has been eliminated for one action of a state or its agents, it can be eliminated for all state actions and the actions of agents of the state,” the Chamber of Commerce said.

“Under reciprocal legal regimes, the United States and its agents throughout the world could be tried before foreign courts – perhaps including the military – for any activity that the foreign state wishes to make an offense,” it added.

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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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Senator Rand Paul has blocked a fast-track senate vote on the additional $40 billion funding package created by Joe Biden and House Democrats.  Both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell approved a fast-track vote; however, senator Rand Paul (KY) stood defiant against their effort.

Despite the high-profile pressure from the two Senate leaders, Rand Paul refused to move and that means the Senate will have to take procedural steps to overcome his objection, which could take several days.

“My oath of office is the US constitution not to any foreign nation and no matter how sympathetic the cause, my oath of office is to the national security of the United States of America,” Paul said in his remarks before objecting to moving to swift passage of the bill. “We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the US economy.”

Watch:

The $40 billion supplemental spending bill for Ukraine is more than the total military budget of Russia.  The combined Ukraine aid packages now exceed $60 billion, more than the entire budget for the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security including border protection.

Rand Paul is on the right side of history with his position, and the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with him.   However, the opinion of the people is irrelevant to the Senate.   Even democrat Senator Chuck Schumer seemed to admit this point when he said Rand Paul’s position “was not the opinion of the overwhelming majority here,” meaning in the senate.  Schumer would have used other terms if he thought the American people agreed with him.  They don’t, and he knows it.

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The Biden Administration used the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ (FBI) counterterrorism resources to investigate conservative parents and Republican politicians, according to whistleblowers cited in a congressional letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland Wednesday. 

The letter, sent to Garland by Republican Reps. Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson, cites evidence provided to Congress by whistleblowers showing that the FBI launched dozens of investigations into parents for criticizing school COVID policies. The whistleblowers provided the evidence as part of an investigation into the application of Garland’s October memo to the FBI instructing them to treat conservative parents as “domestic terrorists.” 

Garland issued the memo following a letter from the National School Board Association (NSBA), which asked the Biden administration to target parents who attended school board meetings in opposition to curricula and school district COVID policies. Subsequently released emails showedthat the administration worked in tandem with the NSBA to come up with the policy that would be found in Garland’s memo. 

An email obtained by the House Judiciary Committee in November from the Counterterrorism and Criminal Division of the FBI showed that the bureau used the tag EDUOFFICIALS to monitor threats against education officials nationwide, a tag which whistleblowers claim was used to launch investigations into parents. 

Image

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Source: @realchrisrufo/Twitter

According to the letter, “These cases include investigations into parents upset about mask mandates and state elected officials who publicly voiced opposition to vaccine mandates. These investigations into concerned parents are the direct result of, and could not have occurred but for, [the] directive to federal law enforcement to target these categories of people.” 

Examples mentioned in the letter include a mother investigated for allegedly telling a school board member “we are coming for you.” The mother was reported for belonging to the conservative group Moms for Liberty and for owning a gun.  

Another example cited shows that the FBI interviewed a father who opposed mask mandates because someone reported that he looked like an “insurrectionist” and “rails against the government.” It was also claimed that he owned “a lot of guns and threatens to use them.” The person that made the claim against the father later admitted that there was “no specific information or observations of … any crimes or threats.” 

A third example shows that a local Democratic Party official claimed that a Republican politician “incited violence” by opposing a school district’s jab policy. 

“You have subjected these moms and dads to the opening of an FBI investigation about them, the establishment of an FBI case file that includes their political views, and the application of a ‘threat tag’ to their names as a direct result of their exercise of their fundamental constitutional right to speak and advocate for their children,” the letter states 

“This whistleblower information raises serious concerns that your October 4 memorandum will chill protected First Amendment activity as parents will rightfully fear that their passionate advocacy for their children could result in a visit from federal law enforcement.” 

Garland, testifying before Congress in October, said that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had not deployed antiterrorism tools against parents protesting COVID policy. “I can’t imagine any circumstance in which the Patriot Act would be used in the circumstances of parents complaining about their children,” Garland said, “nor can I imagine a circumstance where they would be labeled as domestic terrorism.”  

The DOJ did not immediately respond to LifeSite’s request for comment.

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The New York Times provides daily updates from the CDC on the numbers vaccinated.  While nothing that comes out of CDC’s mouth is necessarily reliable, I am presenting the official numbers below. But it is certainly possible that the numbers of the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated are even higher than presented here.

Pay close attention to the numbers.

257.6 million (of a total 334 million Americans) got at least one dose of vaccine.  That is 77% of the country.  If you remove the 0 through 4 year olds, it is 82% of those eligible by age for vaccine.  It seems like the vast majority of Americans went along with the vaccine program.

But not for long.

A surprising 15% of the initially vaccinated (and 11% of all Americans) never went back for their second shot.  That is huge.  There is no other vaccine where such a high percentage fails to complete a 2 dose series. So if you add together the 18% who refused any shot and the 11% (of all Americans) who refused to complete the initial series, you are up to 29% vaccine refusers and ex-vaxxers who did not get “fully vaccinated,” which refers to two shots, using CDC’s terminology.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday that about 257.6 million people had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, including about 219.6 million people who had been fully vaccinated by the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine or the two-dose series made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

The C.D.C. also reported that about 100.5 million fully vaccinated people have received an additional vaccine dose or a booster dose, the highest level of protection against the virus.

Why does CDC use the term “about” when it has a record of every single American who has been vaccinated?

Now let’s look at how many Americans went along with the booster dose.   Only 100.5 million Americans took that first booster, or 30% of Americans, according to the NYT.  But if you look at the NYT graph of % boosted by county, in many counties less than 15% of the population took booster #1.  Why didn’t the NYT use additional colors for counties where over 35% or over 40% were boosted?  Are there none?  If so, the total boosted in the US may be less than 30%.

But let’s go along with CDC and the NYT and use 30% or 100.5 million people as our boosted number.

How many people took the first two shots (or one if they got the J and J shot) and refused the booster?  36% of Americans (219.6 M-100.5 M/ 334 M people) took the initial series and refused the booster.  Add 36% to 18% who refused all, and add 11% who refused the second shot and now you have 65% of the country that said “No more!”

Throw in the 5.6% of Americans below age 5 who are not eligible for the vaccine (it is not emergency use authorized for them) and you find that 70% of us are not “up to date” according to the CDC.

It looks like Americans are not so dumb after all.  Despite two years of continuous propaganda, and unprecedented threats of employment and educational loss if unvaccinated, Americans are saying, “Enough.”  They have stopped queueing up at vaccine clinics, many of which are now closed.

Why would they do that?

It seems they have access to the alternative media.

They have seen people get injured or die after receiving the shots.

They have enough common sense to know it’s not right to get an injection every few months.

Information coming from the UK and other places that vaccination did not prevent deaths or hospitalizations, not to mention cases and spread, has gotten out via the bush telegraph.  People were able to distinguish the truth from fake news.

Information that vaccination with the COVID vaccines seems to impair the ability to mount a broad immune response to COVID could only be suppressed for so long.

The original Moderna clinical trial data, which should have been available to regulatory agencies at least since the Moderna package was presented for licensure, reveals that while 93% of unvaccinated controls produced the SARS-CoV-2 anti-nucleocapsid antibody after infection, only 40% of the vaccinated produced this antibody at detectable levels after infection.  They failed to mount the expected immune response. It is possible or probable that the more doses of these vaccines you receive, the less broad immunity you will develop, even after getting infected.

In any event, Americans have woken out of their slumber.  According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, only 35% of 5 through 11 year olds have received any COVID vaccine, and only 28% have received both doses.  Twenty percent of initially vaccinated 5-11 year olds were never brought back for the second shot. Doesn’t that tell you something?

According to CDC, 75% of American children have already had COVID. And it is only very rarely a severe disease for children, despite CDC’s desperate spin. So the idea of mass vaccinating little kids is unspeakably cruel.

Now the 65% of us that are awake need to save the preschoolers from these fiendish shots.  FDA has set aside several days in June for advisory committee meetings on shots for toddlers and babies, and a booster dose for the 5-11 year olds.  We muststop the carnage before the vaccines are authorized for the tiniest Americans.

We also need to save the unawakened parents from themselves, in case the vaccines do get authorized. These parents desperately need our guidance.  Won’t you help?

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Is Ivermectin a Cancer Solution?

May 13th, 2022 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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Ivermectin has notable antitumor effects, which include inhibiting proliferation, metastasis and angiogenic activity in cancer cells

Ivermectin may target cancer in multiple ways, including inducing apoptosis and autophagy while also inhibiting tumor stem cells and reversing multidrug resistance

Along with direct cytotoxic effects, it’s believed that ivermectin regulates the tumor microenvironment, mediating immunogenic cell death

The development of an injectable form of ivermectin, or liposomal ivermectin, could help overcome some of its limitations regarding solubility, and open its use to a broader range of cancers

Considering that the “war against cancer” has been ongoing for decades, with little to show in terms of lives saved, repurposing existing drugs with favorable safety profiles and notable anticancer effects — like ivermectin — makes sense

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Ivermectin is a widely used antiparasitic drug that’s listed on the World Health Organization’s essential medicines list1 and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In low- and middle-income countries, ivermectin is commonly used to treat parasitic diseases including onchocerciasis (river blindness), strongyloidiasis and other diseases caused by soil-transmitted helminthiasis, or parasitic worms.2

The drug is also used to treat scabies and lice. It’s estimated that the total number of ivermectin doses distributed is equal to one-third of the world’s population and, as such, “ivermectin at the usual doses (0.2–0.4 mg/kg) is considered extremely safe for use in humans.”3

Ivermectin also has demonstrated antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties and made headlines for its potential role in treating COVID-194 — although much of the positive press has been censored and falsely labeled misinformation.5 Now researchers are highlighting another potential use for ivermectin, which is equally as exciting as its potential role in COVID-19 — as an anticancer agent.

Ivermectin’s Powerful Antitumor Effects

Ivermectin has notable antitumor effects, which include inhibiting proliferation, metastasis and angiogenic activity in cancer cells.6 It appears to inhibit tumor cells by regulating multiple signaling pathways, which researchers explained in the Pharmacological Research journal, “suggests that ivermectin may be an anticancer drug with great potential.”7

Their graphic, below, shows the multiple ways that ivermectin may target cancer, including inducing apoptosis and autophagy while also inhibiting tumor stem cells and reversing multidrug resistance. They stated that ivermectin “exerts the optimal effect when used in combination with other chemotherapy drugs.”8

Ivermectin's Powerful Antitumor Effects

Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207

Many may not be aware that scientists Satoshi ōmura and William C. Campbell won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015 for their discovery of ivermectin.9 The medicine is used to treat not only parasitic diseases like malaria but also shows promise for treating asthma and neurological diseases, in addition to cancer.

Along with direct cytotoxic effects, it’s believed that ivermectin regulates the tumor microenvironment, mediating immunogenic cell death — another reason for its promise as an anticancer agent.10 Research suggests the drug may be useful for the following cancers:11

Ivermectin Shows Promise Against Colorectal Cancer

A study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology specifically highlighted ivermectin’s potential to fight colorectal cancer, which is the third most common cancer worldwide.12 The drug was found to inhibit colorectal cancer cell growth in a dose-dependent manner as well as promote cell apoptosis.

Further, even at low doses of 2.5 and 5 µM, ivermectin inducted cell arrest in colorectal cancer, leading researchers to state, “[I]vermectin might be a new potential anticancer drug therapy for human colorectal cancer and other cancers.”13 Considering that the “war against cancer” has been ongoing for decades, with little to show in terms of lives saved, repurposing existing drugs with favorable safety profiles and notable anticancer effects — like ivermectin — makes sense.

The Pharmacological Research scientists similarly noted, “Drug repositioning is a shortcut to accelerate the development of anticancer drugs.”14 Not only has ivermectin been shown to permeate tumor tissues effectively, but it has a long history of successful use in humans. They explained that even when doses were increased, no serious adverse effects were found:15

“[T]he broad-spectrum antiparasitic drug IVM (ivermectin), which is widely used in the field of parasitic control, has many advantages that suggest that it is worth developing as a potential new anticancer drug. IVM selectively inhibits the proliferation of tumors at a dose that is not toxic to normal cells and can reverse the MDR [multidrug resistance] of tumors.

Importantly, IVM is an established drug used for the treatment of parasitic diseases such as river blindness and elephantiasis. It has been widely used in humans for many years, and its various pharmacological properties, including long- and short-term toxicological effects and drug metabolism characteristics are very clear. In healthy volunteers, the dose was increased to 2 mg/Kg, and no serious adverse reactions were found …”

Is Liposomal Delivery a Game Changer?

The development of an injectable form of ivermectin, or liposomal ivermectin, could help overcome some of its limitations regarding solubility and open its use to a broader range of cancers. The cancer immunotherapy treatment pembrolizumab, for instance, is approved to treat PD-L1-positive, triple-negative breast cancer, which accounts for only about 20% of cases.

As an immune checkpoint inhibitor, it works best in so-called “hot” tumors, which are already infiltrated by T cells. If ivermectin could be injected into the tumor, inducing T-cell infiltration into the area and inducing immunogenic cancer cell death, it’s possible that it could turn a “cold” tumor into a “hot” one, thereby making it more effectively treated.16

Biotech company Mountain Valley MD has developed a liposomal delivery system for ivermectin that they believe could dramatically widen its treatment potential. In an interview with Medical Update Online, Dennis Hancock, Mountain Valley MD president and CEO, explained:17

“So the business value proposition really simply is, we take the best-selling and best-acting drugs and expand their ability to be used on … more types of cancer on a broader spectrum. So you still need the cancer drug and what our Ivectosol does is it enables it to be used in a broader universe …

What’s really exciting about the work that Mountain Valley MD is doing is we’re enabling drugs that have already been proven in their efficacy and safety to do better and do more faster — so we’re not asking people to ‘wait five years and see’…”

Most of the research involving ivermectin for cancer to date involves oral or in-vitro administration. Mountain Valley MD is conducting preclinical trials using liposomal ivermectin for metastatic melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, triple-negative breast cancer and possibly bladder cancers. They also have plans to produce liposomal ivermectin for use in human trials.18 In a news release, Mike Farber, director of life sciences at Mountain Valley MD, stated:19

“The extensive research supporting the drug ivermectin as effective in the inhibition of proliferation, metastasis, and angiogenic activity in a variety of cancers, and as an initiator of immunogenic cell death, is overwhelming. Imagine what is possible when you have the world’s only human injectable form of ivermectin that can be directly injected into a tumor or provided through more bio-available forms such as intravenously.

We believe this will be groundbreaking research with near-immediate application to be able to proceed directly to human trials based on the safety and efficacy of ivermectin.”

What About Ivermectin for SARS-CoV-2?

In the U.S., ivermectin has been vilified as a treatment for SARS-CoV-2, despite its impressive inhibitory effects on the virus.20 Even the FDA has a dedicated webpage warning “why you should not use ivermectin to prevent COVID-19.”21

It’s interesting to note, however, that Africa has a lower number of cases, severity of disease, hospitalizations and deaths than other areas of the world,22 which may be due to using prophylactic medications for endemic infections — ivermectin and others, such as sweet wormwood — that have successfully treated COVID-19.

For instance, a study from Japan demonstrated that just 12 days after doctors were allowed to legally prescribe ivermectin to their COVID-19 patients, the cases dropped dramatically.23 The chairman of the Tokyo Medical Association24 noticed the low number of infections and deaths in Africa, where many use ivermectin prophylactically and as the core strategy to treat river blindness.25 More than 99% of people infected with river blindness live in 31 African countries.

Aside from these observations, a study published in the March 2022 issue of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases found that treatment with ivermectin reduced mortality in COVID-19 patients — and to a greater degree than remdesivir.26

Another recent investigation by Cornell University, posted on the University’s preprint server January 20, 2022, found ivermectin outperformed 10 other drugs against COVID-19, making it the most effective against the Omicron variant.27 It even outperformed nirmatrelvir (Paxlovid), which was granted emergency use authorization against COVID-19 in December 2021.

Remdesivir costs between $2,340 and $3,120,28 and nirmatrelvir costs $529 per treatment,29 while ivermectin’s average treatment cost is $58.30 Do you think this has anything to do with ivermectin’s vilification?

Dr. Pierre Kory, who is part of the group that formed the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group (FLCCC) to advance early treatments for COVID-19, pleaded with the U.S. government early on in the pandemic to review the expansive data on ivermectin to prevent COVID-19, and to keep those with early symptoms from progressing and help critically ill patients recover — to no avail.31,32

However, if you’d like to learn more about its potential uses for SARS-CoV-2, FLCCC’s I-MASK+ protocol can be downloaded in full,33 giving you step-by-step instructions on how to prevent and treat the early symptoms of COVID-19.

FLCCC also has protocols for at-home prevention and early treatment, called I-MASS, which involves ivermectin, vitamin D3, a multivitamin and a digital thermometer to watch your body temperature in the prevention phase and ivermectin, melatonin, aspirin and antiseptic mouthwash for early at-home treatment.

Household or close contacts of COVID-19 patients may take ivermectin (18 milligrams, then repeat the dose in 48 hours) for post-exposure prevention.34 Whether ivermectin’s potential as an anticancer agent will be stifled the same way it was for COVID-19 remains to be seen, but it appears to be a compound that’s worth watching as a potential powerful agent in the fight against cancer.

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Notes

1, 2 WHO March 31, 2021

3 American Journal of Therapeutics: July/August 2021 – Volume 28 – Issue 4 – p e434-e460

4 In Vivo. Sep-Oct 2020;34(5):3023-3026. doi: 10.21873/invivo.12134

5 Trial Site News November 27, 2021, 3:52

6, 7, 8 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207

9, 20 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207., Introduction

10 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207., 2.1 Breast cancer

11 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207., 2. The role of IVM in different cancers

12, 13 Front Pharmacol. 2021; 12: 717529

14, 15 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207., Summary

16, 17, 18 Medical Update Online June 19, 2021

19 Mountain Valley MD May 3, 2021

21 U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Why You Should Not Use Ivermetin to Prevent COVID-19

22 AP News, November 19, 2021

23 YouTube, November 23, 2021 Min 1:25

24 Tokyo Web, August 13, 2021

25 World Health Organization, Onchocerciasis

26 International Journal of Infectious Diseases March 2022; 116(Supplement): S40

27 Cornell University, January 20, 2022

28 AJMC June 29, 2020

29 Precision Vaccinations, November 19, 2021

30 JAMA 2022;327(6):584-587

31 FLCCC Alliance, Ivermectin & COVID-19

32 Mountain Home May 1, 2021

33 FLCCC Alliance, I-Mask+

34 FLCCC Alliance, I-MASS

A Promise to Our Kids: We Won’t Kill You

May 13th, 2022 by Robert C. Koehler

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At a certain point, as I was reading the book I’d recently been sent, a strange transformation began occurring: Gradually, as I moved ever deeper into it, I wasn’t so much reading as quietly singing a hymn . . . participating in a chant.

The book is A Promise to Our Children: A Field Guide to Peace, by Charles P. Busch, an online version of which was sent to me by Adam Vogal, president of the Oregon Peace Institute.

The book isn’t so much about ending war as it’s about, well, loving children. And children are massacred, again and again and again and again, as the military forces of the world fight and kill, not so much one another, but rather various random swaths of humanity — a.k.a., civilians — who simply happen to be present when the bullets are fired and the bombs go off. They’re in the way. They’re collateral damage.

Early in the book, Busch, who is director of Fields of Peace, points out that “in World War I, the ratio of combatant deaths to civilian deaths was nine to one. In World War II that ratio changed dramatically. Every one combatant death was matched by one civilian death. Today, following the Vietnam War, and now Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, the ratio has again changed dramatically: one combatant death to nine civilian deaths.”

And a terrifyingly large percentage of those civilian deaths happen to be children, which is to say: “Far more children are killed in today’s wars than combatants. War has become the killing of children.”

As Busch’s words hit home — war has become the killing of children — he’s not so much making an abstract point as bringing the news to us in whatever random moment of our lives we happen to be, sort of like parents responding to a knock on the door and learning that their son or daughter has just been killed in combat.

This is the promise the book urges us to make, indeed, to say aloud, to repeat on a daily basis: “I will not be a part of the killing of any child, no matter how lofty the reason. Not my neighbor’s child. Not my child. Not the enemy’s child. Not by bomb. Not by bullet. Not by looking the other way. I will be the power that is peace.”

What does this mean, for God’s sake? These wars aren’t my fault! As I read the book, I hurried past those words, but I couldn’t let go of them. Finally I read them aloud. I suggest you do the same. I’ll wait . . .

Somehow Busch manages to push readers a little closer to the planet’s combat zones, or perhaps what I mean to say is that he clarifies the concept of “combat zone.” If there is one, we are in it, but we can choose to live in such a way that we stand up to its wrong: that we do something, on a daily basis, to change the world. He concedes the simplicity of this idea, but notes that change often emerges from simple, seemingly naïve — usually debased and ridiculed — ideas: from Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March in 1930 to Greta Thunbeg sitting alone on the steps of the Swedish parliament building, demanding governmental action on climate change.

The only real solutions to conflict are nonviolent ones. I believe most people on Planet Earth know this, yet human civilization is organized in lethal opposition to itself, with a global annual military budget in 2021 of more than $2 trillion, half of which is American. Think how many children we’re prepared to kill!

Indeed, all hail Herman Goering, who said during the Nuremberg Trials: “Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. . . . All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked. . . . It works the same in any country.”

In contrast, let me introduce Mary Gordon, a Canadian educator who has developed a curriculum called Roots of Empathy, which Busch writes about:

“In a 4th grade classroom, a group of students sit in a circle on the floor. It is the first day of the school year. They are excited and a little nervous. They are waiting for the arrival of what the teacher said will be a ‘very special surprise.’ The door opens, and in comes a mother holding her 6-month-old infant, Evelyn.

“The mother and child join them in the circle, spreading a green blanket for the infant to sit and roll and rest on. Every three weeks throughout the school year Baby Evelyn and her mother will return, and the children will come to know Evelyn. They will observe her development, her ability to sit up and express her desires and emotions. They will learn to name her expressions — hunger, tiredness, frustration, joy, anger, contentment. And the students will learn the proper way to hold an infant, and, one by one experience Evelyn’s warmth and fragility, and her preciousness.”

This is for real! Gordon’s Roots of Empathy curriculum, which she developed in 1996, is now being used in a dozen countries, including Canada and the U.S. This is emotional — or perhaps what I would call spiritual — education, with an infant as the teacher.

“In the classroom where Baby Evelyn became the teacher, the students soon claimed her as their own. They welcomed her arrivals with singing and gifts — drawings, paper necklaces, poems, and flowers. They loved her and wished they could take her home with them.”

This differs a bit from the established school norm, where the emotional education process, which takes place primarily on the playground, is often led by bullies, who teach kids how to be either jerks or victims.

The Roots of Empathy curriculum teaches, my God, empathy: reverence for vulnerability. Who knew that could be taught? But if the development of empathy is not simply left to chance — if children start becoming aware of it, start valuing and understanding it, in their preteens — they will probably be less susceptible, as adults, to the Goering dictum, less likely to be dragged into war, less willing to dehumanize others, less willing to kill their children.

The concluding metaphor in Busch’s remarkable book — his hymn — is about the great forests of the world, which may seem to consist of thousands of individual trees, but every forest is, in fact, one entity, a single life form connected at the roots.

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Outer space isn’t what most people would think of as an ecosystem. Its barren and frigid void isn’t exactly akin to the verdant canopies of a rainforest or to the iridescent shoals that swim among coral cities. But if we are to become better stewards of the increasingly frenzied band of orbital space above our atmosphere, a shift to thinking of it as an ecosystem — as part of an interconnected system of living things interacting with their physical environment — may be just what we need.

Last month, in the journal Nature Astronomy, a collective of 11 astrophysicists and space scientists proposed we do just that, citing the proliferation of anthropogenic space objects. Thousands of satellites currently orbit the Earth, with commercial internet providers such as SpaceX’s Starlink launching new ones at a dizzying pace. Based on proposals for projects in the future, the authors note, the number could reach more than a hundred thousand within the decade. Artificial satellites, long a vital part of the space ecosystem, have arguably become an invasive species.

The band of orbital space just above our atmosphere is becoming so densely populated with satellites that it may threaten the practice of astronomy. Whereas the main source of light interference used to be the cities below, it is now increasingly the satellites above. These artificial stars can be a billion times brighter than the objects astronomers hope to study, and they emit radio waves that can interfere with telescopes. By some estimates, around one in twenty images from the Hubble Telescope are affected by the streaks of passing satellites. By 2030, the authors say, a third of Hubble’s images could be impacted.

Yet the choice by the authors of the Nature Astronomy paper to call the orbital space around Earth an ecosystem reflects the fact that it’s not just astronomers who are affected by the recent infiltration of the night sky. Rather, the cluttering of orbital space is impacting the wellbeing of creatures both above the skies and below.

To begin with, there are the handful of astronauts at any given moment who call low-Earth orbit home — and the plants, worms, and tardigrades that have been their playthings on the International Space Station. Space junk created by the rare but inevitable collisions between satellites — which can travel faster than bullet speed — is becoming a threat to that life. Last year, a 5-millimeter hole was puncturedin the International Space Station’s robotic arm by debris of unknown origin.

But clutter in low-Earth orbit also threatens ways of life for entire communities of people here on the ground. The traditions and cosmologies of many Indigenous peoples, for example, are rooted in the movements of the stars. Polynesian sailors’ feats of navigation by starlight are unparalleled. The Palikur people of the Amazon see constellations as boats driven by shamans that bring rain and seasonal fish. The recent deluge of light pollution in our night skies is more than a headache to these and other Indigenous peoples, whose cosmologies may wither if the numbers of satellites aren’t kept in check. New artificial mega constellations could mask those that have been relied on for millennia. (This issue may provide rare common ground between Indigenous peoples and professional astronomers, the latter of whom have historically been aligned with colonialism and courted controversy with the construction of new telescopes on sacred Indigenous lands.)

For many non-human animals, evidence suggests that a clear night sky might be a basic survival need. The hazy stripe of the Milky Way is used by dung beetles to navigate back to their burrows. Migratory birds, harbor seals, and some species of moths all use the movement of the stars as a compass too. Who knows how many other creatures might depend on a clear view of the night sky?

To protect the space ecosystem, we should treat it the way many aspire to treat our atmosphere and our oceans: as a global commons, a resource that lies beyond national, corporate, or individual ownership. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty took steps toward this ideal by recognizing that all nations have an equal interest in the exploration and use of outer space. Yet even that treaty establishes space as a resource humans can use for our own benefit. That’s like defining an ecosystem in terms of the natural capital it offers to humans, rather than recognizing the protection of habitats and biodiversity as an intrinsic good.

Who knows how many creatures might depend on a clear view of the night sky?

More apt would be to emphasize not the potential benefits that space provides to humans but rather the potential threats that humans pose to orbital space. In this view, overuse of the global commons by any one actor imposes a shared expense on us all. In our management of Antarctica, for example, preservation goes hand in hand with human activity on the continent. In this light, we shouldn’t see low Earth orbit as the next frontier of capitalist extraction, but rather as an ecosystem to be protected — one that, like other ecosystems, has limits and tipping points beyond which there is no return.

Some groups have started to open up conversations and build initiatives to this effect. The authors of the Nature Astronomy paper, for example, propose a “space traffic footprint” akin to a carbon footprint. And in February, the International Astronomical Union launched the Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference. The center, which will be co-hosted by the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab and the Square Kilometer Array Observatory, aims to act as a hub of information and advocacy, bringing together stakeholders such as astronomers, ecologists, and Indigenous peoples alike. While much remains to be done, the issue is one of perspective as much as policy. It will take a shared commitment to the value of a clear night sky, and collaboration across diverse communities, to preserve orbital space for generations to come.

Unlike other ecosystems, the near-barrenness of the band of space just beyond our atmosphere is precisely what makes it unique and valuable. Preserving this transparent window grants us all access to what lies beyond.

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Thomas Lewton is a science journalist who writes about astrophysics and the environment.

Featured image: A pass of the Starlink 4 train of satellites on March 26, 2020. Visual: Alan Dyer/Stocktrek Images

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US Counting on Putin to Signal Before Using Nukes

May 13th, 2022 by Ray McGovern

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Hats off to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines for her Senate May 10 testimony on the likelihood of nuclear war with Russia, even though parts of it were surreal, as we discuss below.

From an intelligence perspective, she told it like it is. Not only that; she took the quintessential nuclear-use question a step beyond what CIA Director William Burns had told the Financial Times on May 7. Burns pointed out that Russian President Vladimir Putin “doesn’t believe he can afford to lose” in Ukraine. Burns added:

“I don’t think this means Putin is deterred at this point because he staked so much on the choice that he made to launch this invasion that I think he’s convinced right now that doubling down still will enable him to make progress.”

Whether or not Burns read our brief VIPS Memo of May 1, it was, frankly, good to see that he and we were on the same page regarding the key judgment that the Ukraine conflict is a must-win for Putin.

Ms. Haines took VIPs’ warning (about an “existential threat” to Russia) a step further. Swallowing hard and, uncharacteristically, stammering a little, she answered THE big question when asked by Sen. Mark Warner (D, VA):

“We’re supporting Ukraine but also we don’t want to ultimately end up in World War III and we don’t want to end up in a situation where actors are using nuclear weapons. Our view is, as General Berrier indicated, there’s not a sort of an imminent potential for Putin to use nuclear weapons. We perceive that … as something that he is unlikely to do unless there is effectively an existential threat to his regime and to Russia from his perspective.

“We do think that that could be the case in the event he perceives that he is losing the war in Ukraine, and that NATO is sort of, in effect, either intervening or about to intervene in that context, which would obviously contribute to a perception that he is about to lose the war in Ukraine.

“But that there are a lot of things that he would do in the context of escalation before he would get to a nuclear weapon, and also that he would be likely to engage in some signaling beyond what he has done thus far before doing so.”

Do You Dare Follow the Logic in this Syllogism?

Major Premise: We don’t want to end up in WWIII, using nuclear weapons.

Minor Pemise: Putin may use them if he perceives that he is losing the war in Ukraine.

Conclusion: Thus the U.S. will do what it takes to make Putin “perceive” he is losing in Ukraine.

See what I mean about surreal? Oh, but not to worry; Putin will probably first signal “beyond what he has done thus far” before using nukes. Right!

Putin Need Not Be Paranoid

It did not take a tirade by Sen. Lindsey Graham, or the outspoken “Victory Over Russia in Ukraine” pledges of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate leader Chuck Schumer, or the “weakening Russia” objective advertised by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to give President Putin a complex. Nor is it some kind of surprise to him that he is atop the list of those to be removed by “regime change.” What causes wonderment is the nonchalant way that prominent US policy officials proceed willy nilly, apparently without really comprehending the dangers at hand – even when those dangers are laid out before them by top intelligence officials like Haines and Burns.

Putin, of course, is under no illusions. He is only too well aware that this is what the U.S.-arranged coup d’etat in Kyiv in 2014 (rightly labeled the “most blatant coup in history”), was all about. That coup sharpened the Kremlin’s understanding of the existential threat Russia faced. If confirmation were needed, it came – surprisingly – from the US Defense Intelligence Agency. In DIA’s Dec. 2015 “National Security Strategy Report,” DIA Director Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart asserted:

“The Kremlin is convinced the US is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in Ukraine. Moscow views the US as the critical driver behind the crisis in Ukraine and believes that the overthrow of Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-established pattern of U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts.”

So, you don’t have to be paranoid … Paranoia or not, the likelihood that nuclear weapons might be used if Putin “perceives” he is losing in Ukraine is NOT something to be treated with such nonchalance. Reasonable policy makers would be well advised to change the Conclusion resting beneath those premises in the fateful syllogism depicted above.

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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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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  

Recipe for Terror: Kill The Truth, Kill the Journalists

May 13th, 2022 by Felicity Arbuthnot

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First published on Global Research in November 2003, this article by Felicity Arbuthnot reveals how journalists in Iraq were killed and threatened for revealing the truth:

thirty major news gathering outlets wrote to the Pentagon complaining of intimidation, arrest, destruction of note books, video tape, recorders and film. The circumstances of the death of ITN’s Terry Lloyd and disappearance of his colleagues is still obscured by the US Administration as has been the US tank attack on the Palestine Hotel with deaths of three journalists. Journalists’ protection, under the Geneva Convention is absolute.

***

“He also told me that he found U.S. troops covered in plastic bags in remote desert areas and he filmed them for a TV program. We are pretty sure that the American forces had killed Mazen knowingly to prevent him from airing his finding.”

If Tony Blair is making a list of topics to discuss with President Bush, ‘accountability’ should be well near the top. The lack of it, at US Administration level, is stunning.

“It is just not worth characterizing by numbers”, said Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, when asked how many Iraqis had died during the invasion. But from Guantanamo Bay to America’s own casualties, ‘life, liberty’ – yet alone the ‘pursuit of happiness’ has become frighteningly endangered under the neo-cons pulling George W’s strings.

At the recent World Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Dr Doug Rokke, former senior Pentagon advisor charged with the 1991 uranium clean up of Kuwait, described how injured US troops are being flown ‘in their hundreds, in the dead of night’ back to US bases ‘throughout Europe’, in order to disguise the magnitude of casualty figures. Public photographs of coffins of the dead have been proscribed and in stark contrast to the public honoring and grief of the Italian nation for their nineteen soldiers and carabinieri, killed in a suicide bombing in Nassiriyah, southern Iraq last week, the US military shuffles its fallen as quietly as possible into their final resting place.

With the death toll of US soldiers having exceeded, in just seven months, that of the first three years of Vietnam it is worth asking if even these figures are the full truth. Many of those who have joined the military in Iraq, do not hold American passports, but were, broadly, promised that they would be given them on return, for their efforts against the ‘war on terrorism’. According to Dr Rokke, should they die, their deaths are not factored in to ‘U.S.’ casualties. Further, Mazen Dana, the Award winning Reuters camera man, shot dead by US troops whilst filming outside Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison in August – with full permission and press accreditation from the US Authorities in Baghdad – told his brother Nazmi, a chilling tale days before he died.

“Mazen told me by phone few days before his death that he discovered a mass grave dug by U.S. troops to conceal the bodies of their fellow comrades killed in Iraqi resistance attacks,” Nazmi said.

“He also told me that he found U.S. troops covered in plastic bags in remote desert areas and he filmed them for a TV program. We are pretty sure that the American forces had killed Mazen knowingly to prevent him from airing his finding.”

“All international and local news agencies sent cables of condolences to his family, lauding his …… determination to uncover the truth wherever it was”, recorded veteran Middle East correspondent Awed Al Ragoub.

Truth is becoming increasingly difficult for journalists to record in Iraq. Last week, reported the Boston Globe, thirty major news gathering outlets wrote to the Pentagon complaining of intimidation, arrest, destruction of note books, video tape, recorders and film. The circumstances of the death of ITN’s Terry Lloyd and disappearance of his colleagues is still obscured by the US Administration as has been the US tank attack on the Palestine Hotel with deaths of three journalists. Journalists’ protection, under the Geneva Convention is absolute.

Iraq is now a vast Guantanamo Bay, with the disappeared unaccounted for, which was why Mazen Dana was filming outside Abu Ghraib. Even prisoners under Saddam, were more accounted for. The full number of both prison camps and prisoners are simply unknown. With the bombing of the Red Cross building in Baghdad and resultant pull out of staff, the last shred of accountability for the detained has been removed. The Red Cross is enshrined in the Geneva Convention as the neutral body who can interview and account for prisoners in war, held as hostage or in conflict zones. The tragedy of the Red Cross attack had a coincidental convenience for a U.S. human rights time bomb.

The Geneva Convention also has emotive words regarding environmental destruction. Viet Nam with Agent Orange, torching of villages, rapes and even the decapitation of a baby by a US soldier to steal her necklace, has been recently chillingly revisited by a stunning, painstaking two year investigation by journalists at the extraordinarily committed but relatively small town Toledo Blade newspaper.

‘Will this be another Viet Nam?’ has been a frequent haunting, relating to American body bags. Maybe. But little addressed is : environmentally, it is. Distraught reports have come out of Iraq of fauna, flora, wheat, barley, agriculture, bushes being torched by US soldiers with, like Viet Nam, music blaring and redolent of Palestine’s olive groves, Iraq’s great dates palms being mown down. Iraq has maybe six hundred different kinds of dates, is the worlds biggest producer. Nothing is wasted: sugar syrup is made, the stones are polished and made into beads, the fronds become anything from brooms to intricate, evocative bird cages. The date harvest (about now) is a vivid, beautiful celebration; towns and cities display them in markets in their vibrant colors: from sand and gold to brown and near vermillion, in great, intricately woven baskets – made of the fronds. Date palms are near sacred. Asking the way to a home, people will deliberate the location of the house and then , invariably say: “the garden has the tallest (smallest, most twisted etc) palm …”

The full horror and lack of accountability is outside the scope of an article, but was starkly outlined by an Iraqi academic – old friend, rabidly anti- Saddam – I met recently. She told me of a beloved alter-ego, the sister she never had, who had gone to find medication for one of her two children. The two kids were in the back of the car and she trawled the pharmacies for the medicine. (Hospitals are now , say Iraqi doctors, worse equipped than after the 1991 war, but under the new freedom no journalists are allowed to visit to record.) Finally, she found what she was needing. Driving back over the 14th of July Bridge (hugely emotive and named after another revolution against the British) she was shot at by US troops, the car burned out and she and her children burned to the unrecognizable. Baghdad, being a village of five million people, her husband quickly learned what had happened and ran across the town with friends and blankets, to cover and succor them in death. They were shot at, as they returned repeatedly, for three days, by the troops as wife and childrens’ remains stayed in the car, before they could be collected and interred.

“For telling you this, I await the knock at the door, any day, like all academics do who speak out in this occupation”, said my friend. Academics are being disappeared at stunning speed in Iraq. “You know” she said quietly, her eyes meeting mine: “many of us say we want Saddam and our country back.”

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Felicity Arbuthnot has written and broadcast widely on Iraq and with Denis Halliday was senior researcher for John Pilger’s Award winning documentary: ‘Paying the Price – Killing the Children of Iraq.’ She is Associate Editor of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image: US Embassy in Iraq under siege. Credit: Creative Commons

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May 12, 2022, the arbitrary decision by the government of the United States to exclude Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela from participation in the regional Summit of the Americas – scheduled to take place in Los Angeles, June 6th to 10th – represents another example of imperial hubris and delusion.

Mexico’s President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently announced that he would boycott the Summit unless all countries in the region are invited. Some member states of CARICOM and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, including Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and Grenadines, are also considering not attending the Summit. Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, stated that his country “does not believe in the policy of ostracising Cuba and Venezuela.”

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), however, believes that even if the U.S. reverses its decision and invites all countries of the region, the aggressive, illegal, and oppressive policies of the U.S. toward the region demands that these governments take a stand and reject the invitation to attend the Summit.

The Summit of the Americas, taking place every three years, promotes “economic growth and prosperity throughout the Americas based on shared democratic values.” However, this rhetorical hypocrisy is evident with the Biden-Harris administration’s subversion in Haiti and sanctions and attacks on Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba. “From support for autocracy in Haiti, the embargo against Cuba, and deaths in Venezuela as a result of U.S. sanctions, the U.S. continues to prove that it has no regard or respect for the peoples and nations of our region and should not be given the honor of hosting this summit,” states Jemima Pierre, co-coordinator of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team.

BAP understands the motivations and interests to expand U.S. hegemony across what the U.S. sees as its “backyard” are tied to a reassertion of the racist Monroe Doctrine. Democracy and human rights are no more than ideological props as the U.S. utilizes forces like OAS, CORE Group, and SOUTHCOM to ensure the interests of its capitalist oligarchy. Our call is, “U.S. out of the Americas,” and our goal is to work towards the establishment of the region as a “Zone of Peace.”

“As long as the U.S. operates as a hegemon instead of a partner in our region, the peoples and nations of Latin America and the Caribbean must consider the U.S. an enemy to national sovereignty and People(s)-Centered Human Rights. It is, therefore, an absurdity and a surrender of dignity to allow the U.S. to not only host this summit, but to determine who can attend,” said Erica Caines, co-coordinator of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team.

