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Awards and honours bestowed by States or private committees, republican or monarchical, are bound to be corrupted by considerations of hypocrisy, racketeering and general, chummy disposition. From the Nobel Peace Prize to the range of eccentric and esoteric orders bestowed each year in Britain by Her Majesty, diddling and manipulating is never far behind. You are bestowed such things as a reminder of your worth to the establishment rather than your unique contribution to the good quotient of humanity. Flip many a peace prize over and you are bound to find the smouldering remains of a war criminal’s legacy.
The recently knighted Tony Blair is certainly not one to bother. His name appeared in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list, having been made a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. “It is an immense honour,” came the statement from the foundation that bears his name, “to be appointed Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, and I am deeply grateful to Her Majesty the Queen.”
Others begged to differ. Within hours, a petition launched by Angus Scott calling for the rescission of the award garnered thousands of signatures. (To date, the number is 755,879.) The award, says the petition, is “the oldest and most senior British Order of Chivalry.” It asserts that Blair “caused irreparable damage to both the constitution of the United Kingdom and to the very fabric of the nation’s society. He was personally responsible for causing the death of countless innocent, civilian lives and servicemen in various conflicts. For this alone he should be held accountable for war crimes.”
The evangelical Blair of war adventurism will be forever associated with Iraq’s invasion in 2003, though most current commentary avoids his role in promoting humanitarian imperialism in NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999. (Never one to be too firmly attached to his ideals, Blair is currently advising the government of President Aleksandar Vučić who, as information minister of the Milošević regime, knew a thing or two in how to demonise Muslim Kosovars.)
The Chilcot inquiry into the origins of the Iraq War did not openly challenge the legality of the Iraq invasion in 2003 by Coalition forces but noted that Saddam Hussein posed no immediate threat to Western states. It was also clear that peaceful options had not been exhausted. The slippery Blair preferred another reading. “The report should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit.”
Sir Tony’s performance before the Chilcot inquiry should be, for students of legal history, placed alongside that of Hermann Göring at the International Military Tribunal proceedings at Nuremberg in 1946. The latter’s sparring with the poorly briefed US Supreme Court justice turned prosecutor Robert Jackson was eminently superior, but the recently ennobled one could play the trained politician wary of being implicated in past misdeeds.
Defenders of Sir Tony can be found in the ranks, all of whom essentially follow institutional logic. The Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey insisted that calls to rescind the knighthood showed disrespect for the Queen. Sir Keir Starmer, his crown as Labour leader looking increasingly unsettled, defended the knighthood as rightfully earned, Blair having “made Britain a better country”.
Others preferred to see Blair’s critics as incurably diseased. “Blair Derangement Syndrome is a curious malady,” charges a smug Jack Kessler of The Evening Standard. Kessler’s point is sensible enough: The entire honours system is slimed and soiled, so much so that getting upset about Blair as the “least deserving” of recipients is an act of meaningless stroppiness.
Consider the entire awards system to begin with. “From major donors to political parties to chief executives of soon-to-be insolvent banks, even a cursory glance at the history of our honours system would suggest this is somewhat of a reach.”
Kessler’s parlour room logic presumes that a person party to what was described by the victors of the Second World War as a crime against peace can somehow be equated to rewarding banksters for financial misconduct or wealthy donors. It certainly cannot be equated to King George V’s decision to make Lord Lonsdale a Knight of the Garter in 1928 in what was described at the time by a courtier as “sheer tomfoolery”.
Others are simply indifferent to the culpability of a figure who richly deserves a grilling in the dock of the International Criminal Court. (So much for the liberal international order of things, including the rule of law.) The Spectator, through a piece by Stephen Daisley, shuns the issue, merely acknowledging Blair’s shabby treatment of Parliament, his “unduly presidential” manner, or a “New Labour project” spun to bankrupt politics. These are deemed valid criticisms but hardly an impediment to receiving a knighthood.
For Daisley, Blair Derangement Syndrome is a condition that must be rebuffed, rebuked and repudiated. “Blair’s gravest sin, what he cannot and must not and will not be forgiven for, is that he won.” He led his country “with moral imagination and personal fortitude and left Britain fairer, healthier, more modern and more at ease with itself.” Pity the same cannot be said of Iraq or Afghanistan.
It should be noted that this line of reasoning is entirely acceptable to a magazine that used to be edited by the current UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and who made the Labour Prime Minister its 2002 Parliamentarian of the Year despite him showing an utter contempt for Parliament. “It is hard to think of another party leader who, for eight years, has exercised such unchallenged dominance of the political landscape,” Johnson declared at the award ceremony.
It was the classic affirmation that the Tories had, if only vicariously, won through the guise of one Blair. Johnson, for his part, publicly mused that the award could aggravate the Cain-Abel relationship between Blair and his Chancellor Gordon Brown, “all other strategies so far having proved not wholly successful”.
The justifications advanced by Daisley have been used for leaders past who made the trains run on time, built spiffy, smooth roads for vehicles (military and civilian) and ensured that everything operated to a neat schedule, irrespective of whether death camps or slave labour were involved. Many made the mistake of losing the wars they began, facing noose, poison or firing squad.
In the British context, where the benevolent, benign ruler assumes the force of majesty, the latitude for forgiveness is even greater. Reducing colonies to penury, aiding the conditions of famine, initiating social experiments that distorted and destroyed, molested and plundered extant, thriving and sovereign cultures, has never been accounted for in a court of law, international or domestic. In the absence of a hanging judge, it has been deemed fitting that any such figures be given knighthoods and rendered into statuary instead.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
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On January 4, mass protests broke out in the richest post-Soviet country in Central Asia, in Kazakhstan. The formal reason for the protests was the increase in prices for liquefied petroleum gas on January 2 from 14 cents to 28 cents per liter. By comparison, the new price is a third lower than in Russia, 2 times than in Belarus, and almost 3 times lower than in Ukraine.
The protests first erupted in the west of Kazakhstan, in the cities of Aktau and Zhanaozen. By January 4, they have spread to major cities in the south, including the largest city of the country, the former capital of Almaty, as well as to the largest industrial city of the central region, Karaganda.
Earlier in 2011, similar events had already taken place in the city of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan. Then the authorities took quite tough and effective measures to pacify the protests, up to the use of armed force.
In his turn, Nursultan Nazarbayev, then-president of Kazakhstan, handled the work of the local media space and countered outside information influence. At that time, such influence aimed at disruption of the situation and was observed from the West, including Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Turkey.
This time, the narrative is developing in a very similar way, except that the headliners are information resources located on the territory of Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic States and some Western European countries.
The protests in 2022, apparently unexpectedly for the Kazakh leadership, stirred up deep dissatisfaction of the population with the socio-economic situation in the country and the significant stratification of income between the new Kazakh elite and the bulk of residents. These reasons were fertile ground for the escalation and the proliferation of peaceful protests that began on January 2 into direct clashes with law enforcement forces by January 4.
Against this background, the current leadership of the country in the person of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev did not show the same firmness that Nazarbayev’s office did in 2011. On the night of January 5, it was decided the entire government to resign, and to introduce a state of emergency in two cities in western Kazakhstan and in Almaty.
Indeed, representatives of the ruling elite, including those from the government, have to answer for all that’s happening. However, the resignation of the entire government, i.e. a political act, is a sign of weakness, fear and misunderstanding. Instead of firing and bringing to justice targeted functionaries guilty of creating conditions for the current crisis.
After 2 days of protests, the protesters changed their economic demands to political and nationalistic ones. Yesterday, calls like “shal ket” (“Old Man Leave”) and anti-Russian appeals were heard, despite the fact that in the regions inflamed with protests, the Russian population on the average is only about 5%. These same slogans are actively spread by various social media platforms and mass media managed from the territories of Poland, Ukraine and Turkey.
In recent years, the ruling elites of Kazakhstan have been playing to the West, preaching a multi-vector approach, and with Turkey in the framework of the “Great Turan” project.
At the beginning of 2022, there are about 16,000 NGOs acting throughout the country, of which the most dashing are those associated with the Soros Foundation and Turkey’s soft power.
Apparently, the Kazakh elites learned nothing from the experience of Belarus, Armenia, Ukraine, Georgia, Libya, Serbia and other countries. We are likely witnessing a stage of the situation by some Kazakh elites, aimed at the final removal of Nazarbayev’s team from power and a sharp reorientation of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy towards the West and Turkey. This may explain the seemingly thoughtless decisions that led to the riots, and the fact that the quite strong Kazakh special services were unable to predict these developments.
On January 5, the protests continued and by the afternoon had spread to other cities of Kazakhstan, where local authorities are unable to effectively resist the protesters. Regardless of further developments, Kazakhstan will never be the same. The country will probably face a social collapse and even a Ukrainian scenario for its economy. The beneficiaries are obviously global financial elites and the West, led by the United States.
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First published by Global Research on July 31, 2021
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Very important Interview
According to Dr. Charles Hoffe, Canadian medical doctor based in British Columbia:
“The blood clots we hear about which the media claim are very rare are the big blood clots which are the ones that cause strokes and show up on CT scans, MRI, etc.
The clots I’m talking about are microscopic and too small to find on any scan. They can thus only be detected using the D-dimer test.”
“These people have no idea they are even having these microscopic blood clots. 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 re-generate. When those tissues are damaged by blood clots they are permanently damaged.
“These shots are causing huge damage and the worst is yet to come.”
From Truth11.com, there is a presentation by Dr. Hoffe where he talks about the truth on mRNA, spike proteins and why so much people are developing blood clots after being jabbed with experimental nanotechnology in the Covid-19 vaccines. Click here to watch it.
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“I felt very alone during the case. No one was on my side except my lawyers,” statedQing Quentin Huang, after the Ontario Superior Court recently stayed charges that he had illegally spied for China.
Huang worked for Lloyd’s Register, a subcontractor to Irving Shipbuilding, when he was arrested in 2013 and charged with stealing secrets regarding Canadian shipbuilding and marine strategy and offering them to the Chinese government. He pleaded not guilty to all charges. When the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) refused to release full transcripts of wiretaps used against him after eight years, the court stayed the charges.
Then there is the case of Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, who were dismissed from the National Microbiology Lab in July 2019 after CSIS reported they represented a security threat. Qiu is an award-winning scientist who co-discovered ZMapp, an effective treatment for the Ebola virus. Two scientists who worked with Qiu at the Winnipeg lab continue to vouch for her integrity yet the government continues to stonewall, refusing to release the evidence against Qiu and her husband, supposedly on national security grounds.
And the list goes on. Canadian authorities recently charged a Montreal engineer with breach of trust for allegedly helping a Chinese aerospace company negotiate an agreement for a satellite station facility in Iceland. In mid-December, federal authorities charged Yantai Gan, a member of the Royal Society of Canada, with fraud and breach of trust for ties with a Chinese university. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Given the trend towards racial profiling, is it any wonder that the Canadian Academy of Chinese Professors and the Canadian Association of Chinese Professors, representing over one thousand Chinese Canadian faculty members in universities in Canada, have protested against recent CSIS-inspired guidelines for research partnerships? Their statement claims that the guidelines racially profile Chinese researchers as foreign agents and “poisons the Canadian academic atmosphere”.
The targeting of Chinese Canadian scientists has accompanied the rising influence of Canada’s spy agencies: CSIS, responsible for analysis and operations, and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), responsible for information collection. They are deeply integrated with the spy agencies of the “Five Eyes” alliance, comprised of the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
Retired Canadian Brigadier-General James Cox described the Five Eyes as having an “affinity strengthened by their common Anglo-Saxon culture,” pointing to the settler colonial roots of this sophisticated, global spy network led by the United States.[1]
CSIS ratchets up
Not long ago, New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta declared: “We are uncomfortable with expanding the remit of the Five Eyes. We would much rather prefer to look for multilateral opportunities to express our interests.” Her statement came after it became apparent that the spy network was aspiring to play a coordinating role in policies regarding China. Mahuta reiterated her concerns a week later:
“The Five Eyes arrangement is about a security and intelligence framework. It’s not necessary, all the time on every issue, to invoke Five Eyes as your first port of call in terms of creating a coalition of support around particular issues in the human rights space.”
The Canadian government, however, has ignored such warnings. Instead, it has moved to strengthen CSIS, allowing it to engage in widespread racial profiling, reinforcing Sinophobia as part of its anti-China campaign.
A recent Public Policy Forum report indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic created “a pivotal moment” for CSIS, which now declares, “Spies are no longer wearing trench coats, they’re wearing lab coats.”[2] The agency has created new programs including “Academic Outreach and Stakeholder Engagement” and taken to social media, establishing YouTube channels and offering support against certain cyber crimes, all the while spreading fear of “foreign actors”—a term that apparently does not include the United States.
This overreach has now achieved critical proportions with the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada imposing compulsory CSIS self-screening by all Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Alliance grant applicants. This interference in research was developed by CSIS in collaboration with major research institutions including the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities, Universities Canada, and Vice-Presidents of Research.
So far neither local faculty associations nor the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) appear to have taken up the issue of racial profiling of Chinese Canadian researchers. CAUT has in the past flagged the issue of Islamophobia and called RCMP and CSIS activities on campus a “threat to academic freedom.” Perhaps it is time for faculty associations to consider the problem of Sinophobia and racial profiling and the threat the Five Eyes, as a global settler colonial network, presents to academic freedom.
The ‘Five Eyes’ and misinformation
Given a huge boost with the US inspired “War on Terror” after 9/11, the Five Eyes have taken on aggressive new profiles with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes coordinating political statements on the part of the Five Eyes as it did recently in the case of the Hong Kong elections. Beyond coordinating the anti-China campaign, hacking, and the illegal monitoring of telecommunications, the heart of the issue is how built-in biases of US agencies can influence its allies and contribute to “fake news.”
Nowhere was this more evident than in 2003, when the recently deceased Colin Powell stood up in front of the UN Security Council to justify the invasion of Iraq based on falsified US/UK intelligence attesting that the regime of Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). That intelligence was produced by the Five Eyes, with the support of CSIS/CSE.
Former Canadian security official, Alan Barnes, recently revealed that in 2003,
“CSIS analysis of Iraq’s WMDs tended to support the claims coming from Washington. This is likely a reflection of the discomfort of CSIS managers and analysts at being out of step with the US intelligence community on a critical issue which might compromise their close operational links.”[3]
Advisors to then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien ignored the biased CSIS reports and advised Chrétien not to join George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and John Howard in their “coalition of the willing” to invade Iraq.
Under pressure from the largest demonstrations in Canadian history opposing the 2003 invasion and the refusal of the UN to sanction military action, Chrétien followed his advisors’ advice to the great disgust of Bush and Blair. One can’t help speculating whether this experience has contributed to Chrétien’s continued insistence that the Canadian government should have ignored the US extradition request and released Meng Wanzhou to Chinese custody in exchange for Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
The election of a minority Conservative government under Stephen Harper in 2006, however, marked the beginning of greater support for the War on Terror and for strengthening Canada’s spy agencies. This soon generated noxious tracts such as the Nest of Spies, written by a journalist and former CSIS officer, that made one of the earliest false accusations that Chinese Canadians were acting as “agents of the Chinese government.”[4] This was followed by the head of CSIS from 2009 to 2013, Richard Fadden, declaring that some elected municipal and provincial politicians were under the influence of “foreign governments,” by which he meant China. These suggestions that Chinese Canadians were “fifth columns” operating within Canada correlate closely with the racist campaigns accusing Japanese Canadians of being agents of imperial Japan prior to the Second World War.
Stephen Harper subsequently appointed Fadden as his national security and intelligence advisor in 2015. In the wake of a violent incident in Canada in 2014, the state’s powers of encroachment increased with the passing of Canada’s Bill C-51.[5] The strengthening of CSIS/CSE and its involvement in the Five Eyes amplified Islamophobia with serious repercussions, including:
The Canadian government devoted over $50 million to settling legal cases related to the imprisonment and torture of Canadians Maher Arar, Omar Khadr, Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin, and Ahmad El Maati, carried out based on unreliable evidence provided by CSIS or the RCMP and then shared with foreign counterparts including the US.
Five senior CSIS intelligence officers launched a lawsuit against CSIS alleging racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia on the job. Though settled out of court, the allegations point to systemic racism, which is hardly surprising given CSIS’ mandate.[6]
The BC Civil Liberties Association revealed how CSIS illegally spied on Indigenous groups and environmentalists opposing the construction of oil pipelines in British Columbia.
Too often today, mainstream media picks up CSIS reports and repeats them uncritically, relegating their misdeeds and crimes to the past.
Australian researchers have noted how the enduring role of the Five Eyes “is overlooked in media coverage, as well as in the research fields of international relations, surveillance studies, and media, communications and journalism.”[7] This certainly holds true in Canada where conservatives, much of the mainstream media, and even progressive policy advocates too often accept a ‘national security’ discourse that normalizes the roles of Canada’s spy agencies and their global connections with other settler colonial states.[8] Such a discourse contributes to the politics of fear, feeds white nationalism, and reinforces support for settler colonialism globally.
Unfortunately, the Trudeau government also embraced the politics of fear, enhancing the role of CSIS, leading it to run afoul of its own mandate during the 2019 federal elections. According to the BBC, the Five Eyes has expanded globally and is actively and publicly intervening in politics: “In May 2020 the [Five Eyes] alliance agreed to expand its role away from just security and intelligence to a more public stance on respect for human rights and democracy.” Precisely then, CSIS and the CSE issued a joint statement in May 2020 citing an “elevated risk” to the cybersecurity of Canadian health organizations from “an increased risk of foreign interference and espionage.” The two organizations concluded their statement, noting “that the Government of Canada has a strong and valuable relationship with its Five Eyes alliance partners. We regularly share information with our partners, including the US, which has a significant impact on protecting our respective countries’ safety and security.”
Far from enhancing Canadian security, CSIS and the Five Eyes are enmeshing this country in a campaign of disinformation and propaganda regarding China reminiscent of the McCarthy era in the United States when government agencies went on a witch hunt against anyone who dissented from official foreign policy.
No one should be left alone, as was Qing Quentin Huang, to take on this formidable arm of settler colonialism.
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John Price is professor emeritus at the University of Victoria, author of Orienting Canada, and a member of the Advisory Board of the newly formed Canada-China Focus, a project of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute and the Centre for Global Studies (University of Victoria).
[4] John Price, “From the Margins and Beyond: Racism, the San Francisco System and Asian Canadians,” in The San Francisco System and Its Legacies, ed. Kimie Hara (London: Routledge, 2014), 200-201.
[5] Reg Whitaker, Gregory S. Kealey, and Andrew Parnaby, Secret Service: Political Policing in Canada from the Fenians to Fortress America (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 431-520; Craig Forcese and Kent Roach, False Security: The Radicalization of Canadian Anti-Terrorism(Toronto: Irwin Law, 2015).
[8] Pascale Massot, “Global Order, U.S.-China Relations and Chinese Behaviour: The Ground is Shifting, Canada Must Adjust,” International Journal, 74.4 (2019), 606;”
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In a horrifying altercation, a German police officer denounced the humanity of the unvaccinated. This is but one sign that mass formation psychosis is at work
“Mass formation psychosis” is the explanation for how the Germans accepted the atrocities by the Nazi party in the 1930s, and it’s the explanation for why so many around the world support medical apartheid and the dehumanization of the unvaccinated now
The stigmatization of the unvaxxed is all the more irrational when you consider that the COVID shot doesn’t prevent infection or spread of the virus. “Fully vaxxed” individuals are just as infectious and “dangerous” as the unjabbed
While high-level officials continue to use the term “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” suggesting the COVID-jabbed play no role in the epidemiology of COVID-19, there’s ample evidence that the “fully vaccinated” have a relevant role in transmission and outbreaks
For example, in Massachusetts, 469 new COVID-19 cases were identified during July 2021. Of those, 346 (74%) were either fully or partially jabbed, and 274 (79%) were symptomatic. This proves the COVID jabs cannot end the pandemic, and may in fact be preventing it from dying out naturally
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GERMANY 2021: A police officer calls unvaccinated people indirect killers and says they are not human. pic.twitter.com/iM2W7OPVXp
You know you’ve entered a twilight zone of insanity when a police officer tells you you’re a criminal simply because you’re unvaccinated. That’s exactly what happened the other day in Germany. The police officer insisted the unvaccinated man was “a murderer” because he “might infect someone,” and that he’s “not a human.”
The bizarre altercation was posted on Twitter December 12, 2021, (see above). In response, the unvaccinated man tells the cop he’s the one who has “lost all humanity.” Indeed. Who thought we’d ever see the day when individuals are marked as “murderers” and “not human” based on vaccination status alone?
It’s beyond irrational. But then again, insanity does not obey reason, and according to professor Mattias Desmet, a Belgian psychologist, the world has indeed been hypnotized into a state of mass psychosis.1
“Mass formation psychosis” is the explanation for how the Germans accepted the atrocities by the Nazi party in the 1930s, and it’s the explanation for why so many around the world support medical apartheid and the dehumanization of the unvaccinated now.
You Cannot Comply Your Way Out of Tyranny
Auschwitz survivor Marian Turski, 94: "And that's how it is done, step by step, slowly." pic.twitter.com/ewla4GCjeu
The stigmatization and dehumanization of the unvaxxed is all the more irrational when you consider that the COVID shot doesn’t prevent infection or spread of the virus. Those who have received one, two or even three doses are STILL contracting the infection, and at ever-increasing rates, and are spreading it to vaxxed and unvaxxed alike.
Outbreaks among “fully vaccinated” populations, isolated on cruise ships, for example, have occurred on several occasions, proving the shots fail to prevent outbreaks. The COVID-jabbed are clearly just as “dangerous” and likely to “kill” their fellow man as those who are unjabbed.
When either decision — the decision to get the jab or decline it — results in you posing the exact same level of risk to others, how can anyone say that one is more dangerous than the other? Anyone still capable of clear, level-headed thinking will see that it doesn’t add up.
Unfortunately, most countries are experiencing a mass delusional psychosis. They have been manipulated into believing highly irrational absurdities. The same psychological operation was at work in the 1930s, when Jews, the old and infirm, and the mentally and physically handicapped were dehumanized and blamed as carriers of disease and other social ills.
In the short video above, Auschwitz survivor Marian Turski, now 94 years old, describes the incremental dehumanization and ostracizing that took place in Nazi Germany, ultimately ending in the Holocaust. Now, we stand before the same fork in the road yet again. Many, like the German police officer, are choosing the well-trodden road of repeated history.
Stigmatizing Unvaccinated Is Unjustified
November 20, 2021, The Lancet published a letter by Gunter Kampf, titled “COVID-19: Stigmatizing the Unvaccinated Is Not Justified.”2 “In the USA and Germany, high-level officials have used the term pandemic of the unvaccinated, suggesting that people who have been vaccinated are not relevant in the epidemiology of COVID-19,” Kampf writes.
However, he adds, “There is increasing evidence that vaccinated individuals continue to have a relevant role in transmission.” He goes on to cite statistics from Massachusetts, where 469 new COVID-19 cases were identified during July 2021. Of those, 346 (74%) were either fully or partially jabbed, and 274 (79%) were symptomatic.
