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Governments around the world continue to impose an expanding sequence of measures to curtail rights and freedoms ostensibly to tackle a ‘virus’. In response, public demonstrations against these government measures are also ongoing and expanding with truck convoys the latest manifestation of this form of protest.

Unfortunately, while activists mistake these popular mobilizations for effective resistance, the Global Elite’s coup d’état against humanity gathers pace.

Concealed beneath the ‘virus’/‘vaccine’ narrative, and marketed by the World Economic Forum as the ‘Great Reset’, this coup is designed to utterly transform human society and even human life. This is because the detail outlined in the ‘Great Reset’ documentation, which anyone can investigate for themselves, clearly identifies intended changes to some 200 areas of human activity, essentially characterized as part of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’.

Beyond that, however, as a lengthening list of doctors, scientists and scholars have been warning us for some time, although their efforts are invariably heavily censored by corporate media, the injectables program is decimating the human population – see

‘Killing Off Humanity: How the Global Elite is using Eugenics and Transhumanism to Shape Our Future’ – while ensuring that those who submit to it and survive will only do so as transhuman slaves.

See ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.

Even beyond the injectables, however, the Global Elite is using a vast range of other measures to implement its ‘kill and control’ agenda.

One means of doing this has been to exploit the ‘pandemic’ (and its control measures such as lockdowns) to engineer the greatest redistribution of wealth from poor to rich in human history, thus starving to death vast numbers of people in Africa, Asia and Central/South America in the process – as the Director of the World Food Program had no trouble predicting in April 2020: see ‘WFP chief warns of “hunger pandemic” as Global Food Crises Report launched’ – while impoverishing (and often rendering homeless) substantial numbers in industrialized economies as confidently predicted by geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar, also in April 2020.

See ‘Who Profits From the Pandemic?’

Have these predictions been realized? As Oxfam has recently noted: ‘A new billionaire has been created every 26 hours since the pandemic began. The world’s 10 richest men have doubled their fortunes, while over 160 million people are projected to have been pushed into poverty.’ See ‘Inequality Kills: The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-19’.

But notable among the Elite’s other measures, including ongoing deployment of 5G which continues to devastate life generally – see ‘Deadly Rainbow: Will 5G Precipitate the Extinction of All Life on Earth?’ – are its ongoing efforts to destroy global supply chains, including those in relation to food, so that starvation functions to kill off far more than just marginalized populations but also to ensure that those left alive are compliant as the price of being ‘entitled’ to eat.

In essence, this component of their plan (which is now being rapidly implemented) is to disconnect humans from nature, herd us into ‘smart cities’ and destroy our sense of natural food; that is, destroy human culture.

Hence, using a combination of 5G, AI and blockchain technologies, the intention is to take complete control of food supply chains and get rid of natural food by creating lab-grown meat, synthetic foods and even ‘3D printed food’.

Watch ‘Architecting the Beast System’ and

‘DARPA funds Soylent Green as Empty Shelves in USA – #BareShelvesBiden Trends’ and see

‘Don’t Be Fooled: Lab-Grown Meat Is a Disaster in the Making’.

If you have not been following the progressive destruction of small farmers, the consolidation of agricultural land, the relentless promotion of genetically-mutilated organisms (GMOs), the destruction of food supply chains, the hoarding of food and even the destruction of food supplies, as well as the ongoing efforts to feed you a combination of synthesized trash and insect-based food substitutes, let me briefly outline the evidence below and tell you how Mohandas K. Gandhi would respond.

Control of Food Historically

Since the neolithic revolution (the transition from hunting/gathering to farming) began unfolding 60,000 years ago – see The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia and Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture – humans have farmed open-pollinated seeds that simply allow a farmer to keep some seed harvested in one season to plant in the next. But that natural round has been progressively eroded over recent decades.
Among those who have spent considerable time drawing attention to what the Global Elite has been doing and plans for us in relation to food generally, Dr. Vandana Shiva is certainly an outstanding figure.

In a series of articles and interviews over many years, Shiva and the organization she founded, Navdanya International, have pointed out how ownership of the genetic diversity of our food crops as well as agricultural land is being increasingly consolidated in the hands of fewer corporations owned by fewer individuals and how control of the food industry (from production to processing to distribution) is also being increasingly consolidated in the hands of fewer corporations and individuals.

Beyond this, Shiva has highlighted how capital and chemical intensive monoculture-based industrial agriculture is the biggest driver of species extinctions, including systematically wiping out the diversity of crops we grow and eat, and this has been transforming the very nature of the food we consume, not just by progressively eliminating this food diversity but also by aggressively introducing toxins and poisons in various forms as well as genetically-mutilated and, ultimately, synthetic foods.

See ‘Gates to a Global Empire over Seed, Food, Health, Knowledge… and the Earth’  Vandana Shiva Editor

and

‘The Poison Cartel is Poisoning the World, Driving Species to Extinction, and Contributing to Hunger’.

As Shiva has pointed out, just one of the many outcomes of the aggressive marketing of genetically-mutilated seeds has been an epidemic of farmer suicides in India.

See ‘How Monsanto’s GMO Creations Caused 291,000 Suicides in India’.

Source: Natural Society

Another prominent figure who has drawn attention to the many dramatic reverses in the ownership, control and diversity of food and food production is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But to highlight just one of the myriad points made by Kennedy, he draws attention to a report highlighting that Bill Gates ‘has quietly made himself the largest owner of farmland in the United States.’

See ‘Bill Gates and Neo-Feudalism: A Closer Look at Farmer Bill’ and

‘Bill Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner’.

Beyond this, researcher ‘Sam Parker’ has offered a history of the use of food as an instrument of control for the past 4,000 years beginning with the ominous words ‘The control of food for use as a weapon is an ancient practice.’ He nominates the major food conglomerates (Cargill, Continental Grain, Louis Drefuss, Bunge & Born, Andre, Archer Daniels Midland/Topfer, ConAgra, IBP, Nestle, Unilever, Philip Morris) and offers an explanation of how this food cartel, along with another three dozen food corporations, control the world’s food supply noting that, today, ‘food warfare is firmly under the control of London and New York’ and that the cartel is ‘prepared to apply a tourniquet to food production and export supplies, not only to poor nations, but to advanced sector nations as well’.

See ‘The BA Cartel Part 2 (of a 3 Part Series)’.

So for those still unconcerned as humanity rapidly loses the little control it still has left of its food supply, it might be worthwhile to recall that infamous comment of Henry Kissinger:

‘Who controls the food supply controls the people.’

But whatever the threats to the food supply that have been accelerating and accumulating over recent decades, they have been dramatically compounded in the past two years.

Control of Food in the ‘Pandemic’ Era

Since the beginning of the so-called pandemic, global supply chains of goods, including food, have been severely disrupted with the intention of forcing them to collapse. This plan has been executed using a careful combination of restrictions implemented by governments, supposedly to contain spread of the non-existent virus. Primarily, it has included forcing workers out of their role in the production, transport and distribution of food supplies.

Hence, farmers have grappled with restrictions impeding their capacity to plant, tend and harvest crops or care for livestock, workers have been prevented from staffing canning and processing factories as well as abattoirs – see ‘Staff shortages due to COVID-19 taking a toll across all industries in NSW’ – truckers have been unavailable to transport foodstocks – see ‘COVID-19 vaccines still mandatory for Canadian cross-border truckers, feds say’ – wharf labourers have been unavailable to load shipping containers of food onto ships – see ‘The supply chain crisis is a jobs crisis’ – and supermarket shelves are empty as stores struggle with product and staff shortages, which is particularly challenging for those in remote communities with limited food retail outlets. See ‘Grocery store closures loom amid labour, product shortages’.

None of this has happened because a virus will kill us, because the virus does not exist.

For just two of the myriad demonstrations of this point, see

‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’ and

‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’.

And for an account of researcher Christine Massey’s fruitless search over the course of more than a year to find evidence of an isolated virus, via Freedom of Information requests to health/science institutions all over the world, see

‘164 health/science institutions globally all failed to cite even 1 record of “SARS-COV-2” purification, by anyone, anywhere, ever’.

Beyond restrictions supposedly imposed in response to the ‘virus’ threat, some natural disasters have disrupted food production and supply chains, such as when ‘unfavourable weather conditions’ reduced the expected potato harvest in Russia – see ‘Russia – 2021 saw potato production drop’ – drought was a key factor is Syria’s lowest wheat production in 50 years – see ‘Syria’s wheat production “lowest in 50 years” with fears of mass starvation: UN’ – and a flood shut down Vancouver, the largest port in Canada: ‘The floods temporarily shut down much of the movement of wheat and canola from Canada, one of the world’s biggest grain exporters’.

See ‘Floods cut rail access to Canada’s Vancouver port, disrupting goods shipments’.

Moreover, some food supplies, notably including grain among other products, are being hoarded. ‘Less than 20% of the world’s population has managed to stockpile more than half of the globe’s maize and other grains, leading to steep price increases across the planet and dropping more countries into famine. The hoarding is taking place in China…. Over the past five years, China’s soybean, maize and wheat imports soared two- to twelvefold on aggressive purchases from the U.S., Brazil and other supplier nations. Imports of beef, pork, dairy and fruit jumped two- to fivefold.’ The food, including grains to be fed to farm animals, is being stored in massive food-stockpiling bases but also in container ships anchored in the port at Dalian waiting to be unloaded.

See ‘China hoards over half the world’s grain, pushing up global prices’.

Other countries that traditionally supply food products just turned off the export tap early in the ‘pandemic’ to keep food supplies for domestic consumption.

See ‘Countries Are Starting to Hoard Food, Threatening Global Trade’.

And food stocks are being destroyed as, for example, the ongoing worker shortages continue to serve the insidious ‘kill and control’ agenda of the elite – see ‘30,000 pigs culled on farms [in UK] as backlog remains “dire”’ – and the periodic ‘apocalyptic bird flu’ nonsense – see ‘Scientists say an apocalyptic bird flu could wipe out half of humanity’ and ‘UK: “Apocalyptic Bird Flu” Jumps to Humans as Authorities Cull Millions of Birds’ – gets yet another run and, as just one example, was used to ‘justify’ the slaughter of a million egg-laying hens in Israel.

See ‘Massive New Bird Flu Outbreak Could Be 2022’s Deadly Pandemic’.

More simply, perhaps, it is easy to prevent unvaccinated farmers from delivering crops to grain silos, as happened in Australia, for example.

Watch ‘Farmers, Truckers STOPPED as Food Supply Collapses’.

Beyond these problems, however, it is happening because of the interrelated nature of supply chains, including when they collapse. Farmers have been having increasing problems growing food because of the difficulties of obtaining vital inputs, ranging from fertilizers for which ‘supply chain logistics are a mess’ – see ‘Supply chain problems contribute to fertilizer worries’ – and pesticides – see ‘Pesticide industry battling supply chain challenges, working to ensure 2022 availability’ – to machine parts and other inputs – see ‘Supply chain issues hitting all segments of ag’ – as supply chains in other sectors have been shut down too.

Sometimes, there are simply no available empty containers on which to load the produce.

See ‘Why there will be no end to the global container crisis anytime soon’.

And even the deployment of 5G, catastrophic for other reasons as noted above, is now exacerbating supply chain problems as it is introduced.

See ‘Airlines warn of “catastrophic” crisis when new 5G service is deployed’ and ‘Why 5G Is Dangerous for Planes — and People’.

Is all of this a total surprise?

Not if you are aware of the script of the 2015 Center for American Progress simulation ‘Food Chain Reaction: A Global Food Security Game’, or have followed the progressive destruction of the food supply chain in recent years. Watch ‘Farmers Panic, Can’t Get Supplies to Grow Food’.

What Can You Do?

Fortunately, a great deal. But I gently encourage you to get on with it!

As Mohandas K. Gandhi, who was assassinated 74 years ago on 30 January 1948, was teaching more than 100 years ago, self-reliance is still the safest option, particularly when it comes to food. Whether grown in  your own backyard or a community garden, and perhaps participating in a local trading scheme and/or possibly a local farmers market, individual, family and community self-reliance in food-growing is the only viable option for the near-term future if survival is among your desired personal outcomes.

If you want to grow your own food with the intention of becoming self-sufficient and you are starting from scratch, watch this recent webinar by Marjory Wildcraft, coordinator of the Grow Food Network: ‘You Can Grow Food’.

There is high quality information on growing food for vegans and vegetarians in John Jeavons’ book How to Grow More Vegetables.

In this video, the Ice Age Farmer, Christian Westbrook, interviews Marjory Wildcraft about working with the local community to establish and maintain a community food garden:

‘Building Food Security through Community – Marjory Wildcraft’.

And David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture, offers excellent resources explaining how to create a permaculture food garden for your backyard and community at his website Holmgren Design.

But don’t forget, if you are not resisting the elite agenda overall, it won’t matter how self-reliant in food production you have become, you will be killed or enslaved by another component of the multifaceted nature of the elite plan.

Information on strategically resisting the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ is explained on the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ website and the simplest form of this strategic resistance is outlined on the one-page flyers, now available in 15languages (Czech, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish & Slovak) with more in the pipeline.

If strategically resisting the ‘Great Reset’ appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram group as well.

Conclusion

The global food supply chain is being systematically destroyed. This is happening as part of the overall elite agenda to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population and enslave those left alive. Any reading of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ program and its related eugenicist and transhumanist agendas makes this clear even if, occasionally, one needs to read between the lines.

While resisting this entire agenda is an absolute necessity if humanity is to survive in the form we have existed for the past 200,000 years, our sustained resistance is going to depend on people being able to eat.

So getting organized to defend yourself and your family by growing your own food and working with like-minded people in your local community are essential elements of our survival even if, in itself, self-reliance in food production is not enough.

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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

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While many in the US are trying to address pressing domestic issues, the White House’s political rhetoric is intended to divert voters’ attention to non-existent external threats. If one is to believe Western mass media, it would appear that the US is being encircled by external threats, primarily China and Russia, but also by the likes of Iran and North Korea.

Although China has become the main focus of American media in recent years, especially regarding Taiwan, Xinjiang and Hong Kong, Russia is of course not immune from such propaganda campaigns. The media continues to publish reports on China’s supposed unfair trade practices and imbalances, the threat of stealing advanced American technology, and domestic human rights issues, whilst with Russia it makes similar criticisms on domestic human rights issues, supposed election interference and the country’s policy on Ukraine.

Anti-China rhetoric began under former President Donald Trump, but has certainly not slowed down under his successor Joe Biden. The anti-Russia rhetoric has continued relentlessly since the Cold War.

In the case of China, the FBI said that every 10 hours, it opens a new investigation relating to acts of espionage and theft of intellectual property, as well as other threats to US national security. However, most of the investigations collapse before going to trial, as happened to Professor Gang Chen of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was accused of hiding ties with the Chinese government.

At the same time, the Biden administration has not taken any practical steps regarding China’s alleged non-compliance with the terms of the Phase 1 trade deal, which has expired. In other words, the US in fact has no evidence to denounce China.

None-the-less, Western media still create a tense atmosphere, intensifying rhetoric about the threat from Russia and China. Their goal on the domestic front is to make the American people feel that they are under threat from foreign countries but that authorities are doing their best to counter this.

However, if attempting to shift focus to pressing domestic issues, one could be berated by the president himself, as happened to Fox News journalist Peter Doocy, who only asked Biden if inflation was a political responsibility in the context of the upcoming mid-term election. After hearing the question, Biden said in an outburst, “It’s a great asset—more inflation. What a stupid son of a bitch.” He then called Doocy a “stupid bastard.” On the same day, the American president called the reporter to apologise for his comments.

This situation shows how sensitive the topic of inflation is for the Biden administration. Evidently, frustrations are revealing themselves as the upcoming mid-term election does not bode well for the Democrats. According to the latest polls, the Democrats are expected to lose control of Congress. If this occurs, all the blame will fall on Biden.

Many people forget that despite being the world’s largest economy, the US funds its operations with debt. Last year, American public debt was greater than its GDP for the first time since 1946.

Large-scale programs aimed at stimulating the economy by helping individuals and businesses are funded by issuing new dollars. In 2020, the US printed more money to flood the market. According to the fundamentals of economic theory, pumping large amounts of money into the market leads to a sharp increase in inflation. For a while, American authorities have been trying to curb the rise in consumer good prices, and the stock market has held back the rise in inflation.

Although household incomes have risen fairly rapidly because of unprecedented measures (worth more than $1 trillion) by US authorities to help people and businesses survive the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation is even stronger. As a result, compared to 2020 levels, household income has fallen by 1.2% in the US. Due to this significant economic issue, the Biden administration is trying to divert people’s attention from it by ramping up anti-China and anti-Russia rhetoric.

Mid-term elections are held every four years and, in this cycle, politicians are preoccupied with their own ambitions and interests. For this reason, the president’s proposed measures have been met with serious opposition from the Republican Party. Biden’s power is severely limited and the problems associated with the pandemic have not been solved. Stuck in this quagmire, Biden believes all he can do to politically survive is step up anti-China and-Russia rhetoric to gain some rapid, short-term impact in the run-up to the midterm elections.

Despite Biden’s tough attitude towards China and Russia, it does not solve the fundamental problems of the US economy, but rather only exacerbate them.

Tariffs on Chinese products, as an example, have not yet been lifted, which has only intensified the problem of inflation. The US cannot refuse to import Chinese goods because up to 50% of China’s exports are intermediate goods, which are then used by American manufacturers. With global supply chain disruptions because of the pandemic, demand for Chinese goods has increased.

In this way, one (of many) motivating factors for Biden’s continued hostility and provocations against the two Eurasian powers is because of the domestic economic situation. However, whether the same continued threats will be enough to help the Democrats retain power in Congress remains to be seen.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) welcomes a new report by Amnesty International which concludes that Israeli officials are perpetuating a system of Apartheid against the Palestinian people. Amnesty’s report bolsters the argument made by Palestinians, Israeli human rights groups, South African liberation leaders, and many other credible authorities, who for years have used the term Apartheid to describe forms of Israeli oppression. CJPME urges Canada’s political leaders to meaningfully engage with the report and its conclusions, and to adopt measures to hold Israeli officials accountable for perpetuating the crime of Apartheid.

“By using the term ‘Apartheid’ to describe Israel’s practices towards the Palestinians, Amnesty International joins a growing consensus within the human rights sector which can no longer be ignored,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “Amnesty’s report should be a wake-up call for Canadian officials and prompt a serious reconsideration of Canada’s relationship with Israel, given the severity of its findings,” Bueckert added.

Published today, the 280-page report determined that Israeli officials enforce Apartheid beyond just the occupied Palestinian territory. Instead, Amnesty determined that Israel operates a single, institutional regime of oppression and domination, amounting to Apartheid, whose victims include Palestinians under military occupation, Palestinian citizens within Israel, and even Palestinian refugees in exile. This regime is characterized by the fragmentation of the Palestinian people into domains of control, discrimination in land and property, segregation, the deprivation of rights, and inhumane acts. Amnesty urges governments to adopt a series of measures to pressure Israel into dismantling its system of apartheid; recommendations include a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, a ban on settlement goods, and targeted sanctions against Israeli officials.

Over the past year, several prominent international and Israeli human rights organizations have independently determined that Israel’s actions amount to Apartheid. In April 2021, Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded that Israeli officials were committing the crimes against humanity of Apartheid and persecution. A few months earlier, Israel’s largest human rights group B’Tselem concluded that Israel is best described in terms of Apartheid, or as “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” CJPME maintains a list of notable figures and organizations, including many of Israel’s most important human rights groups, who now describe Israeli oppression in terms of “Apartheid.” Despite the credible and authoritative voices who have made similar claims, Canada’s then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Marc Garneau stated in May 2021 that Canada “categorically” rejects the “apartheid label.”

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Medical debt is the predominant cause for about 25% of consumer bankruptcies, with medical debt often triggered by “sudden adverse events — such as vaccine-induced myocarditis.

For decades, families have been learning bitter lessons about the financial impact of vaccine injuries. In an estimated 18% to 26% of consumer bankruptcies or more, medical debt is the “predominant causal factor” — with medical debt often triggered by “sudden adverse events.”

Consider autism — by now indisputably linked to vaccines as well as other toxic exposures — which can saddle families with lifetime care costs of $1.4 to $2.4 million, setting up a contentious battleground between parents and entities like insurance companies and school systems that don’t want to “pick up that big tab.”

The government’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP), too, has gone to great lengths to avoid compensating autism and other childhood vaccine injuries, helped along by the well-known dysfunctions of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

Although an HHS-commissioned study estimated, in 2010, that 1 in every 38 vaccine doses (2.6%) produced an adverse reaction, the conveniently broken surveillance system facilitates propagation of the fiction that adverse events are “rare,” “one in a million” or, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, “almost nonmeasurable.”

The taxpayer-funded NVICP has paid out over $4.7 billion since 1988 and professes to be an “accessible and efficient forum for individuals found to be injured by certain vaccines.” But its adversarial — and sluggish — process and sky-high burden of proof result in two-thirds of claims being dismissed or remaining in limbo.

When it does pay out, NVICP more often compensates vaccine injuries in adults than children.

Recipients of Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) COVID injections ostensibly have recourse to the special Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), but the CICP, from its inception, has proved to be even more of a hollow promise than the NVICP, with no funds set aside to cover eventual compensation, no allowance for attorneys’ fees and a one-year statute of limitations.

As attorneys wrote in January, “If you have suffered a serious injury from a Covid-19 vaccine, you are basically on your own.”

In short, the financial stakes for those who take liability-free COVID shots — with their unparalleled health risks — are high.

In early 2020, the CEO of a crowdfunding platform noted that over one-third of its fundraisers were for medical expenses. With more than 1 million COVID-vaccine-related adverse events reported to VAERS since December 2020, that state of affairs has picked up even more speed, as households rack up extraordinary debt and turn to crowdfunding for help.

Heart problems: a known vaccine adverse event

Well before COVID, myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart) were understood to be the result of “the interaction of an external environmental trigger with the host’s immune system.”

One of those “environmental triggers,” researchers acknowledged, was vaccination.

For example, analyses of VAERS and clinical data identified the two cardiac conditions as adverse events reported after vaccines for anthrax, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), hepatitis A, hepatitis B, human papillomavirus (HPV), influenza, meningococcal illness, smallpox, typhoid, varicella (chickenpox) and zoster (shingles).

A 2018 case report described myocarditis in a 6-week-old infant following administration of a diphtheria, whole-cell pertussis and tetanus toxoid (DPT) shot.

With the advent of COVID shots, cardiac adverse events — myocarditis, pericarditis and myopericarditis — have skyrocketed to an entirely new level, especially in young males and especially after the second dose.

In young people under the age of 30, VAERS shows “a 15,600% increase in heart disease following COVID EUA vaccines compared to FDA-approved [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] vaccines for the previous 31 years.”

With heart problems being some of the most commonly reported, widely published and life-changing COVID-jab-related injuries, the FDA was forced into requiring warnings about the increased risks in manufacturer fact sheets.

As University of Pennsylvania researchers put it last year (parroting official silliness about such events being “rare”), “the temporal association of the receipt of the vaccine and absence of other plausible causes suggest the vaccine as the likely precipitant of these rare events.”

Expensive conditions

Heart conditions pack a financial wallop, predominating among the 20 most expensive conditions treated in American hospitals and accounting for almost half of aggregate hospital costs.

With the most expensive healthcare in the world, a third of U.S. healthcare spending goes to hospital care.

Analyzing several hundred confirmed myocarditis and pericarditis cases in young COVID vaccine recipients (< 29 years), a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientist reported in June 2021 that 96% of the youth with heart injuries had been hospitalized.

Past studies of myocarditis and pericarditis hospitalization costs have found the following:

• As of 2016, the median inflation-adjusted cost of a single pediatric hospitalization for acute myocarditis (median hospital stay = 6.1 days) was more than $27K — already representing a “significant” increase over 2007 costs and likely much higher today.
• One in five kids hospitalized with myocarditis has an arrhythmia. A pediatric study published in 2020 reported the median cost of hospitalization for children with myocarditis involving arrhythmia to be far higher — almost $122K versus roughly $38K for myocarditis patients without arrhythmia. Heart rhythm problems also dramatically increased the odds of death.
• The median cost of hospitalization for acute pericarditis (all age groups), as of 2016, was estimated at around $10K, but nearly one in five patients (18%) reentered the hospital within 30 days of discharge, at a cost of another nearly $10K.

Both arrhythmias and complications from cardiac treatments are common causes of hospital readmission.

Not ‘mild’ and not short-term

Myocarditis manifestations include increased heart rate (tachycardia), irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia), a heart-attack-like presentation and acute heart failure.

Longer-term sequelae include dilated cardiomyopathy (enlarged ventricles) and chronic heart failure.

Chest pain, malaise and palpitations are common signs of pericarditis. It, too, can lead to heart failure and other longer-term complications.

Children tend to have a more fulminant — sudden and severe — myocarditis presentation than adults, with an estimated 7% to 15% mortality rate. Children hospitalized with myocarditis are more likely to die than children admitted with other diagnoses.

Discussing myocarditis in 2012, Mayo Clinic researchers acknowledged that even with a good short-term prognosis, “patients who initially recover might develop recurrent dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure, sometimes years later.”

One of the Mayo authors added in 2018, “the greatest burden of myocarditis may not be apparent for 6 to 12 years after diagnosis when children die or need to undergo cardiac transplantation.”

Strangely, Mayo nevertheless continues to propagate the myth of “mild” myocarditis, a dishonest characterization that physicians in the COVID era have strenuously protested.

Dr. Steven Pelech of the University of British Columbia explained last August, for example:

“Contrary to what a number of people have said, there is no such thing as ‘mild myocarditis.’ It’s the destruction of the myocytes, the heart cells that contract. When those cells die, they are not replaced in your body and are instead replaced by scar-tissue, which is from fibroblasts — skin cells which don’t have contractile activity …Every time you get an inflammatory response, you lose more of that contractility and have a greater chance of heart attack and other problems later in life.”

A New Zealand writer pointedly observed that “mild” clinical manifestations in the present are meaningless for interpreting longer-term risks.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans with gadolinium contrast — capable of showing “damaged heart areas undetectable by any other means” — studies of children and adolescents who developed myocarditis following COVID vaccination revealed, in the vast majority, a “potentially poor prognosis despite the heart seeming to have returned to normal.”

Describing their study just published in Neurology, University of California, San Francisco researchers Laure Rouch and Kristine Yaffe told Medscape “heart health is key to brain health.”

The study disclosed the alarming finding that abnormalities in cardiac structure and function acquired in young adulthood are a risk factor for cognitive decline in midlife.

Myocarditis and pericarditis interventions — costly bandaids

Myocarditis treatments are expensive but almost purely supportive, primarily aimed at managing complications.

For severe cases, interventions can be costly, aggressive and often futile.

For complications of severe myocarditis, the last resort is a heart transplant. Ironically, individuals who need a transplant but refuse to get a COVID shot are being taken off transplant waiting lists.

Situations involving acute cardiac failure and heart transplantation may lead to short-term mechanical circulatory support, including the use of ventricular assist devices (VAD) or lung-mimicking extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines.

These gizmos come with a high price tag, with total hospitalization costs for pediatric patients receiving such support estimated around $755K (VAD) and $809K (ECMO), versus $457K for patients not getting mechanical support.

Unfortunately, research involving pediatric heart patients suggests these mechanical supports do little good. In one myocarditis study in kids, the development of ventricular arrhythmia strongly predicted both ECMO utilization AND mortality.

Good for business, bad for families

Cardiac injuries triggered by dangerous COVID injections appear to be good for business. As the Mayo Clinic frankly admits, some myocarditis patients will require lifelong medication — creating customers for life.

Moreover, the corticosteroids — “or other medications to suppress [the] immune system” —  and anti-clotting or blood-pressure drugs prescribed for supposedly “mild” cases of myocarditis come with their own set of side effects, setting the stage for further profit-generating medical and pharmaceutical interventions down the road.

A July 2021 BusinessWire report forecast a booming market for cardiac-assist devices such as VAD through 2027, noting “increasing incidence of heart failure is driving growth.”

BusinessWire cited the vast pipeline of such products as a market driver and “opportunity.”

Market researchers also predict:

• An “upward trend” for the overall “myocarditis treatment market,” with the market “expected to rise over the projected horizon” (2021–2027).
• Steady growth in the global market addressing dilated cardiomyopathy (one of the downstream consequences of myocarditis) — from $163 million in 2019 to $258.2 million by 2026.
• An equally rosy “global pericarditis market” featuring market players such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca as well as other Pharma giants such as Bayer and Merck.

In addition, Big Pharma is champing at the bit to roll out expensive new pericarditis therapies — which researchers eagerly (coincidentally?) announced in late summer and fall of 2021.

Meanwhile, COVID shots are leaving many young people either dead or facing a broken heart and uncertain future.

Even with definitive autopsy confirmation of a direct vaccine-myocarditis link staring them in the face, the engineers of “this ungodly and criminal medical experiment on humankind” — a key fixture of the push for a global control grid — are content to uphold the ruinous status quo.

Where does that leave families?

Holding the bag not just emotionally, but financially, blindsided by financial impacts they surely never anticipated.

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BMJ editor Peter Doshi has publicly called for release of raw data from the clinical trials that led to the emergency use authorization of the COVID-19 shots. The FDA has a statutory obligation to publish the Pfizer data after drug approval, leaving Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca to provide the raw data

The delay in releasing raw data is reminiscent of Roche’s handling of Tamiflu and Gilead’s determination to get authorization for remdesivir to treat COVID-19, despite clinical data demonstrating the drug showed little or no positive effect

At least one Pfizer testing facility had poor practices, including data that were falsified, patients who were unblinded and poorly trained people hired to administer the injections

In an opinion piece published coincidentally on the day the FDA announced full approval of the Pfizer injection, Doshi noted Pfizer’s August 2021 preprint paper held no new information since April 2021, and the shot demonstrated waning immunity in Israel, where it was used exclusively

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While other Big Pharma manufacturers have developed and released a COVID-19 genetic therapy injection, only shots from Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have been approved in the U.S.¹

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) editor Peter Doshi, an associate professor of pharmaceutical health services research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, has called for the release of the clinical trial raw data on which the emergency use authorizations were based.²

As of December 2021, there were 12 countries with the capacity to produce the shots being distributed throughout the world, with approximately 200 vaccine candidates that are in preclinical development.³ According to OpenVAERS,⁴ there have been 1,053,828 adverse events reported as of January 14, 2022, and of those 593,078 (56.2%) are attributed to the Pfizer/BioNTech shot.

Of the three emergency use authorization approved shots in the U.S., Pfizer’s Comirnaty was the only one approved for full use by the FDA in August 2021.⁵ The thing is, Comirnaty is not available in the U.S., and won’t be made available as long as doses of the Emergency Use Authorized Pfizer shot, BNT162b2, remain.⁶

In other words, the shot that has triggered more than half of all adverse events is the one that is being touted as approved by the FDA — when in reality the shot that was actually approved isn’t even available yet. Dr. Peter Marks, FDA’s director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research wrote this as justification for the approval to do this in the FDA press release:⁷

“Our scientific and medical experts conducted an incredibly thorough and thoughtful evaluation of this vaccine. We evaluated scientific data and information included in hundreds of thousands of pages, conducted our own analyses of Comirnaty’s safety and effectiveness, and performed a detailed assessment of the manufacturing processes, including inspections of the manufacturing facilities.”

It is the FDA’s statutory obligation⁸ to publish this “incredibly thorough” evaluation of the data and their own analysis within 30 days of a drug approval. Yet, after a Freedom of Information Act request and subsequent lawsuit by a nonprofit group to release the data,⁹ the FDA proposed to release documentation over many decades.

Ultimately, they asked a federal judge to give them 75 years to complete the process,¹⁰ but in January 2022 a federal judge ordered the FDA to accelerate this schedule to eight months.¹¹

Pfizer Won’t Accept Requests for Trial Data Until 2025

According to Doshi,¹² it will take Pfizer at least 24 months after the study completion date listed on ClinicalTrials.gov¹³ to even consider a request to release the primary data. Doshi calls this an “unacceptable delay,” and yet the lack of access to data is not unique to Pfizer.

Moderna and AstraZeneca¹⁴ have both indicated they will have similar delays in releasing their data.¹⁵ Since only the data from Pfizer can be released by the FDA, it falls to Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca to provide the raw data. Doshi points out that raw data for other therapeutics tied to COVID-19 are also difficult to uncover.

For example, the published reports of the monoclonal antibody therapy produced by Regeneron state that any raw data will not be released to others.¹⁶ Only the methods and findings will be released, and the raw data will only be considered once the drug has been approved and if there’s legal authority to share it.

Likewise, Doshi notes the raw data from the National Institutes of Health for the drug promoted to treat COVID-19 — remdesivir — is limited, with the accompanying explanation: “The longitudinal data set only contains a small subset of the protocol and statistical analysis plan objectives.”¹⁷Doshi argues the point, writing:

“We are left with publications but no access to the underlying data on reasonable request. This is worrying for trial participants, researchers, clinicians, journal editors, policy makers, and the public. The journals that have published these primary studies may argue that they faced an awkward dilemma, caught between making the summary findings available quickly and upholding the best ethical values that support timely access to underlying data.

In our view, there is no dilemma; the anonymized individual participant data from clinical trials must be made available for independent scrutiny.”

Access to the underlying data is necessary for transparent decision-making. Each of these are essential steps for public health safety. Doshi notes¹⁸ that had information been revealed as to why the vaccine trials were not used to test efficacy against the infection, countries would have learned earlier about how the vaccine allowed transmission in the pandemic and would have been able to plan public health strategies accordingly.

Pfizer has been a habitual offender in shady dealings, having been sued in multiple venues over unethical drug testing, illegal marketing practices,¹⁹ bribery in multiple countries,²⁰ environmental violations,²¹ labor and worker safety violations and more.^22,23

Doshi cites documentation²⁴ that three of the companies have had past criminal and civil settlements costing them billions of dollars, one pleaded guilty to fraud and other drug companies have jumped into developing a genetic injection with no track record before the pandemic. These actions create doubt that the raw data will adequately support the manufacturers claims.

Doshi recalls that 12 years ago the scientific community called for the release of raw data from clinical trials from another drug that was stockpiled by governments around the world in the middle of a different pandemic.²⁵

In this case, most of the trials that formed the foundation of the government approval and stockpiling of Tamiflu were sponsored by the manufacturer and ghost written by writers paid by the manufacturer. Ironically, those who were listed as principal authors did not have access to the raw data.

The history of Tamiflu also parallels remdesivir, a drug that has little or no positive effect on treatment of COVID.²⁶ Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist who works for the Cochrane Collaboration, an organization that collects and reviews medical research findings.

In his presentation at the Symposium about Scientific Freedom in Copenhagen,²⁷ Jefferson described the intricate and complex journey he and his team took to publish the only Cochrane review that was based solely on raw unpublished regulatory data for Tamiflu.

Ultimately, his review demonstrated that the drug shortened the duration of symptoms from flu by less than one day. However, the struggle to obtain the data was nearly as eye-opening as the results.

It took four years for Roche to deliver 150,000 pages of clinical data to Jefferson’s team.²⁸ After getting the data, Jefferson found that although the drug was used worldwide, the WHO had never vetted the raw data, nor had the European Medicines Agency, nor had the CDC.

The FDA had seen the data, however, which prompted them to request a published statement on the label “saying serious bacterial infections may begin with influenza-like symptoms or may coexist with or without complications … but Tamiflu has not been shown to prevent such complications.”²⁹Jefferson commented: “The FDA was saying, this business about complications, no evidence of that.”

Jefferson also notes that even a decade after the Tamiflu Phase 3 trials were completed, they remained unpublished. From an analysis the team determined “there was no convincing trial evidence that Tamiflu affected influenza complications and treatment or influenza infections in prophylaxis.”³⁰

At Least One Pfizer Shot Testing Facility Had Poor Practices

Paul Thacker, investigative journalist from the BMJ, reported on evidence presented by researchers in a Texas privately-owned clinical research lab that the data integrity in Pfizer’s vaccine trial was suspect.³¹ While this should have been front-page news in 2021, the mainstream media completely ignored it.

According to Brook Jackson, a veteran clinical research coordinator with 20 years of experience, the Pfizer Phase 3 COVID jab trial included data that were falsified, patients who were unblinded and poorly trained people hired to administer the injections. Additionally, follow up on any adverse side effects reported by the participants lagged significantly.

Thacker led the article with the statement: “Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal COVID-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight.”³²

Jackson attempted to inform her superiors multiple times. When her concerns were ignored, she called the FDA and filed an email complaint. Hours later she was fired after working just two weeks. According to her separation letter the management had decided she was “not a good fit” for the company. According to Jackson, this was the first time she’d ever been fired in her 20-year career as a clinical research coordinator.

While the briefing document that Pfizer submitted to the FDA in the application for an emergency use authorization contained no indication of any problems at the lab, Jackson has since provided The BMJ with “dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings and emails”³³proving her concerns were valid.

The BMJ also learned that Jackson’s allegations were supported by others. Months later, Jackson reconnected with employees who were either fired from the lab or who left. One official sent a text message to Jackson saying, “everything that you complained about was spot on.”³⁴

Two other former employees spoke to The BMJ anonymously confirming the broad allegations made in Jackson’s complaint, with one person saying she had worked on more than four dozen trials during her career, but had never experienced the type of work environment at Ventavia on the Pfizer trial.

For example, in several cases there weren’t enough employees to swab the trial participants who were reporting symptom, even though the trial required lab confirmation of symptomatic COVID-19 as a primary endpoint. The employee called the data produced by the Ventavia lab for the Pfizer trial “a crazy mess.”³⁵

Preprint Data Demonstrate Waning Immunity by March 2021

Doshi also addressed the need for adequate and controlled studies with long-term follow-up before granting approval for vaccinations, most notably the COVID-19 genetic therapy injection.³⁶ In an opinion piece published August 23, 2021, he discussed the updated results that Pfizer had posted for their ongoing Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial.³⁷

Months before, the company had announced the vaccine efficacy was estimated to be “up to six months” after injection.³⁸ While updated results were published one year after the trial began,³⁹there were not 10 months of data in the follow-up. The paper appeared to be based on the same data included in the April 1, 2021, news release from Pfizer.⁴⁰

The efficacy results were identical, claiming 91.3% efficacy against symptomatic disease “up to six months of follow-up.” Doshi points out that this matters because it is thus far the most information Pfizer had offered to the public as they were pursuing full approval from the FDA. Both Pfizer⁴¹ and the CDC⁴² have claimed the shot is 95% effective.

Without addressing whether that 95% is absolute or relative risk reduction, or how Pfizer arrived at those claims, it’s also important to note that little can be said about how long vaccine-induced immunity could last when researchers had only measured two months of data.

“Waning immunity” is a known issue for some vaccines, such as the influenza shot.⁴³ Doshi notes⁴⁴there have been some studies that found near zero effectiveness only three months after the flu vaccine was administered. The crucial question is the level of effectiveness of the vaccine after an individual is exposed to the virus.

In early July 2021, Israel’s Ministry of Health reported that efficacy against asymptomatic disease fell dramatically in the months following vaccinations. Israel exclusively uses the Pfizer vaccine, which Pfizer’s chief scientific officer, Philip Dormitzer, told a Zoom meeting:⁴⁵

“Early in the pandemic we established a relationship with the Israeli Ministry of Health where they used exclusively the Pfizer vaccine and then monitored it very closely, so we had a sort of laboratory where we could see the effect.”

Only 7% of Trial Participants Reached 6 Months of Data

Data released from Israel show the efficacy fell to 64% over one month from June 6, 2021, to July 5, 2021.⁴⁶ By late July, the efficacy had dropped dramatically again to 39%.⁴⁷ While these numbers are low, the FDA’s expectation is that any approved vaccine should be at least 50% effective.⁴⁸

Starting in December 2020, Pfizer unblinded the majority of the participants in the trial and allowed the placebo group to get vaccinated. By March 13, 2021, 93% of those participating in the Pfizer trial had been unblinded. This means the reference to six months of safety and efficacy in the preprint paper reports on only the 7% of trial participants that reached six months of the blinded follow up.

While the paper was published one year after the trial began, the data reported do not go past the first six months, which is the time period in which Israel reports efficacy dropped to 39%. Doshi goes on to say:⁴⁹

“It is hard to imagine that the <10% of trial participants who remained blinded at six months (which presumably further dwindled after 13 March 2021) could constitute a reliable or valid sample to produce further findings. And the preprint does not report any demographic comparisons to justify future analyses.”

Although claims have been made that the vaccine prevents severe disease, the trials were not designed to study severe disease, which Doshi details in another paper published in The BMJ.⁵⁰ In the opinion piece published in The BMJ, Doshi writes:⁵¹

“But here we are, with FDA reportedly on the verge of granting a marketing license 13 months into the still ongoing, two-year pivotal trial, with no reported data past 13 March 2021, unclear efficacy after six months due to unblinding, evidence of waning protection irrespective of the Delta variant, and limited reporting of safety data.”

Coincidentally, the very day Doshi’s paper was published in The BMJ, the FDA announced approval for the Pfizer COVID-19 shot being marketed as Comirnaty.⁵²

Yet, without adequate data analysis, and with mounting numbers of adverse events reported to VAERS,⁵³ the FDA still expanded eligibility for the jab to include children 12 years and older to receive a single booster dose and approved emergency use authorization for children 5 years old and older.⁵⁴ Doshi ends with a reasoned and logical call to action to the FDA:⁵⁵

“FDA should be demanding that the companies complete the two-year follow-up, as originally planned (even without a placebo group, much can still be learned about safety). They should demand adequate, controlled studies using patient outcomes in the now substantial population of people who have recovered from covid. And regulators should bolster public trust by helping ensure that everyone can access the underlying data.”