BAP is committed to a democratic and independent “Americas” free from militarism and subversion. Toward that, we believe that rejecting the divisive and disrespectful politics of the U.S. is a moral and political imperative.

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Today, we are witnessing the assassination of Palestinian-American Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin in Palestine’s Occupied West Bank.

She was deliberately targeted and killed by an Israeli soldier.

According to the Palestinian Authority government spokesperson, “all the witnesses present at the scene of the crime ensures that it was an Israeli sniper that committed the crime in a deliberate way.”

She was reporting on behalf of Al-Jazeera.

Killing journalists is a crime against humanity, which has increasingly become routine. 

Today our thoughts are with Shireen Abu Akleh (image right) and her family.

Her Legacy and Commitment to Truth will live. 

Flash Backwards to Iraq, April 2003. Nineteen Years Ago

In the immediate wake of the Battle of Baghdad, April 9, 2003, I recall the killing of two journalists by U.S forces. Al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Baghdad was deliberately targeted.

The Pentagon sponsored media were “embedded” within the US Armed Forces. This was the basis of war propaganda. And it was tightly controlled. 

Independent journalists who had not been officially approved by the invading US Forces, namely those who were “un -embedded” were targeted and killed.  Tariq Ayoub, a correspondent for Al Jazeera was killed when two US missiles struck Al Jazeera’s Baghdad offices.

 “The Al Jazeera cameraman was killed on the roof ‘getting ready for a live broadcast amid intensifying bombardment of the city when the building was hit by two missiles.'”

“Another journalist died [Reuters Taras Protsyuk] and four others were also injured when a US tank round later hit the Palestine Hotel where at least 200 international correspondents, including Al-Jazeera reporters, are staying…”  (See Al Jazeera report, 8 April 2003)

The killings of the journalists by US forces was deliberate. This was not an accident. In fact, it was consistent with Pentagon “guidelines” regarding independent “un-embedded journalists”. 


Since the war on Iraq, killing journalists is an integral part of 
war propaganda, which has taken an even more dramatic turn in America’s wars and military interventions against a large number of countries including Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Palestine, … not to mention Ukraine. 

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The text below has not been modified, updated or edited since its publication on April 11, 2003

Michel Chossudovsky, April 9, 2018, May 12, 2022

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The Battle of Baghdad, April 2003: Killing the Independent Media, Killing the “Unembedded Truth”

By Michel Chossudovsky

April 11, 2003

The tragic death of two journalists on the 8th of April bears a direct relationship to the timing of US military operations in Baghdad. The killings were an integral part of the Pentagon’s war plans.  They marked a turning point in the disinformation campaign.

On the 8th of April,  Al Jazeera and Reuters were deliberately targeted.  This was not an accident.  In fact, it was consistent with Pentagon “guidelines” regarding the independent “unembedded journalists”, who had been reporting since the beginning of the war under the “protection”  of the Iraqi Ministry of Information.

A week prior to the war, the Pentagon had intimated that it would target the transmission of information by independent  journalists, from their satellite mobile phones.  (Of course, that does not mean that  they would actually kill the journalists.) According to veteran BBC correspondent Kate Adie, in an interview with Irish TV, the Pentagon had:

 “threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists. Uplinks is where you have your own satellite telephone method of distributing information, the telephones and the television signals. According to the Pentagon official they would be ‘targeted down… Who cares.. ..They’ve been warned'” (See transcript of interview with Katie Adie, Pentagon Threatens to Kill Independent Reporters in Iraq)

The underlying objective was to unseat the “unembedded media” and disrupt factual and objective reporting from the war theatre. The killing of the journalists was also a warning to media organizations from Asia and the Middle East, which were covering the war from Baghdad, without due accreditation of the US military.

With the entry of US troops into Baghdad, the independent journalists, who were  operating under the protection of the Iraqi Ministry of Information, were brought under the direct control of the US military. In turn, the approved USCENTCOM  “embedded journalists”, attached to various US and British divisions, were now reporting directly from Baghdad, overshadowing and silencing many of their independent “nonembedded” colleagues, who had been operating out of the Palestine Hotel.

This shift in jurisdiction over the independent journalists in Baghdad took place on the 8th of April, with the breakdown of the Ministry of Information and the killing of two independent journalists by US forces.

“A Reuters reporter, photographer, television cameraman and television technician were taken to hospital after the blast. The extent of their injuries was not immediately clear.” (Reuters, 8 April 2003)

According to the Pentagon, “American soldiers who killed two foreign journalists in a Baghdad hotel had ‘exercised their inherent right to self-defence’. (quoted in the Advertiser, 10 April 2003).

The Pentagon’s objective was clear: foreclose independent reporting of the ongoing battle of Baghdad. How to achieve this objective:

-intimidate the un-embedded journalists and oblige them to seek approval and/or accreditation with the US military,

-exert direct censorship on the flow of information out of Baghdad.

Targeting “Unembedded” Humanitarian Organizations

Coincidence? On the same day, April 8th, a convoy of seven vehicles of the Red Cross (ICRC), involved in re-supplyng the city’s hospitals .was “caught in cross fire”. Thirteen people were killed including the ICRC delegate in Baghdad (who is a Canadian). The vehicles “were clearly marked with large red crosses visible from a distance.” (Health Newswire Consumer, 10 April 2003). The press reports suggest that the convoy had been deliberately targeted. The Red Cross was the last independent international aid agency operating in Baghdad. It suspended its operations that same day, April 8th.

The attack on the Red Cross, which had been working closely with Iraqi health officials and hospital staff, was also an important turning point. It laid the groundwork for bringing in the Pentagon’s approved (“embedded”) humanitarian organizations and aid agencies.

Saddam’s Statue: A Media Staged Event

The following day, 9th of April, broadcast live by network TV, the whole world had its eyes riveted on the collapse of Saddam’s 40 foot statue, portraying   “a jubilant crowd.”

A couple of hundred people at most, mainly by-standers gathered in Al-Fardus Square, while the statue was brought down by US Marines in a carefully staged media event.  An Aerial photograph of the event suggests that the square had been  “sealed off and guarded by tanks” (NYC Indymedia) . The Marines had draped an American flag over Saddam’s statue and forcefully pulled it down with a tug from a tank recovery vehicle. A hundred or so people, at most,  were shown on TV screens, rejoicing. (The Video is available online at Reuters. Photographs of the event are also available)

The “liberation footage” was replayed obsessively by network TV. “Iconic images” of the toppled statue were plastered on the front page of major newspapers. In chorus, the Western media portrayed this staged event as “historic”, as a spontaneous mass movement of “thousands” of “happy Iraqis”, celebrating the “Liberation of Iraq” by American troops.

Reuters first released the story on the 9th, following the Live TV newscast. The report said that  “dozens” of people were celebrating the collapse of the statue. Hours later, this story had already been changed. The AFP report also acknowledged that “dozens” of people were rejoicing:

“Tanks had rumbled by late afternoon into the central Al-Fardus (Paradise) Square, where dozens of Iraqis quickly set about the massive bronze statue of the Iraqi president, a symbol of his 24-year iron-fisted rule…. Dozens of Iraqis jumped on the fallen figure shouting with joy and venting their anger by breaking it into pieces.” (AFP, 9 April 2003)

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s mouthpiece, the London Daily Express, casually inflated the “dozens” to “thousands”:

“In historic scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of civilians cheered as young men mounted the statue and tied a makeshift noose around Saddam’s neck.” (Daily Express, 10 April 2003)

Baghdad was not rejoicing. Since the outset of the war, several thousand civilians had been murdered and maimed by US and British troops. US occupation forces invoking the pretext of self-defense continue to shoot indiscriminately at civilians, as evidenced by several press reports. (See for instance ABC TV broadcast, 10 April 2003). Baghdad has a population of 5.6 million and most people, fearing for the lives, decided to stay home. With the entry of US troops, a reign of terror prevails in Baghdad.

Media Spin

The bringing down of the statue of Saddam played a crucial role in the Pentagon’s propaganda campaign. Relayed by Fox News and CNN,  it was immediately heralded by TV channels and news media around the World as marking an end to the war. While fighting was still ongoing, with heavy casualties on both sides, the Western media had decided in chorus: “It’s in the end game now,”

In turn, the toppling of Saddam’s statue had become a symbol of Iraq’s “Liberation” by US forces, overshadowing everything else, including the atrocities committed by US and British forces.

Since the entry of US troops into Baghdad, civilian casualties are no longer front-page news. The slaughter of women and children and the crisis in the hospitals, is no  longer an issue. The impending humanitarian crisis, reported by the relief agencies and the UN is no longer mentioned. Civilian deaths are view as “the price to pay” to “liberate Iraq”:

 “the number of Iraqi civilians accidentally killed has been far, far less than the number that would have been killed by Saddam Hussein’s evil regime in the normal scheme of things” (Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 8 April 2003)

. “I’m sure there will be more casualties, but it is one of the prices we have to pay” (Washington Post, 10 April 2003)

“‘one day’ the mothers of children killed or maimed by British cluster bombs will thank Britain for their use (British Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon quoted in the Independent, 5 April 2003)

In turn, because “the war is nearly over”, detailed and accurate reporting from the war theatre is no longer deemed necessary.

Meanwhile, financial markets rejoice. Investors on Wall Street “applauded images of a statue of Saddam…[which] sent sent stocks surging…” (UPI, 9 April 2003).

This “liberation euphoria” also serves to disarm the critics and create divisions within the anti-war movement. A segment of the anti-war movement now views as “positive” the demise of the Iraqi regime, thereby tacitly signifying their approval of the US military intervention in support  of “regime change”.

“Peace”, “reconstruction”, “democracy” and “the post-Saddam era” are the buzz words.  The main justification for waging the war (i.e. Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction) is no longer deemed relevant. The fact that the invasion was a criminal act in blatant violation of the UN charter and the Nuremberg charter on war crimes is no longer an issue. (For further details see Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal. Adopted by the International Law Commission of the United Nations, 1950 ).

The Pentagon’s propaganda apparatus had taken over. The targeted killing of journalists in Baghdad marked a crucial turning point. Independent reporting out of Baghdad has been seriously impaired.

News media from Arab countries including Al Jazeera, which had been threatened for their “non-Western news perspective”, were towing the line. Since the attack on its office in Baghdad, Al Jazeera’s news reports seem to have taken on a different tone.

Virtually the entire news chain has become “embedded”.

The War is not over

How best to disarm the anti-war movement and silence the critics: Convey the illusion that the war is over.

But the war is not over.

Heavy fighting is ongoing. The evidence suggests that a significant part of the Iraqi arsenal and troops is still intact. (For further details see the report of Richard Bennett published on April 5, 2003) .  Thousands of Iraqi troops and armed civilians including volunteers from neighboring countries are confronting the invaders.

The Pentagon has acknowledged that it only controls part of the city.

The Battle of Baghdad is not over.  The struggle against US occupation has commenced.


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Important article by Forbes. Selected excerpts.

Our thanks to Forbes for bringing this article to our attention.

***

We know the pandemic has had a serious negative impact on the academic achievement of school-age children. But recent evidence shows we also need to worry about Covid-era babies and toddlers.

Because of Covid-related disruptions, about a third of early elementary students will likely need intensive support to become proficient readers, according to one study. Now two additional studies suggest that many children born during the pandemic will also be at risk for academic failure. It seems that overburdened parents haven’t been able to engage babies and toddlers in the kind of “conversation” that is crucial for language development—and eventually, for reading.

Independently, another study from Brown University’s Advanced Baby Imaging Lab found similar results. The lab has been tracking over 1700 families with young children since 2010. One year into the pandemic, researchers found that children’s average cognitive performance was the lowest it had been since the study began. A separate analysis of infants found a dramatic decline in verbal functioning in 2021, apparently because adults were initiating fewer conversational turns.

The reasons for the decline in vocalizations and conversational turns aren’t entirely clear from the data, but the Brown study concluded that factors related to the pandemic had “by far the greatest impact on infant and toddler neurodevelopment.”

While it’s true that schools and teachers have been stretched thin as a result of the pandemic, it would be nothing less than a tragedy if their added burdens were used as a reason to stick with an approach to reading instruction that has been failing students for far too long. Especially in light of this new evidence that the negative impact of Covid is likely to be with us for years to come, we have no time to waste in adopting materials and methods that can work for all students, including the most vulnerable.

Click here to read the full article.

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Natalie Wexler is the author of The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—and How to Fix It (Avery, 2019). She is also the co-author, with Judith C. Hochman, of The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades” (Jossey-Bass, 2017). Substack: https://nataliewexler.substack.com/

Featured image is from Pixabay

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Amid the retreat of Russian forces in the Kharkiv region, the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to expand their control zone in the Kharkiv region.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are aiming at reaching the borders of the Russian Federation.

The Ukrainian Army advanced along the right bank of the Seversky Donets River and took control of the area north of the Pecheneg reservoir. The further Ukrainian advance towards the town of Volchansk located on the Russian border is expected. At the same time, clashes were reported in the villages of Liptsy and Rubezhnoye in the Kharkiv region.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces managed to advance towards the villages of Cossack Lopan and Tsupovka, where a small Russian grouping continues to hold the defense.

One of the main threats to the Russian forces was posed by the AFU attack in the area to the northwest of the town of Izyum. The main blow of the AFU counteroffensive targeted the villages of Ivanovka and Rudnevo on the eastern bank of the Seversky Donets River. Ukrainian troops continue their attempts to cross the river and take control of the settlements.

According to local reports, the AFU managed to transfer some forces across the Seversky Donets River and attack Russian positions.

If the AFU counterattack is successful, it will pose a dangerous threat to the Russian grouping in Izyum. This region is the main springboard for the Russian attack on the city of Slavyansk from the north.

Despite the attempts of the AFU counteroffensive, Russian troops continued to expand the control zone in the Izyum area.

Russian-led forces took control of the village of Velika Kamyshevakha after prolonged fighting to the west of Izyum. The Russian offensive against the AFU grouping in Barvenkovo continues.

In the Luhansk People’s Republic, the encirclement of the AFU group in the cities of Severodonetsk and Lisichansk continues. There are battles for the village of Belogorovka. The positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Lisichansk are constantly shelled by Russian artillery, special forces are deployed on the city outskirts.

In the area of Rubezhnoe, Chechen soldiers of the unit of the Akhmat special forces and the People’s Militia of the LPR blocked the remnants of Ukrainian units at the Zarya plant. According to the military assistant to the head of Chechnya the area from the left flank of the Zarya plant to Kudryashovka located on the north-eastern outskirts of the town was secured.

To the east of Popasnaya, units of the Allied forces took control of Nizhny village and adjacent heights, there are battles for the town of Toshkovka located on the road leading to Lisichanck.

In the Donetsk People’s Republic, the People’s Militia forces are storming Avdiivka, Opytne and Peski. Taking control of settlements in the Donetsk region will stop the shelling of residential quarters of the city by Ukrainian artillery.

On May 10, the Naval Forces of Ukraine blocked the passage in the Dnieper Estuary, placing barges between Ochakov and Pervomaisky Island. Russian missiles have already attacked the area. The missile strike hit at least one of the barges south of Ochakov.

On May 9, the AFU made another attempt to counterattack a grouping of Russian forces on the island of Zmeiny. Attack was a failed “PR campaign” by the Kiev regime to seize the island on the eve of the Great Patriotic War Victory Day.

The attack ended with the complete defeat of the airborne forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

On May 10, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the Kiev regime lost 30 military UAVs in this area over the past three days, including 9 Bayraktar-TB2s. 27 bodies of Ukrainian special forces and nationalist fighters remain at Zmeiniy Island as a result of Kiev’s failed operation. According to the Russian Ministry of Defence, the operation resulted in the deaths of more than five dozen Ukrainian fighters and members of elite AFU units, the loss of 4 aircraft, 10 helicopters, 3 boats and 30 unmanned aerial vehicles.

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So far, all of the drugs developed against COVID-19 have been disastrous in one way or another. Remdesivir, which to this day is the primary COVID drug approved for use in U.S. hospitals, routinely causes severe organ damage and, often, death

Despite that, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved remdesivir for in-hospital and outpatient use in children as young as 1 month old

Another COVID drug, Paxlovid, will in some cases cause the infection to rebound when the medication is withdrawn

Molnupiravir (sold under the brand name Lagevrio) also has serious safety concerns. Not only might it contribute to cancer and birth defects, it may also supercharge the rate at which the virus mutates inside the patient, resulting in newer and more resistant variants

The fact that U.S. health authorities have focused on these drugs to the exclusion of all others, including older drugs with high rates of effectiveness and superior safety profiles, sends a very disturbing message. They’ve basically become extensions of the drug industry, protecting the drug industry’s interests at the cost of public health

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So far, all of the drugs developed against COVID-19 have been disastrous in one way or another. Remdesivir, for example, which to this day is the primary COVID drug approved for use in U.S. hospitals,1 routinely causes severe organ damage2,3,4,5 and, often, death.

Despite its horrible track record, the U.S. government actually pays hospitals a 20% upcharge for sticking to the remdesivir protocol, plus an additional bonus.6,7,8 Hospitals must also use remdesivir if they want liability protection.

Incentives like these have turned U.S. hospitals into veritable death traps, as more effective and far safer drugs are not allowed, and hospitals are essentially forced to follow the recommendations of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As reported by Forbes science reporter JV Chamary back in January 2021, in an article titled, “The Strange Story of Remdesivir, a COVID Drug That Doesn’t Work”:9

“Remdesivir is an experimental drug developed by biotech company Gilead Sciences (under the brand name Veklury) in collaboration with the US Centers for Disease Control and Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases …

The drug proved ineffective against the Ebola virus … yet was still subsequently repurposed for SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. News media prematurely reported that patients were responding to treatment.

But the published data10 later showed that ‘remdesivir was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits [and] the numerical reduction in time to clinical improvement in those treated earlier requires confirmation in larger studies’ …

What’s weird about remdesivir is that it hasn’t been held to the same standards as other drug candidates. Normally, a drug is only approved for use by a regulatory body like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration if it meets the two criteria for safety and efficacy.

Nonetheless, in October 2020, remdesivir was granted approval by FDA based on promising data from relatively small trials with about 1,000 participants. A large-scale analysis11 by the World Health Organization’s Solidarity trial consortium has cleared-up the confusion.

Based on interim results from studying more than 5,000 participants, the international study concluded that remdesivir ‘had little or no effect on hospitalized patients with COVID-19, as indicated by overall mortality, initiation of ventilation, and duration of hospital stay.’ As a consequence of being mostly ineffective, WHO recommends against the use of remdesivir in COVID-19 patients.”

Shockingly, US Approves Remdesivir for Babies

Curiously, while Big Tech — aided and abetted by the U.S. government — has spent the last two years censoring and banning any information that doesn’t jibe with the opinions of the WHO, the U.S. government has completely ignored the WHO’s recommendation against remdesivir.

In fact, in late April 2022, the FDA approved remdesivir as the first and only COVID-19 treatment for children under 12, including babies as young as 28 days,12 which seems beyond Orwellian and crazy considering it’s the worst of both worlds: It’s ineffective AND has serious side effects.

What’s worse, the drug is also approved for outpatient use in children, which is a first. In an April 30, 2022, blog post,13 Dr. Meryl Nass expressed her concerns about the FDA’s approval of remdesivir for outpatient use in babies, stating:

“Remdesivir received an early EUA (May 1, 2020) and then a very early license (October 22, 2020) despite a paucity of evidence that it actually was helpful in the hospital setting. A variety of problems can arise secondary its use, including liver inflammation, renal insufficiency and renal failure14

WHO recommended against the drug on November 20, 2020. Few if any other countries used it for COVID apart from the US. A large European trial15 in adults found no benefit. The investigators felt 3 deaths were due to remdesivir (0.7% of subjects who received it.) However, on April 22, 2022 the WHO recommended the drug for a new use: early outpatient therapy in patients at high risk of a poor COVID outcome.”

Remdesivir — A Reckless Choice for Children

Nass goes on to recount how monoclonal antibody treatment centers have been turned into outpatient treatment centers using remdesivir instead, but we still don’t have a lot of data on its effectiveness in early treatment. She continues:16

“The FDA just licensed Remdesivir for children as young as one month old. Both hospitalized children and outpatients may receive it. The drug might work in outpatients, but the vast majority of children have a very low risk of dying from COVID.

If 7 deaths per 1,000 result from the drug, as the European investigators thought in the study of adults cited above, it is possible it will harm or kill more children than it saves.

Shouldn’t the FDA have waited longer to see what early outpatient treatment did for older ages? Or studied a much larger group of children? Very little has been published on children and remdesivir …

When we look at the press release17 issued by Gilead, we learn the approval was based on an open label, single arm trial in 53 children, 3 of whom died (6% of these children died); 72% had an adverse event, and 21% had a serious adverse event.”

Overall, remdesivir appears to be an exceptionally risky treatment choice for young children. Certainly, there are safer early treatment protocols that are very effective. Two other COVID drugs, Paxlovid and Molnupiravir, also have serious safety concerns.

Post-Paxlovid COVID Rebound

As reported by Bloomberg,18 COVID patients treated with a five-day course of Paxlovid sometimes experience severe rebound when the medication is withdrawn.19 U.S. government researchers are now planning to study the rate and extent to which the drug is causing SARS-CoV-2 infection to rebound, and whether a longer regimen might prevent it.

Bloomberg describes the post-Paxlovid rebound of David Ho, a virologist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University:20

“Ho said he came down with COVID on April 6 … His doctor prescribed Paxlovid, and within days of taking it, his symptoms dissipated and tests turned negative. But 10 days after first getting sick, the symptoms returned and his tests turned positive for another two days.

Ho said he sequenced his own virus and found that both infections were from the same strain, confirming that the virus had not mutated and become resistant to Paxlovid. A second family member who also got sick around the same time also had post-Paxlovid rebound in symptoms and virus, Ho says.

‘It surprised the heck out of me,’ he said. ‘Up until that point I had not heard of such cases elsewhere.’ While the reasons for the rebound are still unclear, Ho theorizes that it may occur when a small proportion of virus-infected cells may remain viable and resume pumping out viral progeny once treatment stops.”

Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dr. Paul Sax, told Bloomberg:21

“Providers who are going to be prescribing this should be aware that this phenomenon occurs, and if people have symptoms worsening after Paxlovid, it’s probably still COVID. The big problem is that when this drug was released, this information wasn’t included [on the label].”

Pfizer Defends Paxlovid

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has stated it is “evaluating the reports of viral load rebound after completing Paxlovid treatment and will share recommendations if appropriate.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not yet commented on the findings.

Pfizer, meanwhile, insists the increase in viral load post-treatment “is unlikely to be related to Paxlovid” because viral rebound was found in “a small number” of both the treatment and placebo groups in Pfizer’s final-stage study.22 Clifford Lane, deputy director for clinical research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Bloomberg23 that some people may simply “need longer dosing of Pfizer’s drug than the standard five days.”

“There’s two things that suppress the virus: the drug and the host immune response,” he said. “If you stop the drug before the host immune response has had a chance to kick in, you may see the virus come back.”

Molnupiravir Supercharges Viral Mutation

Molnupiravir (sold under the brand name Lagevrio) also has serious safety concerns. This drug was developed by Merck and Ridgeback Therapeutics and approved for emergency use by the FDA December 23, 2021, for high-risk patients with mild to moderate COVID symptoms.

However, not only might it contribute to cancer and birth defects, it may also supercharge the rate at which the virus mutates inside the patient, resulting in newer and more resistant variants.24 As reported in November 2021 by Forbes contributor and former professor at Harvard Medical School, William Haseltine, Ph.D.:25

“… I believe the FDA needs to tread very carefully with molnupiravir, the antiviral currently before them for approval. My misgivings are founded on two key concerns.

The first is the drug’s potential mutagenicity, and the possibility that its use could lead to birth defects or cancerous tumors. The second is a danger that is far greater and potentially far deadlier: the drug’s potential to supercharge SARS-CoV-2 mutations and unleash a more virulent variant upon the world …

My concern with molnupiravir is because of the mechanism26 by which this particular drug works. Molnupiravir works as an antiviral by tricking the virus into using the drug for replication, then inserting errors into the virus’ genetic code once replication is underway. When enough copying errors occur, the virus is essentially killed off, unable to replicate any further …

But my biggest concern with this drug is … molnupiravir’s ability to introduce mutations to the virus itself that are significant enough to change how the virus functions, but not so powerful as to stop it from replicating and becoming the next dominant variant.”

Haseltine cites prepandemic experiments showing MERS-CoV and the mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) both developed resistance against the drug, thanks to mutations that occurred. While the central idea behind the drug is that the genetic errors will eventually kill the virus, these experiments showed the viruses were in fact able to survive and replicate to high titers despite having large numbers of mutations throughout their genomes.

The drug did slow down replication, but as noted by Haseltine, “outside of the lab, as the drug is given to millions of people with active infections, this disadvantage may quickly disappear as we would likely provide a prime selection environment to improve the fitness of the virus.” This risk may be particularly high if you fail to take all the prescribed doses (typically 800 milligrams twice a day for five days).

Experts Question Usefulness of Molnupiravir

More recently, in a January 10, 2022, article, Newsweek cited concerns by professor Michael Lin of Stanford University:27

“’I am very concerned about the potential consequences now that molnupiravir has been approved … It would only be a matter of time, perhaps a very short time, before a lucky set of mutations occurs to create a variant that is more transmissible or immunoevasive …

The drug simply speeds up that natural process. The hope is that over enough days all the viral copies will have so many mutations that none of the copies can function.’ But Lin said he was concerned that in the real world, there is a possibility that a mutated virus could jump from a patient taking molnupiravir to another individual, citing the relatively modest efficacy of the drug.

‘For cases that get worse so that people have to go to the hospital, this drug only prevents that from happening 30%of the time. That means 70% of the time the virus isn’t being eliminated quickly enough to make a difference. And we know COVID patients going to hospitals are highly contagious.’

Lin said the risks could be heightened when a patient does not comply exactly with the dosing schedule of the drug … ‘In any of those situations viruses will have picked up some mutations but not enough to kill all the virus copies,’ he said. ‘The survivors are now mutated, perhaps have picked up immunoevasion, and can go on to infect others’ …

According to Lin, the ‘very low efficacy alone’ should have disqualified the drug from approval … ‘Even if the drug were great we wouldn’t take such a risk, but this drug is worse than any other drug that’s sought approval for COVID-19. It’s completely not worth it.’”

Haseltine also told Newsweek28 that, “Of all the antiviral drugs I have ever seen, this is by far the most potentially dangerous,” and “The more people that take it, the more dangerous it will be.”

One of the FDA panel members who actually voted against the approval of molnupiravir, James Hildreth, president of Meharry Medical College in Tennessee, wanted Merck to do a better job of quantifying the risk of mutations before approval. During the panel meeting, he noted that:29

“Even if the probability is very low, 1 in 10,000 or 100,000, that this drug would induce an escape mutant which the vaccines we have do not cover, that would be catastrophic for the whole world.”

Government Has Sold Out to Big Pharma

Widespread use of a drug that turbocharges mutation of an already rapidly mutating virus probably isn’t the wisest strategy. Likewise, using drugs that cause high rates of organ failure, like remdesivir, and drugs that causes the virus to rebound with a vengeance, like Paxlovid, don’t seem to be in the best interest of public health either.

The fact that U.S. health authorities have focused on these drugs to the exclusion of all others, including older drugs with high rates of effectiveness and superior safety profiles, sends a very disturbing message.

They’ve basically become extensions of the drug industry and have abandoned their original purpose, which is to protect public health — by ensuring the safety and efficacy of drugs, in the case of the FDA,30 and by conducting critical science and data analysis in the case of the CDC.31

Instead, they seem to be doing everything they can to protect Big Pharma profits, even if it costs you your life. Remdesivir, for example, is an extremely expensive drug, costing between $2,340 and $3,120 depending on your insurance.32

Ivermectin, meanwhile — which has been very effective against COVID and shown to outperform at least 10 other drugs, including Paxlovid33 — costs between $4834 and $9435 for 20 pills depending on your location. The average cost is said to be about $58 per treatment.36

Paxlovid costs $529 per five-day course of treatment,37 and molnupiravir is around $700.38 While not quite as expensive as remdesivir, both are still nearly 10 times costlier than ivermectin, which is more effective. Paxlovid alone has cost U.S. taxpayers $5.29 billion. Just imagine the billions we could have saved had we saner leadership.

Since the FDA and CDC cannot be trusted, it’s imperative to take responsibility for your own health. Do your own research and follow your own conscience and conviction. Remember, when it comes to COVID-19, early treatment is crucial, and effective protocols are readily available — just not from the FDA, CDC or even most hospitals.

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The attorneys general of 20 states have threatened legal action against the US government unless they disband the newly formed Disinformation Governance Board.

We shared with you recently an article about the people behind the DGB, who have a history of trying to curb dissenting speech by calling it “disinformation.” We here at the OP have been the targets of censorship before and would not be surprised to see more of the same. (Here’s how we’re meeting the possibility of further oppression head-on.)

It turns out that we’re not the only ones concerned about this.

What’s being done?

In a letter addressed to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the Attorney General of Virginia, Jason Miyares, spoke for the AGs of 19 other states and shared his concerns about the overreach.

The letter was acquired by ReclaimtheNet.org.

As the chief legal officers of our respective States, we, the undersigned Attorneys General, are tasked not just with enforcing the laws but with protecting the constitutional rights of all our citizens. Today we write you to insist that you immediately cease taking action that appears designed exclusively for the purpose of suppressing the exercise of constitutional rights.

Every American knows that the Constitution forbids the government to “abridg[e] the freedom of speech.” US Const. Amend. I. As Justice Robert Jackson wrote nearly eighty years ago, “[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.” West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 US 624, 642 (1943).

Your recent testimony before the US House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, however, indicated that the Department of Homeland Security, under your leadership, is doing exactly that: prescribing orthodoxy by slapping a federal-government label of “disinformation” or “misinformation” on speech that government bureaucrats, operating behind closed doors, decree to be improper. This is an unacceptable and downright alarming encroachment on every citizen’s right to express his or her opinions, engage in political debate, and disagree with the government. The Biden Administration’s latest effort to decide what speech is “acceptable” and “orthodox” combines McCarthyite speech policing with the secrecy of the English Star Chamber.

In short, you seem to have misunderstood George Orwell: the “Ministry of Truth” described in 1984 was intended as a warning against the dangers of socialism, not as a model government agency. “MiniTru” and its thuggish apparatchiks are the villains in that story, not the heroes. For the sake of our democracy, you must immediately disband the “Disinformation Governance Board” and cease all efforts to police Americans’ protected speech. The existence of the Disinformation Governance Board will inevitably have a chilling effect on free speech. Americans will hesitate before they voice their constitutionally protected opinions, knowing that the government’s censors may be watching, and some will decide it is safer to keep their opinions to themselves.

The resulting damage to our political system and our culture will be incalculable: as a democracy, our political debates and decisions are supposed to take place in the public square, where every citizen can participate, rather than in government office buildings where hand-picked and unaccountable partisan committees are insulated from public supervision and criticism.

Read the rest of the letter here. [Screenshot below, Global Research edit] 

The letter goes on to question the timing of the new Ministry of Truth (just as Elon Musk completes the purchase of Twitter with the stated goal of restoring free speech on the platform). It also calls into question the dubious qualifications of head honcho, Nina Jancowiz, who AG Miyares describes as “often in error but never in doubt.”

(Want to learn how to starve the beast? Check out our free QUICKSTART Guide.)

How will the AGs enforce this?

In a firmly worded promise, Miyares concludes:

Unless you turn back now and disband this Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board immediately, the undersigned will have no choice but to consider judicial remedies to protect the rights of their citizens.

We sincerely hope this puts a halt to the censorship efforts of the Biden administration.

Who signed the letter?

The letter was signed by the attorneys general of 20 states. We hope that other states follow in their footsteps to protect this vital constitutional right. (Contact your state’s AG and let them know you support them or want them to get on board, too!)

The following AGs signed the letter.

  1. Jason S. Miyares, Virginia (the author of the letter)
  2. Steve Marshall, Alabama
  3. Mark Brnovich, Arizona
  4. Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas
  5. Ashley Moody, Florida
  6. Christopher M. Carr, Georgia
  7. Todd Rokita, Indiana
  8. Derek Schmidt, Kansas
  9. Daniel Cameron, Kentucky
  10. Jeff Landry, Louisiana
  11. Lynn Fitch, Mississippi
  12. Eric Schmitt, Missouri
  13. Austin Knudson, Montana
  14. Douglas J. Peterson, Nebraska
  15. David Yost, Ohio
  16. John M. O’Connor, Oklahoma
  17. Alan Wilson, South Carolina
  18. Ken Paxton, Texas
  19. Sean D. Reyes, Utah
  20. Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia

What do you think?

What do you think about the letter? Do you feel it will gain traction with the DHS and the current administration? Do you think more states will get on board? How can we support our AGs who are standing up for our constitutional rights?

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Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, adventure-seeking, globe-trotting blogger. She is the founder and publisher of three websites.  1) The Organic Prepper, which is about current events, preparedness, self-reliance, and the pursuit of liberty; 2)  The Frugalite, a website with thrifty tips and solutions to help people get a handle on their personal finances without feeling deprived; and 3) PreppersDailyNews.com, an aggregate site where you can find links to all the most important news for those who wish to be prepared. Her work is widely republished across alternative media and she has appeared in many interviews.

Featured image is from The Organic Prepper

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Facts About COVID-19

May 12th, 2022 by Swiss Policy Research

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First published on March 25, 2021, Updated on May 12, 2022.

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“The only means to fight the plague is honesty.” (Albert Camus, 1947)

Overview

  1. Lethality: The overall infection fatality rate (IFR) of the novel coronavirus in the general population (excluding nursing homes) is about 0.1% to 0.5% in most countries, which is most closely comparable to the medium influenza pandemics of 1936, 1957 and 1968.
  2. Age profile: The median age of covid deaths is over 80 years in most Western countries (78 in the United States) and about 5% of the deceased had no medical preconditions. In many Western countries, about 50% of all covid deaths occurred in nursing homes.
  3. Vaccine protection: Covid vaccines provide a very high, but rapidly declining protection against severe disease. Vaccination cannot prevent infection and transmission. A prior infection generally confers superior immunity compared to vaccination (in part due to mucosal immunity).
  4. Vaccine injuries: Covid vaccinations can cause severe and fatal vaccine reactions, including cardiovascular, neurological and immunological reactions. Because of this, the risk-benefit ratio of covid vaccination in healthy children and adults under 40 years of age remains controversial.
  5. Excess mortality: In most countries, the pandemic increased mortality by about 5% to 25%. Some of the additional deaths were caused not by covid, but by indirect effects of the pandemic and lockdowns (including an increase in drug overdose deaths).
  6. Symptoms: About 30% of all infected persons show no symptoms. Overall, about 95% of all people develop at most mild or moderate symptoms and do not require hospitalization. Obesity, in particular, is a major risk factor for severe covid.
  7. Treatment: For people at high risk or high exposure, early or prophylactic treatment is essential to prevent progression of the disease. Numerous studies found that early outpatient treatment of covid can significantly reduce hospitalizations and deaths.
  8. Long covid: Up to 10% of symptomatic people experience post-acute or long covid, i.e. covid-related symptoms that last several weeks or months. Long covid may also affect young and previously healthy people whose initial course of disease was rather mild.
  9. Transmission: Indoor aerosols appear to be the main route of transmission of the coronavirus, while outdoor aerosols, droplets, as well as most object surfaces appear to play a minor role.
  10. Masks: Face masks had no influence on infection rates, which was already known from studies prior to the pandemic. Even N95 masks had no influence on infection rates in the general population. Moreover, long-term or improper use of face masks can lead to health issues.
  11. Lockdowns: In contrast to early border controls (e.g. by Australia), lockdowns had no significant effect on infection rates. However, according to the World Bank lockdowns caused an “historically unprecedented increase in global poverty” of close to 100 million people.
  12. Children and schools: In contrast to influenza, the risk of severe covid in children is rather low. Moreover, children were not drivers of the pandemic and the closure of schools had no impact on infection rates in the general population.
  13. PCR tests: The highly sensitive PCR tests are prone to producing false positive or false negative results (e.g. after an acute infection). Overall, PCR and antigen mass testing had no impact on infection rates in the general population (exception: to sustain border controls).
  14. Contact tracing: Manual contact tracing and contact tracing apps on mobile phones had no effect on infection rates. Already in 2019, a WHO study on influenza pandemics concluded that contact tracing is “not recommended in any circumstances”.
  15. Vaccine passports: Vaccine passports had no impact on infection rates as vaccination cannot prevent infection. Vaccine passports could, however, serve as a basis for the introduction of digital biometric identity and payment systems. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warned as early as March 2020 that surveillance could be expanded during the pandemic.
  16. Virus mutations: Similar to influenza viruses, mutations occur frequently in coronaviruses. The omicron variant, which may have emerged from vaccine research, showed significantly higher infectiousness and immune escape, but 90% lower lethality.
  17. Sweden: In Sweden, covid mortality without lockdown was comparable to a strong influenza season and somewhat below the EU average. About 50% of Swedish deaths occurred in nursing homes and the median age of Swedish covid deaths was about 84 years.
  18. Influenza viruses: Influenza viruses largely disappeared during the coronavirus pandemic. Yet this was not a result of “covid measures”, but a result of temporary displacement by the novel coronavirus, even in countries without measures (such as Sweden).
  19. Media: The reporting of many media was rather unprofessional, increased fear and panic in the population and led to a hundredfold overestimation of the lethality of the coronavirus. Some media even used manipulative pictures and videos to dramatize the situation.
  20. Virus origin: Genetic evidence points to a laboratory origin of the new coronavirus. Both the Virological Institute in Wuhan (WIV) as well as some US laboratories that cooperated with the WIV performed various kinds of research on similar coronaviruses.

Overview Diagrams

Excess mortality by February 2022 (S)

Covid vs. flu pandemics (S)

Covid mortality in Sweden, the EU, and the US (S)

Sweden: Mortality since 1835 (S)

UK: Mortality since 1842, age-adjusted (S)

US: Monthly age-adjusted mortality (S)

US: Yearly age-adjusted mortality (S)

Germany: Monthly mortality s. 1950 (S)

Percentage of care home deaths (S)

US recessions in comparison (S)

North Dakota vs. South Dakota (S)

Lockdowns in Australia (S)

PCR tests: Sensitivity vs. Infectiousness (S)

Infections in Israel (S)

Post-vaccination deaths, USA, 1990-2021 (S)

Digital Identity (S)

Latest updates

Basics

  1. Covid vaccines
  2. Face masks
  3. Covid treatment
  4. Coronavirus origins
  5. “Vaccine passports”

General

Vaccines

Early Treatment

Face masks

Other topics

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Always looking, and sounding, a touch unhinged, the beetroot-coloured Barnaby Joyce, leader of the Australian Nationals and, for a time now, deputy prime minister, has made a splash.  With the federal elections being held on May 18, he does not have much time to commit mischief and befuddle the political vultures.  But the National Press Club gave him a chance to make some trouble, a task accomplished with some success.

At stages during his address, it seemed that trouble had followed Joyce.  There was sniffing and sniffling.  Then a nosebleed, brief intermission and tissues.  The Twitterati thought this ominous; political commentators searched for omens about previous pre-election mishaps.  “I know you are going to get 1001 photos of me with a Kleenex up my nose, congratulations,” he chirped, on being handed a fresh tissue.

Of more interest, and some bafflement, was the speech itself, a filling of meaty prejudices and concerns about China, a fairly dismissive take on climate change, and a warning about the threat posed by a number of independent candidates that are knocking at the door of traditional conservative seats.

As far as Beijing is concerned, Joyce presents the classic Australian paradox: a pathological suspicion of the Yellow Horde and its strategic interests, but a delight at the voracious appetite they show for Australian commodities.  In recent years, Australia’s skewed and distorted pattern of wealth has developed on the back of that particular interest.  The same can also be said about the China student market and witless Australian universities lazily disposed to easy cash.

The role played by China in aiding Australian wealth did feature, if only to enable Joyce to speculate wildly as to who would replace it as top customer in the importing of iron ore exports.  This proved particularly pertinent on the issue of how Australian commodities were essentially going into Chinese war-making capabilities.

In his answer, Joyce recalled “talking to one of the large miners” and saying that “we have a big new customer.”  That customer: Germany.  “Germany is a big new customer.  And I imagine Germany is using the iron ore for a whole range of things and of course, one the other Germany is redoing, rearming.”  When “rearming” and “Germany” are used, however disjointedly, in a sentence, ghosts of wars past stir nervously.