The cycle threshold values used during PCR testing were also similarly low regardless of COVID jab status (median 22.8 cycles, which minimizes the risk of false positive results), “indicating a high viral load even among people who were fully vaccinated,” Kampf notes. These data are clear evidence that the COVID jabs cannot end the pandemic, and may in fact be preventing it from dying out naturally. Kampf continues:3
“In the USA, a total of 10,262 COVID-19 cases were reported in vaccinated people by April 30, 2021, of whom 2725 (26.6%) were asymptomatic, 995 (9.7%) were hospitalized, and 160 (1.6%) died. In Germany, 55.4% of symptomatic COVID-19 cases in patients aged 60 years or older were in fully vaccinated individuals, and this proportion is increasing each week.
In Münster, Germany, new cases of COVID-19 occurred in at least 85 (22%) of 380 people who were fully vaccinated or who had recovered from COVID-19 and who attended a nightclub.
People who are vaccinated have a lower risk of severe disease but are still a relevant part of the pandemic. It is therefore wrong and dangerous to speak of a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
Historically, both the USA and Germany have engendered negative experiences by stigmatizing parts of the population for their skin color or religion.
I call on high-level officials and scientists to stop the inappropriate stigmatization of unvaccinated people, who include our patients, colleagues, and other fellow citizens, and to put extra effort into bringing society together.”
Human Today, Not Human Tomorrow
It’s important to realize you cannot comply your way out of this tyranny. If you choose to get the COVID shot because you don’t want to be stigmatized, there can be no end to your compliance to future boosters, no matter what the cost to you or your family.
In short order — a handful of months at most — you will suddenly and arbitrarily be deemed an unvaccinated menace to society again, even though you’ve already had one, two or three kill shots.
None of that will matter. You get no brownie points for past compliance. At six months past your second or third dose, your status will go from green to red, from human to not human, literally overnight. You’re “unvaccinated” again, until or unless you get another booster. This cycle will continue until you’re dead. Are you game? Is that how you want to spend the rest of your life?
COVID Shots Keep the ‘Pandemic’ Going
More than 80 studies have confirmed that natural immunity to COVID-19 is equal or superior to what you get from the jab.4 This conforms to well-established medical science, so it’s no surprise. It’s as it should be.
But for the first time in modern medical history, natural immunity is being portrayed as having no benefit whatsoever. Even worse, those with natural immunity are being labeled as dangerous and are shunned and even fired from their jobs for failing to get a shot.
Only the jabbed are protected and can protect others, health authorities now claim — even though it’s those with natural immunity who are most protected and don’t pose a risk to others.
The reality and truth, though, is that natural immunity is long-lasting, protects against all variants and will not contribute to the creation of variants. The same cannot be said for the COVID jab. We now have clear evidence the shots offer, at most, six months’ worth of protection, after which the relative risk reduction drops to zero.
As just one example among many, a Swedish study5 published October 25, 2021, found that while the jabs initially lowered the risk of hospitalization, their effectiveness rapidly waned.
The Pfizer jab went from 92% effectiveness at Day 15 through 30, to 47% at Day 121 through 180, and zero from Day 201 onward.
The Moderna shot had a similar trajectory, being estimated at 59% from Day 181 onward.
The AstraZeneca injection had a lower effectiveness out of the gate, waned faster than the mRNA shots, and had no detectable effectiveness as of Day 121.
This and other studies showing waning immunity were discussed in a December 9, 2021, New England Journal of Medicine interview.6 As noted in that interview, the Delta variant, which is significantly different from the initial SARS-CoV-2 strain, can infect fully jabbed individuals, and its ability to do so increases over time, as the effectiveness of the shot rapidly wanes.
Aside from waning efficacy, the fact that the virus is mutating within “vaccinated” populations also forces it to develop the capacity to circumvent the COVID jab. In short, the deck is stacked against those who rely on the COVID shot to protect them. In the long term, it’s a hopeless situation, as we cannot inoculate our way out of an endemic with a product that doesn’t prevent infection and spread!
Sadly, NEJM, rather than promoting science, toes the line of the official mainstream narrative and suggest boosters are the answer. They should know better, which raises suspicions that conflicts of interest likely impact their clinical judgment.7
Lindsey Baden, one of the interviewees, has received grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust — three institutions that more or less openly support medical tyranny and totalitarian rule by a biosecurity-based police state.
The Gravity of Our Situation
In the video above, Dr. Chris Martenson interviews Desmet about the gravity of our situation, seeing how it’s rooted in a grossly self-destructive psychiatric condition — and one that permits totalitarianism to flourish.
According to Desmet, the mass formation psychosis now appears so widespread that global totalitarianism may be unavoidable. He believes it’ll take over, as we’re seeing in a number of countries already.
The German police officer denouncing the humanity of the unvaccinated is a shining example of the brainwashing propaganda that supports and strengthens the totalitarian state, and allows inconceivable atrocities to be committed in broad daylight. The question is, what can we do to limit the damage?
First and foremost, we must continue to provide true and accurate information to counter the false narratives. Some who aren’t yet fully hypnotized may still be routed back to sanity. Speaking out can also help to limit the atrocities the totalitarian regime is emboldened to implement, because in totalitarianism, atrocities and crimes against humanity increase as dissent decreases.
We can also substitute fear of the virus narratives with narratives that highlight an even greater fear — fear of totalitarianism. That’s a far greater threat to you and your children, by far. Try to appeal to people’s memory. Remind them of the freedoms they grew up with. Do they really want to be responsible for leaving their children with zero freedom to think and act for themselves?
Also, join with other dissenters into larger groups. This gives the larger majority who aren’t fully hypnotized but too fearful to go against the grain an alternative to going along with the totalitarians.
Lastly, start building parallel structures within your local communities that address the four underlying conditions that allowed mass formation psychosis to develop in the first place, namely poor social bonding, lack of meaning in life, free-floating anxiety and discontent, and free-floating frustration and aggression.
A parallel structure is any kind of business, organization, technology, movement or creative pursuit that fits within a totalitarian society while being morally outside of it. Once enough parallel structures are created, a parallel culture is born that functions as a sanctuary of sanity within the totalitarian world.
By rebuilding society, starting locally, into one where people feel connected and valued, the foundational psychological conditions for totalitarianism are undermined and ultimately eliminated. That’s the grand challenge facing all of us.
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There is growing speculation that with two dozen Democratic members of the House having already announced their retirement, an undeniable opportunity exists for Republicans to seize control of both houses of Congress during the 2022 midterm elections. It can be assumed that those Democratic incumbents, after having defended an illegitimate President and his morally bankrupt policies, fear they will bear the blame for their party’s support of deplorable COVID lockdowns and their effort to destroy the American republic.
The painful truth is that the Democratic party controls almost every major social and cultural institution in the country: the mainstream and social media, every federal government agency of importance including intelligence, national security, health and the military apparatus; academic, religious and science foundations and many opinion outlets. What they do not control is the majority of the American people.
While control of Congress has dominated public discussion, what has not yet gained any real attention is whether blue governors will suffer election losses in retribution for their excessive COVID lockdowns, as Republicans may be expected to mount rigorous election challenges. This scenario raises the question whether Republican candidates have the necessary mojo to square off against the Democrats, to call them out for their despotic policies and whether they are willing to challenge their own RINO incumbents.
Since COVID was identified, the level of lockdown depended on how blue was the blue state with the assumption that blue governors were assured of re-election no matter how diligently lockdown requirements were applied. For example, will Democratic voters reward previously unelected and newly appointed New York State governor Kathy Hochul’s destructive COVID escalations just as California voters awarded Gov. Gavin Newsom for his extremism, despite his defiance of his own rules?
If this is a sign that Democratic governors who often introduced harsh requirements that shut down businesses and schools are electorally safe, the only conclusion is that Democratic voters are easily snookered into obeying tyrannical authority and that they more easily accept repressive dictates from the very governors they elect to represent them.
As COVID took hold, it was within the constitutional purview of every state’s governor to implement his own enforcement of COVID requirements and to issue an Emergency Executive Order to initiate his state’s response. At the time, the now discredited doctorsAnthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, coordinator of the vice-president’s COVID Task Force, provided strategic advice on repression rather than treatment options to each governor that was in direct contradiction to President Trump’s message of ending the lockdowns and to focus on high-risk Americans.
On the other hand, many, but not all, Republican governors remained more distrustful of government meddling in their private health decisions and dared to question CDC ‘science’ as Dr. Scott Atlas, who served as advisor to President Trump, described in A Plague on Our House. Hence, some of the most callous Democratic states are experiencing a population exodus with the ‘free’ states of Florida, South Dakota, and Texas accepting the influx.
To date, thirty-six governors will be on the 2022 ballot with twenty Republican governors and sixteen Democratic governorships up for grabs. While the final candidate alignment is still in formation, eight incumbents are bowing out with seven being term limited. The Hill has identified six incumbent Democrats and one Republican who are considered vulnerable in Kansas, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, New Mexico, and Maine.
Across the map there are Republican primaries with multiple candidates vying in almost every race against a Democrat incumbent with the Rs eager to challenge the Democrat record on mandatory lockdown requirements.
Of special interest will be replacements for Maryland governor Larry Hogan and Massachusetts governor Charles Baker, both elected as Republicans in Democratic states who both followed the Democratic playbook on COVID. In addition, Colorado Democratic governor Jared Polis declared the COVID emergency over as at least three lockdown opponents filed as candidates in the Republican primary.
The question on election day will be whether those Democratic governors will be held responsible for adopting more harsh measures on the population than necessary or whether those Democratic voters, many of whom are now better informed than they were, will take the opportunity to hold one of their own accountable.
If, in fact, the Dems are doomed to lose their collective shirts in 2022 by impressive margins, it is difficult to see how the party of Jefferson will not, based on its recent confrontational behavior, initiate some sort of full-blown crisis to disrupt any attempt to restore the country to its previous constitutional base. Would it be outside the realm of possibility to expect Democrats having lost their once glowing halo with their bold hijacking of the country’s 2020 electoral process, continue their radical divisive campaign to do whatever is necessary in the interests of self-preservation of their power base?
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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found at [email protected].
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How many American soldiers will die in the battle for Luhansk? Or Kerch? Not 1 in 1,000 Americans could find these drab Ukrainian (formerly Russian) industrial cities on a map.
How many Americans are aware that a unit of the Florida National Guard is stationed in western Ukraine, of all places? It’s just a training mission, says the Pentagon. Right. Training how to pick oranges. This from the ‘invincible’ US military (I used to be a member) that got its backside whipped in Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan.
No matter. The US, says President Biden, is geared up for a major fight in this obscure coal-mining region of the former Soviet Union. US Navy vessels and aircraft now challenge Russia’s Black Sea and Azov Sea borders. NATO units probe Ukraine’s air and land borders.
Washington is warning Moscow not to react to US military intrusions. And, above all, not to invade Ukraine – which was part of historic Russia and the Soviet Union until the USSR fell apart after a US-engineered coup in Kiev that created western-orientated Ukraine. Today, Ukraine is governed by a former TV comic whose career was financed by shady oligarchs and western interests.
President Biden has all but threatened war against Russia if Vlad Putin makes good on threats to attack Ukraine. Putin warns the US of his new arsenal of whizz-bang weapons, many of them nuclear. This reminds me of an Italian diplomat’s brilliant quip about the regional conflict over a barren Eritrean border region: ‘two bald men fighting over a comb.”
Ukraine is an economic black hole, with massive industrial pollution, titanic debts, unbridled thievery, and staggering corruption.
For Russia, Ukraine was its former industrial and agricultural heartland, and key component of the Russian state. Think of Ohio suddenly detached from America by pro-Trump rebels or the Red Fleet cruising the Great Lakes.
Moscow has no doubt at all that Washington’s strategic objective is to complete the amputation of Ukraine from Russia and then to go on tearing down what’s left of the current Russian Federation. Russia’s remote Far East would be a key target. No wonder Putin keeps making ever more dire warnings. He is the West’s target number one.
Yes, Moscow has moved about 80,000 troops to ‘NATO’s border.’ But this border is Russia’s own external border as well. Moscow has every right to do so.
Putin is no angel (see his repression of the Chechen) but he is quite right when he says that the West back-stabbed Russia when it orally promised not to expand NATO east in exchange for Gorbachev’s agreeing to Germany’s reunification and its inclusion in NATO.
Today NATO has pushed into Moscow’s former backyard. In NATO’s vanguard are Russia-hating Poland, the three Baltic states and Hungary – all of whom have ample reason to fear and mistrust Russia. All would be happy to see the US go to war with Russia. But the US has no strategic objectives and no logical war aims in southern Russia/Ukraine. A bridge too far, as it proved for Germany in the 1940’s, one of the toughest campaigns fought by one of Germany’s top generals, Erich von Manstein.
It’s very unlikely that Joe Biden or Vlad Putin want a real shooting war in Ukraine. We see lots of breast-beating but no real military action – so far. What neither side will admit is that they both have serious shortages of ammunition, spare parts, fuel, recovery vehicles and guided missiles. Neither Kiev nor Moscow can afford to replace weapons lost even in a short war. Bankrupt America is in no position to fight for Ukraine. The other NATO allies are paper tigers. Most important, Germany has no desire to fight Russia. Unlike the snarling Republicans in the US Congress, Europeans want no new wars. Their boys are not ready to die for Luhansk.
But an accidental conflict is always close and growing nearer.
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ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102 Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling) PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
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OneAmerica is a large life insurance company in Indianapolis. The chief executive officer, Scott Davison just announced that judging by policy claims Americans of working age are suddenly dying in unprecedented numbers.
He reports that all life insurance companies are experiencing a 40% rise in the death rate. “Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic. So 40% is just unheard of.” These are not Covid deaths. They are deaths from conditions caused by the vaccine.
Brian Tabor, president of the Indiana Hospital Association, reports a corresponding huge increase in hospital caseloads, not from Covid but from all sorts of things, things known to be risks of the vaccine.
In other words, the extraordinary increase in deaths and hospitalizations is associated with the Covid vaccines.
For the past year and perhaps longer I have reported the findings and predictions of top medical scientists who are not on Big Pharma or Fauci’s payrolls. The findings of these scientists have been suppressed by Fauci and the presstitutes. In a nutshell, the vaccine undermines the human immune system and turns it into a weapon against your own body. The result is heart attacks and the range of adverse effects now associated with the vaccine. An exasperated and angry Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi explains the process here.
A number of experts have concluded that a large percentage of the vaccinated are going to experience disability and death. As Dr. Bhakdi explains, it doesn’t happen to everyone right away. Some experience death or disability immediately, some a month later, some a year afterwards, and some over a longer time.
As I understand it, the rate of death and disability of Covid vaccinated people will rise with time. If the process is rapid, one consequence could be societal collapse. If the process is slow, then those populations most vaccinated would experience numerical decline.
Clearly, the vaccination drive was a huge mistake, or an intentional population control operation. But now that it is known that there is more danger in the vaccine than in the virus, all vaccination should be stopped.
Censorship of renowned medical experts must stop so that we can escape marketing propaganda and come to an understanding of the true situation.
Covid was not deadly except for untreated persons with comorbidities. The current variant, Omicron, appears to be milder than the common cold, and as the vaccine does not protect against either, its use is completely irresponsible. Humanity will be paying the cost of the mRNA vaccines for decades to come.
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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 frequent contributor to Global Research.
January 5th, 2022 by Ontario Civil Liberties Association
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The question of potential batch-specific toxicity of COVID-19 vaccine products is an important one that merits careful investigation. Indeed, history shows that dangerous “hot lots” have existed for past vaccine products. However, researchers investigating this topic should be wary of important artifacts that are present in the publicly-available VAERS data, which can skew analyses and lead to incorrect conclusions.
Several exploratory reports of potential batch-specific toxicity of COVID-19 vaccine products have been posted on the Internet (see here, here, and here) using data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database maintained by the US Department of Health & Human Services.
OCLA is researching the VAERS database, and wants to alert the research community to the following issues in the data:
Approximately 1/3 of adverse event (AE) entries in the VAERS database have no associated batch label. This is a large number of missing batch label assignments.
For the AEs that do have batch labels, the labels are alpha-numeric strings, which is a data format that is prone to artifacts, such as typos and the presence of multiple label-strings that should be considered to be the same label. The latter can occur due to substitution of lower-case for upper-case letters, inclusion or non-inclusion of a white-space character, replacement of a number by a letter (e.g., “B” versus “8”), etc.
Examples of spurious batch labels that can be seen by scrolling down the list of batch labels at the link here are the labels “UNKNOWN”, “N/A”, “Pfizer”, “Na”, “?”, “Pfizer-BioNTech”, “unk”, “don’t know”, etc.
An example of a set of multiple strings that should most likely be considered to be a single unique label are the labels “Ew0158” (1662 AEs), “EwO158” (47 AEs), “#EW0168” (1 AE), and “(EW0158)” (1 AE). These four strings are included as separate entries in the list at the link here. There are many such examples of spurious multiplicity of batch labels in the VAERS data.
If the above-noted artifacts are not corrected for, then a histogram of AE-frequencies per batch label will include many label-strings that should not be included as unique labels, and these will have low AE-frequencies. Such a histogram cannot be used to infer the probability of low-AE (low “toxicity”) vaccine product batches, and consequently cannot be used to infer the probability of high-AE batches.
An additional observation that has been presented (at the video here) is an apparent “linear decline in toxicity” vs. batch label for the Pfizer vaccine products, which appears when the batch labels are sorted alpha-numerically and plotted on the x-axis and the number of AEs associated with each label is plotted on the y-axis. This observation can be explained by the fact that Pfizer’s format for labeling their batches correlates with how the batches were administered in time – “E” batches were administered before “F” batches, etc. The VAERS data shows many more AEs and deaths in the early stages of the vaccine rollout than later in the rollout, probably because the vaccine products were initially given to older and frailer people (with the exception of some healthcare workers) and then to progressively younger people. Unlike Pfizer, Moderna’s batch-labeling format does not correlate with how the batches were administered in time, and this explains why no apparent “linear decline in toxicity” is seen for Moderna in the same graph.
The above-noted artifacts have the effect of rendering the currently-available batch-toxicity analyses unreliable, in that their graphical and distributional analyses do not support their stated conclusions. More careful analysis, accounting for the important data-artifact issues, is required.
OCLA researchers have performed detailed data analyses on the VAERS data, which corroborate the need for this cautionary note. OCLA researchers plan to publish their analysis soon, at ocla.ca.
Researcher Jessica Rose made essentially the same cautionary note (with supporting analyses) on December 1, 2021 (here), however her observations have since been largely overlooked by critical experts (e.g., here).
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If the killing was meant to push Iran back, it has failed abysmally. Soleimani’s ability to maintain a modicum of stability outweighed any benefits that his death could have brought
Soleimani was the brain behind Iran’s shadow war in the Middle East, and for years the counterpart of US Central Command (Centcom) leaders and CIA directors, as he boasted about in a text message he allegedly sent to General David Petraeus, the former US military commander in Iraq.
In the process, Soleimani became a local hero against western hegemony in the region, the main enabler of the resistance for large Shia constituencies spread around Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen and Gaza. But he also crossed the sectarian divide, garnering significant support from the Kurds and other Sunnis. Millions turned out onto the streets of Tehran and his hometown of Kerman to see his coffin, in a collective show of grief not seen since the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989.
For the West, Israel, their Arab partners, the Syrian opposition to Bashar al-Assad, and the Yemeni opposition to the Houthis, he was the mastermind of Iran’s many acts of terror. But has his assassination significantly altered the Middle East’s strategic landscape? Has his removal fulfilled the purpose for which it was conceived?
No imminent threat
More has come out about the assassination. At the time, the Donald Trump administration claimed that Soleimani was killed to pre-empt a major strike that he was planning. This has now been debunked. There was no imminent threat from Iran against US personnel in the region to justify the strike carried out in Baghdad on 3 January 2020.
More recently, Trump has hinted about Israeli manipulation behind his decision to eliminate the top Iranian strategist, adding unequivocally, however, that ″the Israelis are willing to fight Iran until the last American soldier″. Trump’s statement was ambiguous, but Major General Tamir Hayman, former chief of Israeli military intelligence, was not. He confirmed Israel’s role in the killing.
If Jerusalem had then nurtured any hope to remain shielded from Tehran’s wrath, Trump’s and Hayman’s words have dashed it. Israeli decision-makers should keep in mind that, as observed previously, Tehran’s response to Soleimani’s killing could take years to unfold.
The then prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, thought he was being clever in persuading Trump to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018, and apparently twisted his arm in doing the dirty work of Soleimani’s elimination for Israel. However, it is becoming clear that neither decision served Israel’s national interest, not to mention that of the US.
Thanks to Washington’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, Tehran is now closer than ever to the nuclear threshold.
Important developments
As far as the strategic landscape of the region is concerned, it is doubtful that the relative position of Israel or the US has improved. True, Israel has carried out a smart engagement policy with some Arab states, which has produced significant economic results, mainly with the UAE.
Important developments are also forthcoming with Bahrain and Morocco, but it is still too early to say if they will have a strategic impact. Until Saudi Arabia, jewel in the crown of Israeli normalisation with the Arab world, joins the Abraham Accords, the judgment remains suspended.
On the other hand, and enlarging the perspective, there have been some other important developments:
The US has humiliatingly withdrawn from Afghanistan, losing the game in Central Asia, with potentially serious repercussions in Western Asia, too; the Iraqi parliament has voted for the US’s complete withdrawal from the country; the Syrian government maintains and consolidates its grip on the useful part of its country, as once-hostile Arab leaders are now increasingly going back to Damascus; and Hezbollah continues to hold sway over the Lebanese political landscape.
Further, the Houthis, no matter how heavily Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen, are close to winning the strategic city of Marib, one of the most important Saudi strongholds in the country. Hamas still holds Gaza – last spring Israel, for the first time in its history, saw its Arab citizens siding with the Palestinians protesting in the street of Jerusalem, leaving the chilling sensation of a possible civil war inside the country.
If the principals behind Soleimani’s killing bet on Iran’s self-deterrence, they miscalculated, as the bombing of the US al-Asad base in Iraq has proven – a far more damaging and accurate attack than it was initially considered.
In addition, US and Israeli naval warfare against Tehran, intended to stop oil supplies to Syria, has now ceased after Iran’s reprisals; joining the Abraham Accords has not prevented delegations from Riyadh and Abu Dhabi from going to Tehran – these Gulf states both know how vital a non-aggression pact with their neighbour is. They also know that Israel cannot fill the vacuum left by the US partial withdrawal from the region, and they are increasingly at odds with Washington over the depth of the US security commitment.
And, finally, a new Iranian leadership is changing the country’s attitude to nuclear negotiation, as it casually disregards any western pressure against it.
Put it all together and it is difficult to argue that Iran is more deterred than it was before Soleimani’s killing.
His authority was undisputed
Soleimani represented a reliable interlocutor to call to de-escalate moments of crisis. He was the equivalent of the famous telephone number in Europe that Henry Kissinger searched for in the 1970s.
In a region that is so volatile, secure and confidential communication channels should be maintained. The IRGC’s commander was a master of the region’s highly complex and over nuanced dynamics. When it was necessary, he kept his turbulent proxies under control. Finding a worthy successor has been difficult for Iran, as the latest developments in Iraq have shown.
His authority was undisputed, as was his ability to present effectively and quickly any case to his top decision-makers in Tehran. The void he left has not been filled.