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Notes

¹ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, January 21, 2022

^2, 12, 15 The BMJ; 2022;376:o102

³ Council on Foreign Relations, December 27, 2021, What are the leading COVID vaccines?

⁴ Open VAERS, January 14, 2022

^5, 7, 52 FDA, August 23, 2021

⁶ Anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com January 10, 2022

⁸ SOPP 8401.7: Action Package for Posting December 11, 2020, page 1, III. Background, 30 calendar days

⁹ United States District Court Northern District Of Texas, September 16, 2021, Introduction #9

¹⁰ Maryanne Demasi, December 20, 2021

¹¹ Reuters, January 7, 2022

¹³ Clinical Trials, NCT04368728

¹⁴ FDA, August 6, 2021

¹⁶ New England Journal of Medicine, 2021; NEJMoa2108163

¹⁷ The BMJ; 2022;376:o102 Section 2

¹⁸ The BMJ; 2022;376:o102 Section 3 para 1

¹⁹ SGT Report January 7, 2021

²⁰ CorpWatch August 8, 2012

^21, 22 Corporate Research Project February 3, 2017

²³ Matthews & Associates November 18, 2020

²⁴ The BMJ; 2022;376:o102 Section 3 para 2

²⁵ The BMJ; 2022;376:o102 top para and 2nd from the bottom

²⁶ medRxiv, 2020; doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.15.20209817

²⁷ YouTube, April 29th, 2019

²⁸ YouTube, April 29th, 2019 Min 13:50 & 14:11

²⁹ YouTube, April 29th, 2019 Min 13:10

³⁰ YouTube, April 29th, 2019 Min 14:50

^{31, 32, 33, 34, 35} The BMJ, 2021;375:n2635

^{36, 44, 51, 55} The BMJ Opinion, August 23, 2021

³⁷ medRxiv, 2021; doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159

^38, 40 Pfizer, April 1, 2021

³⁹ Clinical Trials, NCT04368728 Record

⁴¹ Pfizer, November 18, 2020

⁴² Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, January 6, 2022; How well the vaccine works

⁴³ Clinical Infectious Disease, 2021;73(4)

⁴⁵ Times of Israel, September 12, 2021, para 3

⁴⁶ Reuters, July 5, 2021

⁴⁷ CNBC, July 23, 2021

⁴⁸ Food and Drug Administration Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research June 2020 page 17, E

⁴⁹ The BMJ Opinion, August 23, 2021; 40% down the page

⁵⁰ The BMJ, 2020;371:m4037

⁵³ OpenVAERS, COVID data

⁵⁴ FDA, January 19, 2022

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She worked in the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit (CTICU) of a major children’s hospital in San Diego, California for more than 12 years. Here’s her story about what happened after the vax rollout.

Tawny Buettner, RN, worked in the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit (CTICU) of a major children’s hospital in San Diego, California for more than 12 years.

Before the vaccine rollout, they’d see 4 or 5 myocarditis cases a year in the CTICU at the hospital where Tawny Buettner works that she was aware of (see 2:15 in the video).

In the last half of 2021, she is aware of 33 cases (at 4:15 in the video).

That’s an increase of over 10X in the rate of cases of myocarditis cases since the vaccines rolled out.

Not only that, the troponin levels of the kids were extremely high (start watching at 3:15), from the teens to up to the 30’s. Note that after a heart attack your troponin levels might hit 5 and then return to normal after a few days. So these troponin levels were elevated by something more extreme than a heart attack. Those levels can stay elevated for months. Troponin is released when the heart is damaged.

One person who commented on the video wrote:

I saw boys with troponin levels more than 400x than normal, 2-3 months after the injections. Girls don’t have high troponin, but they do have D-dimers up. God knows what’s coming next

Why aren’t we hearing this from other nurses?

Tawny is not the only CTICU RN witnessing this nightmare. Where are the others? Not willing to be fired.

It takes a dedicated intensivist RN fired for doing her job to tell us what she witnessed at her hospital.

Summary

The increased rate of myocarditis cases and excessive troponin levels didn’t happen by chance. It only started after the COVID vaccines rolled out.

The CDC says there is only a slightly elevated risk of myocarditis after the vaccine and they claim it is lower than the rate due to the virus.

Someone is lying to you.

Postscript

On Jan 28, 2022 I sent the following email to Nikki Daniels, Head of School of Monte Vista Christian School and bcc’ed a bunch of parents at the school. I’ll let you know if she responds. For background on MVCS, see Estimated 1 in 95 boys with myocarditis and There are now four myocarditis cases at Monte Vista.

What do you think Nikki should do? Keep quiet? Or go public?

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***

In less than 12 hours, Denmark turns into Florida.

No masks (except possibly in hospitals and nursing homes).

No vaccine passports.

Any person jabbed with ANY Covid shot can enter the country without a test; unvaccinated people can enter with a negative PCR test.

“We say goodbye to the restrictions and welcome the life we knew before,” the prime minister said last week.

Right on schedule, the bluecheck muppets popped up to explain that the Danes had won because they weren’t a bunch of unmasked Trump-loving mouth-breathers.

The muppets are half right. Denmark is 90 percent-plus adult vaccinated, almost 70 percent boosted. Plus the Danes have that legendary “high trust in government,” so they do exactly what the public health authorities say, double-quick! Denmark is Dr. Anthony Fauci’s dream.

But here’s the thing.

Sars-Cov-2 could not care less about all that trust and all those jabs. Denmark is now right up there with Israel in seeing the highest rates of infections of any country – ever.

In the last two weeks, more than 10 percent of ALL Danes – the equivalent of 35 million Americans – have been infected with Covid (the number is probably considerably higher, because at some point testing becomes impossible).

As someone once said, virus gonna virus.

And though Omicron is milder than Delta, Covid deaths in Denmark are now higher than at any point except a couple weeks last January, and the rise shows no sign of slowing.

In fact, even if the Omicron wave suddenly turns around with the end of all restrictions (and wouldn’t that be ironic), deaths will almost certainly keep rising through most if not all of February. Deaths lag.

In reality Covid is far from done with Denmark.

But the Danes are done with Covid. I thought they had figured this out back in September, when they went through their first round of loosening restrictions. (I wrote about them then.)

But the fall wave spooked them – and convinced them to give boosters a try.

Now they have learned. Fool me twice, mRNA vaccines, shame on you. Even those legendarily trusting Danes were hardly going to line up for a fourth shot in a hurry.

Let’s just hope that they haven’t mucked up their chance at long-term immunity too much already. Time will tell. (It would be nice if the virologists and immunologists weren’t too scared to attack this question head-on, but Saint Fauci and the Bright Boys (free band name!) are going to do everything possible to keep anyone with a laboratory from asking.)

In any case, the vaccine fanatics – so wrong about so much so often – are right on one point. Small, rich, mostly homogenous countries like Denmark, with relatively stable political cultures, have a big edge right now. Their public health advocates and governments will have a far easier time admitting they were wrong than those in the United States.

The reason should be obvious.

Nobody risks getting fired – much less indicted – in Denmark for telling the truth.

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US-Qatar relations seem to be getting better and better. During a conversation at the White House with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, US President Joe Biden promised to elevate Qatar’s military status, considering it a major non-NATO ally. The measure favors the Qatari state as it allows the country access to a select sphere of the American arms market, with special prices and favorable tax conditions. In fact, this case looks like a real trade-off to encourage Qatar to play a major role in US energy strategy: Biden simply wants Doha to produce and export more and more gas to Europe in order to prevent international cooperation projects with Russia.

In recognition of the historic cooperation between both countries and the role played by Qatar as a rescuer of US troops fleeing Afghanistan during Taliban’s seizure of Kabul, Joe Biden decided to designate Doha as Major non-NATO Ally, a status that grants Qatar privileged access to special conditions in the trade of weapons and military equipment between the two countries, which makes the American proposal very profitable for the Qataris.

Also, more than economic, legal and fiscal privileges, the promotion to this status in NATO strengthens US-Qatar relations because it “guarantees” Doha the existence of solid ties of respect and mutual trust between the countries, encouraging the Qatari government to believe in a possible US cooperation and military assistance during an eventual conflict scenario in the future.

These were some of Biden’s words:

“I’m notifying Congress that I will designate Qatar as a major non-NATO ally to reflect the importance of our relationship; I think it’s long overdue (…) I am making this designation in recognition of Qatar’s many years of contributions to US-led efforts in the US Central Command area of responsibility and in recognition of our own national interest in deepening bilateral defense and security cooperation with the State of Qatar”.

There is clearly an interest on the part of Washington to make Doha a central agent in the current US anti-Russian strategy, especially with regard to the energy issue. One of the biggest difficulties seen by the US in its attempt to promote a global boycott against Russia is to replace the role played by Moscow in the energy supply of several countries – among them, many American allies. As one of the major global producers and exporters of natural gas, Qatar shows great strategic value to the US as it can be a key to encouraging more and more countries to stop buying gas from Russia.

Last week, the White House had already informed that the issue of energy supply would be the main topic of discussion during the visit of the Emir of Qatar. Washington has planned to diversify the energy sources of its partner countries, mainly on the European continent, which consumes most of Russian gas. Qatar is playing a key role in this game: Doha increases production and lowers prices for European countries to consume its gas. In return, Washington gives Doha the “guarantee” of military cooperation within NATO to ensure that the country remains safe and protected by the West from any possible reprisals for adhering to such a plan.

However, the Qatari government needs to analyze the proposal carefully, as there are several points that make this cooperation questionable in its purposes. Doha’s designation as a NATO ally is very profitable from a technological and economic point of view, as it gives access to the aforementioned military market. But such a measure means little from a realistic and pragmatic perspective, since, despite being considered an “ally”, the country that is outside NATO does not share the guarantees of protection enjoyed by the members of the alliance.

On the other hand, regardless of the military aid issue, designation as a non-NATO ally will make Doha adhere to all the alliance’s projects. In fact, accepting the new status of partner of the Western bloc, in this sense, will certainly involve a decrease in the important strategic ties that Doha has with Beijing, for example, considering that China is one of Washington’s biggest enemies. In other words, it is a position that demands more than it provides. By assuming closer ties with NATO, in short, Doha will be giving up a large part of its strategic autonomy and its ability to maintain ties with different powers.

Qatar will accept a prestigious position in the gas market and a high military status but will become dependent on the West to maintain its economic stability, ceasing to occupy the role of regional power with its own sovereign interests, which has been its main characteristic in recent years.

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Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

Featured image is from https://www.qatar-tribune.com/

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***

According to reports from Israel, the population there is 90% vaccinated and boostered with some on 4 jabs, and hospitals are full of Omicron patients and so many doctors and nurses are themselves sick that there is no one to care for the patients.

What is going on?

First of all, here is total proof that the Covid vaccines do not protect, so why are they still being pushed using tyrannical methods as protection? It makes no sense other than the profits of pharmaceutical companies and the power it gives governments to dispense with civil liberty.

Second, according to numerous reports from countries, what is called the Omicron variant is not deadly and seldom hospitalizes those infected. So why is it that in Israel hospitals cannot cope with Omicron patients?

Can it be that so many hospitalized vaccinated people are suffering from adverse reactions to the vaccine? Medical scientists have established that the mRNA vaccines cause our immune system to attack our vital organs. The extent of this is difficult to nail down for two reasons. One is that in the US, for example, hospitals are discouraged from reporting vaccine-associated injuries and deaths to the adverse reaction reporting system. The other is that the Fauci-Big Pharma controlled medical establishment refuses to acknowledge that adverse reactions are not “rare” but widespread. Enormous increases in heart, lung, neurological an other problems have been reported in vaccinated populations, and the rollout of vaccination has been followed by the unprecedented event of children and healthy athletes dropping dead from heart attacks. There is no other explanation but the vaccines.

If the evidence that independent medical scientists have found is correct that the vaccine turns our immune system into a weapon against our vital organs, countries, such as Israel, with most of their populations vaccinated will lose a significant percentage of their populations to injuries and death.

It is clearly medical malpractice to continue to vaccinate before examining the evidence provided by independent scientists. All vaccination should cease until open and uncensored examination of the evidence either refutes or confirms the independent scientists. The scientists on Fauci’s and Big Pharma’s payrolls obviously have conflicts of interest. As all of the public health authorities, such as WHO, NIH, CDC, and regulatory authorities such as FDA are themselves compromised by their financial relationships with Big Pharma, and as the presstitutes censor and deplatform the evidence of independent scientists, there seem to be no way to stop the insane and irresponsible malpractice that is the heart and soul of the Covid protocol.

Humanity is being driven over the cliff by malpractice that is called “science.”

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

Featured image is from America’s Frontline Doctors

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What would a completely unscrupulous chief executive whose sole purpose in life is to seize power and never relinquish it do to conceal his evil intentions? He or she would use deception to change the narrative. Many are beginning to recognize that that is precisely what the Democrats are doing and their game plan includes demonizing both Russia and China to create plausible external enemies while also generating fear and uncertainty around alleged domestic threats as well as the COVID menace, to include initiating mandates designed to make the people submissive and fearful of legal and personal consequences for defying the government. Well, be that as it may, the penny has finally dropped and it is now clear that Biden-Pelosi-Schumer are intent on changing the rules and using lawfare and other tools to create a permanent governing majority.

The key to power in this case has been exploiting the legal system to criminalize many forms of dissent. For the past year President Joe Biden and his Department of Justice sidekick Attorney General Merrick Garland have been making noises about all the terrorists running around loose in the country. And they have not been shy about suggesting that the alleged terrorists are nothing less that “white supremacists” who are allegedly promoting violence to address their grievances against the new administration in Washington. Well, it has now become official. The Biden government has mobilized and has finally declared “war on the American people,” most particularly the third or so of the population that has concerns about the conduct and results of the 2020 election as well as over the “woke” racial preference policies that the government has been aggressively promoting.

On January 11^th, Matthew Olsen, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, revealed to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI has now created a special unit that will deal exclusively with “domestic terrorism,” which it further describes as constituting an “elevated threat” to American democracy. Olsen claimed that there has been a large increase in “domestic extremism” reports having doubled in 2021 compared with the previous year. The new unit will “augment the existing approach” by way of additional resources that have been made available to identify the dissidents, track them down, arrest them and try them under the authority of various laws that were originally conceived as a legal tool to combat the perceived international terrorist threat after 9/11.

Olsen, citing what he referred to as the January 6^th 2021 “riot” at the Capitol in Washington, elaborated how the Department of Justice believes that the nation now faces a serious threat from “domestic violent extremists — that is, individuals in the United States who seek to commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of domestic social or political goals.” He also suggested a racist motive behind some of the violence, adding that “We’ve seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus…,” and observed that the “terrorists” often are “anti-Authority,” whatever that is supposed to mean.

Olsen did not mention that the war on dissent has even included monitoring the social media of America’s military personnel lest they harbor dangerous thoughts. To be sure, the driving force behind the government’s campaign to criminalize the actions of the many citizens who object to the Biden Administration policies appears to be Olsen’s boss Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is very well placed to engage in mischief that will potentially affect all Americans. In fact, he has proven to be a more than willing accomplice in the social engineering that the Biden Administration is engaged in, to include his declaration last year that white supremacists are the single greatest terrorist threat the United States faces today.

Garland and others in the Biden Administration unashamedly propose that America’s governmental bodies and infrastructures are racist and supportive of “white supremacy” and must be deconstructed. “Building Back Better” requires everything to be examined through a value system determined by identity politics and race and it views both whites and their institutions as hopelessly corrupted, if not evil.

If there were any doubts about Biden’s intentions, they were dispelled in a speech made in Georgia on the same day that Olsen was addressing the Senate. Biden issued a call to arms that was full of race-baiting, claiming that those who are resisting the voting “reforms” that he is promoting are little better than notorious civil-rights era racists like George Wallace and Bull Connors. In reality, however, the voting changes that the Administration is promoting by fiat are, in fact, licenses to steal votes and commit large scale electoral fraud as they will strip states of the right to demand that voters prove both that they are citizens and legal residents.

On January 26^th the Department of Homeland Security got into the game, releasing a memo suggesting that the “domestic extremists” are seeking to make the lives of all Americans more difficult. The dissidents “have been developing plans to attack the US electric sector… since at least 2020.’” The report stated that extremists “adhering to a range of ideologies will likely continue to plot and encourage physical attacks against electrical infrastructure” but it did not provide even a single piece of evidence that the “threat” had ever proceeded beyond the talking stage, suggesting that the report was generated to create fear on the part of the public regarding the “domestic terrorism” issue.

In yet another instance demonstrating how the White House is interpreting its national security mandate in a highly partisan fashion, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated last week that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) works closely with the Bureau to identify and investigate instances of anti-Semitism in the United States. That should raise questions about a private group with an agenda working as a source for the police and intelligence services and it suggests in particular that critics of Israel and its policies will find themselves increasingly targeted by law enforcement under “hate crime” legislation. Such statements citing rising anti-Semitism and “holocaust denialism” also generate more fear among the public to justify “protection” by a dominating and intrusive national security apparatus.

Witness how this has already played out in Europe where “holocaust denial” has been widely criminalized by way of so-called “memory laws [which] prohibit the denial, justification, or trivialization of the crimes committed by the Nazis during World War II… France has had a ban on Holocaust denial in place since 1990. Austria’s ban was adopted in 1992, and Belgium’s is from 1995. Germany itself did not adopt an explicit ban until 1994, though it countered Holocaust denial before then through laws against defamation, incitement, and disparaging the memory of the dead… Holocaust denial laws were also approved in the 1990s by the European Court of Human Rights (under the Council of Europe), which stated that the negation or revision of ‘clearly established historical facts — such as the Holocaust — … would be removed from the protection’ of free speech under the European Convention on Human Rights.”

Eliminating free speech, the most fundamental right, would allow government and a compromised media to gain control of the narrative of government that prevails in the United States and would be a significant step towards totalitarian control. Going beyond that, the Administration is even reported to be considering devastating proposals to make all illegal immigrants citizens to allow them to vote. New York City has already declared that all residents will be able to vote on local issues, whether they are in the country legally or not. More to the point, the discussion comes at a time when the nation’s southern border has become an out-of-control entry point for anyone who can reach Mexico.

Even though the Biden Administration’s enemies list admittedly features white supremacists regarded ipso facto as extremists, it now notoriously also including those parents who do not support the various formulae being employed to install programs seeking to establish what is referred to as “equity” in the nation’s public schools. That the agenda is both reverse racism and detrimental to good educational practice is why parents are protesting. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has observed how “The Department of Justice’s fight against angry parents is a real testament to the authoritarian nature of the Biden administration and indeed, the entirety of the left. It takes a lot of hubris to declare that you know how to raise someone’s child better than them and send authorities to shut you down when you protest that.”

Senator Paul’s father former Congressman Ron Paul has also responded to the threat coming from a government that he perceives as trending towards totalitarianism by way of a single state model for education, commenting how “If government can override the wishes of parents in the name of ‘education’ or ‘protecting children’s health’ then what area of our lives is safe from government intrusion?”

If it is indeed true that Joe Biden is not completely in control of what his administration appears to be doing, one then has to wonder who is directing his appointed officials to pursue policies that are destructive of all the freedoms and other positive things that this nation once represented. One thing for sure, the mask is now off and the Democratic Party plan to create something like a totalitarian state with one party rule in perpetuum is right there for everyone to see.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: US Capitol during the January 6, 2021 attack on the building. Licensed under Creative Commons

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***

All charts and tables below reflect the data release on 01/28/2022 from the VAERS website, which includes U.S. and foreign data, and is updated through: 1/21/2022

*Note that the total number of deaths associated with the COVID-19 vaccines is more than double the number of deaths associated with all other vaccines combined since the year 1990.

Deaths

[Unknowns separated from All Other Vaccines for greater clarity; in a majority of cases the Unknowns are actually Covid-19]

Adverse Events

[Unknowns separated from All Other Vaccines for greater clarity; in many cases the Unknowns are actually Covid-19] 

Symptoms

The slide below was taken from an FDA document from October 22, 2020 and provides a list of possible adverse event outcomes related to the Covid-19 vaccines.

• Source: ‘Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee October 22,2020 Meeting Presentation”.

The following table lists the number of adverse events found in the VAERS data which match the outcomes listed above:

Average Annual Adverse Events by Symptom for COVID-19 Vaccines as a Multiple of All Other Vaccines Combined since 1990

(Data from VAERS through 1/21/22)

Vaccination Related Risks of COVID19 Vs. Flu

These set of figures compare the COVID19 vaccine to the traditional Flu vaccines.  ‘Risk of Death’ percentages depend on the ‘# of Vaccinations’ data, which is only approximate, and was pulled from the CDC’s report on Flu vaccination coverage for the 2019-2020 season, and from Our World in Data for the COVID19 vaccinations.

Covid19 vaccinations through 5/31/2021 vs. Flu vaccinations 7/1/2019 – 5/31/2020 (last complete flu season)

Risk of dying from COVID vaccine is 171 times greater than Flu Vaccine

Risk of adverse reaction from COVID vaccine is 56 times greater than Flu Vaccine

Notes

^[1] number of flu vaccinations based on estimated flu vaccine coverage data from CDC and estimated population data from US Census. Yearly flu vaccination data covers a period of time from 7/1 to 5/31 of the following year.

^[2] number of covid19 vaccinations based on estimates from Our World in Data ^[2] number of covid19 vaccinations based on estimates from Our World in Data

^[3] Persons vaccinated with at least one dose.

Vaccine Data by Manufacturer

Vaccine Data by Gender

Vaccine Data by Location

Recall History

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Our thanks to Mark Taliano (CRG Associate) for bringing this to our attention.

Sources

Vaccine data (Covid-19 and other vaccines) taken from CDC’s VAERS website, located here: https://vaers.hhs.gov/data/datasets.html.  VAERS data sets in the form of csv files are pulled down weekly and put into a database for reporting/analysis. Data files are available all the way back to 1990.

Number of doses distributed for other vaccines found in NVICP Data and Statistics report here: https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/hrsa/vaccine-compensation/data/data-statistics-report.pdf

Numbers for Covid-19 vaccines administered by manufacturer found here: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total

Numbers for total Covid-19 vaccine doses administered found here: https://data.cdc.gov/Vaccinations/COVID-19-Vaccination-Trends-in-the-United-States-N/rh2h-3yt2

Numbers for Flu vaccine doses administered for 2019-2020 season found here: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/fluvaxview/coverage-1920estimates.htm

Numbers for FDA regulated drugs taken from FDA’s FAERS website, located here: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/questions-and-answers-fdas-adverse-event-reporting-system-faers/fda-adverse-event-reporting-system-faers-public-dashboard

Featured image is from VAERS Analysis

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The D.C. District Court today invalidated the Department of the Interior’s decision to offer 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas leasing, marking a pivotal victory in the fight to defend Gulf communities and the planet from the worsening climate crisis.

The court held that Interior failed to accurately disclose and consider the greenhouse gas emissions that would result from the lease sale, violating a bedrock environmental law.

Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of Healthy Gulf, Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth on Aug. 31 against Interior Secretary Debra Haaland and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management following the notice of lease sale 257. The lawsuit noted that the 2017 environmental analysis that the Biden administration relied on to hold the sale is fatally flawed. The sale also contradicted the administration’s pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 50% to 52% by 2030.

The court decision holds Interior accountable for grossly underestimating the climate impacts and risks to Gulf communities before deciding to hold the largest oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history. This ruling ensures that waters and coasts will be protected from additional harmful drilling and eventual spills in the Gulf, where the fossil fuel industry is already sitting on 8 million acres of leases on public waters.

By vacating Interior’s decision to hold this illegal lease sale, the court has ensured that no harm will result from it. Whatever Interior decides to do, it must start with a blank slate and consider the full environmental costs.

“We are pleased that the court invalidated Interior’s illegal lease sale,” said Earthjustice’s senior attorney, Brettny Hardy. “We simply cannot continue to make investments in the fossil fuel industry to the peril of our communities and increasingly warming planet. This administration must meet this critical moment and honor the campaign promises President Biden made by stopping offshore leasing once and for all.  Interior should use its next 5-year leasing plan to protect our coastal communities and public waters and offer no new offshore leases. We can no longer afford to do anything less.”

“This is a victory for all Gulf communities impacted by the onshore pollution from offshore drilling in the Gulf,” said Cynthia Sarthou, executive director of Healthy Gulf. “Today, we can look forward to the day when we stop selling off our public waters for pennies on the dollar when a just transition to a clean energy future is critical to our very survival. Now, the Gulf can be seen as a viable field for offshore wind energy that will power our future.”

“This is a huge victory for our climate, Rice’s whales and Gulf communities,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “I’m thrilled the court saw through the Biden administration’s horribly reckless decision to hold the largest oil lease sale in U.S. history without carefully studying the risks. New oil leases are fundamentally incompatible with addressing the climate emergency, and they’ll cause more oil spills and harm to wildlife and people in the Gulf. For the sake of our climate and frontline communities, the Biden administration must end new leasing and phase out existing drilling. Anything less would be a gross failure of climate leadership.”

“Today’s decision is a victorious outcome not only for the Gulf’s communities, wildlife, and ecosystem, but also for the warming planet,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director at Friends of the Earth. “But the fight is not over. We will continue to hold the Biden administration accountable for making unlawful decisions that contradict its pledge to take swift, urgent action on ‘code red’ climate and environmental justice priorities.”

“The Biden administration’s failure to adequately evaluate the climate impacts of this massive lease sale wasn’t just out of step with their stated commitment to climate action, it was also illegal,” said Sierra Club Senior Attorney Devorah Ancel. “We are glad that the court has held them accountable for this reckless action, and we will continue to fight to protect Gulf Coast communities from the dangers of offshore drilling and climate chaos.”

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In mid-December, some 114 members of Congress sent a forceful letter to President Joe Biden calling for “immediate humanitarian actions” to lift the economic sanctions “that prevent food, medicine, and other humanitarian assistance from reaching the Cuban people.” With Cuba struggling to emerge from a dire, Covid-generated economic crisis, the congressional representatives are pushing the White House to end the restrictions imposed by the Trump administration on remittances and travel and restore the Obama-era policy of engagement with the island nation. “Engagement,” the members concluded, “is more likely to enable the political, economic, and social openings that Cubans may desire, and to ease the hardships that Cubans face today.”

Full engagement with Cuba, of course, would require lifting the US embargo—a demand the congressional letter conspicuously fails to make. As the embargo approaches its 60th anniversary, terminating it would require not only White House action but a vote in Congress that the Democratic leadership has neither the political capacity nor the moral courage to prioritize. Indeed, the humanitarian measures that these members of Congress are asking of President Biden are intended to soften an economic crisis that, for decades, the embargo has explicitly attempted to create.

Imposed by the proclamation of John F. Kennedy on February 3, 1962, and codified into law during the Clinton administration, the “embargo on all trade with Cuba” has evolved through many manifestations of punitive economic sanctions and commercial restrictions over the past 60 years. “The embargo is outdated and should be lifted,” Barack Obama declared during his dramatic but short-lived effort to normalize US-Cuba relations. Instead, this “mold-encrusted relic” of the Cold War, as The Nation once described it, remains in place—the framework of a protracted, and failed, US endeavor to promote regime change, as well as an enduring symbol of the perpetual hostility of US policy toward the Cuban revolution.

During the past six decades, The Nation has consistently opposed the US embargo against Cuba. The magazine has published editorial after editorial, story after story, with titles like “Endless Embargo,” “Tightening the Chokehold on Cuba,” “An Embargo That Serves No Purpose,” and “The Stupid Embargo.” The arguments for ending el bloqueo, as the Cubans refer to it, and adopting a sane, humanitarian, and normal US posture toward Cuba remain as relevant today as when they were published.

Cuba’s economy…depended on the United States for such essential itemsas trucks, buses, bulldozers, telephone and electrical equipment, industrial chemicals, medicine, raw cotton, detergents, lard, potatoes, poultry, butter, a large assortment of canned goods, and half of such staple items in the Cuban diet as rice and black beans…. A nation which had been an economic appendage of the United States was suddenly cut adrift; it was as if Florida had been isolated from the rest of the country, unable to sell oranges and cattle or to bring in tourists, gasoline, automobile parts, or Cape Canaveral rockets. —“Cuba Today: An Eyewitness Report,” by Samuel Shapiro, Sept. 22, 1962

We are antagonizing allies and enemies alike, and giving to others a market which geographically has been and should be ours. All this in the name of isolating Castro, but all we are doing is isolating ourselves. — Editorial, “The Inertia of Folly,” March 2, 1964

At the heart of the United States policy toward Cuba is the economic embargo. It was laid on to make things hard for the Cuban people in the expectation that they would recognize Fidel Castro as the man responsible for their hardship and throw the rascal out. The scheme has not worked; such schemes rarely do. Instead, the Cubans identified the cause of their troubles as the government of the United States. They rallied to Castro and he, for more than a decade, has used us as a whipping boy. —“Cuba: Policy of Malign Neglect,” by Richard O’Mara, Nov. 22, 1971

For fifteen years we have tried to bring down the Cuban Government, by an airtight trade embargo, by diplomatic boycott, and even sordid efforts apparently organized by the CIA to assassinate Prime Minister Castro and other Cuban leaders. With both Mr. Nixon and Mr. Ford making highly publicized missions to Peking and Moscow…one wonders why we maintain our unyielding stand toward Cuba….

From the vantage point of common sense, economics and diplomacy, we should be moving to normalize our relations with Cuba—not because we are looking for a love affair but because it is the only reasonable course for two neighboring nations….

—“Common Sense and Cuba,” by Senator George McGovern, Feb. 6, 1976

Among its other efforts to dismantle the Cuban revolution, the United States has imposed one of the longest, most strictly enforced and extensive trade embargoes on record. That embargo, twenty years old this year, has produced endless bitterness but has failed to accomplish its original purpose: the economic isolation of Cuba…. Obviously the United States has everything to gain by lifting the trade ban and nothing perceptible to lose. The market is there, the currency is there, the desire is there. Ultimately, Washington will gain more influence not only in Cuba but throughout the hemisphere by re-establishing trade and diplomatic relations with the island than by perpetuating a retaliatory embargo that long ago lost its punch. —“An Embargo That Serves No Purpose: Twenty Years of ‘El Bloqueo,’” by Maisie McAdoo, Dec. 4, 1982

Under the fashionable label of “promoting democracy,” Representative Robert Torricelli is propelling a new “punish Cuba” bill through Congress…. Torricelli’s missionary passion is directed toward tightening the already strict U.S. embargo on Cuba, so as to, in his words, “shorten the suffering of the Cuban people by isolating Castro and forcing him out.” Despite recent polls showing that a significant sector of Cuban-Americans oppose tightening the embargo, Torricelli claims to speak for that community. This presumption has led to some dramatic exchanges with those Cuban-Americans who call his bill a “new Platt Amendment,” referring to the 1901 act that said the United States had the right to intervene at will in Cuban affairs. —“Tightening the Chokehold on Cuba,” by Saul Landau, June 15, 1992

Source: The Nation

In a 1992 letter to the Bush Administration, protesting the tightening of the Cuba embargo, the U.S. Catholic Conference noted that embargoes “are acts of force…morally unacceptable, generally in violation of the principles of international law, and always contrary to the values of the Gospel.”

The Cuba embargo is all of the above and worse. Put in place by President Kennedy’s executive order in 1962, it is a fossilized relic of an era that refuses to recede into cold war history. Since its inception, the trade embargo has become, as the Bay of Pigs invasion was once called, “a perfect failure” in all ethical, political and economic respects. It hurts the Cuban people but has failed to shake the government.

Still, the “wreak havoc” crowd [in Congress], financed by Miami’s hard-line exile community, has managed to keep opposition to the embargo at bay. The logic of their position—to squeeze Cuba until it implodes into civil war—runs directly counter to U.S. national interests in the Caribbean. More than one major Pentagon study has pointed out that destabilization of Cuba will generate hundreds of thousands of refugees and extreme political pressure for U.S. military intervention—a prospect the Southern Command, and presumably the U.S. public, would rather avoid.

—Editorial, “Freeing Cuba,” Jan. 26, 1998

The Administration frequently says that it wishes to see a “peaceful transitional process” in Cuba. And yet, if the objective is to get rid of Castro, then one cannot expect the process to be peaceful, for the hard fact is that Castro will not simply resign or fade away because the United States wants him to; rather if need be, he would fight, and many Cubans would fight with him. Thus, if one aims to remove the Castro government, then one must be ready for a bloody civil war—a war which would result in tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Cuban refugees on our shores. Is that what the Administration wants? —“Washington’s Costly Cuba Policy,” by Wayne S. Smith, July 3, 2000

Since the end of the Cold War, the embargo has proved a serious embarrassment for Washington. Instituted as part of a broad set of punitive measures designed to isolate the Castro regime, the trade sanctions have succeeded only in isolating the United States. Every year for the past decade the United Nations has voted overwhelmingly to condemn the US blockade; the last vote, on November 27, was a 167-to-3 defeat for the United States, with only the Marshall Islands and Israel supporting Washington…. —“Cuban Embargo-Busters?” by Peter Kornbluh, Dec. 13, 2001

What do you call a US policy that…detains and fines a class of New York high school students for taking a study trip over spring break? A policy that has been repudiated at the United Nations by virtually every other country in the world? A policy that, after forty-eight years of abject failure, is still based on the false assumption that success—in the form of “regime change”—is just around the corner? Imperial? Illogical? Irrational? Insane? As Wayne Smith, former chief of the US Interest Section in Havana, has observed, Cuba seems to have “the same effect on American administrations that the full moon has on werewolves.” —Editorial, “Changing Course on Cuba,” May 14, 2007

Imagine a country developing and producing its own Covid-19 vaccines,enough to cover its entire population, but being unable to inoculate everyone because of a syringe shortage…. Because of the 60-year US embargo, which punishes civilians during a pandemic, the country is facing a shortage of millions of syringes.

This reality is a consequence of what amounts to US economic warfare, which makes it extremely difficult for Cuba to acquire medicine, equipment, and supplies from vendors or transportation companies that do business in or with the United States. Syringes are in short supply internationally, so no company wants to be bogged down navigating the complicated banking and licensing demands the US government places on transactions with Cuba….

If human rights are to be a core pillar of US policy, as a White House spokesperson recently declared, then the embargo must end. It is a policy that indiscriminately targets and harms civilians. It is a systematic violation of human rights on a massive scale.

—“Biden’s Failure to End Trump’s War on Cuba Is Threatening Lives,” by Danny Glover, June 29, 2021

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Peter Kornbluh, a longtime contributor to The Nation on Cuba, is co-author, with William M. LeoGrande, of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana. Kornbluh is also the author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.

Featured image is from The Nation

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Despite the Anglo Alliance of the US-UK claiming that a Russian invasion is “imminent,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the situation is not “more intense” than it was in April. In fact, despite leading the imminent Russian invasion propaganda since March 2021, he now complains that Western media creates a false image of the situation and hurts the country’s already struggling economy. 

“They’re saying ‘the war is tomorrow’ – this causes panic on the market and elsewhere,” he said.

Shortly after Zelensky’s complaints about Western media hysteria, Foreign Policy magazine in an article published titled “Russia Can Win in Ukraine Without Firing a Shot,” tried to shift the blame onto Russia and claimed that Ukraine is becoming more difficult to insure. Because of this, “without sending a single soldier across the border, Russia could make Ukraine’s economy tank.”

It was omitted in Foreign Policy that the Kremlin continually stresses that it has no intentions of war with Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed this again on Friday and said “if it depends on Russia, then there will be no war. We don’t want wars.”

Rather, the current crisis in Ukraine is entirely manufactured and exaggerated by the Anglo Alliance. It appeared unexpectedly over the winter when the Anglo Alliance was more strongly prioritising its resources towards China, especially in the lead up to the Winter Olympics that begins on February 4.

None-the-less, Zelensky said on Friday that $446 million in investments flowed out of the country due to the manufactured crisis. It comes as the Ukrainian economy already struggles and is about to be dealt an even bigger blow when it loses billions of dollars in transit fees as a result of the opening of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. With investors fleeing the country, believing that a Russian invasion is imminent, Kiev has been forced to use reserves to stabilise the hryvnia, Ukraine’s currency. Zelensky has said he will need about $5 billion to stabilise the economy, a disastrous position to be in considering the hryvnia fell to its lowest level against the US dollar in seven years on January 27.

The Ukrainian president also criticised the decision by the Anglo Alliance to withdraw non-essential diplomats, saying: “Yes, I think it was a mistake, I say this openly.” According to Kyiv Independence, Zelensky acknowledged that it was more of Ukraine’s mistake than that of the foreign governments. “Under these circumstances, everyone is essential. Everyone should stay.”

It now appears that Ukraine desperately regrets propagating the idea of an imminent Russian invasion and allowing the Anglo Alliance and its media apparatus to grab hold of this idea. Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov also does not expect an attack, saying “At the moment, the Russian armed forces have not created a single strike unit to indicate that they will launch an attack tomorrow.” In addition, the Supreme Rada abruptly withdrew the “On transitional state policy” bill that was first lodged in August 2021. There, Russia is referred to as the “aggressor” and any documents issued by the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics are recognized as invalid.

With the Ukrainian economy tanking and Anglo diplomats withdrawing from the country, it is now too late for Kiev to rollback what it created itself. By exaggerating a Russian invasion threat, Ukraine expected to have its military bolstered by the West on the cheap and increase its opportunities for NATO and EU membership.

Even worse, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Sunday that it is “very unlikely” British soldiers would be deployed to fight in any conflict. In addition, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said that because Ukraine was not a member of the military alliance, there were “no plans to deploy NATO combat troops.”

In effect, Kiev acted as a willing agent of provocation and tension against Russia on behalf of the Anglo Alliance and NATO, but in turn will not receive troop support if a war is to breakout. Zelensky could have an even bigger crisis to face now – preserving his own position as president if the Ukrainian economy is to completely collapse due to the prioritisation of military provocations instead of economic development.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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***

Last week, we celebrated Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday dedicated to the life and legacy of this champion for equality and justice. The effort to gain national recognition for MLK Day took 14 years, from 1970 when it was first proposed until 1983 when it was passed by Congress and signed into law. It was controversial because King himself was controversial,a true revolutionary historical figure who fought racial discrimination, militarism and economic injustice.

Instead of remembering King as he really was, the meaning of the day and the memory of Dr. King have been hollowed out. He has been transformed into a fuzzy, feel-good figure and the struggles for which he gave his life have been ignored.

During his lifetime, even many of those who supported his struggle to end racial segregation in the South and secure voting rights for Blacks could not accept the broader vision he projected. When he moved the focus of his protest movement to segregation in the North, when he spoke out against the war in Vietnam, when he embraced the cause of economic justice for the poor who were denied opportunity in the wealthiest nation on Earth, he was rebuked by some who said, “You should stay in your lane” and “Why are you getting involved in issues that detract from your central message?”

By the time he was assassinated in 1968, Dr. King had become a figure of controversy for many Americans. That was to be expected precisely because the moral challenges he presented were so deeply upsetting to those who embraced and benefitted from the status quo.

With the passage of time we forget, glossing over and romanticising the past. Our hope in securing the recognition of King Day was that not only would the man be remembered, but also the realities he confronted and the injustices he opposed.

It is important to note that almost 70 per cent of the current US population were either not alive or not yet living here during King’s lifetime. They have no recollection of segregated lunch counters, water fountains and bathrooms, of the dogs and fire hoses that were unleashed on children simply because they were protesting for equality. They don’t remember the disgusting racist rhetoric used by senators, governors and others seeking to maintain the old, segregated order that King and his colleagues sought to tear down. Nor do they recall the horrors of the lives wasted in an unwinnable war in Vietnam and the trauma of a nation torn asunder by that conflict. And they do not remember the crisis of wretched poverty that plagued inner cities and rural regions, problems that then President Johnson sought to address with his New Society programmes, all of which were stymied by the costs of the war. All this needs to be remembered to understand King in the context of his time.

When we fought to commemorate his birthday we had hoped that King’s Day would be one on which we would recall this history and the sacrifices Dr. King and so many others made in their efforts to bring needed change, and would then recommit ourselves to using, if necessary, the tools he used to fight injustice, poverty and war.

Given this background, it is distressing that four decades later, with the concerns embraced by Dr. King still present, that the challenges he posed have been diluted or erased from historical memory. America is still torn apart by deep and abiding racial inequities, extreme income disparity, challenges to voting rights and misguided government budgets that prioritise militarism and waging unwinnable wars at the expense of the social well-being of citizens. In the face of these problems, it is an insult for us to celebrate MLK Day without the message of King being uppermost on our minds. We need him today as much as we needed him during his lifetime.

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The writer is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.

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***

We all remember where we were when the Berlin Wall came down. While it may have seemed that communist rule would go on forever, when the people decided that they had enough suddenly the wall fell. Just like that.

Thus it is after two years of Covid authoritarianism that in Canada the largest truck convoy in history has smashed through the Berlin Wall of tyranny. I have watched as the Canada I once respected as a haven for antiwar Americans in the 1960s turned into one of the most repressive countries on earth. I wondered how a freedom-loving people could allow themselves to be abused by these mini-Stalins without a peep.