Not, it would seem, now.  A Teutonic replacement would be welcome in the face of Beijing’s regional ambitions.  Chinese military expansion, Joyce stated unequivocally, was “without a shadow of a doubt” the most important issue facing Australians.

Inventively, and with a flourish, he took the view that China’s conduct in seeking security ties with countries such as the Solomon Islands was simple: the encirclement of Australia.  “It is quite obvious through their desire to have military bases that they are starting a process of encircling Australia and that there is a wish, at the very least, to intimidate, or worse, to supplicate Australia.”

Joyce has never quite had the mind or sense to understand the historical basis of China’s own concern of encirclement, a psychic disturbance very much aided by the United States and the recent AUKUS security pact.  The same can be said about his understanding of independent candidates, whom he rubbishes as being incapable of understanding national security.

Such novel, absurd and dangerous interpretations on the wishes of a power can become, at a moment’s notice, the bricks and mortar for conflict.  “The thing that China will respect is strength.  That’s why I say we have to become as strong as possible as quickly as possible.  And respecting strength means you have to be strong across all facets of what you do.”

Giving the impression of being far-eyed and sagacious, Barnaby spoke of his role in preventing previous efforts by Chinese entities to acquire Australian assets and muscle in on domestic matters.  “I refer to my successful endeavours to stop a Chinese state-owned enterprise takeover of Rio Tinto, our largest iron ore exporter, back as far as 2009.”  He then boasted of his support for “changes in foreign investment laws which the Labor Party opposed.”

When asked about the touchy issue of climate change and disagreement within his own party and his Liberal coalition partners, he was unperturbed.  Metropolitan, ecology-minded types, despite being threatened by the so-called “teal independents”, would not have their way on the issue of preventing coal projects.  “Because what we are doing is … we have got to make sure our nation earns as much money as possible.  We can’t do that if we shut down coal exports.”  What vision, what clarity.

What about the issue of the Coalition’s “safeguard mechanism” in responding to climate change?  In a sense, this looks suspiciously like a version of the demonised carbon tax, an idea considered pestilential in pro-fossil fuel circles.  The mechanism requires polluting companies to purchase carbon credits or, in lieu of that, reduce emissions.  “It’s like the ceiling on this,” the cryptic Barnaby intoned.  “It’s out of the way but it stops you going through the roof.  They [Labor] are going to bring the ceiling down to about head level for tall people.  And about 215 [companies] are going to start belting their heads on the fans and the lights and being fatally attacked based on that.”

In all the hyperbolic, and at points inscrutable venting, Joyce struggled with the correct pronunciation of Labor opposition leader Anthony Albanese, the man vying to be the next Prime Minister.  Several attempts were made, none quite hitting the mark.  Labor will be hoping that such misfiring will translate into electoral returns.  Given Joyce’s previous successes, this will prove a tall order, notably in regional Australia.

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

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April 25 marked the 77th anniversary of the “Oath of the Elbe,” when U.S. and Russian soldiers embraced in a historic meeting on the Elbe River in Torgau, Germany, to mark the final end of the Third Reich and pledge mutual understanding, empathy and peaceful relations between the U.S. and Soviet Union

Despite today’s hysterical hostility towards Russia—fomented by U.S. corporate interests, implemented by opportunistic politicians, and enflamed by a complicit mass media—the Russian and American people have a long tradition of friendship and mutual support.

A Suppressed History

Long forgotten is a history of U.S.-Russian cooperation that goes back to the era of Catherine the Great who supported the American revolution.

Believing that the American colonists were right, Catherine refused a request by King George for 20,000 Russian troops to help crush the revolution. King George subsequently tried to bribe Catherine by offering an island of Menorca in the Mediterranean Sea in exchange for convincing France to exit the war and thus forcing the American rebels to fight alone. Again, however, the offer was turned down.

During the Crimean War in the 1850s, when Russia was invaded by Britain, France and Turkey, President Franklin Pierce sent arms and munitions, as well as engineers and doctors, to assist the Russians.

Russia returned the favor during the American Civil War (1861-1865), when Abraham Lincoln called for Russian help because Great Britain and France began supporting the Southern Confederacy in an attempt to destabilize and weaken the United States.

<p>Cartoon depicting Abraham Lincoln and Alexander II shaking hands as fighting and death take place around them (Photo: Getty Images)</p>

Cartoon depicting Abraham Lincoln and Russian Czar Alexander II shaking hands as fighting rages all around them. [Source: usrussiarelations.org]

The Russians sent the Imperial Navy’s flagship, Alexander Nevsky, along with four other vessels into New York harbor four days after the Union defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga as a warning for the British and French to back off—which they did.[1]

A picture containing boat, watercraft, outdoor, transport Description automatically generated

Russian Imperial Navy’s flagship, Alexander Nevsky, sailing into New York harbor as depicted in Harper’s Weekly. [Source: boweryboyshistory.com]

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles wrote in his diary afterwards: “God Bless the Russians,” while future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a Union army lieutenant, wrote a song about “the nation who was our friend when the world was our foe.”[2]

In Lincoln and the Russians (1952), historian Albert A. Woldman wrote:

“New York City, gaily bedecked with American and Russian flags, bubbled over with sumptuous hospitality for the Muscovite naval officers wearing gold laced chapeaux [who] were cheered as they were being driven up Broadway. The city’s merchants and businessmen gave a banquet in their honor at the Astor House and there was a Grand Ball for the officers at the Academy of Music [which] according to the editor of Harper’s Weekly was undoubtedly the greatest ball every given in this country, with excepting the ball to the Prince of Wales.”[3]

The great Russian ball at the Academy of Music, Nov. 5, 1863.

Great Russian Ball at the Academy of Music, November 5, 1863. The tables were decorated with the likenesses of Washington and Peter the Great, of Lincoln and Czar Alexander. Harper’s Weekly referred to the Russians as “Slavic heroes,” and described the Ball as a “very wonderful and indescribable phantasmagoria of humanity.” [Source: opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com]

Harper’s Weekly specified that the feting of the Russian sailors had “a political significance….Every [U.S.] citizen felt bound to do what in him lay to testify to the Russians our sense of gratitude for the friendly manner in which Russia has stood by us in our present struggle, while the Western powers have done not a little to work our ruin.”[4]

How quickly we forget!

Lincoln was generally a visionary who understood the benefits of close diplomatic relations with the Russians. The great man of letters, Leo Tolstoy, praised Lincoln as “a man of whom a nation has the right to be proud; a Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity whose name will live thousands of years in the legends of future generations.”[5]

Tolstoy would have had similar high regard for Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Vice President Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945), who would almost certainly have embraced and implemented the Elbe spirit. But any such possibility was sabotaged when Wallace was ousted from the vice-presidency at the 1944 Democratic Party convention in Chicago in a coup and replaced with Harry S. Truman, who betrayed Roosevelt’s legacy as president by starting the Cold War.

Of course, none of the above ignores the reality that the Russian-U.S. relationship has not always been ‘wine and roses.’

Toward the end of WW I, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson joined with Britain, France and Japan to launch a military invasion of Russia that included 8,500 American soldiers. It was originally intended to block the German war effort, but after the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Allied forces stayed on until 1920 in a futile attempt to overthrow Russia’s Bolshevik government.

The VFW Once Went to the Soviet Union to Retrieve the Remains of US Troops | Military.com

U.S. soldiers in Siberia in 1918 in an ill-fated invasion designed to overthrow the Bolsehvik revolution. [Source: military.com]

And after World War II, U.S. government propaganda cynically transformed Russia into a threatening demon to justify the transformation of America into a permanent military economy for the enrichment of the military-industrial complex.

Nevertheless, it would be a good idea if the lost history of U.S.-Russian cooperation were to be remembered at this dark historical moment, since the fate of the world may depend on it.

Joseph Polowsky and the Elbe River Spirit

A person with his own private reason for remembering this history of Russian cooperation was a Chicago taxi driver named Joseph Polowsky.

Every year on April 25, prior to his death from cancer in 1983, Polowsky would stand on the Michigan Avenue bridge and pass out leaflets calling for a halt to the spread of nuclear weapons and Cold War.

When approached by passersby, he would tell them about the historic meeting between American and Russian soldiers at the end of World War II, along the Elbe River in Central Europe.

Polowsky didn’t just know the details of the meeting, which marked a crucial step toward the end of the war, he had taken part in it.

Today, Polowsky’s son, Joseph Wolff, is carrying on the tradition and spirit of the Elbe River meeting.

On the seventy seventh anniversary of the linkup, Wolff, called for a renewal of the Elbe River oath at a commemorative Zoom event.

The event was sponsored by the Eurasian Peoples’ Assembly and Edward Lozansky, president of the American University in Moscow (now Moscow International University), who has long promoted U.S.-Russian friendship.

Wolff reminded the audience that the meeting between U.S. and Soviet troops on the Elbe River on April 25, 1945, marked the end of the Third Reich.

The troops made a pledge for mutual understanding, empathy and peaceful relations between the U.S. and Soviet Union which, Wolff said, his father worked for for the rest of his life.

Today, with U.S.-Russian relations at a breaking point, Wolff said that the time to renew the Elbe oath is now.

“The threat of World War III is real and the stakes are too high,” he said. “With the conflict in Ukraine, the threat from the pandemic and climate change, the world needs the U.S. and Russia to work on the same team.”

“All of us are part of one race, the human race. We need to set our grievances aside and have our two great nations work together for the human race to flourish for hundreds of years into the future.”

Despite the strenuous efforts by Biden and his surrounding coterie of war hawks and imperialist profiteers to paint Russia as a fearful enemy seeking world conquest, perhaps the spirit of Polowsky and the Elbe River oath might yet prevail if people mobilize in support of it.

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

Notes

  1. See Albert A. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1952), 135. The Battle of Chickamauga took place in September 1863. 

  2. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians, 136, 248. The Russian czar had his own interests for sending the ships, including seeking American support as the Russian army crushed a Polish insurrection. 
  3. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians, 137. 
  4. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians, 140. 
  5. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians, 251. 

Featured image: U.S. and Soviet troops embrace on the Elbe River on April 25, 1945, to celebrate their defeat of Naziism. [Source: history.com]

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We investigated Israel’s claim that veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Palestinian gunmen. It doesn’t add up.

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Last week, when the pilfered draft of a Supreme Court opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to the media, it saddened me deeply. My sadness was brought about by the realization that someone is trying to sabotage the highest court in the land. Justice Robert Jackson, who sat in the 1940s and 1950s, famously said that the Supreme Court is infallible only because it is final; it is not final because it is infallible.

Stated differently, under our system of government, the judiciary has the duty of interpreting the Constitution and federal laws, and it has the final say on what they mean; and the final step in the judiciary is the Supreme Court.

The court does not answer to the people; it is intentionally secret and even obscure. That’s because the whole purpose of an independent judiciary is to be anti-democratic. Its job is to preserve and protect life, liberty and property from the overreach of the popular branches — the president and Congress — and from the states.

The unfairness to the court in general, and to Justice Alito in particular (full disclosure, we are college classmates who disagree on much and remain good friends), is that what was leaked was a work in progress. Any change from the leaked draft to the final opinion will provoke endless speculation.

The leaker is trying to effect the outcome of the case. If from the left, the leaker no doubt wants to shake loose the most tentative justice in the tentative majority. If from the right, the leaker wants to fortify the most tentative justice in the tentative majority.

Either way, the leaker’s work is repellant.

What did Justice Alito write? He wrote that Roe v. Wade — the 1973 case that bars the states from prohibiting abortion during the first and second trimesters of fetal development — was wrong when decided and is wrong today because there is no constitutional text, history or tradition of the federal courts protecting or ruling on abortion.

At the time the Constitution was ratified, abortion was unlawful in all 13 states. In 1868, when the states ratified the 14th Amendment with its Equal Protection Clause, 28 of the then-37 states prohibited abortion. In 1973, 30 states prohibited abortion, four states permitted it outright, 16 permitted it under narrow circumstances, and all states imposed some regulations upon it; and the feds had no laws governing it.

From all of this, Justice Alito and the four other justices in the tentative majority concluded abortion is an issue for the states and not the feds.

There are other problems with Roe that the Alito opinion recognized. Roe’s reasoning did not rely on precedent, science or history. No less an abortion proponent than the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lamented that the rationale in Roe was made up out of thin air by its author, Justice Harry Blackmun.

Leaving abortion up to the states returns the matter to them and keeps the federal courts and Congress out of it. This liberates states to do as their legislatures wish. They can criminalize all abortion as Louisiana is about to do, or they can legalize all abortion up to the moment of birth as New Jersey has done. California is even considering a bill that would legalize infanticide during the first 28 days after birth.

Should life and death decisions be left up to legislatures, or do all states have a duty to protect all life?

The Equal Protection Clause requires all states to protect life, liberty and property of all persons equally. They cannot, as some of them once did, afford more protection to white lives than to Black lives. Thus, if the baby in the mother’s womb is a person, all abortion is homicide.

Surely, the baby in the womb is a person. She has human parents. From conception, she has all the genomic material in her tiny body needed to develop naturally into a post-natal being. She can sue, be sued and inherit property. The Roe opinion itself concedes that if the baby is a person, then Roe collapses.

It is hard to imagine the mind of a state legislator defining a class of innocent persons as without the right to live. A right is an indefeasible claim against the whole world that comes from God, not from the government. The government creates privileges, which it can condition and take back.

Only God creates rights that are unconditional and integral to our humanity. The right to live is the highest right, as life is the greatest good. There is no right to kill, just the right to defend against a conscious aggressor.

When confronted with an enormous evil — 63 million American babies killed in 49 years — should one do all in one’s power to stop this or can one do so incrementally? The Alito opinion chooses the latter.

Were I on the court, I’d have concurred in the outcome — overruling Roe and its progeny — but I’d have done so on the basis of the babies’ personhood.

Abortion is, as former Rep. Ron Paul, an OB-GYN physician, has stated, the ultimate state tyranny because it allows the state to decide whom to protect from homicide and whom to expose to the abortionist’s scalpel and suffocating chemicals. This version of the state is not unlike what existed here with respect to Blacks in the South with slavery or in 1930s and 1940s Germany with respect to the Jewish people.

A government that creates classes of people whom it prefers and classes whom it hates or as to whom it is indifferent should be altered or abolished. The whole business of state-sanctioned killing of innocents is, as San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone called it, unfathomable.

But elites in America today prefer personal convenience over innocent life, and they will use tyranny and slaughter to achieve their preferences.

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Ukraine’s decision to partially disable the flow of gas earmarked for Europe will be short-lived as it will not only cause major problems for the European economy, but it will also leave Kiev without billions of dollars in transit tax revenue – something it desperately needs as the economy is in ruin.

The Ukrainian gas transmission system operator (GTSOU) said it decided to suspend operations at a major transit point because of “interference by the occupying forces.”

The decision to stop flows from Sokhranivka halts about a third of the Russian gas that arrives in Europe via Ukraine as the measuring station handles as much as 32.6 million cubic meters per day, according to GTSOU.

“As a result of the Russian Federation’s military aggression against Ukraine, several GTS facilities are located in territory temporarily controlled by Russian troops and the occupation administration,” the company said.

Kiev’s idea of transferring gas supplies from Sohranovka to the Suja gas station, which is in Ukrainian-controlled territory, has been dismissed by the Russian state gas company Gazprom as “technically impossible.” In addition, Gazprom said that it fulfills all its obligations to European consumers and delivers gas for transit in accordance with all contracts.

The disrupted transit of one-third of the gas that Europe needs would cause major damage to the continent’s economy. Europe already has less gas than it currently needs and the problem is not just that the price of gas will go up, but there will not be enough needed for industrial production.

If Russian gas does not arrive via Ukraine in the agreed quantity, Europe would have to consider extracting from reserves in underground storage facilities. The price of such gas will certainly be higher than in the case of gas arriving via Ukraine. Therefore, Kiev’s attempts to coax Europe into further involvement in the war with Russia will receive little accolade as it threatens Europe’s economy at a time when it is already suffering.

Kiev’s decision to reduce gas flows to European markets also means that it will suffer as it will lose transit fees that it desperately needs as its economy has stagnated. Another outcome that Ukraine did not consider is that it could force Europe to challenge the US’ opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. If Russian gas does not arrive via Ukraine, it could be the very catalyst needed to activate Nord Stream 2.

If Ukraine were to remain committed to reducing Russian gas flows to Europe, even at the expense of billions of dollars in transit fees, the question begs whether the EU would be willing to potentially run out of gas and/or see prices rise even further, or activate Nord Stream 2. Activating Nord Stream 2 would effectively mean the US’ failure after so much effort was made to prevent the pipeline from functioning.

For this reason, Ukraine’s decision to halt a third of Russian gas flows to Europe is likely a bluff as it needs all the money it can receive at the moment. At the same time, the Europeans hope to slowly wean themselves off Russian energy, understanding that an immediate cut is not sustainable and would collapse their economies.

Kiev’s incessant demand that Brussels put an embargo on Russian energy imports to the EU will be challenged so long as there are leaders, like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who prioritize their state’s economy and people’s welfare, or entire major industries are threatened, such as Germany’s manufacturing and Greece’s shipping.

It is quite possible that this disunity and lack of consensus on the embargo in a situation where energy cannot be undermined, could force a rethink of Europe’s policies towards Moscow.

“We will have a peace to build tomorrow, let us never forget that,” Macron said in Strasbourg on May 9, adding: “We will have to do this with Ukraine and Russia around the table. The end of the discussion and the negotiation will be set by Ukraine and Russia. But it will not be done in denial, nor in exclusion of each other, nor even in humiliation.”

On the same day, he said in a tweet:

“We are not at war with Russia. We work as Europeans for the preservation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. For the return of peace to our continent. We will be there to rebuild Ukraine, as Europeans, always.”

However, despite the rhetoric of pan-Europeanism, Macron has already proven in deed that Europe’s elite are still very much under the orbit of Washington. If Ukraine are to partially halt the flow of Russian gas to Europe, the next test of Europe’s so-called “strategic autonomy” would be whether it activates Nord Stream 2 to protect their economic interests or continue following Washington’s demands on keeping the pipeline closed.

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From the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Biden White House has repeatedly announced large and seemingly random amounts of money that it intends to send to fuel the war in Ukraine. The latest such dispatch, pursuant to an initial $3.5 billion fund authorized by Congress early on, was announced on Friday; “Biden says U.S. will send $1.3 billion in additional military and economic support to Ukraine,” read the CNBC headline. This was preceded by a series of new lavish spending packages for the war, unveiled every two to three weeks, starting on the third day of the war:

  • Feb. 26: “Biden approves $350 million in military aid for Ukraine”: Reuters;
  • Mar. 16: “Biden announces $800 million in military aid for Ukraine”: The New York Times;
  • Mar. 30: “Ukraine to receive additional $500 million in aid from U.S., Biden announces”: NBC News;
  • Apr. 12: “U.S. to announce $750 million more in weapons for Ukraine, officials say”: Reuters;
  • May 6: “Biden announces new $150 million weapons package for Ukraine”: Reuters.

Those amounts by themselves are in excess of $3 billion; by the end of April, the total U.S. expenditure on the war in Ukraine was close to $14 billion, drawn from the additional $13.5 billion Congress authorized in mid-March. While some of that is earmarked for economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, most of it will go into the coffers of the weapons industry — including Raytheon, on whose Board of Directors the current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, sat immediately before being chosen by Biden to run the Pentagon. As CNN put it: “about $6.5 billion, roughly half of the aid package, will go to the US Department of Defense so it can deploy troops to the region and send defense equipment to Ukraine.”

As enormous as those sums already are, they were dwarfed by the Biden administration’s announcement on April 28 that it “is asking Congress for $33 billion in funding to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, more than double the $14 billion in support authorized so far.” The White House itself acknowledges that the vast majority of that new spending package will go to the purchase of weaponry and other military assets: “$20.4 billion in additional security and military assistance for Ukraine and for U.S. efforts to strengthen European security in cooperation with our NATO allies and other partners in the region.”

It is difficult to put into context how enormous these expenditures are — particularly since the war is only ten weeks old, and U.S. officials predict/hope that this war will last not months but years. That ensures that the ultimate amounts will be significantly higher still.

The amounts allocated thus far — the new Biden request of $33 billion combined with the $14 billion already spent — already exceed the average annual amount the U.S. spent for its own war in Afghanistan ($46 billion). In the twenty-year U.S. war in Afghanistan which ended just eight months ago, there was at least some pretense of a self-defense rationale given the claim that the Taliban had harbored Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda at the time of the 9/11 attack. Now the U.S. will spend more than that annual average after just ten weeks of a war in Ukraine that nobody claims has any remote connection to American self-defense.

Even more amazingly, the total amount spent by the U.S. on the Russia/Ukraine war in less than three months is close to Russia’s total military budget for the entire year ($65.9 billion). While Washington depicts Russia as some sort of grave and existential menace to the U.S., the reality is that the U.S. spends more than ten times on its military what Russia spends on its military each year; indeed, the U.S. spends three times more than the second-highest military spender, China, and more than the next twelve countries combined.

But as gargantuan as Biden’s already-spent and newly requested sums are — for a ten-week war in which the U.S. claims not to be a belligerent — it was apparently woefully inadequate in the eyes of the bipartisan establishment in Congress, who is ostensibly elected to serve the needs and interests of American citizens, not Ukrainians. Leaders of both parties instantly decreed that Biden’s $33 billion request was not enough. They thus raised it to $40 billion — a more than 20% increase over the White House’s request — and are now working together to create an accelerated procedure to ensure immediate passage and disbursement of these weapons and funds to the war zone in Ukraine. “Time is of the essence – and we cannot afford to wait,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a letter to House members, adding: “This package, which builds on the robust support already secured by Congress, will be pivotal in helping Ukraine defend not only its nation but democracy for the world.” (See update below).

We have long ago left the realm of debating why it is in the interest of American citizens to pour our country’s resources into this war, to say nothing of risking a direct war and possibly catastrophic nuclear escalation with Russia, the country with the largest nuclear stockpile, with the US close behind. Indeed, one could argue that the U.S. government entered this war and rapidly escalated its involvement without this critical question — which should be fundamental to any policy decision of the U.S. government — being asked at all.

This omission — a failure to address how the interests of ordinary Americans are served by the U.S. government’s escalating role in this conflict — is particularly glaring given the steadfast and oft-stated view of former President Barack Obama that Ukraine is and always will be of vital interest to Russia, but is not of vital interest to the U.S. For that reason, Obama repeatedly resisted bipartisan demands that he send lethal arms to Ukraine, a step he was deeply reluctant to take due to his belief that the U.S. should not provoke Moscow over an interest as remote as Ukraine (ironically, Trump — who was accused by the U.S. media for years of being a Kremlin asset, controlled by Putin through blackmail — did send lethal arms to Ukraine despite how provocative doing so was to Russia).

While it is extremely difficult to isolate any benefit to ordinary American citizens from all of this, it requires no effort to see that there is a tiny group of Americans who do benefit greatly from this massive expenditure of funds. That is the industry of weapons manufacturers. So fortunate are they that the White House has met with them on several occasions to urge them to expand their capacity to produce sophisticated weapons so that the U.S. government can buy them in massive quantities:

Top U.S. defense officials will meet with the chief executives of the eight largest U.S. defense contractors to discuss industry’s capacity to meet Ukraine’s weapons needs if the war with Russia continues for years.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told reporters Tuesday she plans to participate in a classified roundtable with defense CEOs on Wednesday to discuss “what can we do to help them, what do they need to generate supply”….

“We will discuss industry proposals to accelerate production of existing systems and develop new, modernized capabilities critical to the Department’s ongoing security assistance to Ukraine and long-term readiness of U.S. and ally/partner forces,” the official added.

On May 3, Biden visited a Lockheed Martin facility (see lead photo) and “praised the… plant that manufactures Javelin anti-tank missiles, saying their work was critical to the Ukrainian war effort and to the defense of democracy itself.”

Indeed, by transferring so much military equipment to Ukraine, the U.S. has depleted its own stockpiles, necessitating their replenishment with mass government purchases. One need not be a conspiracy theorist to marvel at the great fortune of this industry, having lost their primary weapons market just eight months ago when the U.S. war in Afghanistan finally ended, only to now be gifted with an even greater and more lucrative opportunity to sell their weapons by virtue of the protracted and always-escalating U.S. role in Ukraine. Raytheon, the primary manufacturer of Javelins along with Lockheed, has been particularly fortunate that its large stockpile, no longer needed for Afghanistan, is now being ordered in larger-than-ever quantities by its former Board member, now running the Pentagon, for shipment to Ukraine. Their stock prices have bulged nicely since the start of the war:

But how does any of this benefit the vast majority of Americans? Does that even matter? As of 2020, almost 30 million Americans are without any health insurance. Over the weekend, USA Today warned of “the ongoing infant formula shortage,” in which “nearly 40% of popular baby formula brands were sold out at retailers across the U.S. during the week starting April 24.” So many Americans are unable to afford college for their children that close to a majority are delaying plans or eliminating them all together. Meanwhile, “monthly poverty remained elevated in February 2022, with a 14.4 percent poverty rate for the total US population….Overall, 6 million more individuals were in poverty in February relative to December.” The latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau found that “approximately 42.5 million Americans [are] living below the poverty line.” Americans with diabetes often struggle to buy life-saving insulin. And on and on and on.

Now, if the U.S. were invaded or otherwise attacked by another country, or its vital interests were directly threatened, one would of course expect the U.S. government to expend large sums in order to protect and defend the national security of the country and its citizens. But can anyone advance a cogent argument, let alone a persuasive one, that Americans are somehow endangered by the war in Ukraine? Clearly, they are far more endangered by the U.S. response to the war in Ukraine than the war itself; after all, a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Russia has long been ranked by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists as one of the two greatest threats facing humanity.

One would usually expect the American left, or whatever passes it for these days, to be indignant about the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars for weapons while ordinary Americans suffer. But the American left, such that it exists, is barely visible when it comes to debates over the war in Ukraine, while American liberals stand in virtual unity with the establishment wing of the Republican Party behind the Biden administration in support for the escalating U.S. role in the war in Ukraine. A few stray voices (such as Noam Chomsky) have joined large parts of the international left in urging a diplomatic solution in lieu of war and criticizing Biden for insufficient efforts to forge one, but the U.S. left and American liberals are almost entirely silent if not supportive.

That has left the traditionally left-wing argument about war opposition to the populist right. “You can’t find baby formula in the United States right now but Congress is voting today to send $40 billion to Ukraine,” said Donald Trump, Jr. on Tuesday, echoing what one would expect to hear from the 2016 version of Bernie Sanders or the pre-victory AOC. “In the America LAST $40 BILLION Ukraine FIRST bill that we are voting on tonight, there is authorization for funds to be given to the CIA for who knows what and who knows how much? But NO BABY FORMULA for American mothers!” explained Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Christian Walker, the conservative influencer and son of GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker in Georgia, today observed: “Biden should go apply to be the President of Ukraine since he clearly cares more about them than the U.S.” Chomsky himself caused controversy last week when he said that there is only one statesman of any stature in the West urging a diplomatic solution “and his name is Donald J. Trump.”

Meanwhile, the only place where dissent is heard over the Biden administration’s war policy is on the 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. programs on Fox News, hosted, respectively, by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who routinely demand to know how ordinary Americans are benefiting from this increasing U.S. involvement. On CNN, NBC, and in the op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, there is virtually lockstep unity in favor of the U.S. role in this war; the only question that is permitted, as usual, is whether the U.S. is doing enough or whether it should do more.

That the U.S. has no legitimate role to play in this war, or that its escalating involvement comes at the expense of American citizens, the people they are supposed to be serving, provokes immediate accusations that one is spreading Russian propaganda and is a Kremlin agent. That is therefore an anti-war view that is all but prohibited in those corporate liberal media venues. Meanwhile, mainstream Democratic House members, such as Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), are now openly talking about the war in Ukraine as if it is the U.S.’s own:

Whatever else is true, the claim with which we are bombarded by the corporate press — the two parties agree on nothing; they are constantly at each other’s throats; they have radically different views of the world — is patently untrue, at least when it comes time for the U.S. to join in new wars. Typically, what we see in such situations is what we are seeing now: the establishment wings of both parties are in complete lockstep unity, always breathlessly supporting the new proposed U.S. role in any new war, eager to empty the coffers of the U.S. Treasury and transfer it to the weapons industry while their constituents suffer.

One can believe that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is profoundly unjust and has produced horrific outcomes while still questioning what legitimate interests the U.S. has in participating in this war to this extent. Even if one fervently believes that helping Ukrainians fight Russia is a moral good, surely the U.S. government should be prioritizing the ability of its own citizens to live above the poverty line, have health insurance, send their kids to college, and buy insulin and baby formula.

There are always horrific wars raging, typically with a clear aggressor, but that does not mean that the U.S. can or should assume responsibility for the war absent its own vital interests and the interests of its citizens being directly at stake. In what conceivable sense are American citizens benefiting from this enormous expenditure of their resources and the increasing energy and attention being devoted by their leaders to Ukraine rather than to their lives and the multi-pronged deprivations that define them?

CORRECTION (May 10, 2022, 20:47 pm ET): This article was edited shortly after publication to reflect that Russia’s total annual military budget is $65.9 billion, not $65.9 million.

UPDATE (May 10, 2022, 22:39 pm ET): Shortly after publication of this article, the $40 billion package for the war in Ukraine passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 368-57. According to CNN: “All 57 votes in opposition were from Republicans.”

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Hungary Announces Veto on Oil Embargo

May 12th, 2022 by Free West Media

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Hungary has announced that it will veto the EU’s planned embargo on Russian oil imports. The country will not vote for the sanctions package as it will destroy Hungary’s secure and stable energy supply and make it impossible to source the oil needed for the economy, according to Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó.

For the country, the measure means petrol prices at around 1,83 euros and an increase in the price of diesel fuel to around 2,10 euros. “We will not allow the Hungarian people to pay the price for the war,” stressed Szijjártó.

Prime minister Viktor Orban earlier described the EU oil embargo as an “atomic bomb” dropped on the Hungarian economy. Last week Orbán explained that it would destroy the Hungarian economy. His country needs about five years to be able to do without Russian oil imports. An alternative would be supply via the Adriatic pipeline from Croatia.

The prime minister stressed that earlier the leaders of EU Member States had agreed that only such measures could be adopted that duly took account of the different energy structures of countries and the sovereign right to determine their own energy access. However, the President of the European Commission, “wittingly or unwittingly, attacked the hard-forged European unity”.

It makes no financial sense to change energy infrastructure

Orban said those who have seas and ports are able to transport oil in tankers from any part of the world, but there are countries which do not have such options. Russian or any other oil can only be transported to Hungary via pipelines, “one end of the pipeline is in Russia, the other one is in Hungary,” that is a given, he explained, adding that Hungary was therefore unable to accept a proposal that disregards this circumstance.

“The fight that I’m fighting now is a fight to protect the Hungarian reduction of energy bills,” Orban said, also mentioning that it would take years and investments worth hundreds of billions of forints to replace Russian oil with any other kind, while the transformation of the Hungarian energy conveyance system would require further investments in the thousands of billions.

He said it would take five years to complete the necessary investments. Even if the EU provides funds for such purposes, “we only have that money on paper because they haven’t yet given it to us, and until they give us the money, we can’t start” that project.

Orban said at the same time it was well worth considering whether such a costly project that could only start functioning in 4 or 5 years’ time would make sense at all, given that the war was “taking place right now”.

He said if he saw a proposal that conformed to Hungarian interests, “then naturally, we’re happy to talk about it”. However, the proposal that is on the table now creates a Hungarian problem, and makes no proposal of any kind for solving that problem.

Orban made it clear that there would be a red line, namely, the energy embargo.

Arms supply supports war

By supplying arms, we move away from peace, rather than moving towards it, “those who supply arms also bring trouble onto themselves, in particular, if the country at war is your neighbour,” he argued.

The prime minister pointed out that the Hungarian community in the Ukrainian region of “Transcarpathia is now within firing range” because someone supplied or was about to supply weapons, and the Russians would destroy the transport nodes where such supplies can be offloaded or transported on.

Orban said he is planning to introduce the members of his new, significantly reshuffled government between 20 and 30 May. He indicated that there will be many and meaningful changes in response to the fact that many and meaningful changes have taken place in the world, too.

Hungary must reinforce its defence against the pressure of migration, he stated, adding that “the pandemic hasn’t gone away yet,” and the world is not prepared for a pandemic on such a scale, while there is also a war under way. “We must form a government which will be able to defend Hungary against these challenges,” Orban said.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has meanwhile announced that she will travel to Budapest to talk to Orbán about security of supply in Hungary.

Hungary rejects sanctions against religious leaders

Hungary also rejected sanctions against religious leaders, the state secretary for aiding persecuted Christians told public television on Sunday, commenting on the European Union’s plan to sanction Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Tristan Azbej, who heads the Hungary Helps aid programme, said Hungary supported brokering peace and “sees counterproductive, nonsensical sanctions as harmful”.

The Russian Orthodox Church has some 160 million members and 40 000 priests worldwide, Azbej noted, adding that the EU’s “crazy” proposal would ban the patriarch from entering the bloc, isolating religious people from their spiritual leader.

The Syrian orthodox patriarch, the Armenian Apostolic Church, and the Hungarian eparchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, among others, have turned to Orban, “the last voice of Christianity and common sense in the EU”, regarding the European Commission’s proposal, which he said would create a dangerous precedent of “keeping other churches in check, and subjecting them to politically motivated sanctions”.

Hungary sees religious freedom as “sacred and inviolable”, and will not support sanctioning religious leaders, he said.

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Featured image: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (Source: NEO)

EU Stumbles Over Russian Oil Slick

May 12th, 2022 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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The European Union officials are insisting that oil sanctions against Russia are coming. On Sunday, France’s Ecological Transition Minister Barbara Pompili was certain that “we will reach (an agreement) by the end of the week.”  

But the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has warned EU that it would be impossible to replace more than 7 million barrels per day (bpd) of Russian oil and other liquids exports potentially lost due to sanctions or voluntary actions. 

The fine print here is that the Western entreaties on OPEC to increase oil production is falling on deaf ears not so much due to diplomatic recalcitrance as the group’s genuine inability to implement higher hikes due to under-investment in oil and gas ventures that has left some Opec+ members with dwindling spare capacity (with the exception of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.) In fact, in March, OPEC+ production production recorded a decline for the first time in 13 months and is currently around 1.48mn b/d under the coalition’s quota system. 

OPEC+ members, including Russia, have agreed to raise output by about 432,000 barrels per day in May, as part of a gradual unwinding of output cuts made during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is seething anger in Washington that Saudi Arabia and the UAE refrain from stepping up production. Hence the renewed talk of the 15-year old Damocles’ sword in the form of a US legislation to punish these countries — NOPEC bill — which aims to modify the existing antitrust law to revoke the sovereign immunity that has long protected OPEC and its national oil companies from lawsuits in American federal courts. 

If signed into law, the US attorney general would gain the ability to sue the oil cartel or its members Saudi Arabia or the UAE in federal court. (Other producers like Russia, which works with OPEC in wider group known as OPEC+ to withhold output, could also be sued.) But the energy superpowers know this threat is a load of baloney — that the US is in no position to dictate terms. In fact, when the US Congress passed a version of the bill in 2007, it died under veto threat from President George W. Bush who said it could lead to oil supply disruptions as well as “retaliatory action against American interests.” 

The “retaliatory action” that Bush feared, which President Biden should fear even more, could today include Saudi retaliation by way of terminating the use of the dollar for its oil trade, which would of course lethally undermine the dollar’s status as the world’s main reserve currency and significantly reduce the US influence in global trade. 

Some recent reports suggest that Saudis are already in talks with Beijing on usage of local currencies for some portion of their oil trade, something that China also has been seeking lately. Interestingly, in a recent commentary, the well-known Chinese political thinker Zhang Weiwei argued strongly in favour of a new thinking in Beijing against the backdrop of the US’ harsh sanctions freezing the foreign exchange reserves of the Russian Central Bank  and removing Russia from the the Swift international settlement system. Prof. Zhang wrote:  

“The current (Russian) decision to link natural gas and other raw materials to the ruble can be said to be a revolution against the hegemonic order of the US dollar. Very inspiring. As the world’s largest economy (based on purchasing power parity), the largest trader of goods, the largest consumer market and investment market, we (China) must boldly conceive and practice the construction of a financial system in the “post-American era”… We have a good hand, we have abundant natural resources, including a large amount of rare metals, we have the most complete industrial chain in the world, we are the only one in the world that can produce almost everything from the first industrial revolution to the fourth industrial revolution All product countries. Linking the renminbi to our special resources, to many products, is a new idea that we can consider.” 

Be that as it may, Biden is highly unlikely to take the NOPEC path. The powerful American Petroleum Institute (which holds veto power on the Hill) thoroughly rejects the very idea of a lawsuit against OPEC for antitrust behaviour and market manipulation, which it fears could  trigger “serious, unintended consequences” by giving Opec members an opportunity to reciprocate against US companies and even undermine their ability to sustain growing production. 

Suffice to say, it is incredible that the EU is planning to commit harakiri this weekend by imposing oil sanctions against Russia. But then, it is one of those queer coincidences that at such a transformative period in world politics, the EU’s executive branch is headed by two arch-Atlanticists and hawkish Russophobes — Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. When Biden is set to sign a $40 billion bill to defeat Russia in the proxy war in Ukraine, the least these two decision-makers can do to supplement the war effort is to cut Europe’s umbilical cord with Russia in oil trade — something that had survived even the high noon of the Cold War era (US diplomatic skulduggery notwithstanding.) 

So, von der Leyen travelled to Budapest yesterday to persuade President Viktor Orban to join her chariot to storm the Russian citadel. Orban threatens to veto EU sanctions against Russia, since Hungary is critically dependent on Russian oil supplies, which come overland through the Druzhba pipeline at ridiculously low cost price. Orban visited Moscow on February 1 when he and President Putin agreed on a new long term gas contract at favourable price.   

Hungary needs more time (and investments) to reduce its dependency on Russian gas. But Orban is a smart politician too. Von der Leyen crossed Orban’s path, irritated alike by his authoritarian tendencies at home and his warm ties with Kremlin, and in an itch to teach him a hard lesson decided in March to withhold EU funding for Hungary by invoking the “rule-of-law conditionality mechanism.” 

Perhaps, von der Leyen thought she could incentivise Orban. Of course, going slow on the EU’s conditionality mechanism prescribing a “rules-based order” for Hungary is a counterfactual that is impossible to test. The word so far from Budapest is that no deal was struck. But the bottom line in the Hungarian saga is that EU member states can muster “smart power” within the group’s treaties to frustrate the Commission using a mechanism outside of it to try and get to them. In systemic terms, this highlights the limits of European integration via the backdoor: what the EU can actually achieve institutionally without treaty change.

It is far too premature for the EU to talk about stabilising prices or reducing dependence on Russian energy resources because these processes will take time. On the other hand, these sanctions won’t deter the Russian operation in Ukraine, while the ensuing turbulence in the world oil market will not spare European economies too.

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Watching the Western World Dissolve into Nazism

May 12th, 2022 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

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How is it that in the exceptional and indispensable USA, a former American president [Trump] can be denied his constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech by a private communications company? 

How can a mere private company cancel the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

How is it possible that the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of Americans (including a former US president) is dependent on who owns Twitter? And Facebook? And Google? And the New York Times?

How can Americans, especially conservatives, think they live in a free country when a former president of the United States can have his Constitutional Rights cancelled or granted by a private company CEO?

Isn’t this a case of the “private sector” controlling the government?

How can people be free when they are denied access to facts, open debate, and truth?

The head of Homeland Security, a Nazi-era institution now assuming a governing role in the USA, has established a US Ministry of Truth with the power to shut down all who challenge the official narrative. 

How is it possible that a presidential administration dares establish in the USA a Nazi-era Gestapo institution with the power to cancel the truth? And still be supported by 45% of the population? How can a country with 45% of its population completely stupid beyond all belief survive?

What is the matter with “Biden Democrats”? Are they unable to comprehend that freedom, liberty, the rights for which the founders of the country fought for, are at stake?

How can anything be more valuable than truth?

Why are minority rights, racial rights, transgender rights, lesbian rights, homosexual rights, and whatever new rights will be discovered tomorrow, more important, more valuable than TRUTH?