Any serious professional involved in the shadowy world of intelligence and asymmetric warfare in the Middle East will tell you that a person as important as Soleimani should not have been eliminated. His intrinsic value in maintaining a modicum of stability, and in avoiding dangerous miscalculations and escalations, outweighed any benefits that could arise from his death.
Only neophytes like Trump, or Israelis who had a short-term interest in conflict generation like Netanyahu, could go that far; and, if the intent was to push Iran back, they have failed abysmally.
The man who is talked about as Soleimani’s protege, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, is the new foreign minister of Iran, in the more hawkish Ebrahim Raisi administration.
‘Iran’s strategic capacity is now enormous’
In the words of US Centcom Commander General Kenneth McKenzie: “Iran’s missiles have become a more immediate threat than its nuclear programme… they hit pretty much where they wanted to hit… can strike effectively across the breadth and depth of the Middle East.” McKenzie chillingly added that Iran had achieved an “overmatch″ capability, that is it can fire more missiles than its adversaries can shoot down or destroy, making it extremely difficult to check or defeat.
“Iran’s strategic capacity is now enormous,” the commander concluded.
The room for a compromise on both sides to save the JCPOA is narrowing to months if not weeks, and the new Iranian leadership does not appear particularly concerned about such a perspective.
No matter how many times the Israelis “mow the grass“ of the Iranian nuclear programme with sabotage and the killing of Iranian scientists, the research and development Iran has gained over the past two years cannot be reversed.
Former top Israeli Air Force commander, General Isaac Ben-Israel, recently said that up to 10 years ago Israel could probably have hit effectively the Iranian nuclear facilities, but added: “Today, all the technology needed to produce a bomb is already in Iranian hands. The only question is whether Iran will decide to go ahead or not. And that’s just a matter of time.”
It must have been very tempting to kill Qassem Soleimani, but sometimes, especially in the Middle East, the more tempting option is not necessarily the best one.
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Marco Carnelos is a former Italian diplomat. He has been assigned to Somalia, Australia and the United Nations. He served in the foreign policy staff of three Italian prime ministers between 1995 and 2011. More recently he has been Middle East peace process coordinator special envoy for Syria for the Italian government and, until November 2017, Italy’s ambassador to Iraq.
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“Section 83.01 of the Criminal Code defines terrorism as an act committed ‘in whole or in part for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause’ with the intention of intimidating the public’…with regard to its security, including its economic security, or compelling a person, a government or a domestic or an international organization to do or to refrain from doing any act.’ Activities recognized as criminal within this context include death and bodily harm with the use of violence; endangering a person’s life; risks posed to the health and safety of the public; significant property damage; and interference or disruption of essential services, facilities or systems.” – Department of Justice, Government of Canada1
The NATO attack on Libya in March 2011, which was led by Canada and destroyed the Libyan government, state and much of the country’s infrastructure arguably makes Canada a terrorist nation, according to its own Department of Justice’s definition of terrorism, provided above. All of the conditions outlined by the Department of Justice apply to Canada’s attack on Libya. Canadian Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard was commander of NATO’s war on Libya, known as Operation Mobile, on which Canada spent $347 million under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. The Canadian ship HMCS Charlottetown carried 240 officers and sailors to Libya. Ten fighter jets, one helicopter and 200 Canadian Forces members were also sent to Libya. Canadian planes bombed Libya, its troops carried out psychological warfare operations and its special forces helped Libyan rebels on the ground. Members of Parliament from the Liberal Party, New Democratic Party and Bloc Québécois all voted to support Operation Mobile.
Canada’s CF-18 jets have dropped 696 bombs on Libya as part of the NATO attack which included 10,000 bombing sorties that killed and wounded more than 5,600 civilians (up until July 2011 alone) and destroyed vital civilian infrastructure, particularly water facilities, leaving four million Libyans (out of a population of six million) without potable water. NATO bombing demolished hospitals, universities, homes and the entire town of Sirte (population 100,000). These are clearly war crimes and crimes against humanity that Canada and NATO are responsible for. The NATO attack lasted seven months until October 2011, eradicating Libya’s central government, society and state and handing the country over to gangs of terrorists, criminals, Islamic fundamentalists and American operatives who started fighting with each other, pushing Libya into an abyss of violent anarchy that continues today, a decade later.
Libya went from being a prosperous country with Africa’s highest standard of living (54th on the U.N.’s Human Development Index in 2010, which totalled 174 countries) and a welfare state to becoming one of the poorest and most devastated nations in the world today, where slavery abounds and traffickers prey on millions of people trying to escape to Europe in boats that often sink. Scott Taylor tells me, “Lt. General Bouchard bears at least partial responsibility for the crimes committed by NATO in Libya.” Taylor, who calls the aftermath of NATO’s Libya war a “catastrophe,” is a Canadian journalist who specializes in military journalism and war reporting.
He is editor and publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine and a former infantry soldier in the Canadian Forces.
The NATO intervention derived from a series of lies spread mainly by the U.S. government about the intentions of Libya’s ruler, Muammar Gaddafi. U.S. President Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, his Secretary of State, claimed that Gaddafi was going to commit “genocide” against a group of rebels who had taken up arms against him in the city of Benghazi and that he was already bombing protestors from the air. Both of these assertions were untrue. As Professor Alan J. Kuperman, who teaches global policy at the University of Texas, clarified in 2011, “Gaddafi did not ever threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi as Obama alleged.”
Obama’s bombing accusation against Gaddafi was refuted by his own Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates. To purportedly prevent Gaddafi from carrying out genocide and stop him from bombing Libyans, Clinton had the United Nations Security Council approve enforcement of a “no-fly zone” in Libya in the form of Resolution 1973. Obama and Clinton then used this very limited resolution to launch an all-out war on Libya which enormously exceeded the scope of a no-fly-zone.
“You can’t wage a war against a tactic. Terrorism is the weapon of the weak and disenfranchised against the powerful. We [the U.S.] didn’t—and don’t now—care two hoots in hell about terrorism.” Conn Hallinan
As Taylor puts it, “The Canadian government willingly accepted the false narrative generated by France, the U.K. and the U.S. to justify armed intervention in Libya. The U.N. Resolution authorizing a no-fly zone enforced by NATO was ignored in the intended scope and used to mount airstrikes against Gaddafi loyalists.” Taylor adds in a September 2016 article: “That’s right folks, NATO dropped bombs on Libyans to prevent Gaddafi from dropping bombs on Libyans.”
Taylor points out that a British parliamentary committee “roundly condemned” U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s role in the Libya disaster in a 2016 report and asks “Where is the clamour in Canada for a similar investigation into our country’s role in that massive failure?…Cameron is not the only one responsible for the ongoing deaths and suffering in Libya. He has Canadian company in Harper and [John] Baird, [foreign affairs minister under Harper].”
Far from any censure, Harper awarded Bouchard the Order of Canada and gave him a military jet flyover in Ottawa. This is when even U.S. President Obama, whose bidding Canada was doing in Libya, called the NATO war, “a shit show” and blamed Britain and France for it although the attack would not have happened without Obama’s approval.
“There is simply no justification for the NATO attack on Libya” Conn Hallinan tells me. He has been a columnist with Foreign Policy in Focus, a project of the Washington D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies. Hallinan has written on foreign affairs for 50 years and retired in September. “It is a violation of international law to attack a country that does not pose a threat to other countries” he continues, “No one argued that Libya posed a threat to its neighbours or other nations, only that Gaddafi had threatened his people.
Photo by Karim Mostafa, 2012: Rebels at a Katiba compound in Benghazi get their training to maintain order in the country after the fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
“The whole premise was a violation of international law and unfortunately, the U.N. was involved. Given that so many people are involved, it is unclear who one would prosecute, but one could start with Hilary Clinton, the person who pushed the war. Indeed, it was called ‘Hilary’s war’ in Washington. I would add the leadership of France and Italy, the former for starting the bombing, the latter for coordinating the bombing out of bases in Southern Italy.”
The real reason for the NATO invasion of Libya had to do with Western economic imperialism aimed at dominating Africa. Hallinan explains, “Libya was one of the last countries bordering the Mediterranean that was not a NATO member or a NATO ‘partner.’ Along with Syria, Libya has always been an independent actor in the region and many people in Washington and NATO have longed to end that status. I don’t think oil played a major role—but it is always a factor—but Washington has always been unhappy about Gaddafi’s effort to create an African investment bank and cooperative communications systems. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to control international finance and they have a particular interest in developing agriculture in Africa for the West. European and Middle Eastern countries have snapped up hundreds of square miles of prime agricultural land in Africa to start industrial farming to ensure their food supplies in a time of climate change. Gaddafi always got in the way of those organizations. The uprising [in Benghazi] was the excuse they were looking for.”
Taylor explains the Canadian part in this economic imperialism, Ottawa being a “junior” imperialist dominated by the U.S. Canadian foreign policy aims usually dovetail with those of the U.S. and U.K.: “I think you need to look no further than the SNC Lavalin scandal to realize that Canada has long had interest in developing Libyan oil and gas resources. Canada, like the other G8 countries, realized the looming threat of Gaddafi amassing gold reserves to create an African Union currency. This would have challenged the existing global banking system. With those gold reserves now outside Libya and the country awash in anarchy, that threat has been neutralized.”
The Canadian/NATO attack on Libya spread terrorism within and outside the country to Syria and several African states— especially Mali, where France had to send troops once more to prevent the military dictatorship’s fall to Islamic fundamentalists armed with weapons from Gaddafi’s looted arsenal and from NATO’s own extensive distribution of weaponry to Gaddafi’s opponents. “The NATO-backed rebellion saw the emergence of such extremist Islamic groups as the al Nusra Front and subsequently the anarchy opened the door to both al Qaeda and then Daesh (a.k.a. ISIS or ISIL) to get footholds in Libya,” emphasizes Taylor.
“The result of the invasion and overthrow has been a disaster,” concurs Hallinan. “The massive weapon caches of Gaddafi fuel insurgents and terrorists throughout Africa. And as [veteran journalist] Seymour Hersh showed, Libya was the key to the ‘rat line’ of arms going to Syria. The U.S., British, French and Israelis were using Gaddafi’s weapons to arm Islamic fundamentalists in Syria to wage war on the Bashar Al-Assad government. That, in turn, generated millions of refugees who are currently freezing to death on the Polish border. And insurgents in the trans-Sahel [an area comprising nine African countries] are using those weapons to overthrow governments or ignite civil wars. But then again, we [the U.S.government] knew that would happen. It is easier to rule during times of chaos than times of calm.”
Hallinan rejects the credibility of the “war on terror” entirely considering it “nothing but an excuse to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. You can’t wage a war against a tactic. Terrorism is the weapon of the weak and disenfranchised against the powerful. We [the U.S.] didn’t—and don’t now—care two hoots in hell about terrorism.” That certainly applies to Canada and NATO as well. As far the Western alliance goes, terrorism is an excuse to be a terrorist.
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Asad Ismi is an award-winning writer and radio documentary-maker. He covers international politics for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor (CCPA Monitor), Canada’s biggest leftist magazine (by circulation) where this article was originally published. Asad has written on the politics of 70 countries and is a regular contributer to Global Research. For his publications visit www.asadismi.info.
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The decarbonization terraforming of planet Earth is now under way. A new project has already been launched that will install mega machines across five U.S. states to harvest “life molecules” out of the atmosphere in an effort to shut down photosynthesis and unleash global food crop failures that destroy human civilization.
Farmland is already being seized in Iowa via eminent domain to build the mechanical infrastructure that will render Earth’s atmosphere inhospitable to plant life, animal life and human life, if it is allowed to continue to operate.
It’s almost like a scene ripped right out of the film Oblivion, where giant ocean harvesting machines sucked the water off the planet, abandoning the remaining human survivors on a barren, dead world that was ransacked by aliens. But in this case, the planet’s air is being stripped of carbon, the “God element” that is the very basis of life on Earth.
The terraforming project being unleashed against planet Earth right now is called “Heartland Greenway,” and it camouflages its true intent under the cover of “green” initiatives. The website for this project is HeartlandGreenway.com, and there, you’ll find admissions that it’s all about sucking carbon dioxide molecules out of the atmosphere and burying them underground where plants can’t use the molecules for photosynthesis.
An actual CO2 pipeline is being constructed across five U.S. states to transport liquefied CO2 and bury it underground. The pipeline cross Iowa and has branches in South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska and Illinois.
Farmers are powerless to stop the project, which is being pushed via eminent domain. As reported via The Hawkeye:
Des Moines County Engineer Brian Carter told the board of supervisors on Tuesday during the board’s regular meeting that Navigator Heartland Greenway LLC is pushing for a carbon capture pipeline to transport liquid carbon dioxide through five midwestern states.
An October letter to Broeker from the Iowa Utilities Board gives notice that, “Navigator has developed a proposal to build and operate a large-scale carbon capture pipeline system in your county that will convert carbon dioxide to a liquid form, then transport it via pipeline to a permanent underground sequestration site.”
“I don’t know for sure that we have a whole lot of say in this, county-wise,” Carter said.
Shockingly, no local media outlets bother to tell farmers that CO2 is the single most important molecule for plant growth. Globalists are literally seizing farmers’ land to erect a terraforming infrastructure that will ultimately make crops nearly impossible to grow.
This is an irrefutable scientific fact. It’s all confirmed in the process of photosynthesis (see below).
Stripping CO2 out of the atmosphere cripples photosynthesis, the foundation of carbon-based life on Earth
All plants need CO2 in order to carry out photosynthesis, the single most important biochemical process for life on Earth. Without CO2, all life on the planet ceases to exist.
Photosynthesis has three inputs: Sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. From these three inputs, plants produce energy to grow and flourish. Without CO2, all plants die across the entire planet.
All human beings (and animals) are made of carbon, and most of that carbon starts in the atmosphere. Through photosynthesis, the carbon is used by plants to make various molecules and proteins, and when humans eat plants or animals, they are effectively consuming the carbon that was once present in the air.
In other words, all human beings are made of carbon from the air, and without carbon in the atmosphere, human life cannot exist on the planet.
Carbon dioxide is the “God molecule” for life on Earth, and carbon is the “God element” that supports all life. When Earth had an abundant supply of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it was greener, wetter and more lush, with vast rainforests covering areas that are now deserts (such as many areas of the Middle East). When CO2 is depleted in the atmosphere, Earth becomes a colder, drier, more inhospitable planet with far less food production potential.
When NASA talks about terraforming Mars and transforming it into a planet that can support forests, animals, rivers, oceans and human colonies, the No. 1 molecule that’s needed to achieve this is carbon dioxide. The reason Mars can’t be terraformed right now is because it lacks carbon dioxide.
If you take the CO2 out of Earth’s atmosphere, you turn it into a planet more like Mars: Lifeless, cold, and completely unsuitable for human survival. You effectively crush human civilization on a planetary basis. The removal of CO2 from the atmosphere is planetary-scale genocide.
Yet this is exactly what the Heartland Greenway project aims to do, all under the language of “reducing your carbon footprint.”
Dacarbonization is depopulation
The war on carbon is a war on carbon-based life… and that’s us! “Decarbonization” is depopulation. Eliminating carbon means eliminating the human race.
Furthermore, the shutting down of fossil fuel pipelines is attacking the Haber process that uses hydrocarbons to transform nitrogen (in the air) into ammonia (NH3), making the nitrogen available to plants. About half the current world population depends on the Haber process in order to eat. Without hydrocarbons, literally half the world dies of starvation. Shutting down natural gas, oil and fossil fuels is a direct attack on the Haber process, which means fertilizer production gets shut down (it’s already happening). Without fertilizer, you can’t feed the world. And without low-cost hydrocarbons from fossil fuels, you can’t make fertilizer.
Mass starvation is already “baked in” for 2022, affecting most developing nations and even some first world nations.
Mass starvation will happen next year due to the shut down of fertilizer production. But terraforming the planet to remove CO2 from the atmosphere will take many years to fully achieve… perhaps even decades. They are launching the pilot projects right now, using printed fiat currency to fund it. Once the concept is proven, they will expand their terraforming machines across the planet, ransacking the atmosphere and depriving all plant life the molecules that are desperately needed to produce food, oxygen and biodiversity.
Pollinators will collapse. Food crops will fail. Human civilization will be utterly destroyed. Decarbonization is total war against life on Earth.
If we do not stop decarbonization, life on Earth will cease to exist as we know it.
We are under planetary-scale attack. Humanity must fight back or perish.
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Comments Off on “Decarbonization Terraforming” of Planet Earth Is Now Under Way… Giant Machines to be Installed in Iowa to Suck “Life Molecules” Out of the Atmosphere and Cause Global Crops to Fail
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Nonprofit organization Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), an advocate for full transparency of the medical products’ safety and efficacy, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its parent entity, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for their refusal to make public the post-licensure safety data of Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines.
The lawsuit was filed after the agency turned down three Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to publish reports, submitted through the CDC’s “V-Safe” system.
The “V-Safe” is a smartphone application that uses text messaging and web surveys to give “personalized health check-ins” after a person receives a COVID shot. The “V-Safe” app is also supposed to allow individuals to report to the CDC if they have any side effects after getting a COVID-19 vaccine in “near real-time.” The system is supposed to be so effective that the agency said that depending on reports’ specifics, representatives may call to check on a vaccine recipient to collect more information.
The system was created because the CDC said that the Vaccine Adverse Effects Reaction System (VAERS) is not capable of determining causation, making it unreliable. At the same time, the agency noted that the COVID-19 vaccines are being administered under intensive vaccine safety monitoring efforts in the United States.
However, it seems that the CDC wants to keep secret the adverse reactions and corresponding numbers that have been reported through the app. In response to ICAN’s FOIA requests, the agency refused to report the safety data under the pretext that such information is not deidentified, or that it includes personal health information. (Related: California bill would require state to post links to vaccine injury reporting and vaccine injury compensation.)
De-identified data does exist. The CDC relies on private data company Oracle to collect, manage and house the data, as stated in its own document. The document indicates that as per Oracle’s internal policies, staff will not be able to view any individualized survey data, including those with personally identifiable information (PII). Instead, they will gain access to aggregate unidentifiable data for reporting.
Big Government protecting Big Pharma
ICAN is pushing for the CDC to produce the unidentified data in the same form that Oracle can access, but the agency has closed that inquiry. ICAN noted that the federal government is not only failing to comply with the FOIA, but also failing to provide the transparency necessary to earn people’s trust regarding the vaccines.
The nonprofit organization emphasized that the public deserves to have all information necessary regarding the vaccines that are being mandated, as many Americans are under threat of losing their jobs, being excluded from school and not being allowed to participate in society.
New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and Seattle, among others, have already put such laws into place.
Individuals who get injured by the vaccines will not be able to hold the pharmaceutical companies accountable because the federal government has given them and others associated with administering the shots legal immunity for any injuries that the vaccines may cost. Moreover, the vaccine manufacturers are immune from liability for willful misconduct unless the government brings this claim first.
ICAN stated in the lawsuit that comprehensive knowledge of vaccine safety is important for the public and that the government should remain transparent about the data. It stressed that locking out independent scientists from addressing the issues is dangerous, irresponsible, unethical and illegal.
The CDC is not the first government agency to be sued over documents associated with vaccine safety. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was also previously sued for over 400,000 pages of information regarding Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
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Mathematician and statistician Pavlos Kolias of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece has checked EU data on Corona for anomalies. He did so on the basis of Benford’s laws, which expose anomalies in the distribution of the figures.
Kolias noted that the number of “infections” and deaths has been largely misrepresented throughout the EU.
Deviations from Benford’s distribution are a preliminary step for obtaining evidence for data manipulation. Interestingly, Kolias’ study did not receive any funding.
Dutch health sciences professor Sam Brokken spoke of a “statistical bomb”. Notably Belgium, the Netherlands and France scored poorly with a significant and highly significant probability value in terms of “infections” and a very high probability of deviation in the number of registered deaths.
Especially in countries with high vaccination coverage, the deviations were greater. “In short, yet more proof that the figures that reach us every day are not correct,” concluded Brokken. Overall, Denmark, Greece and Ireland showed the greatest deviation from a normal distribution.
Countries with a high vaccination coverage showed more data distortion than countries with a low vaccination coverage, he added. “So it becomes clear that numbers are driven to sell the policy.”
Fired for speaking out against Corona policy
Brokken was fired earlier this year by the PXL University of Applied Sciences in Hasselt because as a scientist he questioned the government’s Corona approach. “I was simply informed over the phone that I must stop my activities with immediate effect,” he said.
Not only has he been fired, but he is also being censored by social media companies such as LinkedIn. “It is impossible for me to share any analysis with you. Even a simple link to my website is blocked,” he said.
“What I say is what tens of thousands of virologists and experts worldwide say.” The researcher was nevertheless fired after a televised debate with vaccinologist Pierre Van Damme on 14 February on the Belgian talkshow De Zevende Dag.
“I have been dismissed as an antivaxxer by many journalists, but I am not at all,” Brokken said. “During the debate on De Zevende Dag, I spoke for exactly 1 minute and 49 seconds. I said that I had ethical reflections when administering a vaccine when you know that the general population only shows mild symptoms when they become infected with the virus. We are now at a mortality rate of 0,05 percent for people under the age of 70. Is it then justifiable that we are going to vaccinate an entire population? There is actually no need for that. The same goes for a flu vaccine. That too is only useful for people with a condition or the elderly.”
Sam Brokken pointed out that many experts had agreed with his view. “A month after that televised broadcast, an open letter was published and was signed by 41 000 virologists, immunologists and other experts proposing exactly what I said. Among the signatories are world authorities and professors from the largest universities. Even former Nobel laureate Michael Levitt is included. Why not consider an alternative approach?”
Dutch health authority prefers fear mongering
The Dutch Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) warned in the House of Representatives barely two weeks ago that the Omicron variant could potentially lead to 600 hospital admissions and more than 100 intensive care admissions per day, twice the level at which the last wave peaked. “It’s not all reassuring,” said RIVM boss Jaap van Dissel. He based his prediction on the number of hospital admissions expected in Britain.
As a result of these predictions, the government decided to institute a hard lockdown. Nobel laureate Michael Levitt expressed his astonishment, saying that the Netherlands has set the record for worst approach to Corona ever.
Levitt noted on December 19 that “the Netherlands peaked 18 days ago, as predicted”.
“The RIVM’s fear models again prove worthless and the government’s policy is completely disproportionate and very harmful. Can the cabinet at least admit its blunder and lift the panic lockdown immediately?” noted Member of Parliament Wybren van Haga.
Lawsuit to stop lockdown
On December 28, summary proceedings against lockdowns will take place. Lawyer Bart Maes has demanded the immediate lifting of the lockdown that is currently in force. “The judge is required to give a ruling immediately because of the urgent interest. After all, every day that this lockdown lasts longer, the material and immaterial damage increases,” said the lawyer.
“The fear surrounding Omicron is therefore purely based on models from the RIVM and, as with the Delta variant, they are miles away from reality, as is already apparent from information from countries such as South Africa.”
The lawyer further highlighted that as a result of the lockdown, many more life years have been lost than life years are gained. Professor Ira Helsloot and economist Barbara Baarsma have also calculated that the corona policy has extended the lifespan of Corona patients by an average of two weeks. However, all other people sacrificed an average of five weeks of their lifespan for this. The cost of this policy was 100 billion euros, according to them.
A report has also emerged that was drawn up by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate, which showed that an additional 520 000 life years would be destroyed if a lockdown was imposed. The government ignored the report.