But then Canada stood up and showed the rest of the world that freedom can triumph over tyranny if the people demand it. As I say, no army can stop an idea whose time has come.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau had been basking in his ability to terrorize the population in the name of fighting a virus. He was so confident in his seemingly unlimited power that he felt he could ridicule any Canadian with different views. The prime minister said in a recent interview that unvaccinated Canadians were “extremists,” “misogynists,” and “racists.”

When the Canadian truckers stood up to his tyranny and began their historic convoy to Ottawa, he thought he could continue ridiculing people. The truckers and their supporters were just a “small fringe minority” who hold “unacceptable views,” he confidently claimed. For Trudeau, love of liberty is just an “unacceptable view.”

Less than a week later, as tens of thousands of trucks began entering the capital with millions of supporters behind them, the “brave” Canadian prime minister had fled the city and shuffled off to an undisclosed location.

As Elon Musk Tweeted,

“It would appear that the so-called ‘fringe minority’ is actually the government.”

The Canadian mainstream media is obviously just as obedient to the regime as ours. They ignored the Freedom Convoy for as long as possible. There was almost no reporting. Then, when it became impossible to ignore, they began to attack and ridicule instead of trying to report it accurately. It was disgusting and almost comical to see a “reporter” from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation suggest that the Canadian Freedom Convoy was cooked up by Putin and the Russians!

Thousands of trucks have arrived in Ottawa. They demand an end to covid tyranny. They are backed by millions of citizens, who braved the Canadian winter at night to cheer the truckers on.

This protest is so important because it’s not limited to Canada. The truckers are being supported worldwide, and a similar convoy is being planned from California to Washington, DC. In a US where grocery store shelves are increasingly bare, the truckers have more leverage than the powers-that-be would like to admit.

If I were prime minister of totalitarian Australia or New Zealand – or most anywhere in Europe – I would be getting pretty nervous right now. Just as the Covid tyranny descended across the globe in a seemingly coordinated fashion, now that the Berlin Wall of the tyrants has been breached, it’s just a matter of time before the shockwaves are felt far and wide.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the Canadian truck drivers. Let’s all do whatever we can to help the freedom movement continue to gather steam!

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***

The resistance reveals itself always in unexpected ways. As I type, thousands of truckers (numbers are in flux and are in dispute) are part of a 50-mile-long convoy in Canada, headed to the capital city of Ottawa in protest against an egregious vaccine mandate imposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They will be joined upon arrival by vast numbers of protestors who are defying the restrictions, closures, and mandates of the last nearly two years. 

The triple-vaccinated Trudeau, meanwhile, has decided that he has to go into deep hiding because he was exposed to Covid. A clean, ruling-class, fit, and fashionable lefty like him cannot be expected to face such a pathogen directly. As a member of the vanguard of the lockdown elite, he must never take risks (however small) and must keep himself safe. It is merely a matter of coincidence that he will be locked away in hiding as the truckers arrive together with hundreds of thousands of citizens who are fed up with being treated like lab rats.

Previously, Trudeau had said nearly two years ago that the truckers were heroes. On March 31, 2020, he tweeted:

“While many of us are working from home, there are others who aren’t able to do that – like the truck drivers who are working day and night to make sure our shelves are stocked. So when you can, please #ThankATrucker for everything they’re doing and help them however you can.”

It’s true. Like many “essential workers” in the US, these truckers bravely faced the virus and many already gained natural immunity, which Canadian law does not recognize. Trudeau decided that they needed to be forced to get the vaccine anyway. Keep in mind: these are the people who get food to the stores, packages to homes, and all products that keep life moving. If they don’t drive, the people don’t eat. It’s that simple. Now Trudeau must deal with #FreedomConvoy2022.

Source: Brownstone Institute

Few events in modern times have revealed the vast chasm that exists between the ruled and rulers, especially as it pertains to class. For nearly two years, the professional class has experienced a completely different reality than the working class. In the US, this only began to change once the highly vaccinated Zoom class got Covid anyway. Only then did we start seeing articles about how there is no shame in getting sick. It appears that in many countries, the working class that was forced into early confrontation with the virus are saying that they aren’t going to take it anymore (and many are playing that song to make the point).

It’s a massive workers’ strike but not the kind of communist dreams. This is a “working class” movement that stands squarely for freedom against all the impositions of the last two years, which were imposed by an overclass with almost no consultation from legislatures. Canada has had some of the worst, much to the shock of its citizens. The convoy is an enormous show of power concerning who really keeps the country running.

The convoy is being joined by truckers from all over the US too, rising up in solidarity. This is easily the most meaningful and impactful protest to emerge in North America. It is being joined by as many as half a million Canadian citizens, who overwhelmingly support this protest, as one can observe from the cheers on the highway along the way. Indeed, it’s likely to break the record for the largest trucker convoy in history, as well as the most loved.

Trudeau, meanwhile, has dismissed the whole thing as a “small fringe” of extremists and says it means nothing to him and will change nothing. This is because, he says, these truckers hold “unacceptable views.”

This is setting up to be one of the most significant clashes in the world in the great battle between freedom and those governments have set out to crush it.

Meanwhile, I’m looking now for information on this in the mainstream media. It is almost nonexistent outside social media. Fox is covering some of it but that’s about it. The Epoch Times is a wonderful exception, as we’ve come to expect in recent months. It’s not being covered in any depth in Canadian papers and TV. All the usual subjects in the US have completely ignored this mighty movement. It’s almost like these venues have created an alternate version of reality, one that denies the astonishing reality that anyone can see outside the window.

Yes, I know that we have all come to expect that the corporate media will not cover what actually matters, and much of what it does cover it does only with a strong bias toward narratives crafted by ruling elites. Even so, it seems to stretch credulity beyond any plausible extent for the major media to pretend that this isn’t happening. It is and it has massive implications for the present and the future.

This is not really or just about vaccine mandates. It’s about what they represent: government taking possession of our lives. If they can force you to get an injection in your arm over which you have doubts, all bets for freedom are off. There must be evidence that you complied. The phone app is next, which gets tied to your bank account and your job and your access to communications and your ability to pay your rent or mortgage. It means eventually 100% government control over the whole of life. The technology already exists. Everything going on now with these passports is driving to this point.

This is why the truckers are striking this way. It is an act of bravery but also of desperation. Once the tyranny of health passports arrives, there will be no escape. The window of opportunity to do something about this will have closed. So this is the moment. There might not be another one. Something needs to be done to fight for human rights and freedom, and put in place systems that make lockdowns and mandates impossible in the future.

This is the largest and latest example of the revolt and one that could make the biggest difference yet. But it is only one sign among many that the ruling elites in most countries have overplayed their hand. They have arrogantly imposed their plans for everyone else based on the opinions of only a few and without real consultation with experts with differences of opinion or with the people whose lives have been profoundly affected by the pandemic response.

In the US the revolt is taking many forms. There was the rally in DC this past weekend. It was impressive. Also the latest polls on political alliances show that the Democrats have lost a major part of their base. Virginia right now points to where this is headed. The party lost vast amounts of its political power in elections last year and now Republicans rule the state with great popularity.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at Biden’s latest poll numbers. I almost cannot believe my eyes. We are talking about an overall 14-point split between approve and disapprove. If this is an indication of what happens to the pro-lockdown political elite, it stands to reason that Trudeau should be worried.

In the Vietnam War, many Americans fled the draft by going to the safe haven on the northern border. That’s one way that Canada had earned its long reputation for being delightfully normal, peaceful, and mercifully boring. Pandemic policies in Canada changed that, with some of the longest-lasting stringencies in the world.

No one asked the workers. Now they are rising up. Nor does it matter that 78% of the Canadian public is vaccinated (and up to 90% of truckers). Possessing that status alone does not mean that people no longer feel resentment for being forced to accept what they do not believe they needed and did not want in the first place. The vaccinated do not automatically give up their longing to be free and to have their human rights recognized.

The resistance to tyranny in our times is taking many unexpected forms. There will be many confrontations on the way, and there is still a very long way to go. At some point, and no one knows when or how, something has to give.

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Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. [email protected]

Featured image is from Brownstone Institute

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***

Canada’s opposition parties have lined up squarely behind the imperialist war drive against Russia, which is being spearheaded by the Biden administration in Washington and backed to the hilt by the Trudeau Liberal government. There is not a single principled opponent of imperialist aggression to be found in Canada’s Parliament, only cheerleaders for war. From the “left” New Democrats to the avowedly right-wing Conservatives, the Greens and the pro-Quebec independence Bloc Quebecois, all the opposition parties are whipping up war fever.

The Trudeau government announced last Wednesday that it is extending its participation in NATO’s training mission for the Ukrainian military, Operation Unifier, for three years until 2025. Ottawa will send 60 additional Canadian Armed Forces personnel, raising the Ukraine deployment to 260, provide a $120 million loan and grant Kiev access to Canadian signals intelligence. The troop deployment, Ottawa has added, could be increased to 400 at any time.

In his announcement, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck a provocative tone, declaring that his government supports “the Ukrainian people” in their struggle to “choose the course of their country” and “defend their territorial integrity.” This was a reference to the Trudeau government’s support for Kiev’s reconquest of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia following a referendum in 2014. The annexation was Russia’s response to the fascist-spearheaded coup in Kiev, orchestrated by the US, Germany and Canada to overthrow pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovitch and install a pro-Western puppet regime.

Trudeau’s remarks came as top Biden administration officials ratcheted up pressure on Russia by refusing to rule out Ukraine’s admission to NATO, sending massive amounts of military gear to Kiev and preparing to deploy up to 50,000 troops to Eastern Europe. As the World Socialist Web Site noted in a statement Friday, Washington’s primary goal is to goad President Vladimir Putin into attacking Ukraine and triggering a military conflict.

“The conflict that Washington is provoking with Russia over Ukraine threatens the globe with a catastrophe beyond measure,” the statement warned. “Driven by insoluble internal crisis and rapacious geopolitical ambition, US imperialism is recklessly marching to the brink of World War III.”

Canadian imperialism fully endorses this reckless policy for the same reasons.

On her arrival in Kiev yesterday for talks with top Ukrainian leaders, Canada’s Defense Minister Anita Anand said Canada stood by the claims of Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other NATO leaders that a Russian invasion is imminent, although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called them unhelpful and untrue. Later in the week Anand is to travel to Latvia, the Baltic republic where Canada has deployed over 500 soldiers since 2017, to lead NATO’s new Forward Presence Battle Group against Russia.

Speaking alongside Trudeau, Anand and Foreign Minister Mélane Joly last Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, a longtime supporter of the Ukrainian far right, stood reality on its head and accused Russia of attempting to create “a world in which might makes right and where the great powers … have the authority to redraw the borders, dictate the foreign policies…” This comes from a representative of the Western imperialist powers whose wars of aggression have razed Yugoslavia, Iraq, Haiti, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya and imposed murderous sanctions on governments who refuse to obey their diktats.

In so far as the opposition parties have criticized the Liberal government’s role in NATO’s war threats and preparations against Russia, it is for not providing Ukraine more fulsome support. The Conservatives have complained that the Trudeau government is only sending “non-lethal” support to Ukraine. They are demanding that Ottawa provide Ukraine with offensive weapons originally intended for the Kurdish Peshmerga guerrillas in Iraq.

“Ukraine has been clear in its request to the Trudeau government of what it needs to defend itself: Lethal defensive weapons,” declared a statement signed by three Tory frontbench MPs. “The time for half-measures has long passed. Ukraine needs Canada’s support, and today Mr. Trudeau let them down.”

This position was backed up by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), which has its origins in the pro-Nazi Ukrainian nationalist movement of the 1930 and 1940s. The UCC declared, “It is disappointing that Canada has not joined our allies in providing Ukraine with weapons.”

Full support for Canada’s continued military deployment to the Ukraine was extended by the New Democrats. In a statement on Ukraine, the party declared,

“New Democrats stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine. We are alarmed by escalating threats of further Russian invasion. Canada was the first country to recognize Ukraine’s independence 30 years ago, and we must continue to support an independent and democratic Ukraine.”

To cover its support for imperialist violence in a “progressive” garb, the NDP said it opposed Ottawa providing “lethal” aid to Kiev—leaving that, for the moment, to the US, Britain and other “allies” it wants Canada to work in close concert with; expressed concern about “extremists” in Ukraine’s military; and concluded with an appeal for a “diplomatic solution” with Russia.

This is all hogwash. Ukraine today is neither “democratic” nor “independent.” The current regime has its origins in the imperialist-sponsored 2014 coup, in which far-right and outright neo-Nazi elements such as “Svoboda” (Freedom), “Right Sector” and the Azov Battalion played key roles. These fascists provide the Ukrainian state with its shock troops on the front line against Russian speakers in Donetsk and Lugansk, regions that only attempted to separate from Ukraine after the far-right government passed legislation suppressing the Russian language and launched hysterical campaigns targeting ethnic Russians.

Ukraine is governed by some of the most corrupt oligarchs to emerge from the Stalinist bureaucracy, which liquidated the Soviet Union in order to enrich themselves. The top 10 percent of the population controls 60 percent of national wealth.

“Independent” Ukraine is, in fact, a political dependency of American, Canadian, British and German imperialism, whose collective will is expressed through NATO and the IMF, and to which Ukraine says, “Yes, sir.”

As for its professed commitment to “diplomacy,” the NDP supports economic sanctions on Russia under the 2015 Magnitsky Act, which would target Russia’s political leadership. The Russian government has declared that such sanctions would result in the severing of all diplomatic relations, a development associated historically with the commencement of military hostilities. In calling for these sanctions, the NDP is thus seeking to provoke an end to diplomatic efforts.

The bogus character of the NDP’s “concern” about extremists in the Ukrainian military was underscored by its participation in a bellicose mobilization organized by the far-right UCC on January 23.

NDP Foreign Affairs critic Heather McPherson and Blake Desjarlais, the deputy chair of the party’s parliamentary caucus, joined the UCC-initiated “Stand with Ukraine” mobilization. Also participating were former Defense Minister Harjit Sajan, Mary Ng, and Marco Mendicino from the Liberals, Dave Epp and others from the Conservatives and the BQ’s Foreign Affairs and National Security critic Stéphane Bergeron.

McPherson’s and Desjarlais’ tweets of support for the UCC and the right-wing Kiev regime are in keeping with their party’s support for Canadian imperialism’s participation in a long series of US-led wars of aggression. From the 1999 NATO assault on Yugoslavia, through the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the 2011 “regime change” war in Libya and the ongoing interventions in Iraq and Syria, Canada’s social democrats have dressed up their support for imperialist war and intrigue in phoney “human rights” and “responsibility to protect” rhetoric.

The NDP’s visceral hostility to any opposition to Canadian imperialism and its far-right allies was underscored by the party leadership’s refusal to defend MPs Leah Gazan, Nikki Ashton and Don Davies, after they came under vicious attack from the UCC for posting tweets critical of Canada’s full-throated support for NATO’s provocative and threatening stance on Ukraine.

Gazan, who counts Holocaust survivors among her relatives, came under special attack for pointing to Canada’s support of “an anti-Semitic, neo-nazi [sic] and fascist militia,” referring to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, whose members have received training from Canada’s government. (See Canadian Armed Forces providing military training to Ukrainian neo-Nazis.)

The UCC, along with the Zionist Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, preposterously accused Gazan of trivializing the Holocaust, claiming her tweet was “ignorant, inaccurate and hurtful” and “could provoke attacks against our community.”

Gazan quickly walked back her comments and voiced her support for the Canadian imperialist-NATO narrative that Ukraine is a victim of Russian aggression, when it is the NATO powers that have encircled Russia and are intent on using Ukraine as an economic vassal and geostrategic outpost.

Of course, Gazan said nothing about the political origins and record of the UCC, which has long enjoyed the sponsorship of the Canadian state and, like the contemporary far-right and neo-Nazi militia groups in the Ukraine, celebrates the Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and fascists who collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War, including in the mass murder of Jews and Poles. The UCC recently saluted the 70th anniversary of the creation of the League for the Liberation of Ukraine, which was founded by members of Stepan Bandera’s fascist and Nazi collaborationist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists who were given safe haven in Canada after the Third Reich’s defeat.

Meanwhile, in its official statement of last week on Ukraine, the NDP top brass went out of its way to downplay the significant role fascists play in Ukraine’s security forces and allied militia, saying it was “concerned” about “reports of extremism within a small part of the Ukrainian military,” a “problem,” that it hastened to add “many militaries, including our own, have faced.”

The enthusiasm for the drive to war with Russia within all sections of Canada’s political establishment, from ostensible “left” to right, underscores that the only social force capable of opposing the eruption of a catastrophic conflict is the international working class. Workers in Canada must build an international anti-war movement alongside their class brothers and sisters in the United States, Russia, Ukraine and throughout Europe to put an end to the imperialists’ mad push for war by fighting for the socialist transformation of society.

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Featured image: NDP Foreign Affairs critic Heather McPherson and other NDP MPs joined the bellicose “Stand with Ukraine” mobilization mounted by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. (Source: WSWS)

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The Blackwater Is in Donbass with the Azov Battalion

By Manlio Dinucci, February 01, 2022

According to reports from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, obscured by our mainstream which only talks about the Russian deployment, Ukrainian Army and National Guard units, amounting to about 150 thousand men, are positioned here.

Video: Has Justin Trudeau Been Duly Vaccinated? Registered Nurse Expresses Doubt on Authenticity of Trudeau’s Vaccine Jab

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 01, 2022

In recent developments, Justin Trudeau has stated that unvaccinated cross border truck drivers “may pose a risk of transmitting COVID-19 to the general public”.  What absolute nonsense. Truck drivers for the most part stay in their truck, deliver the  commodities and have limited contact with people.

The Philosophy of “Venceremos!”, We Shall Overcome: Canadian Freedom Convoy against Covid-19 Mandates

By Peter Koenig, January 31, 2022

Remember, freedom doesn’t come for free. Freedom is a constant movement of protecting our freedom. We may call it the continuous pursuit of Happiness through the philosophy of Venceremos – in action.

Video: Justin Trudeau Accuses Freedom Convoy 2022 of Propagating Hatred, Racism and Violence

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 31, 2022

“Disgust and Disbelief” according to Trudeau. Millions of Canadians from coast to coast have supported and continue to support the Freedom Convoy 2022. There was no evidence of racism, hatred and violence by protesters, abuse against fellow citizens as claimed by the Prime Minister.

Ukrainian Anti-Russian Engagement Deepens Economic Crisis

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, January 31, 2022

In a recent statement, the Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs stated that the current gas tariff per cubic meter, valued at 52.7 hryvnia, will prevent, before the end of January, Ukrainian industrial production (which is dependent on gas) from make it profitable.

Nova Scotia Moves Quickly Using Emergency Declaration to Ban Truck Convoys and Highway Cheering, $10,000 Fine for Cheering on Roadway

By Sundance, January 31, 2022

Apparently, the Canadian province of Nova Scotia is taking proactive steps {link} to ensure their government officials are not subjected to any protests similar to what’s happening in Ottawa or other regions.

US Army Tour with Hebron Settler-extremist Legitimizes Occupation of Palestine and Signals Biden’s Collapse

By Rabbi Michael Davis, January 31, 2022

A recent US military visit to the illegal Jewish settlement in occupied Hebron shows that the Biden administration is accepting the one-Jewish-state reality. The tour’s host was settler Noam Arnon – who has called Jewish terrorists “heroes”.

“Human Augmentation – The Dawn of a New Paradigm”: Analysis by Dr. Robert Malone

By Dr. Robert Malone, January 31, 2022

The document goes on to write that the role of ethics and public perception in the use of human augmentation are not the deciding factors in developing human augmentation. The general consensus of the report is that human augmentation is critical for national security for the future development of warfare.

We Vaccinated 4 Billion People… and You’ll Never Believe What Happened Next

By Alex Berenson, January 31, 2022

Daily Covid infections worldwide since the epidemic began, read the article.

America Is Reaping What It Sowed in Ukraine

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, January 31, 2022

U.S. allies do not all support the current U.S. policy. Germany is wisely refusing to funnel more weapons into Ukraine, in keeping with its long-standing policy of not sending weapons into conflict zones.

Is It Already Too Late to Say Goodbye? Jonathan Cook

By Jonathan Cook, January 31, 2022

Journalists like me are part of an experiment – in a new, more democratised media landscape. We have developed new reader-funded models so that we can break free of the media corporations, which until now ensured billionaires and the state controlled the flow of information in one direction only: to speak down to us.

First published by Global Research on May 18, 2019

Karl Kraus, born in 1874, was one of the most important Austrian writers of the beginning of the 20th century and a sharp critic of the predominant press and inflammatory journalism of his time. “Journaille” means in reference to the French word “Canaille” as much as “Presse-Gesindel” or “Presse-Pack”.

Karl Kraus made the expression known in 1902. That was over 100 years ago. It is worthwhile to read himself once again in all peace into the time and to compare it with today’s time.

Mass media still take part in the creation of enemy images and in warmongering. Through manipulation and propaganda they also contribute to the stultification of the masses. This irresponsible behaviour of the “servants of their masters” endangers democracy.

Sceptics who see through the game and try to keep against it are personally discredited by the manslaughter argument “conspiracy theorists” in order to silence them.

“The devastation of the state by the press mafia.”

From 1899 to 1936 Karl Kraus published the satirical magazine “Die Fackel”. In it he dealt critically, ironically and sometimes bitterly with the developments of his time. His topics were journalism and war, sex and crime, politics and corruption as well as literature and lies. In 1902 he wrote in an article entitled “Die Journaille” about “the devastation of the state by the press mafia” and passed this term on to the linguistic usage (1). The word “Journaille” refers to journalists who spread degrading and scandalous falsehoods or half-truths. They are described as irresponsible, hungry for sensation and acting unfairly. Demagogic or political motives are also attributed to them.

But not only Karl Kraus, also the great militant woman and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Bertha von Suttner, described the press – already in 1889 – as a “tool of the War Ministry”, and warned in her rousing appeal “Lay Down your Arms!” against the mass communication media, which were “in the service of the stupefying of the masses, of agitation and hate propaganda”. According to Bertha von Suttner, man is obliged to be a “peace maker” to man, a man who gives peace, makes peace, brings peace (2). Journalists in particular would also be obliged to do so.

But mass media, through their reporting and language, still contribute decisively to the creation of enemy images up to the encouragement of bloody revolutions, which can suddenly lead to (civil) wars. Presidents who do not submit to the US dictate are criminalized and demonized for months or years on behalf of criminal clients of the Deep State: Putin, Assad, Maduro or even the president of small Serbia are just a few current examples. And we all know the tragic fates of the former presidents of Iraq, Serbia and the former Yugoslavia and Libya. After years of demonisation, they were killed. Their states were shattered, their countries destroyed, their populations murdered. 

“We live in an age of media mass stupefaction.”

The targeted disinformation of citizens is just as destructive, dangerous to democracy and dangerous as hate propaganda and the creation of enemy images. The globally respected journalist, Orientalist and author Peter Scholl-Latour, warned in a “ZEIT” interview on the occasion of his 90th birthday on 9 March 2014:

“We live in an age of mass stupefaction, especially media mass stupefaction. (…) If you look at the one-sided way in which the local media, from “TAZ” to “WELT”, report on events in Ukraine, then you can really report on disinformation on a large scale, flanked by the technical possibilities of the digital age, then you can only conclude that globalization has led to a sadly ordinary provincialization of the media world. Similar things have happened and continue to happen in Syria and other trouble spots.”(3)

Mass media could make an important contribution to the education and encouragement of the people, since the media are committed to the truthful information of us citizens and to peace according to national and international agreements. But the opposite is the case. They take no responsibility for the common good of humanity.

How can people draw hope and think about the essential things in life, if they are only disinformed by the mass media, distracted and stuffed with unfit for life information garbage (“circenses”)? Only if humans have enough knowledge and education, they can draw from it consequences for their personal and also social acting, something new to tackle. The educated and independently thinking person, who must also be a humane thinking and feeling person, will gladly cooperate in developing a better social order.

The voice of their masters

I know a whole series of exemplary journalists who are committed to truth, objective reporting and peace. But their enlightening analyses are not to be found in the mass media, but in alternative media or on websites such as “Global Research“. But those who see through the game of the powerful and their medial helpers are very quickly dismissed as “conspiracy theorists” and as intellectuals in love with their theories and pompously pompous. This manslaughter argument was already introduced in 1967 by the CIA by means of a secret handout to discredit doubters.

And the dubious and unethical journalists of the mass media? Are they bought and are the mass media directed by politicians, secret services and high finance, as the former “”FAZ journalist Udo Ulfkotte claimed in his sensational book “Bought Journalists” in 2014? He spoke from his own experience. Then it would be “press whores” or “presstitutes” who chum up the powerful, go to bed with them.

I myself am of the opinion that these irresponsibly acting journalists do not lie, but rather obey the orders or constraints of their masters like servants. Didn’t US Secretary of State Pompeo recently give a brief glimpse of the CIA’s approach when he said in a panel discussion with students from Texas A&M University in College Station (USA), which is considered a recruitment hotbed for the CIA’s foreign intelligence service:

“When I was a cadet at West Point, (…) what is the motto of the West Point cadets? Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal and don’t tolerate those who do. I was director of the CIA. We lied, stole and cheated. It was as if there had been proper courses. It reminds us of the glory of the American experiment.”(4)

The real liars, deceivers, thieves – or rather criminals – are the powerful of this world. And the journalists of the relevant mass media are the voice of their masters. But that does not mean releasing them from their responsibility for the common good. They are jointly responsible for all the consequences of their irresponsible actions.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is an educationalist and psychologist.

Notes

(1) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journaille

(2) Von Suttner, B. (1977). Lay Down Your Arms!  The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling. Vienna, p. XVIII f.

(3) https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Scholl-Latour-Wir-leben-in-einer-Zeit-der-Massenverbloedung-3364167.html?

(4) https://deutsch.rt.com/meinung/87465-us-aussenminister-pompeo-wir-logen-betrogen-stahlen/

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“Venceremos” is a concept. It’s a philosophy. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a conviction – a conviction in solidarity with masses of other people. Venceremos is more than “we shall overcome”. Venceremos is enduring. Venceremos is a movement. Venceremosis persevering against all odds – and Venceremos, finally is dynamics. It’s a concept that adapts to circumstances and moves on and on and on – until and way beyond the movement has achieved its objective. The philosophy of Venceremosis to sustain our efforts to hold onto sovereign control of our lives.

Remember, freedom doesn’t come for free. Freedom is a constant movement of protecting our freedom. We may call it the continuous pursuit of Happiness through the philosophy of Venceremos – in action.

What is currently being played out by the truckers of Canada – Canada’s Freedom Convoy – is the first such action of Venceremos – of we won’t let go – a peaceful act in solidarity against the Covid atrocities of the Trudeau Government. Such a moement has never been seen, worldwide, in recent human history.

Tens of thousands of trucks from all corners of Canada and some from across the border in the US, moving in solidarity towards Ottawa to besiege Prime Minister Trudeau – to either resign or lift immediately all Covid restrictions.

As Professor Chossudovsky pointed out, Canada needs

the political quarantine of Justin Trudeau.

Most of the trucks arrived in Ottawa on Saturday 29 January. They literally beleaguered the Nation’s Capital.

Tens of thousands of trucks, tens of thousands of people on foot.

Trudeau tried to brush them away, by a ludicrous TV appearance, saying: They are a small minority not representative for Canada.

Trudeau’s popularity dropped to 35%, (Angus Reid, December 2021) below US President Biden’s approval rating of 41.8% on 29 January 2022.

It was then reported that Trudeau had left 24 Sussex Drive to an unknown destination, a “secret location” according to the CBC.

See video below. For how long can he hold out?  According to reports, he will be holding a Press Conference on January 31st.

At the time of writing, it was announced that he was Covid-19 positiv , despite having received the required three doses vaccines.  The vaccination of Trudeau raised a stir. A registered nurse after examining the videos cast doubts on whether he had been vaccinated.

What we are witnessing is a solidarity movement with all the characteristics of “Venceremos”.

Below is 30 January Video. Across Canada, in towns, and cities, people are in the streets and support the truckers in full solidarity.

See video below. The impact on the rest of the world is colossal.

In a first phase, the Canada Freedom Convoy is spreading its concept of Venceremos and solidarity to the United States.

Although a start date has not been fixed yet, according to American journalist Cassandra Fairbanks, American truckers will form a similar protest convoy from California to Washington DC, with the same purpose, to have all Covid restrictions, Covid passes, masks, forced vaccination and more lifted indefinitely. See this.

If this movement takes hold, we can but wish it will also embrace Europe, the European Union (EU) and its puppet members. Should that happen, it would lend Europe a new face of respect. It would be a movement not only to break Brussels (EU HQ) stranglehold on its member countries, but it would return much needed, and much sought-after sovereignty by the vast majority of the people – not the governments – much of which are implants by the WEF and the WEF’s masters.

In addition to freeing the peoples from the Covid tyranny, it may also be a first step of de-globalizing the world.

Globalization has gradually robbed most countries in Europe of their sovereignty over the last 50 years or so, ever since the foundation of the Club of Rome (CoR) in 1968. Just to understand that the idea and concepts behind todays European Union was not primarily European but American, as the chief founder of the CoR was David Rockefeller; and the CoR was founded as an NGO in Rome but registered in Switzerland.

The report issued in 1972 by the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth, focuses on the exponential economic and population growth with a finite supply of resources, and basically predicts the collapse of civilization by 2030. This became the basis for the 1992 first UN Climate Conference, United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also called Earth Summit, held at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (June 3–14, 1992).

The Earth Summit was the precursor to the infamous UN Agenda 2030. Further visible developments are the different, so-called Conferences of the Parties (CoP) that pretend to hammer into peoples’ consciousness the lies of man-made climate change, the Green Agenda – a new wave of neoliberal capitalism; the hypocritical pretension of exiting from the use of hydrocarbons for the world’s energy use – and so on.

Less visibly, but on the same vein of thought, is the 2010 Rockefeller Report, giving the script for the lockstep, lockdowns and fear campaigns to control people by an imaginary virus. This report was followed by many sub-reports, WHO statements, WHO conferences, and finally, culminating in Event 201 (18 October 2019, in NYC), a new SARS virus simulation sponsored by the Gates Foundation, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the World Economic Forum that led the world into the SARS-CoV-2, alias Covid-19 scam, the largest crime of human history.

Back to the Freedom Convoys, the relentless Venceremos moves in solidarity, that aim at regaining human rights, human dignity, human sovereignty, and civil liberties, will most likely continue in the US and may actually spread to Europe, as people realize the power behind this peaceful and effective movement.

The possibly dire consequences must however be known. They are economic, financial and may affect people’s immediate lives, as they may result in massive unemployment, increased poverty and supply chain disruption. In other words, empty shelves in supermarkets. This may lead to rationing of food and other consumables and famine – and possibly even death in extremis.

Deliveries from Asia to the US and Canada, and possibly also to Europe, may be stranded – without further distribution at least for a while. The same may apply for internal US, Canadian – trans-border US-Canada — and internal European deliveries. This will undoubtedly create shortages of food and other consumables. In addition, energy supplies from Russia to Europe may be interrupted, thereby exacerbate hardship for Europeans. President Putin warned about a gas cut-off, as a counter-action to Europe’s unfounded “sanctions”, especially if the West would cut Russia off from the western money transfer system SWIFT.

“Venceremos” means not giving up, despite these inconveniences. Such contrarieties were amply predicted in the context of the Canadian Freedom Convoy – people stood up and supported truckers unconditionally. We may expect similar reactions in the US and hopefully also in Europe.

This may lead to and accelerate the process towards an alternative society or societies. A totally deglobalized population, de-digitized money – back to cash – and away from all digitization. We do not need a dollar/euro-based economy. All to the contrary, we need an economy that stands on its own feet and is backing local currencies.

An economy that fully answers to deglobalization – local production, for local markets, with local (non-digital) money and a sovereign local or regional central bank, not connected to the western monetary system. Trade would take place possibly with virtual currencies among like-minded societies, based on comparative advantages to create “win-win” situations.

With the onset of neoliberal economics, the concept of comparative advantage, where all parties are winning, the true meaning of trade, has disappeared from economists’ minds.

This process of creating a new society, or new societies, is not necessarily fast. It depends on how many nations and societies within nations are willing to venture into a new life stream, chosen by the people, as opposed to a One World Order society, created by the WEF’s Great Reset. This process is part of the Venceremos philosophy. It will gradually teach and accustom people to a new paradigm – a society away from imposed fear and digital surveillance and enslavement.

The Freedom Convoys in Canada, the US and Europe – the Venceremos philosophy, active expressions of people’s actions against tyranny — may be accompanied by sister movements of solidarity to enhance and accelerate the attaining of the objectives of Venceremos, by such legal crusades as are already under way by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, German Corona Investigative Committee.

They may bring to justice the chief perpetrators for this genocidal fraud that has been playing out for the past two years, in a Nuremberg 2.0 type trial, either through the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, or another new international legal venue. See this and this.

There is no doubt, the tide is turning. It may not be turning as fast as we wish, as many of the highly corrupted mainstream media still defend the ongoing Covid and vaxx narrative. Most mainstream media in the west do not, or only in a largely distorted way report about the Freedom Convoys, and about the increasing amount of people, who say enough is enough, Venceremos – breaking out from the tyranny.

Going back to the beginning: Venceremos is more than “winning” or “we shall overcome”. It is an enduring concept, a philosophy that creates a mindset in people of never again letting go and letting fear and enslavement take away our freedom and sovereign lives.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he 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).

Featured image is from The Last Refuge

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The Ukrainian political situation is well known. The country is going through an extremely anti-democratic phase and full of authoritarian characteristics, such as the racist persecution against ethnic Russian citizens. However, not much is said about Kiev from an economic point of view. In fact, in addition to the catastrophic political and diplomatic legacy, the Ukrainian state inherited from the Maidan a bad economic administration, entering a constant crisis that has lasted almost eight years so far and is not expected to end anytime soon.

Since the 2014 coup d’état, Kiev has been in an economic crisis that it can no longer get out of. For years, the Ukrainian economic and financial situation has only deteriorated – sometimes at a slower pace, sometimes at a faster pace, but without ever showing signs of improvement or economic growth. In general, when any Ukrainian economic indicator shows some improvement, simultaneously, some other indicators deteriorate, keeping the country’s social levels very low. In the first half of last year, for example, there was an increase in the price of ores and grains, which are some of the main commodities exported by Ukraine, but, on the other hand, there was a marked shortage in the number of energy carriers, as a result, the export indices were not turned into social benefits for state or the Ukrainian population.

In a recent statement, the Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs stated that the current gas tariff per cubic meter, valued at 52.7 hryvnia, will prevent, before the end of January, Ukrainian industrial production (which is dependent on gas) from make it profitable. In some regions of the country, the price of the tariff already exceeds 60 hryvnia, which brings the local economy to complete ruin. Obviously, these prices would be better if the Ukrainian government were willing to negotiate with Russia and establish energy cooperation agreements. Being a country of large proportions and with enormous productive capacity, Russia could provide enough gas for Ukraine to supply its economy at fair prices. However, the government’s Russophobia prevents this from happening.

On possible gas cooperation with Russia, even some Ukrainian politicians agree that there is a need to make concessions to strategically benefit Kiev’s energy supply. For example, these were the words of a parliament member Oleg Seminsky about the topic:

“I am deeply convinced that we need to create a working group with the Russian Gazprom and purchase gas directly under an understandable contract, at an understandable price, and not in Swiss offshore with cheating. Our balance is not covered – consumption is 33 billion, but we extract less than 20 billion cubic meters. Where to take them? It can only be Russian gas”.

The hryvnia value is approaching 30 to one dollar, driving up fuel prices absurdly. Since the first half of 2021, fuel prices have been controlled by the Ukrainian state, but the regulation has proved not to be sufficient to overcome the escalation of values. At the end of January, the price of gasoline and diesel reached 34 hryvnia per liter. With this increase in prices, which is a direct consequence of the devaluation of the currency, the economic cycle of the country is ruined: with expensive fuel, the availability of transport decreases, and without transport there is no circulation of people, goods and services.

The National Bank of Ukraine has been trying to offer responses to the crisis, but all have been unsuccessful so far. A package of operational measures is currently being prepared in order to prevent the hryvnia from devaluing further. The problem is that, as a side effect of the measures (which include an increase in the discount rate), there is a significant forecast of a rise in the inflation rate.

The official discourse is that there is no real threat to the Ukrainian economy – and anyone who says otherwise is branded as a spreader of fake news and conspiracy theories. The National Bank, for example, claims that the rise in fuel prices is the sole consequence of a global trend, not admitting the country’s disastrous economic policy:

“World energy prices will remain higher than previously expected. This will not only put pressure on the production costs of the business, but also require a gradual adjustment of tariffs for housing and communal services. There is also significant price pressure from the trade partners of Ukraine. In addition, the deterioration of the information background against the backdrop of geopolitical tensions at the end of last year affected the moods of various groups of economic entities and led to devaluation pressure on the hryvnia”.

Also, the Ukrainian government has not even been able to pay its own security forces fighting in the Donbass region. Soldiers from the Armed Forces and paramilitary militiamen are in arrears with salaries and no money is expected to be paid at any time soon.

At the same time, corruption rates only increase. In a recent state audit report, it was revealed that billions of hryvnias were misappropriated from the government fund set aside to fight the pandemic. The institutional crisis and legal insecurity which are direct consequences of the 2014 coup d’etat and the illegality of the current government deepen the economic chaos, forming a nation with corrupt billionaires and miserable working citizens. Western society tries to help Ukraine. The European Union has been sending financial assistance, as have the US and UK, but, as is well known, almost all the money is embezzled by bureaucrats and corrupt businessmen, not being converted into social benefits.

In fact, only a profound political reform will be able to reverse this scenario.

An illegal government, set up by a coup and characterized by corruption, will obviously not be able to solve the financial crisis. For Washington and NATO, all is well, as they do not care about the quality of life of the Ukrainian people, being happy with Kiev engaged in a global anti-Russian project. So, only a future government, democratically and legally elected, apart from such an anti-Russian project will be able to overcome the crisis.

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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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Below link to important statement by the organizers of the Freedom Convoy. Click image

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Apparently, the Canadian province of Nova Scotia is taking proactive steps {link} to ensure their government officials are not subjected to any protests similar to what’s happening in Ottawa or other regions.

Using their pre-existing state of emergency, the “Province today, January 28, issued a directive under the Emergency Management Act prohibiting protesters from blockading Highway 104 near the Nova Scotia-New Brunswick border.” [Announcement]

Link

According to the provincial government, “fines for a summary conviction under the new directive will range from $3,000 to $10,000 for individuals and between $20,000 and $100,000 for a corporation.” Additionally, “outdoor gatherings of more than 20 people are prohibited under a Health Protection Act order.”

At the same time tens-of-thousands of Canadians are rallying for freedom in the nation’s capital city, Nova Scotia says citizens will obey the government or be arrested, fined and punished by provincial authorities for their noncompliance.  Talk about a totally tone-deaf governing authority.

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All images in this article are from TLR

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Watch the video below or click here.

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Click here or the image below to view the live broadcast.

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A recent US military visit to the illegal Jewish settlement in occupied Hebron shows that the Biden administration is accepting the one-Jewish-state reality. The tour’s host was settler Noam Arnon – who has called Jewish terrorists “heroes”.

Why did US officers visit the illegal, fortified Israeli settlement in the Palestinian city of Hebron earlier this month? I want the Biden administration to answer this question.

Like many who have Palestinian friends or who follow events in Israel/Palestine, I was dismayed to learn of the visit three weeks ago by U.S. Army officers to the militarized compound in the heart of the West Bank city. The U.S. personnel chose to bypass a major Palestinian city completely and visit the Israeli settlers instead.

The military’s recognition of the settlers emboldens violent Israeli extremists and undermines the Biden administration’s ability to mediate between Israel and Palestine.

Even worse, the U.S. officers were in Hebron at the invitation of long-time Israeli, settler leader Noam Arnon, “the spokesman of the Jewish community in Hebron”.

Noam Arnon is a mid-level leader in the successful Israeli project to create a one-state reality– One Jewish State stretching from the Mediterranean coast across the entire Palestinian West Bank to the Jordan River.

The resonance of the U.S. military visit to Hebron extends far beyond Hebron and is emblematic of the one-state reality that is Israel/Palestine– and the American political acceptance of apartheid at the highest levels.

And the Israeli government is taking similar steps. Israeli President Herzog visited the Jewish settlement of Hebron in December to celebrate Hanukkah. The relative lack of public outcry at this visit reflects the established reality of One Jewish State combining the State of Israel and the Palestinian occupied territories. But it’s the U.S. that makes the One Jewish State possible through outsized financial aid, massive military assistance and unique diplomatic protection on the world stage. We should expect our country to be better than this.

Let’s step back to look at some history to appreciate the significance of this historic recognition by the US military of the Israeli settlement in the heart of Hebron.

“A US MILITARY ATTACHÉ AND AN AMERICAN SECURITY COORDINATOR” ACCOMPANIED BY U.S. SOLDIER AND ISRAELI MILITARY PERSONNEL, TOUR THE IBRAHIMI MOSQUE/TOMB OF THE PATRIARCHS IN OCCUPIED HEBRON WITH SETTLER LEADER NOAM ARNON. PHOTO POSTED BY HEBRON FUND, JANUARY 18, 2022.