Where are the American people? 

Where are their elected representatives in the House and Senate? 

Where are the media, the watchdogs of democracy? 

Where are the courts, the law schools, law associations, the protesters standing in defense of liberty, which is based in free speech, a constitutionally protected right? 

Why does no influential group defend the rights granted by the US Constitution?  No university or bar association in America is protesting the replacement of truth with elite-serving fiction.

Why do Americans just sit there while an American Nazi, the head of “Homeland Security,” creates an Orwellian state in the USA? 

We just witnessed in the USA, allegedly a free country, the Biden appointed head of Homeland Security say that his Gestapo agency has the right to determine truth in the United States of America.

In America the respect for truth is so weak that the Nazi  is still head of America’s “Homeland Security.” The American Nazi was not fired. He was not even reprimanded for elevating censorship above the United States Constitution.

It is a massive joke than any Western country is a “free country.” 

As the entirety of the Western World is now thoroughly Nazified, little wonder the Nazified Western governments support, at the peril of their own existence from incoming hypersonic ICBMs, the Nazi regime in Ukraine. Putin is a Russian liberal, and therefore weak, but Putin is not weak enough to allow Russia to succumb to Western Nazism. 

End times approach while dumbshit Americans worry about transgender rights and the boundaries of Nazi Ukraine. 

Americans have entirely forgotten their own rights guaranteed by the US Constitution and do nothing to protect them.

Freedom in the West has been thrown into the trash bin of History, not by conquerors but by the West itself.

See this and this.

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

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The U.S. Solicitor General on Tuesday dealt a blow to Monsanto owner Bayer AG, advising the U.S. Supreme Court that it should deny the company’s request for a review of a key Roundup cancer trial loss.

Bayer has seen the Supreme Court as its last and best hope for putting a stop to the flood of lawsuits filed by tens of thousands of people claiming exposure to Roundup weed killing products caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

The brief from Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar states that “There is no sound reason for the Court to grant review…”

Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, filed its petition to the high court in August, asking the court to review the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision that affirmed the district court’s judgment in Monsanto’s 2019 trial loss to plaintiff Edwin Hardeman. The jury in the case agreed with Hardeman’s attorneys that exposure to Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide was a cause of Hardeman’s NHL and that Monsanto failed to warn of the risks despite decades of science showing links between the herbicide and cancer.

Hardeman was awarded approximately $80 million by the jury, but the award was cut by the trial court judge to roughly $25.2 million.

Bayer did pay Hardeman as it awaited word from the U.S. Supreme Court, but accompanied the funds with a letter warning him that he may have to repay the money if the company was successful in getting a reversal by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bayer maintains Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicides do not cause cancer, and it additionally argues that  the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), which governs the registration, distribution, sale, and use of pesticides in the United States, preempts “failure-to-warn” claims by Hardeman and other plaintiffs in the Roundup litigation. Because the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved labels with no cancer warning, failure-to-warn claims should be barred, the company maintains.

In addition to the FIFRA issue, the company urged the Supreme Court to also address whether or not the Ninth Circuit’s standard for admitting expert testimony “is inconsistent” with precedent and federal evidence rules. Bayer argues that the admission of expert testimony in the Hardeman case “departed from federal standards, enabling plaintiff’s causation witnesses to provide unsupported testimony on the principal issue in the case, Roundup’s safety profile.”

The Solicitor General’s brief states that “FIFRA does not preempt respondent’s claims” and found that the evidentiary ruling by the court of appeals was proper.

The Solicitor General wrote that Bayer’s request on the federal rules issue was “particularly misconceived.”

In a statement, lawyers for Hardeman applauded the findings.

“The Solicitor General correctly determined that Mr. Hardeman’s claims are not preempted and told the Supreme Court it should leave the verdict alone,” Hardeman’s legal counsel Aimee Wagstaff and Jennifer Moore said in the statement.

“Despite paying billions of dollars to other Roundup plaintiffs, Monsanto has refused to resolve Mr. Hardeman’s case. Instead, Monsanto has spent the last three years putting the Hardeman family through an unbelievable amount of stress. We are beyond grateful that we are one step closer to giving the Hardemans the resolution they deserve.”

Bayer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read the brief in its entirety here.

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Featured image is from Sebastian Rittau via Wikimedia Commons

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In a newly released video clip, Biden disinformation czar Nina Jankowicz demands that “trustworthy verified people” like her be given the power to edit other people’s tweets, making Twitter more like Wikipedia.

Yes, really.

Asserting that she was “eligible for it because I’m verified,” Jankowicz then bemoaned the fact there are people on Twitter with different opinions to her who also have the blue tick but “shouldn’t be verified” because they’re “not trustworthy.”

“So verified people can essentially start to edit Twitter the same sort of way that Wikipedia is so they can add context to certain tweets,” said Jankowicz.

She then provided the example, which she claimed was non-political, of President Trump tweeting about voter fraud.

“Someone could add context from one of the 60 lawsuits that went through the court or something that an election official in one of the states said, perhaps your own Secretary of State and his news conferences, something like that,” said Jankowicz.

“Adding context so that people have a fuller picture rather than just an individual claim on a tweet,” she added.

Of course, Twitter already slaps warning labels on such tweets, but now Jankowicz wants approved regime propagandists to be empowered to insert their narrative on an individual basis.

Also note how two of the other participants in the conversation were wearing face masks, despite it being a remote Zoom call.

As we previously highlighted, Jankowicz was handed the role of overseeing Biden’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ despite revealing that free speech makes her “shudder” while also promoting the lie that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.

Jankowicz also ludicrously cited Christopher Steele as an expert on disinformation. Steele was the author of the infamous Clinton campaign-funded Trump ‘peegate’ dossier’ that turned out to be an actual product of disinformation.

But yeah, a person with a proven track record of pushing disinformation and hyper-partisanship should totally be given the power to edit tweets she disagrees with.

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First published on January 20, 2022

‘This is intentional, premeditated, mass murder. There’s absolutely no doubt about it because nothing else makes any sense,’ said attorney Reiner Fuellmich. ‘We’re going to get them.’

A recent analysis of public government data reveals very high percentages of adverse events reported as a result of COVID-19 experimental “vaccine” injections, including over 21,000 deaths, have occurred in a small minority of product batches released by pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Furthermore, according to analysts, the wide dispersement of these highly toxic batches (or “lots”) to numerous U.S. states, along with their apparent sequential labeling according to levels of toxicity, is evidence of intentionality in  adulterating the contents of the shots and is thus likely a serious violation of federal regulations that require such products to have consistency.

In mid-November, London-based researcher Craig Paardekooper produced a short video drawing data from the  Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in the United States, where he discovered that “1 in 200 of the [COVID-19 vaccine] batches are highly toxic,” while the vast majority of them are not, at least according to short-term outcomes.

“In fact,” he continued, “70% of the batches for the vaccine-only produce one adverse reaction report in total,” and “80% of the vaccine batches only produce one or two adverse reaction reports.”

However, Paardekooper began to find anomalies that “produced thousands of times the number of adverse reactions” standing out from the vast majority of batches, including examples of 1,394, 1,012, and eventually to as many as 4,911 adverse reactions.

Additionally, these batches consistently produced these injuries across the many states where they were distributed, affirming the cause was the vaccine contents in the batches themselves rather than local circumstances, applications or demographics.

For example, for Pfizer, only 4% of their lots accounted for all the death reports associated with those injections and for Moderna the same was true with respect to only 5% of their batches.

In addition, unlike the more benign batches that were sent to fewer regional areas, the highly toxic injections were widely disseminated across multiple states.

As Paardekooper reported with regard to the Pfizer injections, only 2.9% of their lots were distributed to more than 12 states and these were associated with 96.5% of all the product’s deaths, 95.5% of all hospitalizations and 94.7% of all adverse event reports.

‘Highly unusual pattern’ indicates a ‘significant crime’ and ‘must be investigated

Independent of these efforts, however, retired pharmaceutical industry executive Alexandra Latypova made her own query into this question and later, after connecting with Paardekooper, assembled a team of researchers with experience in clinical trials, data analysis, statistics, pharmaceutical industry regulations, manufacturing, and research and development to further analyze these figures.

She produced a 20-minute video highlighting the contrast between the tremendous variability of COVID-19 gene-transfer vaccine lots as compared with seasonal flu vaccines and stressed the importance of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) laws that she told LifeSiteNews are “designed to ensure safety and consistency of pharmaceutical products which must be produced in large quantities to very exacting standards of purity, stability, consistency, etc.”

“Breaches of these practices have historically resulted in tragic cases of adulterated, tainted, or poisoned drug products which resulted in loss of life and severe injuries,” she wrote in an email correspondence.

According to her presentation, GMP laws include expectations that every new lot/batch is “almost the same” as all previous lots, and that vaccines from different manufacturers “for a disease indication are ‘the same’ or interchangeable product.”

Quoting the specific regulation, Latypova said, “‘The failure to comply (with these practices) … shall render such drug to be adulterated,’ and that is a pretty significant crime to sell adulterated products.”

Establishing over 10 years of flu vaccine data as a control group in a visual graph (below), she demonstrated that in terms of the numbers of serious adverse events (SAEs), these products are very consistent, showing only two outliers with a maximum of 37 SAEs in one such lot.

Graphing the data from COVID-19 vaccines in the same way, she observed that the range of the SAEs had to be much higher, from 1 to 700 instead of from 1 to 40 with the flu shots to accommodate the enormous numbers of injuries associated with these injections.

Second, she pointed out how the lots from the three different companies “look completely different from each other,” and “lot to lot, they look extremely different as well” with many lots having very few SAEs and others having hundreds.

By comparison, she observed how “the flu vaccine outliers (the maximum number was 37) reside below the red line” and are clearly contrasted by the enormous spikes from the COVID vaccine “outlier” lots which are not just a few, but very numerous.

“This highly unusual pattern points to severe non-compliance in manufacturing and must be investigated,” Latypova concluded in a follow-up video.

Batched labeled according to toxicity further indicating intentionality of variability

Another important observation Paardekooper documents includes what appears to be consistent patterns of labeling for ranges of toxicity in batches.

For example, he shows that Pfizer batches labeled with an alphanumeric code beginning in “EN6” are the most toxic with a range of 2,000 to 3,000 reported adverse reactions per batch, the “ER87 series” has between 1,500 and 2,500, the EW series has 1,000 to 2,000, and the “F series” is at 100 to 1,500 times base toxicity.

Paardekooper defines “base toxicity” to be one adverse reaction per batch, which is the case for 70% of all reported batches.

He explains the great concern here is this pattern of labeling “would be exactly what scientists would do if they were testing different dosages of drugs and monitoring their effects.”

Moderna has the same pattern wherein, for example, their batches ending with 20A or 21A are associated with very high levels of injury, with those ending in 20A being the most toxic. In fact, all of the batches producing more than 1,719 adverse events all end with the 20A label.

Further, the level of toxicity seems to correlate in descending and ascending order as indicated by letters in the center of the batch numbers, with the higher toxicity rating containing the letters J, K, L, M, and the less A, B, C, D, E, and F.

As illustrated by one Telegram post on the topic, the unexpected and early death of one 48-year-old surgeon was highlighted in the New York Post last May with the deceased displaying a picture of his vaccine card showing two injections from “20A” Moderna shots received earlier in the year.

As the more toxic batches have been dispersed widely across the United States, one incident from California suggests one of them may not have been distributed broadly enough to escape notice. In January 2021, state health officials halted the distribution of “Moderna Lot 041L20A” due to “a higher-than-usual number of possible allergic reactions” at one vaccination site.

This pause was intended to allow investigation by the manufacturer, the FDA and CDC, yet it was lifted only a few days later when it was announced such bodies “found no scientific basis to continue the pause,” granting providers permission to “immediately resume” the injections.

According to data from HowBadIsMyBatch.com, as of December 29, 2021, “Moderna Lot 041L20A” shots charted 2,679 VAERS reports of adverse reactions, including 32 deaths, 29 individuals with life threatening illnesses, and 26 with disabilities.

As should always be remembered, VAERS is a passive reporting system that has historically“under-reported adverse events by about two orders-of-magnitude” as is verified by a Harvard Pilgrim study that found “fewer than 1%” of adverse effects from vaccines are reported to VAERS. Even vaccine manufacturers have calculated a likely “fifty-fold underreporting of adverse events” in this system. Therefore, the actual injuries from these batches may be 10 to 100 times higher than reported.

‘We are now absolutely certain it is not the same stuff in every vial’ and ‘criminal acts are being committed’

Presenting much of this material in a January 7 comprehensive interview with German international trial attorney Reiner Fuellmich and his associates of the German Corona Investigative Committee, Dr. Michael Yeadon, former Pfizer vice president and chief scientist for allergy & respiratory, offered commentary drawing from 32 years in the pharmaceutical industry leading new medicines research.

Addressing the enormous variability of the batches, he said, “We are now absolutely certain it is not the same stuff in every vial. And that means criminal acts are being committed.”

“It’s not just the extreme toxicity, but it’s the variability,” he said. “That means it’s not the same products. … it’s not the same stuff. I am certain. It’s not an assessment. It’s not a ‘maybe.’ I’m absolutely certain [this is the case].”

Having worked with Latypova on this project, presenting the same graphs that can be viewed above, he said, “It cannot be the case that these middle Pfizer lots are the same material as the ones immediately to the left and to the right.”

“These drug companies are highly professional outfits. They know how to manufacture reproducibly, and we saw that with the flu vaccines over decades. They know how to do it, [and yet] they haven’t done it.

“I’m afraid I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re doing it on purpose because … after a year they know this data,” he said. “They can go into VAERS … and see what’s happening. They know. So, the fact that they haven’t stopped this tells me that they are at least okay with it, and I fear that this is deliberate.”

Commenting on the fact that the most toxic batches were distributed broadly across the nation to many states, while the less dangerous ones were sent to fewer localities, Yeadon observed, “If this was innocent, then you would expect that a batch (or a lot) would go on average to the same number of states each time.”

“And we need to go and check this but certainly as of a couple of weeks ago our findings were the most toxic batches were going to the largest number of states. And if that’s confirmed, again [this would be] evidence of premeditation. How would they know ahead of time to distribute, to dilute, the most toxic batches across the largest number of states?”

Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a former head of the health committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and a panel member for this interview, concluded, “[this is] a big crime. And it’s so obvious.”

“We have to wake up the doctors and wake up the pharmacists and wake up the people that they are just victims of criminals,” he said.

‘This is intentional, premeditated, mass murder,’ ‘crimes against humanity’

Coming from a legal perspective, Fuellmich responded to the evidence stating, “At this point in time, I think this must be considered the missing link. This is the smoking gun.”

According to the international attorney whose professional record includes litigating against fraudulent corporations, the evidence is “enough to show us that what has been happening is that within this gigantic experiment they are experimenting with lethal dosages.”

“[And] for what purpose?” he asked. “It can only be [that] they want to reduce the population without us understanding this. That’s why they’re experimenting with lethal dosages because if they killed everyone at the first shot it would be very obvious,” he said.

“[This evidence is] way more than enough for me,” the attorney continued. “And [it] should be way more than enough for any prosecutor.”

“I have no doubt, that if we talk to all of the experts that we have spoken to, the psychologists, the psychiatrists, the epidemiologists, the immunologists, the lawyers, the economists, they will all come to the same conclusion: This is intentional, premeditated, mass murder. There’s absolutely no doubt about it because nothing else makes any sense,” he said.

“These are crimes against humanity,” Fuellmich concluded. “We’re going to get them.”

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America’s Full Spectrum Decline

May 12th, 2022 by Richard Gale

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“It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion.”  Leo Tolstoy

For an ever-growing number of Americans, life is becoming ever more difficult and precarious to maneuver for making ends meet.

Each subsequent year becomes more challenging. It seems that suffering has become an endemic quality to the nation’s character. However, not everyone has been suffering equally.

This national chronic illness is not uniform. Much of our suffering depends upon the institutionalization and negligence of previous injustices, the loss of social equanimity, economic heedlessness, and our leaders’ unmitigated greed and pursuit of power. Nor is everyone adversely affected by the shifts underway in the imaginations of the political and ideological universes.

The transnational corporate class has little motivation to respect or contribute to national boundaries and interests. They perceive themselves as global actors. For the generals and captains of neoliberal globalization, the puppet masters of financial markets, the Covid-19 pandemic only caused annoying disruptions in the quality of their lives. For the remainder, it has been cataclysmic.

Now that Washington acknowledges its proxy war against Russia, and the hawkish ambitions of the political class are determined to drive the economy into the abyss, we must pause and reflect carefully about what we want and don’t want as individuals and as a nation to secure a sustainable future.

This demands a deep and collective introspection into shared moral principles. It is no longer what we say or profess that guarantees truth or empirical significance. Rather what we actualize in our daily lives and as a society is going to determine whether the future will be liveable or not. Only our actions realistically convey the deeper values in the American psyche.

Therefore it is incumbent to ask ourselves harsher questions to realize the deeper spiritual poverty that defines American civilization.

Where were the large demonstrations against the trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and foreign banks when barely a penny was spent for the average citizen?

Where were the demonstrations against home foreclosures and the loss of small family farms?

What about debt drenched student aid, exploitative payday loans and exorbitant credit card fees?

There was no outrage against Obama’s broken promises on universal healthcare that brought him to the White House.

The single-minded attention on the pandemic has cancelled out 2.5 million homeless American children and 46 million adults and children who are food insecure.

At this moment where is a collective voice condemning the billions of dollars being given to the corrupt fascist regime in Ukraine to fight the Russian boogeyman as the rest of America further slides into a ghetto crying for energy and food?

Why no vocal outrage against the invasions of Libya and Syria, or the US’ ongoing support of rogue dictatorships, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE for crimes against humanity in Yemen?

There weren’t and aren’t now noteworthy protests against any of these issues.

And yet these are unquestionable existential threats to our very democracy.

Bertrand Russell wrote,

“one should care about the world they do not see.” Should we not be planning ahead for the future of our children, grandchildren and ourselves instead of being incapacitated by fear?

The national popular disinterest in our past and present crises foreshadows something on the future horizon that does not bode well for the nation’s integrity. It is a simple principle to understand; yet so subtle it will likely go unnoticed until everyone is individually and collectively affected.

That is, there is an utter lack of honesty and moral balance throughout the nation’s body politick.

Like a bad case of herpes, government disinformation spreads across the media, which thrives on feeding the masses virtual images of a faux theatrical play and airing illusory icons and lies on our minds’ monitor screens.

The media’s Mummers’ parade of jesters, who masquerade as knowledgeable program hosts, intentionally distort their viewers’ perceptions of reality.  In our opinion, these are covert acts of psychological violence.  This is how control is exerted over our thoughts, speech and actions. In fact, it is only after people exercise their thoughts independently, with the certain belief that they have actual self-control over their lives, that they can arrive at the realization that their perceptions may be horribly distorted by the government and media working together.

Aside from the three federal branches of government that provide our rapidly deteriorating system a semblance of checks and balances, there is also what is commonly referred to as the “fourth estate,” the powers of the press and news media that control the framing of the political narrative and partisan issues. In the past, the media was expected to hold the government accountable by exposing its conflicts of interest, its misdemeanors, and systemic corruption.

The media’s moral mission is nearly extinct as it has now been fully captured by corporate interests. It is politically and ideologically aligned with Washington’s globalist agenda to dismantle the foundations of an authentic democracy and launch a Great Reset to suppress individual rights and liberties under the control of a technologically driven regime.

Even more insidious, the private media, as the fourth branch of government, is subservient to the US intelligence agencies, which operate independently from executive and legislative oversight. Today we are witnessing this loose cabal of seemingly independent entities, working simultaneously in consortium, propelling us towards a future tsunami of greater polarization and immense social disruption and suffering. Individual rights and freedoms are the collateral damage from this covert war of violence against the American public.

Earlier generations were not threatened by the telecommunication and technological giants, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia. Clinton’s Communications Decency Act of 1996, despite its well-meaning intentions to protect free speech, turned out to be destructively naïve. At that time it was sensible; however, that was before the advent of the social media that now dominates our lives and shapes political discourse. Silicon Valley has become a force far more powerful than the lobbyists on K Street to ensure that corporate Democrats are raised to a position of absolute power. Yet the problem would be equally threatening if it were the corporate and radicalized GOP in power.

The centrist Democratic left, lulled in a passivity that “it can’t happen here,” is every bit as dangerous and delusional as the Republican far-right’s paranoia over conspiracies squatting behind every nook and cranny. “One wanders to the left, another to the right,” wrote Horace, a 1st century BC lyric poet, “Both are equally in error but are seduced by different delusions.” A moderate centrist right no longer exists as it has now exited reality like a herd of lemmings to follow Trump phenomena over a phantasmagoric cliff. A centrist left no longer exists as Clintonistas continue to move party divisions’ goalposts farther right.

The more important question to contemplate is how this will impact yourself and average citizens.

Biden’s and the European Union’s sanctions against Russia already prove that nothing happens in isolation.

Rather than weakening Russia by a fantasy that Russians will rise up to overthrow Putin, we are observing the exact opposite. Putin is at the height of his popularity at around 85 percent.

At the moment the Russian ruble is the world’s strongest currency.

The sanctions have been a dismal failure. Their blowback is hyperinflation–realistically in double digits, higher energy costs, empty supermarket shelves and crashing asset values. Common sense would dictate that the armchair bureaucrats, wearing Halloween military costumes in the Oval Office, would acknowledge their mistake and readjust accordingly. But the very real danger people need to realize is that when Washington slams its foot on the gas pedal, there are no breaks or reverse gear. This has repeatedly been the case during the past three decades as the US has been the top dog propelling globalization while waging wars and regime change against nations who buck globalization’s unipolar world.

Globalization is perhaps the most holistic phenomena within the matrix of financial capital movements and post-modern social restructuring. China has the means to socially control most of its population, especially in urban areas. On the other hand, China would be unable to succeed in this endeavor without the direct assistance, trade and technological development of Silicon Valley and the private innovators of intelligence and surveillance applied science.

China has already launched digitized social credit scoring, a nefarious means to reward and penalize public activity. If a person protests for greater democratic values and free speech, his or her social score decreases. The alternative is long imprisonment. And through digital networks, authorities are able to monitor and identify every Chinese citizen’s movements. All of this technology is ready for launch in the US and other developed nations.

The federal government and individual states have been blindly over-reacting to Covid’s health threats, the climate and environment, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the collapse of social cohesion. These self-inflicted crises give our elected officials and their handlers reason to solidify more comprehensive and long-term agendas to expand government social control under the pretense of national security and to keep Americans safe. The latest in this effort is Biden’s new Disinformation Governance Board, an Orwellian nightmare that echoes memories of the Third Reich.

New laws are under construction that would redefine hate speech. Censorship of free speech for criticizing official narratives and policies are being enforced.

Any criticism towards the failures of the Covid-19 vaccines or the Charlie Chaplin comedian and Winston Churchill wannabe in Ukraine’s presidential seat is redefined as threats to domestic health and national security.

People who challenge Washngton’s narratives with hard facts may eventually find their names on domestic terrorist lists.

This scenario is not beyond the imagination. Wikileaks revealed that environmental, animal protection, and human rights groups have been labeled as domestic terrorist organizations.

Guilt by association laws buried in Obama’s National Defense Authorization Act, for example, are in place.

Expanding a law’s scope is far easier than erasing it from the books. Consequently, it is not unlikely that these laws may eventually widen to include charges of subversion based solely on the emails you read, the videos you watch or the broadcasts you listen to. This would inevitably lead to the death toll for any residue of integrity in journalism. Silicon Valley’s collusion with the government has canceled the voices of some of our best investigative journalists, such as Julian Assange, Chris Hedges, Sharyl Attkinsson, Glenn Greenwald and Max Blumenthal. These are only a few of many examples. The new unstated law is that original investigation must support the official narrative, otherwise it will be prohibited from accessible public view.

We may recall that under the second Bush administration, the justice department created “free speech zones,” fenced off or confined areas where demonstrators were only permitted to exercise their Constitutional rights of free protest and expression. Today we are only several small amendments away before the right to assemble being banned altogether.

Faced with growing condemnation by many nations, America’s hegemony in the world’s geopolitical arena has waned considerably.

The refusal of a large majority of the world’s nations to abide with the US’s sanctions against Russia is one clear indication that distrust towards America has increased dramatically.  The move by more and more nations to bail on the US dollar as the global fiat currency is a sign of an international awakening that the US only prints disposal paper.  This was a rude awakening for Washington and the EU. Nevertheless, Biden’s neocon war posturing against Russia and China, with the White House’s attitude of the domestic economy be damned, will continue to make every effort to retain its throne as the world’s most powerful and exceptional nation. For the rest of the world, aside from America’s closest allies who sanctioned Russia and are now on the verge of runaway hyperinflation, energy shortages and recession, Washington’s image of itself is only mirage of the past. What has vanished in the US’ former full spectrum dominance over the geopolitical landscape is now being inverted to strengthen federal hegemonic reign over the American population.

Finally, we need to awaken to modern technologies’ remarkable sophistication and its certain threats to the health of our society, and even to our definition of being human. Sadly, this is an industry each of us has been complicit in advancing. Coining a term by one of the planet’s most important and forgotten 20thcentury prophetic voices, the Trappist monk Father Thomas Merton, we are facing a great Unspeakable, a spiritual crisis contributing to the existential vacuity of modern American culture. Few are aware that in his 1964 collection of meditations, Seeds of Destruction, Merton predicted that the civil rights movement would confront a catastrophic impasse and may find itself without leadership. Four years later, Martin Luther King Jr, who Merton had a deep correspondence with, was assassinated. Merton would die suddenly later that same year under very mysterious circumstances in Thailand.

Another way to describe the Unspeakable is criminal Sovereignty, with a capital S, to convey its almost numinous god-like qualities. If Merton were alive today, he would look upon both the extreme right and left as mere expressions of the meaninglessness of American life manifesting as a turbulent ocean of afflictive emotions and thoughts. Instead of technology serving the needs of humanity, Americans have become conditioned to willingly serve as technology’s slaves. The public, Somerset Maugham warned, “are easily disillusioned, then they are angry for it was the illusion they loved.” The Unspeakable’s unspoken mantra is: technology must progress regardless of how many people fall destitute, jobless, debt ridden and physically ill with only suicide as a recourse to escape. “American democracy today,” Merton observed over 55 years ago, “is just cheap pressed wood fiber, cardboard and spray paint.” No wonder the elite sitting in the global control tower view the Great Reset’s technological regime as preferable to modern democracy’s kabuki theater. Advanced surveillance, artificial intelligence, robotics, transhumanism, a 5G internet of everything, genetic engineering, and weather modification should be our guiding avatars. The solutions, Merton would argue, can no longer be found in civil discourse nor the rights of human beings to gather in assembly. For the ruling elite, the masses are blind sheep wandering in search of a shepherd. This is what author Ronald Wright called the “progress trap” – progress’ unending efforts to feed technology’s hunger to devour natural and human capital, interest free. And the mainstream press and news media, in its malady of cognitive dissonance and spineless amorality, serve as technology’s unreflective cheerleader on its march towards civilizational collapse.

Merton was keenly aware of technology’s dangers to social stability. In a 1967 letter he took aim at the “universal myth that technology’s infallibly makes everything in every way better for everybody. It does not.” However, Merton was by no means a Luddite. “Technology could indeed make a better world for millions of human beings,” he wrote. Yet there remains the nightmare of technology transforming the world into a “more collectivist, cybernated mass culture.” Decades before the first desktop, Merton foresaw a complete fragmentation of the nation’s moral and spiritual fabric when people began basing all of their political and ethical decisions on computers. Prophetically he wrote to a friend, “just wait until they start philosophizing with computers!” That was 1967. He even foresaw technology becoming a means to elevate the slaves of technology’s false self, to satisfy narcissistic appetites for admiration and status. In other words, the woke social media.

“The greatest need of our time,” Merton wrote in his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, “is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we see we cannot think. The purification must begin with the mass media.”

For this reason we urgently need to penetrate the illusions of propaganda and popular falsehoods, across the entire political spectrum.  The self-appointed Pharisees, such as Yuval Harari and other globalist clones minted through the mills of Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset, now pontificate about the ghastly wonders of a new socio-economic era where endless technological innovation will have precedence over human lives.

Yet all of this has been clearly predictable for those with eyes-wide-open, such as Fr. Merton and other visionaries like the French Catholic anarchist Jacques Ellul. No doubt, if Orwell were penning his great novel today, the emergence of this new American and unipolar era emerging in our midst would not be fiction.

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

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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***

 

 

 

 

An American journalist, born in Jerusalem, was killed in Jenin in the Occupied West Bank of Palestine by Israeli Defense Forces on Wednesday.  Shireen Abu Akleh had worked as a reporter for the Arabic-language channel of Al Jazeera for 25 years, and was covering an Israeli raid into Jenin when she was deliberately targeted and killed by an Israeli soldier. 

Ali al-Samoudi, of Al-Quds newspaper, was shot in the back, and two other Palestinians were injured and transported to a hospital.  Al Samoudi, and all other journalists present reported there were no Palestinian fighters present when the Israeli Defense Forces opened fire on the group of journalists.

“Suddenly they shot us without asking us to leave or stop filming,” said al-Samoudi. He added, “The first bullet hit me and the second bullet hit Shireen … there was no Palestinian military resistance at all at the scene.”

Shatha Hanaysha, a local journalist who was standing next to Abu Akleh said,

“We were four journalists, we were all wearing vests, all wearing helmets,” Hanaysha said. “The [Israeli] occupation army did not stop firing even after she collapsed. I couldn’t even extend my arm to pull her because of the shots being fired. The army was adamant on shooting to kill.”

Walid Al-Omari, Ramallah bureau chief for Al Jazeera, said that Abu Akleh was wearing a blue flak jacket marked “PRESS”, and a helmet, but was shot in an unprotected area under her ear, which points to a deliberately targeted shot. The video of the shooting substantiates what Al-Omari described.

Ibrahim Melham, Palestinian Authority government spokesperson said,

“However, all the witnesses present at the scene of the crime ensures that it was an Israeli sniper that committed the crime in a deliberate way.”

Abu Akleh’s father was from Bethlehem, the birth place of Jesus Christ, and her family were Palestinian Christians, descendants of the followers of Jesus.  Bethlehem is a Christian village dating over 2,000 years, and is the birthplace of Christianity.  Palestinian Christians had been about 20% of the population of Palestine in 1948, but now number only 2% of the Palestinian occupied territory. Only Jews can be Israeli citizens, and human rights groups have labeled Israel as an Apartheid state, as well as a racist state.

Christians in Palestine have been diminished over the 74 years of brutal military occupation. American and European Christians, and their churches, have mostly turned a blind-eye to the crimes and atrocities carried out by the Israeli government.

Abu Akleh wrote last year about the importance of Jenin.

“It is the city that can raise my morale and help me fly. It embodies the Palestinian spirit.”

Jenin has the potential to be the beginning point of a raging wildfire, which the Israeli government is deadly afraid of, and wishes to stomp-out before it spreads to the rest of the Occupied West Bank. This has caused the Israeli Defense Forces to intensify its raid on Jenin recently.

Jamal Haweel explained,

“Jenin has a legacy of hundreds of years in resistance that has been passed on from one generation to the next.” He added, “Resistance in the city has become our lifestyle, our culture, our life,” stressing that all Israeli and American attempts to change the city’s identity since 2002 have failed.

“The [Israeli] occupation forces’ daily attacks and attempts to turn the West Bank into a settlement is the main reason for the resistance in Jenin,” said Haweel, while noting that Israel fears Jenin would become an inspiration to resistance cells in other cities in the West Bank.

Stanley L. Cohen is an attorney and human rights activist who has done extensive work in the Middle East, and he wrote,

“Long ago, it was settled that resistance and even armed struggle against a colonial occupation force is not just recognized under international law but specifically endorsed.  In accordance with international humanitarian law, wars of national liberation have been expressly embraced, through the adoption of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (pdf), as a protected and essential right of occupied people everywhere.”

Abu Akleh is just the latest American to be killed by Israeli violence and aggression. Rachel Corrie was a 23-year-old American peace activist from Olympia, Washington, who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer on 16 March 2003, while undertaking nonviolent direct action to protect the home of a Palestinian family from demolition.

The US government has never taken a stand against Israel in the killing of any American citizen.  The White House, like the US churches, turn a blind-eye at crimes and atrocities committed by their staunch ally.  Israel is routinely described as the “only democracy in the Middle East”; however, keeping five million Palestinians under a brutal military occupation for 74 years cannot be described as a democracy.

The administration of President Joe Biden is busy with other worries, and has not hinted at any US push for peace in the Middle East, which is kept in chaos and turmoil because the Palestinian people are not free.  The only solution for peace and stability for Israelis and Palestinians is to recognize the human rights of the Palestinian people and set them free in their own land.  Until then, the resistance to occupation will continue to grow and is a legally justified response.

I dedicate this article to the memory of Shireen Abu Akleh, and all the other journalists who have been killed while reporting the truth.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

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***

Since the beginning of 2020 the world population as been under the spell of an emergency regime, worldwide; an ever more tightening control of people’s lives, gradually merging from dictatorship into tyranny – all under the guise of a deadly pandemic.

This world tyranny, englobing all 193 UN member countries (WHO’s 194 members), appears to be happening all at once, had been prepared for maybe as much as hundred years, with an active pursuit after WWII.

It is led by a group of super-wealthy oligarch, multi-billionaires, in essence very sick, power-thirsty individuals, who can hardly be considered humans, although they appear as humans.

These oligarchs are accompanied by some super-giant financial institutions, like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity and more which control an estimated 25 trillion dollars-equivalent in assets, giving them a leverage power of well-over a 100 trillion dollars, as compared to the world’s GDP of some 90 trillion dollars. In other words, they can manipulate, control and pressure every government on Mother Earth to do their bidding.

Their cult’s stated reason is to make the world a better place, less population, less pollution, reduction of man-made climate change (sic), and the conservation of non-renewable and rare natural resources.

To hammer this point in, they use their immense wealth to buy the mainstream media around the world, so that they use massive psychologically-targeted propaganda to indoctrinate people with their lies.

And what’s worse – propaganda to instill FEAR. People with fear are submissive, obedient, and they lose their resistance, both in terms of immunity and physical resistance.

Governments around the globe are co-opted, coerced or outright threatened having to implement a propaganda-lie based agenda for full control of the world population, leading to a One World Order (OWO), with a One World Government.

This fabulous documentary in German with English and Dutch subtitles illustrates what has happened over the past few years in silent preparation to the plandemic, also called scam-demic – or as the movie calls it, PANDAMNED – and what we, the people, are living now, and how we can get out of this unknown in history Tyranny.

Video

Source: MPMedia

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NATO Without Ukraine – The Only Way for Peace in Eastern Europe

May 12th, 2022 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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As the conflict continues in Ukraine, in the West it becomes increasingly difficult to hide NATO’s blame for the worsening of the current security crisis. Among American politicians, it is already known that the Western military alliance was the real cause for the beginning of the Russian special military operation, as it unnecessarily threatened the security of the Russian State and people with its destabilizing actions in Ukraine. This is expected to bring about a new wave of debates on the true role of NATO in the contemporary world order.

In the US, politicians, experts and analysts are divided between two large groups regarding the interpretation of the NATO role in the conflict: on the one hand, the more realistic ones admit mistakes in the way NATO acted in recent years, and consider the alliance one of the culprits for the worsening of the conflict in Ukraine; while, on the other hand, the second group is a more ideologically committed one that insists on praising the supposed “defensive” aspect of the alliance, placing Moscow as a kind of “criminal” in this discussion.

Senior White House official Derek Chollet, for example, is one of the great exponents of this most ideological group in defense of NATO. In his public statements, Chollet states that the alliance is an absolutely defensive organism, whose expansion does not in any way threaten Russia or any US enemy country: “NATO is a defensive alliance. NATO is not a threat to Russia”. This is also the opinion of Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2009-2013, who claims that “[NATO] is a defensive alliance, not just in theory; it is, in fact, in practice, a defensive alliance”.

Curiously, Daalder himself is one of the most responsible for the existence of feelings of mistrust in relation to NATO. Two decades ago, in 1999, he wrote a paper about the transition process of NATO from a defensive alliance to an “organization concerned with managing international crises”. In that report, praising the invasion of Yugoslavia, he explicitly defended the expansion of the possibilities of military action by NATO, not only admitting intervention in case of attacks against members but stating that the organization could engage in any military action that was in its interest.

Later, Daalder also became one of the great architects of NATO’s intervention in Libya, in 2011, which used exactly the same assumptions of action defended by him before, justifying military intervention without any previous aggression towards the member states of the alliance. So, given all this background, it is relatively simple to understand what Daalder means when he says that NATO is a “defensive alliance, not just in theory but in practice”. For him, “defense” is not reaction to attack, but any military action in the name of American interests.

Obviously, however, military action by NATO against Russia is virtually impossible, as it would imply a nuclear world war, so Ukraine was chosen as a target for expansionism and the Russian-speaking populations living there as an enemy for proxy military actions by NATO power of attorney, delegated to Kiev forces and neo-Nazi battalions. This was the result of a long American strategy to somehow “occupy” Ukraine and cross all the red lines that separate the West and Russia.

The current scenario, prompted by the beginning of the Russian special military operation, was just the only possible way out that Moscow found in the face of such pressure. An occupied Ukraine would mean a Russia surrounded and available for deep-sea attacks at any time. Biden has accelerated this process and has been concerned to further strengthen Kiev in recent months, creating an unsustainable scenario of instability that could only culminate in a great conflict.

Biden’s actions reversed a short period of “pause” in tensions with Russia that had been promoted by Trump, whose isolationism focused on a strategy to reduce conflicts in Eastern Europe. But, despite that, Biden only continued a long process that had been taking shape at least since George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who publicly defended the need to bring “democracy and freedom” to Ukraine, opposing all the advises of the CIA analyst Fiona Hill, who considered maneuvers in Kiev an unnecessary affront to Russia and called for Ukraine’s non-entry in NATO. Subsequently, the interventionism in Ukraine was continued by Obama, and that much helped to carry out the 2014 coup. So, in that timeline, Trump was a “pause”, but Biden resumed the strategy.

All these arguments make it impossible to believe the narrative of those who defend NATO as a “defensive organization” which “does not threaten Russia”. Not by chance the group of the realists, who blame NATO for the crisis, is growing in the US itself. Recently, this debate has reached the US Senate and there was a visible increase in anti-NATO opinions among American lawmakers. Western public opinion is slowly understanding how it all started and how it may end: NATO created the crisis and it is the only one that can stop it – by signing an agreement with Russia that Kiev will remain neutral and totally disconnected from the alliance.

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

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‘Russia Started the War’ and Other Fallacies

May 12th, 2022 by Mike Whitney

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***

On Monday, Putin delivered the annual “Victory Day” speech celebrating Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. The Russian president made none of the hyperbolic pronouncements the media had predicted but, instead, gave a brief recap of the events leading up to the war in Ukraine. There was none of the bravado you’d expect from a leader trying to gin up support for the ongoing war. Putin simply reminded the crowd that he had done everything he could to avoid the bloody conflict in which Russia is currently embroiled. Here’s part of what he said:

“Last December we proposed signing a treaty on security guarantees. Russia urged the West to hold an honest dialogue in search for meaningful and compromising solutions, and to take account of each other’s interests. All in vain. NATO countries did not want to heed us, which means they had totally different plans. And we saw it.”

This is an accurate account of what took place in the months preceding the war. Putin tried to avoid a confrontation by repeatedly asking the US to address Russia’s reasonable security concerns. Unfortunately, the Biden administration brushed off Putin’s demands without even providing a response. The US and NATO insist that Ukraine has every right to choose whatever security arrangement it wants. But that’s clearly not the case. The United States and every nation in NATO have signed treaties (Istanbul in 1999, and Astana in 2010) that stipulate they cannot improve their own security at the expense of others.