Remember the photo of coffins from Bergamo, Italy, in March 2020, which terrified the world and contributed to the lockdown frenzy? It was also fake: pic.twitter.com/0tP5aQ4rQ2
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A seasoned stock analyst colleague texted me a link today, and when I clicked it open, I could hardly believe what I was reading. What a headline. “Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64”. This headline is a nuclear truth bomb masquerading as an insurance agent’s dry manila envelope full of actuarial tables.
People frequently write to Jill and myself. People we have never met. They call, they arrive at the farm by appointment or unannounced, they fill our email in boxes with their inquiries. They all want something; time, attention, an interview. Many want to tell us about their fear, illness, nightmares, or (what often seems like) outright paranoid conspiracies. And then, over time, these fears and “conspiracies” keep getting confirmed. As Jan Jekielek (a senior editor with The Epoch Times) recently said to me, it is getting harder and harder to tell which ones are mere conspiracy theories and which are true reality.
One farm visitor told me of his foreshadowing massive numbers of deaths within three years consequent to the genetic vaccines, and that this was all about the “Great Reset” and the depopulation agenda of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
I tried to reassure him that, in my opinion, this was highly unlikely- while privately thinking about how easily people fall into this type of conspiracy ideation, and how I need to be careful to avoid going there when confronting so many public health decisions that appear either incompetent or nefarious.
At the time, I only knew of the WEF as the host of a big annual party in Davos Switzerland where the uber rich and the hoi oligoi of the Western nations went to watch Ted talks, drink the best wine, see and be seen. Silly me. What a long, strange trip this has been. I doubt that even Hunter S. Thompson could have imagined it in his most drug and booze addled state. Suffice to say, I nominate Ralph Steadman as official illustrator of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Or a resurrected Hieronymus Bosch.
But I am wandering from a point that I am afraid to clearly state.
It is starting to look to me like the largest experiment on human beings in recorded history has failed. And, if this rather dry report from a senior Indiana life insurance executive holds true, then Reiner Fuellmich’s “Crimes against Humanity” push for convening new Nuremberg trials starts to look a lot less quixotic and a lot more prophetic.
Here is what lit me up in this report from The Center Square contributor Margaret Menge.
“The head of Indianapolis-based insurance company OneAmerica said the death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among working-age people.
“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”
OneAmerica is a $100 billion insurance company that has had its headquarters in Indianapolis since 1877. The company has approximately 2,400 employees and sells life insurance, including group life insurance to employers in the state.
Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica.
“And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said.
“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.””
So, what is driving this unprecedented surge in all-cause mortality?
“Most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths,
Davison said.“What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.””
AT A MINIMUM, based on my reading, one has to conclude that if this report holds and is confirmed by others in the dry world of life insurance actuaries, we have both a huge human tragedy and a profound public policy failure of the US Government and US HHS system to serve and protect the citizens that pay for this “service”.
IF this holds true, then the genetic vaccines so aggressively promoted have failed, and the clear federal campaign to prevent early treatment with lifesaving drugs has contributed to a massive, avoidable loss of life.
AT WORST, this report implies that the federal workplace vaccine mandates have driven what appear to be a true crime against humanity. Massive loss of life in (presumably) workers that have been forced to accept a toxic vaccine at higher frequency relative to the general population of Indiana.
FURTHERMORE, we have also been living through the most massive, globally coordinated propaganda and censorship campaign in the history of the human race. All major mass media and the social media technology companies have coordinated to stifle and suppress any discussion of the risks of the genetic vaccines AND/OR alternative early treatments.
IF this report holds true, there must be accountability. We are not just talking about running over the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States and grinding it into the mud with an army of artificial intelligence-powered heavy infantry. This article reads like a dry description of an avoidable mass casualty event caused by a mandated experimental medical procedure. One for which all opportunities for the victims to have become self-informed about the potential risks have been methodically erased from both the internet and public awareness by an international corrupt cabal operating under the flag of the “Trusted News Initiative”. George Orwell must be spinning in his grave.
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The US presidential doctrine is an odd creature. Usually summoned up by security wonks and satellite personnel who revolve around the President, these eventually assume the name of the person holding office. They are given the force of a Papal bull and treated by the priest pundits as binding, coherent and sound.
Much of this is often simple myth-making for the imperial minder in the White House, betraying what are often shallow understandings about global politics and movements. Clarity and details are often found wanting. Variety in such doctrinal matters, the Soviet Union’s veteran diplomat Andrei Gromykonoted in casting his eye over the US approach, meant that there was no “solid, coherent and consistent policy” in the field.
In the case of President Joe Biden, any doctrine was bound to be a readjustment made in hostility to the Trump administration, at least superficially. But in so many ways, Biden has simply pulled down the blinds and kept the US policy train going, notably in its approach to China and its unabashed embrace of the Anglosphere. There remain smatterings of nativism, doses of protectionism. There is the childlike evangelism that insists on enlightened democracy doing battle with vicious autocracy. This was, according to Foreign Affairs, the “everything doctrine”.
Such an approach would barely astonish. Former US Defense Secretary Bob Gates did claim in his memoir with sharp certitude that the current President’s record, prior to coming to office, was patchy, proving to be “wrong on nearly every foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
At the time, a stung White House demurred from the view through remarks made by National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden. “The President [Barack Obama] disagrees with Secretary Gates’ assessment – from his leadership on the Balkans in the Senate, to his efforts to end the war in Iraq, Joe Biden has been one of the leading statesmen of his time, and has helped advance America’s leadership in the world.”
Anne-Marie Slaughter, writing mid-November last year, suggested that the world was finally getting a sense of “the contours of” Biden’s foreign policy, which was a veritable shop of goodies. “He has,” she claimed in reproach, much along the line taken in Foreign Affairs, “something for everyone.” For the China bashers, he has pushed “the QUAD” of India, Australia, Japan and the United States and created AUKUS, “a new British, Australian, US nexus with the … submarine deal, no matter how clumsily handled.”
A throbbing human rights narrative has also taken some shape, an approach neither convincing nor commanding. Again, China features as a main target, being accused of genocide and grave human rights abuses, though Beijing can be assured that the sword of US military power will be, at least for the moment, sheathed from attempts to protect them. What remains less certain is whether the same thing can be said about Taiwan.
The liberal internationalists can cheer the boosting rhetoric of international institutions: the gleeful nod towards the World Health Organization, the recommitment of the US to pursuing goals to alleviate the problems of climate change; the revitalisation of NATO, an alliance derided by President Donald Trump.
From Chatham House, we see the view that Biden’s “pragmatic realism”, which eschews sentimentalism to traditional allies while still respecting them, took European partners “off-guard” with Washington’s energetic focus on the Indo-Pacific.
Slaughter has charged that, if all are recipients of something, a doctrine remains hard to “pin down”. She remains unconvinced by the stacked pantry, wishing to see a more concerted effort that embraces “thinking that shifts away from states, whether great powers or lesser powers, democracies or autocracies”. Embrace, she commands, “globalism”, with an emphasis on cooperation irrespective of political or ideological stripes. “From a people-first perspective, saving the planet for humanity must be a goal that takes precedence over all others.”
This view is far from spanking in its novelty. With every change of the guard in Washington, opinions such as those of Slaughter become resurgent, often messianic urgings that claim to make things anew and see the world afresh. In her case, there is a recycled One World quality to it, with the US, of course, as central leader. As a presidential candidate in 1992, Bill Clinton insisted that it was “time to put people first”. In accepting the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1996, he spoke of building “that bridge to the 21st century, to meet our challenges and protect our values”.
How fine a vision that turned out to be, with the US ensuring its position as the sole superpower, with an amassed military able to strike, globally, any part of the planet with impunity and, as Clinton himself showed, frivolous, criminal distraction. Washington continued to bribe and coddle satraps and client states, seeking janitors to mind the imperium and keep any power that might dare to challenge the status quo in stern, severe check. Little wonder, then, that Beijing threatens such self-serving understanding.
The transcendent, humanity-driven view will not sit well in the Bidenverse, which remains moored in a brand of power politics that is Trumpism shorn, with a range of other antecedents. The “America First” ideals of the previous president have been retained, though the howling about the risks of a complex world has simply been delivered in another register. The open question, and one yielding a potentially troubling answer, is how far US military power will be used to shore up a shoddy, shallow doctrine that shows all the signs of the old.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
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The Doomsday Clock has been sitting the past year at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to civilization-ending apocalypse. The United States has done little to quell doomsday apprehensions by ratcheting up tensions with China over Taiwan and its warships in the South China Sea, as well as with Russia over Ukraine, further NATO expansion, and missile deployment in eastern Europe.
Joint Statement: The People’s Republic of China, the French Republic, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America consider the avoidance of war between Nuclear-Weapon States and the reduction of strategic risks as our foremost responsibilities.
Analysis: This consideration is a delimited call for the avoidance of war; it is a call for “the avoidance of war between Nuclear-Weapon States.” It does not foreclose on the possibility of war with non-nuclear states. Since the US is the major warmonger on the planet, and since it fears getting militarily involved with a nuclear-weapon state, it only militarily engages non-nuclear states. Nonetheless, to be precise, the joint statement does not preclude the possibility of a war between nuclear states.
The call is for “the avoidance of war,”not for the elimination of war. How much more hopeful the statement would have been if written: “the avoidance of war, especially between Nuclear-Weapon States.”
Yes, the danger of nuclear war should be a foremost responsibility, but shouldn’t the total elimination of war everywhere be stated as one of the “foremost responsibilities”?
Joint Statement: We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. As nuclear use would have far-reaching consequences, we also affirm that nuclear weapons—for as long as they continue to exist—should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war. We believe strongly that the further spread of such weapons must be prevented.
Analysis: Since the main nuclear powers acknowledge that there are no winners in a nuclear war and that such a war should never be fought, then why hold on to weapons that must never be used?
What logically flows from affirming “that nuclear weapons … should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war”? Two points stand out: (1) nukes should not be used offensively, and (2) nukes can be defensive and serve as deterrence.
That nuclear weapons have a deterrence capability has been well understood by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The DPRK having a nuclear weapon arsenal strongly hinders a military action being launched against it because a nuclear retaliation would cause considerable destruction to any attacker. Arguably, the DPRK’s nukes are preventing war. It must also be noted that the DPRK has a no-first-use policy regarding nukes. The DPRK saw what happened to Iraq and Libya after they disarmed and were devastated by western aggression. Others likely reached a similar conclusion. This knowledge causes consternation among Israeli and American militarists who fear Iran developing nuclear deterrence.
If the five nuclear powers “believe strongly that the further spread of such weapons must be prevented,” then ask yourself why? One obvious answer is the fear of a rogue, a psychologically unhinged actor initiating a nuclear attack. C’est possible. But mentally aberrant individuals are not confined to non-nuclear states. Any among us could suffer psychological symptoms during our lifetime, and when we reach an advanced age we become prone to cognitive decline. However, a rational person would hope that there are plenty of safeguards in place to prevent any unilateral access to launching nukes by one individual or group of individuals. This is wishful given the 32 acknowledged broken arrows, six of which are lost and have never been retrieved.
The nightmarish possibility of a rogue actor is further stalemated by the deterrence factor of having nukes. Ask yourself: what if the USSR had never developed nukes or helped China develop a nuclear capacity? Would the lack of a deterrence have allowed the US to turn up the heat on a Cold War?
Joint Statement: We reaffirm the importance of addressing nuclear threats and emphasize the importance of preserving and complying with our bilateral and multilateral non-proliferation, disarmament, and arms control agreements and commitments. We remain committed to our Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, including our Article VI obligation “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.
The NPT was signed in 1968 and entered into force in 1970. Although the number of nuclear-armed missiles has decreased, one might still ask whether this reflects a genuine commitment to the Article VI obligation, given the exponential increase in the explosive yield of nukes over the years? In 2020, Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, lamented: “The horror of a nuclear detonation may feel like distant history. Treaties to reduce nuclear arsenals and risks of proliferation are being abandoned, new types of nuclear weapons are being produced, and serious threats are being made.” Barack Obama who called for nuclear reduction during his presidency ended it by authorizing a $1 trillion nuclear modernization. Did that indicate a commitment to Article VI?
Joint Statement: We each intend to maintain and further strengthen our national measures to prevent unauthorized or unintended use of nuclear weapons. We reiterate the validity of our previous statements on de-targeting, reaffirming that none of our nuclear weapons are targeted at each other or at any other State.
We underline our desire to work with all states to create a security environment more conducive to progress on disarmament with the ultimate goal of a world without nuclear weapons with undiminished security for all. We intend to continue seeking bilateral and multilateral diplomatic approaches to avoid military confrontations, strengthen stability and predictability, increase mutual understanding and confidence, and prevent an arms race that would benefit none and endanger all. We are resolved to pursue constructive dialogue with mutual respect and acknowledgment of each other’s security interests and concerns.
Analysis: The countries that strive for offensive military superiority ignore the wisdom and warning of the pacifist scientist Albert Einstein: “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. The very prevention of war requires more faith, courage and resolution than are needed to prepare for war. We must all do our share, that we may be equal to the task of peace.”
Spokesman Stéphane Dujarric made known the sentiment of UN secretary-general António Guterres to the Joint Statement: “The Secretary-General takes the opportunity to restate what he has said repeatedly: the only way to eliminate all nuclear risks is to eliminate all nuclear weapons.”
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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be emailed at: kimohp@gmail. Twitter: @kimpetersen. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Protest against nuclear weapons (photo via Creative Commons)
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102 Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling) PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
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Dr. Julie Ponesse sits down with Harry Wade, the former engineering student at Western University that was dragged out of his classroom on numerous occasions for refusing to disclose his Covid-19 vaccination status.
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When one travels nearly anywhere in Europe where Medieval government centers, including courts, remain, one will frequently see the personification of a sometimes blindfolded woman representing Justice holding a sword in one hand and a scale or a scroll in the other. As soon as human beings came together to form governments, one of the first demands has always for justice that is accessible to all and that is readily understood. That is not to say that governments have not corrupted the mechanisms that were set up to deliver justice to serve their own parochial ends, but it does demonstrate that the human desire for fair treatment under law has been strong for thousands of years.
Now, it seems, those who seek justice often find that justice is denied through various artifices that have been contrived to give the government greater control over what constitutes criminal behavior. It is an emphasis on punishment of those the government has decided to make an example of. One only has to look at the treatment of whistleblowers by the US government, most notably the cases of CIA veterans Jeffrey Sterling and John Kiriakou, where punishment was the objective to discourage anyone from exposing criminal behavior by those in charge.
Even though in theory whistleblowers are protected because they have come forward to reveal illegal activity by the government, in practice that protection is often notional. And then there are those instances where justice is deliberately perverted, as in the current case of Julian Assange, whom the United States government would like to extradite so he can be tried under the Espionage Act of 1917. But the actual charges against Assange are where things get murky. Assange is accused of having collaborated with Chelsea Manning to steal and publish classified material relating to clear evidence that atrocities were carried out by the US military in Iraq and then covered up. And perhaps more to the point in political terms, Assange is also being accused of having participated in the theft of the Hillary Clinton emails in 2016. It should be pointed out that the Federal government has not provided any actual evidence of either alleged crime.
A British high court justice has approved Washington’s extradition demand re Assange but the case has now been moved to a final effort to appeal the ruling. It is likely that Assange will be convicted if he is sent to the US in spite of the fact that his only crime was that he was an effective journalist doing what good journalists do. His life has been destroyed in any event. He spent 82 months in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London having been granted asylum status and is now in solitary confinement in the top security Belmarsh prison, where Britain sends its terrorists. He has been in Belmarsh for 31 months and recently suffered a stroke. It is rather cruel and unusual punishment for someone who has not been convicted of anything.
It is perhaps not unreasonable to examine more closely the shenanigans related to the criminal justice system as it is mismanaged by today’s “democratic” governments to include the United States and Britain. Indeed, one might consider that the games being played could be summed up by the recently coined expression “lawfare.” The word came into common use after a 2001 essay by Colonel Charles J. Dunlap written for Harvard’s Carr Center. Dunlap defined lawfare as “the use of law as a weapon of war” including “the exploitation of real, perceived, or even orchestrated incidents of law-of-war violations being employed as an unconventional means of confronting” a superior opponent. It is “a method of warfare where law is used as a means of realizing a military objective” as well as a “cynical manipulation of the rule of law and the humanitarian values it represents.” In the United States, lawfare has been particularly associated with the concept of “universal jurisdiction,” that is, one nation or an international organization hosted by that nation reaching out to seize and prosecute officials of another. Or, as in Assange’s case, an Australian citizen residing in Britain being extradited for trial by Washington for an alleged theft of classified information by an American whistleblower.
Indeed, one of the most disturbing aspects of American foreign policy since 9/11 has been the assumption that decisions made by the United States are binding on the rest of the world, best exemplified by President George W. Bush’s warning that “there was a new sheriff in town.” Apart from time of war, no other nation has ever sought to prevent other nations from trading with each other, nor has any government sought to punish foreigners using sanctions with the cynical arrogance demonstrated by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The United States uniquely seeks to penalize other sovereign countries for alleged crimes that did not occur in the US and that did not involve American citizens, while also insisting that all nations must comply with whatever penalties are meted out by Washington. At the same time, the US government demonstrates its own gross hypocrisy by claiming sovereign immunity whenever foreigners or even American citizens seek to use the courts to hold it accountable for its many crimes.
Perhaps it comes as no surprise that the nation that has officially and openly incorporated lawfare into its conduct of foreign policy is Israel. Its lawfare center Shurat HaDin is in part financed by the Israeli government and has gotten involved in numerous court cases in the United States, where it finds a friendly judicial audience in New York City. The ability to sue in American courts for redress of either real or imaginary crimes has led to the creation of a lawfare culture in which lawyers seek to bankrupt an opponent through both legal expenses and damages. To no one’s surprise, Shurat HaDin is a major litigator against entities that Israel disapproves of. It boasts on its website how it uses the law to bankrupt opponents.
The Federal Court for the Southern District of Manhattan has become the clearing house for suing the pants off of any number of foreign governments and individuals with virtually no requirement that the suit have any merit beyond claims of “terrorism.” In February 2015, a lawsuit initiated by Shurat HaDin led to the conviction of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization of liability for terrorist attacks in Israel between 2000 and 2004. The New York Federal jury awarded damages of $218.5 million, but under a special feature of the Anti-Terrorism Act the award was automatically tripled to $655.5 million. Shurat HaDin claimed sanctimoniously that it was “bankrupting terror.”
Another legal victory for Israel and its friends occurred in a federal district court in the District of Columbia on June 1, 2020 where Syria and Iran were held to be liable for the killing of American citizens in Palestinian terrorist attacks that have taken place in Israel. Judge Randolph D. Moss ruled that Americans wounded and killed in seven attacks carried out by Palestinians inside the Jewish state were eligible for damages from Iran and Syria because they provided “material support” to militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Interestingly, one might observe that the United States is becoming more like Israel in its employment of lawfare. It sanctions foreign entities based on what might be hearsay information and then sets up a mechanism to fine or imprison anyone who provides anything that might be construed as “material support” to them. Some readers might be aware of a recent action by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) directed against Russian-based news and analysis site Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF). The site is admittedly not friendly to current United States foreign policy, but the Biden regime seems to believe that it is a malignant instrument of the Kremlin’s intelligence service based on what appears to be no evidence whatsoever apart from that clear hostility to US policies. During the first week in November the Treasury Department issued a “cautionary letter” dated October 15th to me and a number of other Americans who were contributing regular articles to SCF. The letters were hand delivered by FBI Special Agents.
The letter was quite bizarre, describing how SCF was now a “designated entity pursuant to Executive Order 13848 of September 12, 2018” which in turn relied on an April 15th designation by OFAC. “As a result of OFAC’s designation, unless otherwise authorized or exempt, all property and interests in property of SCF that are subject to US jurisdiction are blocked, and US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.”
The letter went on to indicated that SCF has “interfered in or undermined public confidence in United States elections, as set forth in the Foreign Interference in US Elections Sanctions regulations…and Executive orders issued under the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act…Under applicable law, each violation of the above referenced regulations is subject to a statutory maximum civil monetary penalty of up to the greater of $311,562 or twice the value of the underlying transaction.”
The clear intent of the Treasury letter and the legislation that it represents is to prevent American writers and journalists from contributing to foreign websites and publications if those sites and journals are critical of United States policies. The threat of a grossly punitive fine is a warning that one will be bankrupted or even imprisoned if the letter is ignored, which is lawfare at its most effective. It would appear that all of the US-based journalists involved have therefore cut their ties with SCF.
I would make several observations regarding this blatant move to eliminate or at least control freedom of speech in the United States. First, I would invite readers to go to the SCF site, where one will find numerous highly respectable international journalists and writers, including a number of former senior diplomats. Second, as a former intelligence officer who actually ran media operations for CIA in Europe and the Middle East, I absolutely reject the description of SCF as an intelligence front. Intelligence operations are based on absolute control of the agents by the directing authority, which would mean that SCF stories would have had to be scripted and designed to influence opinion in a certain way. I contributed to SCF a weekly column for nearly three years and no one ever suggested that I write on a certain subject or slant the reporting. I always went for the best story. That kind of freedom is not how an intelligence agency operates, which is a point I also made to the FBI couriers.
Finally, I would observe that the real damage is being done through the employment of government driven lawfare against ordinary citizens who are exercising their right of free speech. It is easy to claim that a foreign news service is “undermining confidence in US elections” as it is a charge that one need not have to prove. Indeed, it is unprovable and it is a weapon that can be used to manage dissent and to narrow the bounds of acceptable discourse. And it serves to cover up an unpleasant reality, which is that American elections have been tainted by the actions of two groups referred to as the Democrats and the Republicans aided by a lickspittle media, not by someone sitting in an office somewhere in the Kremlin.
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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
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There seems to be little effort to hide the fact that the Biden Administration does not plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison in his first term as he once declared. That pledge is but a whisper on the wind, much like the promises made by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama. According to a recent New York Times report by Carol Rosenberg, who has been been covering the infamous GTMO for the 20 years since it opened, the military is building a new, secret courtroom on the premises — which won’t be completed until 2023.
It’s hard to say what is the most disturbing thread in her report, which came out right before the New Year and of course made no waves. (It must be quite difficult to dedicate one’s journalistic career to an issue that most Americans have lost all interest in. The torture and detention of other human beings without charge appeared to go out with the government spying illegally on Americans — no one seems to care) According to Rosenberg, the military is building a second courtroom to handle more than one case simultaneously, as the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks is still going on. That sort of sounds legit considering there are five others at the prison today charged and awaiting trials, too. However, she points out, this new courtroom will have no gallery for visitors, with proceedings broadcast for journalists and observers on closed circuit with a 40 second delay in a remote room so judges can cut off anything “classified” said during trials:
Only people with a secret clearance, such as members of the intelligence community and specially cleared guards and lawyers, will be allowed inside the new chamber.
As a workaround, the court staff is designing a “virtual gallery with multiple camera angles simultaneously displayed,” said Ron Flesvig, a spokesman for the Office of Military Commissions. The public would be escorted there to watch the proceedings, streamed on a 40-second delay.
During recesses in the current courtroom, lawyers and other court participants often engage with reporters and relatives of victims of terror attacks, routine contact that would be lost with the “virtual gallery.” So would the ability for a sketch artist to observe the proceedings live.