It has taken half a century to kill the two state solution and the possibility of a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. This One Jewish State reality was accomplished in two phases. Phase one: build a network of Israeli cities and outposts on occupied Palestinian land.

But the settlements alone were not enough to end the dream of an independent Palestinian state. The Israeli colonists could have been required to leave or accept life under a Palestinian government.

Phase Two was an even bolder move: to link these Israeli militarized outposts to each other, breaking up the Palestinian territories into isolated cantons and then connecting this Jewish settler network back to Israel to establish de facto Israeli sovereignty across all the occupied Palestinian territories.

Both colonization and annexation of occupied territories are prohibited under international law. These Jewish-only Israeli colonies have long been considered illegal by the international community, including the United States.

Colonizing occupied territories is illegal under Israeli law too, So how could this plan get off the ground?

A legal fiction had to be engineered outside of Israeli law but under Israeli control. Enter the quasi-governmental “Jewish Agency”, the so-called representative body of the world’s (Zionist) Jews, whose offices are located in Jerusalem under the control of the Israeli government. The illegal colonization of the West Bank by Israel was launched in the name of the world’s Jews. This makes the West Bank settlements the particular responsibility of world’s Jews (known in Israeli and Zionist parlance by the ideologically laden misnomer “the Diaspora.”)

Who was the driving force behind the settlement project? This was the community I grew up in: Orthodox Jews who believe the State of Israel was a Divinely-instituted vessel of the Messianic age, long foretold.

Who else would have been willing to leave the relative comfort of Israel to start families in harsh, pioneer conditions in hostile, Palestinian territory? There is no gold to be found under the rocks of the Holy Land, but there is high octane religious fervor buried in these biblical hills. The Israeli colonization of the West Bank was spearheaded with revolutionary zeal, by idealistic, nationalistic young Jewish Orthodox men.

During my high school years, my Orthodox high school was a card-carrying member of this settler movement. At schoolwide gatherings, hundreds of us teenage boys belted out anthems of love for the Land of Israel – by which we meant, the West Bank and Gaza. We trothed our youthful pledge to build Jewish settlements “everywhere”. We looked up to the young men just a few years older than us who would slip out in the middle of the night to engage in the illicit activity of building these new settlements. When we sang our hymns of love to the West Bank, we riffed off the politically correct “occupied territories”, roaring “….and the LIBERATED territories!” Our generation’s mission was “to return” to the Holy Land east of the Green Line.

I was vague on what my role exactly was beyond enthusiastically supporting this effort. But I knew from my peers and teachers that colonizing and annexing the West Bank was respectable and commendable.

How did the messianic, nationalist, religious young settlers take control of government policy? How did they win the confidence of the grown ups, the sober, secularist, Israeli generals and politicians, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres and their cohort?

This is a classic Zionist story: working off the emotional appeal of centuries-old traditions to fashion an entirely different modern, secular, nationalistic ideology of colonization and exploitation.

This chapter begins not in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, but in Hebron. Jerusalem has been the most sacred Jewish place on earth for thousands of years. But just 17 miles south along the hilltop range is an even more venerable Jewish touchstone: Hebron, King David’s first capital. Hebron runs deeper in the Jewish mind than Jerusalem.

While Jerusalem is never once mentioned explicitly in the Torah (Pentateuch), stories about Hebron abound, including an unusual reference to its great antiquity. Early in the Pentateuch’s first book, the Book of Genesis, Hebron is the site of the first land purchase recorded in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and Jewish tradition, when Abraham purchases a burial plot there for his wife Sarah.

Jews have sustained a religious connection to Hebron continuously ever since. A small, Jewish community lived in Hebron until 1929. Judaism’s only extant building from antiquity is right there holding up the Ibrahimi Mosque/ the Cave of the Machpelah, Sarah’s burial place. This monumental stone enclosure was built over 2,000 years ago by King Herod. The is the same King Herod who built Judaism’s most famous religious site and synagogue, the massive Western Wall in Jerusalem. Alongside Jerusalem, Hebron is revered by Jews as one of the Land of Israel’s Four Sacred Cities.

The Cave of the Machpelah became the family burial site for the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs, Sarah and Abraham’s family. According to tradition, in due course, Isaac and Rebecca and then Jacob and Leah were buried there too. Other, lesser, biblical figures later joined them. And so, Hebron was always a site of Jewish pilgrimage to the graves of the patriarchs and matriarchs.

As a rabbi and as a teacher of rabbinical students I regularly encounter the figures of Abraham and the other patriarchs and matriarchs in text, in the stories of the Torah and Midrash (ancient Rabbinic commentary). They live in my imagination as paragons and teachers. Many Jews are still drawn to Cave of the Machpelah to pray at their shrine. These Jews experience a unique bond with the Divine in the presence of the patriarchs’ and matriarchs’ earthly remains.

I confess, I am not drawn to shrines housing the earthly remains of religious or secular icons. Partly, like many other modern Jews, I recoil from the sanctification of land and human relics but also I am deterred by the divisiveness of this particular shrine. After all, the Jewish side of the Cave of Machpelah/Ibrahimi Mosque is an armed settler outpost; and the Muslim mosque reminds me of how much work there is to do before this can be a place of peace. The tension between occupier and occupied is palpable here. This is not the place where I can enter into my own prayerful ideas of Abraham.

And frankly, I feel even more inconsequential in this place. The task is daunting. I am more prayerful about the Jewish matriarchs and patriarchs back home in the United States than at this shrine in Hebron.

But for many Jews today, as in centuries past, The Cave of the Machpelah/the Ibrahimi Mosque continues to be a sacred place with a powerful spiritual presence. Their expectation to have access to pray there is appropriate and should be honored by all.

Indeed, Israel has long guaranteed that Jews will have access to prayer at the Cave of Machpelah/the Ibrahimi Mosque.

This is the point where Noam Arnon and his cohort of settlers make their big lie. Noam Arnon promotes the Jewish outpost on the grounds that the settlers guarantee Jewish access to the shrine and are rebuilding the old Jewish community. This was the community that fled the city in 1929 in the wake of an Arab pogrom that claimed the lives of 57 Jews, some 15% of the small Jewish community.

Neither of these arguments are remotely true. The Israeli authorities guarantee Jewish access to the shrine, and Arnon does not speak for the heirs of the 1929 Jewish community. For instance, Dr. Yona Rochlin, whose father Moshe Hasson owned property in pre-1929 Hebron slammed Arnon (Hebrew):

“This is infuriating. I am beside myself with anger. My family holds the titles to several properties that the Hebron settlement wants to build on. [Prime Minister Naftali] Bennett and the settlers [claim to] speak in our name when they say they are righting a historic injustice and are reclaiming “their” real estate! What an arrogant, blatant lie! I am incensed at the settlers’ claim that the entire Jewish community in Hebron was wiped out and therefore they have taken over these properties.”

Arnon also fails to acknowledge the many acts of human solidarity by Hebron’s Muslim Palestinians who gave sanctuary to their Jewish neighbors in the 1929 riots, even at mortal risk to their own families.

Arnon, in fact, has a much bigger and more bellicose agenda than rebuilding old Jewish communities. The 20th century left behind any number of abandoned Jewish communities. Between the destruction of European Jewish civilization by Nazi Germany and their allies in the Holocaust and the subsequent Zionist-led dissolution of the millennia-old Arab Jewish world, it’s just a matter of putting a pin anywhere on the map. But Arnon only cares about Hebron and the West Bank.

That the colonization of the West Bank began in Hebron over fifty years ago and Noam Arnon is based today in Hebron is no accident. The settlers started out in Hebron less than a year after the 1967/Six Day War when Israel occupied the West Bank precisely because of its significance as home to a major Jewish religious shrine. They leveraged the religious claim of access to a house of worship into a secular, colonialist claim to land rights. They replaced the Jewish prayer book with the gun and the talit prayer shawl with the battle gear of the Israeli soldier. The claim to the land continues to be expressed and enforced solely under the authority of the gun, the ubiquitous badge of the settlers and their uniformed protectors, a privilege denied the occupied people of Palestine.

This is the host who welcomed US army officers to Hebron three weeks ago.

As I wrote in my own report from Hebron lately, Arnon’s colony has shut down the heart of its Old City. Many Hebronites have fled the area under the constant menace of settler violence. Others live in terror of heavily-armed, racist Jewish thugs who routinely harass Palestinians in Hebron. It’s always an unfair fight: the settlers are armed, the Palestinians are not. And as a backup, the Israeli army can be counted on to side with their fellow Israelis, the settlers, not the occupied Palestinians. In 11th grade some 39 years ago, several of my more extreme classmates disappeared for a few days. When they came back they told us of their exploits. They had gone to Hebron. The Israeli army had forced out the Palestinian residents and guarded the perimeter. My classmates were part of a larger group that entered the vacant Palestinian homes and wrecked them. One classmate told us nonchalantly how he had tipped over a large TV crashing it to the ground.

Hebron epitomizes the entire ongoing crisis that is Israel and Palestine. A savvy, well-funded, heavily-armed group of Israeli Jews has leveraged a traditional religious claim into a secular, colonialist presence dominating and disrupting life in the heart of the city.

In this view, the Palestinian indigenous people can stay so long as they are neither seen nor heard. The temporary-turned-permanent shutdown of Hebron’s Old City near the Ibrahimi Mosque is intentional. The ugly walls of the Israeli settlement backing into the market and disrupting its flow place a giant’s footprint inside the Arab market. The massive concrete walls and watchtowers separating Palestinians from Jews and the signs in Hebrew warning Israelis to stay away all make the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Hebronites invisible to Israelis and other Jews.

Arnon may have a beard and yarmulke and proclaim to be an observant Jew, but his occupier’s game has nothing to do with Judaism. It’s colonialism with all the brute force of any occupying force. He and his cohort rule by the gun.

Despite living in one of the most dangerous Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories and his vociferous support of violent felons, Arnon has received accolades and holds public positions within the Israeli establishment for his work in Hebron. In Israel, Noam Arnon, and by extension all he stands for, is respectable.

A crowning moment in legitimizing the Hebron Israeli colony came when the U.S. army accepted that invitation. That Palestinians were not included in the visit confirms the reality: Noam Arnon and his settler cohort are not interested in peaceful coexistence but in military domination of the occupied Palestinians.

In Judaism, Joshua’s military conquest of most of the Land of Israel, as recorded in the eponymous book of the Tanakh, carries less legitimacy than Abraham’s purchase of the burial plot in Hebron. The ancient story of Abraham’s purchase in the Torah’s Book of Genesis is cited continuously across millennia of Jewish tradition in various contexts: Arnon’s supersessionist colonialism deceptively upends that legitimacy by employing Joshua-like violence under the guise of peaceful, Abraham-like commerce.

Any military occupation, colonization or forced annexation can only be maintained against the will of the people through the constant application of violence. Jewish violence on the West Bank is so ubiquitous that it has been reduced to white noise.

However, inevitably the dull rumble of a volcano presages a spectacular eruption into something so violent that it commands the public’s attention.

The first time I remember the violence surfacing was in high school. One day, in April 1984 the news broke that a Jewish terrorist network had been exposed on the West Bank. We were shocked. The “Jewish Underground” had been murdering and maiming Palestinians public figures and other citizens for the previous five years. The “Jewish Underground” targeted Palestinian mayors. Bombs were placed in their cars, killing or maiming these democratically elected Palestinians leaders. One had both legs amputated. The general population was terrorized too. A girls’ school was intended to the be the site of a shooting massacre. This grim story is recorded in dispassionate detail in the court cases of the Israeli Jewish perpetrators and conspirators.

Some of the attackers were convicted and, predictably, given very short prison terms, if at all. And when they were released from jail, it was Noam Arnon, who was at the prison gates leading the singing and dancing, welcoming his comrades, the convicted murderers. He went on record saying: “They are heroes because they decided to sacrifice themselves, their future, their families, for the security of Jews.”

Then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dedicated many years of his career to building brand new Jewish-only towns straddling both sides of the Green Line. These new borderline settlements obliterated the old border between Israel and the West Bank under suburban Jewish-only streets and playgrounds. Jewish-only roads were extended from Israel into the West Bank. Jewish-only settlements bypassed the Palestinian electric grid and were hooked up to the Israeli national grid. Other major Israeli state-funded infrastructure went into creating today’s reality of a single Jewish state for Israelis living between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

Hebron was the first Jewish settlement in the One Jewish State’s first phase of illegally colonizing the occupied territories. Hebron continues to be at the forefront of this second phase, that of annexation, normalizing the inherently abnormal. One Jewish State from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. What to do with the non-Jews in the occupied territories? They are tucked out of sight behind 20-foot walls and Israeli military watchtowers. The Israeli gun holds them back and holds them down.

All, so that Noam Arnon and his messianic, nationalistic, racist cohort can indulge in his violent all-Jewish fantasy starting at a religious shrine in the heart of the ancient Palestinian city of Hebron and emanating out across the occupied territories.

This is the reality US armed officers blessed with their visit earlier this month. This was a moment we might have expected from President Trump, not from President Biden.

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Rabbi Michael Davis is an independent Rabbi in suburban Chicago.

Featured image: U.S. ARMY PERSONNEL MEETING WITH HEBRON JEWISH SETTLERS, INCLUDING NOAM ARNON, SECOND FROM LEFT, AND RABBI YISHAI FLEISHER (R) OUTSIDE IBRAHIMI MOSQUE. “A U.S. MILITARY ATTACHE AND SECURITY COORDINATOR” WERE ACCOMPANIED BY ISRAELI FORCES, ACCORDING TO HEBRON FUND, WHICH POSTED THE PHOTO, JANUARY 18, 2022.

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The report: “Human Augmentation – The Dawn of a New Paradigm. A strategic implications project” was published jointly by the UK Ministry of Defense, and German Federal Ministry of Defense in 2021. Reading this document is frankly chilling as the the idea of using human augmentation for warfare is considered a fait accompli by the authors. That planning for human augmentation must start now.

We can assume that although this report is coming from the UK Ministry of Defense, and German Federal Ministry of Defense, parallel efforts are being made by most large governments around the world.

To begin this report highlights the important and benefits of human augmentation. From the report:

Human augmentation will become increasingly relevant, partly because it can directly enhance human capability and behavior and partly because it is the binding agent between people and machines. Future wars will be won, not by those with the most advanced technology, but by those who can most effectively integrate the unique capabilities of both people and machines. The importance of human-machine teaming is widely acknowledged but it has been viewed from a techno-centric perspective. Human augmentation is the missing part of this puzzle.

Of course, one of the first questions that must be asked when reading this report is what is human augmentation. An image from the report lists the technologies. The back of the report details these technologies in great detail:

The document goes on to write that the role of ethics and public perception in the use of human augmentation are not the deciding factors in developing human augmentation. The general consensus of the report is that human augmentation is critical for national security for the future development of warfare. It will be the military industrial complex (national interests) the ultimately decides what is developed.

Feasibility assessment

We cannot wait for the ethics of human augmentation to be decided for us, we
must be part of the conversation now. The ethical implications are significant but not insurmountable; early and regular engagement will be essential to remain at the forefront of this field. Ethical perspectives on human augmentation will change and this could happen quickly. There may be a moral obligation to augment people, particularly in cases where it promotes well-being or protects us from novel threats. It could be argued that treatments involving novel vaccination processes and gene and cell therapies are examples of human augmentation already in the pipeline.

The need to use human augmentation may ultimately be dictated by national interest.

Countries may need to develop and use human augmentation or risk surrendering influence, prosperity and security to those who will. National regulations dictating the pace and scope of scientific research reflect societal views, particularly in democracies that are more sensitive to public opinion. The future of human augmentation should not, however, be decided by ethicists or public opinion, although both will be important voices; rather, governments will need to develop a clear policy position that maximises the use of human augmentation in support of prosperity, safety and security, without undermining our values.

The report goes on:

Human augmentation is our first insight of what lies beyond today’s Information
Age – the coming of the Biotech age. The Biotech age will see focus on the human grow. No longer will it be adequate to regard people merely as the means to operate
the machine. The interdisciplinary nature of human augmentation will render our current Industrial Age model of Defense ineffective. Defense must consider how it reorganizes to meet a future that will demand a human-centric approach to warfare where the person is armed with the capabilities to integrate fully into a single platform.

Differences in national, cultural and legal approaches will lead to an uneven uptake
of human augmentation within international alliances. This will further complicate interoperability, integration and deconfliction. Overcoming these challenges will demand closer cooperation between allies. Alliances must therefore start work now to understand how and where to prepare for the use of human augmentation.

In reading this report, it is important to understand how military complexes around the world view the human augmentation model for warfare.

Human augmentation may lead to fundamentally new concepts of warfare. In the next 30 years, increasing use of autonomous and unmanned systems – from the tactical to strategic level – could significantly increase the combat effect that an individual can bring to bear, but to realize this potential the interfaces between people and machines will need to be significantly enhanced. Human augmentation will play an important part in enabling this interface and, if done effectively, it will significantly alter our force structure, equipment program and doctrine. It is important to realize that the more human augmentation is embedded into Defense planning and practice, the more likely it is to become a target itself for an adversary; thus, counter-human augmentation measures need to be considered in parallel with the adoption of human augmentation.

Human augmentation will play a key role in reducing the risk of cognitive overload as warfare becomes faster, more complex and more congested. Bioinformatics are likely to play a key role in identifying commanders and staff with the right cognitive and adaptive potential for command and control roles. Brain interfaces linked to machine learning algorithms have the potential to rapidly accelerate the speed and quality of decision-making.

Today’s rehabilitation tools: tomorrow’s enhancements – physical and mental rehabilitation may, in the near term, prove to be the front line of human augmentation in Defense. Advanced prosthetics to rehabilitate wounded personnel represent the cutting edge of robotics and the latest neurostimulation devices and pharmaceuticals have been used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Further development of these treatments will not only help to rehabilitate injured personnel, but they could also pave the way for future enhancements.

The report make the point that warfare models must conceptualize human beings as a platform “technology,” one that comprises physical, psychological and social performance. This is summarized in the following image:

Now read the caption from the report written below image at the top of the page, it states,

“six million years of evolution to where we are today and now we have the tools in our hands to decide how our continued evolution should be shaped.”

It is important to understand that the development of human augmentation being presented goes beyond warfare, it suggests that humans will now control our own evolution via genetic engineering.

The arrogance and hubris in this point of view is enormous. That in one or two generations, the military industrial complex will pivot to controlling human evolution via genetic engineering and human augmentation is not only naive, ethically corrupt but fundamentally dangerous.

Another image from the report:

The report goes on to discusses the advantages of genetic engineering:

Another aspect of the report delves into personal information and the need to supersede such issues:

The key to developing effective human augmentation is an improved understanding of how both the body and technology work and how they work together. This will require access to, and analysis of, personal data: whether it is psychophysiological variables, collection of personal reference data, analysis of medical markers, or supervision of training routines. Only if these building blocks are put in place, will there be enough understanding to ensure that human augmentations can be made precisely and with certainty that the desired effect will be achieved. Only when (or if) this happens will the science of human augmentation arrive.

To end, this 110 page report is detailed and complex. It documents the ways humans can be augmented in great detail. I ask all of you to please read this report. Absorb this information and get ready for the coming battle.

We need to work to control and regulate the development of human augmentation now, before it truly is a fait accompli.

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Note from the author: The above Images and quotes from the report entitled “Human Augmentation – The Dawn of a New Paradigm” are being used for educational purposes under Section 107 of the Copyright Act

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***

When John Brown was led from his cell to be hanged by the neck until dead on December 2, 1859, he passed a scrap of folded paper to his guard.

John Brown had been convicted of treason by the state of Virginia, the first such conviction in American history, in a show trial. Treason referred to how Brown organized a group of armed citizens who raided the federal armory at Harper Ferry, Virginia, with the intention of starting a mass uprising against the institution of slavery, and, by extension, the entire political economic system that defined the United States.

The hand-written note asserted that the guilt was not his, but that rather guilt permeated the entire nation, corrupted by the filthy institution of slavery.

The note read,

 “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

His words were prescient in a sense that few understood. His contemporaries, and future historians, bent over backwards to describe him as a mad man, and to dismiss his raid as a folly.

Now that we see before our eyes the employment of COVID-19 lockdowns, masks, quarantine camps, vaccine mandates and other institutions that are intended to reduce all, but a handful of the rich—the planter class of our age, to slavery, we must ask ourselves exactly what did John Brown do and why was the reaction of the establishment to him so severe?

For those who are absolute pacifists, pass over John Brown. The rest of you, listen closely.

John Brown had been fighting against slavery since 1848 and his activities in Kansas included explicit violence in opposition to the institution of slavery.

He spent two years preparing for the uprising that would start and end at Harpers Ferry. His invitation to action was turned down by most everyone, including leading anti-slavery figures like Frederick Douglass, who considered it too dangerous and too provocative.

That raid, that decision resolve the issue of slavery by force—no matter how small the numbers of people in the group, made Brown an extremist because he undermined the progressive cause of ending slavery through negotiation and compromise.

But John Brown’s logic was impeccable and his contemporaries had to ignore what he wrote in order to dismiss him. Frederick Douglass himself would come to agree with Brown’s position.

The true nature of slavery, just like the true nature of lockdowns, masks and vaccines, had been intentionally suppressed by progressive politicians and intellectuals who wanted to debate heatedly the policy process, but not the nature of slavery.

Slavery, according to Brown, was not a mistaken policy, not a “peculiar institution” distinctive to the South, not a matter of state’s rights, or property rights, and not an issue that could be worked out through comprise. No, John Brown made it clear in his writings that slavery, like vaccines, was a war against the people and that the people must respond to this assault in kind, as they would respond to a war.

His actions were attacked by Democrat and Republican alike, but he galvanized the nation when he revealed a hidden horrid truth by charging madly into the horns of common sense.

Frances Ellen Watkins, a freed slave and abolitionist, sent a letter to John Brown in prison reading,

“Dear friend: Although the hands of slavery throw a barrier between you and me, and it may not be my privilege to see you in the prison house, Virginia has no bolts or bars through which I dread to send you my sympathy. In the name of the young girl sold from the warm clasp of a mother’s arms to the clutches of a libertine or profligate- in the name of the slave mother, her heart rocked to and fro by the agony of her mournful separations — I thank you that you have been brave enough to reach out your hands to the crushed and blighted of my race.

Your martyr grave will be a sacred altar upon which men will record their vows of undying hatred to that system which tramples on man and bids defiance to God.”

Brown did what the other anti-slavery forces, the Robert Malones and the Naomi Kleins of that era, were afraid to do. He insisted that words alone, protests alone, would not work. It was a war and dedicated organizations of men ready to die for the cause were the only means of resistance.

Brown drafted in 1858 a “Declaration of Liberty” that extended the “Declaration of Independence” to its full logical conclusion of freedom for all Americans.

The Declaration of Liberty rewrote the Declaration of Independence to cover all races, men and women, without exception.

“That when any form of Government, becomes destructive to these ends, It is the right of the People, to alter, Amend, or Remodel it, Laying its foundation on Such Principles, & organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect the safety, & happiness” of the Human Race, To secure equal rights, privileges, & justice to all; Irrespective of Sex; or Nation; To Secure Fraternal Kindness to all Friends of Equal Moral privileges, to all who honestly abandon their Despotic oppressive rule.”

He and his followers also drafted a Provisional Constitution for the United States that laid down the logical, ethical and legal justifications for the raid at Harpers Ferry.

He explained that the cancer of slavery had rendered the United States so corrupt, and its policies so distant from the word and the spirit of the Constitution, that it lacked legitimacy. This new constitution presented a blue print for the rule by law, and his actions were entirely and just from the point of view of the position articulated.

We watch today the horrific final stages of the decay of civilization and the rule of law in the United States, a decay that has allowed COVID-19 to fester and to blossom. COVID-19 has taken the place of slavery as the weapon, a weapon that cowardly intellectuals cannot name, that is deployed in the war on citizens.

COVID-19 regulations, cooked up in secret by consulting firms funded by the rich, are fed through a shadowy network to the pathetic politicians who rubber stamp them and then appear on television to justify them.

This COVID-19 regime, has entirely replaced the constitution in same sense that the radical expansion of slavery in the 1850s gutted constitutional guarantees and opened the door for transformation of all working-class Americans into slaves.

Brown’s provisional constitution identified the true nature of slavery as “none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked, and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens upon another portion.”

The war against the people today, the campaign to make us into slaves, is made possible by denial and by the embrace of falsehood, by the treason of the intellectuals who value their status more than the pursuit of truth.

The false, limited-hangout, critics of COVID-19 suggest that posting something witty in social media sources like Facebook, Twitter, etc. is an act of defiance. But these sources, as well as Wikipedia and YouTube, are not even public platforms, but rather controlled by multinational corporations whose ultimate purpose is to allow you, and to encourage you, to complain to your friends, but to take no actions that could lead to fundamental institutional, financial or ideological change

We must not enter the dead-end tunnel of moral outrage for the like-minded aimed not at painful change through sacrifice, but rather at self-importance.

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As Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk put it, we observe today,

“Egotism hidden under the mask of humanity and nobility in mind; cowardice passing itself off as fortitude; sophistry deceiving the sensible and wise.”

John Brown may not be the appropriate model for us at this historical juncture, but his decision to act, rather than to debate, speaks volumes.

As the billionaires use supercomputers and complex algorithms to induce mass psychosis, fear and passivity, narcissistic obsessions with image, sex and food, as the first steps are taken to create a permanent slave class at home and abroad, we must see the actions of John Brown, or of Spartacus (who led the slave revolt in Rome of the 1^st century A.D.), with new eyes.

It may be far worse this time.

While the trashy media continues to suggest that the COVID pandemic will be over in a few months, we need to consider the other possibility.

Plato wrote “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

Perhaps the proper revision should be,

“Only the dead have seen the end of this pandemic.”

Once you put it that way, the solution becomes crystal clear.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is licensed under Public Domain

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***

A covert US task force came close to decimating a major area in Syria by bombing a dam that the Pentagon had put on a “no-strike list,” a new report claims.

In 2017, the American unit bombed the Tabqa dam on the Euphrates in eastern Syria, upstream of Raqqa, where Daesh fighters were occupying the control towers.

When the attack was originally reported, the US and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces claimed that limited munitions were used to seize the location, with the head of the anti-Daesh coalition describing rumors that it was bombed as “crazy reporting.”

But new analysis by the New York Times, which has uncovered and reviewed a slurry of bombing incidents from the war against Daesh, claimed that three 2,000-lb bombs were deployed.

The attack risked tens of thousands of lives, destroying the dam’s machinery and requiring emergency intervention to prevent the reservoir from flooding. The dam was only saved due to a “bunker-buster” bomb failing to explode.

On March 26, 2017, as the SDF closed in on Raqqa, the US launched the strike with support from its Kurdish allies on the ground, with whom it had established a close relationship for calling in high-powered attacks.

The SDF called for a B-52 — the long-range strategic bomber that has been in continual service since the 1950s — as the fighting party was being blocked from advancing by Daesh fighters further ahead up the reservoir.

Spotting the Islamists in fortified positions in the control towers, a bombing run was requested.

But the unit ignored this advice, using an emergency protocol that allowed it to call in airstrikes beyond the ordinary chain of command during sudden life-threatening moments, such as the battle with Daesh at the reservoir.

However, crew logs from the B-52 flight that undertook the bombing run said it had been required for “terrain denial,” with no reference to lives being at risk from Daesh fighters.

The bombing run was devastating. Fifty feet of water quickly rose as the machinery was bust, with dams on the Euphrates in Turkey further upstream rushing to slow the flow.

A one-day ceasefire was called to allow a group of 16 engineers from all sides of the conflict to lift the floodgates and prevent further damage.

Three of those engineers were killed after they had successfully used a crane to lift the gates, bombed by a drone while driving home.

The dam strike reportedly shocked US Air Force personnel and military planners. Scott Murray, a retired USAF colonel, was quoted by the NYT as saying: “Using a 2,000 lb bomb against a restricted target like a dam is extremely difficult and should have never been done on the fly. Worst case, those munitions could have absolutely caused the dam to fail.”

The Pentagon defended the strike, saying it had targeted the dam’s control towers, not its structure.

“Analysis had confirmed that strikes on the towers attached to the dam were not considered likely to cause structural damage to the Tabqa dam itself,” said Bill Urban, a US Central Command spokesman, adding that the dam had not collapsed. “That analysis has proved accurate.”

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Featured image is from Britannica

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***

Daily Covid infections worldwide since the epidemic began:

Just imagine how bad things would be if we DIDN’T have vaccines.

Lol. (Sob.)

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***

Check out this article:

The article calls out Mercola, Berenson, Malone, me, and anonymous writer Eugyppius as the most followed “vaccine-sceptic writers.”

Just to be perfectly clear, I’ve offered to debate CCDH in the past, but they were not interested.

When you don’t have the facts on your side, the only thing you can do is decline all debates and call for censorship.

Here are my offers to debate Imran Ahmed and Chelsea Clinton. You can click these and see if they reply. My advice: don’t hold your breath on that one.

Nice article in the Guardian on Substack writers. I was wondering if you'd like to debate all of us in a recorded Zoom call? You can have all your "fact checkers" on the call. Or are you afraid?

— Steve Kirsch (@stkirsch) January 29, 2022

Would you like to debate all of us Chelsea? I'm game and I think I can get the others as well.

— Steve Kirsch (@stkirsch) January 29, 2022

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***

So what are Americans to believe about the rising tensions over Ukraine? The United States and Russia both claim their escalations are defensive, responding to threats and escalations by the other side, but the resulting spiral of escalation can only make war more likely. Ukrainian President Zelensky is warning that “panic” by U.S. and Western leaders is already causing economic destabilization in Ukraine.     

U.S. allies do not all support the current U.S. policy. Germany is wisely refusing to funnel more weapons into Ukraine, in keeping with its long-standing policy of not sending weapons into conflict zones. Ralf Stegner, a senior Member of Parliament for Germany’s ruling Social Democrats, told the BBC on January 25th that the Minsk-Normandy process agreed to by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine in 2015 is still the right framework for ending the civil war.

“The Minsk Agreement hasn’t been applied by both sides,” Stegner explained, “and it just doesn’t make any sense to think that forcing up the military possibilities would make it better. Rather, I think it’s the hour of diplomacy.”

By contrast, most American politicians and corporate media have fallen in line with a one-sided narrative that paints Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine, and support sending more and more weapons to Ukrainian government forces. After decades of U.S. military disasters based on such one-sided narratives, Americans should know better by now. But what is it that our leaders and the corporate media are not telling us this time?

The most critical events that have been airbrushed out of the West’s political narrative are the violation of agreements Western leaders made at the end of the Cold War not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe, and the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in February 2014.

Western mainstream media accounts date the crisis in Ukraine back to Russia’s 2014 reintegration of Crimea, and the decision by ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine to secede from Ukraine as the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics.

But these were not unprovoked actions. They were responses to the U.S.-backed coup, in which an armed mob led by the neo-Nazi Right Sector militia stormed the Ukrainian parliament, forcing the elected President Yanukovich and members of his party to flee for their lives. After the events of January 6, 2021, in Washington, that should now be easier for Americans to understand.

Protesters throwing bricks at riot police, using tire smoke for cover from sniper fire, Kyiv, 18 February 2014 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

The remaining members of parliament voted to form a new government, subverting the political transition and plans for a new election that Yanukovich had publicly agreed to the day before, after meetings with the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland.

The U.S. role in managing the coup was exposed by a leaked 2014 audio recording of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt working on their plans, which included sidelining the European Union (“Fuck the EU,” as Nuland put it) and shoehorning in U.S. protege Arseniy Yatsenyuk (“Yats”) as Prime Minister.

At the end of the call, Ambassador Pyatt told Nuland, “…we want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing.”

Nuland replied (verbatim),

“So on that piece Geoff, when I wrote the note, [Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan’s come back to me VFR [very quickly?], saying you need [Vice President] Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details?] to stick. So Biden’s willing.”

It has never been explained why two senior State Department officials who were plotting a regime change in Ukraine looked to Vice President Biden to “midwife this thing,” instead of to their own boss, Secretary of State John Kerry.

Now that the crisis over Ukraine has blown up with a vengeance during Biden’s first year as president, such unanswered questions about his role in the 2014 coup have become more urgent and troubling. And why did President Biden appoint Nuland to the # 4 position at the State Department, despite (or was it because of?) her critical role in triggering the disintegration of Ukraine and an eight-year-long civil war that has so far killed at least 14,000 people?

Both of Nuland’s hand-picked puppets in Ukraine, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and President Poroshenko, were soon mired in corruption scandals. Yatsenyuk was forced to resign after two years and Poroshenko was outed in a tax evasion scandal revealed in the Panama Papers. Post-coup, war-torn Ukraine remains the poorest country in Europe, and one of the most corrupt.

The Ukrainian military had little enthusiasm for a civil war against its own people in Eastern Ukraine, so the post-coup government formed new “National Guard” units to assault the separatist People’s Republics. The infamous Azov Battalion drew its first recruits from the Right Sector militia and openly displays neo-Nazi symbols, yet it has kept receiving U.S. arms and training, even after Congress explicitly cut off its U.S. funding in the FY2018 Defense Appropriation bill.

In 2015, the Minsk and Normandy negotiations led to a ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons from a buffer zone around the separatist-held areas. Ukraine agreed to grant greater autonomy to Donetsk, Luhansk and other ethnically Russian areas of Ukraine, but it has failed to follow through on that.

A federal system, with some powers devolved to individual provinces or regions, could help to resolve the all-or-nothing power struggle between Ukrainian nationalists and Ukraine’s traditional ties to Russia that has dogged its politics since independence in 1991.

But the U.S. and NATO’s interest in Ukraine is not really about resolving its regional differences, but about something else altogether. The U.S. coup was calculated to put Russia in an impossible position. If Russia did nothing, post-coup Ukraine would sooner or later join NATO, as NATO members already agreed to in principle in 2008. NATO forces would advance right up to Russia’s border and Russia’s important naval base at Sevastopol in the Crimea would fall under NATO control.

On the other hand, if Russia had responded to the coup by invading Ukraine, there would have been no turning back from a disastrous new Cold War with the West. To Washington’s frustration, Russia found a middle path out of this dilemma, by accepting the result of Crimea’s referendum to rejoin Russia, but only giving covert support to the separatists in the East.

In 2021, with Nuland once again installed in a corner office at the State Department, the Biden administration quickly cooked up a plan to put Russia in a new pickle. The United States had already given Ukraine $2 billion in military aid since 2014, and Biden has added another $650 million to that, along with deployments of U.S. and NATO military trainers.

Ukraine has still not implemented the constitutional changes called for in the Minsk agreements, and the unconditional military support the United States and NATO have provided has encouraged Ukraine’s leaders to effectively abandon the Minsk-Normandy process and simply reassert sovereignty over all of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea.

In practice, Ukraine could only recover those territories by a major escalation of the civil war, and that was exactly what Ukraine and its NATO backers appeared to be preparing for in March 2021. But that prompted Russia to begin moving troops and conducting military exercises, within its own territory (including Crimea), but close enough to Ukraine to deter a new offensive by Ukrainian government forces.

In October, Ukraine launched new attacks in Donbass. Russia, which still had about 100,000 troops stationed near Ukraine, responded with new troop movements and military exercises. U.S. officials launched an information warfare campaign to frame Russia’s troop movements as an unprovoked threat to invade Ukraine, concealing their own role in fueling the threatened Ukrainian escalation that Russia is responding to. U.S. propaganda has gone so far as to preemptively dismiss any actual new Ukrainian assault in the East as a Russian false-flag operation.

Underlying all these tensions is NATO’s expansion through Eastern Europe to the borders of Russia, in violation of commitments Western officials made at the end of the Cold War. The U.S. and NATO’s refusal to acknowledge that they have violated those commitments or to negotiate a diplomatic resolution with the Russians is a central factor in the breakdown of U.S.-Russian relations.

While U.S. officials and corporate media are scaring the pants off Americans and Europeans with tales of an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials are warning that U.S.-Russian relations are close to the breaking point. If the United States and NATO are not prepared to negotiate new disarmament treaties, remove U.S. missiles from countries bordering Russia and dial back NATO expansion, Russian officials say they will have no option but to respond with “appropriate military-technical reciprocal measures.”

This expression may not refer to an invasion of Ukraine, as most Western commentators have assumed, but to a broader strategy that could include actions that hit much closer to home for Western leaders.

For example, Russia could place short-range nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad (between Lithuania and Poland), within range of European capitals; it could establish military bases in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and other friendly countries; and it could deploy submarines armed with hypersonic nuclear missiles to the Western Atlantic, from where they could destroy Washington, D.C. in a matter of minutes.

It has long been a common refrain among American activists to point to the 800 or so U.S. military bases all over the world and ask, “How would Americans like it if Russia or China built military bases in Mexico or Cuba?” Well, we may be about to find out.

Hypersonic nuclear missiles off the U.S. East Coast would put the United States in a similar position to that in which NATO has placed the Russians. China could adopt a similar strategy in the Pacific to respond to U.S. military bases and deployments around its coast.

So the revived Cold War that U.S. officials and corporate media hacks have been mindlessly cheering on could very quickly turn into one in which the United States would find itself just as encircled and endangered as its enemies.

Will the prospect of such a 21st Century Cuban Missile Crisis be enough to bring America’s irresponsible leaders to their senses and back to the negotiating table, to start unwinding the suicidal mess they have blundered into? We certainly hope so.

*

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image: U.S. allies in Ukraine, with NATO, Azov Battalion and neo-Nazi flags. Photo by russia-insider.com

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

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Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg.

***

It seems we may have reached the moment when it is time to say goodbye. It has been fun, educational and sometimes cathartic – for me at least. I hope you got something from our time together too.

I am not going anywhere, of course. Not for now at least. I love to write. For as long as I feasibly can, I will continue to rail against injustice, call out corporate power and its abuses, and demand a fairer and more open society.

But I have to be realistic. I have to recognise that a growing number of you will not be joining me here on this page for much longer. And it feels rude after so much time together not to bid you a fond farewell before it is too late. I will miss you.

Many of you may have assumed it wouldn’t end this way. You probably imagined that I would get banned by Facebook or Twitter. You would be able to rally round, send in complaints worded in the strongest possible terms, and lobby for my reinstatement. Maybe even sign a petition.

But it isn’t going to end like that. There will be no bang. I have been too careful for that to be my fate. I have avoided rude and crude words. I have steered clear of insults (apologies if my responses have sometimes been a little caustic). I have not defamed anyone. I have avoided “fake news” – except to critique it. I have not peddled “conspiracy theories”, unless quoting the British Medical Journal on Covid now counts as misinformation (yes, I know for a few of you it does).

But none of that has helped. My blog posts once attracted tens of thousands of shares. Then, as the algorithms tightened, it became thousands. Now, as they throttle me further, shares can often be counted in the hundreds. “Going viral” is a distant memory.

No, I won’t be banned. I will fade incrementally, like a small star in the night sky – one among millions – gradually eclipsed as its neighbouring suns grow ever bigger and brighter. I will disappear from view so slowly you won’t even notice.

Which is why I am saying my goodbyes now while I can still reach you, my most obstinate followers.

But this isn’t really about one small light being snuffed out. This isn’t just about our relationship coming to an end. Something bigger, and more disturbing, is taking place.

Journalists like me are part of an experiment – in a new, more democratised media landscape. We have developed new reader-funded models so that we can break free of the media corporations, which until now ensured billionaires and the state controlled the flow of information in one direction only: to speak down to us.

Watch the video here.

The corporate media needs corporate advertising to survive – or the owners’ deep pockets. They don’t need you, except as a captive audience. You’re both their prisoner and their product.

But the lifeblood of a reader-funded journalist, as the name suggests, are readers. The more of you we attract, the better chance there is that we can generate donations and income and make the model sustainable. Our Achilles’ heel is our dependence on social media to find you, to keep reaching you, to offer you an alternative from the corporate media.

If Facebook (sorry, the Meta universe) and Twitter stop independent writers from growing their readerships by manipulating the algorithms, by ghosting and shadow-banning us, and by all the other trickery we do not yet understand, then new voices cannot grow their funding base and break free of corporate control.

And equally, for those like me who are already established and have significant numbers of readers, these tech giants can whittle them away one by one. Ostensibly, I have many tens of thousands of followers, but for several years now I have been reaching fewer and fewer of you. I am starved of connection. The danger, already only too obvious, is that my readership, and funding model, will slowly start to shrivel and die.

Joe Rogan, Russell Brand and a handful of titans of the new media age are so big they can probably weather it out. But the rest of us will not be so lucky.

Readers will lose sight of us, as our light slowly fades, and then we will be gone completely. Vanished.

I have lost count of the followers who – because, god knows, an algorithm slipped up? – tell me they have received a social media post many months after they last saw one from me. In the cacophony of media noise, they had not noticed that I had unexpectedly gone quiet until that reminder arrived or else they assumed I had given up writing.

Which is why, if you want to keep seeing posts from me and writers like me, if this is not soon to be a final goodbye, if you think it important to read non-corporate analysis and commentary, then you need to act. You should be bookmarking your favourite writers and visiting their sites regularly – not just when you are prompted to by Mark Zuckerberg.

You need to be an active consumer of news – not a passive one, as you were raised to be when the choice was between three TV channels and a dozen print newspapers.

You need to search out and maintain those connections before they are gone entirely and the window has closed. Because those voices you prize now will wither and decay like autumn leaves if they have no audience. Even when you finally remember to go search for them, if you leave it too long you may find they are no longer there to be discovered. You will have missed the chance to say goodbye.