The principle underlying these agreements is called “the indivisibility of security”, which means that the security of one state can’t be separated from the security of the others. In practical terms, that means that signatories to these treaties are not free to develop their own military capability to the point where it poses a danger to their neighbors. These terms are especially applicable to Ukraine which is seeking membership in a military alliance that is openly hostile to Russia. NATO membership has always been a “red line” for Putin who has stated repeatedly that he will not allow NATO bases, combat troops and missile sites to be located on Ukrainian soil where they’d be just a stone’s throw from Moscow. As one critic from Texas put it, “You wouldn’t let a rattlesnake make its home on your front porch, would you?” No, you wouldn’t, and neither would Putin. Here’s more from a speech Putin gave in 2007:

“I’m convinced that we have reached the decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security. And we must proceed by searching for a reasonable balance between the interests of all participants in the international dialogue.” Munich Security Conference, 2007

For Putin, security has always been the paramount issue. How do we create a world in which ordinary people can feel safe in their homes, their communities and their countries? How do we protect the weaker countries from the constant threat of intervention, invasion or regime change by an impulsive superpower whose behavior is guided by its own material interests and its own insatiable geopolitical ambitions? Concepts like the “indivisibility of security” might appeal to the sensibilities of idealists, but where’s the enforcement mechanism? And, how do we use these grand ideas to rein in an intractable hegemon rampaging across the planet?

These are questions that need to be answered, after all, if the United Nations actually worked the way it is supposed to work, Russia’s demands would have been thoroughly debated at emergency meetings before the first shot was ever fired. But that didn’t happen. International law and global institutions failed again. As everyone knows, most of these institutions have been hijacked by Washington which now uses them to provide a fig leaf of legitimacy for its serial depredations. That’s certainly how they are being used in the current war against Russia.

The western media is also being used as a weapon against Russia. For example, Russia has been universally blamed for starting the war, but Russia did not start the war and everyone on the Security Council knows it. Ukraine started the war, and the Observer Mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has collected evidence to prove it. Check out this excerpt from an interview at the Grayzone with Swiss Intelligence officer and NATO advisor, Jacques Baud:

JACQUES BAUD: “I think we have to understand, as you know, that the war in fact hasn’t started on 24 February this year… what led to the decision to launch an offensive in the Donbas was not what happened since 2014. There was a trigger for that…

The first is the decision and the law adopted by Volodymyr Zelensky in March 2021—that means last year—to reconquer Crimea by force…

(And,also,) the intensification of the artillery shelling of the Donbas starting on the 16th of February, and this increase in the shelling was observed, in fact, by the Observer Mission of the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe], and t hey recorded this increase of violation, and it’s a massive violation. I mean, we are talking about something that is about 30 times more than what it used to be... On the 16th of February you had a massive increase of violation on the Ukrainian side. So, for the Russians, Vladimir Putin in particular, that was the sign that the operation—the Ukrainian operation—was about to start.

And then everything started; I mean, all the events came very quickly. That means that if we look at the figures, you can see that there’s…. a massive increase from the 16th-17th, and then it reached kind of a maximum on the 18th of February, and that was continuing.

… And that’s why, on the 24th of February when Vladimir Putin decided to launch the offensive, it could invoke Article 51 of the UN Charter that provides for assistance in case of attack.” (“US, EU sacrificing Ukraine to ‘weaken Russia’: fmr. NATO adviser“, The Grayzone)

You can see that by the time Putin invaded Ukraine, the war had already begun. The shelling of ethnic Russians had already intensified by many orders of magnitude. People were being slaughtered in droves, and tens of thousands of refugees were fleeing across the border into Russia. And, all of this had been going on since the 16th of February, a full week before Russia crossed the border. (Moon of Alabamahas compiled the data on the bombardment that took place in the Donbas preceding the invasion: “The February 15 report of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine recorded some 41 explosions in the ceasefire areas. This increased to 76 explosions on Feb 16, 316 on Feb 17, 654 on Feb 18, 1413 on Feb 19, a total of 2026 of Feb 20 and 21 and 1484 on Feb 22.”)

So, why does the media keep repeating the lie that Russia started the war when it is clearly false?

The fact is, Putin sent in the troops to put out a fire not to start one. If ever there was a situation where the Responsibility To Protect (R2P) could be justified, it’s in east Ukraine prior to the invasion. 14,000 ethnic Russians had been killed before the shelling began. Should Putin have looked the other way and allowed another 14,000-or-so to be slaughtered without lifting a finger?

No, Putin did what he had to do to save lives and defend Russia’s national security. Even so, he has no territorial ambitions and no desire to recreate the Soviet Empire.His “special military operation” is, in fact, a defensive operation designed to remove emerging threats that could no longer be ignored. Putin’s 83% public approval rating proves that the Russian people understand what he is doing and fully support him. (A political leader would never garner that level of support if the people thought he had launched a war of aggression.)

Some readers might remember that –before sending in the tanks– Putin invoked United Nations Article 51 which provides a legal justification for military intervention. Here’s an excerpt from an article by former weapons inspector Scott Ritter who defended the Russian action like this:

“Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing Article 51 as his authority, ordered what he called a “special military operation”….

under Article 51, there can be no doubt as to the legitimacy of Russia’s contention that the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass had been subjected to a brutal eight-year-long bombardment that had killed thousands of people.… Moreover, Russia claims to have documentary proof that the Ukrainian Army was preparing for a massive military incursion into the Donbass which was pre-empted by the Russian-led “special military operation.” [OSCE figures show an increase of government shelling of the area in the days before Russia moved in.]

..

The bottom line is that Russia has set forth a cognizable claim under the doctrine of anticipatory collective self-defense, devised originally by the U.S. and NATO, as it applies to Article 51 which is predicated on fact, not fiction.

While it might be in vogue for people, organizations, and governments in the West to embrace the knee-jerk conclusion that Russia’s military intervention constitutes a wanton violation of the United Nations Charter and, as such, constitutes an illegal war of aggression, the uncomfortable truth is that, of all the claims made regarding the legality of pre-emption under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine is on solid legal ground.” (“Russia, Ukraine & the Law of War: Crime of Aggression”, Consortium News)

And here’s more on the topic from author Danial Kovalik in his article titled “Why Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is legal under international law”:

“One must begin this discussion by accepting the fact that there was already a war happening in Ukraine for the eight years preceding the Russian military incursion in February 2022. And, this war by the government in Kiev… claimed the lives of around 14,000 people, many of them children, and displaced around 1.5 million more … The government in Kiev, and especially its neo-Nazi battalions, carried out attacks against these peoples … precisely because of their ethnicity. ..

To remove any doubt that the destabilization of Russia itself has been the goal of the US in these efforts, one should examine the very telling 2019 report of the Rand Corporation… entitled, ‘Overextending and Unbalancing Russia, Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options’, one of the many tactics listed is “Providing lethal aid to Ukraine” in order to “exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability.”…

In short, there is no doubt that Russia has been threatened, and in a quite profound way, with concrete destabilizing efforts by the US, NATO and their extremist surrogates in Ukraine….

It is hard to conceive of a more pressing case for the need to act in defense of the nation. While the UN Charter prohibits unilateral acts of war, it also provides, in Article 51, that “nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense… ” And this right of self-defense has been interpreted to permit countries to respond, not only to actual armed attacks, but also to the threat of imminent attack.

In light of the above, it is my assessment.. that Russia had a right to act in its own self-defense by intervening in Ukraine, which had become a proxy of the US and NATO for an assault – not only on Russian ethnics within Ukraine – but also upon Russia itself. A contrary conclusion would simply ignore the dire realities facing Russia.” (Why Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is legal under international law”, RT)

Assigning blame for the current conflict is more than just an academic exercise. It is the way that reasonable people weigh the evidence to determine accountability. That might be a way-off, but it’s a goal worth pursuing all the same.

Finally, it should be clear by now, that the war in Ukraine was planned long before the Russian invasion. At every turn, Washington has orchestrated the provocations that were designed to lure Russia into Ukraine, drain its resources and, thus, remove a major obstacle to US strategic objectives in Central Asia. The ultimate goal– as US war planners have candidly admitted– is to “break Russia’s back”, splinter the country into smaller pieces, topple the government, seize its vast energy resources, and reduce the population to a permanent state of colonial dependency. Washington knows that it will not be able to encircle and control China’s explosive growth, unless it crushes Russia first. That is why it has embarked on such a reckless strategy that could end in an unprecedented catastrophe. Our miscreant leaders believe that preserving their grip on global power is worth the risk of nuclear annihilation.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney, renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

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

Featured image is from TUR

Video: The Global Pandemic Treaty: What You Need to Know. James Corbett

By James Corbett, May 11, 2022

The World Health Organization has already begun drafting a global pandemic treaty on pandemic preparedness. What form will it take? What teeth will it have? How will it further the globalists in cementing the biosecurity grid into place? James breaks it down in today’s episode of The Corbett Report podcast.

European Sanctions Blown to Bits: Draghi Says “Most Gas Importers” Have Opened Ruble Accounts With Gazprom

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Speaking during a press conference in Washington D.C. after his meeting with Joe Biden, Draghi said that European gas importers have already opened accounts in rubles with Gazprom. The Italian PM was responding to a question asking if he is confident that Italy will be able to pay for gas without breaching sanctions and therefore gas flow to Italy won’t be affected.

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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) calls for an independent and international investigation into the killing of veteran Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot in the head today by Israeli snipers while covering an Israeli raid in the Palestinian city of Jenin.

“Financial Reset” and Economic Warfare against Humanity: How Global Relations Should Be Restructured to Ensure National Sovereignty

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The hybrid warfare being waged to determine the future of Ukraine, intertwines frequently with many aspects of the manufactured COVID crisis. Both fiascos have at their core basic questions concerning how global economic relationships are to be restructured.

The Real Reason Behind the EU’s Drive to Embargo Russian Oil

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Three weeks ago we reported that when faced with the actual, brutal consequences of its anti-Russian virtue signaling and harsh language, Europe’s fake united front promptly cracked crack as several European gas buyers quietly paid for supplies in rubles as Russia had demanded – in breach of Brussels sanctions – and we predicted that soon virtually everyone in Europe would follow in their footsteps and similarly bypass EU sanctions. Moments ago, one of the most powerful people in Europe – former Goldman partner and ECB head – Mario Draghi, confirmed just that.

Speaking during a press conference in Washington D.C. after his meeting with Joe Biden, Draghi said that European gas importers have already opened accounts in rubles with Gazprom.

The Italian PM was responding to a question asking if he is confident that Italy will be able to pay for gas without breaching sanctions and therefore gas flow to Italy won’t be affected.

“I’m actually quite confident, but for a silly reason. There is no official pronouncement of what it means to breach sanctions. Nobody ever said anything about whether rubles payments breach sanctions or not, how these payments are organized. So it’s such a gray zone here.”

Actually, it’s not a gray zone at all: on April 27, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen specifically warned companies not to bend to Russia’s demands to pay for gas in rubles:

“companies with such contracts should not accede to the Russian demands,” von der Leyen said. “This would be a breach of the sanctions so a high risk for the companies.”

In other words, Draghi is either completely unaware of the current realty over the hottest topic in the world today, or is blatantly lying, and in the process demonstrating that the entire “united European front” against Putin is one giant farcical facade.

Which led to the just as stunning conclusion from Draghi’: “As a matter of fact, most gas importers have already opened an account in rubles with Gazprom”, Draghi added in a stunning revelation that behind the scenes, Europe not continues to actively pay Russia billions every day, but is doing so on Putin’s terms and helping send the Ruble soaring!

Then again, it’s possible that Draghi is just senile, which would explain why he said that he has discussed with Joe Biden the creation of a global cartel of oil buyers.

We’ll repeat this because it bears repeating: Draghi and Biden sat down, both of them desperate for oil at any price, and contemplated creating an oil buyers’ cartel. We’ll just leave this here without further commentary because any attempts to understand this epic stupidity would lead to a scene right out of Scanners.

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The Supreme Court on Monday said that no person can be forced to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and directed the Central government to make public adverse effects of vaccination.

A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and BR Gavai said bodily autonomy and integrity are protected under Article 21 of the Constitution. The top court said the current COVID-19 vaccine policy cannot be said to be manifestly arbitrary and unreasonable.

“Till numbers are low, we suggest that relevant orders are followed and no restriction is imposed on unvaccinated individuals on access to public areas or recall the same if already not done,” the bench said.

Regarding segregation of vaccine trial data, subject to privacy of individuals, all trials conducted and to be subsequently conducted, all data must be made available to the public without further delay, it said.

“Regarding segregation of vaccine trial data, subject to privacy of individuals, all trials conducted and to be subsequently conducted, all data must be made available to the public without further delay,” the court said.

The apex court also directed the Union of India to publish reports on adverse events of vaccines from the public and doctors on a publicly accessible system without compromising the data of individuals.

The court delivered the judgement on a plea filed by Jacob Puliyel seeking directions for disclosure of data on clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines and post-jab cases.

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With inputs from PTI

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Israel’s Execution of Al Jazeera Journalist Requires International Investigation

May 12th, 2022 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East

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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) calls for an independent and international investigation into the killing of veteran Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot in the head today by Israeli snipers while covering an Israeli raid in the Palestinian city of Jenin. Reports from journalists who were with Akleh on the ground said that they were deliberately targeted by Israeli snipers, despite wearing press vests and helmets, and Al Jazeera asserts that Akleh was “assassinated in cold blood.” CJPME urges Canada to refer this case to the International Criminal Court (ICC), and to respond to violence against journalists by suspending all military trade with Israel.

“Israel’s deliberate killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh amounts to a de facto execution, and possibly a war crime,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. Although several Canadian officials have expressed support for an investigation into this incident, CJPME points out that Israel has proven itself incapable of investigating or prosecting Israeli attacks against Palestinians. In fact, Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem considers Israeli investigations to be what it calls a “whitewash mechanism.” “For any investigation to be credible, it must be independent and international,” adds Bueckert. “That is why Canada must support efforts by journalist organizations to bring Abu Akleh’s case before the International Criminal Court.”

CJPME notes that while an international investigation is required to hold those responsible accountable, broad evidence has already been gathered from eyewitness accounts to conclude that Israeli snipers are responsible for this killing. Human rights group B’Tselem has also already provided a preliminary investigation on the ground, debunking initial Israeli claims attempting to pin responsibility on Palestinian militants.

“The killing of Abu Akleh follows an outrageous pattern of Israeli attacks on journalists,” assert Bueckert. “At the same time as Canada must call for an independent investigation, it must also unequivocally condemn Israel for this attack” added Bueckert. The attack on Akleh is part of a broader context in which Israel conducts systemic attacks on journalists with impunity. Last year, Israel deliberately bombed an 11-story residential tower that hosted the offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press, and Reporters Without Borders says that at least 144 Palestinian journalists have been violently targeted by Israeli forces during the Great March of Return protests since 2018. At the end of April, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS) and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) submitted a joint complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC), alleging Israel’s “systematic targeting of journalists working in Palestine” – killing 46 journalists since 2000 – amount to war crimes. Today, the IFJ announced that it would seek to add Akleh’s case to their complaint, as an example of the “deliberate systematic targeting of a journalist.” CJPME urges the Canadian government to lend its support to this investigative process so that Israeli officials cannot evade accountability.

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Introduction

The hybrid warfare being waged to determine the future of Ukraine, intertwines frequently with many aspects of the manufactured COVID crisis. Both fiascos have at their core basic questions concerning how global economic relationships are to be restructured. Those who manufactured the COVID crisis in the quest to bring about a financial reset have pictured the process as one that would formalize the ascent of supranational agencies over institutions of national sovereignty.

Happy to play the role as prime ministerial mascot for the Davos-based World Economic Forum, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made it clear that he is busily engaged in uploading Canada’s remaining repositories of national sovereignty to supranational entities. Trudeau is sacrificing the little that remains of the self-determination of average Canadians in order to further empower the ruling array of multi-billionaires and the globalist bankers backing them.

In Trudeau’s mind, Canada is a core entity of the World Health Organization and is subject to the political sway of its corrupt sponsors including the fake philanthropy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This and many other surrenders of Canadian sovereignty by Trudeau reflect his fixation on leading the world’s “first post-national country.” See this.

The War in Ukraine, Sanctions against Russia

The emergence of Ukraine as a test field for a number of conflicting agendas is providing platforms for nationalist counterpoints to globalist schemes of post-nationalist transformation. Indeed, the geopolitical effects rippling throughout the world since the Russian Armed Forces entered Ukraine on 24 February include the locating of possible escape routes from the tyrannies being imposed in the name of combating epidemics of disease.

The antipathies directed Russia have run towards radical extremes. The antipathies point towards the goal of ultimately destroying Russia and depriving its people of any basis for independent self-determination outside the grip of the primary banking institutions emerging from Anglo-America (Bretton Woods, Fed, Regional Development Banks, BIS). Hence the anti-Russian financial assault points towards the same oppressive trajectories as those promoted in the name of the fake fight to vanquish COVID-19.

Many countries representing more than half the world’s population have opted not to join in the regime of economic warfare directed at Russia in an onslaught of sanctions created with the goal of destroying the targeted country. An important new development in global geopolitics is marked by the emergence of this block of countries unwilling to play along with US sanctions against Russia.

The Battered Status of the US Dollar

Many agree that this emerging coalition has already significantly undermined the already-battered status of the US dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency. The further falling away of the US dollar’s monopoly role in international finance is helping to stimulate a surge of creative thinking concerning alternative models of economic relationship. Sergei Glazyev is one of the most outspoken economists outlining new strategies to remake the primary structures of economic relations in the light of the faltering US attempts to destroy Russia’s commercial viability.

Glazyev is working on models that would weave together improved economic interactions among Asian and Eurasian countries. This process is unfolding even as the Western system of speculative excess in financing continues to weigh down countries, businesses and citizens under mountains of debt and inflation.

In charting a way forward, Glazyev is critical of the policies of President Vladimir Putin and the state-owned Russian Central Bank, which is in liaison with the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions.

Currently Glazyev is Commissioner for Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasian Economic Commission, which is the executive body of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). See this.

Glazyev recently attracted much attention to his theories especially in his essay entitled “Sanctions and Sovereignty.” 

“US sanctions are the agony of the ongoing imperial world order based on the use of force. To minimize the dangers associated with it, it is necessary to accelerate the formation of a new—integrated—world economic order that restores international law, national sovereignty, equality of countries, diversity of economic models, and the principles of mutually beneficial and voluntary economic cooperation.” See this.

In a recent interview Glazyev commented on the type of world government favoured by those currently pressing forward the war against Russia. These protagonists are seeking oppressive outcomes consistent with those imposed in the name of fighting the supposed “pandemic.” Glazyev declared,

“What we see today is an attempt to form a certain image of a new world order with a world government at the head, where people are driven into an electronic concentration camp. You can see by the example of restrictions during the pandemic how it happened: all people are given tags, access to public goods is regulated through QR codes, everyone is forced to walk in formation.” See this.

Glazyev’s reference to “an electronic concentration camp” refers to the kind of biodigital prison complex being developed through the convergence of oppressive new technologies (QR Code) combined with social credit scoring systems. The aim of this apparatus is to apply computer algorithms in the cause of constraining and tightly regulating the activities of subjugated humans.

Glazyev makes reference in his commentary to a chapter that appeared in the Rockefeller Foundation Report in 2010. In a chapter entitled “Lock Step,” the authors of the document very closely predicted many of the events that would begin to unfold in 2020.

Glazyev writes,

“In the scenario of the Rockefeller Foundation back in 2010, the pandemic and, in fact, everything that happened in connection with it, was amazingly sorted into pieces – they actually predicted the future. This scenario was called Lock Step, that is, “Walk in formation”, and the Western world followed it. Sacrificing their own democratic values, they try to force people to obey commands. International organizations, including the World Health Organization, are used as a kind of stronghold for assembling a world government that would be subordinate to private capital.”

The Great Reset: Oppressive Form of Capitalism

Author and Attorney, Ellen Brown, has helped call attention to Russia’s most frequently-cited economist. Like Glazyev, Brown finds that the policies pushed forward in the supposed “pandemic” help highlight the larger patterns of repressiveness being pushed our way. As Brown sees it, the so-called Great Reset is actually a more oppressive form of capitalism where the middle class is made to disappear and the very rich are further empowered and entitled.

Brown predicts the nature of the political economy of enslavement that is being pushed on us as the assault on Russia intensifies. Writes Brown

“You will have an account with the central bank and a mandatory federal digital ID. You will receive a welfare payment in the form of a marginally adequate basic income – so long as you maintain a proper social credit score. Your central bank digital currency will be “programmable” – rationed, controlled, and canceled if you get out of line or disagree with the official narrative. You will be kept happy with computer games and drugs.” 

The corrupt and shallow globalism of those seeking to exploit a manufactured public health crisis is captured by the push to formulate an international treaty on pandemics at the World Health Organization. A broad constituency is well aware of the subservience of the WHO to the pharmaceutical industry and to its agents in government including the likes of Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci and Justin Trudeau.

An organization named World Council for Health is helping to organize the critics of the WHO in its present state of scandal-ridden disarray.

The WHO simply lacks the public confidence needed to formulate with credibility a new international instrument on pandemics.  See this.

The creation of such a treaty would strip away jurisdiction from national, state, and provincial governments. Elected governments would cede away the right to formulate local health care policies through democratic means in the public interest.

A treaty of the type being proposed would advance the post-national preoccupations of the likes of Trudeau, Macron, Johnson, Draghi, et al.

Trudeau showed by his contemptuous treatment of the Canadian Truckers that he has no inclination whatsoever to listen to the representations from Canadian workers. Trudeau’s post-nationalism elevates the role of corporatist lobby groups like the World Economic Forum even as it undermines the effectiveness and credibility of Parliament and its attending institutions.

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Dr. Anthony Hall is editor in chief of the American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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This week the European Union is expected to announce a complete import ban on Russian oil. Hungary, in its first real act of defiance, is threatening to veto this; Germany, after some hemming and hawing, has finally decided it can survive such a ban.

Assuming Hungary’s objections are eventually overcome, at first blush this looks like yet another energy “own goal” by the people obsessed with soccer. The U.S. has already issued this ban.

Because European industry is heavily dependent on Russian oil and gas, the conventional wisdom is that the EU Commission is just petulant and incompetent.

Are they petulant? Yes. Incompetent? Possibly? But only if you think in conventional terms of doing the right thing for their people. What is clear to any serious observer of EU politics is that they are not interested in what their people have to say or want.

Theirs is an agenda which will brook no opposition, even if it means destroying its own economy to bring a rival to its knees.

That said, I sincerely doubt there will be a “buyers embargo” on natural gas because there is no viable substitute for it.

Hungary is using the need for unanimous consent within the European Council to block any ‘gas ban’ in any new economic sanctions package. There are at least three other countries which are happy Hungary is willing to suffer Brussels’ wrath.

But banning Russian oil, on the other hand, is different.

So, it is interesting that Hungary would do this, given they import no oil from Russia. This veto was predicted by me the morning after the Hungarians overwhelmingly rejected George Soros’s anti-Viktor Orban coalition and handed it an ignominious defeat.

Hungary, on the other hand, has energy independence from Brussels by having contracted directly with Gazprom for natural gas via Turkstream’s train that goes into Serbia and Hungary. This should give you some context as to why the EU is trying to sanction Serbia and cut off the flows of that pipeline where it crosses EU territory in Bulgaria.

With a fiscally, monetarily (they are not on the euro) and energy independent Hungary there is little argument for them staying in the EU if Brussels is going to treat them as second class members. Orban and his government have been resolute in their refusal to get involved in the Russia/Ukraine conflict even though there has been serious pressure applied by NATO.

It is almost as if Orban and the Hungarians are now daring the EU to advance Article 7 procedures to kick them out. The problem with that is, if they do, it would begin the fracturing of the EU.

What Is the European Union?

Source: thebalance.com

So, what is more likely to happen now is Hungary will use this veto to get the EU to back off on the ‘rule-of-law’ violations which are justifying cutting off Hungary from its EU budget distributions. The horse trade here should be obvious.

Because Brussels and their behind-the-scenes backers absolutely want this ban on Russian oil as much as the U.S. and the UK want it. It is part of their long-term strategy to bleed Russia out, after turning Ukraine into Afghanistan 2.0.

And it is in the differences between the oil industry and the natural gas industry where they think they can achieve this goal.

Of Pipes and Populi

In both the oil and gas industries, pressurizing a well is, for the most part, a one-way process. You dig a well and pull the oil and/or gas out. It produces until the well is depleted. You replace the well’s natural decay in production by drilling a new well.

But even if there is a big demand shock to the downside, rarely an issue in the oil industry in the aggregate, then those wells keep producing. The market is temporarily glutted with oil, the price drops and old wells are not replaced until such time as supply-and-demand balance is restored.

Oil futures curves get constructed by traders to anticipate these effects on prices. And for normal volatility of oil demand, these curves should be reasonably predictable.

Unfortunately, we are living through a time where the most powerful people in the world (at least in their minds) are openly trying to destroy the petroleum market for their own purposes and agenda. They are actively working to make oil and gas prices volatile to the point of destroying investment in the industry.

They make no bones about this. Oil is the bane of the planet!

I call these people The Davos Crowd (for a description of them see my podcast, Episodes 75, 76, and 77 for the background information). They are the unelected oligarchs, bankers, hereditary power and newly Made Men (in the mafia sense) who gather at Davos, Switzerland, every year to decide on the future of humanity.

And it is their agenda, using Climate Change and international threats like biowarfare and terrorism as their justifications for a massive expansion of the surveillance state and their control over all things, but especially money.

Russia’s massive natural resource pile and sovereigntist-minded government stands wholly in the way of that. If you believe otherwise, you have been gaslit by Davos propaganda. I urge you to put away childish things, some rabbit holes are just holes, not warrens.

Back to the oil industry. Capping either a gas or oil well is dangerous because there is no guarantee it can be re-opened. Wells can be damaged and the oil/gas they contain lost without drilling a new one.

With gas you can just “flare it off” by burning the excess if your storage is full, rather than capping the well and wait for demand to return. With oil, on the other hand, you cannot really do that. You have to store the stuff somewhere. From all accounts so far, Russia’s oil storage capacity is already full, if not overflowing.

ss66904345-oil-storage

Oil storage tanks in Russia. [Source: energyintel.com]

The oil industry in general is not geared for massive long-term storage due to supply/demand shocks because there is literally no need for it. What expands is the capacity to move oil around to consume it, not store it in big tanks hoping someone will buy it.

The industry has all the spare capacity it needs to coordinate supply and demand within pretty tight tolerances. It is not “just in time” delivery tight, but it is not capable of absorbing a 20% demand shock.

And this is where the West thinks it has a big lever to use against Russia right now. By all accounts, Europe is one of Russia’s biggest oil customers, with the port at Rotterdam taking in and refining as much as 1.4 million barrels per day before the war.

rps-05

Port at Rotterdam. [Source: rotterdamportsupportbv.nl]

Believe it or not, The Washington Post had a decent article breaking down where Russia’s exports go. Of the approximately 7.2 million barrels per day Russia exports to the world, 4.8 million go to countries, most of them in Europe, that say they no longer want to buy it from there.

Lack of storage capacity should not be a big deal if Russia exported most of the oil to Europe by ship, which it does. According to a recent report by Transport & Environment, an NGO which is wholly geared to convincing Europe to get off Russian energy, the Druzhba pipeline only supplies around 10% of Russian oil to the European market.

Druzhba Adria Oil Pipeline, Croatia | EJAtlas

Source: ejatlas.org

This is a paltry 250,000 barrels per day. The U.S. embargo is more dangerous to the Russian economy, where in 2021 the U.S., having to replace barrels sanctioned from Venezuela by former President Trump, imported an average of 600,000 barrels per day.

Those imports began drying up in 2022, well before Russia invaded Ukraine, so chalk that up as another data point that this war between the West and Russia was planned well in advance of the actual start date back in late February.

The point is that the talking point going around the press today is that Russia does not have the storage capacity to deal with a European embargo and as such will have to cut production. Estimates of production cuts from Russia are around 1.8 million barrels per day, while the West is hoping for 3 million.

Similar to what Trump did in 2018 against Iran, the shock-and-awe campaign of sanctions froze many oil trading firms in their tracks, not knowing what the future would hold, and refused to do business with Russia for fear of running afoul of sanctions.

From Shell to Glencore to Trafigura, Russian oil tenders have become persona non grataand it created a complete mess of their trading books and the commodities-trading industry as a whole, as Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar’s note from last month described.

Because of this financial dislocation in what should be a boring, brain-dead stable industry—trading the most important commodity in the world with the biggest infrastructure to service it—chaos ensued.

The collective West, following Davos’s game plan, is hoping for even more.

Pozsar’s conclusion was that all these firms will either need a bailout at some point (with possible nationalization the price they pay) or be allowed to go bankrupt to serve the plan of radically overhauling the global energy economy away from petroleum of Davos.

At the same time, they would put a major dent in Russia’s economic prospects. Viewed that way, this is a kind of Evil Mastermind Two-fer.

But, if backing up the pipeline oil is not that big a hit to Russia’s production, what is the EU trying to accomplish here?

By disrupting the routes oil normally takes around the world, there is now a structural shortage of tankers to move oil demanded. Since many of those barrels, more than 2 million per day, now must go on much longer voyages.

Instead of the coffee and cake run from St. Petersburg to Rotterdam, those same ships now, at a minimum, must go to storage facilities in the Bahamas and the Caribbean, if not all the way to China or India, their final destination.

Read Pozsar’s post, or the ZeroHedge article linked above, to get a sense of the scale of the disruption.

This supply shock within the tanker market and the downstream effects of the added costs to the voyages, it is hoped, will create a cascading back-up within the Russian oil industry, forcing the forecasted production hits.

This will, in turn, eat into its positive trade balance which is “fueling Putin’s war machine.” It will also present the opportunity for Russia’s competitors to come in and steal market share from them.

Through this mechanism and efforts in the West to change Europe’s energy usage, the long-term effect is to destroy Russia’s ability to continue the war by starving it of needed capital.

Davos Rhymes with Thanos

The U.S. is happy to push Europe to this point and many commentators are happy to end the conversation there: Pick your epithet, but the line is the “Empire of Lies” or “Zone A” or whomever, feels their hegemony is threatened and they are bullying everyone, especially Europe, into their preferred strategy.

But I think that story is more of the “Made for TV” version than it is an accurate representation of reality.

It leaves out the larger goal structure of the people behind this mess in the first place. Rather than be captives of a hyper-belligerent U.S., the EU nations are absolutely willing partners in this.

Davos’s Great Reset strategy is built on the same mistakes about resource scarcity that Thomas Malthus made back in the early 19th century. Theirs is an economic model which does not believe people respond in real time to incentives, pro and con, which moderate their behavior. Rather, they see humans as a virus unleashed upon the world that needs to be controlled.

The entire Great Reset can be boiled down to the same argument the villain in the Marvel films, Thanos, made about having to kill off half the life in the Universe to make things “sustainable.”

And the power center of this type of thinking is not in the U.S. and the U.S. Empire. We are the hyper-capitalists growing the virus in our Petri dish of individualism.

No, this thinking comes squarely out of European critiques of capitalism. To be reductionist it is just Marxism warmed over and given a fresh gloss of rhetorical paint—sustainability, stakeholder capitalism, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), shared purpose, etc.

The proof that the EU is just as happy with war in Ukraine as neoconservative forces in the U.S. and UK is evident in their unwillingness to end the war through diplomacy.

But Europeans are the ones who will suffer the most from this strategy.

Bad Scripts Beget Bad Policy

If EU leadership, owned by Davos, were acting on average Europeans’ behalf, they would be using the obvious costs of cutting Europe off from Russian energy to tell the US and U.K. to go scratch.

Instead, all we hear from them is how Germany can wean itself off Russian energy completely within a year.

It does not matter that this is not good for German industry or the German people in the long run. Russian energy is by far the cheapest solution for them, making their labor the most competitive it can be.

Instead, after helping manufacture the crisis in Ukraine, they now uphold the notion that it is a moral imperative for Germans to suffer without food, heat and other basic necessities of a supposed advanced first-world society to defeat the evil Russians.

In the years leading up to this conflict they would have worked to implement the Minsk Accords. They would have lifted the economic sanctions on Russia and come to an agreement about Crimea and the Donbas politically, and let the U.S. and the UK twist in the wind.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron did the opposite. They blew smoke up Putin’s ass while running the clock out until Macron was re-elected and Merkel could exit the scene, leaving a weak Davos-approved coalition to blame the collapse on.

Deepened trade between Russia and the EU would have eventually ground out the animosity and the U.S.’s insistence on arming Ukraine would have become an albatross politically while Europe would be staring at a potential renaissance, instead of an economic black hole.

France and Germany would not have betrayed their own attempts at diplomacy.

This, I believe, is much closer to the real story of the conflict, which serves a far larger purpose clearly stated by the architects of our misery than the simplistic framework of just blaming the U.S. for everything.

The idea that Europe fears a Russian invasion of Poland or even Germany, which necessitates NATO’s expansion to its border in the Donbas, is ludicrous. Russia’s military is not built along these lines nor is its performance in Ukraine evidence it is capable of such an operation.

What is unfolding now is a script that was written a long time ago. The war by the West against Russia has long been in the planning stages.

The Russians understand this better than many are willing to accept. Their leadership, Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have articulated this very clearly at every stage of the war to date.

EU agrees on sanctions against Putin, Lavrov — TV - Russian Politics & Diplomacy - TASS

Sergei Lavrov and Vladimir Putin knew which way the wind was blowing. [Source: tass.com]

They are under no illusions about where the West and Davos are willing to take this conflict, which is why they have made serious threats about striking out at the real “decision centers” who give the Ukrainian Armed Forces their marching orders.

These are warnings not to our politicians, but to us. This is where things lead.

They have asked for a parting of the ways, peaceably, between East and West, but that is not part of the agenda. Like classic narcissists with the burning need to control everything, Russia and the rest of Asia will not be allowed to walk away from Davos and their Eurocrat quislings, because they are the righteous saviors of humanity.

And we are just, at best, “the help” and at worst an inconvenience.

The bigger Davos plan of destroying the old global order to Build it Back Better, where they own everything and you will own nothing and like it or else, is the script.

They are now committed to this plan. It does not matter now whether it will work or not. This is what we have to realize in all of our analyses. Do the Russians and their friends in Asia and across the Global South have the means and the tools to come out on top? Possibly.

But the bigger question is whether or not this conflict escalates to the point where winning is an irrelevant concept. When you see a bloc as powerful as the European Union willing to commit acts of domestic vandalism this big—and blaming the victim of their unbridled aggression—it tells you we are far past the point of rational settlement.

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A former research chemist and Austrian Economist, Tom Luongo is a Senior Financial Editor with Newsmax Media and publisher of “Gold, Goats n’ Guns,” a monthly newsletter offered through Patreon. Tom can be reached at [email protected].

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***

Senator Lindsey Graham said the US must pursue an even more aggressive strategy against Russia. While appearing on Fox News Sunday with Brett Baier, the hawkish Senator advocated for a barrage of actions targeting Moscow.

Graham promoted a new piece of legislation he co-authored with Senator Richard Blumenthal that calls on the White House to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. Senator Graham published an op-ed Friday, arguing the designation will allow the US to conduct more legal and economic warfare against Russia.

However, Graham does not link Russia to a terrorist group. Rather, he compares the invasion of Ukraine to the Nazi military campaign during World War Two and claims Vladimir Putin is a “megalomaniac wanting to rewrite the map of Europe and recreate the former Russian Empire.”

The Senator also urges the passing of the $33 billion aid bill for Ukraine, prosecuting Putin for war crimes through the International Criminal Court, and putting “more weapons in theater that can target the Russian military offensively.”

On Saturday, the Speaker of the Russian State Duma claimed the Western intervention in Ukraine amounted to direct attacks on Russia.

“Washington essentially coordinates and develops military operations, thereby directly participating in the hostilities against our country,” Vyacheslav Volodin said.

Baier posed two questions to Graham, asking if he was concerned that increasing military involvement in Ukraine could lead to direct confrontation with Russia. The Senator was dismissive of the potential conflict between nuclear powers saying, “we can’t let him [Putin] win in Ukraine.”

Graham boldly called on the US to “take out Putin” and said the Russian leader no longer had an “off-ramp.” He predicted that the lack of an off-ramp would provoke Putin to use chemical or nuclear weapons, causing the US to enter the conflict directly.

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Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.

Featured image: Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko presents the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise to Graham, December 30, 2016 (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)

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One of Germany’s largest natural gas importers, VNG, has opened an account with Gazprombank for payments for Russian gas under Moscow’s new terms.

Per a Reuters report, VNG has said it will transfer the next payment for Russian gas in euros, which will then be converted to rubles in Russia, according to the new gas payment scheme Russia announced in March in response to Western sanctions.

“We will pay the invoice amount, which will continue to be denominated in euros, into the accounts at Gazprombank in accordance with the planned procedure, so that timely payment to our supplier is ensured on our part,” VNC told Reuters in a statement.

“We also assume that the conversion into roubles will not cause any difficulties. At least the opening of the account went completely smoothly,” the company added.

In April, another top Russian gas buyer from Germany, Uniper, signaled it was preparing to start paying for imports under the new terms dictated by Moscow.

“The plan is to make our payments in euros to an account in Russia,” a company spokesperson told German media.

The new terms, devised for what Russia calls unfriendly countries, consist of buyers having to open two accounts in Gazprombank, one of them in euros or dollars and one in rubles. After the buyer deposits payment for gas deliveries in the forex account, the bank converts the sum into rubles and transfers it into the local-currency account, from which the payment is then made.

The European Commission has lashed out against the new payment terms, threatening European gas buyers that if they concede to them, it will violate EU sanctions against Russia.

“Paying roubles through the conversion mechanism managed by the Russian public authorities and a second dedicated account in Gazprombank is a violation of the sanctions and cannot be accepted,” Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson said in late April.

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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

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***

The UK government announced plans on Tuesday to ban local councils and other public bodies from participating in boycott and divestment campaigns, dealing a heavy blow to supporters of Palestinian rights in Britain.

The announcement was made during the Queen’s Speech opening of Parliament, where Prince Charles said the government will introduce “legislation [that] will prevent public bodies engaging in boycotts that undermine community cohesion”.

UK civil society groups called on the UK government last month to halt the legislation that would limit the right to support causes such as Palestinian rights and climate and social justice through boycott campaigns.

The 46 UK-based groups said in a statement they oppose plans by the government to table an “anti-boycott” bill, saying it presents a “threat to freedom of expression, and the ability of public bodies and democratic institutions to spend, invest and trade ethically in line with international law and human rights”.

The law would prohibit public bodies from imposing boycotts or divestment campaigns against foreign countries, including those who boycott, divest or sanction Israel.

Attack on free speech

The bill comes in the wake of the UK’s wide-ranging application of sanctions, divestment and boycotts against Russian businesses and cultural programmes in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Yasmine Ahmed, UK Director of Human Rights Watch, said

: “Any anti-boycott laws are likely to stop public sector bodies from doing the right thing and disentangling themselves from human rights abuses.”

 “Whether it’s in China, Myanmar, Israel or Russia, the UK Government should be banning public sector bodies from making investments that contribute to rights abuses and international crimes,” Ahmed said in a statement.

“Instead, it is making it harder for them to make informed decisions and subjecting them to the whims of the Government”

Pro-Palestinian groups in Britain condemned the proposed bill and said they would campaign to stop it from taking place.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) said it will demonstrate against the proposed bill and described it as an attack on free speech.

Friends of Al Aqsa (FOA) also condemned the proposed bill and echoed PSC concerns that it will harm free speech in Britain.

“In a free society, public bodies must have the right to make ethical choices,” FOA said on Twitter.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Friends of Israel, a pro-Israeli group within the ruling Conservative Party, welcomed the proposed bill.

“We welcome the government’s commitment to legislating against divisive BDS actions which have for too long harmed community relations here at home and the prospect of peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” a spokesperson for CFOI said in a statement.

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Translated from German by Global Research

***

Dear Chancellor,

We appreciate that until now you have considered the risks so carefully: the risk of the war spreading within Ukraine; the risk of expansion across Europe; yes, the risk of a Third World War.

We therefore hope that you will remember your original position and will not deliver any more heavy weapons to Ukraine, either directly or indirectly.

On the contrary, we urge you to do everything you can to ensure that a ceasefire can be reached as soon as possible; a compromise that both sides can accept.

We share the verdict on Russian aggression as a breach of the basic norm of international law. We also share the conviction that there is a fundamental political and moral duty not to back down from aggressive violence without resistance. But everything that can be derived from this has its limits in other imperatives of political ethics.

We are convinced that two such dividing lines have now been reached:

First, the categorical prohibition on accepting a manifest risk of this war escalating into a nuclear conflict.