“I’ve observed trial proceedings in person at Guantánamo. The chipper ‘secrecy’ imposed by the military is insulting, anti-democratic, and cowardly,” tweeted Michael Bronner, producer of the 2021 film The Mauritanian, which portrays the plight of GTMO detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi (incidentally, the former 14-year prisoner spoke at a special Quincy Institute panel on June 8 on the subject of the facility’s closure). “The entire enterprise makes a mockery out of what the US pretends to stand for,” added Bronner.
Rosenberg said this was the latest in a serious of moves to make the court and the prison itself less transparent to the public:
For example, for 17 years the military routinely took visiting journalists to the detention facilities where most captives are kept, but required them to delete photographs that showed cameras, gates and other security procedures. Then, the military undertook a consolidation that moved Mr. (Khalid Sheikh) Mohammed and other detainees who were held by the C.I.A. from a secret site to the maximum-security portion of those once showcase facilities — and declared the entire detention zone off limits to journalists.
Their empty, formerly C.I.A.-controlled prison is off limits to reporters too. Defense lawyers who are seeking a preservation order on the site describe it as a rapidly deteriorating facility that was clearly unfit for the prisoners and their guards. One military lawyer who visited there recently described carcasses of dead tarantulas in the empty cellblocks.
The other obvious disturbing angle is that despite earlier reports that the Biden Administration was “quietly moving to close the prison,” Rosenberg’s report indicates no such thing. Either they have hit a brick wall with Congress and/or those efforts have been suspended, but as I wrote in October, even those prisoners cleared for release have zero-to-no chance of getting out anytime soon. Currently there are 27 men at the scrubby island base who are not charged with any crime and/or awaiting repatriation (compared to the 10 awaiting trail and two already convicted). The administration and military rules have made it virtually impossible for the men who have been cleared to be placed in another country at this point.
To be fair, Congress has shown no willingness to budge on the issue of trying the charged in federal courts, even though we know they would be just as secure, cost the taxpayer less, and adjudicate faster. However, that does not explain why they are making it less transparent, and why there has been no progress on resolving the abomination of keeping 27 souls locked away indefinitely without charge. The administration points to the elaborate legal process set up by the military tribunal system, but that is not enough. Moral courage is in order here, and it seems this administration has as much as any of its predecessors in this regard. Very little.
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U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty ruled Saturday that the Biden administration unconstitutionally bypassed Congress when ordering workers in Head Start programs to take the injection by Jan. 31, and for students 2 years or older to be masked indoors and outdoors.
“If the Executive branch is allowed to usurp the power of the Legislative branch to make laws, then this country is no longer a democracy — it is a monarchy,” Doughty wrote.
“This two-year pandemic has fatigued the entire country. However, this is not an excuse to forego the separation of powers,” Doughty, an appointee of then-President Donald Trump, continued. “If the walls of separation fall, the system of checks and balances created by the founders of this country will be destroyed.”
“In the words of Thomas Paine, ‘Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.’ Common Sense (1776). This issue will certainly be decided by a higher court than this one. This issue is important. The separation of powers has never been so thin,” he concluded.
The ruling applies to a lawsuit from 24 states: Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall praised the ruling in a news release, calling Biden’s effort to mask children “nonsensical and damaging.”
“This victory will help ensure that numerous Head Start programs will continue to operate rather than have to fire teachers and cut back services to children,” Marshall wrote. “And this win will forestall the nonsensical and damaging practice of forcing masks on two-year-olds.”
Separately, a Texas judge issued a similar ruling for the Head Start program in the Lone Star State on Friday, calling Biden’s mandate “arbitrary and capricious.”
The judgement comes after a series of major legal defeats for Biden in his crusade to impose vaccines on all Americans, which will be soon taken up by the Supreme Court.
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January 5th, 2022 by Physicians for Informed Consent
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1. There is a 65% increased risk of non-flu respiratory illness in populations that get the flu vaccine.
Although some studies suggest positive effects of the flu vaccine on the incidence of illness caused by flu viruses, that benefit is potentially outweighed by the negative effects of the flu vaccine on the incidence of non-flu respiratory illness.1To address the concern among patients that the flu vaccine causes illness (i.e., acute respiratory illness), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded a three-year study,2 published in Vaccine, to analyze the risk of illness after flu vaccination compared to the risk of illness in unvaccinated individuals.
The study, which included healthy subjects, found a 65% increased risk of non-flu acute respiratory illness within 14 days of receiving the flu vaccine. The authors state, “Patients’ experiences of illness after vaccination may be validated by these results.” The most common non-flu pathogens found were rhinovirus, enterovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, and coronaviruses.
This is important because although flu vaccines target three or four strains of flu virus,3 over 200 different viruses cause illnesses that produce the same symptoms—fever, headache, aches, pains, cough, and runny nose—as influenza,4 and more than 85% of acute respiratory illnesses do not involve the flu.5
2. Studies show the flu vaccine doesn’t reduce demand on hospitals.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) funded a study6 to measure the effect of seasonal influenza vaccination on hospitalization among the elderly. The study analyzed 170 million episodes of medical care and found that “no evidence indicated that vaccination reduced hospitalizations.”
In addition, a 2018 Cochrane review7 of 52 clinical trials assessing the effectiveness of influenza vaccines did not find a significant difference in hospitalizations between vaccinated and unvaccinated adults. Instead, the reviewers found “low-certainty evidence that hospitalization rates and time off work may be comparable between vaccinated and unvaccinated adults.”
Furthermore, the Mayo Clinic conducted a case-control study8 to analyze the effectiveness of the trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) in preventing flu hospitalization in children 6 months to 18 years old. The study evaluated the risk of hospitalization in both vaccinated and unvaccinated children over an eight-year period. The authors state: “TIV is not effective in preventing laboratory-confirmed influenza-related hospitalization in children.” Instead, “[W]e found a threefold increased risk of hospitalization in subjects who did get the TIV vaccine.”
3. Studies show the flu vaccine doesn’t prevent the spread of the flu.
Households are thought to play a major role in community spread of influenza, and there has been a long history of analyzing family households to study the incidence and transmission of respiratory illnesses of all severities. As such, the CDC funded a study9 of 1,441 participants, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, in 328 households. The study evaluated the flu vaccine’s ability to prevent community-acquired influenza (household index cases) and influenza acquired in people with confirmed household exposure to the flu (secondary cases). Transmission risks were determined and characterized.
In conclusion, the authors state: “There was no evidence that vaccination prevented household transmission once influenza was introduced.”9,10
Furthermore, a systematic review5 of 50 influenza vaccine studies conducted for the Cochrane Library states: “Influenza vaccines have a modest effect in reducing influenza symptoms and working days lost. There is no evidence that they affect complications, such as pneumonia, or transmission.”
4. The flu vaccine fails to prevent the flu about 65% of the time.
The CDC conducts studies to assess the effects of flu vaccination each flu season to help determine if flu vaccines are working as intended.11 As circulating flu viruses are constantly changing (primarily due to antigenic drift mutations),12 flu vaccines are reformulated regularly based on a “best guess” of which viruses might circulate during the coming flu season.3 The CDC states: “CDC monitors vaccine effectiveness annually through the Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness (VE) Network, a collaboration with participating institutions in five geographic locations… [A]nnual estimates of vaccine effectiveness give a real-world look at how well the vaccine protects against influenza caused by circulating viruses each season.”13
Data from the CDC’s Influenza VE Network indicate a 65% vaccine failure rate between 2014 and 2018 (Fig. 1).11
5. Repeat doses of the flu vaccine may increase the risk of flu vaccine failure.
Studies have observed that influenza vaccines have low effectiveness in individuals who are vaccinated in two consecutive years.9 A review of 17 influenza vaccine studies published in Expert Review of Vaccines states, “The effects of repeated annual vaccination on individual long-term protection, population immunity, and virus evolution remain largely unknown.”14
6. Death from influenza is rare in children.
Before the widespread use of the influenza vaccine in children, between 2000 and 2003, each year kids age 18 and younger had about 1 in 1.26 million or 0.00008% chance of dying from the flu.15 In a 2004 report, the CDC stated, “Deaths from influenza are uncommon among children with and without high-risk conditions.”16
7. Studies show the flu vaccine doesn’t reduce deaths from pneumonia and flu.
The National Vaccine Program Office, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), funded a study17 to examine flu mortality over the period of 33 years (1968–2001). The study found no decrease in flu mortality associated with the widespread use of the influenza vaccine. The authors state: “We could not correlate increasing vaccination coverage after 1980 with declining mortality rates in any age group… [W]e conclude that observational studies substantially overestimate vaccination benefit.”
Furthermore, the National Institute of Health (NIH) funded a study6 to measure the effect of seasonal influenza vaccination on mortality among the elderly. The study analyzed 7.6 million deaths and found “a sharp increase in influenza vaccination rates at age 65 years with no matching decrease in hospitalization or mortality rates.”
8. Studies show patients don’t benefit from the vaccination of healthcare workers.
A review18 of more than 30 influenza vaccine studies conducted for the Cochrane Library states, “Our review findings have not identified conclusive evidence of benefit of HCW [healthcare workers] vaccination programs on specific outcomes of laboratory-proven influenza, its complications (lower respiratory tract infection, hospitalization or death due to lower respiratory tract illness), or all cause mortality in people over the age of 60.” The authors conclude, “This review does not provide reasonable evidence to support the vaccination of healthcare workers to prevent influenza.” In addition, “There is little evidence to justify medical care and public health practitioners mandating influenza vaccination for healthcare workers.”
9. Flu vaccine mandates are not science-based.
A Cochrane Vaccines Field analysis19 evaluated studies measuring the benefits of flu vaccination. The analysis, published in the BMJ, concludes: “The large gap between policy and what the data tell us (when rigorously assembled and evaluated) is surprising… Evidence from systematic reviews shows that inactivated vaccines have little or no effect on the effects measured… Reasons for the current gap between policy and evidence are unclear, but given the huge resources involved, a re-evaluation should be urgently undertaken.”
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Notes
Dierig A, Heron LG, Lambert SB, Yin JK, Leask J, Chow MY, Sloots TP, Nissen MD, Ridda I, Booy R. Epidemiology of respiratory viral infections in children enrolled in a study of influenza vaccine effectiveness. Influenza Other Respir Viruses. 2014 May;8(3):293-301. Epub 2014 Jan 31.
Rikin S, Jia H, Vargas CY, Castellanos de Belliard Y, Reed C, LaRussa P, Larson EL, Saiman L, Stockwell MS. Assessment of temporally related acute respiratory illness following influenza vaccination. Vaccine. 2018 Apr 5;36(15):1958-64.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Selecting viruses for the seasonal influenza vaccine; [cited 2020 Aug 17]. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/vaccine-selection.htm.
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Demicheli V, Jefferson T, Ferroni E, Rivetti A, Di Pietrantonj C. Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2018 Feb 1;2(2):CD001269.
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During a telephone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, US President Joe Biden promised that his country and its allies would give a decisive response to any “invasion” attempt by Russia and reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. The two leaders expressed support for simultaneous diplomatic efforts at the upcoming bilateral dialogue on strategic stability through the mechanisms of the NATO-Russia Council and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Biden also stressed the commitment of the US and its allies to the principle of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”
Negotiations on security guarantees will take place in Geneva on January 9-10 with the participation of Russia and the US and in Vienna on January 13 with the participation of Moscow and the OSCE. Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin will monitor their progress and give instructions to the negotiating teams, with both presidents’ hoping to enable a new era in Russo-American relations, according to their own visions of course.
However, Biden’s strong diplomatic commitment to Ukraine comes as authorities in Kiev decided to stop the water supply to the Luhansk Peoples Republic from filtering stations due to a supposed accident. It is noted that the water supply was stopped on the evening of January 2 for supposed damage to the main water pipe from the filtering station. As a result, water practically ceased to flow to the cities and oblasts of Perevalsky, Alchevsk, Bryanka, Kirovsk, Stakhanov and Pervomaisk.
Earlier, the deputy of the People’s Council of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Vladislav Berdichevsky, said that Ukraine could poison the drinking water that comes to the Donbass region from territories controlled by Kiev’s military forces.
Meanwhile, Ukraine will be forced to steal Russian gas from the transit stream if Naftogaz does not provide sufficient imports and reserves, according to Andrei Kobolev, the former head of the state-owned and largest Ukrainian national oil and gas company. In his opinion, gas consumption in Ukraine will reach the indicators of February 2020. In this case, Naftogaz will not be able to cover the demand due to the deficit of imports from the European Union.
Kobolev predicted that with this development, Russia would stop transit through Ukraine and immediately terminate the current contract. This would mean that Kiev will lose billions of dollars in transit fees. He added that this would speed up the launch of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and encourage Gazprom to abandon Ukrainian transit with the “tacit consent” of Western countries.
Earlier on January 3, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin said that Russia is not obliged to supply all of Europe’s gas through Ukraine. On the morning of January 3, it was reported that the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine to Slovakia dropped sharply again – on January 2, it fell by almost 30%.
It is likely that Biden will attempt to weaponize the current gas flow situation to try and gain concessions from Russia during the negotiation process. However, as Biden portrays himself as a champion of human rights, he too will face pressure from the Russian side as his Ukrainian allies continue to violate international law by cutting the supply of water to civilians in Donbass.
In this way, although Zelensky secured US support in the unlikely event that Russia invades Ukraine, something that Moscow has stressed it has no interest in, he has put Biden in an awkward situation as his negotiation team will be forced to answer why Washington’s great ally is continually violating international law against Donbass civilians.
It is recalled that Kiev again violated the provisions of the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes in August 2021 by cutting the supply of water to Crimea. Therefore, the weaponization of water, in violation of international law and human rights, is a consistent strategy employed by Kiev against Donbass and Crimea, something that Biden’s negotiation team will struggle to defend during their discussions with the Russian side, and something that actually puts them in a weaker position in terms of postulating morality.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
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La Nato si dichiara preoccupata per la crisi in Libia, che «ha dirette implicazioni per la stabilità regionale e la sicurezza di tutti gli Alleati». Assicura quindi che «resta impegnata a fornire consiglio alla Libia per la difesa e la sicurezza». I governi di Usa, Francia, Germania, Italia e Regno Unito dichiarano che «elezioni libere permetteranno al popolo libico di rafforzare la propria sovranità» e di essere «pronti a chiedere conto a coloro che minacciano la stabilità della Libia». Riaffermano quindi «il pieno rispetto e impegno per la sovranità e l’indipendenza della Libia».
Solenni parole pronunciate dalle stesse potenze che, dopo aver demolito negli anni Novanta la Jugoslavia disgregandola dall’interno e attaccandola dall’esterno, con la stessa tecnica demolirono nel 2011 lo Stato libico. Prima finanziarono e armarono all’interno settori tribali e gruppi islamici ostili al governo, e infiltrarono forze speciali in particolare qatariane, per far divampare gli scontri armati. Quindi lo attaccarono dall’esterno: in sette mesi, l’aviazione Usa/Nato effettuò 30 mila missioni, di cui 10 mila di attacco, con oltre 40 mila bombe e missili. Alla guerra – diretta dagli Stati uniti, prima tramite il Comando Africa, quindi tramite la Nato sotto comando Usa – partecipò l’Italia con 7 basi aeree, cacciabombardieri e una portaerei.
Veniva così demolito quello Stato africano che – documentava nel 2010 la Banca Mondiale – aveva «alti livelli di crescita economica e sviluppo umano», Vi trovavano lavoro circa due milioni di immigrati, per lo più africani. Grazie all’export energetico, lo Stato libico aveva investito all’estero circa 150 miliardi di dollari. Gli investimenti libici in Africa erano determinanti per il progetto dell’Unione Africana di creare propri organismi finanziari, un mercato comune e una moneta unica dell’Africa. Le email della segretaria di Stato dell’Amministrazione Obama, Hillary Clinton, portate alla luce successivamente da WikiLeaks, dimostrano che Stati uniti e Francia volevano eliminare Gheddafi prima che usasse le riserve auree della Libia per creare una moneta pan-africana alternativa al dollaro e al franco Cfa (moneta imposta dalla Francia a 14 ex colonie). Prima che entrassero in azione i bombardieri, entrarono in azione le banche: sequestrarono i 150 miliardi di dollari investiti all’estero dallo Stato libico, di cui poi è sparita la maggior parte, bloccando in tal modo l’intero progetto africano.
Tutto questo viene cancellato nella narrazione politico-mediatica della crisi libica, permettendo ai principali responsabili della catastrofe sociale provocata dalla guerra alla Libia di presentarsi come suoi salvatori. Oggi in Libia gli introiti dell’export energetico vengono accaparrati da milizie e multinazionali. Grandi quantità di petrolio libico vengono vendute a paesi dell’Unione europea, tramite società maltesi che le riciclano camuffandone la provenienza. Il tenore di vita della popolazione è crollato. La Libia è divenuta la principale via di transito di un caotico flusso migratorio che ha provocato più vittime della guerra del 2011. Secondo i dati dell’Oim, sono annegati nel Mediterraneo nel 2021 circa 1.500 migranti, ma certamente sono di più dato che molti casi non sono segnalati.
Circa 30 mila migranti, nel 2021, sono stati intercettati in mare e riportati in Libia dalla Guardia costiera «libica», creata, addestrata e finanziata dall’Italia con 33 milioni di euro. Molti sono finiti in centri di detenzione sia del «governo» di Tripoli che delle milizie. Sono oggi intrappolati in Libia oltre 600 mila migranti di circa 45 nazionalità, praticamente ridotti in stato di schiavitù, costretti a lavorare senza paga e picchiati. Sempre più numerosi sono quelli che chiedono non di essere portati in Europa, ma di tornare nei propri paesi per sfuggire a tale condizione. Particolarmente drammatica è quella delle giovani donne, vendute all’asta, violentate e costrette alla prostituzione.
Tutto questo grazie all’operazione «Protettore Unificato» che, informa il Ministero della Difesa, fu effettuata dalla Nato nel 2011 per «la protezione dei civili in Libia».
The US is faced with a long list of hot-spots and tensions. Beginning with the situation in Iraq, where the Parliament has asked the US troops to leave. However, the US has refused a withdrawal, and instead has announced the 2,500 soldiers will be kept on the ground, but in a support mission, not combat.
The tensions between the US and Russia are at the boiling point as Washington threatens, but President Putin replies, “We didn’t come to the US or UK borders, no, they came to ours,” he said recently.
Presidents of the US and China held a virtual meeting, but did not make headway in resolving lingering US-China trade war disputes. Trump started a trade war in 2018 which has resulted in both nations paying higher taxes to bring in goods from the opposing country.
The US and other western powers have been meeting with Iranian officials concerning renewal of the Iran nuclear deal cancelled by Trump. Iran says the removal of sanctions is a fundamental priority, and it is not clear if the US will accept those terms.
Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Max Parry to gain some insight into these situations which are headlines in the international news.
Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst based in New York. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media, including the Center for Research on Globalization, the Unz Review, Dissident Voice, and the Greanville Post where he serves as an associate editor. He frequently appears as a political commentator for Sputnik News and Press TV.
Steven Sahiounie (SS): The US military is pulling out of Iraq. In your opinion, is the Iraqi military capable of preventing an ISIS resurgence?
Max Parry (MP): First of all, the timetable for the expected drawdown of coalition troops from Iraq is still up in the air. Until now apparently, the resolution passed by the Iraqi parliament following the Soleimani assassination was completely disregarded by Washington.
Initially, the ostensible reason for the protracted reentry of foreign forces in the country was to combat Daesh (editor’s note ISIS) and that pretext for the US-led combat mission expired nearly four years ago, yet coalition forces still remain. Given the historical precedent set by American foreign policy, part of me tends to agree with the pessimistic fears that the announcement by senior US and Iraqi officials of the transition to an “advisory role” is likely just another cosmetic facelift for a continued U.S. occupation. While to some extent I am cynical that Washington has any real intention of withdrawing, the recent developments in Afghanistan arguably marked a turning point for waning US influence in the region so perhaps it is a real pullout of boots on the ground in Iraq after all.
I would note that the resurgence of Daesh, which had been mostly eliminated at the hands of the Iraqi PMU in the areas under its control unlike the former caliphate territory under U.S. occupation, began shortly after the inauguration of Joe Biden earlier this year. It also seems like whenever there is any inkling the US is going to leave the country, an ISIS terrorist attack conveniently occurs (never against the US bases though curiously) and gives the perfect excuse for Washington to remain.
Meanwhile, the U.S. frequently serves as the air force on behalf of the remnants of Daesh by targeting the PMU even as they are fighting ISIS across the border in Syria. At the end of the day, the U.S. uses Daesh as a strategic asset in the region to dominate countries like Iraq and the only hope for ISIS to be eliminated lies with the PMU, not al-Kadhimi and the Iraqi government which essentially allowed the U.S. to murder Soleimani and al-Muhandis on its territory and continuously provokes the Popular Mobilization Forces.
2. SS: The US/EU political pressure on Russia is increasing. In your opinion, how will Moscow react to this pressure?
MP: The source of the tensions between the US/EU and Moscow is the absence of a security guarantee rightfully demanded by the latter from the West, Ukraine and NATO which are leaving Russia with little choice but to take a hard line against their provocations. It is Washington which has continuously withdrawn from arms reduction treaties and NATO that has enlarged eastward despite informal pledges not to expand made to the Kremlin at the end of the Cold War. Russia has no choice but to interpret this encirclement and unfriendly course of action as hostile.
I think we could see in Ukraine what we saw in Georgia back in 2008, one of the shortest conflicts in the history of warfare, where US and Israeli-backed Georgia provoked Russia by shelling civilians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. I believe the same kind of war crimes could occur in Donbass with Ukraine provoking Russia by escalating the conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk. After all, the Russian troop buildup on its border was triggered by Ukrainian President Zelensky’s decree stating Kiev’s intentions to retake Crimea from Russia and Donbass from the Russian-speaking separatists. I do not believe NATO is suicidal enough to directly attack Russia but I do see a potential hot war brewing between Ukraine and Russia with the West using Kiev as a cat’s paw for imperialism against Moscow.
3. SS: The Biden administration is in an economic war with China. How will this economic tension reflect on the world economy?
MP: Fundamentally, if you take a close look at Biden’s Built Back Better initiative and legislation, on a geopolitical level it is basically a counter to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project.
For example, its framework weaponizes the issue of climate change as means to single out China and the New Silk Roads to be punished by economic warfare, namely in the form of sanctions. The U.S. geostrategy is clearly dead set on containing China’s infrastructure development and investment of the global south. Meanwhile, at the G7, the World Economic Forum, and these other Western financial institutions we’ve seen them adopt this “Build Back Better” slogan in coordinated unison for the so-called “Great Reset” or Fourth Industrial Revolution, as some call it, in the wake of the pandemic.
We can see how the US-China trade war is playing out in the realm of big tech, with the success of TikTok and U.S. attempts to designate it a threat to national security. Not to mention, there were the sanctions on Huawei. This is because China is on pace to overtake the U.S. as the preeminent country in the world not just economically but geopolitically in the next ten years and this conflict is taking shape in every aspect of the world economy. The U.S. is desperate to halt the rise of Beijing in the global arena because while it has depleted trillions from the Treasury on endless wars and wasteful military spending, domestically it has been de-industrialized and outsourced virtually all of its manufacturing overseas since the 1970s. We are truly witnessing the emergence of a multipolar world and I believe these efforts by the U.S. to keep pace with China were not made soon enough to make any difference.