So let us say it now, while we still can: Farewell.

*

Writing is a solitary activity, and it can be easy to imagine that what was obvious inside your head will be clear to others when that idea takes its place in the material world. But a proportion of early readers of this post have mistaken it for an actual goodbye, rather than as a cautionary tale of what has been happening and what is still to come. So let me reassure you: I am going to continue writing and you can continue reading me, so long as either Twitter and Facebook direct you to me or you make the effort to find me.

Here’s hoping that my goodbye will prove unnecessary.

*

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This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg.

***

The media wants Canada to give more weapons, military trainers and other support to Ukrainians seeking conflict with Russia.

“Canada faces criticism for ‘soft’ response to Ukraine amid Russia threat”, noted The Canadian Press on Tuesday while a Globe and Mail article was headlined “Trudeau’s dithering on Ukraine should fool no one”. After Trudeau announced an expansion of Canada’s military mission in the Ukraine on Wednesday, reporters questioned why more arms weren’t being sent and Global published “Canada will not send Ukraine weapons but boost cyber support, training mission.”

The media’s claim that the Liberals are “soft” on Russia conflicts with the facts, which even US establishment outlets recognize. On Tuesday Foreign Policy published “Why Britain, Canada Are So Forward-Leaning on Ukraine”. The story noted that Ottawa has “taken a more hawkish approach against Russia in the crisis compared to other NATO allies.”

While the current crisis has many facets to it — some of which I detail in “Maybe the story is more complex than Russia bad, Canada good” — one starting point was the right-wing nationalist EuroMaidan movement that overthrew president Viktor Yanukovych, who was oscillating between the European Union and Russia. The US/Canadian-backed coup in 2014 divided the Ukraine politically, geographically and linguistically (Russian is the mother tongue of 30% of Ukrainians and as much as 75% of those in eastern cities). The largely Russian-speaking east protested the ouster of Yanukovych who was from the region. The Donbass region in the east broke from Kyiv’s control in a war that has left over 10,000 dead.

In response to the conflict in the east and Moscow seizing the predominately Russian Crimea, the US, Canada and Britain have spent lavishly building up the Ukrainian military. Through Operation UNIFIER 200 Canadian troops have been working with Ukrainian soldiers on military engineering, explosive-device disposal, sniper training, etc. since 2015. In March 2017 the Liberals expanded UNIFIER’s mandate, easing restrictions that required the Canadians to stay in the western half of Ukraine, away from the fighting in the east. On Tuesday Foreign Policy reported that Canada’s training mission “has also become more expansive in geographical terms than the U.S. effort, which has long been centered in western Ukraine. Canadian units can go to places like Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Odessa that are mostly untouched by other NATO militaries. The ability to send forces to study Ukraine’s modernizing military has allowed Canadian troops to expand their training from low-level tactical drills to the education courses given to Ukrainian troops.” On Wednesday the Trudeau government announced an expansion of UNIFIER and further loosening of restrictions on Canadian military trainers.

Canadian officials have openly stated that Operation UNIFIER is directed at Russia. During a 2017 parliamentary debate about UNIFIER defence minister Harjit Sajjan said, “through Operation UNIFIER, we sent a clear signal of deterrence to Russia.” Another aim of Operation UNIFIER is to help “modernize the Ukrainian Armed Forces”, noted Sajjan, so the country could join NATO. To support Ukraine’s possible accession to the alliance, Canada has supported the NATO-Ukraine Joint Working Group on Defence Reform and Canada shared the role of NATO Contact Point Embassy in Kyiv.

The Liberals also equipped the Ukrainian military, donating tens of millions of dollars’ worth of helmets, vehicles, clothing and bulletproof vests. In December 2017 the Liberals added Ukraine to Canada’s Automatic Firearms Country Control List, which allowed companies to export weapons to that country with little restriction. In 2019, Winnipeg based PGW Defence Technologies delivered $1 million worth of heavy caliber sniper rifles to the Ukrainian military. Through a memorandum of understanding Ottawa signed with Kyiv a Canadian company, supported by the crown-owned Canadian Commercial Corporation, is helping build up Ukrainian ammunition production.

To strength military ties the two countries signed a Defence Cooperation Agreement in April 2017. Three months earlier the Liberals appointed former Assistant Deputy Minister at National Defence, Jill Sinclair, to Ukraine’s Defence Reform Advisory Board. “This representative provides strategic advice on defence reform to Ukraine’s Minister of Defence and senior officials”, noted Global Affairs.

In July 2018 International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau was the first G7 minister to travel to the line of contact between the warring factions in the East of Ukraine. Two years earlier Trudeau traveled to Kyiv to sign a free-trade agreement. During the visit the Prime Minister said Canadian troops were preparing Ukrainian soldiers to “liberate” its “territory”. At that time Ukrainian troops were actively fighting secessionist forces in the east of the country.

The Liberals effectively deny the legitimate grievances of the predominantly Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine who revolted against the ultra-nationalist government in Kyiv that took power after the Canadian backed overthrow of Yanukovych. In response to a March 2017 question about whether Canada saw the conflict in eastern Ukraine as a separatist movement or Russian aggression Sinclair told a Ukrainian press outlet, “I think Canada has been clear since the outset of Russian aggression against Ukraine that it’s Russian aggression against Ukraine, in Crimea and in the East.”

For her part, former foreign minister Freeland framed the conflict in eastern Ukraine as a global battle between good and evil. In November 2019 she declared that Ukraine was at the “forefront of the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism” and that “modern Ukraine is the country where the struggle is ongoing and the future of the rules-based international order and genuine democracy in the world will be determined.”

Ottawa’s words and actions have emboldened far-right militarists responsible for hundreds of deaths in Eastern Ukraine. Far right militia members were part of the force fighting Russian-aligned groups in eastern Ukraine and Canadians troops have trained a force that includes the best-organized neo-Nazis in the world. In June 2018 Canada’s military attaché in Kiev, Colonel Brian Irwin, met privately with officers from the Azov battalion, who used the Nazi “Wolfsangel” symbol and praised officials who helped slaughter Jews and Poles during World War II. According to Azov, Canadian military officials concluded the briefing by expressing “their hopes for further fruitful cooperation.” A September report from an Institute at George Washington University revealed that the far-right Centuria boasted about being trained by Canadian troops in the Ukraine. The report detailed Centuria members making Nazi salutes, praising SS units and promoting white supremacy.

Canada has also funded, equipped and trained the neo-Nazi infiltrated National Police of Ukraine, which was founded after Yanukovych was overthrown. The post Maiden Ukrainian government included a number of neo-Nazis. During his 2016 trip to Ukraine Trudeau was photographed with Andriy Parubiy, Ukrainian Parliament speaker, who had a background with the far right and was accused of praising Hitler.

As part of its alignment with Ukraine against Russia the Liberals have refused to back a number of UN resolutions opposed to glorifying Nazism, neo-Nazism and racial discrimination. On November 19, 2015, they voted against a UN General assembly resolution critical of the aforementioned subject supported by 126 states. The US, Palau and Ukraine were the only other countries to vote against the resolution titled “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” In subsequent years the Liberals have abstained on a similar resolution.

To a large extent Ottawa and Washington have used the Ukraine as a proxy to weaken Russia. Despite the fact the Cold War ended decades ago, the Russian bogeyman remains an effective tool that supporters of the US Empire are eager to employ.

*

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Featured image is from Yves Engler

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

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Global Research Editor’s Note

Rick Rozoff’s article on CBC Coverage:

“While the CBC just ran a feature with the head of an “anti-hate” group warning that the Canadian capital will be “festooned with swastikas“.

Indelibly, CBC’s report is intent on smearing Canada’s Freedom Convoy mass movement from coast to coast.

What the CBC report fails to mention is Canada’s role in training Ukraine’s National Guard which is integrated by Neo-Nazis.

It is worth noting that in November 2021, the Ottawa Citizen published a carefully documented report on Canada’s role in training Neo-Nazi National Guard operatives in Ukraine at tax payers expense. According to the Ottawa Citizen:

“The Canadians met with and were briefed by leaders from the Azov Battalion in June 2018. The officers and diplomats did not object to the meeting and instead allowed themselves to be photographed with battalion officials despite previous warnings that the unit saw itself as pro-Nazi. The Azov Battalion then used those photos for its online propaganda, pointing out the Canadian delegation expressed “hopes for further fruitful co-operation.”

Click screenshot below to access the full article 

What the Freedom Convoy represents is a mass movement of Canadians committed to democratic values.

The objective is to restore fundamental rights as well as confront the Covid-19 mandates of the government in Canada, which is in blatant violation of the Nuremberg Code. Accusing Canada’s Freedom Convoy of “Nazi inclinations” is not only “fake news”, it is an act of propaganda as defined by Nuremberg.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 31,  2021

***

CBC Coverage of Canada’s Freedom Convoy: Fighting Imaginary Nazis at Home, Training Real Ones Abroad

by Rick Rozoff

January 31, 2022

***

The same Trudeau who staged a shoddy publicity stunt by reporting that he and his family had to be evacuated to a “secret location” because of protests in Ottawa miles from his residence.

Anyone who’s watched live streams of those protests knows that not only were they peaceful, they were joyous and festive, with the young crowd dancing much of the day and into the evening.

No property damage, no police officers attacked or harassed, no trash on the streets.

But CBC just ran a feature with the head of an “anti-hate” group warning that the Canadian capital will be “festooned with swastikas” though CBC couldn’t find one to share with its viewers (while an abundance of Maple Leaf and occasional Quebec flags were evident in the background footage), and the protests were “the worst display of Nazi and racist propaganda that I have seen in this country.”

When Canada’s state media lie this blatantly about what happens in their own capital, how can they be trusted in reporting on what’s happening in Eastern Europe?

Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand denounced protesters accused of climbing on the the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa as “beyond reprehensible.” She’s now in Ukraine where the Canadian military has trained over 30,000 troops to fight alongside the Azov Battalion and other extremist nationalists not averse to flying the swastika. Really flying the swastika. Far-right extremists in Ukrainian military bragged about Canadian training.

The Canadian defense ministry and military are more concerned about their citizens raising Canadian and Quebec flags on the national war memorial than Canadian troops arming and training the likes of the Neo Nazi Azov Battalion.

Amply documented the Ukraine National Guard under the auspices of the Ministry of the Interior is integrated by Neo-Nazis.

A Latvia report entitled Latvia hopes Canada will bolster military mission amid tensions with Russia thanks Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his nation leading the NATO battle group in the country and being the largest trainer of Ukrainian government troops of any nation:

Latvia is crossing its fingers that it is up next after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced this week that Canada is extending and expanding its military mission in Ukraine in response to concerns about Russia.

In an interview, Latvian Ambassador to Canada Kārlis Eihenbaums said his country’s citizens are grateful for the 600 Canadian soldiers currently deployed to the Baltic state to defend against the threat of Russian attack.

The Canadians form the backbone and lead a 1,000-strong NATO battle group that includes soldiers from nine other alliance countries….

*

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This article was originally published on Anti-Bellum.

Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website.

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

Featured image: Canada’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly meeting with Canadian combat troops in Latvia last November. Photo: CBC.

Dear Readers,

As everyone faces difficult times, the company which deals with the fulfillment of book sales on behalf of Global Research is no longer able to provide its services. We are unfortunately suspending the sale of print books until further notice.

We will be contacting and refunding readers who have purchased our books in print format. Meanwhile, PDF versions are still available for purchase. We hope to be able to resolve this matter as soon as possible. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

Thank you for your valuable support.

***

Press Stunned as Ukraine President Zelensky Points Finger at West

By Nury Vittachi, January 31, 2022

In a stunning and unexpected outburst this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that his country’s current problems came from the west rather than the east. The fears of a looming war were built on news stories that Russia had troops on the border it shares with the country—but this was not unusual, and there had been a similar assembly of soldiers a year ago, he said.

Burkina Faso Military Coup Reflects Wave of Insecurity in West Africa

By Abayomi Azikiwe, January 31, 2022

There has been yet another military coup in West Africa following the events of Mali and Guinea during 2020-2021. This time lower-ranking army officers staged a mutiny in Burkina Faso over the weekend of January 22-23 leaving millions domestically and throughout the region wondering who was actually in control of the landlocked agricultural country formerly colonized by France.

“Micro Blood Clots” Explain Covid-19 Vaccine Impacts

By Joel S. Hirschhorn, January 31, 2022

An intriguing aspect of the pandemic getting little attention is the formation of microscopic blood clots throughout bodies.  These are not easily found through conventional medical scanning and imaging technologies.

FDA Asks the Court to Delay First 55,000 Page Production Until May and Pfizer Moves to Intervene in the Lawsuit

By Aaron Siri, January 31, 2022

Pfizer is coming in as a third party.  But Pfizer assures the Court it is here to help expedite production of the documents.  Sure it is!  Where was Pfizer before the Court ordered the 55,000 pages per month?  Right, doing what it normally does: letting the government work on its behalf – like the way the government mandates, promotes, and defends Pfizer’s product.

Klaus Schwab’s WEF “School for Covid Dictators”, a Plan for the “Great Reset”

By Michael Lord, January 31, 2022

The WEF is best-known to the public for the annual conferences it holds in Davos, Switzerland each January that aim to bring together political and business leaders from around the world to discuss the problems of the day. Today, it is one of the most important networks in the world for the globalist power elite, being funded by approximately a thousand multinational corporations.

The “Killer Vaccine” Worldwide. 7.9 Billion People

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 30, 2022

Let us be under no illusions, it’s not only “experimental”, it’s a Big Pharma “killer vaccine” which modifies the human genome. The evidence of mortality and morbidity resulting from vaccine inoculation both present (official data) and future (e.g. undetected microscopic blood clots) is overwhelming.

50 Years of Crimes against Humanity: From Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland to Croatia, Kosovo and Iraq

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 30, 2022

Today, we commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday. It happened 50 years ago on January 30, 1972. Thirteen people were shot dead when soldiers opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Derry on 30 January 1972.

Video: From Cold War to 9/11 to Ukraine: Historian Daniele Ganser Examines NATO’s History of Illegal Activities

By Dr. Daniele Ganser and Kristina Borjesson, January 30, 2022

Historian Prof. Daniele Ganser details how US-controlled NATO, now the world’s largest military alliance, was formed during the Cold War as a collective defense organization for retaliating against a possible Soviet attack on Western Europe that never materialized. During that time, under CIA and MI6 leadership, NATO had formed an illegal network of secret guerilla armies in Europe known as Gladio.

U.S. Government Pays Big Money for Bad News About Cuba

By W.T. Whitney Jr., January 29, 2022

he cruder U.S. methods for destroying Cuba’s revolutionary government—military attacks, bombings of hotels and a fully-loaded airplane, violent attacks on officials, biological warfare—did not work. Nor has economic blockade, which of course continues. A more subtle approach also exists. Like the blockade, its purpose is to cause despair and then dissent.

Video: Justin Trudeau on Bribing the Media, On the Need To “Override the Fundamental Rights of A Minority”

By Global Research, January 29, 2022

The issue is not what Trudeau is saying but what he is doing as a duly elected Prime Minister of Canada’s parliamentary democracy. The decisions which he has already taken against Canadians including the lockdowns, the imposition of the vaccine passport, labour rights, the suspension of the right to travel both within Canada and abroad, etc etc constitute blatant violations of fundamental rights.

Putting Trudeau On Notice, Our Governments are No Longer Legitimate: Throwing Off the Tyranny of Canada’s Mandatory Vaccines

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, January 29, 2022

To make up for the impossibility of serious debate among our brain-maimed parliamentarians, Trudeau appointed the so-called “unvaccinated” as the official opposition.

Russia calls on U.S. to withdraw nuclear weapons from Europe, cease joint nuclear drills with non-nuclear allies

By Rick Rozoff, January 29, 2022

This is a serious issue, perhaps the most serious of issues in Europe, but coming as it does immediately on the heels of Russia’s prior list of demands being resolutely rejected by the U.S. and NATO yesterday, the prospects of Washington and Brussels positively responding to this one either don’t appear good.

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

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***

To:

Keith Grellner, R.S., Chair
Dr. Thomas Pendergrass, Vice Chair
Elisabeth L. Crawford, Mukilteo Council Woman
Temple Lentz, M.S., Clark County Council Woman
Vazaskia Crockrell, M.B.A candidate
Fran Bessermin, B.A.
Bob Lutz, MD, MPH
Umair Shah, M.D., M.P.H. and designee of Secretary Shah, Tao Sheng Kwan-Gett, M.D., M.P.H.

From: Xavier A. Figueroa, Ph.D.

Members of the Washington State Board of Health, Department of Health and the Office of the Secretary of Health,

I write to you today on the issue of COVID19 inoculations, mask mandates, and the use of lockdowns.  You are all officers on the board of health for Washington State and two of you are elected officials in council member positions.  Four of you have advanced medical and scientific training.  All of you are failing in your designated duty to protect the health and safety of the citizens of Washington State and in upholding the rule of law.

The recent denial of ICWA’s petitions on January 12^th, 2022, that was meant to remind the Board of Health (BoH) that federal and state laws are required to be upheld, was summarily dismissed on the grounds that, to quote Dr. Pendergrass, “I do not want to be in the setting where I am preventing some future event from occurring.”  It is concerning that members of the board agreed and voted to allow future boards to potentially violate state, federal and international law.  As the board should be aware, all the COVID19 inoculations are still under E.U.A. and the provisions under 21 CFR section 360bbb3(a) are still in effect.  It is impossible to provide informed consent if you do not have the necessary data (the totality of scientific evidence) to provide to physicians and recipients of medical products, as the clinical trial are ongoing.

A concerning aspect of the BoH’s position on the COVID19 inoculations for children and the technical advisory group (TAG) convening is that the TAG should never have been formed in the first place.  The BoH holds that the TAG was convened to review all the data on the COVID19 inoculations, but that cannot be possible.  SARs-CoV-2, for our younger population, does not demonstrate a significant morbidity or mortality risk compared to pneumonia and influenza (P&I; Figure 1). The current totality of scientific evidence already demonstrates a far greater threat to the health and safety to our children from these experimental therapies (Pfizer/BioNTech, ModeRNA and Janssen) than the SARs-CoV-2 virus ever did (Figure 2).  What is apparent is the bias displayed by the Washington State DoH in presenting data to the BoH and overreliance on the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup.  This does not relieve the BoH of its responsibility to demand a complete review of the existing data. If the Washington State BoH was solely reliant on the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup recommendations, the BoH has left gaping holes in its review of the totality of scientific, epidemiological, safety and medical data that it needed to analyze.

I am sure that I do not need to remind the BoH that all PCR/NAAT and antigen tests are in the market under an emergency use authorization (E.U.A.).   They are not cleared to diagnose or even have a guarantee of being accurate or reliable.  Medical and technical publications on the reliability of the PCR/NAAT tests show a wide range of false positivity (See this; BMJ 2020;369:m1808 doi: 10.1136/bmj.m1808; see this), as well as the need of verifying the ability to culture virus in order to guarantee that PCR tests have a modicum of reliability at Ct values above 30 cycle times (see this).  The indicated articles are just a sampling of what has been published questioning the reliability and accuracy of these tests.

The reliability of the 6 month results from the Pfizer clinical trial as an indicator of the outcomes of the general population have been questioned (see this) and the post-authorization (note: this is not a post-marketing surveillance report) review by Pfizer itself shows a higher than expected morbidity and mortality (5.3.6 CUMULATIVE ANALYSIS OF POST-AUTHORIZATION ADVERSE EVENT REPORTS OF PF-07302048 (BNT162B2) RECEIVED THROUGH 28-FEB-2021; see this): 1,223 deaths out of 42,086 patients (a 2.9% risk of death).  This is unprecedented and concerning that the BoH has not addressed or acknowledged the Pfizer report and event.  I am unaware that the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup has even commented or reviewed this information.

The totality of evidence in the United States of America is indicating that there is a tightly linked correlation between COVID19 administration and reports to the VAERS system (Figure 2).  Until coroners and local pathologist begin the critical autopsy work on these patients, we have to rely on these systems to make health policy choices. So far, the roll out of the COVID19 inoculations are indicating a higher rate of AEs, SAEs (stroke and myocarditis) and death than historical averages for all recent vaccine reports (Figure 3).  Even comparing all VAERS deaths from 1990 up to 2021, the totality of deaths is orders of magnitude higher than the closest comparable year (2018-2019) and exceeds six-sigma deviations (Figure 4).  I have not seen a single statement by the BoH and the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup comment or review any of the data presented here in this letter.

The reports submitted to VAERS are supported by over 1022 peer-reviewed medical article (see references) that align with the list of expected side effects that were disclosed at the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee – 10/22/2020; (see this).  The potential side effects are listed:

1. Guillain-Barré syndrome
2. Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis
3. Transverse myelitis
4. Encephalitis/encephalomyelitis/meningoencephalitis/meningitis/encepholapathy
5. Convulsions/seizures
6. Stroke
7. Narcolepsy and cataplexy
8. Anaphylaxis
9. Acute myocardial infraction
10. Myocarditis/pericarditis
11. Autoimmune disease
12. Death
13. Pregnancy and birth outcomes
14. Other acute demyelinating diseases
15. Thrombocytopenia
16. Disseminated intravascular coagulation
17. Venous thromboembolism
18. Arthritis and arthralgia/joint pain
19. Kawasaki disease
20. Multisystem Inflammatory Disease in Children
21. Vaccine enhanced disease

The table above highlights the most common reported post-vaccine associated side effects that are in the attached list of Articles/Reports. [[1]NOTE: the table does not reflect total reported adverse events in these categories. See more below.] The articles were collated and prepared by the Save us Now network (see this), but I was able to confirm that all are peer-reviewed articles or related to the post-vaccine effects or programs/policy to reduce vaccine hesitancy.

This should be more than sufficient to cause a moment of pause by the members of the BoH and to re-assess the appropriateness of continuing with the current path.

As part of my writing to you, I have a few questions that I would like answered by Secretary Shah, his designee or the members of the DoH and the BoH.

1. When the COVID19 vaccination program began in Washington State, were any members of the Secretary of Health’s office, the Washington State DoH or the BoH provided with the list of potential side effects that were presented to the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee? Did the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup review the data available or the known and unlisted components of the COVID19 inoculations?

2. If a potential list of side effects was not provided, what steps (if any) did the Secretary of Health’s office, the Washington State DoH or the BoH take to acquire a list of potential side effects and the ingredients in the injections? Was there a request sent to the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup to provide you with such information?

3. What steps (if any) did the Secretary of Health’s office, the Washington State DoH or the BoH take to ensure that physicians, clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care professionals could provide informed consent to individuals receiving these COVID19 inoculations?

4. Where there any discussions or meetings held by the Secretary of Health’s office, the Washington State DoH or the BoH to establish a stopping condition for the COVID19 inoculation program?

5. Where there any attempts or recommendations by any members of the Secretary of Health’s office, the Washington State DoH or the BoH to request or review deaths ore serious adverse events that may have been linked to any of the COVID19 inoculations in Washington State?

6. Have any members of the Secretary of Health’s office, the Washington State DoH or the BoH attempted to collect or review autopsy or pathology data on adults or children reported to have died following or be suspected of dying from one of the COVID19 inoculations?

7. The Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup announced on May12, September 24, October 22, November 19 of 2021 and January 5, 2022 that they had reviewed the data from the Pfizer, ModeRNA and Janssen clinical trial and were continuing to recommend COVID19 inoculations from Pfizer, ModeRNA and Janssen, as well as the boosters. Has the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup commented on or analyzed the Pfizer CUMULATIVE ANALYSIS OF POST-AUTHORIZATION ADVERSE EVENT REPORTS OF PF-07302048 (BNT162B2) RECEIVED THROUGH 28-FEB-2021? Has the Secretary of Health’s office, the Washington State DoH or the BoH reviewed the same?

I am sure that I will have more questions as time and information from public and private sources become available.  I look forward to receiving your information and learning more about the process and decision making used by the various offices and departments.  I hope that this dialogue will help to support the health and safety for all Washingtonians.

Very Respectfully,

Xavier A. Figueroa, Ph.D.

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Notes

[1] The current total federal VAERS numbers matching the adverse events listed in the above table can be found using Medalerts.org. For example, a search of the term “myocarditis” and “COVID19 vaccine” found 10,959 mentions. These numbers do not include reports to the CDC’s V-Safe App.

Click here for a list of articles and reports pertaining to COVID-19.

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In a stunning and unexpected outburst this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that his country’s current problems came from the west rather than the east.

The fears of a looming war were built on news stories that Russia had troops on the border it shares with the country—but this was not unusual, and there had been a similar assembly of soldiers a year ago, he said.

The truth was that threat level had not changed, he told a press conference this week.

Furthermore, the real threat to Ukraine was not Russia, but the “destabilisation of the situation inside the country” he told journalists.

The cause of the panic was the press itself, Zelensky said.

Correspondents at the event were discomfited. The event was “a slightly surreal encounter” said the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford.

The Ukrainian leader went on to slam the US, British and other Western diplomats who were fleeing the country, as if the much-described war was actually real.

He denied that Ukraine was a sinking ship, but even if they saw it that way, “diplomats are like captains. They should be the last to leave a sinking ship.”

What’s Really Happening?

The Western powers appear to be repeating their Taiwan strategy in the Ukraine.

• Step one is to travel to someone’s territory and alter the status quo until the neighbors react.
• Step two is to angrily accuse the neighbors of being aggressive and expansionist—even though they literally haven’t left their own territory (unlike the accusers).
• Step three is to work with the press to mislead the world about which side is destabilizing the situation, and thus justify military expansion.

Ultimately, the aim is to push NATO borders eastwards, justify increased spending on the military, and attempt to further unite the world against communities which the West feels need to be “contained”.

It’s Working

The plan is working. Russia is being universally painted as the aggressor, and military activity from the west is rising. The UK government is sending weapons and troops to Ukraine, and calling on other NATO members to “unite”. The US says it has 8,500 troops ready to go.

On the media front, the message is virtually identical in every outlet: Russia is suddenly being threatening, so the good guys are being forced to respond. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said the US was committed to helping Ukraine “defend itself”.

The BBC rolled out politician Tobias Ellwood to explain that all the problems are Russia’s fault. (The same man is used by the media as a source of negative comments on China.) The BBC newsroom always “forgets” to mention Ellwood’s background. He served as part of the 77th Brigade, a British army propaganda unit focused on psychological warfare, media operations, and “special influence methods”.

How differently viewers would see the news if they knew the full story: “We are the media, and we are about to showcase the views of a person trained in spreading disinformation via the media.”

Just as the carefully balanced relationship between Taiwan and mainland China has been in place for years, with alternating periods of calm and tension, the same has been true in Ukraine. Russia has regularly placed troops on its border with Ukraine, and vice versa.

As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, the military tensions were a long-term fact of life between the two countries, and the threat level had not changed, despite every Western media outlet saying that it had.

But the underlying issue is this: NATO promised not to expand eastwards. It has done so repeatedly. It is never called out for this.

Yet those exact promises are well documented in history books – in the west as well as the east, as all students of recent European history know. Let’s look at them below.

In 1989 and 1990, Europe went through a massive political earthquake, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and numerous related events. The Western powers and the Soviet Union held a series of meetings to reassure the other that they would not take advantage of the shake-up for purposes of aggressive expansionism.

The Russian side, represented by Mikhail Gorbachev, had to play it straight. The country had large numbers of other urgent issues on its plate, so his argument was simple: Moscow would not move westward – as long as the west would not move eastward. Let the countries in between be.

Gorbachev (seated, middle) talking with West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher (left) and Helmut Kohl (right) in Russia, July 15, 1990. Photo: Bundesbildstelle / Presseund Informationsamt der Bundesregierung.

The Famous Inch

The buzzphrase that emerged from those discussions was just three words long: “Not one inch.” It came, originally, from the mouth of the US Secretary of State James Baker, on February 9, 1990. NATO, he told Gorbachev, would move “not one inch eastward”.

NATO should rule out an “expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders”, the US Embassy in Bonn declared.

America’s national security archive, housed at George Washington University, sums up the meeting thus:

Not once, but three times, Baker tried out the “not one inch eastward” formula with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker assured Gorbachev that “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.

The following day, the West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl made a similar promise to Gorbachev: “We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity.”

Douglas Hurd, the British Foreign Secretary, declared his country would be party to the same promise. In June of that year, his boss Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s “Iron Lady” Prime Minister, made the same pledge to Moscow: “We must find ways to give the Soviet Union confidence that its security would be assured.”

Fast forward to the present day: NATO has spent years declaring itself a “defensive” rather than “expansionist” force, while its actions show itself doing precisely the opposite, year after year.

This diagram published this week by the BBC shows just some of the eastward expansion of NATO since that time.

BBC diagram showed the partial expansion of NATO over recent decades

The “not one inch” promised has been disregarded, with Western diplomats saying that it was never intended to be lasting, and was never put down on paper, anyway.

Coming back to the present day, what is Russia asking for?

• It is calling on NATO to halt its program of building missile bases in countries bordering or close to Russia’s territory.
• It is asking NATO to withdraw troops in Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
• It is urging NATO to make it clear that Ukraine is not being groomed to join, thus further damaging the 1990 agreement.

Like China, Russia will be painted as the aggressor whatever it does. The western powers will be portrayed as the defenders, whatever they do. But while the press is taking a sharply pro-western angle, academics and the public have a much wider range of views.

“You asserted that ‘NATO is a defensive alliance’. It is not perceived that way in Russia,” wrote Robert Morley, a former staff member of the US National Security Council in a letter to the Economist published today. “Our decision to expand into areas previously dominated by the Soviet Union reinforced the perception that NATO is aggressively pursuing policies detrimental to Russia’s political and security interests.”

Russia’s response “is relatively moderate when compared with the American reaction to Moscow’s effort to establish a military presence in Cuba during the 1960s,” he added.

But while there is little hope that the mainstream media will ever lose its pro-NATO bias, the growth of independent media around the world gives hope that a more diverse, more inclusive set of voices will eventually be heard.

In the meantime, the Western hawks are once more banging the drums of war, but the East, so far, has always shown more patience than expected.

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Featured image: Zelensky in 2019, photo by President.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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There has been yet another military coup in West Africa following the events of Mali and Guinea during 2020-2021.

This time lower-ranking army officers staged a mutiny in Burkina Faso over the weekend of January 22-23 leaving millions domestically and throughout the region wondering who was actually in control of the landlocked agricultural country formerly colonized by France.

During the afternoon on January 24, several soldiers appeared on national television saying they had taken control of the government removing President Roche Marc Christian Kabore who was elected during a transitional process in 2015. The deposed president was reportedly being held at a military camp where one of the mutinies occurred.

Other officials including the president of the National Assembly, Allasane Bala Sakande, was also taken into custody by the coup makers. The military officers declared in their television statement announcing the takeover, that the parliament and the Constitution had been suspended while announcing the formation of a Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration which would govern the country indefinitely.

Sakande was the leader of the ruling People’s Movement for Progress (MPP) and had been considered as a possible successor to Kabore. The headquarters of the MPP was vandalized and partially burned by supporters of the coup.

Due to the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Burkina Faso, discontent with President Kabore and the military leadership has mounted over the last several years. The attacks by insurgents have spread throughout several West African countries including Nigeria, Cameroun, Niger, Chad and Mali.

Most recently in November, 53 members of the security forces were killed in an ambush carried out by rebels claiming to be allied with al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State. Residents of the capital of Ouagadougou were appalled that the military was incapable of defending itself from such armed attacks in rural areas.

Since the seizure of power by the military junta, there have been demonstrations in the capital celebrating the putsch. Similar to developments in Guinea and Mali, widespread unease over the economic and security situations in the Sahel and other geo-political regions have created disillusionment with politicians.

The leader of the coup appears to be Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Damiba, a graduate of the Military College in Paris. In addition, Damiba has participated in numerous training exercises with the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) which have grown in size and influence in West Africa in recent years.

Between 2010 and 2020, Damiba was involved in the Pentagon-coordinated Flintlock Joint Combined Exchange Training exercises. In 2013, Damiba studied in the U.S. State Department sponsored African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance course. In 2013 and 2014, Damiba attended the Military Intelligence Basic Officer Course for Africa. In 2018 and 2019, he trained in Burkina Faso with a U.S. Defense Department Civil Military Support Element.

The ostensible purpose of these numerous Pentagon training operations is to provide assistance to governments in Africa related to the enhancement of their internal security structures. However, with the advent of AFRICOM beginning in 2008 and the escalation of military officers being trained by the Defense Department both on the continent and in the U.S., the actual security situation in Africa has declined precipitously.

In Mali and Guinea as well, the officers involved in military coups had close ties with the various Pentagon and State Department projects. Even though the rationale for taking power in Mali and now Burkina Faso was that the civilian governments had failed to protect people from the jihadists, yet since the 2012 coup in Mali, the successive military and civilian administrations have not been able to defeat the insurgencies.

Regional and World Leaders Respond to the Coup

A delegation from the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) visited Burkina Faso on January 29. Quite similar to the ECOWAS response to events in Mali and Guinea, the regional body has suspended the membership of Burkina Faso and is imposing economic sanctions.

France has also condemned the coup amid rising anti-Paris sentiments throughout the Sahel where the presence of the former colonial power’s military forces has drawn the ire of a broad spectrum of Africans. In the aftermath of the January 24 coup in Burkina Faso, people demonstrating in support of the coup waved Russian flags and called for Moscow to intervene to assist in defending the country against the jihadist rebels.

A report published on the coup by Al Jazeera noted that:

“Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the current ECOWAS chairman, called the recent spate of coups in West Africa ‘a direct violation of our democratic tenets’. The rest of the world is looking up to us to be firm on this matter,’ he said…. Nicolas Haque reporting from Ouagadougou said, ‘The heads of the military in the region will be meeting with the new strongman of this country, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Tamiba on Saturday (Jan. 30) to try to apply pressure on him.’… ‘There were words from Niger’s foreign minister. He said: ‘We do not understand that military leaders – after having failed in the field of war – take political power and call on mercenaries to defend the integrity of their territory,’ Haque said. ‘He’s referring to Russian fighters from the Wagner group that are active in neighboring Mali and the Central African Republic.”

Revolutionary Leader of Burkina Faso Was Overthrown in 1987

Much of the turmoil which has gripped this West African country can be traced back decades to the violent removal of the government of Capt. Thomas Sankara who ruled the country from 1983 to 1987. Sankara was overthrown in a coup led by his former close comrade Blaise Compraore, who betrayed the revolution, assassinating Sankara obviously at the behest of neighboring Ivory Coast and France.

Although Capt. Sankara emerged from the ranks of the military in 1983, in the years leading up to his seizure of power, he had studied Marxism and world revolution providing the lower-ranking officer with a perspective aimed at building self-reliance and Pan-African solidarity. During his tenure in office which lasted only four years, substantial reforms were undertaken to develop national industries, universal education and literacy, the greater empowerment of workers, women and youth as well as efforts aimed at building an alliance of African states to refuse payment on the usurious debt owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other western-based financial institutions.

Image on the right is from the author

Sankara’s influence was spreading at the time of the coup against his leadership. France was bitterly opposed to his ideological orientation and political work and therefore undoubtedly played a pivotal role in his removal from office and liquidation. The circumstances surrounding his assassination were concealed by the succeeding regime of Blaise Compaore, which remained in office for 27 long years.

Compaore brought Burkina Faso solidly back into the fold of French neo-colonialism and world imperialism. Nonetheless, a scheme to extend his tenure in office during 2014, sparked a nationwide rebellion leading to Compaore fleeing the country to Ivory Coast. A subsequent trial involving 14 defendants, including Compaore, accused of involvement in the coup against Sankara in 1987, is still underway in Ouagadougou. The recent coup against Kabore could very well place a damper if not halt the proceedings.

Ousted President Kabore was elected in multi-party elections during 2015. An attempted coup by loyalists to Compaore failed to halt the transitional process. However, the Kabore administration has been increasingly viewed as weak and inefficient. Yet the spread of several jihadist groups since 2015 illustrates the security vacuum inside the country.

These groups are heavily fractured and have conflicting loyalties to foreign-based organizations operating throughout North and West Africa. Despite the presence of U.S. and French forces in the Sahel and other areas of West Africa under the guise of fighting terrorism, the al-Qaeda and ISIS-linked formations such as Ansar Dine, Boko Haram, Islam State of West Africa, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen, al-Mourabitoun, Ansar-ul-Islam lil-Ichad wal Jihad, among others continue to operate terrorizing local populations.

These insurgency groups often exploit the internal ethnic and sectoral divisions among the people of Burkina Faso along with the poverty and underdevelopment resulting from the legacies of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Many of these jihadist tendencies in Africa and West Asia have been supported by the imperialist countries and their allies in efforts aimed at undermining and removing governments which have resisted many of the policies mandated by the western capitalist states.

In Libya during 2011, a counter-revolution against the government of Col. Muammar Gaddafi was coordinated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the State Department, the Pentagon and NATO. Numerous NATO countries and their allies armed the jihadist ground forces while an eight-month aerial bombing campaign killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions.

Since 2011, the instability which was initiated during the war against Libya has spread throughout the Sahel region impacting Mali and other countries. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have pursued a similar policy of imperialist hegemony through economic exploitation and militarism.

The U.S. nor France has the willingness to provide genuine assistance to the African people in their contemporary struggles for economic development and territorial sovereignty. The mass sentiment against Paris and Washington is well-founded. What is needed is revolutionary organization which can bring together the people of the region in a program aimed at continental unity and socialist reconstruction.

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

Featured image: Burkina Faso coup supporters waving national and Russian flags (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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The massacre of innocent Catholic civilians on Bloody Sunday in Derry 50 years ago became a turning point with tragic consequences for Northern Ireland communities and British soldiers alike, writes RICHARD RUDKIN

“WHAT happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong — what happened should never, ever have happened.”

These words formed part of David Cameron’s speech in Parliament in June 2010, when as British prime minister, he apologised for the murder of innocent civilians by the British army on Bloody Sunday.

It had been a long hard slog by the relatives of the victims, but finally, 12 years after it began, the Saville inquiry published its findings that placed blame for the killings squarely with the British army.

Shockingly, Saville concluded that many of the former British soldiers lied, stating: “Many of these soldiers have knowingly put forward false accounts to seek to justify their firing.”

While Cameron as prime minister rightly apologised for the actions of the British soldiers, what neither he nor any British prime minister since has done is accepted responsibility for the role that agencies of the British government played for the escalation of violence on both the island of Ireland and in Britain.

I say this because if the British government is serious about finding a way forward for all those who suffered during the Troubles, as it claims to be, a good start would be to acknowledge the failings of these agencies, before, and most certainly following the events in Derry on January 30 1972.

The clearest admission of the impact Bloody Sunday had on the Troubles came from the prime minister at the time, Edward Heath, when he told the Saville inquiry: “The tragic deaths in Londonderry on January 30 1972 outraged the Catholic community, increased support for the IRA and destroyed the prospect of a political initiative.”

A fact confirmed by former president of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, who wrote in him memoirs following the events of Bloody Sunday: “Money, guns and recruits flooded into the IRA.”

Further confirmation came from a Catholic priest who was present when the shooting began.

Derry priest Fr Edward Daly will be remembered by those who watched events unfold on TV, waving a white bloodstained handkerchief in the air, as he walked with civilians carrying the dying body of John Duddy.

Years later Daly wrote: “People who were there on the day … saw what happened and were enraged by it and just wanted to seek some kind of revenge for it” and went on to say: “Young people I visited in prison told me quite explicitly that they would never have become involved in the IRA but for what they witnessed and heard of happening on Bloody Sunday.”

Three different people, two politicians with opposite opinions of the Troubles along with a man of peace, all saying the same thing.

The killings and the lies that were subsequently told by the British army to justify the killings were a major factor in the escalation of the Troubles.

It’s worth remembering that before Bloody Sunday, many members of the Catholic community had remained indifferent to the British army on the streets.

At that time, there was no instant access to news, therefore the Ministry of Defence (MoD) was able to spin the “facts” surrounding shootings or bombings to the media in its favour with little fear of being challenged.

If the British army claimed it had shot an IRA gunman after coming under fire, then it was accepted and regurgitated as fact by the media.

A good example of media spin by the MoD occurred following the deaths of 11 people, in a 36-hour window, in the Ballymurphy area of West Belfast in August 1971, which left 57 children bereaved of a parent. The MoD claimed the victims had been shot after the British soldiers first came under fire.

Similar to the families of Bloody Sunday, it took decades of campaigning before they cleared the names of their loved ones.

Finally, in May 2021, coroner Mrs Justice Keegan, who presided over the inquest into the deaths, concluded: “What is very clear is that all of the deceased in the series of inquests were entirely innocent of all wrongdoing on the day in question.”

Unlike Ballymurphy, the events on Bloody Sunday were caught on camera and beamed around the world. So too was the British army officer who told the waiting press that the paratroopers came under fire and responded.

When asked how many weapons had been recovered, he replied none at present. Just like Ballymurphy, no weapons were ever recovered, because no weapons ever existed.

With the opportunity to correct the appalling events in Ballymurphy ignored by the military commanders, the same parachute regiment was sent into Derry where, as we know, they went on to kill and injure more innocent victims.

Today, because we are fully aware of the facts surrounding the deaths of unarmed innocent civilians, should we be surprised that many people decided to support the IRA?

We don’t have to condone their decision, but we should be able to understand why they made that choice. But this is only part of the problem.