The delivery of large quantities of heavy weapons, however, could make Germany itself a party to the war. And a Russian counter-attack could then trigger the case for assistance under the NATO treaty and with it the immediate danger of a world war.

The second line of demarcation is the level of destruction and human suffering among Ukrainian civilians. Even legitimate resistance to an aggressor is at some point  intolerable.

We warn against a double error:

Firstly, that the responsibility for the risk of an escalation to a nuclear conflict lies solely with the original aggressor and not also with those who openly provide him with a motive for possibly criminal action.

And on the other hand, that the decision on the moral responsibility of the further “costs” in human lives among the Ukrainian civilian population falls exclusively within the competence of their government. Morally binding norms are universal in nature.

The escalating armament taking place under pressure could be the beginning of a global arms race with catastrophic consequences, not least for global health and climate change. Despite all the differences, it is important to strive for worldwide peace. The European approach of shared diversity is a model for this.

Dear Chancellor, we are convinced that the head of government of Germany can make a decisive contribution to a solution that will stand up to the judgment of history.

Not only in view of our current (economic) power, but also in view of our historical responsibility – and in the hope of a peaceful future

We hope and count on you!

Sincerely

Initial signatories 

Andreas Dresen, filmmaker
Lars Eidinger, actor
dr Svenja Flaßpöhler, philosopher
Prof. Dr. Elisa Hoven, criminal lawyer
Alexander Kluge, intellectual
Heinz Mack, sculptor
Gisela Marx, film producer
Prof. Dr. Reinhard Merkel, criminal lawyer and legal philosopher
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Merkel, political scientist
Reinhard Mey, musician
Dieter Nuhr, cabaret artist
Gerhard Polt, cabaret artist
Helke Sander, filmmaker
HA Schult, artist
Alice Schwarzer, journalist
Robert Seethaler, writer
Edgar Selge, actor
Antje Vollmer, theologian and green politician
Franziska Walser, actress
Martin Walser, writer
Prof. Dr. Peter Weibel, art and media theorist
Christoph, Karl and Michael Well, musicians
Prof. Dr. Harald Welzer, social psychologist
Ranga Yogeshwar, science journalist
Juli Zeh, writer
Prof. Dr. Siegfried Zielinski, media theorist

If you wish to sign the petition, click here.

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Translated from German.

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***

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official told a congressional committee on Friday that COVID-19 vaccines for kids under 6 will not have to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold required to obtain Emergency Use Authorization.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) top vaccine official told a congressional committee on Friday that COVID-19 vaccines for kids under 6 will not have to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold required to obtain Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).

The FDA is reviewing data from Moderna’s two-shot vaccine for infants and toddlers 6 months to 2 years old, and for children 2 to 6 years old.

The agency is awaiting data on Pfizer and BioNTech’s three-dose regimen for children under age 5 after two doses of its pediatric vaccine failed to trigger an immune response in 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds comparable to the response generated in teens and adults.

According to Endpoints News, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis the agency would not withhold authorization of a pediatric vaccine if it fails to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold for blocking symptomatic infections.

COVID-19 vaccines for adolescents, teens and adults had to meet the requirement.

“If these vaccines seem to be mirroring efficacy in adults and just seem to be less effective against Omicron like they are for adults, we will probably still authorize,” Marks said.

The FDA on June 30, 2020, issued guidance that in order for an experimental COVID-19 vaccine to obtain EUA, it must “prevent disease or decrease its severity in at least 50 percent of people who are vaccinated.”

The guidelines were issued during a briefing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, during which senators sought assurances from former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top health officials that the expedited speed of development of COVID-19 vaccines wouldn’t compromise the integrity of the final product.

All previously authorized COVID-19 vaccines and boosters for all age groups were required to meet the FDA’s 50% requirement prior to obtaining EUA.

Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco posted a video responding to the news the FDA would bypass its own standard to authorize pediatric COVID-19 vaccines for kids.

Prasad said:

“Peter Marks from the FDA — he’s the defacto regulator-in-chief when it comes to vaccines — is saying that kids’ vaccines don’t need to hit the target. They don’t need to hit the 50% vaccine efficacy against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 target. That was the target that the FDA themselves came up with in the original pandemic.

“They came up with this target 50% point estimate above, and the lower bound to the 95% confidence interval has to be above 30%. That was their minimum efficacy standard for vaccination. That was the standard they themselves set and that was the standard initial vaccine trials did clear for adults.

“But the pediatric vaccine trials — both the Pfizer and Moderna — appear not to have cleared that bar, and Peter Marks is talking to congressional officials and he is saying that it’s okay, we’ll probably authorize it anyway.”

Prasad said it was “incredible” that Marks would sign off on a pediatric vaccine if it seems to be mirroring efficacy in adults but is less effective against Omicron.

“We have standards for a reason,” Prasad said. The standard chosen by the FDA was “arbitrary and if anything I’d argue it was on the low side — 50% isn’t as good as what we wanted,” Prasad said.

“Fifty percent is quite low, and if you have a very low vaccine efficacy […] you can have compensatory behavior that actually leads to a lot more viral spread,” he added.

Prasad said when it comes to kids, it’s “kind of a moot point” because estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from a few months ago showed 75% of children had seroprevalence — and it’s “probably higher now.”

“Taking a child under the age of 5 who already had and recovered from COVID and trying to make them better off with a vaccine against the original Wuhan ancestral strain — that’s an uphill battle,” Prasad said.

“The absolute upper bound, absolute risk reduction, has got to be super super low because once kids have it and recover from it they generally do pretty well. If they get it again they do even better than the first time.”

Lowering the regulatory standards for vaccine products is not the direction FDA should go, Prasad said. “They need to be upholding the standards they’ve set and raising the standards.”

Prasadd raised concerns over what the standard will be moving forward if the agency doesn’t abide by its own minimum requirement.

“At what point will vaccine efficacy arrive at something the agency doesn’t accept?” He asked.

Prasad said once the FDA does away with EUA, many preschools will immediately mandate COVID-19 vaccines, and they won’t make exceptions for natural immunity or provide any exceptions at all.

“And so what he’s talking about is authorizing a vaccine in a setting where you have 75% minimum seroprevalence and the vaccine efficacy could be less than 50%,” Prasad said. “How much less?”

Pointing to a Moderna press release stating one arm of its trial showed its pediatric vaccines were only 37% and 23% effective, Prasad asked, “How much lower can it go — 10%? How low before Peter Marks says that’s too low?”

Prasad said if the adult vaccine becomes less effective over time, “tell me why that means you should accept the less effective kids’ vaccine?”

Prasad explained:

“If a therapy loses efficacy over time, why does that mean the bar to be a therapy is lower? It should mean that we need new therapies. We need a new mRNA construct.

“You need to kind of aim at the thing that’s actually out there now and not the original thing from two years ago. Maybe you want to rejigger your process. Try something new but it doesn’t mean we keep lowering the bar. This is ridiculous.”

Moderna reports concerning efficacy data for pediatric COVID-19 vaccines

As The Defender reported, Moderna on April 28 asked the FDA to approve its COVID-19 mRNA-1273 vaccine for children 6 months to 6 years old, citing different efficacy numbers than it disclosed in March.

The company conducted separate trials for two versions of the vaccine, one for infants and toddlers aged 6 months to 2 years, and one for children 2 to 6 years, and claimed data showed “a robust neutralizing antibody response” and “a favorable safety profile.”

Yet, Moderna’s KidCOVE study showed the company’s COVID-19 vaccine failed to meet the FDA’s minimum efficacy requirements for EUA in the 2- to under-6 age group, and barely surpassed the agency’s 50% efficacy requirement in the 6-month to 2-year age group — even after the vaccine maker changed its analysis of the study to meet the threshold.

Moderna also did not follow trial participants beyond 28 days, so vaccine effectiveness after that time is unknown. Data from New York state show vaccine effectiveness for the 5-to-11 age group plummets within seven weeks to 12%.

“Here, we’re looking only at the first four weeks,” Dr. Madhava Setty told The Defender. “Although data from New York were in a different age group using a different mRNA vaccine, the effectiveness was remarkably similar after four weeks. Why wouldn’t we expect that the same thing is going to happen?”

The House Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus Crisis on April 26 asked the FDA for a status update on COVID-19 vaccines for children under 5.

The agency said it was considering holding off on reviewing Moderna’s request to authorize its COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5 until it has data from Pfizer and BioNTech on their vaccine for children, pushing the earliest possible authorization of a vaccine from May to June.

When asked on Friday whether the FDA’s vaccine advisors would slow-roll Moderna’s applications and wait to review Pfizer’s and Moderna’s applications together, Marks said the meetings set for next month could move up if necessary.

“Obviously if we get through reviews faster, then we will send them to committees sooner,” Marks said.

According to Rep. Jim Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) account of the meeting, Marks said the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee has reserved earlier dates, enabling the agency to potentially “move dates up even by a week for any of these reviews.”

“At the end of the day, we want people to have confidence in getting vaccinated,” Marks said. “We need to get more kids vaccinated, not just in the younger than 5 age range, but also older than 5.”

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

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***

Researchers at Charité Berlin, Germany’s top hospital and one of Europe’s largest, have announced a high rate of severe side effects lasting months or longer based on a survey of about 40,000 Germans. Some highlights:

  1. Researchers estimate 8 serious side effects per 1,000 vaccinated people (1 out of every 125), compared to 0.2 per 1,000 estimated by the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), which is Germany’s FDA and vaccine watchdog.
  2. This equates to an underreporting factor (URF) of 40x, which is almost exactly the same as the VAERS URF estimated by Steve Kirsch.
  3. The study’s lead researcher, Prof. Harald Matthes, MD, estimates that half a million Germans experienced serious side effects following vaccination. Survey findings indicate that up to 80% of people with severe reactions recover within 3-6 months, but for 20% the symptoms persist. This equates to 100,000 Germans currently suffering from long term serious side effects. That means 0.16% of people vaccinated are still suffering serious side effects over 6 months following vaccination.
  4. This is a major embarrassment for the PEI, which has maintained all along that it is doing a thorough tracking of vaccine adverse events and denounced anyone questioning its numbers as dangerous anti-vaxxers.
  5. Matthes calls on the government to take people claiming vaccine injury seriously and to provide dedicated outpatient care to the vaccine-injured, noting that most have been unable to find help in the current medical climate, which both strongly discourages talking about vaccine injury and is basically clueless about how to help the vaccine injured. He has also called for permitting doctors to discuss vaccine injury openly so that they can develop treatments without fear of being denounced as “anti-vaxxers.”
  6. Matthes notes a strong similarity between many of the symptoms of so-called “long COVID” and vaccine injury and believes treatments for long COVID may be helpful in addressing vaccine injury. For more on this, see my presentation at PANDA’s open science meeting on a unified theory of susceptibility to COVID-19 and injuries from COVID-19 vaccines.
  7. Germany has set up outpatient clinics devoted to long COVID, and the vaccine injured can turn to them for help. Problem: too many injured. From this article: “

    The special outpatient clinic at the University Hospital in Marburg is a prominent example of this. The employees actually wanted to do research on Long-Covid, but now they mainly care for patients with severe vaccination side effects. Between 200 and 400 e-mails from those affected are now received daily in the Marburg special outpatient clinic, and the waiting list includes around 800 patients.

    The problem here, however, is that demand far outstrips supply. “We need more outpatient clinics, they are far from enough,” emphasizes Matthes in the MDR report. [Note that outpatient treatment in German is machine translated into ‘ambulances’ in English.]

  8. This story is huge. It is akin to researchers at Harvard Medical School coming forward and announcing that the CDC was undercounting the serious adverse event rate by a factor of 40, that vaccine injury is real and the vaccine injured need to be taken seriously and treated, and that doctors need to be able to voice their opinions openly without fear of retribution so that treatments for the vaccine injured can be developed.
  9. In this interview, Dr. Matthes is asked about Andreas Schöfbeck, the insurance company executive who was fired after raising his concerns about vaccine injury based on claims data:

    “He should have said there is a clue here, but causality has yet to be verified. It wasn’t entirely clear if he was speaking politically, or if he was just doing his due diligence and saying: Here’s a signal that needs to be investigated further, please. That little differentiation cost him his job. But if you then look at how black and white is currently being painted in public and with what vehemence certain opinions are exchanged without there being any facts – then you realize how unfairly he was punished for something that maybe not quite was carefully worded.”

    You can tell he is being very cautious in his choice of words, but one can hardly justify Schöfbeck’s firing on the grounds that he was not guarded enough in his statements. Anyway, I’d bet dollars to donuts that he would have been fired even if his statement was more carefully worded.

  10. Curiously, Dr. Matthes says the 8 per 1,000 serious event rate “corresponds to what is known from other countries such as Sweden, Israel or Canada. Incidentally, even the manufacturers of the vaccines had already determined similar values ​​in their studies.” Is this true? My experience from Israel says it’s not. Perhaps there is some wiggle room, as according to this article, the study defines “serious events” as “symptoms that require medical treatment and last for several weeks or months.” As far as I know, no study or data out of Israel has tracked serious events by that definition. If anybody knows what data he is comparing to, in Israel or elsewhere, please let us know in comments.
  11. Of course there are a lot of possible biases in the survey methodology. Unfortunately I was not able to find any details on the methodology of the survey, so a more complete discussion of that will have to wait for another time. One thing for sure: people who died from the vaccine can’t answer a survey, so the research has nothing to say on this issue.

Here are links to some of the articles I found on this story in the mainstream German press: 1, 2, 3, 4. Machine translation is more than serviceable. And here is a video (again in German) from a mainstream German broadcaster on vaccine injuries, including an interview with Dr. Matthes. No translation possible.

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Sri Lanka is in the throes of an unprecedented economic crisis. Faced with a shortage of foreign exchange and defaulting on its foreign debt repayment, the country is unable to pay for its food, fuel, medicine, and other basic necessities. Notwithstanding the austerities that would be entailed, a bail out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been accepted as the only way out of the dire economic situation.

Opposition political parties and citizens across the country blame the Rajapaksa government’s widespread corruption and mismanagement for the crisis, and demand that the President and the Parliament resign.  The Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa did so on May 9th, 2022. However, the protesters at Galle Face Green and elsewhere have not been able to put forward an alternative leadership or a viable road map for the future. The country remains mired in confusion, chaos and a highly volatile political impasse.

To understand the complexity of the current crisis, and to prevent us falling back into the same paralyzing debt-cycle, it is necessary to move beyond domestic politics and the relentless news cycles of corporate media and explore some of the commonly overlooked yet basic global economic and geopolitical dimensions.

Debt Crises and Global Inequality

The transfer of financial and resource wealth from poor countries in the global South to the rich countries in the North is not a new phenomenon. It has been an enduring feature throughout centuries of both classical and neo-colonialism. At the start of 1989, developing nations owed foreign creditors $1.3 trillion US dollars. That is, “just over half their combined gross national products and two thirds more than their export earnings.”

Recently, the effects of the war in the Ukraine and the Covid-19 crisis have worsened the high debt burdens of developing countries. These countries were already struggling to pay accumulated debts stemming from the expansion of capital flows from the high-income countries to lower income countries after the 2008 global financial crisis. Financial liberalization was fostered by powerful global interests, including the IMF, when interest rates dropped in the richer countries. This facilitated borrowing by developing countries from private international capital markets through International Sovergein Bonds (ISBs), which come with high interest rates and short maturation periods.

Financial liberalization facilitated by the IMF and the developed countries working with the domestic elites of poor countries has created a “hierarchical and asymmetrical international financial architecture.” As a December 2021 Report published by the Bretton Woods Project points out, this unequal framework creates “macroeconomic imbalances, financial fragilities, and exchange rate instability that can trigger debt and/or currency crises and curb the economic policy autonomy of affected countries to pursue domestic goals.”

The international NGO Debt Jubilee Campaign (soon to be called Debt Justice) has pointed out that 54 countries are now experiencing a debt crisis. According to the World Bank, Sri Lanka owes $15 billion in bonds, mostly dollar-denominated, out of a total of $45 to 50 billion in long-term debt. The country needs $7 to 8.6 billion to service its debt load in 2022, whereas it had just $1.6 billion in reserves at the end of March 2022. The downgrading of Sri Lanka by rating agencies such as Moody’s added to the difficulty of further borrowing to pay off the debt. The devaluation of the Sri Lankan rupee by 32% since the beginning of the year has made it the ‘world’s worst performing currency,’ exacerbating the plight of the Sri Lankan people.

The multilateral Asian Development Bank and the World Bank owns 13% and 9% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, respectively. Currently, China is Sri Lanka’s largest bilateral lender, owning about 10% of its total foreign debt, followed by Japan which also owns 10%.

Approximately half of Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt (55% according to some estimates) is market borrowings through US- and EU-based ISBs. Asset managers BlackRock, Inc. and Ashmore Group Plc., along with Fidelity, T Rowe Price and TIAA are among Sri Lanka’s main ISB creditors. However, the information on the ownership of ISBs – including one worth $1 billion that is maturing on July 25, 2022 – is not publicly revealed.

Sri Lanka is in negotiations with the IMF to restructure and repay its massive debt. IMF structural adjustment will include the familiar privatization, cutbacks of social safety nets and alignment of local economic policy with U.S. and western interests, to the further detriment of local working people’s standard of living and inevitably leading to more wealth disparity and repeat debt crises.

Debt Crisis and Geopolitical Rivalry

Economic crises create opportunities for external powers to expand economic exploitation and geopolitical control. In Sri Lanka’s context, this means India, the US and China.

Sri Lanka’s big neighbor India has extended a $1 billion credit line to provide essential food and medicine. The Sri Lankan government has stated that there are no conditions attached to the Indian loans. However, Sri Lankan analysts believe that agreements have been made giving Indian companies exclusive access to investments on the island.

Sri Lanka is strategically located in the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean. Over 80% of the global seaborne oil trade is estimated to pass through the choke points of the Indian Ocean. Although bizarrely overlooked by the global media, a Cold War is already in place between China and the Quadrilateral Alliance (United States, Japan, Australia and India) over the control of Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean.

Sri Lanka is part of China’s $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative, which includes the island’s Hambantota Port and Port City. The United States, on the other hand, signed an open-ended Acquisition and Cross Services Agreement (ACSA) with Sri Lanka on August 4, 2017, facilitating military logistic support. The US is also seeking to sign a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which would effectively turn Sri Lanka into a US military base. While the proposed United States Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact has not been signed due to local protests, the pact’s objective – US control over the land, transportation and communication infrastructure in Sri Lanka – continues unabated.

In this context of Sri Lanka as a tense theater of geopolitical rivalry, the Sri Lankan debt crisis cannot be understood simply as an economic crisis. Could it, in fact, be a ‘staged default’ designed to push Sri Lanka into an IMF bailout which would complete the island’s subservience to the US dominated economic and political agenda?

Alternative Sustainable Approaches

The young ‘Gotta Go Home!’ protesters who demand President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation seem to be unaware of the global dynamics of the Sri Lankan crisis. Perhaps local and foreign interests guiding the protests may want to keep it that way. They are certainly not encouraging the protestors to join global calls for much-needed debt cancellation, debt swaps and regulation of capital market borrowing to prevent debt crises occurring in the first place.

However, at least a few Sri Lankan professionals concerned about the implications of an IMF bailout have put forward alternative short and long-term solutions. They recognize that while exploitative colonial and neocolonial policies have turned Sri Lanka into a poor and desperate country, the island is rich with abundant natural resources and human capital. If the land and ocean and the graphite, ilmenite and the other mineral resources are sustainably utilized, Sri Lanka can be economically self-sufficient and prosperous. There is also much to be learned from Sri Lanka’s pre-colonial history in this regard, not least its hydraulic civilization.

The Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) has revealed that there are enough fuel and natural gas deposits in the Mannar Basin to meet the entire country’s needs for 60 years. If the abundant sustainable solar and wind power are also utilized, Sri Lanka can become not only energy self-sufficient, but an exporter of energy as well.

Bioregionalism, economic democracy, and food and energy sovereignty are the only route to a sustainable future for Sri Lanka and other debt-trapped countries, and indeed the world at large. To overcome the dominant forces seeking to monopolize control over the natural environment and humanity, people – especially the young – need to awaken and work in partnership with each other to fight the destructive greed that ensnares and threatens to destroy us.

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Asoka Bandarage PhD is the author of Sustainability and Well-Being, The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka, Women, Population and Global Crisis, Colonialism in Sri Lanka and many other publications. She serves on the boards of the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate and Critical Asian Studies and has taught at Yale, Brandeis, Mount Holyoke, Georgetown, American and other universities.

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***

The World Health Organization has started drafting a global pandemic treaty on pandemic preparedness that would grant it absolute power over global biosecurity, such as the power to implement digital identities/vaccine passports, mandatory vaccinations, travel restrictions, standardized medical care and more

The WHO is not qualified to make global health decisions. As just one example, the WHO didn’t publicly admit SARS-CoV-2 was airborne until the end of December 2021, yet scientists knew the virus was airborne within weeks of the pandemic being declared. The WHO also ignored early advice about airborne transmission

More importantly, a one-size-fits-all approach to pandemic response simply does not work, because pandemic threats are not identical in all parts of the world. Even people in the same region do not have identical risk and may not need or benefit from identical treatment

The WHO will accept two more days of public comment on the treaty, June 16 and 17, 2022, so prepare your statements now. The World Health Assembly will also vote on amendments to the International Health Regulations, May 22-28, 2022, which may also strip away more individual rights and liberties

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The globalists that brought us the wildly exaggerated COVID pandemic in an effort to cement a biosecurity grid into place is now hard at work on the next phase of this New World Order.

The World Health Organization has started drafting a global pandemic treaty on pandemic preparedness that would grant it absolute power over global biosecurity, such as the power to implement digital identities/vaccine passports, mandatory vaccinations, travel restrictions, standardized medical care and more.

In “The Corbett Report”1,2 above, independent journalist James Corbett reviews what this treaty is, how it will change the global landscape and strip you of some of your most basic rights and freedoms. Make no mistake, the WHO pandemic treaty is a direct attack on the sovereignty of its member states, as well as a direct attack on your bodily autonomy.

A Backdoor to Global Governance

As noted by anti-extremism activist Maajid Nawaz in an April 28, 2022, Twitter post,3 the “WHO pandemic treaty serves as a backdoor to global empire.”

COVID-19, while potentially deadly to certain vulnerable groups, simply isn’t a valid justification for handing over more power to the WHO, especially in light of its many inexplicable “mistakes” in this and previous pandemics.

As just one example, the WHO didn’t publicly admit SARS-CoV-2 was airborne until the end of December 2021,4 yet scientists knew the virus was airborne within weeks of the pandemic being declared.5 The WHO also ignored early advice about airborne transmission.6

So, it seems clear that the effort to now hand over more power to the WHO is about something other than them being the most qualified to make health decisions that benefit and protect everyone.

It seems far more likely that the WHO is being installed as a de facto governing body for the global Deep State.7 Through the WHO, under the guise of biosecurity, the globalist cabal who seek to own everything and control everyone, will then be able to implement their wishes across the whole world in one fell swoop.

With this treaty in place, all member nations will be subject to the WHO’s dictates. If the WHO says every person on the planet needs to have a vaccine passport and digital identity to ensure vaccination compliance, then that’s what every country will be forced to implement, even if the people have rejected such plans using local democratic processes.

As noted by Corbett, these negotiations are already well underway,8 and the treaty is expected to be fully implemented in 2024 — that is, unless the people of the world wake up to what’s happening and beat back this monstrosity.

WHO Likely Seeking to Monopolize Health Care Worldwide

Under the guise of a global pandemic, the WHO, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and all its installed leaders in government and private business, were able to roll out a plan that had already been decades in the making. The pandemic was a perfect cover.

In the name of keeping everyone “safe” from infection, the globalists justified unprecedented attacks on democracy, civil liberties and personal freedoms, including the right to choose your own medical treatment.

Now, the WHO is gearing up to make its pandemic leadership permanent, extend it into the health care systems of every nation, and eventually implement a universal or “socialist-like” health care system as part of The Great Reset.

While this is not currently being discussed, there’s every reason to suspect that this is part of the plan. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has previously stated that his “central priority” as director-general of the WHO is to push the world toward universal health coverage.9

And, considering the WHO changed its definition of “pandemic” to “a worldwide epidemic of a disease,”10 without the original specificity of severe illness that causes high morbidity,11,12 just about anything could be made to fit the pandemic criterion. The whole premise behind this pandemic treaty is that “shared threat requires shared response.” But a given threat is almost never equally shared across regions.

Take COVID-19 for example. Not only is the risk of COVID not the same for people in New York City and the outback of Australia, it’s not even the same for all the people in those areas, as COVID is highly dependent on age and underlying health conditions.

The WHO insists that the remedy is the same for everyone everywhere, yet the risks vary widely from nation to nation, region to region, person to person. They intend to eliminate individualized medicine and provide blanket rulings for how a given threat is to be addressed. Without doubt, this can only result in needless suffering, not to mention the loss of individual freedom.

How the WHO Has Wielded Previous Pandemic Instruments

To give us an idea of how the WHO might end up misusing this new proposed international “instrument” on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, we can look at the International Health Regulations (IHR),13 which the U.S. signed on to in 2005.

The IHR is what empowered the WHO to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).14 This is a special legal category that allows the WHO to initiate certain contracts and procedures, including drug and vaccine contracts.

As noted by Corbett, the IHR allows the unelected director-general of the WHO to simply declare a PHEIC and, suddenly, all member states have to dance to his tune. It basically grants the WHO dictatorial powers over health policy.

PHEICs have included the phony H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009, the inconsequential Zika outbreak in 2016, the overhyped Ebola outbreak in 2019, and, of course, the massively exaggerated COVID pandemic in 2020. All of these PHEICs were poorly handled and the WHO was criticized as inept and corrupt15 in their wake.

So, to summarize, through the IHR, the WHO has already been significantly empowered to dictate global health policy with regard to pandemics, and they used that power to bamboozle the nations of the world into spending billions of dollars on countermeasures, especially drugs and vaccines, that didn’t work very well.

In that sense, the WHO is really just another wealth-transfer instrument. The WHO’s Big Pharma collaborators make billions on the taxpayers’ dime, while the people of the world are left to suffer the consequences of fast-tracked vaccines. Its handling of the COVID pandemic in particular has been unprecedentedly bad, as they were behind the withholding of early treatment with safe medicines worldwide.

As noted by ivermectin advocate Dr. Tess Lawrie,16 the WHO has also claimed the mRNA shots as safe as conventional vaccines, which is nowhere near the truth. Most all available data prove they are the most dangerous drugs ever created. Why would anyone expect the WHO to become less corrupt if given even more power and control?

IHR Amendments May Also Restrict Rights and Freedoms

Now, the IHR overrode and superseded the U.S. Constitution from the start, but in January 2022, the U.S. also submitted regulatory amendments17 that will give the WHO even more power to restrict your rights and freedoms.

May 22 through 28, 2022, the World Health Assembly will gather and vote on these amendments to the IHR and, if passed, they will be enacted into international law. These submitted amendments are in addition to the WHO pandemic treaty currently under discussion. As reported by Health Policy Watch, February 23, 2022:18

“Washington wants to fast track a series of nitty-gritty, but far-reaching changes in the existing International Health Regulations that govern WHO and member state emergency alert and response — for consideration at this year’s World Health Assembly, 22-28 May.

The U.S. proposal19 for major IHR rule changes, obtained by Health Policy Watch, has been a topic of discussion in a series of closed-door meetings of WHO member states, which are considering ways to reform the existing IHR, as well as advancing a whole new WHO convention or other international instrument20 on pandemic prevention and response …

The U.S. is expected to lead a parallel track of tightly-paced ‘informal’ member state negotiations to reach consensus on an IHR reform resolution for approval at this year’s 75th WHA [World Health Assembly] …”

The “new WHO convention or other international instrument” mentioned here refers to the WHO treaty currently under discussion. An intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) was established as a subdivision of the World Health Assembly in December 2021,21 for the purpose of drafting and negotiating this new pandemic treaty. And, as mentioned, this INB has begun that work.

However, as noted by Corbett, this is only the second time in the WHO’s history that an INB has been established. The first one was the INB of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control,22 22 years ago. So, this is not a well-established process, and it’s hard to predict how it will play out.

Bill Gates Builds GERM Team for the WHO

Another clue about what the WHO intends to do with more power comes from its primary funder, Bill Gates. Gates recently announced he’s building a pandemic response team for the WHO, which he would like to be called the “Global Epidemic Response & Mobilization” or GERM Team.

This team will be made up of thousands of disease experts under WHO’s purview, and will monitor nations and “decide when they need to suspend civil liberties, force populations to wear masks and close borders,” The Counter Signal reports.23

Of course, Gates is also the largest funder of the WHO (when you combine the donations from both his foundation and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance). This and other relationships speak volumes about the corruption still ruling the WHO. At the end of the day, Gates is basically paying the WHO to dictate to the world what they must do to make Gates a ton of money. As noted by The Counter Signal:24

“Gates’ announcement of the GERM team coincides with the World Health Organization’s drafting of a global pandemic treaty … In the future, the pandemic treaty will not only ensure that member states abide by International Health Regulations but will also put the WHO in the driver’s seat, so to speak. Member states, including the US and Canada, will take their orders directly from the organization. As Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis explains:

‘The treaty includes 190 countries and would be legally binding. The treaty defines and classifies what is considered a pandemic, and this could consist of broad classifications, including an increase in cancers, heart conditions, strokes, etc. If a pandemic is declared, the WHO takes over the global health management of the pandemic.

Of even more concern, if this treaty is enshrined, the WHO would be in full control over what gets called a pandemic. They could dictate how our doctors can respond, which drugs can and can’t be used, or which vaccines are approved. We would end up with a one-size-fits-all approach for the entire world … A one-size-fits-all response to a health crisis doesn’t even work across Canada, let alone the entire globe’ …

It isn’t unreasonable to assume that the GERM team, as a new branch of the WHO, would oversee making sure member states comply with the pandemic treaty after the draft is finalized and member states sign-on.

The next question, then, is how the WHO and Bill Gates would be able to monitor every individual in every country to determine whether enough people are sick to justify locking a region down.

To this end, the WHO has contracted German-based Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems to develop a global vaccine passport system,25 with plans to link every person on the planet to a QR code digital ID … Thus, there will be one pandemic treaty, one GERM team, one global vaccine passport, and one World Health Organization to monitor every person on the planet.”

Under WHO Control, Vaccine Passports Are a Given

Indeed, while countries around the world have scrubbed their COVID measures and backed away from vaccine passports, the WHO is still moving ahead with a global vaccine passport program.26

So, if the WHO is given the authority to dictate biosecurity rules for the world, you can bet they’ll insist on vaccine passports with built-in digital identity and readiness for a centralized programmable central bank digital currency (CBDC). As reported by the Western Standard:27

“The WHO fully intends to provide support to its 194 member states to facilitate the implementation of the digital verification technology for countries’ national and regional verification of vaccine status.

‘COVID-19 affects everyone. Countries will therefore only emerge from the pandemic together. Vaccination certificates that are tamper-proof and digitally verifiable build trust. WHO is therefore supporting member states in building national and regional trust networks and verification technology.

The WHO’s gateway service also serves as a bridge between regional systems. It can also be used as part of future vaccination campaigns and home-based records,’ said Garrett Mehl, unit head of the WHO’s Department of Digital Health and Innovation, on Deutsche Telekom’s website.”

Can We Stop the International Pandemic Treaty?

The question now is, can we stop this “international pandemic instrument” that the WHO is seeking? With short notice, the WHO announced it would accept public comment on the treaty for a total of five days.28 The World Council for Health (WCH) was among the few that acted quickly enough to submit a comment in opposition of the treaty. Lawrie delivered the WCH’s submission.29

In an April 26, 2022, update on Substack, Lawrie wrote:30

“Despite the lack of notice, many grassroots organizations did what they could to spread the word and the World Council for Health’s #stopthetreaty campaign reached an astonishing 415 million people. Many of you made written submissions expressing your concerns. So many of you in fact, that I hear the WHO’s website crashed on the last day.”

One person who missed the deadline was professor Robert Clancy, a leading clinical immunologist in Canada. He sent the comment he would have wanted to submit to Lawrie, who included it in her post:31

“The proposal to take control of pandemics at a central WHO level is untenable and threatens a global society. I am in receipt of the World Council for Health response, and the superbly summarized view by Dr. Tess Lawrie. These concerns reflect the ‘across the board’ view of most Australian doctors …

The failure to understand the restrictions of systemic vaccination for mucosal infection and the dangers of accumulated suppression that follows mindless booster programs, and failure to interrogate the massive databases regarding adverse events of genetic vaccines are but two of the serious mistakes perpetuated by the WHO …

It is foolhardy to even suggest that a ‘one size fits all’ response to a pandemic crisis across geographic zones characterized by hugely different parameters, could possibly be covered by a central bureaucratic process — the need for local decision making is of prime importance.

The rule of science and the rule of the doctor-patient relationship must determine any response to a pandemic, and current experience where the rule of the narrative has so distorted disease outcomes — supported by the WHO — must make very clear the foolishness of rewarding incompetence and corruption with even greater powers.

I write this as the most experienced Clinical Immunologist in Australia, and a leading research scientist in Mucosal Immunology with a focus on ‘host-parasite relationship.’ Professor Robert Clancy AM FRS(N) MB BS BSc(Med) PhD DSc FRACP FRCP(A) FRCP(C)”

Make Your Voice Heard in June

While many, like Clancy, didn’t get a chance to participate, the WHO has announced it will allow for two more days of public comment, June 16 and 17, 2022. As noted by Lawrie:32

“Please also be aware of the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations, to be voted on this May at the World Health Assembly.

Like the pandemic treaty, this is another move to seize greater powers and override the sovereign laws of individual nations. Some say this is more significant than the pandemic treaty: if voted in, it means the loss of our sovereignty from this November. James Roguski has written extensively about this on his Substack.33

There seems to be a concerted effort by the WHO and its controllers to attack our sovereignty from all angles. It is important we make it clear that we do not recognize the WHO as an authority over us and that we will not tolerate this abuse of power.

We are sovereign and will not be bound by the undertakings of corrupt officials who pretend to act on our behalf when signing away the inherent rights of the World’s People. They do not act for us and we will not be bound.”

I encourage you to make plans to have your voice heard June 16 and 17, 2022. Unfortunately, the WHO has not yet released any submission details. Your best bet right now is to sign up for the WCH’s newsletter. The last time, they issued links and instructions on how to submit your comment, and are sure to do the same for the June submission window. You can subscribe at the bottom of this page, or on the WCH’s home page.

To block the IHR amendments at the May 2022 World Health Assembly, we need to flood our respective delegations with opposition. A list of U.S. delegates can be found in Roguski’s Substack article, “Speaking Truth to Power.”

For contact information for other nations’ delegates, I would suggest contacting the regional office and ask for a list (see “Regions” in the blue section at the bottom of the World Health Assembly’s webpage). It’s also possible that the WCH will publish guidance on it, so be sure to sign up for their newsletter.

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Notes

1 The Corbett Report April 27, 2022

2 Transcript of The Corbett Report

3 Twitter Maajid Nawaz April 28, 2022

4 World Health Organization, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): How is it transmitted? December 23, 2021

5 J Hosp Infect. 2021 Apr; 110: 89–96

6 Nature April 6, 2022

7 Heysatyamevjayate WordPress March 20, 2022

8 America Out Loud February 18, 2022

9 National Review June 14, 2017

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

11 The BMJ 2010;340:c2912

12 Wayback Machine, WHO Pandemic Preparedness captured May 1, 2009 (PDF)

13, 14 CDC International Health Regulations

15 Corbett Report April 13, 2010

16, 28, 29 Tess Lawrie Substack April 13, 2022

17, 18 Health Policy Watch February 23, 2022

19 WHO Proposal for Amendments to the International Health Regulations January 20, 2022

20, 21 WHO Proposed Method of Work February 21, 2022

22 INB of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

23, 24 The Counter Signal May 2, 2022

25, 27 Western Standard March 2, 2022

26 Off-Guardian March 1, 2022

30, 31, 32 Tess Lawrie Substack April 26, 2022

33 James Roguski Substack March 31, 2022

Featured image is from Stop World Control

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***

Our humanity is obsessed with power.

The currently ongoing and devastating Ukraine-Russia war is the result of such power obsession. Let’s look back and analyze what may unfold, when we connect the dots; how the WEF may be crucially involved in this war. A war of Power towards the Great Reset?

Ever-so-often, one or a group of extreme power-crazy people wants to take over a country, a region – and even the world, as we see it happen now. And in the process thousands, or millions of innocent people die, or are thrown into abject misery. And that for the whim of power-thirsty people, whose mind for some sick reason has become “possessed” with evil and they believe they must control humanity and the globe’s resources.

Similar events, on much smaller scale, have happened many times in the past 100 years, let alone in the last 2000 years and all the way back, since humanity exists. Progress today of humanity, when all is said and done, despite all the so-called technical “advances”, is insignificant. And today’s perpetrators have similar motives like those of thousands of years back. They have similar mental diseases, thirst of domination, fed by hate, as they had then. They lead to similar criminal behaviors.

What is happening today and has been playing out over the past two years is a worldwide crime against humanity, of biblical proportions, never experienced in recent history.

It is maybe the largest and most illicit attempt at world control, to the point where it  literally threatens the future of humanity. This has been prepared for decades, possibly for at least a century.

It has been cleverly planned in connivance with what humanity thought having created to preserve peace, justice, nations’ sovereignty and human rights – with a deceptive United Nations.

Today the playbook is called the UN Agenda 2030. The agenda is being disguised as a noble plan presenting to the world 17 so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), decided by a UN Summit of the same name, in September 2015 in NYC. Reaching these SDGs pretends to mainly lift the Global South out of poverty.

Any politician or serious economist who looks at these development goals, will soon see that implementing them is an absolute illusion, from points of view of costs, political will, implementation capacity and many more impending factors which are not even addressed in the 17 SDGs.

The political architects who designed them, or the masters behind them, know exactly that the SDGs are but a smoke screen, that they can never be fulfilled. So, what’s behind this smoke screen?

An unbelievable deranged concept that was prepared by a long-hand, probably for decades or more; a solid concept that is difficult – but not impossible – to undo, especially because the people behind this global construct are powerful financial individuals or entities, that have no scruples, no remorse, no human conscience.

What could be the executing “construct” behind the monstrous plan? – Could it be the World Economic Forum (WEF) under its founder and eternal CEO, Klaus Schwab?

The WEF was created in January 1971, as an NGO. It is headquartered in Cologny, a lush suburb of Geneva, Switzerland. As of this day it remains an NGO – alas, by far the wealthiest most powerful NGO in the world, controlling or leveraging billions of dollars through associated businesses, corporations and financial giants. The WEF started as the European Management Forum, and converted in 1987, with the support of the European Commission, to today’s WEF. More outreach – around the globe – more money – more power – more control.

The WEF’s stated purpose: Directly influencing global agendas & decision making, promoting public-private cooperation – see this.

Klaus Schwab is the ideal leader for the sick-wealthy multi-multi billionaire elite. This mentally deranged elite want to control literally the entire universe, if they could. Just listen and watch Elon Musk with his space shuttle plans, attempting at controlling parts of the universe. They also want a globalist fully digitized One World Order – better called a One World Tyranny (OWT), which Schwab also calls the 4th Industrial Revolution, alias, The Great Reset. Its Klaus Schwab’s wet dream numero uno. And certainly, supported by lots of think-alikes around the globe.

He is well-qualified for carrying out their agenda. His influence peddling reaches “high-flyers”, politicians, industrialists, corporate managers, artists – anybody of “name and reputation” – around the world.

Through the now famous – some would call it infamous – annual meetings in Davos, Switzerland, where the elite and their associates meet, Schwab and his cronies intend to shape the world according to their own concocted scheme. Of course, Schwab also meets his power-friends and buddies through other special events and personal contacts, to concoct world-decision-making in private.

If you were to tell this story to an Alien from outer space, he / she would not believe it. Unless these “people” who intend to shape the world of some 7.9 billion people according to their will and image, are themselves unelected “aliens”.

Imagine, nobody has elected either Schwab or the WEF, or any of his wealthy corporate and finance cronies. Yet, they behave as if they owned Mother Earth – maybe the entire universe. A thought worth pondering about.

In the words of David Rockefeller:

“…The world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” (quoted by Aspen Times, August 15, 2011, emphasis added)

We, the People, shall not accept any unelected self-imposed individual or entity – not Schwab, not the WEF, not the G-7, not the G-20 – not NATO – to decide over our lives, the lives of our children.