4. SS: Will the Zionist Lobby in the US be successful in preventing a new nuclear deal with Iran?
MP: I don’t believe the United States is committed to a return to the JCPOA under Biden. Iran has made it abundantly clear the U.S. must lift all sanctions imposed since 2018 after the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the agreement. Biden has been in office nearly a year and has had ample time to make good on his campaign pledge, the ball has been in his court. Instead, we’ve only seen Washington demand further concessions from Iran regarding ballistic missiles, for example, if the agreement is to be re-implemented.
The Zionist lobby tried to sabotage the non-proliferation framework from being adopted and was instrumental in Trump’s move to kill the deal in total violation of international law. While AIPAC’s powerful influence over Washington obviously remains under the Democrats, Biden seems more concerned with using the abandonment of the JCPOA as a political football to score points against Trump and the GOP rather than follow through on returning to what was considered a foreign policy victory under Obama. I foresee a crisis coming to a head between the US and Israel which has become a pariah and total PR disaster for the U.S. where the tide of public opinion domestically is starting to turn against the Zionist entity. That said, I think we are still some ways away from any South Africa-like moment for the Palestinians, unfortunately.
5. SS: Is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project operational? How is this affecting the relationship between Russia and the EU?
MP: Construction of the pipeline was completed but it is not yet operational, awaiting certification from Germany’s energy regulator. This has huge implications for EU-Russia relations and for the Ukraine crisis, as Ukraine is a transit country economically reliant on gas transit feeds the new pipeline would bypass. The US would also be impacted because its economic foothold in Europe would be reduced. In the midst of this, the EU and US are accusing Russia of using the pipeline and its supply of natural gas to Europe to its advantage. These factors are all behind what is driving the crisis in Ukraine and the NATO provocations in the Black Sea against Russia.
In this incisive article first published on May 1, 2020, Peter Koenig foresaw what is now unfolding before our very eyes.
***
First comes the farce, an (almost) universal government lie around the globe about a deadly virus, WHO named COVID-19. The decision for a global lockdown – literally for the collapse of the world economy – was already taken at the WEF conference in Davos, 21 – 24 January 2020. On January 30, WHO declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). At that time, there were only 150 known COVID-19 cases outside of China. No reason whatsoever to declare a pandemic. On March 11, Dr. Tedros, DG of WHO converted the PHEIC into a pandemic. This gave the green light for the start if implementing “The Plan”.
The pandemic was needed as a pretext to halt and collapse the world economy and the underlying social fabric.
There is no coincidence. There were a number of preparatory events, all pointing into the direction of aworldwide monumental historic disaster. It started at least 10 years ago – probably considerably earlier – with the infamous 2010 Rockefeller Report, which painted the first phase of a monstrous Plan, called the “Lock Step” scenario. Among the last preparatory moves for the “pandemic” was Event 201, held in NYC on 18 October 2019.
The event was sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the World Economic Forum (WEF), the club of the rich and powerful that meets every January in Davos, Switzerland. Participating were a number of pharmaceuticals (vaccine interest groups), as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s of the US and – of China.
One of the objectives of Event 201 was a computer simulation of a corona virus pandemic. The simulated virus was called 2019-nCoV. The simulation results were disastrous, killing 65 million people in 18 months and plunging the stock market by more than 30% — causing untold unemployment and bankruptcies. Precisely the scenario of which we are now living the beginning.
The Lock Step scenario foresees a number of ghastly and disturbing events or components of The Plan to be implemented by the so called Agenda ID2020, a Bill Gates creation, fully integrated into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) – target date for completion – 2030 (also called Agenda 2030, the hidden agenda unknown to most of the UN members), the same target date for completion of the Agenda ID02020.
Here, just the key elements as a precursor to what the world is living now, and what is to come, if we don’t stop it – to demonstrate how this entirely criminal sham has been planned. Parts of the scenario are:
A massive vaccination program, probably through compulsory vaccination – Bill Gates’ dream and brainchild is vaccinating 7 billion people.
Massive population reduction, a eugenics plan – in part through vaccination and other means (Ref. Bill Gates, “if we are doing a real good job vaccinating, we may reduce the world population by 10% to 15%”. See “Innovating to Zero!”, speech to the TED2010 annual conference, Long Beach, California, February 18, 2010).
Bill Gates has been advocating for years the need for a massive population reduction – and indeed the more than 20 years of the BMGF’s extensive vaccination programs in Africa, India and other places around the world have seen a record of involuntary sterilization of women between 14 and 49 years. See In 2014 and 2015 Kenya carried out a massive tetanus vaccination program, sponsored by WHO and UNICEF.
An electronic ID for every person on the planet – in the form of a nano chip, possibly injected along with the mandatory vaccination. This nano-chip could be remotely uploaded with all personal data.
Digitized money, no more cash.
Universal rolling out of 5G, later to be followed by 6G.
This is leading to a total control of every individuum on the planet. It is sold to the public as the Internet of Things (TIT), meaning self-driving cars, robotized kitchen equipment, artificial intelligence (AI) for the production and delivery of everything. What the sales pitch doesn’t say, is how humans would be marginalized and enslaved. To carry this masterplan forward, high frequency electromagnet waves are needed. Therefore, rolling out of 5G is a must, no matter what the health impact on humans, fauna and flora may be – and no matter how it may influence viral infections, like possibly the current COVID19.
WHO remains silent, although they do admit that no independent official study has been carried out on the dangers of 5G – and electromagnetic fields in general. Does that mean that WHO is coopted by the Big and Powerful into this deadly spiel? – Let it suffice to say that unlike other UN agencies, WHO was created in 1948 by the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) – see The Lancet. It might be also noteworthy that about half of WHOs budget comes from private interest sources, mostly the pharma industry, but also others, like telecom giants.
This is a precursor for understanding how things are being planned. It may help connecting the dots for what is coming.
It may also help us understand what is happening right now, in the first phase of the Lock Step scenario. It portrays in vivid colors the criminal nature of the Dark Deep State.
Never mind the stock market crash – that’s a speculator’s syndrome, rich people’s risks, as the stock market is a western invention to play with capital and capital gains to the detriment of the workers, whose lives depend on working that capital. They are the first ones to go, when Big Money calls for a merger – or a bankruptcy.
Now the almost universal and justified by NOTHING quarantine, total lockdown of every business, small or big – restaurants, construction, tourism, little and big hardware stores, bakeries, air lines, transport – interrupted supply chains – factories, food processing – and it goes on and on.
In the Global North some up to 90% of business transactions are emanating from small and medium size enterprises (SME). Almost all of them are closed now. Two thirds or more of them may never open again. Employees and workers are laid off, or are reduced to part-time work, meaning part-time pay – but still need to sustain their families. Poverty and desperation set in and becomes rampant. No future in sight. Suicide rates will rise – see Greece in the 2008 / 2009 crisis – and up to ten years later – broken families, foreclosures, families expulsed from rental apartments because they can no longer pay their rents. Street begging becomes normal, except there is nobody left to spare a dime.
In Europe at least a third to maybe 50% or more of the work force – depending on the country and structure of the labor force – is expected to be unemployed or will be reduced to part time work. And that’s only the beginning. In the US official unemployment figures are as of this writing in excess of 23 million – and are expected, by predictions of the FED, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg -to reach between 32% and 40% in the next quarter. Bankruptcies may spin out of control.
The IMF predicts for 2020 a worldwide economic contraction of a mere 3% – and a small growth rate in the latter part of 2021. How utterly ridiculous! – What planet are these people on? Whom are they trying to fool, and why? Perhaps to encourage countries to borrow huge amounts of foreign exchange from these predatory Bretton Woods institutions, IMF and World Bank – to get deeply into debt, thinking with IMF predictions they will be fine? – Further enslavement by deceit?
This is the Global North – which has some kind of social safety nets, whatever flimsy they may be – there is a sliver of hope for relief. Another sliver of hope is built on the premises that mankind will be constantly creating – working ingeniously inventing -moving forward flowing like a river towards new horizons, creating new dynamics, new jobs… yes, that’s what mankind can do – and in our comfort we have forgotten this virtue – an essential virtue for survival – survival of the corona crisis.
The Global South – or developing countries – presents a grimmer story. Under normal circumstances a third to half of the economy is informal, meaning not tight to any norm of formal or legal organization. They are short-term workers, daily, hourly laborers – living from hand-to-mouth, no savings, no safety nets- and in most cases no health coverage. They are left to the whims of the “market”, literally. Now the market collapsed.
There is nothing left. No work, no income, no money to pay for food, rent, medication – and the government orders them, the deprived poverty-stricken, to stay ‘home’ – ‘lockdown’ in quarantine – to protect themselves from a virus, an imposed virus that nobody sees, but the government and the media make sure you are aware – and SCARED – of its dangers, you never know whether true or false.
Confinement at ”home”? – Where is home? Home is gone. No money to pay rent. Keep social distance – don’t get together. Stay apart. The infection could spread. Fear is of the essence.
Take a city like Lima, Peru. Peru’s total population about 30 million. Lima, about eleven million – of which some 3 to 4 million live on the margins or below – in shantytowns, or worse. Daily, or hourly laborers. They live sometimes hours away from their work place. Now, there is no workplace anymore. They have no money to pay for food, transport or rent – landlords put them in streets, expel them from their properties. How can they stay in confinement? How can they take care of themselves by quarantine – lockdown – having no shelter, no food – desperately looking to earn just enough money to survive another day – and perhaps to share with their families? They can’t.
Lockdown-protection (sic-sic) is only for the rich. The poor they starve with kids and families – and quite possibly with the corona disease. They live within the circles of poverty and misery, where there is nothing to spare. Nobody has anything. Not even in solidarity. There simply is nothing. Total deprivation, caused by a total economic standstill – forced upon the world and especially the poor by evil men – and perhaps also evil women.
These 3 to 4 or 5 million people, they all have come at one point or another from the rural provinces, for which the government does nothing, or not enough to keep them there. So, in search of a better life, they abandon their ‘çhacras’ (little plots of land) and move to the Big City – to paradise – where they are relegated to live in more misery than in their provincial meagre settlements. They endure – always with hope. Now this – the man-made corona crisis – has made life even worse, much worse for them. There are none or far from enough government handouts – or they come too late or get lost in corruption.
In solidarity they assemble. They need to get back to their provincial origins, to their çhacras, to their families – where they will get shelter and food, where they again may feel “home” and loved or at least welcome.
A dictatorial military style government prevents them from leaving – for security reasons, of course – they may infect other people, — the farse continues. And nobody says peep. Nobody dares, for fear of being locked away. Police brutality – sticks, tear gas – repression – back to no shelter – no food. Until the central almighty government decides to “organize” repatriation – by buses, but there is not enough capacity, nor organization – chaos emerges – and the lot gets worse – and how much worse can it get? Famine will strike, will make them weaker and weaker, more prone to diseases and to die – not fromCOVID19, but from famine. But as statistics go, MUST go, by orders of the Masters, such deaths will automatically be attributed to the corona pandemic. Naturally. It’s done elsewhere, in the Global North. Why not in the Global South?
Lima is just a case in point – Its representative probably for most of Latin America, except for Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba – where, in the midst of misery, there is still a sense of solidarity uniting the people – where the government stands with the people, yet, where people are more severely suffering, because of western sanctions – they are literally being murdered by western sanctions – foremost the US of A. A genocidal nation.
The New York Times (22 April 2020) reports, ‘Instead of Coronavirus, the Hunger Will Kill Us.’ A Global Food Crisis Looms. The world has never faced a hunger emergency like this, experts say. It could double the number of people facing acute hunger to 265 million by the end of this year.
Also, by the NYT –
“In Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya, residents already live in extreme poverty. Desperate to eat set off a stampede during a recent giveaway of flour and cooking oil, leaving scores injured and two people dead.”
“In India, thousands of workers are lining up twice a day for bread and fried vegetables to keep hunger at bay.”
“And across Colombia, poor households are hanging red clothing and flags from their windows and balconies as a sign that they are hungry.”
This reminds of the infamous Kissinger quote of the 1970s on famine,
“Who controls the food supply controls the people – the quote goes on saying,
“Who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”
Kissinger, like the Gates, the Rockefellers are “well meaning”: They have never made a secret of their desire to reduce the world population in a format that reminds one of eugenics, by “eradicating poverty”, for example through vaccination – starting in Africa.
Gates has recently suggested that he would try out his new corona vaccine in Africa – to which even his buddy, Dr. Tedros, the WHO Director General, protested.
The coronavirus pandemic has brought poverty and famine to millions of people around the world. And there is no end in sight.
To the contrary, it would seem that almost all governments are coopted or tacitly coerced into adhering to the “guidelines”.
It is both diabolical as well as beyond comprehension. Why? The “global elites” really believe that they are contributing to the future and well-being of humanity. Yet their actions have resulted in abject misery, unemployment and despair.
Without such coercive measures it could hardly be explained why almost all governments of the planet submit to this horrendous social and economic agenda – and lie, lie, abject lie – to their people. The very people they are supposed to protect against unemployment, famine and despair.
Under “normal” circumstances of our globe’s predatory inequality, some 9 million people die annually from hunger and famine-related diseases. This figure may now shoot up exponentially. Maybe into the tens of millions, or more.
Famine and death by famine could be further affected by artificially caused food shortages, or by droughts or floods – resulting from purposefully man-made climate change – not through the ludicrously touted CO2-caused temperature rise – but by the advanced US Air Force HAARP system (HAARP = High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program).
“offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary …
‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.”
Under the proposed Gates Foundation forced vaccination program – those who refuse vaccination, may, for example, not be able to travel.
The abject misery that is purposefully imposed upon mankind becomes ever more visible. Aside from wiping out people’s and business’ assets, it’s poverty and famine…
There is today no Nuremberg-type Tribunal, honest, ethical and powerful enough to hold the global elites accountable and bring them to justice.
We the people have to take the reign in this ongoing paradigm shift.
We the people, have to get out of this atrocious lockdown.
Not confrontational, but with wisdom and savvy. Letting the enemy’s ferocious forces strengthen our weakness – and make us overcome.
A good General doesn’t like aggression
A good warrior doesn’t know hate
If you want to conquer your enemy, don’t confront him.
Put yourself below him
This is called the power of not-fighting
This is using the ability of men
This is called since ancient times, to be in harmony with heaven,
And it is the greatest power there is (Tao 68)
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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Featured image: A woman wearing face mask walks in Damascus, Syria, March 24, 2020. | Photo: EFE
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At the beginning of January of 2021, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) officially launched its ambitious efforts to unify the economies within the African Union (AU) region.
The plans stemmed from discussions which extend as far back as the 1950s and 1960s when the early Pan-Africanists and socialists in independent states and burgeoning national liberation movements recognized the need for breaking the colonial bondage imposed by Europe and the United States.
These detrimental links to colonialism and imperialism could not be thoroughly broken without an economic base from which to assert genuine independence and sovereignty. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the founder and leader of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) which pioneered the liberation of the Gold Coast (Ghana), stated at the independence ceremonies on March 6, 1957, that the independence of this former British colony was meaningless unless it was connected to the total freedom of the African continent.
A series of symbolic and substantive initiatives occurred between 1958 and 1963 including the Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union; the alliance of anti-imperialists states labeled the Casablanca Group; the Conference of Independence African States; the All-African People’s Conference; and the eventual founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa. The OAU was transformed into the African Union between 1999 at the Sirte conference in Libya through 2002 when the transition was completed in Durban, South Africa.
Of course, Dr. Nkrumah during the years between 1945-1972, wrote extensively on the necessity of African unification. The union of African governments and people would encompass the national economies, the trade unions, youth, women, military institutions and the establishment of a continental market based in socialist planning.
The urgency under which Nkrumah and other Pan-Africanists and anti-imperialists acted during the 1950s and 1960s was met with the obstinance and obstructionism of the colonial and neo-colonial power centers in Western Europe and North America. Today there are 54 independent AU member-states on the continent while the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) remains in a valiant fight to gain independence from the Kingdom of Morocco. Yet the economic and consequent genuine political independence remains elusive.
The AfCFTA has its Secretariat based in Ghana, which served as the fountainhead of Pan-Africanism and national liberation between 1957-1966, when Dr. Nkrumah, the president, was overthrown in a military coup backed by the U.S. and other imperialist governments. Other national liberation movements in the former Portuguese colonies, Rhodesia, South Africa, and Namibia were compelled to take up arms in their struggle for independence.
Africa Renewal in a report on the activation of AfCFTA said of the situation that:
“The new market, created under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement is estimated to be as large as 1.3 billion people across Africa, with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of $3.4 trillion. This has a potential of lifting up to 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty, according to the World Bank. ‘This is not just a trade agreement, this is our hope for Africa to be lifted up from poverty,’ said Wamkele Mene, the Secretary-General of the AfCFTA Secretariat, at the virtual launch event. It is also expected to boost intra-African trade, promote industrialization, create job, and improve competitiveness of African industries on the global stage.”
These aspirations will not be met in the short term due to the ongoing structural impediments to African unification and development. The dependency on foreign exchange payments for raw materials, agricultural products and bilateral trade agreements with the imperialist states and institutions are designed for the benefit of the West. Consequently, a redirection of economic priorities is required to achieve economic growth that is qualitative and sustainable.
This same report from Africa Renewal reveals:
“The pact will also empower women by improving their access to trade opportunities. Women make up the largest share of informal traders, representing 70 per cent to 80 per cent in some countries. ‘Today is a historic day for Africa. In 1963 the founders of the Organization of African Unity had a vision of creating an Africa common market. The start of trading under the Africa continental free trade area today is an operational start towards the Africa common market. It has been a long journey of focus, determination and resilience,’ said Moussa Faki Mahamat, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, at the launch.”
However, there are other aspects which are critical to the success of the AfCFTA, that being the defense of African sovereignty amid the continuing legacy of imperialist plunder through enslavement, colonization and neo-colonialism. With the fracturing of nation-states, albeit inherited from the period of classical imperialist domination, represents a clear threat to the economic and social advancement of the majority of the 1.3 billion people. The AU needs greater political unity and efficacy to ensure that the societal underpinning necessary for market integration which can only be the logical outcome of the AfCFTA program.
Mozambique Security Crisis and the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
All along the Indian Ocean coast of East Africa there have been monumental discoveries of strategic energy resources over the last decade. From Somalia, to Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique, natural gas and petroleum deposits are to be found in abundance.
Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony for five centuries, has overcome a national liberation war, a civil war, only to be challenged in the present period with an insurgency which has halted a monumental liquified natural gas project in the Cabo Delgado province. Islamic rebels claiming to represent the interests of the local population have disrupted the extraction and production process while dislocating hundreds of thousands of people inside the country.
The 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) has been drawn into the conflict since the rebels represent a warning to the entire subcontinent. Southern African has been the most consistent in fostering regional unity and therefore serves as a model for the rest of the continent. Although several nations within SADC have deployed troops to northern Mozambique along with the Central-Eastern African state of Rwanda, the problems of destabilization have not been resolved.
Eyewitness News based in the Republic of South Africa said of the contemporary situation:
“Nearly 4,000 Mozambicans have fled their villages in a month due to intensifying jihadist attacks in Niassa, a province neighboring insurgency hotbed Cabo Delgado, a government official said Friday. Militants terrorizing the gas-rich northern Cabo Delgado province for the past four years have in recent weeks shifted their attacks to the west into Niassa. ‘There are 3,803 displaced so far. These are people who fled from areas targeted by attacks in Mecula district,’ Felismino Patricio, a government spokesman in Niassa province, told AFP by phone.
The latest displacements add to the more than 820,000 that have fled the insurgency in Cabo Delgado since 2017.”
These problems, which are by no means unique to the SADC region, require the attention of the AU and its Peace and Security Council (PSC). If the insurgency cannot be contained, it portends much for the future of similar development projects on the continent whether in the Horn of Africa, West Africa, the Northern region and the equally mineral-rich states of Central Africa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Chad. The indispensable demand for African wealth within the world economic system must become an asset rather than a grave liability for the people as the 21st century proceeds.
Climate Change and the Failure of Global Consensus
The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) took place during late October and early November amid a two-years resurgence in mass action globally to end environmental degradation and its concomitant socioeconomic consequences. Mozambique and the SADC region are not only battling the insurgency within Cabo Delgado they are facing renewed climate disasters such as Cyclone Idai and Kenneth.
Internal conflict and the cycle of underdevelopment further threatens the capacity of governments and the people to maintain social stability. Dislocations from imperialist-influenced conflicts are compounded by the failure of the industrialized capitalist states to curb the production and distribution of harmful toxins into the atmosphere. The deforestation of large swaths of territories not only destroys communities, it results in the weakening of the ability to reproduce the essentials of a national and regional economy.
The role of the U.S. and other western states in delaying the imposition of a cohesive international environmental policy based upon mandates and timelines, illustrates the necessity of challenging the existing global division of economic power and labor. The Pentagon is by far the world’s greatest polluter, yet these issues were not adequately addressed at COP26 and other forums related to the impact of climate change.
Consequently, Pan-African unification programs cannot ignore the struggle against imperialism and its various manifestations. The hegemony of the U.S., Britain, the EU and their allies around the planet must be removed as an obstacle to the well-being and social advancement of the majority.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)
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We bring to the attention of Global Research this important article (translated from German, minor edits by GR) by renowned author and geopolitical analyst Wolfgang Effenberger
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On Friday 3rd December 2021, the seventh round of the mentioned talks over the ongoing talks between Iran and the group 4+1 (Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) in Vienna has ended after five days of continued negotiations including two days for “sanctions removal working group” and “nuclear working group”.
Based on reports, Iran has delivered two documents to the group 4+1 containing Tehran’s conditions to pave the ground for further cooperation to settle both sides’ concerns. In response, representatives of the group 4+1 nations have preferred to go back to their capitals for more consultations.
History
On July 14, 2015, after years of persistent negotiations, the E3 (Germany, France, UK) +3 (US, Russia, China) and Iran were able to resolve the dangerous conflict over Iran’s nuclear program through negotiations with the Vienna Nuclear Agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPoA) – apparently a stellar moment for diplomacy (German foreign ministry ).
But only a few months later, in October 2014, the U.S. issued its long-term strategy paper entitled:
This important document highlighted so-called emerging threats from China, Russia the DPRK and Iran:
“While the United States must assess new and emerging threats, many current operational challenges will exist into the future. Harbingers of future conflict include competing powers (e.g., China and Russia), regional powers (e.g., Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)), transnational terrorist networks (e.g., al Qaida, its affiliates, and transnational criminals), and cyber threats. The following are examples only and illustrate a limited number of threats for which future Army forces must prepare.
China
China’s goal over time is to expand its influence to establish stability along its periphery.While China prefers to avoid direct confrontation with the U.S., it uses civilian assets to challenge actions such as U.S. surveillance flights. Moreover, China’s behavior has created friction with regional neighbors including U.S. allies and partners
Russia
Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and use of conventional and unconventional land forces in Ukraine suggest that Russia is determined to expand its territory and assert its power on the Eurasian landmass. Russia deployed and integrated a range of diplomatic, information, military, and economic means to conduct what some analysts have described as “non-linear” operations. Russia conducted operations to pursue its war aims below the threshold that would elicit a concerted North Atlantic Treaty Organization response. In addition, Russia used cyberspace capabilities and social media to influence perceptions at home and abroad and provide cover for large-scale military operations. While the long-term results of the incursion into Ukraine are not yet certain, Russia demonstrated the centrality of land forces in its effort to assert power and advance its interests in former Soviet states. Without a viable land force capable of opposing the Russian army and its irregular proxies, such adventurism is likely to continue undeterred.