Up and down the country, young soldiers (like yours truly) who had watched the events of Bloody Sunday on TV, believed what occurred in Derry was a gun battle between the IRA and British soldiers.

This belief was reinforced by those trusted with training them, warning them when serving in the North of Ireland to never trust members of the Catholic community.

This warning was reinforced with horror stories that turned out to be completely untrue, such as the story of the British soldier Paul Carter.

In September 1971 Private Paul Carter was shot dead by the IRA on the Falls Road. Carter’s relatives were told that members of the local community had tried to run off with his body and steal his weapon.

However, in 2012, the Northern Ireland Historical Enquiries Team discovered nothing could be further from the truth. Far from trying to steal his body, local men ran to his aid and carried the soldier to the Royal Victoria Hospital. At no time did anyone attempt to steal his weapon.

With military personnel adding to the cocktail of violence with suspicion, fear and hatred of the Catholic communities with stories like the one described, together with the killing of innocent civilians by British soldiers, is it any wonder that 1972 turned out to be the bloodiest year of the Troubles with just under 480 deaths, of which 130 were British soldiers?

Those who say the victims of Bloody Sunday were in the wrong place at the wrong time, couldn’t be more mistaken.

Patrick Doherty, Gerald Donaghey, John Duddy, Hugh Gilmore, Michael Kelly, Michael McDaid, Kevin McElhinney, Bernard McGuigan, Gerard McKinney, William McKinney, William Nash, James Wray, John Young, along with all those injured both physically and mentally on that day, were exactly in the right place at the right time and doing what they believed to be the right thing by supporting the march for civil rights.

No. It was those who pulled the trigger that did the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in a place, arguably they had no right to be.

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Richard Rudkin is a former British soldier who served in Northern Ireland.

Featured image: A silent crowd form a cordon 10 or more deep, lining both sides of the 250 yards of road leading from St Mary’s Church, Creggan Hill to the cemetery, to watch the funeral procession of the 13 who died on ‘Bloody Sunday’, February 1972

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The European Commission’s denial of access to text messages between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla amounts to ‘maladministration’, the EU Ombudsman found.

The text messages were sent while the EU was securing COVID-19 vaccine contracts, but the Commission claimed they had not “identified” them when asked by a journalist. The New York Times first reported their existence in April 2021.

This resulted in a complaint to Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, who made her verdict clear on Friday (28 January), stressing that the European Commission must “do a more extensive search for the relevant messages.”

“The narrow way in which this public access request was treated meant that no attempt was made to identify if any text messages existed. This falls short of reasonable expectations of transparency and administrative standards in the Commission,” O’Reilly said in a press statement.

Her report found that the search carried out by the Commission was limited to an internal record of documents where such texts would not be stored. Furthermore, it was revealed that the president’s personal office had not been asked about the messages.

She concluded that this amounted to a case of maladministration and fell far short of transparency levels expected under EU law.

Von der Leyen’s cabinet was initially asked to dig out documents fulfilling the Commission’s internal criteria for recording. According to these internal criteria, text messages are not required to be recorded along with other means of communication.

However, this was not enough to satisfy O’Reilly, who urged the Commission to change its practice.

“Not all text messages need to be recorded, but text messages clearly do fall under the EU transparency law, and so relevant text messages should be recorded,” O’Reilly pointed out, adding that it is “not credible to claim otherwise”.

The deadline for the Commission’s response to the Ombudsman is 26 April.

Many questions left unanswered

The chief Commission spokesperson, Eric Mamer, said the Commission would respond to the European Ombudsman “within the deadlines set”.

“Until such time, when we have provided our response, we will not make further comments on this topic,” he said.

Meanwhile, Commission spokesperson Johannes Bahrke added assurances that the EU executive would “investigate the issue of possible updates of our policy for providing access to documents,” adding that methods of communication are “changing across the board”.

While the Commission’s spokespeople declined further comment on the case, they reiterated that the negotiations on the vaccine contracts had happened in a formal format, in the presence of EU member states and Commission representatives.

Unclear guidelines

In November 2021, Dutch MEP Sophie in ’t Velt sent a parliamentary question to the Commission asking them to clarify the situation. The answer to her question was signed off by Commission Vice-President Věra Jourová, who is, amongst other things, responsible for work on values and transparency, including leading talks on a transparency register.

In the response, Jourová made it clear that two of the Commission’s criteria for registration were information relating “to the policies, activities or decisions falling within the institution’s sphere of responsibility” and information considered “important and not short-lived”.

The conclusion to her answer was that “due to their short-lived and ephemeral nature, text and instant messages are not meant to contain important information relating to policies, activities and decisions of the Commission.”

in ’t Velt said she was glad to see the Ombudsman’s criticisms of the Commission but nevertheless remained concerned.

“It does not often happen that you read such hard words from the EU Ombudsman,” she pointed out, adding that it “does not take a team of lawyers to assess the Commission’s reasoning for what it is: deeply flawed”.

“What worries me even more, though, is the muted response from the European Parliament. In any member state, such contempt for democratic accountability from the executive would cause an uproar,” in ’t Velt stressed in a written comment to EURACTIV.

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Featured image: The European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, delivers a speech in the European Parliament. [ EPA-EFE/JULIEN WARNAND]

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Saad Hariri, three-time Prime Minister from 2009 to 2021, announced his retirement from political life and has returned to his new home in Abu Dhabi. His announcement from Beirut on January 24 was followed by one of the worst snowstorms in recent history in Lebanon and Syria.

Hariri’s announcement sent a cold chill through many who had supported him and his Future Party, as the country faces a parliamentary election in May.  He explained that he had failed at his goal of making life better for the Lebanese people.  In October 2019 violent street protests broke out demonstrating against the wealthy political elites who were seen as corrupt and the cause of the worst economic melt-down of any county in the last 150 years, according to the World Bank.

Most analysts point to Hariri’s working relationship with Hezbollah which caused an end to his political career, with the US and Saudi Arabia pulling the plug.

Saad Hariri, like his father Rafik Hariri who died in 2015, was Prime Minister but was unable to form a government in 2021, and he left Lebanon to take up residence in the UAE.

The current de-facto leader of Saudi Arabia, Muhammed bin Salman (MBS), held Saad Hariri in 2017 against his will in a shake-down and caused Hariri to announce his resignation while in captivity.  MBS was furious that Hariri had managed to work with Hezbollah in the political arena, even though his party was opposed to the group. It took French President Emmanuel Macron personally to gain the release of Hariri, where he returned to Beirut and rescinded his resignation.

Saad Hariri’s older brother, Bahaa Hariri, maybe the wild card in the political game in Lebanon.  The charismatic businessman, with a personal fortune estimated by Forbes at $2 billion, is rumored to be supported by both Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and Bahaa Hariri takes a harder line against Hezbollah than his brother.

Bahaa Hariri has formed a political advocacy group, “Sawa li Lubnan” (Together for Lebanon), which intends to support candidates for the May elections, especially reformists. On Thursday Bahaa Hariri’s media office announced the appointment of Safi Kalou as his political representative in Lebanon.

Bahaa Hariri, the eldest son of Rafik Hariri, has developed a unique style of citizen activism in Lebanon in response to the Lebanese crisis.

He has taken a tough stance on Hezbollah, which will be enticing to the US and KSA.  His current campaign is raising billboards across Beirut, and has 10 offices in Lebanon, with a supporting TV campaign as well.  The platform is secular, appealing to all Lebanese, and has a modern reform base ideology, which emphasizes national unity in the face of corruption reforms.

One political party leader has emerged and is a very old face on the scene. Samir Geagea, the leader of the Lebanese Forces (LF) since 1986.   The LF is a political party that began as an armed militia, with no connection to the national Lebanese Army.

Geagea, although representing a Christian sect, is the agent of Saudi Arabia in Lebanon, while his bitter rival is President Michel Aoun and his Free Patriotic Movement, who are the country’s largest representatives of Christians.

Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said after the Hariri announcement, that he felt Hezbollah would gain from the situation, and he complained that Arab states were abandoning Lebanon.  Jumblatt and Hariri had in the past formed a US-backed alliance called ‘March 14’.  Jumblatt pointed to the past ties with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates which used to spend billions on Lebanon but had cut ties because of Hezbollah.  Jumblatt admitted that it is impossible to disarm Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, headed by Hassan Nasrallah, is a Lebanese resistance group that is supported by Iran and Syria.  Israel is occupying Shebaa Farms, an area in the South of Lebanon, along with the Golan Heights in Syria, and Palestine.  Despite multiple UN resolutions demanding Israel return to the 1967 borders, Israel instead steals even more land on the Occupied West Bank through illegal settlements.

Hezbollah was formed in 1982 in response to the brutal military occupation of the South of Lebanon for 18 years, ending in 2000.  Unsurprisingly, the residents of the South of Lebanon are the community that most support Hezbollah.  Those communities of Christians and Shiites were imprisoned, tortured, maimed, and killed by the Israeli occupation.  Lebanese history has made the residents say it was Hezbollah’s resistance that caused Israel to leave. In 2018, Hezbollah won a parliamentary majority.

Lebanon is a sectarian governed country, owing to the Saudi-negotiated Taif accord of 1989, next to the only secular country in the Middle East, Syria.  The residents of Syria have an ideology rooted in resistance to the occupation of Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian land.  This same spirit of resistance allowed the Syrian people, and their Army, to resist almost 11 years of US-NATO attack on Syria for ‘regime change’.  Syria and Lebanon have shared this resistance ideology, but there are divisions among the Lebanese population, with a sizeable portion who do not support Hezbollah but would rather the national Army of Lebanon by the only bearers of weapons in defense of the country and the borders.  However, the Lebanese Army is very weak and needs an influx of funding to bring the army up to being capable of defending the nation.  Saudi Arabia had pledged $4 billion but refused to deliver the funds.

The leading secular party in Lebanon is also the oldest.  The Syrian Social National Party (SSNP) was founded in 1932.  Experts point to the sectarianism in Lebanon as the source of division that permeated during the civil war from 1975 to 1990.

“The Great Denial” is the title of a report on Lebanon issued last week by The World Bank, which accuses sectarian dynasties and warlords of creating the economic collapse which has plunged the residents into poverty and driven many to a mass migration abroad.

Lebanon on Thursday registered 9,199 new COVID-19 infections, the highest number of daily cases since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Health Ministry reported. The total number of infections reached 891,982, while the death toll from the virus went up by 16 to 9,544.

Snow, poverty, pandemic, and political instability are bringing suffering to the Lebanese people.  Will Spring be the beginning of a bright future for Lebanon?

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist.

Featured image is from MD

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An intriguing aspect of the pandemic getting little attention is the formation of microscopic blood clots throughout bodies.  These are not easily found through conventional medical scanning and imaging technologies.

Know this: They result from COVID spike proteins that screw up fine blood vessels causing micro blood clots.  The spike protein molecules from COVID infection are the same as what happens when COVID vaccines pump huge numbers of them into your body.  So, vaccines create the same blood problem as COVID itself.

This article uses micro blood clots to explain three important pandemic problems:

1.  Vaccine adverse health impacts, including deaths

2.  A broad array of COVID infection illnesses and deaths

3.  Millions of people with “long” COVID and diverse health problems.

THIS IS A DIFFICULT ARTICLE TO READ; IT PRESENTS CONSIDERABLE MEDICAL DETAILS.  IF YOU SEEK UNDERSTANDING, THEN IT IS WORTH YOUR TIME.  THE MICRO BLOOD CLOT PROBLEM IS NOW IMPACTING, OR IN THE FUTURE WILL IMPACT MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.

Micro blood clot problems

What can these micro blood clots cause?  That is the key question.  There is nothing but bad news that very few people are aware of.  Understand this: You do not want micro blood clots throughout your body.  Finding proof that you have them is difficult.

Blood clots that occur in the tiniest blood vessels are referred to as microvascular thromboses. The clinical symptoms depend on the organs that are most strongly affected.

Here is the main point: Many patients can experience micro blood clotting that isn’t visible to the naked eye or normal scans, but produce bad impacts.

When pumped to the lungs they may be diagnosed as pulmonary embolisms.  If they reach the brain, they can cause a stroke or confusion.  If they lodge in the heart, they can cause a heart attack.  If they lodge in the smaller blood vessels that provide oxygen to the hands or feet, they can cause those limbs to go numb and require amputation.  Clots in other organs, such as the liver or the kidneys, could cause those organs to fail.

The diagnosis from the clotting depends largely on where the clots end up lodging, which explains why people who take spike protein “vaccine” shots experience such a wide array of injuries and deaths.  Over one million injuries now reported in VAERS CDC data base, with estimates of hundreds of thousands of deaths so far in the USA alone.

The eminent Dr. Peter McCollough, a truly great medical expert, has addressed micro clots.  Early in the pandemic he noted that “the Spike Protein itself caused Coagulation or Blood Clotting.

And a unique type of Coagulation.  It caused the Red Blood Cells to stick together.  At the same time the Platelets stick together.  So, this is a very different type of Blood Clotting that we would see with major Blood Clots in the Arteries and Veins.  For instance, Blood Clots involved in Stroke and Heart Attack.  Blood Clots involved in major Blood Vessels in the Legs.  This was a different type of Clotting and in fact the Italians courageously did some Autopsies and found Micro Blood Clots in the Lungs.  And so, we understood in the end, the reason why the Lungs fail is not because the virus is there.  It is because Micro Blood Clots are there.  When People can’t breathe, the problem is micro-blood clotting in the lungs.  The spicule on the ball of the virus itself damages blood vessels that causes blood clotting.”

Probably most people who have late stage COVID and die have severe lung problems and micro clots are a likely cause.

Now you get to the key and mostly ignored point.  COVID vaccines can insert spike proteins just like the ones created by COVID infection.  Should we expect health problems from COVID vaccines just like ones from COVID infection?  Yes!

Canadian doctor blew the whistle about micro clots from vaccines

Months ago in July 2021 a brave and smart Canadian doctor, Charles Hoffe, went public with his findings on COVID vaccinated patients.  Using the d-dimer test of blood he found that 62% of hundreds of his vaccinated patients had high numbers indicating the presence of micro blood clots.  A d-dimer test measures the amount of degraded fibrin in the blood.

He did more than just release that finding.  He said that the use of mRNA vaccines would “kill most people through heart failure.”

Note that in April 2021 Dr. Hoffe wrote an open letter to the Provincial Health Officer for British Columbia trying to get the Canadian government to recognize the bad vaccine impacts related to micro blood clots.  He was not successful in stopping use of the COVID vaccines.

Trying to get media attention, the doctor worked to warn the public and the medical community that the vast majority of people who are getting injected with the genetic experimental vaccines will die within a few short years from heart failure.

He explained that he observed in his patients who took an mRNA (messenger RNA) “vaccine” from either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna that their capillaries were now plugging up, which he says will eventually lead to a serious cardiovascular event.

In plain language he said that the mRNA shots are programmed to turn a person’s body into a spike protein “factory,” and that over time these mass-produced spike proteins cause progressive blood clotting.

He said what other medical experts have expressed, namely that only 25 percent of the ‘vaccine’ injected into a person’s arm actually stays in your arm.  The other 75 percent is collected by your lymphatic system and literally fed into your circulation so these little packages of messenger RNA invade your body.  And in a single dose of Moderna ‘vaccine’ there are literally 40 trillion mRNA molecules.

Dr. Hoffe said that while these packages were designed by Big Pharma to be absorbed directly into people’s cells, the only place they can actually be absorbed is around the blood vessels and into capillary networks, which are the tiniest blood vessels where blood flow is slow and where genes are released.

“Your body then gets to work reading and then manufacturing trillions and trillions of these spike proteins,” he said.  “Each gene can produce many, many spike proteins. The body then recognizes these are foreign bodies so it makes antibodies against it so you are then protected against COVID.  That’s the idea.”  Now we know that this theory does not assure destruction of the virus or transmission of it, nor effective immunity.

Here is what you need to understand: Though the claim has long been that these spike proteins act as a deterrent to viral infection after being injected into a person’s body, the reality is that they actually become part of the cell wall of a person’s vascular endothelium or linings of the blood vessels.

The result is not good.  Your blood vessels are supposed to be smooth so that your blood flows smoothly.  After spike proteins invade your body the small blood vessels have these little spikey bits sticking out which impede blood flow and can cause clots.  And if you get a lot of clots, then your blood platelet count can greatly decrease, and this can lead to bleeding problems.

Dr. Hoffe says it is an inevitability that the vaccine injected will develop blood clots because as the vaccine-inserted spike proteins embed themselves within blood vessels and capillaries, blood platelets circulate around trying to fix the problem by creating increasingly more clots.

“So, when the platelet comes through the capillary it suddenly hits all these COVID spikes and it becomes absolutely inevitable that blood clots will form to block that vessel,” he writes.  Therefore, these spike proteins can predictably cause blood clots.  They are in your blood vessels (if mRNA ‘vaccinated’) so it is guaranteed.”

What must be remembered is that these blood clots are different than the “rare” ones spoken about by physicians that show up on CT scans and MRIs or even ultrasound images.  These are microscopic and do not show up on tests, as they can only be detected using a blood test known as d-dimer.  And nearly all doctors do not routinely use this test.

Dr. Hoffe performed d-dimer tests on his mRNA “vaccinated” patients, which led him to the discovery that at least 62 percent of them have these microscopic blood clots.  Why some people do not get the clots is not entirely clear.

“The most alarming part of this is that there are some parts of the body like the brain, spinal cord, heart and lungs which cannot [regenerate],” he said. “When those tissues are damaged by blood clots, they are permanently damaged.”  That is the deadly issue for understanding why there are huge numbers of vaccinated people who have suffered death or a broad array of serious health impacts from COVID vaccines.

Micro clots in COVID patients

While there has been very limited medical research on micro clots from vaccines, there has been much more on micro clots in COVID patients.  Here are some findings from a key study in August 2021 with the title “Study identifies micro clots as cause of death in some severely ill COVID-19 patients.”

Loma Linda University Health researchers found that severely ill COVID-19 patients likely die as the result of micro clots formed in the lungs that spread to cause deadly damage to organs throughout the body. This finding differed from the current view that the COVID-19 virus travels to the body’s organs and damages blood vessel lining in those organs.

According to this research, once the clotting process begins, the body is no longer fighting against the virus but mostly against the clotting process instead.

“This could change our approach to fighting this disease because we may have been looking in the wrong place,” saids Brian Bull, MD, a pathologist, former dean of the Loma Linda University School of Medicine, and the study’s first author. “We have been looking for a treatment against a viral disease, but we should now also look for therapy for a viral disease that has transformed into a clotting disorder.”

In another study, “A macrophage attack culminating in microthromboses characterizes COVID 19 pneumonia,” published in the Journal of Immunity, Inflammation and Disease, proposes an explanation for why COVID-19 patients die from a vast array of conditions such as strokes, heart attacks, kidney failure, or failure of several organs at the same time.

“We face the problem of not yet understanding the physiological disorders well enough to explain how a viral disease like COVID-19 kills people in such a diverse and difficult-to-predict fashion.” Dr. Bull said.

Bull and co-author Karen Hay contend that showers of tiny clots form and block micro-blood vessels in the bodies of many severely ill COVID-19 patients.  Though invisible to the naked eye, the micro clots can damage and kill tiny portions of whichever organ tissue — brain, heart, liver, kidney, lung, etc. — the blocked blood vessels feed.

“Clotting in really sick COVID-19 patients is not something trivial and unimportant — it may well be fundamental to what is going on” said Dr. Bull.

But how do these micro clots form and travel throughout the body?  Bull provides a broad overview of this disease process:

When the body senses a COVID-19 infection, large white blood cells called monocytes respond and gather in the air sacs of the lungs.

Over the course of a few days, the monocytes transform into macrophages — the “demolition and cleanout crew” for infected and damaged tissue in the body.  The macrophages attack the virus-laden cells that line the inside of the air sacs.  Unfortunately, macrophages may also chew right through the virus-laden air sac lining to the blood vessels that surround each air sac.  This is the place in the body where the blood picks up oxygen when we breathe.  If the macrophages puncture these blood vessels the air sac will fill up with blood.

A protein produced by the macrophages on their surfaces causes the blood to clot.  When a clot forms an enzyme, thrombin, interacts with a protein in the blood known as fibrinogen to produce fibrin strands or fibrils.  When these fibrin strands accumulate, they become a clot.  These fibrils can be still soluble if they remain short enough (about 25 molecules or less).  Anything longer than that becomes insoluble and will appear as tiny clots.

Short chains of fibrin, still soluble, can travel in the blood supply to all of the body’s organs. As long as the fibrin chains remain short, this will cause no problems, but if more thrombin is coming from clots in the lungs, then more fibrin is continually being fed into the blood.  This makes the chains of fibrin grow longer; they grow too long to remain in solution and showers of micro clots will form.

These micro clots will block the tiny blood vessels that nourish the tissue making up each of the body’s organs, making the organs less able to perform their necessary function.  The organs (heart, kidney, brain, etc.) with little patches of dead and dying tissue throughout will, sooner or later, fail.

Indeed, when Bull and Hay monitored three COVID-19 patients hospitalized in an intensive care unit for tell-tale clotting biomarkers — the still soluble fibrin chains — they found that in a matter of four days, all of the fibrinogen in the patients’ bodies had transformed into soluble fibrin chains at levels five times higher than normal.  Body organs were severely damaged in all three patients.  Two of them died in the hospital, and the third survived but suffered severe brain damage.

Although Bull and Hay found blood clotting was taking place by tracking the bio-markers and performing clotting tests, no visible clots were detected in any of the three patients.  The likeliest explanation, Bull states, is that those clots were present but were too small to be seen.

“Here in this study we have three patients in which clearly a massive clotting disorder occurred over a very short period,” Bull said.

Bull said in a year and a half of searching for therapeutic modalities, the medical community has not come up with any anti-viral medications that have had a significant beneficial effect on COVID-19. Yet, heparin, an anti-clotting drug, not an anti-viral medication, has proven highly beneficial and is now being given to virtually all hospitalized, severely ill COVID-19 patients.

[This author has also researched the use of ivermectin for late state COVID and concluded that it can work because of its anti-inflammatory property.]

“Clotting in really sick COVID-19 patients is not something trivial and unimportant — it may well be fundamental to what is going on,” Bull said.

The point of giving all these details is to show that what spike proteins cause in ill COVID patients can also be what is happening in many vaccinated people.  Just as Dr. Hoffe had predicted.  And why a few million people worldwide have had adverse health impacts from vaccines, including probably a few hundred thousand deaths.

Long covid has clot cause

Now we come to the third area of medical research that has also found micro clots as the likely cause of that is being called “long” COVID; which refers to people who seem to have successfully recovered from COVID but live with serious health problems that only seem to be related to their previous COVID infection.  Sadly, some doctors have said these persistent health problems are psychological in nature.

Here some new research is summarized that finds the cause of persistent health problems are micro blood clots.

In October 2021 the material in this article was originally published in the journal Cardiovascular Diabetology in August 2021.

“Inflammatory micro clots in blood of individuals suffering from Long COVID.”  The research was done at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.  Researchers found an overload of various inflammatory molecules, ‘trapped’ inside insoluble microscopic blood clots (micro clots), in the blood of individuals suffering from lingering symptoms experienced by individuals with long COVID.

This important finding was made by Prof. Resia Pretorius, a researcher in the Department of Physiological Science at Stellenbosch University.  She started looking at micro clots and their molecular content in blood samples from individuals with long COVID.  The findings have since been peer-reviewed and published in the journal

“We found high levels of various inflammatory molecules trapped in micro clots present in the blood of individuals with Long COVID.  Some of the trapped molecules contain clotting proteins such as fibrinogen, as well as alpha(2)-antiplasmin,” Prof. Pretorius explained.

Alpha(2)-antiplasmin is a molecule that prevents the breakdown of blood clots, while fibrinogen is the main clotting protein.  Under normal conditions the body’s plasmin-antiplasmin system maintains a fine balance between blood clotting (the process by which blood thickens and coagulate to prevent blood loss after an injury) and fibrinolysis (the process of breaking down the fibrin in the coagulated blood to prevent blood clots from forming).

With high levels of alpha(2)-antiplasmin in the blood of COVID-19 patients and individuals suffering from long COVID, the body’s ability to break down the clots are significantly inhibited.

The insolubility of the micro clots became apparent through specific analysis of blood plasma samples from individuals with acute COVID and long COVID; they continued to deposit insoluble pellets in collection devices.

This is the first research group to have reported on finding micro clots in the blood samples from individuals with long COVID, using fluorescence microscopy and proteomics analysis, thereby solving yet another puzzle associated with the disease.

“Of particular interest is the simultaneous presence of persistent anomalous micro clots and a pathological fibrinolytic system,” they write in the research paper.  “This implies that the plasmin and antiplasmin balance may be central to pathologies in Long COVID, and provides further evidence that COVID-19, and now Long COVID, have significant cardiovascular and clotting pathologies.”

In other words, this research connects with what has been found in COVID patients with micro blood clots.

To date they have collected blood from one hundred long COVID individuals who participated in the long COVID registry which launched in May 2021, as well as from 30 healthy individuals.

The Guardian article

This research was seen as a very important development in a January 2022 article in The Guardian with the heading “Could microclots help explain the mystery of long Covid?”  It was written by Resia Pretorius, one of the senior South African researchers.  “My lab has found significant microclot formation in long Covid patients.  Unfortunately, these are missed in routine blood tests.”

Screenshot from The Guardian

Here are more excerpts from this article that was aimed at informing the world about the importance of micro clots.

“One of the biggest failures during the Covid-19 pandemic is our slow response in diagnosing and treating long Covid.  As many as 100 million people worldwide already suffer from long Covid.  That staggering number will eventually be much higher, if we take into account that diagnoses are still inadequate, and that we still do not know what the impact of Omicron and future variants will be.”

“Patients with long Covid complain of numerous symptoms, the main ones being recurring fatigue and brain fog, muscle weakness, being out of breath and having low oxygen levels, sleep difficulties and anxiety or depression.  Some patients are so sick that they cannot work or even walk a few steps.  There is possibly also an elevated risk of stroke and heart attacks.  One of the biggest sources of concern is that even mild and sometimes asymptomatic initial Covid-19 infection may lead to debilitating, long-term disability.”  [That last sentence is especially important.]

“Since early 2020, we and other researchers have pointed out that acute Covid-19 is not only a lung disease, but actually significantly affects the vascular (blood flow) and coagulation (blood clotting) systems.”

“In blood from patients with long Covid, persistent microclots are resistant to the body’s own fibrinolytic processes.  We found high levels of various inflammatory molecules trapped in the persistent microclots, including clotting proteins like plasminogen, fibrinogen and Von Willebrand factor (VWF), and also Alpha-2 antiplasmin (a molecule that prevents the breakdown of microclots).”

“The presence of persistent microclots and hyperactivated platelets (also involved in clotting) perpetuates coagulation and vascular pathology, resulting in cells not getting enough oxygen in the tissues to sustain bodily functions (known as cellular hypoxia).  Widespread hypoxia may be central to the numerous reported debilitating symptoms.”

And here is what long COVID victims need to know: “So why can long Covid patients not go to their nearest clinic or health care practitioner to find treatment options?  Currently there are no general pathology tests readily available to diagnose these patients.  Desperately ill patients are told that their pathology test results are within normal/healthy ranges. Many are then told that their symptoms are possibly psychological and they should try meditation or exercise.  The main reason the traditional lab tests do not pick up any of the inflammatory molecules is that they are trapped inside the fibrinolytic-resistant microclots (visible under a fluorescence or bright-field microscope, as our research has shown). When the molecular content of the soluble part of the plasma is measured, the inflammatory molecules, including auto-antibodies, are simply missed.”

Remember that Dr. Hoffe used the d-dimer test to confirm the presence of micro blood clots, and this test can be ordered by your physician.  Also, many pro-ivermectin articles invoke not merely the anti-viral property that works to address initial COVID infection, but also its anti-inflammatory property more important after the initial viral replication phase.

Autopsy findings

There is also a fairly large medical literature with findings of micro blood clots from autopsies.  Here is just one example published in 2020 by Dr. Amy Rapkiewicz, the chairman of the department of pathology at NYU Langone Medical Center,

Describing the work in a news story was this: “The clotting was not only in the large vessels but also in the smaller vessels.  And this was dramatic, because though we might have expected it in the lungs, we found it in almost every organ that we looked at in our autopsy study,” the researcher said.

This too was noted in another news story: “We knew that clinical people were finding clots in these [COVID] patients,” she said. “So although I knew that that was going to be there, I didn’t expect it at the microscopic level to the degree that I saw it.”  Her autopsy study found blood clots in small vessels of the patients’ lungs, hearts, kidneys and livers.

In another news story this was noted in 2020 about research at Harvard University: “Researchers also noted that patients with the novel coronavirus suffered many microscopic blood clots.  In a stark difference with lungs infected with the flu, the micro-clots were nine times as present in areas of the lungs that allow the passage of oxygen into the patient’s bloodstream while carbon dioxide is emitted.”

This is from the published medical study: “Histologic analysis of pulmonary vessels in patients with Covid-19 showed widespread thrombosis with microangiopathy.  Alveolar capillary microthrombi were 9 times as prevalent in patients with Covid-19 as in patients with influenza.  In lungs from patients with Covid-19, the amount of new vessel growth — predominantly through a mechanism of intussusceptive angiogenesis — was 2.7 times as high as that in the lungs from patients with influenza.”  In other words, micro blood clots were uniquely associated with COVID infection.

This is the title of a May 2020 medical article: “Pathophysiology of SARS-CoV-2: Targeting of endothelial cells renders a complex disease with thrombotic microangiopathy and aberrant immune response. The Mount Sinai COVID-19 autopsy experience.”  Here is the summary of the findings; note the word micro:

“Autopsies were performed at the Mount Sinai Hospital on 67 COVID-19 positive patients and data from the clinical records were obtained from the Mount Sinai Data Warehouse.  The experimental design included a comprehensive microscopic examination carried out by a team of expert pathologists, along with transmission electron microscopy, immunohistochemistry,”

“We report a comprehensive autopsy series of 67 COVID-19 positive patients revealing that this disease, so far conceptualized as a primarily respiratory viral illness, also causes endothelial dysfunction, a hypercoagulable state [an increased tendency to develop blood clots], and an imbalance of both the innate and adaptive immune responses.  Novel findings reported here include an endothelial phenotype of ACE2 in selected organs, which correlates with clotting abnormalities and thrombotic microangiopathy, addressing the prominent coagulopathy and neuropsychiatric symptoms.  Another original observation is that of macrophage activation syndrome, with hemophagocytosis and a hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis-like disorder, underlying the microangiopathy [disorder involving small blood vessels]and excessive cytokine release.”  In other words, this study also found evidence of micro clots in COVID victims.

Lastly, is the work of Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi.  He has noted: “immune and blood-related categories of risks from vaccines: (1) Clotting from the direct action of spike protein in the bloodstream; (2) Further clotting from the immune system attacking spike-producing endothelial cells.”  This too was said: “The RNA injected into your body are going to enter the cells that line blood vessels.  He points to spiny spike protein that these cells will generate and protrude outwards to attract blood platelets and form micro-clots.  Days after vaccination, white blood cells known as lymphocytes as well as antibodies will begin to mount an attack against these cells.  If you dare to repeat this (get the second jab), “God help you” warns Dr Bhakdi.”  He warned about the blood clot side-effects months before the roll-out of the mRNA vaccines.

Conclusions

Micro blood clots are linked to spike proteins coming from COVID infection OR vaccines that introduce them into the body or cause the body to produce them.

Micro blood clots seem to be the likely cause of many millions of health impacts and deaths from COVID infection as well as from COVID vaccines, and even many millions of long COVID victims suffering diverse health problems with no apparent medical solution.

Have you heard any government or public health official speak of micro blood clots?  Probably not.  But not because they are insignificant.  Now, you probably know more than them.  Now you realize that there has been a scandal of enormous proportions.  Suppressing so much negative information about spike protein induced micro blood clots.

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This article was originally published on Pandemic Blunder.

Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Pandemic Blunder and many articles on the pandemic, worked on health issues for decades.  As a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he directed a medical research program between the colleges of engineering and medicine.  As a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, he directed major studies on health-related subjects; he testified at over 50 U.S. Senate and House hearings and authored hundreds of articles and op-ed articles in major newspapers.  He has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years.  He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and America’s Frontline Doctors and has been a long-time contributor to the sites of Kettle Moraine.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Science Photo Library/Alamy

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The National Post has provided a different perspective to that of most of the mainstream media which have depicted the non-vaccinated as “extremists”.  

According to Justin Trudeau, unvaccinated truck drivers “may pose a risk of transmitting COVID-19 to the general public”.  What nonsense.

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The National Post spoke to truck drivers and supporters as they were driving to Ottawa for this weekend’s “Freedom Convoy 2022” to protest vaccine mandates. Here is what they told us about their jobs, their frustrations with government measures during the pandemic, and the rule that could kill their livelihoods.

Slawek Pietraszek

Image on the right: Slawek Pietraszek is a 43-year-old trucker on his way to Ottawa in the convoy. Credit: Rachel Parent/National Post

Slawek Pietraszek was born in Poland. After moving here in 1991, he spent the rest of his childhood in Brampton, Ont., where he still resides with his wife and four children. The 43-year-old trucker travelled approximately 30 kilometres to participate in a convoy launch in Vaughan, Ont., that will ultimately lead him to Ottawa, where he plans to stay as long as he needs to until a resolution can be reached. Pietraszek, who did not want to disclose his vaccination status, says he is motivated by his family and the birth of his fourth child this week. He hopes to leave a better future to them and that governments will agree to repeal all vaccine mandates. “My fourth child was born this past Saturday; I’ve decided I need to do this for my family,” he said. — Rachel Parent, National Post

Corey Bayne

Image below: Corey Bayne a truck driver at the Vaughan convoy takeoff to show his support. Credit: Rachel Parent/National Post

Growing up in Newfoundland, much of Corey Bayne’s family background and upbringing was surrounded by trucking. At age 18, he moved to Ontario, where he got his trucking licence and became a driver by age 19. The 44-year-old now lives in Georgetown, Ont., where he travelled from to attend the Vaughan convoy launch. While he can’t make it to Ottawa because he is working, he took a day off to show support and solidarity with the truckers that will be making the trip. “It’s exciting that everyone is getting together as one group,” he said. Bayne got vaccinated to keep his job, but says he understands and supports the opposition to the mandates. He hopes all vaccine mandates will be repealed. — Rachel Parent, National Post

Dave Ridell

Image on the right: Dave Ridell and his wife before leaving for Ottawa with the convoy. Credit: Rachel Parent/National Post

As a third-generation farmer in Alliston, Ont., Dave Ridell has been transporting his grains through trucking for the last 30 to 40 years. He travelled approximately 60 kms to participate in the convoy launch in Vaughan, and will be going all the way to Ottawa. The 59-year-old is concerned that government overreach has gotten out of hand, and that politicians need to be held more accountable for what they are doing and the impact vaccine mandates are having on people. He also said that truckers, being frontline workers, were once considered heroes along with health-care workers and other industries, but the mandate on truckers pushes aside many who worked through the harder moments. Ridell, who didn’t want to disclose his vaccination status, hopes that the convoy to Ottawa will lead to all vaccine mandates being lifted. “The amount of people who are unemployed because it’s their personal choice whether they want to be vaccinated or not, it’s not fair, just totally unfair,” he said. — Rachel Parent, National Post

James Smockum

Image below: James Smockum (right) a truck driver for the film industry at the convoy takeoff event in Vaughan. Credit: Rachel Parent/National Post

Growing up on a farm, James Smockum drove trucks from a young age, and as soon as he turned 19, he got his trucking licence. He knew he wanted to become a truck driver after watching Smoky and the Bandit. “I watched it 1,000 times growing up, pretty well from the first time I watched that, I figured that’s what I want to do when I got older,” he said. He was a trucker on the road for most of his life and now primarily does transport for the film industry. The 42-year-old said that while his job hasn’t been impacted yet, there are sets that are starting to mandate vaccination and he has fewer options. He’s planning to go up to Ottawa on the weekend to be a part of the events there. “My hope for this is that people see that there’s this many people against what’s going on,” he said. “Most people see the mainstream narrative that everyone is vaccinated and anyone who’s not vaccinated is a horrible person, which is not the truth at all.” — Rachel Parent, National Post

Claudia Winterhalter

Image on the right: Claudia Winterhalter, a truck driver on her way to Ottawa as part of the convoy. Credit: Rachel Parent/National Post

Claudia Winterhalter lived in West Germany when the country was divided, and says she saw the impact of totalitarianism on East Germany. Growing up, she watched her dad work as a bus driver and wanted to follow in his footsteps. To qualify for driving a bus, you first have to drive a truck in Germany, she said, so she began her career in trucking in 1996. After she married a Canadian truck driver, she continued her career in Canada. The 54-year-old from Orangeville, Ont., has not been vaccinated, but is not against the vaccine. Most of her family and children have gotten it. She believes it is a personal choice. She says much of what is happening reminds her of what she grew up witnessing, with food shortages, political unrest and government overreach. She said even if the convoy doesn’t achieve its goal to reverse all mandates, she hopes they can reinforce that they are all taxpayers and deserve the same freedoms. “I find it’s sad that people are losing their jobs because they have to get vaccinated,” she said. “This is not what Canada is all about, it’s your choice.” — Rachel Parent, National Post

Click here to read the full article.

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As explained in prior posts, in a lawsuit seeking all of the documents the FDA relied upon to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, a federal judge shot down the FDA’s requested rate of 500 pages per month and instead ordered the FDA to produce at the rate of 55,000 pages per month starting on March 1. 

Since the government has trillions of dollars of our money, it is putting it to good use by fighting to assure that the public has the least amount of transparency possible.  To that end, it has now asked the Court to make the public wait until May for it to start producing 55,000 pages per month and, even then, claims it may not be able to meet this rate.

The FDA’s excuse?  As explained in the brief opposing the FDA’s request, the FDA’s defense effectively amounts to claiming that the 11 document reviewers it has already assigned and the 17 additional reviewers being onboarded are only capable of reading at the speed of preschoolers.

Meanwhile…

As the FDA tries to obtain months of delay, guess who just showed upon in the lawsuit?  Yep, Pfizer.  And it is represented by a global chair and team from a law firm with thousands of lawyers.  Pfizer’s legal bill will likely be multiple times what it would cost the FDA to simply hire a private document review company to review, redact, and produce the documents at issue.  Within weeks, if not days.

Pfizer is coming in as a third party.  But Pfizer assures the Court it is here to help expedite production of the documents.  Sure it is!  Where was Pfizer before the Court ordered the 55,000 pages per month?  Right, doing what it normally does: letting the government work on its behalf – like the way the government mandates, promotes, and defends Pfizer’s product.

But the government did not please Pfizer this time and so here it comes, likely looking for a second bite at the apple.  Of course the FDA consented to Pfizer appearing.  You can read the response my firm filed to Pfizer’s motion, as well as all of the other relevant recent filings in the link provided below.

Let me end by noting that all of this insanity is simply in response to an attempt to obtain some basic transparency.  This should again bring into sharp focus why the government should never coerce or mandate anyone to get an unwanted medical product or procedure.  Just look at this circus – the government mandates Pfizer’s product, gives it immunity for any safety or efficacy issues, promotes its product using taxpayer money, gives Pfizer over $17 billion and then uses taxpayers’ money to fight to avoid providing even the most basic level of transparency to the public.

The introduction from the brief opposing the FDA’s request is below and you can find copies of all the relevant court filings (FDA Motion to Modify Scheduling Order, January 18, 2022 / Plaintiff Opposition to Motion to Modify, January 24, 2022 / Pfizer Motion to Intervene, January 21, 2022 / FDA Response to Pfizer Motion, January 25, 2022 / Plaintiff Response to Pfizer Motion, January 25, 2022) here:

Introduction to Opposition to FDA’s Motion

It is understandable that the FDA does not want independent scientists to review the documents it relied upon to license Pfizer’s vaccine given that it is not as effective as the FDA originally claimed, does not prevent transmission, does not prevent against certain emerging variants, can cause serious heart inflammation in younger individuals, and has numerous other undisputed safety issues.[1]  However, the FDA’s potential embarrassment over its decision to license this product must take a back seat to the transparency demanded by FOIA and the urgent need and interests of the American people to review that licensure data.  The Court already recognized this unprecedented urgent need in its January 6th order directing the FDA to produce 55,000 pages per month.

The FDA now insists it must delay its first 55,000-page production until May 1, 2022 – four months after the Court entered its order.  However, the FDA’s own papers seeking this delay make plain it can produce at a rate of 55,000 pages per month in February and March.  The FDA affirms it has already “allocated the equivalent of nearly 11 full-time staff to this project” and that “a review speed of 50 documents per hour was within the normal range for document review in a complex matter” in private practice; and here the 50 document per hour rate would be faster since there is only a need to review for personally identifying information (“PII”) for most pages.  Hence, if the FDA’s 11 full-time reviewers work only 7.5 hours per day and review 50 pages (not documents) per hour, the FDA could review over 88,000 pages per month in February and March.  That is more than sufficient to produce the 55,000 pages per month currently ordered for these two months.

Instead of complying with this Court’s reasoned order, the FDA claims these 11 reviewers can only review a total of 10,000 pages per month.  What the FDA does not say, and what basic math shows, is that a rate of 10,000 pages a month for 11 full-time reviewers amounts to only 5 pages per hour!  This rate is made even more absurd because most of the pages the FDA will be reviewing during this period are repetitive data files that only require second level review to redact minimal amounts of PII that Pfizer may have left in the documents.  FDA’s reality defying claim and contemptuous approach to its production obligations should not be countenanced.  (Infra § I.)