People, wake up!

The Great Reset emerged from Covid-19

The Great Reset which Schwab says emerged from Covid-19, seems according to Schwab to have the support of the world elite – not the world’s population at all. It is, again according to Schwab, a unique opportunity to reshape the world. Unelected, but he and his cronies decide how 7.9 billion people must live.

Has he asked the people around the world whether they want to be reshaped according to his neoliberal dictatorial and people-enslaving, unfriendly ideas? No, of course not. Megalomaniacs never care for the people.

We, the People, shall not accept it; We, the People shall overcome.

The Great Reset and the Putin-Schwab Relationship

The WEF and Co, using their influence and even flexing their muscle, if they were interested in Peace, could stop the currently ongoing atrocious war in Ukraine. They could stop the atrocious killing. But the WEF remains silent except for removing any reference of Putin’s relation to the WEF from the WEF’s website. What does that say?

President Putin in his keynote address of the virtual “Davos” in 2021, boasted about his 30 years-old friendship with Klaus Schwab. Putin also attended Klaus Schwab’s academy for “Young Global Leaders” (YGL).

All references and photos referring to this fact, disappeared from the internet. Putin’s name was erased from the WEF’s website. The WEF, alias Klaus Schwab, does not want the world to believe that he is associated with Putin. Obviously, such a relation doesn’t usually disappear overnight. It’s just no longer readily visible to the world at large.

These photos speak for themselves.

Below is Klaus Schwab’s introduction of Vladimir Putin at the January 2021 virtual WEF Meeting, inviting President Putin to deliver a special address.

Vlad opens his speech by referring to his friend Klaus – mentioning that they know each other since 1992 – a 30-year long friendship (authors addition)

see full video (43 min).

Has President Putin broken with Schwab, with the WEF, with the elite circles that run the west – and attempt to run Russia and the world? It is possible, but for now it remains an enigma. There are still too many dots that do not connect. For example, the Head of the Central Bank of Russia, Ms. Elvira Nabiullina.

Mr. Putin made every effort to have good relations with the west, to cooperate with Europe – to no avail. The more he tried, the more he was rejected. His relentless overtures towards the west, his diplomatic approaches, appeared to the outside observer almost as ridiculously subservient.

One of the latest incidents, is the apparent failure of having taken control of the Russian Central Bank, leaving it in the hands of an apparent western Fifth Columnist, Ms. Nabiullina; thereby losing most likely some US$ 500 billion equivalent in Russian reserves, “blocked”, a euphemism for “stolen” – by the G7 countries.

Infographic: Who Holds Russia's Central Bank Reserves? | Statista

Is this a planned farce, or real?

Ms. Nabiullina was also President Putin’s economic adviser from May 2012 to June 2013, after serving as minister of Economic Development and Trade from September 2007 to May 2012.

As of 2019, Ms. Nabiullina was listed as the 53rd most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.

Only recently has Mr. Sergey Glazyev, an economic genius, returned to the Kremlin, as Mr. Putin’s chief adviser. One of Glazyev’s first brilliant advice, made reality by Putin, was a decision that all hydrocarbons sold by Russia to the west must be paid in Russian rubles.

As a consequence, the ruble’s value jumped overnight to the highest level since the beginning of the war. It is poised to rise even further as the western world is desperate for energy – and Russia is a key supplier.

May we soon have a Petro-Ruble that would allow Russia to print illimited amounts of rubles, as did the US Treasury, when in 1973 the US-dollar became the OPEC currency for trading in hydrocarbons?

How would that fit the WEF’s intentions of a globalized, digitized world under a One World Tyranny, with eventually one digitized currency – controlled, by whom else, the western financial oligarchs?

Source: Armstrong Economics

Then there is Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He is no stranger to Klaus Schwab either. He seems to have rather a cozy relationship with Klaus Schwab. Was the WEF instrumental to put a former comedian at the helm of Ukraine? Maybe time will tell.

As of now, Schwab and the WEF appear to be equally silent vis-à-vis Zelenskyy, not even recommending an armistice cum Peace Agreement. One wonders why not?

One would have hoped, the WEF’s influence would be there to stop the fighting, the insane killing, by calling both sides to a negotiating table, by promoting Peace.

In the face of this senseless killing of tens of thousands of innocent people, destruction of entire cities, peoples’ homes, why doesn’t Schwab even try? What’s his agenda? One just wonders whether the WEF has a Peace or War Agenda since the WEF’s boss seems to be friendly with both leaders of this brutal war but remains silent, doesn’t call them to reason for Peace Talks.

Maybe the war, like the Covid fraud before the war – are they part of Klaus Schwab’s plan and dream of the Great Reset?

Assuming the Covid fraud was and is part of the Great Reset – since Klaus Schwab said jubilantly in the mid 2020’s when his Reset-book was issued,

“The pandemic [Covid-19] represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world”.

Does Schwab know what is in the vaxxes that were hurriedly developed? That they may serve an eugenist agenda and over time resulting in contribute killing untold-millions, maybe resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths?

There are allegations that some of the vaxxes, especially the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA jabs, contain poisonous or deadly substances, like graphene oxide, the HIV-virus, and “adjuvants” (term used by Moderna) to sterilize women and to cause miscarriages. See this. None of this is proven as of yet, and needs further investigation.

The Ukraine Crisis

Ukraine is the cesspool of the west, for trafficking of women and children, of drugs, of human organs; where billions upon billions of dollar-equivalents are laundered; where high-ranking US politicians and their sons do their shady businesses, among them, Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son.

There are others, offsprings of US Senators, uncontrolled, because in a swamp only the mafiosi and – of course – white-collar criminals stay on top of the fraud and misdeeds that in any civilized country could not go unpunished – see also this short article, including a 4-min video by American on-the-ground journalist Laura Logan. She leaves hardly a stone unturned.

The place of war – Ukraine – is a western-oriented country, but strangely none of the western leaders get seriously involved saying stop. It wouldn’t have to be NATO, it could be any of the European brother-countries, in solidarity calling on Russia to stop and seek a peace agreement, or telling Zelenskyy to accept Putin’s conditions for at least a ceasefire to seriously negotiating a peace agreement.

Anyone of these leaders (sic) could offer mediating. Strange, none of them does. All prefer sanctioning the “villain”, knowing very well that the main sufferers of these sanctions are the European themselves.

Instead, there are rumors of a NATO impending attack on Russia. Lets hope and pray that they remain just rumors.

Is the western countries’ inactivity towards Peace and instead committing economic suicide with boomerang-sanctions, part of their sacrifice for a bigger plan, they may have concocted with the WEF, a giant step towards The Great Reset?

Again, no matter, how many civilians, including children and women are killed in the process, these Globalists have no regard for human lives. Globalists are megalomaniacs, striving for a One World Tyranny (OWT).

In addition to the thousands killed, the war has already produced 2 to 3 million refugees fleeing to western Europe, where, on the surface, they are relatively well received. Their welcome is in direct juxtaposition of the way the west, speak mainly Europe, treats war or political and economic refugees from Africa, Afghanistan and other countries with colored-faced people. These colored faces, women and children and men, are frequently rejected and discriminated in Europe, though most of them come from utmost hardship situations and poverty.

As a sideline, doesn’t that in itself already tell a story about the west? If they are capable of such ruthlessly flagrant and open discrimination – aren’t they logically also capable of “colluding with the devil”, arguably with the WEF and all those supporting and driving the Great Reset forward, towards a One World Tyranny?

The US has multiplied its weapons sales by a factor of 8 since the preparation to and the beginning of the war- most for export to NATO countries which then transship them to Ukraine, where they are being handed out to sometimes trained military or non-military personnel. For sure, many of these uncontrolled weapons that enter Ukraine will end up on the black market – with mafia-type organizations, or being re-exported.

US economic growth recovers:

“War is a condition for new growth, that is, it is the continuation not only of politics, but also precisely the continuation of the economy by other means.” (Claudia von Werlhof, German sociologist and political scientist). The US economy depends to more than 50% on the military industrial complex, including other war-related industries and services.

Wars and conflicts would be needed in the future too, under a New Word Tyranny (NWT), as long as we maintain the neoliberal financial and economic structure. Ukraine is just a precursor to more to come, with the world economy in shambles – planned shambles – creating the momentum for bringing in an all-digital currency financial system.

War is profitable. Killing is hugely profitable. Mass killing with weapons of mass destruction even more so regardless whether they are in the tens of thousands of western-loved Ukrainians – what a hypocrisy!

Death is profit.

And the omni-powerful WEF does not intervene for Peace, for stopping the killing? The so-powerful WEF that wants and pretends to reset the world, to make it a “better place”, under its guidance?

And what about this jewel? BlackRock’s Larry Fink in a recent letter to shareholders says, “But the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades….” – Real or fake? See this RT link.

Larry Fink alias BlackRock, is an intimate supporter of Klaus Schwab’s and the WEF. What would a deglobalizing war mean for the Great Reset?

Ukraine war: Towards the “Privatization of Nuclear War”?

On 22 March 2020, Professor Chossudovsky wrote:

“… On August 6, 2003, on Hiroshima Day, a secret meeting was held behind closed doors at Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.”

“Senior executives from the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex were in attendance. This mingling of defense contractors, scientists and policy-makers was not intended to commemorate Hiroshima. The meeting was intended to set the stage for the development of a new generation of “smaller”, “safer” and “more usable” nuclear weapons, to be used in the “in-theater nuclear wars” of the 21st Century.” (Michel Chossudovsky, August 2011)

This meeting was instrumental in setting the stage for the privatization of nuclear war” leading up to Obama’s $1.2 trillion-dollar nuclear weapons program, which is now slated to increase (under Biden) to $2 trillion by 2030. (Ibid)

Is this an indication that there is no immediate end in sight for the Ukraine war? That it may turn nuclear?

Chossudovsky continues,

”The unspoken reality of a nuclear war is Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) and the End of Humanity as we know it.”

Privatization of the Russia-Ukraine war may arguably be an instrument to accelerate The Great Reset – alias, the completion of UN Agenda 2030. If so, it would contradict Larry Fink’s prediction of the end of globalization. It would make the WEF’s silent involvement in the war – by “tolerating” it – and Russia’s actively playing along, as a highly valuable partner of the WEF, understandable, but never ever justifiable.

President Putin’s closeness to Schwab and the WEF is further demonstrated by Russia’s building a “Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. It will be hosted by ANO Digital Economy in Moscow. ANO (Autonomous Non-profit Organization) is a platform for public-private cooperation, promoting Digital Economy, coordinating the participation of expert and business community. It will work across the global network to maximize the benefits of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things, while minimizing its risks.”

On 13 October 2021, the WEF published: Russia Joins Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network

Moscow, Russia, 13 October 2021 – Russia will take a leading role in shaping the trajectory of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Today, leaders from the Russian Federation and the World Economic Forum announced the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Russia.

Part of the Forum’s global Network, the new Centre will bring together leading businesses, policy makers and members of civil society to co-design and pilot innovative approaches to technology governance.

Over the past five years, the World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network has expanded to 15 countries. Project teams worked across public and private sectors to built new policies for drones and commercial aircraft to fly in the same airspace, government procurement of artificial intelligence and accelerated responsible blockchain deployment across the global supply chain.

The Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Russia will be hosted by ANO Digital Economy in Moscow. It will work across the global network to maximize the benefits of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things, while minimizing its risks.

Given these precedents of a relatively close relationship between President Putin and Klaus Schwab, the WEF, the question emerges – is this war furthering the WEF’s agenda of a globalized world, a One World Tyranny? Or is Mr. Putin rather breaking with Schwab and the WEF, by a definitive separation from the west?

If so, it could mean an end to the Great Reset as planned and dreamt by Schwab and his cronies and a move towards a multi-polar world, with a massive Eurasian Pole, led by China and Russia, while preserving individual countries’ autonomy and sovereignty.

In the past few weeks, China has repeatedly told the world that a war was not the solution, that Peace Talks should be initiated and that a new world structure should be multi-polar (as opposed to unipolar, as per Klaus Schwab’s dream), and that nations’ sovereignty should be respected.

While it may be too soon to come to a final conclusion, it is never too soon, to remember that with the unelected WEF and the associated obscure oligarchs, We, the People, are in the process of being enslaved by an unelected, nefarious dark cult and we will not allow it.

People! Stand up in Peace and for Peace.

We, the People, reject the WEF’s Great Reset, reject UN Agenda 2030;
We, the People, reject an all-digitized, fully controlled and surveilled world;
We, the People, will never-ever accept a One World Tyranny.

Let’s return to sovereign nations’ states, seeking real democracy, where people decide their lives and their future.

And finally, let’s forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.  

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

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

The Lies …and the Eyes …of Ukraine. Reporting from Lviv

May 11th, 2022 by Brett Redmayne-Titley

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First published on April 19, 2022

***

Read Part I and II:

Destination Ukraine: The Ignorance of War

By Brett Redmayne-Titley, April 07, 2022

Destination Ukraine: Will Poland Go Rogue? Warsaw’s Ulterior Motive? The Lviv Connection

By Brett Redmayne-Titley, April 21, 2022


“Do not allow me to forget you.” —Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Lviv, Western Ukraine.

The realities of this war, as I expected before arriving two weeks ago, have been slowly found on the faces, in the voices and deep in the penetrating eyes of those affected by it. These are the innocents, mostly, those who have a tale to tell and parse no words in telling it.

The next ninety-six hours would reveal their personal horrors.

After a five hour trip packed together into a cargo van filled with food and medical aid supplies, we arrive in Lviv, Ukraine. Now, I sit alongside my five other passionate colleagues at a long wooden table that is covered modestly and set in preparation for our welcome. We dig in, eating what we all thankfully admit is the finest spaghetti sauce ever served. We are very hungry. Our hosts are glad we’re here.

The meal is served in a huge white hall in front of the altar of an ancient Catholic church, dilapidated from age but still in use by our host, Roman, who is part of a worldwide Christian fellowship called Praise Chapel. I was invited by founder, John McGovern, who I had the great fortune of bumping into while doing refugee interviews at Warsaw’s Central Station, the arrival point for many escaping this war, and where three huge all-white tents staffed by other aid workers provide meals, sundries and shelter to all coming in from Ukraine.

Here I look for interviews with refugees, but only a few speak English.

In conflict zones, being a neutral, fact-based reporter is not possible. In the eyes of those affected, objectivity is perceived as instead being on one end of the polarities of this war; East or West. As such, the most important lesson learned from my time in Lebanon and Turkey is to ask many, many questions, while at the same time keeping one’s mouth securely shut.

And, to listen…and watch closely!

Many I meet, here in Lviv or while tramping the streets of Warsaw have experienced this war, but from its periphery west of the Dnieper River with Kyiv at its northern end near Belarus. This does not mean that they have not been affected or do not express strong emotions. But it is in the eyes of those interviewed who travel West that shows whether a person has indeed been internally afflicted by this war. The eyes being the mirrors of one’s soul.

As I interviewed many, it is their eyes that I focus on to confirm their many offered truths.  Each time I am reminded of what a hardened Hezbollah soldier told me in 2018 while standing on the war-torn Israel/ Lebanon border overlooking Israel’s stolen Palestinian farmlands.

“When one sees his first dead man he remembers it forever. When a man sees a man a die, sees that man take his last breath and then become still, it stays forever… in his eyes!”

I have seen those eyes. In Lebanon. In Turkey. In airports on the gaunt, sallow faces of many khaki clothed GI’s returning from war: Their “thousand-mile stare,” looking so intently at nothing, an unlit cigarette dangling unattended in the left hand,  slumped forward in deep, deep thought, chin perched on the right as their only support.

In the four days to come, I will see those eyes three times more.

*

On the trip to Lviv, Ukraine,  John McGovern’s son-in-law Paul who is our driver and a senior member of Praise Chapel sits next to James who is riding shotgun. He is a youngish veteran who has seen war and lost a close friend in Afghanistan. James is here to begin a sponsored military extraction of persons unknown since I don’t usually ask stupid questions.

Both Paul and James do indeed well understand the background and the reasons that provided little choice but for Russia to seek security from NATO expansion due to its national interests while also protecting the ravaged Eastern Ukrainians who are more Russian than Ukrainian in culture and language.

As James, put it, “When the war started I thought Putin was a chess master. But, “he continued, “I have changed on that. Now he’s losing.” He admits that this opinion is not very popular at the family dining table back home in Georgia and that it is based on US intelligence provided. But, on one point we all agree: We hate this war.

Despite western media claiming that Zelensky’s family remained in Kyiv, Ukraine in support, this is not likely true. Putting two and two together from a conversation with my Christian dinner host just days before, it is quite likely that it was James and his team,  now waiting for him in Lviv, that had completed the “extraction”, of Zelensky’s daughter from Kyiv to Lviv two weeks before. James did not mind admitting he was here this time for a similar mission.

While our comrades in the other seats listen, decorum and a budding friendship created by my love of intelligent discussion, prevent me from challenging Paul and James on some of the information and opinions they share. Finer men I have not met, but pieces were missing in our dialogue and I keep these to myself, all the while fearing that a slip of the tongue in the wrong direction would turn friendship into acrimony as was illustrated very sadly in Part One, of this series.

I have yet to find safe passage to Eastern Ukraine so I have offered to our hosts at our dinner table my limited medical skills and a strong back in getting supplies to the east. Due to the dangers, Eastwards stockpiles of medical aid and food are piling up in Lviv. The dangers are not particularly Russian.

Zelensky, desperate for troops after suffering massive losses opened the jails of Western Ukraine to the criminals and next armed them in the outlandish belief that despite brutal incarceration they would actually side with Ukraine and direct their weapons eastwards. He claimed this was limited to those prisoners with battle experience, but this was not true as this would have been a very small subset since, other than criminally razing the Donbas, a sanctioned crime, this is Ukraine’s first recent war. Not surprisingly, many turned their weapons and their newfound freedom to the West instead for a renewed criminal opportunity. In war, medical supplies are often worth their weight in gold. So, relief supplies for the refugees have more than a Russian threat to contend with.

Despite so much media distortion to the contrary, Lviv, eighty kilometres from the Polish border, has only been affected by this war due to its proximity and use for the incoming military arms and foreign mercenaries stockpiled on the outskirts of the town. Lviv has been hit by the Russian rockets but these have been limited to purely military targets. There have been no civilian casualties as stated by the Mayor of Lviv in multiple Telegram posts censored by western media. But, when the rockets fall everyone knows it. They are huge explosions.

Three days before, I met with Michael, who is with another Christian group. He was in Lviv on the night of Biden’s Warsaw speech of March 26 when three Russian rockets destroyed a munitions industrial area and an oil and lubricant facility. Sources indicated that these were also used to store Western supplied munitions. “It shook us out of bed”, Mike said to me on the Sunday. This was not surprising since Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov  on March 13 warned the U.S. that pumping weapons from a number of countries it orchestrates isn’t just a dangerous move, it’s an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets.”

I also spoke to one aid worker in Lviv who was in the nearby village of Deliatyn in the Ivano-Frankivsk region 50km from the Romanian border, on March 18, when Russia reportedly used for the first time a hypersonic missile that screamed in at Mach 5.5 with a direct hit on a deep underground bunker containing Ukrainian missiles and aircraft rockets donated by the west. Reportedly, over 200 incoming mercenaries were also housed there for initial training. The blast as seen on video was colossal. Said, Vincent, “Our whole hotel shook and we were more than 20 kilometres away! Shit fell all over the floor like an earthquake. Thank God there was only one blast.”

All munitions and mercenaries and their drive to increase the horrors of war eastwards were vaporized, instantly. No civilians were hurt.

Despite these strikes, Lviv moves as normal. I see that the shops are open and people walk casually as the buses and trains pass by as usual. This indicates that the public here knows from these experiences that Russia has not been trying to victimize the innocent population of Lviv, instead  using precision advanced munitions for purely military targets only.

After our dinner, we are also welcomed by Antone, who, he says, has just got back from the East in Odessa. Mosha, Ukrainian and our sole woman companion on this trip translates as Antone provides us with his tales of derring-do fighting Russians. He is verbose and affable all the time as he tells us of escaping the Russians repeatedly after attacking them with rifle fire and a donated RPG.

This is the man who may have my life in his hands if I help take supplies East.

So, I pay very close attention. As to being a reporter, my colleagues have been sworn to secrecy for my protection. They keep this promise. So, as Antone continues his story I occasionally ask Mosha to translate a strategically benign question or more to him.

Listening In the wings is a short, stout, stubble-faced man quietly standing, saying nothing. As the story continues, I often look at him closely before returning my attention to Antone. There is something seemingly wrong with his ongoing tale.

But it is when this man sees me looking his way and looks back into my eyes,  blank-faced, that I know, what is wrong. It is the storyteller.

The silent man now turns and leaves. Without a goodbye, he is gone, but he looks at me one last time and for the first time on this trip, I see the most unmistakable affliction of war. Those eyes.

As Antone wraps up his tale, I ask a few more questions, no longer probing his testimony but the face of this man himself, smiling and talking so quickly. No, I will not be putting my life at risk with him. No. He has not seen war.

Unlike the man who said nothing, I do not see… those eyes.

*

With our business now finished in Lviv, we aid workers hunker down in the van to begin our long return journey to Warsaw. One seat is now vacant.

Suddenly, news of a new rocket strike in Lviv comes over Mosha’s phone…

It begins to snow. Strange for this being late spring in early April… a seemingly very dark natural comment levied upon us all about this God damn war!

*

Over the past two weeks, I have heard very much. However, I am in Western Ukraine a very different reality than the east where real war there rages town by town, hour by hour. Warsaw is plastered everywhere with Ukrainian bright yellow and pale blue flags all fervently supporting war in Ukraine. Vendors sell them on many street corners like they were fruit and their colours adorn the billboards, shops, buses, lamp posts, and subways as the radio and TV stations every ten minutes scream infomercials in support of Ukraine as part of this collective support for war.

Here in Warsaw, most refugees, with the exception of those from Kyiv, have fled due to this inspired fear, not direct conflict. Many admit this freely. Yes, they have family there and have heard much, but most are predisposed to their own opinions derived years before the war began: Anti Russia. This sentiment is not the case in the East. As I watch the evening news, my hotel night clerk translates rapidly this purely western narrative. As a counter, regularly,  my translator and friend, Andrew, who is Ukrainian texts me at odd hours with info from the east and it quickly becomes clear that the media in both Poland and Ukraine have intentionally made the reality of war muddy.

Zelensky has banned all media coverage in Ukraine, save one, and alternative views favouring peace are, as I would find out are a death sentence. War is the only sanctioned opinion allowed. Peace will get you arrested or shot.

This was shown yesterday April 14 when both Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian politician who was elected as People’s Deputy of Ukraine on 29 August 2019 and Major General Valery Shaytanov from Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), were arrested on very specious charges of “treason.” The full breadth of Western media joined in,  falsely accusing both men of being “Putin’s ally.”

This is utter rubbish. I confirmed this with a recent US inside contact here in Ukraine (see: upcoming Part Four) in a call this morning and who knows both men well.

Their true crime is making the mistake of suggesting that Ukraine settle this war and accept peace.

Both men know the truth: The Ukrainian army is taking staggering loses in men, materiel, and the ability to resupply both. Zelensky’s on going purge of peace and “anti-heroes” was preceded two weeks ago by his firing of both Naumov Andriy Olehovych, former chief of the Main Department of Internal Security of the Security Service of Ukraine, and Kryvoruchko Serhiy Oleksandrovych, former chief of the Office of the Security Service of Ukraine in the Kherson region. Both of these men, too, are guilty of merely suggesting the new Ukrainian capital crime of “Peace.”

For Zelensky and Nato their personal treason is allowing this war to be fought right down to the very last Ukrainian.

*

I am frustrated. My goal of getting to the East where the true stories of the atrocities there will certainly be told by those refugees has met with my own realities. The Russian embassy here in Warsaw has now closed. The staff is burning everything before they leave. Presumably, my visa application to Russia is in one of the piles.

Despite my current proximity barely a day goes by that I don’t receive videos and pictures of the horrors taking place in the Donbas and the East. My contact info is easily found and since the start of this series, I have received scores of Instagram, Telegram, Tick Toc or Whatsapp messages asking that I share these images with the reader.

But I refuse to look at any of them. Videos and pictures can be doctored and used to sway a reporter’s work in the wrong direction away from objective reporting. This war is now a media-inspired shit show and I will not be a part of it. So, I file these many solicitations away, never looking at a one, for I already know what they contain, horror. I do not need to look… or listen.

Except once.

At my first hotel, I meet Lee. English being rather rare, he has stopped me, asking for information. In turn, I parry him for the same.

Lee admits to being a US mercenary- former Airborne- paid, like James, to extract persons unknown from an area near Kyiv. He readily admits to knowing of the Nazi philosophy attached to many in the Ukrainian military but is being paid well for his service not to care. He seems to lack quality US intel since his questions are mostly about the roads and military beyond Kyiv and I cannot answer beyond Lviv.

He seems out of his league here. Interestingly, he asks if I have contacts for protective gear like flack jackets and helmets. I warn him of the dangers, not of the Russians who are mostly east of his target, but of the Ukrainians. Days before, Andrew my translator, had sent me three of the many videos I have received, telling me, “The man being tortured is speaking Russian. His killers are speaking Ukrainian,” in his effort to educate me.

But, again, I refuse to access these videos.

But Lee seems a good kid, but too full of US-inspired bravado to heed my warning. To help I tell him of Andrew’s videos, though I haven’t viewed them. He doesn’t believe me and asks me to show him. I scroll to the right spot on Whatsapp and hand him my phone and he eagerly taps the first, second and then third video to life.

Screams, the likes of which could not be faked, shriek from my phone and I close my eyes hard shut in a desperate and failed attempt not to hear.

He hands me back my phone. “Yeah”, he says, “That’s pretty bad.”

*

“Please, tell my story.”

As I put my boots on the ground one more time, still stuck in Warsaw I remember the guardian angel that has steered me well during my times reporting in foreign lands. Sitting and stewing in a dank hotel room does not provide the story… nor luck.

So, I return to Central Station, Warsaw. While doing a bit of photo editing and sitting on one of the very nearby concrete benches on the grounds in front of the massive soviet Palace of Culture and Science building, my glance comes up from my screen. Directly in front of me is an old man stooped and holding a cane. He is moving directly at me. He appears quite frail and he is now just a few yards away, so close I am afraid he is blind. But he stops, now close enough to speak. “You are a journalist,” he says in perfect, but heavily accented English, not as a question, but strangely as a statement. I nod, not sure how far English will take me. “Will you help me,” he offers and I assume he means a donation and reach for my red day pack. “No, no, no…” he responds, “I have things to tell you.”

I get to my feet and offer him my arm which he takes lightly in both hands as I help steer his half-bent body next to me onto the concrete bench. More than an hour later, as the snow flurries again cry in response from the grey gloom above, I bid him goodbye. What he has told me has brought a tear to my eyes, prayers to my lips and hatred to my heart.

Abram is from Markivka and has traversed the war zone of the east to meet his daughter and two granddaughters who were already here the past two weeks from just south of Kyiv. It turned out I had spoken to his daughter Taisaya earlier that morning at Central Station because she also spoke enough English. I had apparently left much too quickly since her two little girls had said they were waiting for their granddad to arrive, but trains here no longer follow a scripted schedule. The girls were full of happy smiles, waiting. I had told their Mum that I wanted testimonies from the east, but she could not help. I had forgotten their names but remembered the encounter well.

Over that next hour, as I scribbled furiously, Abram told me of being trapped in Markivka as the war began, not by the Russians but by the Ukrainian Army (AFU), what he repeatedly called the “Banderists.” Those following this series know what that means: Nazis.

Abram is a Russian Jew and proudly admits to serving in the Red Army, particularly in Afghanistan. “We did many wrong things there,” he began, “but these Banderists they hate, their hearts, full of hate. Always hate. Many years, only hate!” Stupidly I offered the leading question, “why?.” Abram, who had been looking down while delivering his thoughts straightened in a start, now looking me in the eyes like a father scolding a child, “Because we are Russian!”

Abram talked, then, about the times well before the 2014 Maidan Square Orange revolution, a time when Ukraine was certainly divided into ethnic regions, but when the Donbas, Donetsk, Luhansk and eastern Ukraine, although attracting a much larger percentage of Jews and ethnic Russians was just that, a region of Ukraine. East worked well with west. He spoke of small cases of anti-Semitism and anti-Russian sentiment but as he put it, “When we were Soviet, we were all friends.”

According to Abram that all changed quickly in 2014, “We became dogs!” he spat. “But you kick a dog once, he runs. You kick a dog again and he looks you in the eyes, asking why” But, he slowed for emphasis, “You kick a dog three times… and he bites.” He talked about the immediate attacks by the AFU after the west overturned the election of Viktor Yanukovych who was himself from Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine. Continuing he said,

 “What we want then is independence. Already we were. Not to join Russia. That we wanted this is a lie. They made war from the west on us of the East. Because we speak Russian? We love Russia? Not only, this…”

and here he again glanced up from his thoughts and for emphasis,

“Because the Banderists hate Russia. Because you… I’m sorry.. your country… hates Russia. And we are Russian in our hearts! We do not hate America. We love Ukraine!  But you… I’m sorry again… your country, it hates Russia!”

His anger was understood. Abram’s wife had been killed in the indiscriminate artillery shelling by the AFU when a round in the early morning hit the shop where she worked as a clerk and when she was opening for the day. He asked me if I knew what terror was, but answered his own question, “It is to never know, any time when death will come.” He said the Banderists would go days, weeks, months without firing a shot at his village and then suddenly open fire from many miles away and at no target in particular. “For many years we could not know when who would be the next to die. And…” he added, “for seven years we beg Putin for help.”

It was three weeks before he finally left Marikiva but that was when the Russian army had forced the AFU out. According to Abram the AFU held them in the basement the whole time; a horror of its own. Little food, no toilet- buckets- far too many seeking refuge there after the AFU had commandeered his building for their safety, using it for the vantage points and firing opportunities provided by the tall buildings. When the AFU was forced out by the Russians they fired at it with RPGs while he and the more than forty in the basement screamed in terror.

He had escaped Markivka and moved west via Belarus, but his younger brother was killed as he tried to use the humanitarian corridor created not by the AFU but by the Russians. He was supposed to meet his brother Leonid in Prosian on the way to the Belarus border. He didn’t make it. It was a neighbour friend who told him.

Abram told of seeing from his windows AFU soldiers digging mines into the roads to stop people from leaving his town. “Only we walk on concrete. No mines under concrete,” he said.”But you walk on concrete and they shoot you.” His brother died when he and two family men, two women and their children stepped through a tripwire planted by the AFU as they walked through the roadside brush off the road to Prosian. A neighbour friend and others were with another group far enough behind to live. It was the Russian army that responded, not the AFU. The men, leading, died instantly. The others died at the scene.

Breaking the horrible news in Prosian his brother’s neighbour had brought to him his brother’s watch. Abram, as he reached into his pocket, his face and his hands were trembling. I knew what was coming. Shaking, he held out an old, worn but lovely golden wind up watch, the gold wrist band mostly gone, the lens fractured in uneven quadrants, but I could still make out the exact time of this horror: 5:39. Am. Pm. It just didn’t matter…anymore.

“This is what is left of my brother…”

*

His daughter Taisaya and granddaughters, Kristina and Alina, surprise me. They have been waiting out of sight throughout Abram’s time with me and now walk up to help their Grandfather home. I do not know if they have heard of this horror. I hug them all for no, or only one, good reason.

As I help him to his feet, placing Abram’s cane back in his hand and being sure he is steadily balanced, he struggles to straighten himself fully to properly offer his hand. I was surprised that he is almost my height. I offer my hand in return, and he takes it in his, a gentle touch, now looking at me intently as if to test my mettle for one last time.

Abram is smiling now. “My daughter said you are a journalist. Go to the east as you want. You will know what I said is so.” he says as an ending.“Then, please…  tell my story.”

“Thank you…” he adds before turning forever away. But just before he did, I saw his face clearly, and I knew his story was true.

I saw, once more…those eyes.

*

I will view them now. Those videos. The pictures. I feel an obligation. To Abram, to Leonid, to my Christian friends in Lviv, to Andrew and every refugee I have interviewed and those I have not, alive or dead.

Sitting on my hotels bed, pillows piled behind me, I draw these images and videos up on my laptop and access the files on my phone I steel myself with a six-pack close at hand. I have my translator app at hand only to know what language of this war is being spoken. As I ready myself I close my eyes long and hard once again remembering Lee, the mercenary’s, final comment because I know it’s going to be “pretty bad.”

It is.

The dead, the wounded writhing, their screams rising until silent, their words testimonies I don’t understand, but yet I do, the views of the barbarian AFU planting mines, shooting at civilian targets, at the occupants of the buildings, or just the buildings, the bloodied faces screaming for vengeance into the camera, the artillery strikes into buildings as white flags wave, the slit throats, the tears, the children clutching dead mothers, mothers holding dead sons, husbands, brothers for the final time or breath, the blood, so, so much blood, and all the time too, too, too much horror. There must be a better singular word to use, but I am speechless. It is simply, purely…Horror!

Each time I move to the next file, I force myself to do so, swilling beer to dull my outrage that only increases with every pull on the bottle and new atrocity. I will honour them all, must finish what I started.

More than two hours later I am spent. I am done. I am drunk. I have now seen with my own eyes…

I trip over bottles as I head for my bathroom. I must wash this all from my face. Wash it from my mind.

From the sink I splash cold. cold water over my whole head, desperate for relief. Grasping for a white towel at hand I look into the mirror, but my eyes will not focus. All I see is a kaleidoscope of those images swirling, blending all in a cacophony tinged with red that will not go away.

As the towel pulls down from my face, focus slowly comes back to view. In the mirror, I look deeply into my own ashen face, drawn, tired, weary from my two weeks, until this moment improperly afflicted by this God damn war.

And then I see them, staring back at me with pinpoint accuracy, my testimony to the brutal truth of this war. There, in the mirror, staring back at me,  I see…

Those Eyes!

*

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Dedication: To Matias R., Michel C., Ron U., Jeff B., Jan O., and SF. Thanks for keeping me going! Peace… 

Brett Redmayne-Titley has spent the last decade travelling and documenting the “Sorrows of Empire.” He has authored over 200 articles all of which have been published and often republished and translated by news agencies worldwide. An archive of his many articles can be found at watchingromeburn.uk. He can be contacted at live-on-scene ((@))gmx.com.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is by Alexey Fedorenko/Shutterstock

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The Persecution of Julian Assange

May 11th, 2022 by Jonathan Cook

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***

The British home secretary, Priti Patel, will decide this month whether Julian Assange is to be extradited to the United States, where he faces a sentence of up to 175 years – served most likely in strict, 24-hour isolation in a US super-max jail.

He has already spent three years in similarly harsh conditions in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison.

The 18 charges laid against Assange in the US relate to the publication by WikiLeaks in 2010 of leaked official documents, many of them showing that the US and UK were responsible for war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one has been brought to justice for those crimes.

Instead, the US has defined Assange’s journalism as espionage – and by implication asserted a right to seize any journalist in the world who takes on the US national security state – and in a series of extradition hearings, the British courts have given their blessing.

The lengthy proceedings against Assange have been carried out in courtrooms with tightly restricted access and in circumstances that have repeatedly denied journalists the ability to cover the case properly.

Despite the grave implications for a free press and democratic accountability, however, Assange’s plight has provoked little more than a flicker of concern from much of the western media.

Few observers appear to be in any doubt that Patel will sign off on the US extradition order – least of all Nils Melzer, a law professor, and a United Nations’ special rapporteur.

In his role as the UN’s expert on torture, Melzer has made it his job since 2019 to scrutinise not only Assange’s treatment during his 12 years of increasing confinement – overseen by the UK courts – but also the extent to which due process and the rule of law have been followed in pursuing the WikiLeaks founder.

Melzer has distilled his detailed research into a new book, The Trial of Julian Assange, that provides a shocking account of rampant lawlessness by the main states involved – Britain, Sweden, the US, and Ecuador. It also documents a sophisticated campaign of misinformation and character assassination to obscure those misdeeds.

The result, Melzer concludes, has been a relentless assault not only on Assange’s fundamental rights but his physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing that Melzer classifies as psychological torture.

The UN rapporteur argues that the UK has invested far too much money and muscle in securing Assange’s prosecution on behalf of the US, and has too pressing a need itself to deter others from following Assange’s path in exposing western crimes, to risk letting Assange walk free.

It has instead participated in a wide-ranging legal charade to obscure the political nature of Assange’s incarceration. And in doing so, it has systematically ridden roughshod over the rule of law.

Melzer believes Assange’s case is so important because it sets a precedent to erode the most basic liberties the rest of us take for granted. He opens the book with a quote from Otto Gritschneder, a German lawyer who observed up close the rise of the Nazis, “those who sleep in a democracy will wake up in a dictatorship”.

Back to the wall

Melzer has raised his voice because he believes that in the Assange case any residual institutional checks and balances on state power, especially those of the US, have been subdued.

Image on the right: Nils Melzer

He points out that even the prominent human rights group Amnesty International has avoided characterising Assange as a “prisoner of conscience”, despite his meeting all the criteria, with the group apparently fearful of a backlash from funders (p81).

He notes too that, aside from the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, comprising expert law professors, the UN itself has largely ignored the abuses of Assange’s rights (p3). In large part, that is because even states like Russia and China are reluctant to turn Assange’s political persecution into a stick with which to beat the West – as might otherwise have been expected.

The reason, Melzer observes, is that WikiLeaks’ model of journalism demands greater accountability and transparency from all states. With Ecuador’s belated abandonment of Assange, he appears to be utterly at the mercy of the world’s main superpower.

Instead, Melzer argues, Britain and the US have cleared the way to vilify Assange and incrementally disappear him under the pretence of a series of legal proceedings. That has been made possible only because of complicity from prosecutors and the judiciary, who are pursuing the path of least resistance in silencing Assange and the cause he represents.

It is what Melzer terms an official “policy of small compromises” – with dramatic consequences (p250-1).

His 330-page book is so packed with examples of abuses of due process – at the legal, prosecutorial, and judicial levels – that it is impossible to summarise even a tiny fraction of them.

However, the UN rapporteur refuses to label this as a conspiracy – if only because to do so would be to indict himself as part of it. He admits that when Assange’s lawyers first contacted him for help in 2018, arguing that the conditions of Assange’s incarceration amounted to torture, he ignored their pleas.

As he now recognises, he too had been influenced by the demonisation of Assange, despite his long professional and academic training to recognise techniques of perception management and political persecution.

“To me, like most people around the world, he was just a rapist, hacker, spy, and narcissist,” he says (p10).

It was only later when Melzer finally agreed to examine the effects of Assange’s long-term confinement on his health – and found the British authorities obstructing his investigation at every turn and openly deceiving him – that he probed deeper. When he started to pick at the legal narratives around Assange, the threads quickly unravelled.

He points to the risks of speaking up – a price he has experienced firsthand – that have kept others silent.

“With my uncompromising stance, I put not only my credibility at risk, but also my career and, potentially, even my personal safety… Now, I suddenly found myself with my back to the wall, defending human rights and the rule of law against the very democracies which I had always considered to be my closest allies in the fight against torture. It was a steep and painful learning curve” (p97).

He adds regretfully:

“I had inadvertently become a dissident within the system itself” (p269).

Subversion of law

The web of complex cases that have ensnared the WikiLeaks founder – and kept him incarcerated – have included an entirely unproductive, decade-long sexual assault investigation by Sweden; an extended detention over a bail infraction that occurred after Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador from political extradition to the US; and the secret convening of a grand jury in the US, followed by endless hearings and appeals in the UK to extradite him as part of the very political persecution he warned of.

The goal throughout, says Melzer, has not been to expedite Assange’s prosecution – that would have risked exposing the absence of evidence against him in both the Swedish and US cases. Rather it has been to trap Assange in an interminable process of non-prosecution while he is imprisoned in ever-more draconian conditions and the public turned against him.

What appeared – at least to onlookers – to be the upholding of the law in Sweden, Britain and the US was the exact reverse: its repeated subversion. The failure to follow basic legal procedures was so consistent, argues Melzer, that it cannot be viewed as simply a series of unfortunate mistakes.

It aims at the “systematic persecution, silencing and destruction of an inconvenient political dissident”. (p93)

Assange, in Melzer’s view, is not just a political prisoner. He is one whose life is being put in severe danger from relentless abuses that accord with the definition of psychological torture.