Iran
Iran’s management of its nuclear aspirations will shape its role as a rising power in the Middle East. Iran, empowered by expanding sectarian conflicts in the greater Middle East, poses a hybrid threat to U.S. interests and allies in the region. As it continues to apply pressure on the region to erode and supplant U.S. power, Iran uses combinations of economic and diplomatic overtures with irregular forces to advance its interests. Iran develops partnerships with disenfranchised populations, religious factions, and criminal elements to create disorder focused on subverting the influence of the U.S. and partner nations. Iran avoids direct military confrontations while developing advanced capabilities and pursuing comprehensive military modernization. Iran’s modernization efforts include the use of automated systems on land, sea, and air; ballistic missiles; and the development of nuclear capability.“
In the meantime, the dangers arising from the rearmament and confrontation between the “West” (USA, NATO, EU) and Russia-China, are becoming increasingly evident.
Recent Developments: New Cold War Goes Hot
On November 8, 2021, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, the 56th U.S. Artillery Command was reactivated – a major United States Army unit based in the Mainz-Kastel district of the city of Wiesbaden, reporting to a two-star general.
The commander, Major General Stephen Maranian, stated on November 3, 2021:
“The reactivation of the 56th Artillery Command will provide U.S. forces in Europe and Africa with significant capabilities for multidomain operations… It will also enable synchronization of joint and multinational fires and effects, as well as the employment of future ground-to-ground long-range fires.”
On November 10, 2021, under the headline “Dark Eagle has landed,” the British newspaper The Sun reported on a U.S. nuclear force reactivated with hypersonic long-range Dark Eagle missiles in Germany for the first time since the Cold War.
The U.S. activates a nuclear unit in Germany. (Screenshot via The Sun)
According to the U.S. Army, Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) are intended to ensure that joint forces [Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Space Force] can
“meet and defeat a near-equal adversary capable of attacking the United States in all domains [air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace], both competitively and in armed conflict.”
The concept also describes how U.S. ground forces will be able to meet and defeat adversaries in the future. The concept goes on to describe how U.S. ground forces, as part of the joint and multinational team, can deter and defeat highly capable, peer adversaries in the 2025-2050 timeframe. To that end, multi-domain operations are intended to provide commanders with numerous options:
“for conducting simultaneous and sequential operations using surprise effects and the rapid and continuous integration of capabilities across domains to plunge the adversary into multiple dilemmas to gain physical and psychological advantage as well as influence and control over the operational environment.”
The Sun reportet on 4. August 2021:
Today, we are witnessing a throwback to one of the most dangerous periods of the Cold War, when in the early 1980s the rearmament resolution was rushed through and the obsolete Pershing I missiles were replaced by the Pershing II.
The increase in range from 800 to 1200 kilometers was not dramatic for the layman, but it was for the experts in the Kremlin.
Because now the bunkered command posts around Moscow could be taken out in just a few minutes.
Reagan’s dream of a decapitation strike had become reality. In Washington, the vision “Victory is possible” haunted the halls of the Capitol.
The reactivation of the 56th U.S. Artillery Command is logical and the threat to Russia posed by Germany is compelling.
The consequences of a Third World War for Germany and Russia will far exceed all the suffering and misery of the 20th century.
It is time to finally form a community of nations born of the will for peace.
This will only be possible, when people stop being frightened, when they start questioning the harmless mask of “defense“ policy and say goodbye to a one-sided culture of remembrance, which in reality is the cloak of forgetting and a hotbed of appeasement.(10)
At this point I would like to remind you of [former Foreign Minister] Joseph Fischer, who justified the war of aggression against Serbia, which was contrary to international law, with “Never again Auschwitz“.
Without truthfulness towards history there can be no sustainable peace.
For a Peaceful Coexistence of the European states in the Council of Europe, the imperial plans of a small plutocratic US/UK elite must be stopped.
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Global Research Editor’s Note
It is worth noting that in December 2018, the US Military published a followup TRADOC document entitled
The U.S Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028 in which it describes
“how US Army forces, as part of the Joint Force, will militarily compete, penetrate, dis-integrate, and exploit our adversaries in the future”
Strategic competitors like Russia and China are synthesizing emerging technologies with their analysis of military doctrine and operations. They are deploying capabilities to fight the US through multiple layers of stand-off in all domains – space, cyber, air, sea, and land. The military problem we face is defeating multiple layers of stand-off in all domains in order to maintain the coherence of our operations.
Therefore, the American way of war must evolve and adapt. The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations, 2028 is the first step in our doctrinal evolution. It describes how US Army forces, as part of the Joint Force, will militarily compete, penetrate, dis-integrate, and exploit our adversaries in the future.
we will ensure America’s Army is ready, lethal, and prepared to destroy its enemies now and in the future, in any domain, anytime, anywhere.
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2021 has seen some dramatic events in governments’ attempts to “combat COVID.” What was once considered paranoid theories, science-fiction, or ideas from the movies, have become a part of life over the past year. In 2020 we experienced lockdowns, mass testing, and face masks – and so it continued in 2021. But 2021 saw the emergence of new anti-COVID measures and new revelations that vindicated what some called conspiracy theories, previously relegated to the fringes on the web.
Vaccine Passports
Vaccine passes or immunity passports were once dismissed asparanoid conspiracy theories that would never be implemented domestically in free societies. But as we learned in 2021, numerous politicians and policymakers first dismissed the idea, only to change direction and impose the invasive and controlling mechanism – under the guise of wanting to open up society from the lockdowns they previously imposed. Despite the lack of an ethical and epidemiological basis for such an idea, vaccine passes swept the world in 2021. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnsonopposed domestic COVID passes at the start of the year, andimplemented them by the end of the year. Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau alsoopposed vaccination passports calling them “divisive” at the start of the year and laterembraced them. A similar story played out across much of the developed world, what was once written off as a conspiracy theory is now government policy.
‘COVID Camps’
The idea that governments were planning to build quarantine camps was another rumor that was circulating in 2020. The fear was that the government would detain people, even healthy people into internment camps – this was written off by the media and politicians as just more ‘disinformation’. By late 2020 questions were being raised in the Ontario legislature, in Canada by MPP Randy Hillier about camps. He was jeered, shouted out with calls for him to sit down, and his microphone turned off. In Australia, camps were talked about, but only for travelers – anyone who said they may be used for others was branded as a conspiracy theorist and spreaders of fake news. As time went on these camps were built and opened both in Canada and Australia. The facilities in Canada were not used just for travelers or just for people who were looking to ‘voluntarily isolate’ but rather included other Canadians who were detained due to their non-compliance with COVID regulations.
Australia also built camps under the auspices of helping travelers find a place to self-isolate but then began detaining citizens without due process for violating COVID regulations. There were cases of three teenagers who broke out of their ‘voluntary’ stay at the camp after being detained despite having tested negative for COVID. Hayley Hodgson who in an interview described how she was detained under threat of arrest and put into a camp for two weeks – even though she was not a COVID patient. To make matters more dramatic, Australia’s military was called in to ‘assist’ in transporting people to quarantine camps. With the details still unclear, the aboriginals made an appeal for help to the international community.
What started as a wild theory on the fringes of the web, was later implemented and, some might say abused by the authorities, is now a fact of life – COVID camps are here. Canada has decided to expand the program, and similar programs exist in Germany and New Zealand.
5G and COVID
At the start of the pandemic, some speculated that COVID did not exist, and the illness was caused and transmitted by 5G – this speculation was with little basis and never proven to be true. At the same time, many were concerned that wireless radiation could cause flu-like symptoms similar to COVID, or that radiation could depress one’s immune system making people more susceptible to COVID. Did microwave radiation make people sick with COVID-like symptoms? This claim was fact-checked and dismissed as “unfounded” since there is “no evidence that 5G is harmful to humans”. The BBC, quoting a scientist, called the claim “complete rubbish”. Facebook’s COVID-19 policy still prohibits such claims on its platform.
Fast forward to September 2021, when the National Institute of Health (NIH) published a study confirming just that “evidence presented here supports a premise that WCR [Wireless Communications Radiation] and, in particular, 5G, which involves densification of 4G, may have exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic by weakening host immunity and increasing SARS-CoV-2 virulence. ” In particular, it was “amplifying immune dysfunction, including immunosuppression, autoimmunity, and hyper inflammation” and “increasing intracellular Ca2+ essential for viral entry, replication, and release, in addition to promoting pro-inflammatory pathways.” The study explains that it is certainly not the first study to conclude that WCR can cause bodily damage; “For decades, independent research scientists worldwide have emphasized the health risks and cumulative damage caused by WCR [here, here]. The evidence presented here is consistent with a large body of established research.” Unfortunately, this research has yet to influence policymakers while wireless communication systems continue to be rolled out across the world.
The Origins of COVID
The origins of the COV-SARS-2 were straightforward as far as the establishment was concerned – the virus passed from an animal (likely a bat) to a human in the Wuhan wet market. This was the assessment made by the World Health Organization (WHO) in early 2020. To further solidify the theory of the natural origin, a group of scientists published a firm statement in The Lancet, saying that they “strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin” and that scientists “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.” Supported by big tech’s censorship, this theory was established as the undebatable truth.
By 2021 the unquestionable assertion of a natural origin began to unravel. David Asher, who led the State Department’s investigation into the matter revealed that several workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized with an illness very similar to COVID about a month before the new virus was identified. A study was written by Steven Quay and Richard Muller in February and later reported in the Wall Street Journal, examined the sequence of the amino acids in the genome of the virus. They found that “in the entire class of coronaviruses that includes CoV-2, the CGG-CGG combination has never been found naturally” and concluded “The presence of the double CGG sequence is strong evidence of gene splicing, and the absence of diversity in the public outbreak suggests gain-of-function acceleration. The scientific evidence points to the conclusion that the virus was developed in a laboratory.”
In popular culture, the suspicion of a lab leak became more palatable after President Biden ordered an investigation into the matter by the National Security Agency, and popular comedian Jon Stewart appeared on The Late Show. In a humorous rant said it’s obvious to suspect the lab since the new virus first appeared in the very same city that happens to host a lab that experiments with viruses. Out of the 27 scientists that signed the Lancet’s article calling for a suppression of the lab-leak theory, 26 were found to have connections with the Wuhan lab in question, by year’s end Lancet’s editor acknowledged that there were significant competing interests by the authors.
Microchipping People
Theories around new attempts by governments and tech companies to track the people have been circulating for decades. Since COVID there have been two main theories that involve the concept of implanting microchips in people. The first is that the vaccine itself contains some sort of communication device, this theory has not been proven correct. The second theory was that a vaccine pass or RFID would be implanted in people and be used in order to maintain or restrict people’s freedom of movement. This theory was declared to be false by Reuters in April 2020.
In November of 2021 Swedish authorities announced they will require proof of vaccination in order to enter gatherings with over 100 people. At the same time, a Swedish company called DSruptive, which makes implantable microelectronics, found a new application for their product. Instead of carrying a vaccination pass on paper, or on a smartphone app, the company will implant it directly into the person’s hand. Managing Director, Hannes Sjoblad, explained how the process works in a short video, and how people are finding it more convenient. Currently, the implants don’t track a person’s location or transmit any biometric data that wasn’t put on the chip. While authorities have allowed the implanted chips to be used as a vaccine pass, they haven’t (yet) been made mandatory.
Pandemics and times of rapid social change, inevitably arouse suspicions and mistrust over what is going on. While some conspiracy theories remain theories, and may never be proven true, 2021 has seen some very significant revelations that were once considered far-off and highly unlikely, becoming an everyday reality.
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From both his public statements and the view of many on the global left, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is not only fighting Tigrayan ‘terrorists’ but also fending off a neo-colonial West that wants to undermine Ethiopia’s sovereignty. But the problem with portraying Abiy as a valiant African fighter against Western neo-colonialism is that only recently he was a poster-boy of the Western establishment.
There is no higher Western endorsement than Abiy’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for making peace with Eritrea, a validation that puts him in the same company as Henry Kissinger and Barak Obama. Abiy’s international status was further confirmed by being named African of the Year in 2018, one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People, and one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Global Thinkers in 2019. It thus beggars’ belief that a person who has received some of the highest accolades of the West can pass himself off as an anti-imperialist opponent of the West.
Abiy’s past did not give any indication of democratic values or opposition to the West. He served in the former Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government as a lieutenant-colonel in the intelligence services where he founded and led the Information Network Security Agency. This agency targeted diaspora-based dissidents with sophisticated intrusion and surveillance software which led to the arrest of many journalists, politicians, and activists who were subsequently charged with treason and terrorism. In 2015 he was appointed a minister.
After becoming prime minister in late 2018, Abiy announced that the EPRDF developmental state which had produced growth rates of 9.3% a year between 1999 and 2019 according to the World Bank would end, and a new commitment to the market would begin. He then announced a major privatization program and rejected the EPRDF’s opposition to neo-liberalism. And contrary to the EPRDF’s refusal to take out international loans on its signature development project, the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the largest dam in Africa, so as not to be blackmailed by the IMF, Abiy has gone to the international money markets to pay for the dam.
These actions should have been red flags for leftists, but Abiy’s other policies were more alarming. Although self-identifying as an Oromo, a people who have long supported local control if not outright secession, Abiy is opposed to the EPRDF’s national federalism and supports a return to centralized administration. National federalism had its faults, but it held together the polyglot of peoples who have never easily fit within Ethiopia. Indeed, Tigray and Oromia might well have seceded from Ethiopia in 1991 when the ruling military cabal was overthrown were it not for the EPRDF commitment to radically devolve powers to local governments. The same uneasy fit led Eritreans to vote overwhelmingly in a 1993 referendum to secede from Ethiopia.
As bad as Abiy’s centralized Ethiopia is, its inspiration in the capture of much of what now constitutes Ethiopia in the late nineteenth century by Emperor Menelik II. Menelik made slaves of some of those he brought into his empire, sent armed Amhara backed up by the national army to enforce his rule, and was the lone African ruler to compete with Europeans in the scramble for Africa. The Amhara empire of Menelik and his successors is still a source of pain for many Ethiopians.
Tigrayans became alarmed when Abiy began claiming that EPRDF rule was an unambiguous dark period in the history of Ethiopia in which the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) – who Abiy and people close to him called daylight hyenas, a cancer, and weeds – had imposed its authoritarian will on the country for the sole benefit of Tigrayans. Moreover, the routine characterization by Abiy and the global left of the TPLF as ‘terrorist’ should logically also be applied to the entire Tigrayan people since they are collectively wedded to the Front. And that raises comparisons to the pre-genocide period in Rwanda. Thesubsequent invasion of Tigray in November 2020 and holding tens of thousands of Tigrayan citizens in concentration camps further stoked those fears.
Equally alarming is the backstory to Abiy’s Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with Eritrea. Normally both parties that make peace, Abiy, and his Eritrean counterpart, President Isais Aferwerki, would be awarded the peace prize. But Isais is the leader of a country which has never held elections since independence in 1993 and does not allow opposition political parties or a non-government media. The regime forces youth from age 14 to complete schooling in a military camp before they are inducted into the army for an indefinite period. Forced conscription has led many young Eritreans to risk their lives to escape the country and cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
Integral to the many secret meetings between Abiy and Isais that produced the Ethiopia-Eritrea peace agreement was the long planned joint attack on Tigray. Simultaneous with the Abiy and the Amhara militias’ attack on Tigray on 4 November 2020, US election day, the Eritrean army crossed the border at multiple points and continues to occupy western Tigray and other parts of Ethiopia. According to Abiy the attack on Tigray was because the TPLF took over the northern army’s camp on 3 November, but it begs the question of how the forces of Abiy, Isais, the Amhara militias, and even a component from Somalia, could be mobilized within a few hours to launch their attack? More plausible is that the TPLF knew that invading forces were on Tigray’s border and launched a pre-emptive raid on the army camp.
Since Abiy is no fighter for African sovereignty, why do many on the left assume that he is? It is primarily due to ignorance of actual conditions in Ethiopia, appreciation of an African leader speaking out against neo-colonialism, and fall back to a view that the enemy of my enemy is my friend based on a misunderstanding of the positions of the West versus Russia and China.
The US and many countries are aghast at the disaster Abiy has created, but that does not mean they support the TPLF. Indeed, why would the US support the TPLF which pursued statist policies and viewed liberal democracy as inappropriate for Ethiopia when in government in contrast to Abiy’s privatization of the economy and espousal of Western democracy? Why would the West support the TPLF when in its quest for national self-determination for Tigray and support for disaffected Oromos could bring about the dissolution of Ethiopia? And against the background of the US military humiliation in neighbouring Somalia in 1993, is it believable that the US could impose its will on Ethiopia with ten times the population? The US is a world power in decline and what is most significant about US engagement in Ethiopia isn’t its interference, but its impotence and the growing role of neighbouring Middle Eastern states.
Russia and China have blocked efforts by the US and other members of the Security Council to demand that Eritrean troops leave Ethiopia and Abiy be condemned for his humanitarian aid blockade. But instead of viewing the Russian and Chinese position on the Ethiopian conflict as matters of principle, it is better to understand their positions as reflecting national interests. China is the largest investor in Ethiopia, has lent Ethiopia $14 billion, Ethiopia serves as a hub for the Belt and Road Initiative, and when confronted with an independent minded Taiwan, China emphasizes its commitment to a stabilizing central government.
What the left gets wrong in Ethiopia is to attribute the potential dissolution of Ethiopia to the TPLF and its Oromo allies and instead of to the policies of Abiy Ahmed.
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John Young is the author of Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia: Tigray Liberation Front 1975 to 1991 (Cambridge University Press, 1998), books on Sudan and South Sudan (2012 and 2019) and numerous articles on the Horn, the Sudan uprising and Sudan-Ethiopia relations.
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The Nation State: A Wrong Model for the Horn of Africa
Authors: John Markakis, Günther Schlee, John Young
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Last Saturday Palestinians endured a Christmas nightmare as Israeli settler lynch mobs attacked villages near the city of Nablus, injuring over 200. Attacks like these are not going away and are forcing West Bank Palestinians to take to extreme measures to defend their homes.
247 Palestinians were injured — 10 with live ammunition and 48 with rubber-coated steel bullets — in the villages of Sebastia and Burqa, this Saturday. The attackers consisted of hundreds of Israeli settlers in lynch mob-style groups, who were protected and accompanied by Israeli occupation forces. Despite the scale of the attack, on Christmas day, no mainstream Western media outlets even wrote reports about the event, instead there was a complete blackout.
In response to this attack, which followed similar settler assaults on the village of Burqa the day prior, injuring over 127 Palestinians, 145 Non-governmental Organisations (NGO’s) produced a statement urging the United Nations to provide protection to Palestinians from the illegal settlers.
Under the fourth Geneva convention, the some 750,000 illegal Israeli settlers are considered to be there (in the West Bank, East Jerusalem) in violation of international law as it is a crime for an occupying power [Israel] to transfer its own civilians into the territory/territories they occupy. Despite this, Israel treats the West Bank — what they call Judea and Sumaria — as an integral part of their country and views settlers as regular civilians that do not violate international law.
This is why, when armed Israeli settlers are attacked by Palestinians, Western media react as if Palestinians are attacking them for no reason, normally leading people to believe that anti-Semitism is the key motivator. Whilst when Palestinians come under attack from extremist illegal settlers and their mobs, frequently caught chanting “death to Arabs” at almost every protest they hold, the Western media just doesn’t bother to report the incidents at all, and if they do, they paint it as a balanced equation.
Last week a 60-year-old Palestinian woman, Ghadeer Fuqaha, was brutally murdered by an Israeli settler, who rammed her car into the innocent woman before fleeing the scene. The terrorist attack was not reported in a single Western mainstream news outlet. Why? Some pro-Israel supporters online tried to argue they just have not seen the reports, but this is a garbage argument. The event was well covered. In contrast, when a Palestinian man named Fadi Abu Shkhaydam shot dead an Israeli settler, and active member of Israel’s occupation forces, the attack was covered by every major news network in the Western world.
The reality is that Palestinian lives are not worth as much as Israeli lives to Western media organisations and governments. This is why a recent bill, approved for the Israeli military, allowing for soldiers to shoot to kill stone throwing protesters has been implemented with no backlash in the West. The murder rate is bound to increase now in the West Bank as a result of the escalating settler violence, which peaked higher than any year during the Trump or Obama administrations, now soldiers are being trained to be more trigger happy.
It is this reality of injustice and the lack of moral balance that Palestinians in the West Bank understand too well. This is why they are now launching armed attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers at an escalating rate. It is also why young Palestinians in their teens and early twenties are forming their own small armed militia groups to defend their villages. The younger generation have witnessed the failure of diplomacy, the ever-increasing violence against them by the occupiers and see that the West’s advocacy for “peaceful resistance” has gotten them nowhere. Seeing this, they are turning to the way of the gun, the revolutionary path, and they are not looking back.
The idea now for many young Palestinians is freedom or martyrdom, and despite the West clearly seeing the increasing violence throughout the occupied territories, Western governments and their complicit media apparatus continue to behave as if nothing is going on. Desperation breeds violence and the more these extremist religious extremist settlers go on the offensive against Palestinian villages, civilians and places of worship, the more of a reaction will come from the revolutionary youth of Palestine. Soon a Palestinian violent reaction to this incitement and violence against them will emerge, and just as they did in May the media in the West will start the story from the moment the Palestinian responded.
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Robert Inlakesh is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, writer, Middle-East analyst & news correspondent for The Last American Vagabond. https://twitter.com/falasteen47
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Baghdad airport, January 3, 00:52 am. The assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi forces, by laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missiles launched from two US MQ-9 Reaper drones, was an act of war.
The drone strikes at Baghdad airport, directly approved by then US president Donald Trump, were unilateral, unprovoked and illegal: an imperial act engineered as a stark provocation capable of triggering an Iranian reaction that would then be countered by American “self-defense,” packaged as “deterrence.”
Call it a perverse form of double down, reversed false flag.
The imperial narrative barrage spun it as “targeted killing:” a pre-emptive op squashing Soleimani’s alleged planning of “imminent attacks” against US diplomats and troops.
No evidence whatsoever was provided to support the claim. And then-Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, in front of Parliament, offered the ultimate context: Soleimani, on a diplomatic mission, had boarded a regular Cham Wings Airbus A320 flight between Damascus and Baghdad. He was involved in complex negotiations between Tehran and Riyadh, with the Iraqi prime minister as mediator, and all that at the request of President Trump.
So the imperial machine, following trademark mockery of international law, assassinated a de facto diplomatic envoy. In fact, two envoys – because Al-Muhandis had the same leadership qualities as Soleimani, actively promoting synergy between the battlefield and diplomacy, and absolutely irreplaceable as a key political articulator in Iraq.