It is also apparent that the instant demand is just the start of a campaign to delay the production ordered by the Court.  In this first salvo, the FDA is not really asking the Court.  It is instead expressly telling the Court it does not intend to produce more than 10,000 pages per month for February and March, and despite claiming it is making “unprecedented” efforts, the FDA repeatedly tells the Court: “It is not possible to guarantee that FDA will be able to fully comply” with the 55,000-page production rate thereafter.  (Dkt. No. 38 at APPX004, APPX008.)  Americans must follow the law and the FDA, a multi-billion-dollar agency, should similarly be given no safe harbor from complying with the orders of this Court.  (Infra § II.)

The FDA should also be held to what it attests.  The FDA, with over 18,000 employees and an over $3 billion discretionary budget, repeatedly assures the Court that it is taking steps to “marshal every possible resource available to it,” “acting with maximal urgency to assemble every possible resource available to it” and “putting every available resource at its disposal into its efforts to achieve compliance.”  (Dkt. No. 37 at 10, 3, 10.)  The FDA also attests that over the coming weeks, it will have 28.5 full-time people reviewing the documents.  Working 7.5 hours per day for 20 business days per month, 28.5 people reviewing 50 pages per hour can review a total of approximately 213,750 pages per month.  Putting aside that most of this production can be reviewed far faster than the rate of 50 pages per hour, Plaintiff asks that the FDA be held to its representations and be directed to produce at the rate of 180,000 pages per month starting in April.  (Infra § III.)

The Court is, other than Congress, the only check on the FDA.  In a free country, transparency is paramount, and the FDA has chosen to thwart transparency and the requirements of FOIA by anemically understaffing the office it maintains to respond to FOIA requests.  It is akin to the boy that kills his parents and asks for sympathy for being an orphan.  Decrying that this Court is now making it comply with the law – by actually producing documents in a timely manner – is ridiculous.  It is also incredible for the FDA to claim that compliance here would harm its health policy objectives.  Even if the FDA really does need to spend $4 to $5 million which, as shown below, is an absurd overestimate, that is an inconsequential amount of its overall $3.41 billion discretionary budget.  Moreover, the issues with the Pfizer vaccine – including waning immunity, variants evading immunity, the failure to prevent transmission, myocarditis, and pericarditis – show that the FDA’s priority should be to address this product before rushing off to engage in other activities.  (Infra § IV.)

For these reasons, as explained below, the Court should refuse to reduce the rate of production in February and March and should increase the rate of production for April and thereafter to 180,000 pages per month consistent with the FDA employing 28.5 full-time reviewers in the coming weeks to conduct the review and the fact that most of the pages need only be reviewed for PII.

…you can read the rest of the brief here

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Notes

[1] Reflecting the issues with this product, the FDA failed to send a representative to a federal court hearing in this matter on December 14th because of the “FDA’s protocols” regarding COVID-19. Meaning, despite the FDA’s claim the vaccine is “effective,” the FDA is apparently still scared to send a representative to the hearing.  Its actions speak volumes and cast serious doubt on its words.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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This article was originally published in June 2021.

Covid 19 was and is a pseudopandemic. It was the gross exaggeration of the threat posed by a low mortality respiratory illness, comparable to influenza. The pseudopandemic was a psychological operation (psy-op) designed to terrorise the public. The objective was to accustom the people to a draconian system of government oppression by familiarising them with the mechanisms of a biosecurity state.

The pseudopandemic was based upon an influenza like illness which, regardless of its origin, was not and is not a disease which can legitimately be considered the cause of a “pandemic.” The only way it could ever be described as such was by the removal of any reference to mortality from the World Health Organisation’s definition.

COVID 19 is a disease which has a mortality age distribution profile indistinguishable from standard mortality. Unlike influenza, which disproportionately impacts the young, in terms of threat to life, COVID 19 was and is a wholly unremarkable illness. Were it not for political theatrics and mainstream media propaganda, which began in China, no one, outside of the medical profession and COVID 19 sufferers, would have remarked on this disease.

The illusion of overwhelmed health services was created by massively reducing their capacity and staffing levels while simultaneously reorienting healthcare to treat everyone who presented with a respiratory illness as viral plague carriers. In reality the pseudopandemic saw unusually low levels of hospital bed occupancy. However, due to the additional policies and procedures heaped upon them, healthcare services were thrown  into disarray.

This was combined with the use of tests, incapable of diagnosing anything, as proof of a COVID 19 “case.” This enabled governments around the world to make absurd claims about the threat level. They relied upon fake science and junk data throughout. As symptomatic illness and resultant disease mortality was relatively low, they asserted that people without any signs of illness (the asymptomatic) were spreading the contagion.

This was abject nonsense. There was no evidence that the asymptomatic infected anyone. Those at risk of severe illness were the small minority of people who already had serious comorbidities, often due to their age.

The mass house arrests (lockdowns) and other measures, such as wearing face masks, were then used to increase the infection risk, to reduce broad levels of population immunity and give the false impression of an extraordinary public health threat. The removal of health care for every other disease, including cancer and ischaemic heart disease, coupled with the health costs of increasing deprivation and immunosuppressant policies, were then exploited to bolster the illusion of a pandemic.

This does not mean that COVID 19 didn’t kill people but those who died of the disease were a small percentage of the total numbers claimed. COVID 19 had no discernible impact upon all cause mortality. The increase above one of the lowest ever 5 year mortality averages was mainly caused by the withdrawal of health services, as increasing numbers of people died in their own homes or in overburdened care settings, without receiving normal medical attention. Despite these efforts, mortality in 2020 was still only the 9th highest in the first two decades of the 21st century and one of the lowest age standardised mortality rates in the last 50 years.

COVID 19 presented virtually no risk to those of working age an none at all to the young. There was no evidence that children were either at or presented any risk. The school closures were part of the pseudopandemic psy-op. They gave the misleading impression of an emergency and provided fraudulent justification for vaccinating children.

The pseudopandemic was planned to lead to the complete transformation of our culture and society. It has irrevocably changed our relationship with governments, has caused catastrophic economic disruption, shutdown global trade and saw millions become reliant on government subsidies. The pseudopandemic was the opening salvo in a global coup d’état.

The new pseudopandemic biosecurity apparatus is designed to control our behaviour as we are forced through a global transformation. Those behind the pseudopandemic intend to change the International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS) and establish global governance in the shape of technocracy. Technocracy is a neofeudal, totalitarian system based upon communitarian principles.

We will be offered the illusion of participatory democracy through our required participation and belief in “civil society.” Civil society will be a “stakeholder” in the Technocracy. However, civil society will only be allowed to pursue polices set at the global level.

Applied psychology was used throughout the pseudopandemic to fix our “choice environment.” We were conditioned to believe that following the rules was the responsible and moral choice. In reality our behaviour was being deliberately altered to ensure our compliance with the diktats of the biosecurity state, preparing society for the transition to technocracy.

The new global IMFS is built upon carbon trading and a $120 trillion carbon bond market is currently under construction. Assets are being defined in terms of their Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics which rate investments depending upon their environmental, social and governance (ESG) score. These metrics have been established by the World Economic Forum working in partnership with the central banks, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and other stakeholder capitalists, such as the investment firm BlackRock.

The global system of central banks, headed by the BIS, are “going direct” by directly funding government policy. They have linked monetary policy to fiscal policy which means ultimate control of all government spending by the BIS. The Financial Services Board of the BIS regulates ESG’s and determines the value of sustainable financial assets.

In this way, the global technocracy will facilitate the continuation of crony capitalism, as only the right stakeholders will receive the approved ESG rating. Those who don’t will not be able to raise the investment capital they need and will be forced out of business.

“Going direct” began before the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a global pandemic. All of the economic and financial responses to the pseudopandemic, such as furlough and business support packages, were agreed as part of the “going direct” plan in August 2019.

The so called economic stimulus of Quantitative Easing (QE) is a fraud. It is based upon the unbridled monetisation of debt on an unprecedented scale. Going direct means that the toxic junk assets of the financial institutions have been taken on to the balance sheets of the central banks. Thus creating unimaginable levels of public debt that can never, and will never, be repaid.

The QE money, created out of absolutely nothing, has been pumped into the financial markets for the continued enrichment of the right stakeholders. The vast expansion of the money supply will shortly lead to hyperinflation. The mass unemployment that will occur as a result of the austerity, caused both by the staggering levels of debt and our transition to a new IMFS, will create stagflation.

The new net zero carbon economy will mean permanent austerity for the majority. The Technate will provide a universal basic income (UBI), or some variation of the concept, to be paid in Central Bank Digital Currency (CDBC). This will mean that no one will have their own money, other than the chosen stakeholders, as all transactions will be monitored and controlled by the central banks.

Those who oppose the neofeudal authority of the corporate, stakeholder Technate and refuse to comply with the imposition of biosecurity obligations will have their CBDC restricted or switched off. The pseudopandemic has established the framework of the biosecurity state that will control all our lives. The vaccine passports are the gateway to full biometric identity for every citizen in the new normal Technate.

We will be required to show our biometric ID on demand. Access to goods and services will be monitored and restricted as desired by the Technate. UBI and CBDC combined with biometric ID will ensure our compliance. The central planners of the Technate will oversee the AI controlled system which will automatically limit the freedoms of those who defy the rules decreed by the stakeholder capitalists.

Money, as we currently understand it, is no longer required by those behind the pseudopandemic. The net zero carbon economy enables them to seize control of the “global commons.” This means that they will have dominion over all of the Earth’s natural resources. All land, the oceans, the atmosphere and even space is being converted into assets via Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics.

Not only will we have no money of our own, we will be unable to access the resources we need to survive without permission from the Technate. While this system of technocracy has been planned for more than a century, it was the financial collapse in 2008 that led the pseudopandemic planners to increase the pace of transformation. The monetisation of debt had long been the source of their authority but this IMFS was unsustainable. As all money was debt, its eventual collapse was inevitable. It passed the point of no return in 2008.

With their going direct plan in place, the stage was set for the pseudopandemic. SARS-CoV-2 provided the perfect opportunity and the core conspirators behind the pseudopandemic had trained extensively in readiness for the operation. We were then barraged by a mainstream media propaganda campaign and military’s information warfare units were deployed to control our “choice environment.”

Scientific and medical doubts were censored as the suspension of normal democratic processes was exploited to introduce the biosecurity state. Laws were passed to allow government to commit any crime it wished in pursuit of stakeholder capitalist sustainable development goals. Laws to end the right of protest and censor free speech are moving unopposed through the legislature as national governments, who are no more than stakeholder partners within the new normal technocracy, prepare us for the coming Technate.

For the core conspirators of the pseudopandemic this is the realisation of their long held dream of global governance. They are steeped in the mythology of eugenics and population control. Once they have total control of the global commons they will no longer need us as consumers and are intent upon significant population reduction.

As insane as this all sounds the evidence, explored in pseudopandemic, is overwhelming. We are facing global neofeudalism unless we act now. Herein lies our hope.

The core conspirators have no real power. It is an illusion that they are desperate to maintain. They invest billions in propaganda, hybrid warfare and security systems because they are terrified that we will realise what they are doing. Their plan can only succeed if we believe their lies and comply with their orders. If we don’t there is nothing they can do about it.

We can reset the world.

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Iain is an author, journalist, blogger and video maker (contributing to 21st CenturyWire, UKColumn, the OffGuardian and other leading news sites).

Featured image is from In This Together

First published by Global Research on March 6, 2019

The toxic clown Boris Johnson has told the Daily Telegraph that “it feels sickening” that charges might be brought against some of the paratroopers who killed or wounded 28 unarmed people in Derry on Bloody Sunday in 1972. He’s become very delicate all of a sudden.

Johnson has had the stomach for every bit of blood-boltered savagery inflicted on innocent people by the British ruling class down the years. But make any of those involved face the possibility of justice? That’s “sickening.”

In fact, some of the soldiers likely to stand in the dock might reasonably feel sickened themselves that they are being made to carry the can while those who gave them their orders or provided political cover are allowed to slouch off scot-free.

Of course, this wasn’t Johnson’s point. He objects to anyone involved in the Bloody Sunday killings being charged with anything at all: in his eyes, there’s nothing criminal about shooting civil rights marchers. So the “hounding” of the soldiers cannot be based on considerations of justice and law but must be “political.”

In a sense, he’s right. The killings were political. The long campaign to have the killers brought to book was political. The selection of soldiers to be charged was political.

The fact that there will be no generals in the dock is political.

The political motive on the day was to smash “Free Derry.” Military and intelligence documents from the period released by the Saville Tribunal show that the most senior commanders in the North were seething with outrage that “hooligans” had taken over part of the town and shut out the forces of law and order. The great unwashed, the hoi polloi, had taken over.

This was the source of the establishment’s rage which they sent the soldiers in to unleash on the people. It had at least as much to do with class as with any consideration of nationality or communal identity.

In 2012, two years after publication of the report, the PSNI launched a criminal investigation into the Derry events. They didn’t do this out of any pristine belief in due process, but because it had become clear by then that the issue of prosecuting the perpetrators was not going to go away.

The PSNI passed the file to the Public Prosecution Service in 2014. It’s taken a further five years for the authorities to decide on the next step.

The obvious reason both for the delay and for the eventual decision to prosecute is that the evidence was overwhelming. Nobody could read the transcripts of the hearings before Saville and come to any conclusion other than that the paras had done what Derry civilians said they had done. The top brass and their political associates eventually came to the conclusion that the evidence was too glaring to be kept in the dark.

It would have been positively perverse for the PPS to have arrived at any other conclusion. For all the raging controversy it has provoked for almost half a century, the Bloody Sunday case is pretty straight-forward: hundreds of people witnessed men with guns killing people without guns in broad daylight. In essence, that’s it.

The fact that it has taken so long to have this acknowledged is a measure of the depth of the establishment’s reluctance to allow daylight to fall on the facts when the facts don’t suit them.

That they have backed off a bit and sanctioned prosecutions represents a huge victory for the families who decided to keep right on to the end of the road when they were being urged on all sides to call a halt.

In the immediate aftermath of publication of the Report in June 2010, Nationalist parties in Derry were telling the relatives that, “This is as good as it gets,” that there was no point pressing on, that Saville’s would have to be the last word. Sinn Féin was instrumental in having the annual Bloody Sunday March abandoned.

The handful of women who refused to accept this and who resolved to march on were, naturally, denounced as “dissidents.”

If everyone involved had followed the Nationalist leaders, there’d be no pending prosecutions for Boris Johnson to blather about. Like so many other Irish atrocities, the awkward truth would have been swept under the carpet.

We owe it to the few who refused to back off that we may now be closer than ever to the truth.

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Mass formation involves the formation of a hypnotic state around a shared consensus

Those under its spell obsessively focus on a failure of the normal world or a particular event or person, who becomes the focus of the attention and can effectively control the masses

Mass formation can occur in a society with feelings of social isolation and free-floating anxiety among a large number of people; it leads to totalitarian thinking and, eventually, to totalitarian states

After Dr. Robert Malone mentioned mass formation on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the term went viral

The technocrats quickly took action, manipulating search results and populating Google with propaganda to discredit Malone and the mass formation psychosis theory

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At the end of 2021, the term “mass formation psychosis” had a value of 0 on Google Trends, meaning there’s not enough data for the term to even make it on the charts. Then, on December 31, Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of the mRNA and DNA vaccine core platform technology,¹ mentioned it on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience viewed by more than 50 million people.²

The term, which provides a coherent explanation of why so many people have fallen victim to the unbelievable lies and propaganda of the mainstream COVID-19 narrative, went viral. On January 2, 2022, mass formation psychosis reached a value of 100 on Google Trends,³ which means it had reached peak popularity.

Google Manipulates Reality Around ‘Mass Formation Psychosis’

The technocrats quickly took action, adding a rarely seen warning that popped up for those searching the suddenly popular phrase in the early days of 2022. It read, “It looks like these results are changing quickly. If this topic is new, it can sometimes take time for results to be added by reliable sources.”⁴

In reality, the topic is not new. Mattias Desmet, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Ghent in Belgium, who has 126 publications to his name,⁵ has been studying it for many years, and the phenomenon actually dates back over a hundred years. One of the earliest works on the subject, according to Malone, is an 1841 book titled, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds,” which details “the irrational behaviors of crowds.”⁶

You won’t find any of this — at least not easily — if you search on Google for “mass formation psychosis” today, however, as it’s all been effectively buried by Big Tech. What you will find is the results of an orchestrated and carefully vetted links to sites that help control the mainstream narrative around the topic. This not only serves to twist the meaning of the term but also to discredit Malone, a classic Orwellian Doublespeak move.

The top search results include headlines like “An anti-vaxx scientist said ‘mass formation psychosis’ caused people to follow COVID-19 measures. Psychologists say there’s no such thing,” (Business Insider⁷) and “Fact Check-No evidence of pandemic ‘mass formation psychosis’, say experts speaking to Reuters” (Reuters⁸). Rogan’s interview with Malone was also taken down by YouTube.

Outrageously, one of the “expert fact checkers” used by the AP to discredit Malone and mass formation psychosis is Jay Van Bavel, a New York University assistant professor of psychology and neural science who not only stated he had never heard of the phrase and could not find it in peer-reviewed literature, but also has encouraged the use of “behavioral science” to “nudge” and “motivate” people to obey the official COVID-19 narrative.⁹ On January 10, Malone wrote:¹⁰

“[T]here has been an amazingly coordinated effort to shoot the messenger and actively character assassinate (or “defenstrate”) me as a surrogate while avoiding any reference to the highly credentialed academic Professor Dr. Mattias Desmet who actually developed the theory and has documented the extensive evidence in an upcoming academic book.

… In this coordinated propaganda and censorship response, we can clearly see the hands of the BBC-led Trusted News Initiative, the Scientific Technological Elite, the transnational investment funds and their World Economic Forum allies which control Pfizer and most of Big Pharma, Legacy Media and Big Tech (and many national governments) acting in real time to suppress a growing awareness by the general public of having been actively manipulated using crowd psychology tools to generate clinically significant fear and anxiety of COVID-19 (otherwise known as “Coronaphobia”) to advance their agendas on a global scale.”

What Is Mass Formation Psychosis?

In the video above, you can see Thomas Patrick Carrigan interview Malone, Desmet and board-certified internist and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough about mass formation psychosis. Don’t be confused by the term mass, it is just psychological speak for crowd. Crowd formation is the same as mass formation.

Formation is the sudden cohesion of the group (the crowd) around a shared consensus. Desmet says he prefers the term mass formation — not mass formation psychosis — because he doesn’t want to use a diagnostic term and the word “psychosis” has a stigma and medical meaning attached to it. Either way, both terms have the same meaning, which involves the formation of a hypnotic state.

Desmet’s upcoming book, “The Psychology of Totalitarianism,” explains that mass formation has grown over the last 200 years. On a grand scale, mass formation leads to totalitarian thinking and, eventually, to totalitarian states. He details the four conditions needed to achieve mass formation on a large scale, which include cognitive dissonance and psychological pain — factors that often leave people desperate for change and a way to escape:¹¹

1. Feelings of social isolation and being alone among a large number of people
2. Feelings that your life is pointless and meaningless
3. High levels of free-floating anxiety
4. High levels of free-floating frustration and aggression

According to an abridged excerpt from Desmet’s book:¹²

“If under these conditions a narrative is distributed through the mass media which indicates an object of anxiety and provides a strategy to deal with this object of anxiety, then all the free floating anxiety might be associated to this object and a huge willingness might be observed to participate in the strategy to deal with the object of anxiety.

At the same time, the field of attention gets narrower until it only contains the part of reality that is indicated by the narrative and people lose their capacity to take into account the other aspects of reality (what makes them often utterly irrational).”

The More Absurd It Gets, the More Successful It Will Be

People want to remove their feelings of social isolation and anxiety. Toward that end, mass formation involves obsessive focusing on a failure of the normal world or a particular event or person, who becomes the focus of the attention — and the more absurd the narrative becomes, the better. Desmet says in the video above:¹³

“The narrative that leads to the mass formation typically becomes more and more absurd, and the strange thing is that people don’t seem to notice this … The reason why people buy into the narrative is not, in the first place, because the narrative is correct or scientific or accurate.

The reason why people buy into the narrative is because it creates this new social bond. That’s why typically during mass formation, the people who don’t want to conform to the masses, who don’t go along with the narrative, are typically [accused of] lacking citizenship and solidarity.”

Desmet says that the more absurd the narrative and its surrounding measures become, the more successful they will be for a certain part of the population, usually about 30%, because the measures function as rituals, through which an individual shows that they are less important than the collective masses:¹⁴

“A ritual is a kind of behavior that is without pragmatic meaning or sense, which is a symbolic kind of behavior through which an individual shows that it belongs to a collective and that it wants to sacrifice something of itself, which is important, in favor of the collective.”

Another irony is that the higher the level of education, the more susceptible people usually are to mass formation, Desmet says. “The people who try to get advanced degrees are usually people who think that social status is very important. And that could be the reason they are inclined to conform with the mainstream narrative.”¹⁵ It may also explain why so many physicians and academics have bought into the propaganda, ignoring science in favor of the collective narrative.

Fanaticism Allows for Lies, Manipulation

Those who are under the spell of mass formation psychosis are so convinced that their narrative will save the world that they feel justified in using manipulative tactics and lies to protect it, Desmet explains, exemplifying Plato’s noble lie — the notion that, in the case of high-status individuals or designated public leaders, it’s acceptable to lie if the lie is made in the interest of the common good. According to Desmet:¹⁶

“Once you understand the nature of mass formation, you also understand what you can do about it. But that doesn’t mean that it is easy to do something about it. The process of mass formation is a kind of hypnosis. Most scholars agree that it is very hard to wake people up from such a state of mass formation. Mass formation is a phenomenon that’s provoked by a voice.

It’s the voice of a leader, the voice that is distributed time and time again through the mass media, that keeps people in the grasp of mass formation, and the leader himself is also grasped in this process of mass formation … both the hypnotist and the hypnotized are into the process.”

Who’s the leader today? “The experts. The authority and the technocrats you could say,” Desmet says. The way out involves having the courage to speak the truth, even though doing so is typically extremely dangerous.

The ancient Greeks had a word for this — parrhesia, which is having the courage to speak the truth in spite of danger. But as Desmet explains, while those who try to reveal knowledge that is in conflict with the narrative put themselves at risk, if no one speaks the truth, society cannot continue to function.

Four Steps to End Mass Formation Psychosis

The first step to ending mass formation, which is also the most important, is speaking out against the official narrative if things seem off to you. “If you want to make the mass formation less deep, then it is quintessential that there are people who continue to speak out and [are a] dissonant voice in society, because this will disrupt the process of mass formation,” says Desmet.¹⁷

The second step involves connecting with other people in the real world who have a similar viewpoint as you or a feeling that something is wrong. Forming small networks in your community will help you break the mass formation cycle. It’s important, however that when you speak to people about the truth that you don’t try to take them back to the “old normal,” because, remember, this is what drove them to mass formation in the first place. According to Desmet:¹⁸

“If we try to convince people or bring a different narrative, [it’s important] that we do not try to convince people to go back to the old normal, because the old normal, that’s what people tried to escape through the process of mass formation. It was exactly because the old normal was unbearable that people were sensitive to the process of mass formation.

What we should try to construct together is a new normal, which is not a technocratic or transhumanist new normal. We should show people that there are other options. There are other options to escape the old normal.”

In short, Desmet recommends the following four steps to break free from mass formation psychosis and enact favorable change one social circle at a time:

1. Continue to speak out
2. Seek to connect with others of like mind
3. Construct a narrative together of a new normal — not to be confused with the “new normal” the transhumanist, technocratic movements are trying to advance — showing people that there are other options to escape the old normal
4. Always stick to the principles of nonviolent resistance

The last step is an important one, because if you use aggression of any form, even in the way you speak, it will only be used as justification by the masses that they were right to oppose you. Nonviolent resistant is the most efficient strategy as you try to resist and defy the mass formation psychosis around you.

How to Reverse Mass Formation Psychosis

While I deeply appreciate Desmet’s and Malone’s description of how the cabal has been able to fool most of the population, this is the best description of how they pulled all the brainwashing and the solution of how to avoid it right out of the matrix.

We all have the capacity to generate reality with our minds and this is what the cabal has hijacked so effectively. Why? Because never in the history of mankind have the tools existed to pull it off. First radio and then TV spread the message, but then social media leveraged the effectiveness of the brainwashing exponentially.

I would recommend watching this video a few times and sharing it with your friends, as it will help them understand — how we can repair the damage. We need to free our mind from their hijacking and use it for constructive purposes — not destructive ones.

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Notes

¹ Trial Site News May 30, 2021

^2, 4 Church Militant January 11, 2022

³ Google Trends, mass formation psychosis

⁵ University of Ghent, Professor Mattias Desmet, Academic Bibliography

^{6, 10, 11, 12} Who Is Robert Malone January 10, 2022

⁷ Business Insider January 9, 2022

⁸ Reuters January 7, 2022

⁹ The Post Millennial January 10, 2022

¹³ Rumble January 4, 2022, 25:47

¹⁴ Rumble January 4, 2022, 27:26

¹⁵ Rumble January 4, 2022, 43:58

¹⁶ Rumble January 4, 2022, 50:00

^17, 18 Rumble January 4, 2022, 52:00

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As of January 28, the war in Yemen continues to intensify with both the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis (Ansar Allah) escalating their military operations.

On January 24, the Houthis attacked several targets in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with ballistic missiles and suicide drones as a part of a new large-scale operation, codenamed “Operation Yemen’s Hurricane 2”.

The Houthis targeted military positions in the southern Saudi provinces of Najran, Jizan and ‘Asir with a number of Samad-1 and Qasef-2K suicide drones as well as several unidentified ballistic missiles.

At the same time, the Houthis targeted the Al Dhafra Air Base and other military positions near the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi, with a number of Zulfiqar ballistic missiles. Several military positions located near the city of Dubai were also targeted with a number of Samad-3 suicide drones.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US, who maintains a large presence at the Al Dhafra Air Base, claimed that the Houthi large-scale attack was foiled.

In response to the attack, the Saudi-led coalition escalated its airstrikes on Yemen. Coalition warplanes carried out more than 100 airstrikes on the Houthi-held capital, Sanaa, the central provinces of Ma’rib and al-Bayda, and the southwestern province of Taiz between January 24 and 27.

Furthermore, the UAE-backed Giants Brigades and other proxies of the Saudi-led coalition resumed their ground operations in Ma’rib. On January 25, they managed to capture the district center of Harib from the Houthis.

After withdrawing from Harib district center, the Houthis blew up Aqabat Mal’a, a mountainous route that links Harib with the district of al-Jubah, in order to hinder the advance of the Giants Brigades and their allies.

On January 26, the Houthis struck back by targeting a large gathering of Saudi-led coalition proxies in the 3rd Military District in Ma’rib with a ballistic missile.

Brig. Gen. Yahya Sari, a spokesman for the Yemeni group, said that dozens of Saudi-backed militants were supposedly killed or wounded as a result of the strike.

However, pro-Saudi news sources claimed that the strike killed five civilians and wounded at least 23 others. These claims are yet to be verified.

The missile strike didn’t deter the Giants Brigades and other coalition proxies, who continue to advance in Ma’rib as of January 27. Their next target will likely be the district of al-Jubah.

The Houthis will not likely limit their actions to defensive operations. The group may escalate its drone and missile attacks. Foreign investments and key attractions in the UAE, including Expo Dubai and the Burj Khalifa, have already been threatened by the group’s media wing.

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Historian Prof. Daniele Ganser details how US-controlled NATO, now the world’s largest military alliance, was formed during the Cold War as a collective defense organization for retaliating against a possible Soviet attack on Western Europe that never materialized. During that time, under CIA and MI6 leadership, NATO had formed an illegal network of secret guerilla armies in Europe known as Gladio.

Instead of dissolving NATO after the Soviet Union collapsed, the US has continued using NATO as an offensive military force, extending its military power and illegally attacking countries that have never attacked NATO members such as Serbia, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, the US is using NATO to threaten Russia over the Ukraine.

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This article was originally published on The Whistleblower Newsroom.

First published July 2021

Author’s Note

In October 2010, I was invited to the home of Fidel Castro in the outskirts of Havana to discuss US foreign
policy, the dangers of nuclear war, the global economic crisis and the unfolding New World Order.

These meetings which extended over several days resulted in a wide-ranging and fruitful conversation which was published by Global Research and Cuba Debate.

I should mention that Fidel Castro was an avid reader of Global Research. His writings were also featured on our website. 

While Fidel fully understood the insidious role of  NGO’s and philanthropic foundations in supporting Washington’s covert meddling operations inside Cuba, he expressed hope that there would be a turn-around with Obama, for whom he had high regard.

When we started our discussions on a Tuesday afternoon, Fidel had already read from cover the cover Bob Woodward’s book entitled Obama’s Wars, which had been released a few days earlier in Washington (expedited to Havana in the diplomatic pouch). 

Five years later in October 2015, I returned to Cuba on the invitation of the Centro de Investigaciones de Politica Internacional (CIPI), a research centre and think tank affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

There was a sense of optimism at the height of Obama’s second term. The theme of the conference was to analyze the process of geopolitical transition opened up by the resumption of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US.

During that visit, I met up with several friends and colleagues (academics, members of parliament) who were acutely aware of Washington’s undercover role of political cooptation. They expressed their concern (October 2015) that a so-called Golpe Blando, namely “Soft Coup” was in the making.

Unilateral sanctions were never abandoned. In 2019, Donald Trump instated Title III of the 1996 Helms Burton Act, which unleashed the most severe economic sanctions against Cuba since the blockade was first introduced in 1962.

Upon Biden’s accession to the White House, the blockade was nonetheless maintained despite the vote of the UN General Assembly (184 in favour 3 against) demanding an end to the 60-years U.S. economic blockade on Cuba.

The Covid-19 Crisis

But there is another important issue which has largely been overlooked. The covid-19 narrative as well as its various policies (including the vaccine) have become an integral part of US foreign policy under the Biden administration.

The Covid-crisis has obvious geopolitical implications. It constitutes a means to destabilize countries which do not conform to the diktats of  global capitalism. Throughout Latin America it is the source of economic and social chaos. It is also a means to destabilize progressive governments throughout the continent including Venezuela, Cuba and Mexico.

In this regard, the March 2020 Covid-19 lockdown ordered by the upper echelons of the financial establishment has literally destroyed the Cuban economy, specifically the tourist industry which is the country’s main source of foreign exchange.

The lockdown as well the Covid-19 vaccine are presented to public opinion as a means to protecting peoples lives. That’s an outright lie. 

The so-called covid-19 lockdown on March 11, 2020 leading to the simultaneous “closure” of 190 national economies was a deliberate act of economic, social and political sabotage.

With regard to Cuba, the Covid-19 crisis has wrecked havoc. It is all encompassing. It extends beyond the US sanctions regime which the Cuban government has effectively handled for the last 59 years.

The Covid-19 lockdown has weakened the country’s institutions, it has created social divisions, it has impoverished Cuba’s population.  It has also created conditions for a US inspired “color revolution”.

Yet at the same time the legitimacy of the Covid-19 narrative, which emanates from Washington and Wall Street, has been  accepted and endorsed by the Cuban people and their government.

Unfortunately, despite the fraud and scientific falsehoods which are amply documented, the Covid-19 narrative has also been endorsed by “progressives” throughout Latin America. This in turn has led to misleading statements by the Left on the causes of the protest movement in Cuba. The underlying focus is solely on the blockade as the cause of food shortages, poverty and unemployment. The devastating social and economic impacts of the covid lockdown which is undermining the achievements of the Cuban Revolution are casually ignored.

Michel Chossudovsky, Bastille Day, July 14, 2021

***

In the light of recent developments including the eruption of protest movements, Global Research is reposting my article published in November 2016.

…

To the People of Cuba: Is Washington Preparing a “Soft Coup”? The Co-optation of Cuban Intellectuals

by Michel Chossudovsky

The article was originally published in November 2016.

Also available in Spanish

To the People of Cuba,

The Cuban Revolution constitutes a fundamental landmark in the history of humanity, which challenges the legitimacy of global capitalism. In all major regions of the World, the Cuban revolution has been a source of inspiration in the relentless struggle against neo-colonial domination and US imperialism.

The World is at a critical crossroads. At this juncture of our history, most “real” progressive movements towards socialism have been destroyed and defeated through US-NATO led wars, military interventions, destabilization campaigns, regime change, coups d’etat, “soft coups”.

Progressive movements as well as “The Left” in Western Europe and the U.S. have largely been coopted, often financed by elite corporate foundations. 

The socialist project in Cuba nonetheless prevails despite the US economic blockade, CIA intelligence ops and dirty politics.

While the legacy of Fidel Castro lives, let us be under no illusions, Washington’s intent not only consists in destroying the Cuban Revolution, it also seeks to erase the history of socialism.

Washington’s Diabolical Design

There are indications that a “regime change” in Cuba is currently contemplated by Washington policy makers.  The Trump administration has been categorical in this regard. The repercussions will be felt throughout Latin America.

During the election campaign “he committed himself to reversing Obama’s Presidential Policy Directive titled “United States-Cuba Normalization,”(a 12-page directive—referred to officially as “PPD-43”). (The Nation, October 2017). No subsequent statement following Trump’s inauguration has as yet been forthcoming.

Of significance is Trump’s appointment of Dr. Judy Shelton to head the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a think tank and funding agency geared towards regime change. As a former Vice-President of the NED, Shelton was  “directly involved in lending legitimacy to US-backed subversion in Cuba as part of a decades-long attempt to overthrow the government in Havana and expand US hegemony over the Caribbean.”

Whatever US- Cuba “normalization” is contemplated by the Trump Administration, it would be geared towards the restoration of capitalism through acts of sedition, infiltration, etc. combined with the imposition of neoliberal economic reforms, including the IMF’s “strong economic medicine”. The fundamental question is how Cuba and the Cuban people will, in the current context, respond to these ongoing threats.

How does Washington plan to carry out this plan. Fundamentally through:

1) Measures which contribute to destabilizing the Cuban economy and its monetary system.

2) Procedures which are conducive to the eventual integration of the Cuban economy into the nexus of the IMF-World Bank-WTO, including the imposition of policy conditionalities  geared towards dismantling Cuba’s social programs, its rationing of essential consumer goods, etc.

3) To reach their objectives, Washington and its European allies have over the years devised various covert mechanisms of infiltration and cooptation with a view to influencing government policy makers, managers of public sector enterprises as well as intellectuals. In this regard Washington has also relied on its European partners which have established bilateral relations with Cuba.

Fidel Castro Ruz and Michel Chossudovsky, October 2010

This article will largely concentrate on the activities of right wing European foundations involved in funding Cuban think tanks and research centers.

The objective is the cooptation of researchers, scholars and intellectuals. The purpose is to build a “new normal”  which will pave the way towards the insertion of Cuban socialism into the logic of World capitalism. While retaining the socialist narrative, this process is ultimately intended to undermine the Cuban revolution, opening the door to economic deregulation, foreign investment and privatization. The “acceptance” by Cuban intellectuals of this “new normal” is essential to reaching the goal of capitalist restoration.

Background: US Interventionism

In recent years, the modalities of US interventionism have changed dramatically:  The thrust of U.S. foreign policy largely consists in destabilizing sovereign countries through a process of “regime change” (color revolution). The latter consists in  destabilizing the national economy, manipulating national elections, co-opting leftist intellectuals, bribing politicians, financing opposition parties, engineering violence and protest movements.

In Latin America, pro-US military dictatorships have largely been replaced by pro-US  (fake) “democracies”. In turn, neoliberal economic reforms under the guidance of the IMF-World Bank have served to impoverish the population, thereby creating conditions which favor protest as well as social and political strife.

The rigging of elections in Latin America is coupled with engineered protests and the co-optation of Left intellectuals funded both by US and European foundations and NGOs, with links to US intelligence.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) created in 1983 alongside a number of other US based foundations has taken the lead. The NED’s mandate is to promote democracy and human rights in developing countries.

The NED is an unofficial arm of the CIA. According to former NED president Carl Gershman:

“It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the C.I.A. … We have not had the capability of doing this, and that’s why the endowment was created.”

In the words of the NED’s first president Alan Weinstein: ” A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA” (Washington Post, September 22, 1991).

The NED Project in Cuba. Entry through the “Back Door”

While the NED is banned in Cuba, it nonetheless finances indirectly –through partner foundations and proxy NGOs based in Florida —  a large number of so-called “democracy projects”.  Many of these partner (US based) organizations –including the Cuban Democratic Directorate (Directorio), the Instituto Cubano por la Libertad de Expresion y Prensa,  the Observatorio Cubano de Derechos Humanos– have links to US intelligence. Historically, the NED has functioned through partners in the European Union which have formal bilateral links with Cuba.

With regard to Germany, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (linked to the Social Democratic Party), the Hans Böll Stiftung (Green Party) and the Hanns Seidel Stiftung (linked to the right wing Bavarian Christian Democratic Party (CSU)) have agreements with Cuba.

America’s Proxy: The Hanns Seidel Foundation, Instrument of the Right Wing CSU Party of Bavaria

In this essay I will focus primarily on the role of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, with specific reference to its role in Cuba and Venezuela.

The Hanns Seidel Stiftung (HSS), via the right wing Bavaria CSU, has a direct relationship to the government of Angela Merkel, who, in many regards is considered a US proxy  Historically, the activities of the HSS have been supportive of right wing political interventionism.

Many of HSS’ activities in developing countries as well as in Eastern Europe are carried out in partnership with US foundations including the NED and, the Open Society Foundation. HSS also has links with various think tanks including Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs) and the American Enterprise Institute. It hosts speaking events as well as training programs in collaboration with NATO, the EU and the German government.

The Hanns Seidel Stiftung (NSS) has intervened in many countries, often in liaison with the NED and the US State Department. In the early 1990s it was involved in the so-called “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine, which resulted in mass poverty and the destabilization of the Ukrainian economy.

More recently, Hanns Seidel (HSS) has maintained links with the current Kiev regime, largely with a view to confronting Moscow and destabilizing Donbass.

HSS through its Washington office has routine consultations with the US government, Congress, think tanks, including major partner foundations.

HSS is also in liaison with US based foundations including the NED, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundation.

HSS continues to maintain close ties to the Kiev regime which is integrated by two Neo-Nazi parties. The CSU and the HSS have informal ties to German intelligence, the Bundes Nachrichtendienst (BND).

One of the main activities of the Hanns Seidel Foundation has been the co-optation of Leftist intellectuals and scholars. This has been carried out by financing key policy-oriented think tanks and research institutes.

Hanns Seidel in Venezuela

Of significance, the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSS) was actively involved in financing the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski in Venezuela in the 2012 elections. Its activities extended far beyond its endorsement of  Capriles’ candidacy. In its quarterly report, the HSS openly acknowledges its dislike of the Bolivarian process.  In this regard, the HSS was involved in organizing a number of anti-government conferences, largely with a view to upholding free market capitalism (neoliberalism) and smearing the Chavez government.  The HSS was also used to create links with right wing parties including Copei and Primera Justicia.

It is worth noting that more than forty years ago, the CDU and CSU parties (to which the Hanns Seidel foundation is affiliated) were involved in providing financial support to the protagonists of the military coup against president Salvador Allende. And in the wake of the coup, they provided economic aid to  the military government of Augusto Pinochet.

HSS is still involved in Venezuela, financing a number of projects. Their unspoken objective is the destabilization of the Bolivarian government.

Hanns Seidel representing the CSU of Bavaria is also involved in the politics of several Latin American countries including Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina and Bolivia. In Ecuador the CSU through Hanns Seidel is cooperating with the Corporación Autogobierno y Democracia, Fundación Acción y Desarrollo Comunitario (ACDECOM) and various other organizations.

The Hanns Seidel Foundation in Cuba

Now let me turn my attention to Cuba, focussing on a specific activity of the Hanns Seidel Foundation in which I was personally involved.

In October 2015, I was invited to participate in an international venue of the Centro de Investigaciones de Politica Internacional (CIPI), a research centre and think tank affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The theme of the conference was to analyze the process of geopolitical transition opened up by the resumption of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US.

Transicion geopolitica del poder global: entre la cooperacion y el conflicto

The event was funded by the Hanns Seidel Stiftung. Scholars were invited from Western Europe, Latin America, Africa, the US and Canada.

A few weeks following my acceptance to participate in the venue addressed to CIPI, I received a message from the Hanns Seidel Stiftung informing me that the event was supported by them and that the HSS would be funding all my expenses including an honorarium. The message stated that they would be in contact with me regarding issues pertaining to a contract. They also requested that I submit a so-called “propuesta de servicios” (offer of services).

I was fully aware of the track record of the HSS, specifically on how they had intervened in the Venezuelan 2012 presidential elections in support of Capriles Radonski, with a view to ultimately undermining Hugo Chavez.

I was shocked by the fact that CIPI had requested funding from HSS. The intent of HSS (acting on behalf of Bavaria’s CSU, a right wing party) in liaison with its partner organizations in Washington was to undermine socialism in Cuba. It also consisted in  co-opting Cuban scholars and intellectuals in anticipation of a broad process of political change.