Such torture depends on its victim being intimidated, isolated, humiliated, and subjected to arbitrary decisions (p74). Melzer clarifies that the consequences of such torture not only break down the mental and emotional coping mechanisms of victims but over time have very tangible physical consequences too.

Melzer explains the so-called “Mandela Rules” – named after the long-jailed black resistance leader Nelson Mandela, who helped bring down South African apartheid – that limit the use of extreme forms of solitary confinement.

In Assange’s case, however, “this form of ill-treatment very quickly became the status quo” in Belmarsh, even though Assange was a “non-violent inmate posing no threat to anyone”. As his health deteriorated, prison authorities isolated him further, professedly for his own safety. As a result, Melzer concludes, Assange’s “silencing and abuse could be perpetuated indefinitely, all under the guise of concern for his health”. (p88-9)

The rapporteur observes that he would not be fulfilling his UN mandate if he failed to protest not only Assange’s torture but the fact that he is being tortured to protect those who committed torture and other war crimes exposed in the Iraq and Afghanistan logs published by WikiLeaks. They continue to escape justice with the active connivance of the same state authorities seeking to destroy Assange (p95).

With his long experience of handling torture cases around the world, Melzer suggests that Assange has great reserves of inner strength that have kept him alive, if increasingly frail and physically ill. Assange has lost a great deal of weight, is regularly confused and disorientated, and has suffered a minor stroke in Belmarsh.

Many of the rest of us, the reader is left to infer, might well have succumbed by now to a lethal heart attack or stroke, or have committed suicide.

A further troubling implication hangs over the book: that this is the ultimate ambition of those persecuting him. The current extradition hearings can be spun out indefinitely, with appeals right up to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, keeping Assange out of view all that time, further damaging his health, and providing a stronger deterrent effect on whistleblowers and other journalists.

This is a win-win, notes Melzer. If Assange’s mental health breaks down entirely, he can be locked away in a psychiatric institution. And if he dies, that would finally solve the inconvenience of sustaining the legal charade that has been needed to keep him silenced and out of view for so long (p322).

Sweden’s charade

Melzer spends much of the book reconstructing the 2010 accusations of sexual assault against Assange in Sweden. He does this not to discredit the two women involved – in fact, he argues that the Swedish legal system failed them as much as it did Assange – but because that case set the stage for the campaign to paint Assange as a rapist, narcissist, and fugitive from justice.

The US might never have been able to launch its overtly political persecution of Assange had he not already been turned into a popular hate figure over the Sweden case. His demonisation was needed – as well as his disappearance from view – to smooth the path to redefining national security journalism as espionage.

Melzer’s meticulous examination of the case – assisted by his fluency in Swedish – reveals something that the mainstream media coverage has ignored: Swedish prosecutors never had the semblance of a case against Assange, and apparently never the slightest intention to move the investigation beyond the initial taking of witness statements.

Nonetheless, as Melzer observes, it became “the longest ‘preliminary investigation’ in Swedish history” (p103).

The first prosecutor to examine the case, in 2010, immediately dropped the investigation, saying, “there is no suspicion of a crime” (p133).

When the case was finally wrapped up in 2019, many months before the statute of limitations was reached, a third prosecutor observed simply that “it cannot be assumed that further inquiries will change the evidential situation in any significant manner” (p261).

Couched in lawyerly language, that was an admission that interviewing Assange would not lead to any charges. The preceding nine years had been a legal charade.

But in those intervening years, the illusion of a credible case was so well sustained that major newspapers, including Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, repeatedly referred to “rape charges” against Assange, even though he had never been charged with anything.

More significantly, as Melzer keeps pointing out, the allegations against Assange were so clearly unsustainable that the Swedish authorities never sought to seriously investigate them. To do so would have instantly exposed their futility.

Instead, Assange was trapped. For the seven years that he was given asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy, Swedish prosecutors refused to follow normal procedures and interview him where he was, in person or via computer, to resolve the case. But the same prosecutors also refused to issue standard reassurances that he would not be extradited onwards to the US, which would have made his asylum in the embassy unnecessary.

In this way, Melzer argues “the rape suspect narrative could be perpetuated indefinitely without ever coming before a court. Publicly, this deliberately manufactured outcome could conveniently be blamed on Assange, by accusing him of having evaded justice” (p254).

Neutrality dropped

Ultimately, the success of the Swedish case in vilifying Assange derived from the fact that it was driven by a narrative almost impossible to question without appearing to belittle the two women at its centre.

But the rape narrative was not the women’s. It was effectively imposed on the case – and on them – by elements within the Swedish establishment, echoed by the Swedish media. Melzer hazards a guess as to why the chance to discredit Assange was seized on so aggressively.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Swedish leaders dropped the country’s historic position of neutrality and threw their hand in with the US and the global “war on terror”. Stockholm was quickly integrated into the western security and intelligence community (p102).

All of that was put in jeopardy as Assange began eyeing Sweden as a new base for WikiLeaks, attracted by its constitutional protections for publishers.

In fact, he was in Sweden for precisely that reason in the run-up to WikiLeaks’ publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs. It must have been only too obvious to the Swedish establishment that any move to headquarter WikiLeaks there risked setting Stockholm on a collision course with Washington (p159).

This, Melzer argues, is the context that helps to explain an astonishingly hasty decision by the police to notify the public prosecutor of a rape investigation against Assange minutes after a woman referred to only as “S” first spoke to a police officer in a central Stockholm station.

In fact, S and another woman, “A”, had not intended to make any allegation against Assange. After learning he had had sex with them in quick succession, they wanted him to take an HIV test. They thought approaching the police would force his hand (p115). The police had other ideas.

The irregularities in the handling of the case are so numerous, Melzer spends the best part of 100 pages documenting them. The women’s testimonies were not recorded, transcribed verbatim, or witnessed by a second officer. They were summarised.

The same, deeply flawed procedure – one that made it impossible to tell whether leading questions influenced their testimony or whether significant information was excluded – was employed during the interviews of witnesses friendly to the women. Assange’s interview and those of his allies, by contrast, were recorded and transcribed verbatim (p132).

The reason for the women making their statements – the desire to get an HIV test from Assange – was not mentioned in the police summaries.

In the case of S, her testimony was later altered without her knowledge, in highly dubious circumstances that have never been explained (p139-41). The original text is redacted so it is impossible to know what was altered.

Stranger still, a criminal report of rape was logged against Assange on the police computer system at 4.11pm, 11 minutes after the initial meeting with S and 10 minutes before a senior officer had begun interviewing S – and two and half hours before that interview would finish (p119-20).

In another sign of the astounding speed of developments, Sweden’s public prosecutor had received two criminal reports against Assange from the police by 5pm, long before the interview with S had been completed. The prosecutor then immediately issued an arrest warrant against Assange before the police summary was written and without taking into account that S did not agree to sign it (p121).

Almost immediately, the information was leaked to the Swedish media, and within an hour of receiving the criminal reports the public prosecutor had broken protocol by confirming the details to the Swedish media (p126).

Secret amendments

The constant lack of transparency in the treatment of Assange by Swedish, British, US, and Ecuadorian authorities becomes a theme in Melzer’s book. Evidence is not made available under freedom of information laws, or, if it is, it is heavily redacted or only some parts are released – presumably those that do not risk undermining the official narrative.

For four years, Assange’s lawyers were denied any copies of the text messages the two Swedish women sent – on the grounds they were “classified”. The messages were also denied to the Swedish courts, even when they were deliberating on whether to extend an arrest warrant for Assange (p124).

It was not until nine years later those messages were made public, though Melzer notes that the index numbers show many continue to be withheld. Most notably, 12 messages sent by S from the police station – when she is known to have been unhappy at the police narrative being imposed on her – are missing. They would likely have been crucial to Assange’s defence (p125).

Similarly, much of the later correspondence between British and Swedish prosecutors that kept Assange trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy for years was destroyed – even while the Swedish preliminary investigation was supposedly still being pursued (p106).

The text messages from the women that have been released, however, suggest strongly that they felt they were being railroaded into a version of events they had not agreed to.

Slowly they relented, the texts suggest, as the juggernaut of the official narrative bore down on them, with the implied threat that if they disputed it they risked prosecution themselves for providing false testimony (p130).

Moments after S entered the police station, she texted a friend to say that “the police officer appears to like the idea of getting him [Assange]” (p117).

In a later message, she writes that it was “the police who made up the charges” (p129). And when the state assigns her a high-profile lawyer, she observes only that she hopes he will get her “out of this shit” (p136).

In a further text, she says: “I didn’t want to be part of it [the case against Assange], but now I have no choice” (p137).

It was on the basis of the secret amendments made to S’s testimony by the police that the first prosecutor’s decision to drop the case against Assange was overturned, and the investigation reopened (p141). As Melzer notes, the faint hope of launching a prosecution of Assange essentially rested on one word: whether S was “asleep”, “half-asleep” or “sleepy” when they had sex.

Melzer write that “as long as the Swedish authorities are allowed to hide behind the convenient veil of secrecy, the truth about this dubious episode may never come to light” (p141).

‘No ordinary extradition’

These and many, many other glaring irregularities in the Swedish preliminary investigation documented by Melzer are vital to decoding what comes next. Or as Melzer concludes “the authorities were not pursuing justice in this case but a completely different, purely political agenda” (p147).

With the investigation hanging over his head, Assange struggled to build on the momentum of the Iraq and Afghanistan logs revealing systematic war crimes committed by the US and UK.

“The involved governments had successfully snatched the spotlight directed at them by WikiLeaks, turned it around, and pointed it at Assange,” Melzer observes.

They have been doing the same ever since.

Assange was given permission to leave Sweden after the new prosecutor assigned to the case repeatedly declined to interview him a second time (p153-4).

But as soon as Assange departed for London, an Interpol Red Notice was issued, another extraordinary development given its use for serious international crimes, setting the stage for the fugitive-from-justice narrative (p167).

A European Arrest Warrant was approved by the UK courts soon afterwards – but, again exceptionally, after the judges had reversed the express will of the British parliament that such warrants could only be issued by a “judicial authority” in the country seeking extradition, not the police or a prosecutor (p177-9).

A law was passed shortly after the ruling to close that loophole and make sure no one else would suffer Assange’s fate (p180).

As the noose tightened around the neck not only of Assange but WikiLeaks too – the group was denied server capacity, its bank accounts were blocked, credit companies refused to process payments (p172) – Assange had little choice but to accept that the US was the moving force behind the scenes.

He hurried into the Ecuadorean embassy after being offered political asylum. A new chapter of the same story was about to begin.

British officials in the Crown Prosecution Service, as the few surviving emails show, were the ones bullying their Swedish counterparts to keep going with the case as Swedish interest flagged. The UK, supposedly a disinterested party, insisted behind the scenes that Assange must be required to leave the embassy – and his asylum – to be interviewed in Stockholm (p174).

A CPS lawyer told Swedish counterparts “don’t you dare get cold feet!” (p186).

As Christmas neared, the Swedish prosecutor joked about Assange being a present, “I am OK without… In fact, it would be a shock to get that one!” (p187).

When she discussed with the CPS Swedish doubts about continuing the case, she apologised for “ruining your weekend” (p188).

In yet another email, a British CPS lawyer advised “please do not think that the case is being dealt with as just another extradition request” (p176).

Embassy spying operation

That may explain why William Hague, the UK’s foreign secretary at the time, risked a major diplomatic incident by threatening to violate Ecuadorean sovereignty and invade the embassy to arrest Assange (p184).

And why Sir Alan Duncan, a UK government minister, made regular entries in his diary, later published as a book, on how he was working aggressively behind the scenes to get Assange out of the embassy (p200, 209, 273, 313).

And why the British police were ready to spend £16 million of public money besieging the embassy for seven years to enforce an extradition Swedish prosecutors seemed entirely uninterested in advancing (p188).

Ecuador, the only country ready to offer Assange sanctuary, rapidly changed course once its popular left-wing president Rafael Correa stepped down in 2017. His successor, Lenin Moreno, came under enormous diplomatic pressure from Washington and was offered significant financial incentives to give up Assange (p212).

At first, this appears to have chiefly involved depriving Assange of almost all contact with the outside world, including access to the internet, and telephone and launching a media demonisation campaign that portrayed him as abusing his cat and smearing faeces on the wall (p207-9).

At the same time, the CIA worked with the embassy’s security firm to launch a sophisticated, covert spying operation of Assange and all his visitors, including his doctors and lawyers (p200). We now know that the CIA was also considering plans to kidnap or assassinate Assange (p218).

Finally in April 2019, having stripped Assange of his citizenship and asylum – in flagrant violation of international and Ecuadorean law – Quito let the British police seize him (p213).

He was dragged into the daylight, his first public appearance in many months, looking unshaven and unkempt – a “demented looking gnome”, as a long-time Guardian columnist called him.

In fact, Assange’s image had been carefully managed to alienate the watching world. Embassy staff had confiscated his shaving and grooming kit months earlier.

Meanwhile, Assange’s personal belongings, his computer, and documents were seized and transferred not to his family or lawyers, or even the British authorities, but to the US – the real author of this drama (p214).

That move, and the fact that the CIA had spied on Assange’s conversations with his lawyers inside the embassy, should have sufficiently polluted any legal proceedings against Assange to require that he walk free.

But the rule of law, as Melzer keeps noting, has never seemed to matter in Assange’s case.

Quite the reverse, in fact. Assange was immediately taken to a London police station where a new arrest warrant was issued for his extradition to the US.

The same afternoon Assange appeared before a court for half an hour, with no time to prepare a defence, to be tried for a seven-year-old bail violation over his being granted asylum in the embassy (p48).

He was sentenced to 50 weeks – almost the maximum possible – in Belmarsh high-security prison, where he has been ever since.

Apparently, it occurred neither to the British courts nor to the media that the reason Assange had violated his bail conditions was precisely to avoid the political extradition to the US he was faced with as soon as he was forced out of the embassy.

‘Living in a tyranny’

Much of the rest of Melzer’s book documents in disturbing detail what he calls the current “Anglo-American show trial”: the endless procedural abuses Assange has faced over the past three years as British judges have failed to prevent what Melzer argues should be seen as not just one but a raft of glaring miscarriages of justice.

Not least, extradition on political grounds is expressly forbidden under Britain’s extradition treaty with the US (p178-80, 294-5). But yet again the law counts for nothing when it applies to Assange.

The decision on extradition now rests with Patel, the hawkish home secretary who previously had to resign from the government for secret dealings with a foreign power, Israel, and is behind the government’s current draconian plan to ship asylum seekers to Rwanda, almost certainly in violation of the UN Refugee Convention.

Melzer has repeatedly complained to the UK, the US, Sweden, and Ecuador about the many procedural abuses in Assange’s case, as well as the psychological torture he has been subjected to. All four, the UN rapporteur points out, have either stonewalled or treated his inquiries with open contempt (p235-44).

Assange can never hope to get a fair trial in the US, Melzer notes. First, politicians from across the spectrum, including the last two US presidents, have publicly damned Assange as a spy, terrorist, or traitor and many have suggested he deserves death (p216-7).

And second, because he would be tried in the notorious “espionage court” in Alexandria, Virginia, located in the heart of the US intelligence and security establishment, without public or press access (p220-2).

No jury there would be sympathetic to what Assange did in exposing their community’s crimes. Or as Melzer observes: “Assange would get a secret state-security trial very similar to those conducted in dictatorships” (p223).

And once in the US, Assange would likely never be seen again, under “special administrative measures” (SAMs) that would keep him in total isolation 24-hours-a-day (p227-9). Melzer calls SAMs “another fraudulent label for torture”.

Melzer’s book is not just a documentation of the persecution of one dissident. He notes that Washington has been meting out abuses on all dissidents, including most famously the whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.

Assange’s case is so important, Melzer argues, because it marks the moment when western states not only target those working within the system who blow the whistle that breaks their confidentiality contracts, but those outside it too – those like journalists and publishers whose very role in a democratic society is to act as a watchdog on power.

If we do nothing, Melzer’s book warns, we will wake up to find the world transformed. Or as he concludes: “Once telling the truth has become a crime, we will all be living in a tyranny” (p331).

The Trial of Julian Assange by Nils Melzer is published by Penguin Random House.

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Jonathan Cook is the the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at: www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Julian Assange court sketch, October 21, 2019, supplied by Julia Quenzler.

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***

On May 2, 2014, at least 48 people were killed when right-wing Ukrainian forces burned down the Trade Unions Building in Odessa. The victims had taken refuge in the building after opposing the February 2014 coup d’etat in Ukraine that was backed by the U.S. State Department.

Eight years after the massacre, the International Action Center, a New York-based anti-war group founded by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, hosted a public commemoration that included testimony from a survivor named Alexey who currently lives in Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

Alexey spoke movingly about his friend and comrade, Andrey Brezevsky, who was beaten to death by neo-Nazi thugs with a metal bar after he jumped out of the Trade Unions Building to escape the fire.

Brezevsky’s mother, after her son’s death, lost her teaching position at a local university after being denounced by right-wing groups.

Alexey emphasized that none of the perpetrators of the Odessa massacre was ever punished. In the aftermath of the atrocity, neo-Nazi groups mocked and persecuted the relatives of the victims, like Alexey’s mother.

The once bright city became “gloomy and sad,” Alexey said. The massacre had not happened by accident, but was a “planned act of intimidation” by Ukraine’s post-coup government. It was “designed to intimidate the opposition [and] was an act of political terrorism perpetrated by the Ukrainian state targeting unarmed civilians [the victims in the fire were all unarmed].”

Alexey believes that the power of the Nazis will soon come to an end in Ukraine. He said that now “they are dying every day. The Russians are destroying these murderers, and rapists and justice will prevail. The people guilty of the Odessa trade union massacre will finally be brought to justice.”

Results of forensic examination of Odessa massacre victims to be made public - World - TASS

Memorial to victims of the Odessa Trade Unions Building massacre. [Source: tass.com]

“A Human Rights Disaster”

Leonid Ilderkin, a Ukrainian communist in exile and member of the coordination council of the Union of Political Refugees and Political Prisoners of Ukraine, followed Alexey, stating that Ukraine has become a “human rights disaster” following the 2014 Maidan coup.

Since that time, the Ukrainian government under Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky have tried to demolish all types of political opposition and to hunt down everyone who does not like them.

The CIA, it should be noted, has assisted in these latter operations and helped to produce blacklists that are used to pinpoint dissidents for arrest.

Ilderkin said that he was a witness to the protests in Maidan Square which began in November 2013, and saw the kinds of groups that were supporting them.

The unrest led not only to the coup ousting pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych but the resurrection of Nazi ideals in the country, resulting in this situation where anyone who is progressive and on the left of the political spectrum is being hunted down.

According to Ilderkin, the Odessa massacre followed a pattern of state repression that was also exemplified by the crushing of demonstrations after the 2014 coup in Mariupol, Odessa and Zaporizhzhia, where the people almost took back control from the central government.

On May 9, 2014, seven days after the burning of the Odessa Trade Unions Building, an unknown number of unarmed demonstrators were shot and killed by state security forces and neo-Nazi militias in a massacre that was never reported on in the West.

Kiev's army shoots at civilians, uses tanks, APCs in attack on Mariupol police HQ (VIDEO) — RT World News

Kyiv army bringing in tanks and shooting at civilians in Mariupol on May 9, 2014. [Source: rt.com]

The resistance to the new regime, Ilderkin said, was more successful in Donetsk and Luhansk, where armed struggle developed.

Which Side Are You On?

Besides fueling state repression and civil conflict, the disastrous 2014 coup, according to Ilderkin, brought in leaders—Poroshenko and Zelensky—who have demolished workers’ rights and accelerated Ukraine’s deindustrialization.

Far from being a beacon of democracy as is presented in the U.S. and Western media, Ukraine is a police state where people considered disloyal to the regime are arrested and then vanish—no one knows where they are taken. The Azov Battalion is only one of many group of Nazi regiments which constitute the core of the Ukrainian army.

Ilderkin compared the Ukrainian army today to the morally bankrupt armies that fought with U.S. forces under the puppet Lon Nol regime in Cambodia and Thieu-Ky governments in South Vietnam during the Indochina War.

Ilderkin asked audience members: Who are you going to support: the South Vietnamese or Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam?

Zelensky, he said, is like Lon Nol—who courted Western intervention that destroyed his country. Another similarity is to General Francisco Franco and the Fascist forces in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

Ilderkin ended his talk by asking the audience: Which side are you on?

Indeed, which side are you on?

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

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***

Any doubt that many progressives have abandoned their commitment to free speech was erased by the hysterical reaction to Elon Musk’s effort to purchase Twitter and return the company to its roots as a free speech zone. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and “woke” neocon Max Boot fretted that Musk’s commitment to free speech threatens democracy. Those confused by how free speech threatens democracy should remember that for neoconservatives and many progressives democracy means allowing the people to choose between two largely identical supporters of the welfare-warfare state. In this version of “democracy,” those whose views are outside the welfare-warfare mainstream — such as libertarians — are marginalized.

More ominous than the griping of ex-government officials and pundits was the threat of prominent Democratic politicians to haul Musk before Congress. These politicians likely want an opportunity to smear Musk and other supporters of free speech as promoters of hate and Russian (and/or Chinese) disinformation.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin and other Senate Democrats, none of whom seem to have read the First Amendment, are also investigating whether it would be “appropriate” for Congress to force tech companies to “moderate” content on their platforms.

President Biden is not waiting for legislation to ramp up the attack on free speech. His administration has created the Disinformation Governance Board located in the Department of Homeland Security. The board’s purpose is to coordinate government and private sector efforts to combat “disinformation,” with a focus on Russia. The focus on Russia is not surprising since “Russian disinformation” has joined racism and sexism as a go-to justification to smear and silence those whose views (and factual information) contradict the political and media establishment’s “party line.”

Biden’s choice to head the Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, is a spreader of disinformation herself. In 2020, for example, Jankowicz parroted the lie that Russia created the damning materials found on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. Jankowicz’s résumé also includes stints as an advisor to the Ukraine government and a manager of National Democratic Institute programs in Russia and Belarus. Jankowicz’s background suggests she will never call any lie peddled by the US war party “disinformation.”

The Disinformation Governance Board may not directly censor social media. However, by “encouraging” tech companies desperate to maintain good relations with the federal government to remove “unapproved” opinions from their platforms, it can achieve the same results. This is why anyone who values free speech, which should include everyone who cherishes liberty, should not fall for the claim that tech companies’ behavior is nothing to be concerned about since it does not involve government censorship.

Sadly, some misguided conservatives have joined progressives in promoting legislation imposing new regulations on big tech. Increased regulation will only empower Nina Jankowicz and her ilk to further pressure tech companies to restrict free speech. It will also hurt consumers by reducing the ability to find affordable goods and services online. The only way to protect free speech on the internet is to make online platforms truly private through a complete separation of tech and state.

The drive to censor is driven by the woke mob and authoritarian establishment’s fear that their policies could not maintain majority support if forced to compete in a free market of ideas. This shows that even enemies of liberty sense that the days of the welfare-warfare state are numbered.

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***

On May 4, Prime Minister Trudeau issued a statement celebrating the “shared values that unite” Canada and Israel and attacking those who criticize Israel for its crimes against the Indigenous Semitic Palestinian people since 1948. It should be recalled that a year earlier, Trudeau had harshly attacked Canadians who support the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel.

Over the last 12 months, indisputably well-documented reports by United Nations (UN) institutions and reputable human rights groups – including the Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council Canadian Professor Michael Lynk, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Israel’s leading human rights organization B’Tselem – found Israel guilty of war crimes and the crime against humanity of apartheid against the 7 million Palestinians under Israel’s control and the six million exiled Palestinian refugees denied since 1948 the right to return to their homeland.

Furthermore, HRW’s report called on the Trudeau government to take action against the “crimes against humanity” by the Israeli government and Amnesty’s report accused governments with the responsibility and power, like Canada, of refusing  to take any meaningful action to hold Israel accountable.

In addition, over the last year the following academics, students, and Jews in North America have expressed their support for sanctions against Israel:

  • The Middle East Studies Association (Mesa) of North America – consisting of nearly 3,000 faculty, students and practitioners from around the world – voted overwhelmingly in late March 2022 to pass a resolution supporting the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS) targeting apartheid Israel.
  • Student unions at McGill, the University of Toronto (UofT), the University of British Columbia (UBC), and Simon Fraser University (SFU) passed resolutions in March 2022  in support of BDS; and were joined in April 2022 by the student union of Simon Fraser University (SFU).
  • A US poll conducted in February 2022 found that 16% of American Jews support BDS.

By attacking critics of Israel and especially those who support BDS, Trudeau is attacking UN institutions, reputable human rights groups, academics, students, Palestinians, Jews, and any Canadian who opposes apartheid and war crimes.

Disappointingly, Trudeau’s May 4th statement also appears to equate criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews, which would be like accusing critics of the former apartheid regime of South Africa of being haters of whites.

A survey commissioned by the Jewish Electorate Institute in June 2021 shows 25% of US Jews agreed that “Israel is an apartheid state” and 22% agreed that “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.”

Among younger US Jewish voters, 33% agreed that Israel is committing genocide and more than 33% agreed that Israel is an apartheid state.

Hence, equating Israel with World Jewry, which Israel  claims to represent, is a serious mistake since it may be exploited by racists to blame Jews for the war crimes and the crime against humanity of apartheid that UN institutions and human rights organizations have found Israel guilty of committing against the 13 million Indigenous Palestinian Semites.

Trudeau’s attack against Canadians who oppose apartheid and war crimes came on the same day Israel’s High Court issued its ruling that legitimized a war crime, and rubber-stamped the permanent occupation and de facto annexation of the West Bank, by approving the mass expulsion of the Indigenous Palestinian Semitic inhabitants of 8 villages in the occupied West Bank.

This court ruling that violates international law, made me relive the horror and suffering I experienced when I was expelled from Haifa in 1948 and of not being allowed to return since then because I am a Christian, even though I was born there and my family has lived in Palestine for centuries. In the meantime, Irwin Cotler, Trudeau’s appointed Special Envoy who was born in Canada, can move to Israel at any time and obtain citizenship.

Trudeau’s statement was also insensitive to the pain and fear that the vulnerable Palestinian community in Canada had experienced during April 2022, when Israeli occupation forces daily raided and desecrated places of worship in occupied Jerusalem – using weapons, stun grenades and drones – arresting and wounding thousands of unarmed worshippers and restricting Muslim and Christian Palestinian worshippers’ respective access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during Ramadan and Easter.

Trudeau’s government talks about human rights and democracy but Canadians will judge it by its actions.

Trudeau’s government has to choose between supporting apartheid and war crimes or pressuring the Israeli government to treat all who live within its borders, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, as equal citizens with equal civil, human and national rights.

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This article was originally published on One Democratic State.

Khaled Mouammar is a Christian Palestinian Canadian who was forced to flee his hometown Nazareth in 1948. He is one of the founders of the Canadian Arab Federation and a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. He received the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Award from the Governor General of Canada in 1977.

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***

Once upon a time United States foreign policy was based on actual national interests, but that was long ago and far away before the country was beguiled into a colonial war with Spain followed by a twentieth century that was chock-a-block full of any type and intensity of warfare that one might imagine, including the use of nuclear weapons.

Some might consider that the United States has become a nation made by war, to include a presumption that all the war-making has been both just and necessary, since America is “exceptional” and by default “the leader of the Free World.” Witness what is taking place vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia right now, pressing forward with a full-scale economic war against Moscow while arming one of the belligerents in support of no actual national interest, as if by habit.

The propensity of American politicians to resort to arms to compensate for their other failures is such that among circles in Washington and the media there has long been a joke making the rounds observing that no matter who is nominated and elected president we always wind up with John McCain. But if one is seriously concerned about the tendency of the United States to view nearly every foreign problem as solvable if only one uses enough military force, the joke might be updated to suggest that we Americans now always wind up with the Kagans, the first family of neoconservative/neoliberal advocates for an aggressive, interventionist US foreign policy.

Victoria Nuland, the architect of the disaster in Ukraine and a Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton protege, is married to Robert Kagan and now serving as number three in the State Department. Robert is the Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and is also a regular contributing columnist at The Washington Post. His brother is Fred, currently a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Fred’s wife Kimberley is head of the aptly named Institute for the Study of War.

When Congress-critters want to justify a new war, they frequently cite judgements made by one of the various groups associated with the Kagans. Robert is a frequent contributor to the national media both in interviews and opinion pieces calling inevitably for harsh measures against countries like Russia and Iran while Fred uses his bully pulpit to argue in favor of a large increases in military spending to counter “future threats.” Fred and Robert are members of the Aspen Strategy Group. They and their father, Donald, were all signatories to the neocon Project for the New American Century manifesto, Rebuilding America’s Defenses (2000).

Characteristically, the Kagan brothers love war but expect someone else to do the fighting. They are both considerably overweight and could never pass a military entrance physical if they were so inclined, which, of course they are not. The Kagans have been closely tied to the Democratic Party on many social issues and would likely describe themselves as liberal interventionists as well as neocons, since in practice both labels mean the same thing in terms of an assertive foreign policy backed by force. Plus, their flexibility gives them access to the foreign policy establishments of both major parties, as also does their support of Israeli interests in the Middle East, to include outspoken support of the Iraq War and for a covert war against Iran.

The Kagans are labeled by many as conservative, but they are not reliably Republicans. Donald Trump was much troubled during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns by so-called conservatives who rallied behind the #NeverTrump banner, presumably in opposition to his stated intention to end or at least diminish America’s role in wars in the Middle East and Asia. The Kagans were foremost among those pundits. Robert was one of the first neocons to get on the #NeverTrump band wagon back in 2016 when he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and spoke at a Washington fundraiser for her, complaining about the “isolationist” tendency in the Republican Party exemplified by Trump. Many other notable neocons also declared themselves to be #NeverTrump, including Bill Kristol, Bret Stephens, Daniel Pipes, Reuel Gerecht, Max Boot and Jonah Goldberg.

To be sure, some high-profile neocons stuck with the Republicans, to include the highly controversial Elliott Abrams, who initially opposed Trump but later became the point man for dealing with both Venezuela and Iran, attracted by Trump’s hardline with both countries. Abrams’ conversion reportedly took place when he realized that the new president genuinely embraced unrelenting hostility towards Iran in particular as exemplified by his ending of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. John Bolton was also for a time a neocon in the White House fold, though he later became an enemy after being fired by the president and then wrote a book critical of Trump.

Even though the NeverTrumper neocons did not succeed in blocking Donald Trump in 2016, they maintained relevancy by slowly drifting back towards the Democratic Party, which is where they originated back in the 1970s in the office of the Senator from Boeing Henry “Scoop” Jackson. A number of them started their political careers there, to include leading neocon Richard Perle.

It would not be overstating the case to suggest that the neoconservative movement together with its liberal interventionist colleagues are dominating foreign policy thinking across the board in Congress and the White House. That development has been aided by a more aggressive shift among the Democrats themselves, with Russiagate and other “foreign interference” still to this day being blamed for the party’s failure in 2016 and for its dreary prospects in midterm elections later this year. Given that mutual intense hostility to Trump, the doors to previously shunned liberal media outlets have now opened wide to the stream of foreign policy “experts” who want to “restore a sense of the heroic” to US national security policy. Eliot A. Cohen and David Frum have been favored contributors to the Atlantic while Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss were together at the New York Times prior to Weiss’s resignation. Jennifer Rubin, who wrote in 2016 that “It is time for some moral straight talk: Trump is evil incarnate,” is a frequent columnist for The Washington Post while both she and William Kristol appear regularly on MSNBC. Russian-Jewish import hardliner Max Boot is a regular feature contributor at the Post.

The unifying principle that ties many of the mostly Jewish neocons together is, of course, unconditional defense of Israel and everything it does, which leads them to support a policy of American global military dominance which they presume will inter alia serve as a security umbrella for the Jewish state. In the post-9/11 world, the neocon media’s leading publication Bill Kristol’s The Weekly Standard virtually invented the concept of “Islamofascism” to justify endless war in the Middle East, a development that has killed millions of Muslims, destroyed at least three nations, and cost the US taxpayer more than $5 trillion. The Israel connection has also resulted in neocon political and media support for the currently highly aggressive and dangerous policy against Russia, due in part to its involvement in defense of Israeli target Syria. In Eastern Europe, neocon ideologues have aggressively exploited the largely illusory policy of “democracy promotion,” which, not coincidentally, has also been a major Democratic Party foreign policy objective, both coming together nicely to justify the current chaos in Ukraine.

The neocons and liberal interventionists are involved in a number of foundations, the most prominent of which is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), that are largely funded by Jewish billionaires and defense contractors. FDD is headed by Canadian Mark Dubowitz and it is reported that the group takes direction coming from officials in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Other major neocon incubators are the American Enterprise Institute, which currently is the home of Paul Wolfowitz, and the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at John Hopkins University.

Many former Barack Obama White House senior officials who believe in liberal interventionism and democracy promotion while also hating Russia and Vladimir Putin have developed comfortable working relationships with the neocons. Foreign policy hawks including Antony Blinken, Wendy Sherman, Nicholas Burns, Susan Rice and Samantha Power are calling most of the shots given Biden’s senility but with neocon political and media support.

Unfortunately, nowhere in Biden’s foreign policy circle does one find anyone who is resistant to the idea of worldwide interventionism in support of claimed humanitarian objectives, even if it would lead to an actual shooting war with major competitor power Russia and also possibly China. In fact, Biden himself embraces a characteristically extremely bellicose view on a proper relationship with foreign nations “claiming that he is defending democracy against its enemies.” His language and authoritarian governing style leave no wiggle room for constructive dialogue with adversaries. The script being written by his Administration on how to deal with the rest of the world promises nothing but unending trouble and quite possibly sharp economic decline in the US for the foreseeable future.

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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].

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“The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem and very often makes the problem worse.”—Milton Friedman

You’ve been flagged as a threat.

Before long, every household in America will be similarly flagged and assigned a threat score.

Without having ever knowingly committed a crime or been convicted of one, you and your fellow citizens have likely been assessed for behaviors the government might consider devious, dangerous or concerning; assigned a threat score based on your associations, activities and viewpoints; and catalogued in a government database according to how you should be approached by police and other government agencies based on your particular threat level.

If you’re not unnerved over the ramifications of how such a program could be used and abused, keep reading.

It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.

Consider the case of Michael Williams, who spent almost a year in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Williams was behind the wheel when a passing car fired at his vehicle, killing his 25-year-old passenger Safarian Herring, who had hitched a ride.

Despite the fact that Williams had no motive, there were no eyewitnesses to the shooting, no gun was found in the car, and Williams himself drove Herring to the hospital, police charged the 65-year-old man with first-degree murder based on ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection program that had picked up a loud bang on its network of surveillance microphones and triangulated the noise to correspond with a noiseless security video showing Williams’ car driving through an intersection. The case was eventually dismissed for lack of evidence.

Although gunshot detection program like ShotSpotter are gaining popularity with law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and courts alike, they are riddled with flaws, mistaking “dumpsters, trucks, motorcycles, helicopters, fireworks, construction, trash pickup and church bells…for gunshots.”

As an Associated Press investigation found, “the system can miss live gunfire right under its microphones, or misclassify the sounds of fireworks or cars backfiring as gunshots.”

In one community, ShotSpotter worked less than 50% of the time.

Then there’s the human element of corruption which invariably gets added to the mix. In some cases, “employees have changed sounds detected by the system to say that they are gunshots.” Forensic reports prepared by ShotSpotter’s employees have also “been used in court to improperly claim that a defendant shot at police, or provide questionable counts of the number of shots allegedly fired by defendants.”

The same company that owns ShotSpotter also owns a predictive policing program that aims to use gunshot detection data to “predict” crime before it happens. Both Presidents Biden and Trump have pushed for greater use of these predictive programs to combat gun violence in communities, despite the fact that found they have not been found to reduce gun violence or increase community safety.

The rationale behind this fusion of widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs is purportedly to enable the government takes preemptive steps to combat crime (or whatever the government has chosen to outlaw at any given time).

This is precrime, straight out of the realm of dystopian science fiction movies such as Minority Report, which aims to prevent crimes before they happen, but in fact, it’s just another means of getting the citizenry in the government’s crosshairs in order to lock down the nation.

Even Social Services is getting in on the action, with computer algorithms attempting to predict which households might be guilty of child abuse and neglect.

All it takes is an AI bot flagging a household for potential neglect for a family to be investigated, found guilty and the children placed in foster care.

Mind you, potential neglect can include everything from inadequate housing to poor hygiene, but is different from physical or sexual abuse.

According to an investigative report by the Associated Press, once incidents of potential neglect are reported to a child protection hotline, the reports are run through a screening process that pulls together “personal data collected from birth, Medicaid, substance abuse, mental health, jail and probation records, among other government data sets.” The algorithm then calculates the child’s potential risk and assigns a score of 1 to 20 to predict the risk that a child will be placed in foster care in the two years after they are investigated. “The higher the number, the greater the risk. Social workers then use their discretion to decide whether to investigate.”

Other predictive models being used across the country strive to “assess a child’s risk for death and severe injury, whether children should be placed in foster care and if so, where.”

Incredibly, there’s no way for a family to know if AI predictive technology was responsible for their being targeted, investigated and separated from their children. As the AP notes, “Families and their attorneys can never be sure of the algorithm’s role in their lives either because they aren’t allowed to know the scores.”

One thing we do know, however, is that the system disproportionately targets poor, black families for intervention, disruption and possibly displacement, because much of the data being used is gleaned from lower income and minority communities.

The technology is also far from infallible. In one county alone, a technical glitch presented social workers with the wrong scores, either underestimating or overestimating a child’s risk.

Yet fallible or not, AI predictive screening program is being used widely across the country by government agencies to surveil and target families for investigation. The fallout of this over surveillance, according to Aysha Schomburg, the associate commissioner of the U.S. Children’s Bureau, is “mass family separation.”

The impact of these kinds of AI predictive tools is being felt in almost every area of life.

Under the pretext of helping overwhelmed government agencies work more efficiently, AI predictive and surveillance technologies are being used to classify, segregate and flag the populace with little concern for privacy rights or due process.

All of this sorting, sifting and calculating is being done swiftly, secretly and incessantly with the help of AI technology and a surveillance state that monitors your every move.

Where this becomes particularly dangerous is when the government takes preemptive steps to combat crime or abuse, or whatever the government has chosen to outlaw at any given time.

In this way, government agents—with the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software—are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.

Are you a military veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder? Have you expressed controversial, despondent or angry views on social media? Do you associate with people who have criminal records or subscribe to conspiracy theories? Were you seen looking angry at the grocery store? Is your appearance unkempt in public? Has your driving been erratic? Did the previous occupants of your home have any run-ins with police?

All of these details and more are being used by AI technology to create a profile of you that will impact your dealings with government.

It’s the American police state rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package, and the end result is the death of due process.

In a nutshell, due process was intended as a bulwark against government abuses. Due process prohibits the government of depriving anyone of “Life, Liberty, and Property” without first ensuring that an individual’s rights have been recognized and respected and that they have been given the opportunity to know the charges against them and defend against those charges.

With the advent of government-funded AI predictive policing programs that surveil and flag someone as a potential threat to be investigated and treated as dangerous, there can be no assurance of due process: you have already been turned into a suspect.

To disentangle yourself from the fallout of such a threat assessment, the burden of proof rests on you to prove your innocence.

You see the problem?

It used to be that every person had the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty, and the burden of proof rested with one’s accusers. That assumption of innocence has since been turned on its head by a surveillance state that renders us all suspects and overcriminalization which renders us all potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

Combine predictive AI technology with surveillance and overcriminalization, then add militarized police crashing through doors in the middle of the night to serve a routine warrant, and you’ll be lucky to escape with your life.

Yet be warned: once you get snagged by a surveillance camera, flagged by an AI predictive screening program, and placed on a government watch list—whether it’s a watch list for child neglect, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, a terrorist watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.

You will be tracked wherever you go, flagged as a potential threat and dealt with accordingly.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

We’ve made it too easy for the government to identify, label, target, defuse and detain anyone it views as a potential threat for a variety of reasons that run the gamut from mental illness to having a military background to challenging its authority to just being on the government’s list of persona non grata.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, you don’t even have to be a dissident to get flagged by the government for surveillance, censorship and detention.

All you really need to be is a citizen of the American police state.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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