I responded to the HSS invitation indicating both to them and to the CIPI organizers that I would be funding my travel and accommodation expenses and did not see the need to receive funding from the HSS. This decision created confusion in the processing of my participation in the conference.

The October 2015 Conference

What happened: some very good contributions by prominent Cuban and Latin American scholars and scientists on a variety of important topics. But there were several black holes in the program no doubt related to the fact that the HSS linked to Bavaria’s CSU was funding the venue and had imposed its conditions.

1. A key session of the conference was on Venezuela, focussing on the future of the Bolivarian government and its historical relationship to Cuba.

Not a single participant from Venezuela had been invited to the Conference, thereby foreclosing a dialogue and discussion between Cuban and Venezuelan intellectuals.

All the presentations on Venezuela were by Cuban scholars.

No doubt the HSS had blocked the invitation of progressive Venezuelan intellectuals aligned with the Bolivarian revolution.  The topic of the conference (i.e. transition and normalization with the US) is of crucial significance to both Cuba and Venezuela.

It should be understood that in the present context, the future of Cuban socialism [2016] largely hinges upon maintaining and building Cuba-Venezuela relations within the context of the Bolivarian revolution. The HSS was intent upon denying a political dialogue and debate between Cuban and Venezuelan intellectuals. The objective of the HSS was to undermine and weaken the longstanding relationship between Cuba and the Bolivarian government of Venezuela. Ironically, nobody among the Cuban organizers and participants was aware of Hanns Seidel’s dirty politics in Venezuela.

In contrast, the session on Mexico included four distinguished scholars from Mexico. There was a large delegation of Mexicans as well as from other Latin American countries.  Not a single Venezuelan was invited.

2. A session on US Foreign Policy included Israeli academic Yossi Mekelberg associated with Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs (UK), an arch-reactionary British think tank, with links to the Washington based Council on Foreign Relations.

The presentation by the Israeli academic provided a biased interpretation of what was happening in Syria and Palestine.  The US led terrorist insurgency in Syria was  casually described as a “civil war”, Palestinians were tagged as terrorists,  and President Bashar al Assad was accused of killing his own people, much in the same way as the US-UK corporate media.

According to Mekelberg, quoted by Newsweek, the ISIS “emulates” the Palestinians:

http://europe.newsweek.com/netanyahu-ramming-atttacks-isis-palestinians-inspired-541097?rm=eu

The Cuban scholars who were participating in this event did not take the trouble to react or express their disdain.

The question is why would such an individual (affiliated to Chatham House, supportive of the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv) be invited to socialist Cuba by a research centre associated with Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs?  

Cuba has historically expressed solidarity with Palestine as well as with the struggle of the people of Syria and Iraq, who are currently the object of acts of military aggression by US-NATO.

Why did they not invite a committed socialist scholar from Palestine to debate US foreign policy? Was it a condition set by the Right Wing CSU of Bavaria via the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSS)?

3. Another session focussed on Ukraine. Among the participants was the President of the Vienna based International Institute for Peace Prof. Hannes Swoboda, who is a (former) member of the European Parliament. Swoboda outlined his support for US-NATO in Eastern Europe directed against Russia as well as his endorsement of Ukraine’s Maidan Kiev regime (which is integrated by two Neo-Nazi parties). No reaction by the Cuban intellectuals participating in this venue was forthcoming.

Lest we forget, the Cuban government has expressed its solidarity with the people of Donbass and Crimea. In turn, the people of Donbass acknowledged their solidarity with Cuba and the teachings of Fidel Castro (see below). But this was not an issue of debate at the CIPI Conference.

In the words of Fidel Castro:

Cuba, which has always stood in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, and in the difficult days of the Chernobyl tragedy provided medical care to the many children affected by the accident’s harmful radiation, and is always willing to continue doing so, cannot refrain from expressing our repudiation of the action of the anti-Russian, anti-Ukrainian and pro-imperialist [Kiev] government. (July 14, 2014)

Hannes Swoboda invited to Cuba by CIPI  (to quote Fidel Castro) was “anti-Russian, anti-Ukrainian and pro-imperialist”.  As MEP, he initiated (together with several other MEPs) the anti-Russian pro-NATO procedure at the European parliament, calling for support of the illegitimate Kiev regime, integrated by two Neo-Nazi parties. (see below)

Concluding Remarks, The Legacy of Fidel Castro

It is my sincere hope that what I have presented in this article will be the object of debate and discussion in Cuba.

The Cuban government is committed to protecting the achievements of the Cuban revolution. In the current context, this is no easy task. As  outlined in the Introduction, Washington is intent not only upon destroying the Cuban Revolution, it also seeks to erase the history of socialism.

The intent of Western foundations –operating directly or indirectly on behalf of Washington– is to trigger divisions within Cuban society, through infiltration and  co-optation, the ultimate objective of which is the restoration of capitalism. 

These mechanisms of co-optation are also facilitated by the dual currency system in Cuba, which has allowed Hanns Seidel and other European foundations to make payments to Cuban think tanks and research institutes in convertible currency (CUC).

Increased “dollarization” of retail consumer prices (expressed in CUC) is conducive to impoverishment and social inequalities.

Cubans are well aware of this evolving crisis: people who earn income in CUC convertible pesos have acquired purchasing power. In contrast, those whose earnings are largely in nonconvertible Cuban pesos are excluded from the CUC consumer economy.

Washington’s broader intent is to implement measures which contribute to destabilizing the Cuban economy and its monetary system, namely to reintegrate Cuba into a dollarized World economy.

Procedures are also envisaged by Washington to eventually reintegrate the Cuban economy into the nexus of the IMF-World Bank-WTO, including the imposition of policy conditionalities  geared towards dismantling Cuba’s social programs, its rationing of essential consumer goods, etc.

It is essential to block these initiatives. Debate and discussion on the mechanics of “capitalist normalization” are crucial, both within Cuba and internationally.

A revolutionary narrative per se will not sustain Fidel’s legacy, unless it is backed by concrete actions and carefully designed policies.

The mechanics of capitalist restoration and the various modes of political interference and social engineering must be forcefully addressed.

The battle against war and neoliberalism prevails. 

For the outright criminalization of America’s imperial wars,

For a World of Social Justice with a true “responsibility to protect” our fellow human beings,

Long Live Fidel Castro Ruz

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The cruder U.S. methods for destroying Cuba’s revolutionary government—military attacks, bombings of hotels and a fully-loaded airplane, violent attacks on officials, biological warfare—did not work. Nor has economic blockade, which of course continues. A more subtle approach also exists. Like the blockade, its purpose is to cause despair and then dissent.

U.S. officials pay for the collection of bad news about Cuba’s revolutionary government and for its dissemination within Cuba and to news outlets abroad. U.S. paymasters provide money to agents for delivery to opponents of Cuba’s government, real or imagined, in Cuba and elsewhere. The recipients find or devise information unfavorable to Cuba’s image and spread it. Cubans’ well-founded complaints about shortages, bureaucracy, low wages, and living with the pandemic become news items.

The groups transferring the money from the United States to disgruntled elements in Cuba and elsewhere are key to the entire operation. One recalls the “bagman” who in certain U.S. cities deliver pay-offs from point to point within a criminal network. These groups transferring money—as authorized by the Helms Burton law of 1996—are bagmen for imperialism.

An odor of criminality is sensed. To interfere with Cuba’s conduct of its own affairs violates norms of international law relating to national sovereignty. And it turns out that, as of 2011, “Accusations of fraud, reckless distribution of funds, and diversion of monies to stateside anti-Cuban groups have prompted temporary stays in disbursement of funds.”

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is one of two big U.S. paymasters. Founded in 1983, it’s a non-governmental organization funded exclusively by the U.S. Congress. The projects funded by the NED are similar to those formerly undertaken by the CIA.

The Cuban Communist Party’s Granma newspaper on Jan. 18, 2022 presented a list published on the NED website on Feb. 23, 2021. Groups are named “which received funding to intervene in Cuba during the year 2020, with sums ranging from 20,000 to 650,000 dollars.”

The list includes 42 groups; the total amount dispensed was $5,a077,788. Below appears a short list. It contains the names of groups receiving $146,360 or more, the amount of money each one did receive, its home base, and the supposed shortcoming in Cuba needing to be fixed.

The top recipients of NED funds were:

• Cubalex: $150,000 – Memphis, Tenn. (human rights)
• National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI): $500,000 – Washington, D.C. (gender rights)
• Observatorio Cubano de Derechos Humanos: $150,000 – Madrid (human rights)
• Asociacion Diario de Cuba: $215,000 – Madrid (access to information)
• Instituto Cubano por la Libertad de Expresion y Prensa: $146,360 – Hialeah, Fla. (access to information)
• Cuban Democratic Directorate: $650,000 – Miami (access to information)
• Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE): $309,766 – Washington, D.C. (private sector needing support)
• Clovek v tisni, o.p.s. (People in Need): $150,882 – Prague (access to information)
• Grupo Internacional para la Responsabilidad Social Corporativa en Cuba: $230,000 – Miami (labor rights)

The State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is another paymaster. On Oct. 23, 2021, journalist Tracey Eaton’s “Cuba Money Project” website reported on disbursements USAID announced during the previous month. The total being delivered to 12 organizations was $6,669,000. The list, constructed like the list above, includes:

• International Republican Institute: $1,006,895 – Washington, D.C. (human rights)
• Pan American Development Foundation: $800,000 – Washington, D.C. (labor exploitation)
• Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba: $717,000 – Miami (medical workers exploited)
• Digital News Association: $604,920 (military abuse)
• Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia: $625,000 – Miami (political prisoners)
• International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights: $546,00 – Washington, D.C. (human rights and racism)
• Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation: $545,573 – Washington, D.C. (democracy)
• Directorio Democrático Cubano: $520,179 – Miami (tourist workers exploited)
• Outreach Aid to the Americas: $500,000 – Miami (humanitarian crisis)
• Cubanet News: $408,003 – Coral Gables (tourist workers exploited)
• Observatorio Cubano de Derechos Humanos: $250,000 – Madrid (political prisoners)
• Libertatis: $166,430 – Houston, Texas (human rights)

Cubans in many cities, predominantly young people, took to the streets on July 11, 2021. They were protesting shortages of medical supplies, food, and other goods; the failure of remittances from abroad to arrive; and, in some instances, racial discrimination. Arrests and detentions followed and, more recently, trials and prison sentences. Social media played a major role in mobilizing the protesters and subsequently in disseminating news of arrests, injuries, property damage, and reaction from abroad.

As with social media trial runs in earlier anti-Cuban propaganda campaigns, some of the U.S. government funds delivered by the intermediaries were undoubtedly earmarked for expanding the role of social media in recruiting protesters and in publicizing adverse fallout.

As bad news from Cuba makes its way to anti-Cuban politicians in the United States and Europe, it takes on added value. New pretexts crop up for administrative actions and legislation that, aimed at destabilization in Cuba, imposes sanctions and tightens blockade rules. These in turn generate reports of new grief in Cuba.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently responded to the trials of some of the July 11 protest leaders and the resulting prison terms by announcing visa restrictions against eight Cuban officials. A legislative proposal recently introduced by South Florida congresspersons calls upon President Joe Biden to urge the United Nations to issue sanctions against Cuba. The bill’s title is “Atrocities and Genocide in Cuba.”

The story here is about siege socialism. In his Blackshirts and Reds, Michael Parenti shows Russian revolutionaries under Lenin cutting back on their aspirations due to pressures of civil war and invasion by capitalist nations: “[I]n May 1921, the same Lenin who had encouraged the practice of internal party democracy and struggled…to give the trade unions a greater measure of autonomy, now called for an end to the Workers’ Opposition and other factional groups within the party.”

Fidel Castro once offered a vivid characterization of a socialist society faltering under enemy attacks while being advertised, by those enemies, as the best that socialists can do—as if peaceful circumstances did prevail. He declared that, “For 40 years you try to strangle us. And then you criticize us for the way we breathe.”

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W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

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In one of the largest studies on glyphosate contamination in a human population, the world’s most used weedkiller was found in over 99% of the general public in France, with a total of over 6,800 urine samples having been tested.

The study, published Wednesday in Environmental Science and Pollution Research, a top peer-reviewed scientific journal, was carried out on 6,848 people, living in 83 municipalities in France.

These volunteers were recruited via the “Glyphosate Campaign” association, which has launched a legal campaign against the weedkiller classified as a “probable human carcinogen” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

The samples were taken between June 2018 and January 2020, the vast majority under the supervision of third-party lawyers or legal representatives with a view to legal action. They were analyzed during the sampling period by a third-party laboratory in Germany.

Glyphosate was detected in 99.8% of 6,795 exploitable samples, at “an average level of 1.19 µg/L (ppb)”.

The authors of this new study note that the samples taken in spring and summer, the season for glyphosate and other herbicide spraying, showed “significantly higher levels”. Farmers, especially “working in a wine-growing environment”, also had “significantly higher” levels.

Levels were also higher in men and children, people who regularly consume tap or spring water, smokers and drinkers of beer or juice.

People who said they eat “more than 85% organic food”, on the other hand, had lower levels.

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The authors stress that their sample group was not fully representative of the general population, being older, more female and undoubtedly over-representing “citizens aware of the issues of pesticides and a healthy lifestyle”. In fact this means that it is likely for the levels of glyphosate in the general public would be slightly higher.

They added that its size makes the analysis relevant, especially as “our results confirm almost all other international studies”, while being “rather in the upper part” of the levels found, notes Denis Lairon, director of research emeritus at INSERM and one of the authors. However, he said he was “surprised to see an almost systematic contamination”.

The sampling campaign was accompanied by more than 5,800 individual legal complaints by the participants on the basis of the positive results, in particular for “endangering the life of others”.

“This external analysis by scientists helps the case move forward,” concluded Guillaume Tumerelle, a lawyer for the Glyphosate Campaign.

French President Emmanuel Macron had committed in November 2017 for a total ban on glyphosate “at the latest in three years”. Last week however he admitted to having failed with this pledge, while adding that this was due to a “collective” failure by other EU countries.

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***

Secretly and quietly, the Biden administration has continued to use the killing machine crafted by President George W. Bush, expanded by President Barack Obama and employed from time to time by President Donald Trump. These presidents have used drones and other unmanned missiles and projectiles to target persons in foreign countries with which the United States is not at war.

They have done this notwithstanding the prohibition of taking life, liberty or property from any person — not just any American, but any person — in the Constitution each has sworn to uphold, and they have done so pursuant to secret rules that they themselves have established for these killings.

Last week, 11 senators and 39 members of the House of Representatives — Democrats all — to their credit sent a harshly worded letter to President Joseph R. Biden asking him to stop the killings. As of this writing, he has not publicly replied.

Here is the backstory.

The purpose of the Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments to the Constitution — is to protect personal liberty by restraining the government.

The Fifth Amendment prohibits killing persons, restraining liberty and taking property without due process; that means a jury trial at which the government must prove fault. Until President Abraham Lincoln waged war on half the country, the operative clause in the Fifth Amendment was understood to prohibit all federal killing without a declaration of war or due process.

If the country is at war — lawfully and constitutionally declared by Congress — obviously the president can use the U.S. military to kill the military of the opposing country. And if an attack on the U.S. is imminent, the president can strike the first blow against the military of the entity whose attack is just about to occur.

There are no other constitutional circumstances under which a president may kill.

All this changed — culturally, not constitutionally — when President Harry Truman targeted Japanese civilians in Japan as the Japanese government was within days of surrendering in World War II. Truman was, of course, not the first American president to target civilians, as Lincoln criminally targeted American civilians during the War between the States.

Notwithstanding his unprosecuted war crimes, and with the government’s version of Pearl Harbor still fresh in many Americans’ minds, Truman was regarded as heroic for ordering the profoundly immoral, militarily useless, criminal mass killings against the hated Japanese using atomic bombs.

Fast-forward to the 9/11 era, and Bush had precedent to begin his own presidential killings of people the government wanted Americans to hate. While Congress did authorize him to use force against those who caused or aided the 9/11 attacks, we all know that his thirst for Middle Eastern blood knew no regard for the Constitution, evidence, proportionality, civilian lives, morality or human decency.

Julian Assange sits in a British dungeon awaiting decisions on his extradition to the U.S. because he courageously, lawfully and constitutionally published documents and videos demonstrating conclusively that Bush’s use of drones targeted and murdered Afghan and Iraqi civilians, and his administration covered it up.

Obama took this to another level when he targeted and killed Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, both of whom were born in the U.S. Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, advised Obama that the killings were lawful, as al-Awlaki had encouraged folks in the Middle East to fight against American soldiers there. Holder likened killing al-Awlaki to a shooting at a bank robber who is being chased by police and shooting at them.

Holder forgot that al-Awlaki was not charged or indicted for any crime, was never accused of violence and was not even the subject of an arrest warrant when a drone evaporated him while sitting at an outdoor cafe in Yemen.

The exercise of power by the federal government is largely based on precedent and politics. Whenever a president wants to kill secretly, he need only find an example of a predecessor having killed secretly with impunity — without due process, without a declaration of war and without an imminent attack. And then he needs only to calculate what he thinks he can politically get away with.

Stated differently, Joe Biden — whose drones in 2021 targeted innocent civilians in Afghanistan, killing dozens — is using unlawful powers that his modern predecessors used and got away with to target and kill unsympathetic persons.

The nature of political power is to expand so that it fills a perceived need, unless there are mechanisms in place to restrain its expansion.

The founding generation believed that British monarchs had no limits on their power and that was a good enough reason for the 13 colonies to secede. They also believed that they had crafted founding documents — the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — for the new nation that imposed sufficient restraints on the federal government.

After all, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Its language is clear that only Congress writes laws and declares war, and presidents can kill only troops in wartime or civilians consistent with due process.

Moreover, every president takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as it was written, not as they may wish it to be.

Sadly, the Founders were wrong.

Today, the president writes laws and rules that let him restrain personal liberty and kill with impunity, and Congress and the American people let him get away with it. Formally, we still have a Constitution. Functionally, it has utterly failed to restrain the government.

Ultimately, we have ourselves to blame for these killings. Why do we repose the Constitution for safekeeping into the hands of those who subvert it? If a future president uses Bush’s lust and Obama’s logic and Biden’s stealth to kill Americans in America, no one’s life, liberty or property will be secure.

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In Washington the global US military empire is a bipartisan affair. With a trillion dollar yearly military budget, there are plenty of opportunities for both the position and the opposition parties to thrust snouts deeply into the trough.

While Ron Paul was in Congress and GW Bush was president, we did a good deal to craft a bipartisan antiwar coalition in opposition to the Iraq war and other Bush-ite neocon misadventures.  Then Obama was elected and pursued the same policies of global military empire – but with a better smile – and our coalition disintegrated. Suddenly the Democrats (with a couple of exceptions) were uninterested in the antiwar issue.

Such is the case now, when Obama’s great “success” – the US-led coup in Ukraine – is back in the headlines. Now Obama’s second fiddle is “in charge” of things and those under him who pull the levers are determined to solidify their “great achievement” of peeling Ukraine away from its neighbor and dropping that basket-case into the lap of Brussels and Washington. So for the past five weeks they have been ginning up the idea that Russia is about to invade Ukraine – even when Ukraine’s own defense secretary is practically laughing at Washington’s breathless assertions.

Said Ukrainian Defense Secretary Alexey Danilov:

As of today, we don’t see any grounds for statements about a full-scale offensive on our territory. It’s even physically impossible… Maybe, [seeing Russian troops] is an oddity to our foreign partners who finally saw that there are Russian forces and they move a certain way.

It must be comical for Russia to sit back and watch the US Keystone Kops at the helm of foreign policy blunder and bluster, with Biden’s press secretary insisting that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is “imminent” even as the Ukrainians – who are in a position to know and also in a position to benefit if it was true – pour cold water on the Biden war-fear-porn.

But when it comes to Fed-generated counterfeit money, Congress is always ready to sprinkle plenty around to their favorite causes – usually war and corporatism.

That is why House Democrats are desperately trying to ram through a massive “free weapons” bill for Ukraine before the current lapdog media-driven “RUSSIA INVASION” propaganda dies down.

Just as Big Pharma is rushing to put a new omicron variant vaccine on the market before their Covid gravy train dies out, Washington’s Democratic warmongers (with plenty of Republican fellow travelers) are rushing to send half a billion dollars in weapons to Ukraine before the casual MSM consumer learns (they’re always last to know) that the whole “Russia is about to invade Ukraine” cook-up is another lie.

US military aid overseas is corporate welfare for US Beltway weapons manufacturers who in turn kick back millions to fund pro-war politicians and more millions to fund pro-war “think tanks” who warn us that there are Reds under every bed and that we need to spend moar moar moar!

As The Intercept reports, Pelosi is worried that the “RUSSIA IS INVADING” panic will wear off too soon, so she is “looking to skip marking up the bill and move it straight to the House floor, setting up the possibility of a vote as soon as early next week.”

Angry to be left out of the fleecing of America for foreign interests frenzy, Republicans are racing to offer more of our money to protect the borders of corrupt Ukraine (while foreign invaders are given the red carpet treatment on our borders):

Republicans have offered their own measures. Earlier this month in the House, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the lead Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced the Guaranteeing Ukrainian Autonomy by Reinforcing its Defense Act, a companion bill to a measure sponsored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jim Risch, R-Idaho. The bill would give Ukraine $450 million from the State Department’s FMF account and impose sanctions related to the Nord Stream 2 project immediately, without waiting for an escalation as in the Democrats’ bill.

Only $450 million? Come on Republicans! Surely you can do better to flush our money down the foreign policy toilet! Slackers!

As the great Pat Buchanan once said, “Our two parties have become nothing but two wings of the same bird of prey.”

Indeed, Mr. Buchanan. Indeed!

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The formal US response to Russia’s demands for security guarantee was delivered to the foreign ministry in Moscow on Wednesday. Moscow’s worst fears came true: Washington simply ducked without addressing the main Russian concerns — NATO’s expansion, rollback of NATO deployments to pre-1997 level, etc. —and instead offered to discuss confidence-building measures. 

Nonetheless, Moscow will only take the dialogue route, as it is in Russian interests not to appear obdurate, although if past experience is any guide, CBMs with US last only until it abandons them. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his annual address to the Russian Parliament last April, had clearly drawn the “red lines” that much as Moscow wants good relations with other countries and “really don’t want to burn bridges… if someone mistakes our good intentions for indifference or weakness and intends to burn down or even blow up these bridges, they should know that Russia’s response will be asymmetrical, swift and harsh.” 

Russian officials have since repeatedly underscored, including this week, that there is no compromise possible on any further expansion of NATO or the alliance’s deployments on the borders. In fact, Russia’s “asymmetrical” reaction is already unfolding. 

Potentially, there are three key templates in play. The first, of course, is the demand this week by Russia’s Communist Party to accord recognition to the separatist regions in Donbass in eastern Ukraine, which was followed by a call from the ruling party United Russia urging the government to render all military and economic support necessary to those regions to withstand any aggressive moves by Kiev. 

The Russian Parliament may well endorse these demands. Now, if Kiev intervenes militarily to stop the emergence of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent entities and threatens the security of the region’s Russian population, that will be casus belli for intervention by Moscow, which will be left with no option but push back the Ukrainian forces and create a buffer anywhere up to the Dnepr river. 

A second template that is becoming kinetic is the energy front. The fact of the matter is that Russia’s major energy exporter Gazprom has been pumping gas in accordance with existing contracts with European countries. But the gas flow to Germany through the Yamal pipeline ended on December 21. 

Moscow has not made any announcement in this regard and probably expects that it is a matter of time before the German authorities give approval for the newly-built Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which has a massive capacity to supply 55 bcm annually.  

The price of Russian gas is very competitive. The average price of Russian gas is around $280 for one thousand cubic metres (whereas, spot market price recently touched $2000.) Thus, the US cannot compete with Russia in the European market and a need arises to evict Russia from its status as the leading supplier. 

However, even if the US finds a way to boost LNG deliveries to Europe, energy prices would jump. Equally, other gas exporting countries — Norway, Algeria and Qatar — lack the surplus capacity to cover the shortfall in Russian gas supplies to Europe. 

Thus, Nord Stream 2, which Washington wanted to kill in its cradle, has become a test of the EU’s strategic autonomy. Washington thinks that the delay in clearing Nord Stream 2 will put pressure on Moscow to back off in Ukraine since Russia stands to earn more than $15 billion annually out of the pipeline. (Russia invested around $11 billion in the pipeline’s construction.)  

Moscow has warned that holding Nord Stream 2 hostage will be “counterproductive.” And it is doubtful that the Kremlin could be browbeaten to give up on its vital security concerns — NATO expansion, etc. —  for the sake of salvaging the gas exports to Europe. 

Russia has huge currency reserves and can afford take some financial losses. Besides, Russia is shortly signing the deal for the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline to China with a massive capacity of $55 bcm. If push comes shove, Russia will replace the European buyers with Asian customers such as Japan, South Korea and India.  

The third template of Russia’s asymmetrical response concerns an altogether intriguing sphere — Ukraine’s internal politics. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky heads an unstable regime with an eroded power base. The ultra-nationalist right-wing elements call the shots in Kiev. As things stand, Zelensky’s prospects of getting a second term in the presidential election in March 2024 do not look good. 

If Ukraine suffers a military defeat, Zelensky’s fate is sealed. That said, the virulently anti-Russian extremist paramilitary groups who are present on the contact line with Donbass may consider it expedient to provoke a conflict, egged on by Western intelligence, triggering Moscow’s intervention. 

Clearly, annexation of Ukrainian territory or an outright invasion of Ukraine is not in the Russian calculus, but if the security of millions of Russians in the Donbass gets jeopardised, Moscow cannot remain indifferent. 

The US knows it, and Zelensky knows it. That’s why Zelensky and his defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov stepped out of line lately and began tamping down tensions, even declaring that Moscow is not contemplating aggression. 

Reznikov (who once served in the Soviet army) was quoted saying on December 24 after a meeting with lawmakers in Kiev, “As of today, the Russian army has not formed a strike group that would be able to carry out an invasion. There are no grounds to think that an invasion will happen tomorrow from a military point of view.”

Things came to a head today with the CNN reporting that President Biden had a difficult 80-minute conversation with Zelensky trying to convince him that a Russian invasion was imminent and Moscow intended to remove him from power. 

According to CNN, in the “long and frank” conversation, Zelensky disagreed and estimated that the threat from Russia remains “dangerous but ambiguous,” and it is not certain that an attack will take place. 

A second CNN analysis today further reported on “New signs of a fracture between the US and Ukraine over the imminence of a possible Russian invasion…Frustration in Kyiv has mounted in recent days over escalating US rhetoric on the crisis.”

What needs to be factored in here is that Zelensky won the election in 2019 with big support from ethnic Russian voters on an electoral platform that sought improvement of relations with Russia and a settlement in Donbass. 

Of course, after coming to power, under immense pressure from the rightwing Ukrainian nationalists who commanded street power and manipulation behind the scenes by Western powers, Zelensky changed course and began pursuing anti-Russian  policies. 

Zelensky realises that he is certain to be the fall guy if the current tense standoff with Russia leads to a war. The tragedy is that he is no longer in control of the contact line with Donbas where US mercenaries are present. His priority will be to see another day and retrieve the lost political ground before the election in 2024. 

Moscow has a terrific grasp of the undercurrents of Ukrainian politics. Significantly, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated today through the state media that “The Russian president has said: if Zelensky wants to discuss normalising bilateral relations…, we are ready for this, no problem. Let him come to Moscow, Sochi or St. Petersburg.” 

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Video: Justin Trudeau Braging About Bribing the Media

In the video below Trudeau points to the Need to “Override the Fundamental Rights of a Minority”

Video: Justin Trudeau on the Need to Violate Fundamental Rights

The “Fact Checkers” claim that Trudeau’s statement in the above video is “taken out of context”. I am not convinced!

The issue is not what Trudeau is saying but what he is doing as a duly elected Prime Minister of Canada’s parliamentary democracy.

The decisions which he has already taken against Canadians including the lockdowns, the imposition of the vaccine passport, labour rights, the suspension of the right to travel both within Canada and abroad, etc etc constitute blatant violations of fundamental rights.  

If you are not convinced have a look at the following video in which The Prime Minister of Canada depicts the non-vaccinated as racists and misogynists.

“They do not believe in science says Trudeau”.

The latter statement also suggests that the Prime Minster of Canada is ignorant regarding the extensive scientific evidence pertaining to the mRNA vaccine, including the patterns of vaccine related mortality and morbidity. 

Trudeau Calls the Unvaccinated Racists and Misogynistic Extremists

Comments  (Source WS)

“I actually find him to be misogynistic as I personally do not like being told what to do with my body by a powerful male stranger. Trudeau is a man-child. He’s pushing 50 years and still looks about 12 years old, as if his emotional development was stunted around that age. He’s also over-groomed and has bad taste in socks.”

“The biggest issue isn’t what he said this, it is that he feels safe to say this on public television. There have been several times when JT has said things that are horrendous in nature but he says them anyway and feels safe to say it and not have his career suffer.”

“I’m now cracking up laughing, on a daily basis, at what these politicians and political leaders like him are coming out with. It’s hilarious. How anybody can take any of this nonsense seriously any more is beyond me.”

“As I cannot speak French, I have to trust the interpretation of what he said. If he indeed said what the headline indicates, we must all bow our heads in shame that he is the PM of Canada. What a new low for JT.”

Does Justin Trudeau Belong to that Minority of Unvaccinated Canadians Whose “Fundamental Rights” are being Violated?

A Registered Nurse (RN) has carefully reviewed the first video of Prime Minister Trudeau and his wife’s vaccination jab which was broadcast on network TV. Reporters were present. It was a carefully planned public relations event.

Video: Has Justin Trudeau Been Duly Vaccinated? Registered Nurse Expresses Doubt on Authenticity of Trudeau’s Vaccine Jab

Watch the video or click this.

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Justin Trudeau lurched into yet another minority government following the recent federal election. In spite of his failure to win even the popular vote, let alone a majority of seats in the House of Common, Trudeau continues to rule as Vaccination Czar of a totalitarian regime. Trudeau is getting away with his transformation of Canada into a vaccination prison camp, because the main federal parties all refuse to disagree with him on anything substantive.

To make up for the impossibility of serious debate among our brain-maimed parliamentarians, Trudeau appointed the so-called “unvaccinated” as the official opposition.

Trudeau ran against those condemning his government’s blindness to the plague of vaccine deaths and injuries that is accompanying the forced injection of Covid clot shots. See this.

Is Trudeau a Closet Anti-Vaxxer?

One of the ironies of Trudeau’s machinations in Canada’s top job, is that he may well be a closet anti-vaxxer himself.

A registered nurse assessed a video of Trudeau’s Covid injection and came to the conclusion it was “obviously fake.”

The observing Registered Nurse (RN) noted that the alleged nurse who injected Trudeau failed to aspirate the syringe.

The same nurse then failed to “landmark” the injection area with her spare hand before inserting the needle into Justin’s shoulder.

When she did execute the jabbing motion with a single hand, it was made seem as if she was tossing a dart at a target. “Nobody does it that way,” the RN exclaimed. See this.

To watch the video: click this or click screen

Our Governments are No Longer Legitimate

Under the current circumstances I have lost confidence in Canada’s governing apparatus.

I can no longer picture the complex of government agencies in Ottawa and the provincial capitals as legitimate. Canada’s parliamentary system does not translate well into secretive zoom calls and a virtual shut down of crucial flows of information.

For instance, how are citizens supposed to make sense of our government when even the flow of news that used to emanate from question period, is no longer available? Question period is a central tradition of parliamentary procedure.

Canada cannot work well when its finances become increasingly subject to the secretive conniving between the likes of Justin Trudeau, Mark Carney, Chrystia Freeland and those in charge of the Wall Street behemoth, BlackRock. As a proxy for the private bankers pulling the strings on the Federal Reserve  and on the Bank of Canada, BlackRock has become a big part of the creation of all manner of Liberal Party slush funds.

Without any real mechanism of accountability, vast new quantities of new money keep being created. Compound interest is still being charged against the growing national debt slated to become part of the bankers’ Great Reset.

As I see it, the people and institutions that together constitute our governments in Canada can no longer claim the confidence of the Canadian citizenry. The violence entailed in forcing mandatory vaccinations on large numbers of Canadians is the last straw. There is no mandate from the people for implementing the kind of ultimatum being forced on the citizenry without justification.

In the section that follows I outline the reasons why I believe our governing entities have lost their legitimacy. I conceive of the words that follow as a manifesto of sorts, as a call to liberate ourselves from the tyranny taking hold. We must begin the process of reconstructing Canada as a nation of integrity, as a nation where the will of the people prevails over the will of those seeking to subvert us at every turn.   

Canadian Institute of National Integrity 

Our governments in Canada have lost their way. They are no longer legitimate. At all levels, our governments have joined an international conspiracy against the people of Canada and against the peoples of many other nations as well.

Our societies are being plunged into chaos born of a contrived mass hysteria. Our public services no longer serve to protect people. Instead they do the opposite. They hurt and kill people. Our health care systems are being made to break down. They are becoming sites of unnecessary deaths and injury. Similarly, our schools, our courts, our transportation infrastructures, and our life-supporting supply chains are being made to break down through the malevolence of our discredited and compromised public authorities.

Moreover, our public and private systems of media have, with some conspicuous exceptions, become sources of disinformation, deception and censorship. Our big venues of mass communication are withholding the truth in ways that imperil the sanity, discernment, safety, public health, and economic viability of whole populations subjected to an unrelenting barrage of psychological warfare. As a result the mental health of a sizeable portion of our population has been permanently undermined. The principles of informed consent in governance have been bulldozed aside.

Our government officials have empowered themselves to declare states of emergency that they then deploy to make of themselves authoritarian despots. These same government potentates refuse to provide evidence to the courts that would justify the states of emergency they declare. Even experts in their fields are censored when it comes to debating the medical substance of the claims and assertions imposed from above.

Tragically the courts are playing along with the charade and chicanery. The judiciary is refusing to live up to its responsibilities as a check on government overreach into tyranny. As is the case in most of the other countries suffering the same plague of despotism, the constitutional protections for the rights and freedoms of citizens are being regularly and systematically violated. Increasingly threatened is our capacity to even present our grievances to the alien governments stolen from us in this international coup.

The Tainted Content of These Forced Injections

The arbitrary creation of mandatory regimes to force tainted Covid shots into the veins of Canadians have transported us all into an era when the imperative to resist the illegitimate governments is now upon us. We can no longer tolerate the malevolent actions of the dictatorial cliques that have malevolently forced their unfounded authority upon us. As much as our governments and their media accomplices are trying to hide the damning information from us, the tainted content in these forced injections is well known to cause high numbers of deaths and injuries.

Significant portions of these deaths and injuries are being caused by the fact that the Covid shots stimulate the proliferation of pathogenic spike proteins throughout the vascular systems of their recipients. This result is causing all manner of blood-related maladies including myocarditis, heart attacks, strokes, and infertility issues in both females and males.

The evidence is overwhelming that many top-ranking scientists warned of the health problems that would arise if the notoriously-corrupt regulatory agencies bestowed emergency measure approval on the clot shots. Nevertheless, the regulatory agencies gave their approval based on accepting a well-documented complex of lies meant to make it seem that no effective alternative remedies existed.

Ever since early reports began to circulate about the extent of injection-related deaths and injuries, many high-ranking medical professionals have been urgently calling for the complete withdrawal of the dangerous Covid jabs from public distribution. No matter how esteemed and distinguished the reputations of these medical whistleblowers, their professional opinions have been consistently ignored.

A brief survey of some of the professional assessments currently being brushed as aside in the rush towards universal vaccination are the following: They include the position of Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the most widely published medical researchers in the United States. He writes

The current code vaccines; AstraZeneca, J&J, Pfizer & Moderna right now are obsolete. They do not cover the new variants Patients are failing on these vaccines, they’re being hospitalised and getting sick despite having the vaccines. The vaccines at this point in time have amounted to record mortality and percent injury, and should be considered unsafe and unfit for human use.”

Dr. Luc Montagnier, expert virologist and Nobel Prize winner in 2008 in the Physiology of Medicine, writes,

We’re in unknown territory and proclaim mandatory vaccines for everyone. It’s insanity. It’s vaccination insanity that I absolutely condemn. 

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, a professor, virus expert, and one of the cited research scientists in German history, writes,

Gene-based vaccines are an absolute danger to mankind and their use at present violates the Nuremberg codex, such that everyone who is propagating their use should be put before a tribunal.”

Especially the vaccination of children is something that is so criminal that I have no words to express my horror … We are horribly worried that there’s going to be an impact on fertility. And this will be seen in years or decades from now. And this is potentially one of the greatest crimes, simply one of the greatest crimes imaginable.”

Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, an experienced vaccinologist with deep experience as a vaccine designer, writes,

The mass vaccination hype will undoubtedly enter history as the most reckless experiment in the history of medicine.

Dr. Zev Zelenko, a renowned medical practitioner who has successfully treated thousands of Covid patients writes, 

Covid War Criminals Should Face Nuremberg-Style Trials For Crimes Against Humanity. 

See this.

The deaths and injuries being caused by the tainted injections are becoming major factors in the disarray that is taking hold of many hospitals. Many health care professionals, but especially nurses, have become aware of the dishonesty reverberating throughout many emergency rooms and intensive care units. They are fleeing the sites of murder and mayhem– of deception and malfeasance– being perpetrated under the besmirched banner of fighting Covid-19.

Mandatory Vaccines. Chaos in Our Health Care System

Now we are seeing the imposed regime of mandatory vaccines causing many hospital workers to refuse the jabs. These individuals are in a good position to realize the dangers involved in taking these injections. As a result, the hospital workers are being pushed out the door with full knowledge it will cause our health care system to crash. Is this wanton destruction of our hospitals a purposeful initiative aimed at wrecking existing institutions so that they can be fully privatized?

The chaos in our health care system is being replicated across many sectors including air transport. The aviation industry is an especially fraught field for the imposition of tainted vaccines. Blood clotting combined with pressure differentials at high altitudes put aviation workers and passengers at added risk. This pattern applies also to those already-high-risk groups engaged in military aviation.

The result is that air transport is falling into a condition of disarray similar to that currently plaguing our hospitals. It seems that governments are not only allowing this crisis to develop, but are actually stimulating it in order to advance aims and objectives whose true nature is being withheld from the public.

There is growing awareness that something is terribly amiss and that the official narrative of Covid-19 is specious. Many fundamental questions are being raised by the severity of the Covid cult’s ruinous agenda of imposing injection mandates on millions of working people as well as on students. The extremism of Covid Officialdom is leading many to the conclusion that the havoc being wrought is being done purposely rather than inadvertently.   

The force being applied in the imposition of injection mandates goes way beyond the realm of coercion into that of extortion. Like the citizens of many countries, never before have Canadians en masse faced anything like the ultimatum to choose between taking a  “product” or losing one’s job or one’s educational opportunities. In this case, the lose of jobs involves the penury that comes from the lose of economic viability as well from a further set of prohibitions, hardships and indignities. The so-called vaccine passports are being designed to create a new class of Canadian lepers excluded from participation in a society now reserved exclusively for vaccine-compliant people.

It would be bad enough if this agenda was being pushed forward on the basis of the dissemination of medical products that were, in fact, safe and effective. But there is a large and growing body of evidence that the Covid clot shots are anything but safe and effective. How are we to explain our governors’ infatuation with the misguided goal of universalizing cradle-to-grave programs of vaccines as they lionize the pharmaceutical industry and downgrade the God-given gifts of natural immunity?       

It is for these reasons that the Canadian Institute of National Integrity is being founded. CINI is being established with the explicit goal of calling attention to the illegitimate nature of the current crop of Canadian governments at all levels. The levers of power must be removed from these illegitimate entities.

Measures must be put in place as a bridge to a new era when governments are structured to be genuinely accountable to the people of Canada. The fact that we have so quickly descended into our current plight can be taken as proof that our system of checks and balances is illusory; that we lack safeguards against severe abuses of the machinery for declaring and exploiting public emergencies.

Many existing systems have been abused and are broken beyond repair. It is hard to picture, for instance, the medical system, the parliamentary system, the media, the courts as currently structured and our universities in their present form, ever regaining the trust and confidence of ordinary citizens. The extent of the betrayal by these institution is palpable.

There were some flaws deeply embedded in all these institutions that caused them to fail just when we needed them the most. Hence the task we are facing goes far beyond kicking out the saboteurs that got us into this mess and to elect instead genuinely ethical leaders. What is required is a comprehensive reworking of our whole political economy so that we will never be subject to such a malevolent takeover in the future. Somehow the banker’s monopoly must be broken to reign in the abuse of usury as a weapon of enslavement.

Putting Justin Trudeau on Notice

We must, however, start immediately to move forward against the usurpers before they become entrenched. As part of the process of moving forward, we have a responsibility to put Justin Trudeau on notice. Trudeau has made himself into a caricature of the malignant forces that must be resisted and controlled. Trudeau junior has fashioned himself as one of the world’s most reviled symbols of the Great Reset and the atrocious conception of transhumanism. Both of these inter-related globalist objectives are being promoted unrelentingly by Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum.

The WEF, which meets annually at Davos, has displaced the role of Canada’s parliament and that of many other legislatures around the world. Canadians are beginning to rise to reclaim the national integrity of our country that has been betrayed by the treasonous agenda that Justin Trudeau has come to embody.

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Dr. Anthony J. Hall is a renowned author, emeritus Professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. He has been a professor 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 frequent contributor to Global Research.

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