Soleimani’s assassination had been “encouraged” since 2007 by US neo-cons supremely ignorant of West Asian history, culture, politics – and the Israeli and Saudi lobbies. Both the Bush Jr. and Obama administrations resisted it, afraid of an inevitable escalation. Trump could not possibly see the Big Picture and its dire ramifications when he had only Israel-firsters of the Jared-of-Arabia Kushner variety whispering in his ear, in tandem with close pal Saudi crown princeling Muhammed bin Salman (MbS).
The measured Iranian response to Soleimani’s assassination was carefully calibrated to head off vengeful, unrestrained imperial overkill: precision missile strikes on the US-controlled Ain al-Assad air base in Iraq. The Pentagon received advance warning.
Yet it was precisely that measured response that turned out to be the game-changer. Tehran’s message made it graphically clear that the days of imperial impunity were over: we can hit your assets anywhere in the Persian Gulf and beyond, at the time of our choosing.
So this was the first “miracle” that the spirit of Soleimani engineered: the precision missile strikes on Ain al-Assad represented a middle-rank power, enfeebled by sanctions, and facing a massive economic/financial crisis, responding to a unilateral attack by targeting imperial assets that are part of the sprawling Empire of Bases.
That was a global first – unheard of since the end of WWII.
And that was clearly interpreted across West Asia and vast swathes of the Global South as fatally piercing the decades-old hegemonic armor of US “prestige.”
Calculating the Big Picture
Everyone, not only along the Axis of Resistance – Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Hezbollah – but across the Global South has been aware of how Soleimani led the fight against ISIS in Iraq from 2014 to 2015, and how he was instrumental in retaking Tikrit in 2015.
In an extraordinary interview, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah stressed Soleimani’s “great humility,” even “with the common people, the simple people.”
Nasrallah told a story that is essential in placing Soleimani’s modus operandi in the real, not fictional, war on terror that still deserves to be quoted in full two years after his assassination:
“At that time, Hajj Qassem traveled from Baghdad airport to Damascus airport, from where he came (directly) to Beirut, in the southern suburbs. He arrived to me at midnight. I remember very well what he said to me: ‘By dawn you must have provided me with 120 (Hezbollah) operation commanders.’ I replied ‘But Hajj, it’s midnight, how can I provide you with 120 commanders?’ He told me that there was no other solution if we wanted to fight (effectively) against ISIS, to defend the Iraqi people, our holy places [5 of the 12 Imams of Twelver Shiism have their mausoleums in Iraq], our Hawzas [Islamic educational institutions], and everything that existed in Iraq. There was no choice. ‘I don’t need fighters. I need operational commanders [to supervise the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units, PMU]. This is why in my speech [about Soleimani’s assassination], I said that during the 22 years or so of our relationship with Hajj Qassem Soleimani, he never asked us for anything. He never asked us for anything, not even for Iran. Yes, he only asked us once, and that was for Iraq, when he asked us for these (120) operations commanders. So he stayed with me, and we started contacting our (Hezbollah) brothers one by one. We were able to bring in nearly 60 operational commanders, including some brothers who were on the front lines in Syria, and whom we sent to Damascus airport [to wait for Soleimani], and others who were in Lebanon, and that we woke up from their sleep and brought in [immediately] from their house as the Hajj said he wanted to take them with him on the plane that would bring him back to Damascus after the dawn prayer. And indeed, after praying the dawn prayer together, they flew to Damascus with him, and Hajj Qassem traveled from Damascus to Baghdad with 50 to 60 Lebanese Hezbollah commanders, with whom he went to the front lines in Iraq. He said he didn’t need fighters, because thank God there were plenty of volunteers in Iraq. But he needed [battle-hardened] commanders to lead these fighters, train them, pass on experience and expertise to them, etc. And he didn’t leave until he took my pledge that within two or three days I would have sent him the remaining 60 commanders.”
A former commander under Soleimani who I met in Iran in 2018 had promised me and my colleague Sebastiano Caputo that he would try to arrange an interview with the Major General – who never spoke to foreign media. We had no reason to doubt our interlocutor – so until the last Baghdad minute we were part of this selective waiting list.
As for Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, killed side by side with Soleimani in the Baghdad drone strikes, I was with the journalist Sharmine Narwani and a small group who spent an afternoon with him in a safe house inside – not outside – Baghdad’s Green Zone in November 2017. My full report is here.
Soleimani may have been a revolutionary superstar – many across the Global South see him as the Che Guevara of West Asia – but behind several layers of myth he was, most of all, a quite articulated cog of a very articulated machine.
Years before the assassination, Soleimani had already envisaged an inevitable ‘normalization’ between Israel and Persian Gulf monarchies.
At the same time, he was also very much aware of the Arab League’s 2002 position – shared, among others, by Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – that this ‘normalization’ cannot even begin to be discussed without an independent and viable Palestinian state under 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Soleimani saw the Big Picture all across West Asia, from Cairo to Tehran, from the Bosphorus to the Bab al-Mandeb. He had certainly calculated the inevitable ‘normalization’ of Syria in the Arab world, as well as the timeline followed by the Empire of Chaos to abandon Afghanistan – though probably not the extent of the humiliating retreat – and how that would reconfigure all bets from West Asia to Central Asia.
It’s not hard to see Soleimani already envisaging what happened this past month. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu went to Dubai and signed quite a few trade deals with deep political significance, sort of burying a visceral intra-Sunni rivalry.
Abu Dhabi’s Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) seems to be betting simultaneously on an Israel-Emirates free trade deal and a détente with Iran. His security advisor Sheikh Tahnoon met with Iran’s President Raisi in Tehran in mid-December, even discussing Yemen.
But the key issue in all these dealings is a breakthrough land transit corridor that may run between the UAE, Iran and Turkey.
Meanwhile, Qatar – a privileged interlocutor of both Turkey and Iran – is engaged in financing the costs of the Gaza administration, in a delicate balance with Israel that somewhat replays a similar role by Doha in the negotiations between the US and the Taliban.
What Soleimani could not accomplish, side by side with Al-Muhandis, was to set a viable Iraqi path after the inevitable imperial retreat – even though their assassination may have accelerated the popular drive for the definitive expulsion of the Americans. Iraq remains deeply divided and hostage to petty, provincial politicking.
Still, the Soleimani spirit persists when it comes to the Axis of Resistance: Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Beirut, faced with massive imperial subversion, still surviving every possible challenge.
Iran is increasingly solidified as the key node of the New Silk Roads in Southwest Asia: the Iran-China strategic partnership, boosted by Tehran’s accession to the SCO, will be as strong geo-economically as geopolitically.
In parallel, Iran, Russia, and China will all be involved in the reconstruction of Syria – complete with BRI projects ranging from the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Eastern Mediterranean railway to, in the near future, the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline, arguably, the key factor that provoked the US proxy war against Damascus.
Hellfires are not welcome.
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This article was originally published on The Cradle.
Pepe Escobar,born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.
He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: The Baghdad murders of anti-ISIS commanders Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al Muhandes triggered an unprecedented Iranian ballistic missile attack on US military bases in Iraq. Photo Credit: The Cradle
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For months now, I’ve been getting complaints about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where I’ve worked as a TV and radio producer, and occasional on-air columnist, for much of the past decade.
People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported. Or why our pop culture radio show’s coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive. Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as “brainstorm” and “lame.”
Everyone asks the same thing: What is going on at the CBC?
When I started at the national public broadcaster in 2013, the network produced some of the best journalism in the country. By the time I resigned last month, it embodied some of the worst trends in mainstream media. In a short period of time, the CBC went from being a trusted source of news to churning out clickbait that reads like a parody of the student press.
Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted.
It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change.
To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity.
It is to sign on, enthusiastically, to a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal divisions. It is to pretend that the “woke” worldview is near universal — even if it is far from popular with those you know, and speak to, and interview, and read.
To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others.
To work at the CBC is to submit to job interviews that are not about qualifications or experience — but instead demand the parroting of orthodoxies, the demonstration of fealty to dogma.
It is to become less adversarial to government and corporations and more hostile to ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn’t like.
It is to endlessly document microaggressions but pay little attention to evictions; to spotlight company’s political platitudes but have little interest in wages or working conditions. It is to allow sweeping societal changes like lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school closures to roll out — with little debate. To see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power — with little scrutiny. And to watch the most vulnerable among us die of drug overdoses — with little comment.
It is to consent to the idea that a growing list of subjects are off the table, that dialogue itself can be harmful. That the big issues of our time are all already settled.
It is to capitulate to certainty, to shut down critical thinking, to stamp out curiosity. To keep one’s mouth shut, to not ask questions, to not rock the boat.
This, while the world burns.
How could good journalism possibly be done under such conditions? How could any of this possibly be healthy for society?
All of this raises larger questions about the direction that North America is headed. Questions about this new moment we are living through — and its impact on the body politic. On class divisions, and economic inequality. On education. On mental health. On literature, and comedy. On science. On liberalism, and democracy.
These questions keep me up at night.
I can no longer push them down. I will no longer hold them back. This Substack is an attempt to find some answers.
I have been a journalist for 20 years, covering everything from hip-hop to news, food to current affairs. The through line has always been books, which I’ve engaged with at every stage of my career and at every outlet I’ve worked for. In 2020, I published my own book, Lean Out: A Meditation on the Madness of Modern Life, which was an instant bestseller in Canada.
Books have always opened new worlds for me, introduced me to new perspectives, and helped me to make sense of humanity. I need books now more than ever.
During lockdown, when I wasn’t covering COVID-19, I spent a lot of time interviewing authors for a new book I’m working on. Their boldness and insight and humour saved me from despair. These writers gave me ideas on how to move forward, and how to maintain hope. Most of all, they gave me the courage to stand up — and to speak out.
Here at Substack, I will continue the work of thinking through the current moment, focusing on non-fiction writing from around the world. I will post an essay on a books related topic every Monday, and a podcast conversation with a heterodox author every Wednesday. This will be free to all. A third post on Fridays will round up the most contrarian, controversial or overlooked new books and essays, and will be available to paid subscribers.
This work is entirely independent and entirely free from editorial control, allowing me to say the things that are not being said, and ask the questions that are not being asked. Lean Out is solely supported by subscribers. If you care about the world of ideas and value open inquiry, as I do, please consider a paid subscription.
And stay tuned for the first episode of the Lean Out podcast this Wednesday, featuring my conversation with Newsweek’s Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy.
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Christmas might be over for the western world, but it is never over in Bethlehem, Palestine, the birthplace of the global holiday. There were many years in which churches there were locked on Israeli military orders, and the European and American tourists were prevented from a pilgrimage to the birthplace of their religion, while their countrymen back home in places like Bethlehem, Pennsylvania were singing songs and most likely feeling completely unconnected to Palestine.
The political conflict preventing peace and prosperity to Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land is still raging, and with no “Road Map” or “Peace Plan” in sight.
The Jews understand the conflict better than many, and the Jewish Voice of Peace organization tells the story like this:
“The violence between Israelis and Palestinians is often falsely presented as a conflict between two equal sides with irreconcilable claims to one piece of land. In reality, this is a conflict over territory between a nation-state, Israel, with one of the world’s most powerful and well-funded militaries, and an indigenous population of Palestinians that has been occupied, displaced, and exiled for decades.”
Officially the State of Palestine is a de jure sovereign state, which is officially governed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and claims the West Bank and Gaza Strip; however, de facto administrative control over the 165 Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank is held by the Palestinian National Authority, while Gaza is ruled by Hamas. The territory claimed by Palestine has been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967. Palestine has a population of 5,051,953 as of February 2020.
Palestinians across the West Bank have been recently protesting the beatings and conditions of prisoners, both females and males, who are kept in Israeli prisons, without trials, charges, visits or even a toilet. Three Palestinian women held in inhumane conditions in Damon prison in the North were beaten and sustained injuries. Shurooq Dwayyat, Marah Bakir and Muna Qaadan were among those women injured according to a statement by the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) monitoring group.
After the news traveled to Nafha, a male prison in the South, violence broke out in response. The section where the violence took place was raided by Israeli special forces who took 80 prisoners out of their rooms and handcuffed them for hours in the freezing cold, while beating some severely.
“We discussed the implementation of economic and civilian measures, and emphasized the importance of deepening security coordination and preventing terror and violence — for the well-being of both Israelis and Palestinians,” Gantz said.
“The meeting dealt with the importance of creating a political horizon that leads to a political solution, in accordance with international resolutions,” Palestinian civil affairs minister Hussein al-Sheikh said.
Israel’s coalition government led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was formed in June, and the former head of a settler lobby group who opposes Palestinian statehood, underlined that there was no peace process under way with the Palestinians, “and there won’t be one”.
Gantz announced on Wednesday, a day after meeting with Abbas, that he authorized “a number of confidence-building measures,” including 100 million new shekels’ ($32 million) worth of tax payments that Israel has been withholding from the Palestinian authority.
Approval of residency status to about 9,500 Palestinians in the Israel-occupied West Bank and the Gaza strip and travel permits to select Palestinian businessperson was included in the package.
Tor Wennesland, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, urged the UN Security Council to take action on the situation in the West Bank and Gaza. He said, “recent developments on the ground are worrying”, pointing out the challenges faced by the Palestinian Authority.
“I therefore emphasize again the importance of concerted efforts by the parties to calm things on the ground. I am concerned that if we do not act quickly and decisively, we risk plunging into another deadly escalation of violence”, he warned.
He listed the deaths of four Palestinians, including two children, and injuries to 90 others, including 12 children, all at the hands of the Israeli Security Forces.
“Ongoing violence and unilateral steps, including Israeli settlement expansion, and demolitions, continue to raise tensions, feed hopelessness, erode the Palestinian Authority’s standing and further diminish the prospect of a return to meaningful negotiations,” he added.
Of special concern was the attacks on Palestinians by Israeli civilians in the occupied West Bank, reiterating that “that all settlements are illegal under international law and remain a substantial obstacle to peace,” he said.
Concerning the Gaza strip, the Special Envoy said that humanitarian, recovery and reconstruction efforts continued, but said that the economic, security and humanitarian situation “remains of serious concern.”
A Palestinian Authority official, Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement activities, said groups of Jewish settlers entered several Palestinian villages near the northern city of Nablus early on December 17, smashing up cars and homes, sending two wounded Palestinians to hospital.
In the Palestinian village of Qaryout, Jewish settlers broke into one house and tried to abduct a resident, Wael Miqbel, according to Daghlas.
Jewish settlers attacked the village of Burqa using firearms, and set the village’s barracks on fire and stoned a number of Palestinian homes. Settlers also attacked Sebastia town, north Nablus, and smashed a number of Palestinian-owned vehicles and a car maintenance workshop.
Under international law, all Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are considered illegal, and are considered to be an obstacle to peace by the international community.
The world now mourns the passing of Archbishop Desmond Tutu who recognized the similarities in the treatment of Black South Africans and Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Tutu visited Israel’s Religious Affairs Ministry in 1989 and was greeted with a banner “Tutu is a Black Nazi pig.”
“I cannot myself understand people who have suffered as the Jews have suffered inflicting the suffering of the kind I have seen on the Palestinians,” Tutu said during the visit. Tutu’s presence was felt in occupied Palestine at the height of the First Intifada, and he remained in solidarity with them.
Tutu wrote plainly in 2005, “…the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic. People are scared in the US to say ‘wrong is wrong’ because the pro-Israeli lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government [in South Africa] was very powerful, but today it no longer exists.”
The South African Jewish Report, in 2014, published an op-ed piece that likened Tutu to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. The article was accompanied by an image of Tutu with a Hitler-style moustache and Nazi officers’ cap.
During a march, Tutu asked the crowd to chant: “We are opposed to the injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestine. We are opposed to the indiscriminate killings of Gaza. We are opposed to the indignity meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks. We are opposed to violence perpetrated by all parties. But we are not opposed to Jews.”
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The only place I want to hear him speak is in the dock at the Hague at the International Criminal Court facing trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. — George Galloway, former British MP and the director of The Killing$ of Tony Blair
Canada’s head of state, also the queen of Canada, has made the war criminal Tony Blair a “Sir.”
Many will ask, “Isn’t prime minister Justin Trudeau Canada’s head-of-state?” No, he isn’t. Queen Elizabeth is Canada’s head-of-state. No, she isn’t a Canadian. So a Brit is Canada’s head-of-state. That elitist, colonial vestige remains intact in the year 2022.
Having a foreign head-of-state has ramifications for Canada. First, under this constitutional arrangement, Canada has no say as to who its head-of-state will be. Second, the monarchy is thoroughly undemocratic. It is determined by birth order in one family. Third, atheists, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Roman Catholics, etc need not apply. The monarch is the supreme governor of the Anglican church. That is the same church that ran so many Indian Residential Schools in Canada that sought to disappear Indigenous kids. As the Canadian civil servant in charge, Duncan Campbell Scott, stated: “I want to get rid of the Indian problem…. Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question…”
Elizabeth has never apologized for the monarchy’s role in the Anglican church-run residential schools in Canada.
Usually a sovereign country would like its head-of-state to align with the foreign policy of the country. However, despite sharing a titular head with another country, it is unsurprising that those countries would occasionally differ on foreign policy objectives. Canada’s foreign policy does at times deviate from that of the United Kingdom. For instance, Elizabeth blessed the dispatch of British troops to wage war against Iraq, a war that Canada refused to send its troops to join, especially since Canadian citizens were much opposed to the war.
On 1 January, Blair became a member of the Order of the Garter, England’s oldest and most senior order of chivalry. The BBC explains, “The appointments are the personal choice of the Queen, who has up to 24 ‘knight and lady companions’.”
George Galloway was flummoxed by the queen’s decision. He pleaded with his queen: “Tonight I find myself in the unusual position of beseeching her majesty the queen to turn back from a disastrous error of judgement which she has made.”
Canada does not even permit knighthood for Canadian citizens. Yet Canada finds itself in the position of having its head-of-state honoring a war criminal. Just how much blood is on Blair’s hands? One “catastrophic estimate” cited a figure of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths subsequent to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Whether it is 2.4 million deaths, half of that, or a quarter of that, whatever the actual number is, the queen’s actions indicate that it is ostensibly a price worth bringing one of the war’s scoundrels into the queen’s inner circle.
Is it not perversely ironic that the war criminal Blair who helped launch the invasion of Iraq that killed so many people is knighted while the man whose organization, WikiLeaks, that revealed the war crimes committed in Iraq and Britain’s role in the commission of those crimes, languishes as a political prisoner in a maximum security facility in England? Assange has been undergoing psychological torture, incarceration, defamation, and recently he suffered a stroke. He has had to endure all this punishment for the crime of publishing the commission of war crimes for which the kangaroo court in Britain agreed to extradite him to the United States, a country that had planned to murder him; instead he is being subjected to a a slow motion assassination in Elizabeth’s realm.
The time is long past to abolish Canada’s link to the British monarchy. More importantly, it is time for Canada to speak and act in the defense of publishers, journalists, and whistleblowers who expose the horrendous crimes of which any guilty country should forever be ashamed.
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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be emailed at: kimohp@gmail. Twitter: @kimpetersen. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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With tensions rising to fever pitches in Ukraine, and in the wake of Putin’s announced red lines regarding a mad frenzy for the absorption of Ukraine into NATO, Dr. Edward Lozansky, President of the American University in Moscow, arranged a roundtable discussion bringing together eight experts to provide their thoughts on the causes, trajectory and solutions to the current geopolitical disorder.
Participants included Martin Sieff (Senior Fellow American University in Moscow), Glenn Diesen (Professor at University of South-Eastern Norway), Peter Kuznick (Professor of American University), Matthew Ehret (Co-founder of the Rising Tide Foundation), Alex Krainer (economist thenakedhedgie.com), Jeremy Kuzmarov (editor of Covert Action Magazine), Mila Melnichuk (political strategist and Head of the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Citizens and the Constitution of Ukraine), Jim Jatras (analyst, retired U.S. diplomat and adviser to U.S. Senate Republican leadership), and Professor Herbert Reginbogin (The Catholic University of America) delivered written remarks.
What sort of responses could we expect to see should these red lines be crossed? Could the West be trusted to react rationally in the face of Putin’s explicit red lines? What are the risk levels of full-scale thermonuclear war? How does the Russia-China relationship play into this dynamic? What does the economic system’s ongoing plunge into chaos have to do with the geopolitical maneuvers on Russia and China’s perimeters? These questions and more were addressed by the speakers.
The video presentation of the full Roundtable can be watched here and the summary of the event follows below.
Martin Sieff: “The Situation is Desperate But Not Serious”
Martin Sieff began by emphasizing the importance of Putin’s restraint and tone in which he spoke on December 17 laying out the terms of Russia’s red line regarding NATO’s ambitions to absorb Ukraine, the placement of missiles, or war games on Russia’s border. Martin invoked the warning of a Habsburg diplomat years prior to WWI warning that “the situation is desperate but not serious” indicating his belief that a nuclear war is not likely in the near term, although very high in the coming two to three years.
Sieff warned of the hypocrisy of Western geopoliticians who have no capacity to reciprocate Putin’s measured tone, let alone treat his red lines as something deadly serious, as they are far too accustomed to use “salami tactics” in advancing NATO and lecturing the world on how to behave. The lack of ability from Western players to take Putin’s warnings with seriousness are exasperating an already terrible situation and make the danger of miscalculations run high.
Glenn Diesen: Indivisible Security vs NATO Unipolar Hegemony
Professor Glenn Diesen contrasted the many negatives weighing down the situation with a few positives created by Putin’s new approach to foreign policy on Russia’s border. Chief among these positives is that a correct discussion is finally being forced onto the table which has been avoided for years. After years of NATO growth, and unilateral pushing of the entire world towards a “rules based international order” at the cost of broader security for all, Russia’s firm red lines have forced the principles of pan European security to be made front and center. Such principles stand in stark contrast to the “right of each country to join NATO” regardless of the context or instability which such decisions would create.
Professor Diesen made the point that this more rational view of security is in alignment with the Helsinki Accords, the 1990 Charter of Paris emphasizing “equal and indivisible security”, and the 1994 Budapest document which all enshrined the principle that “no state should advance a security doctrine at the expense of the security of other states.”
Détente: Left to Right: Helmut Schmidt, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Erich Honecker, First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Gerald Ford President of the United States, Bruno Kreisky, Chancellor of Austria, Helsinki, 1 August 1975. [Source: osce.org]
The hypocrisy of the United States’s track record of sabotaging such organizations as the Eurasian Economic Union, Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and pan European security agreements (to name a few) make the “narrative reframing” that constantly paints Russia as a villain attempting to impose its sphere of influence onto Ukraine as Western media and politicians repeat, more than a little unpalatable.
Peter Kuznick: How to Trust the Untrustworthy?
Peter Kuznick opened his remarks with a reminder of the broken 1990 promises made to Gorbachev by Bush Sr. and British and German representatives who promised that NATO would not encroach upon Russia and would always honor a buffer zone of former Soviet states that would remain free and independent.
Professor Kuznick explained that the reason it took so long for Putin to finally say “enough is enough”, is that up until recently, Russia was not militarily strong enough to assert itself in this manner. Peter noted that these red lines have been a long time coming and should come as no surprise to anyone, since already on March 1, 2018, five new nuclear warhead delivery mechanisms capable of circumventing Western nuclear defenses were unveiled by Putin in his annual state of the nation address. Now, nearly four years later, Russia’s nuclear defense technology has rapidly advanced with 70% of its nuclear deterrence forces modernized contrasted with the USA which still asserts that “modernization might occur within the coming 25 years.”
Despite Russia’s technological flank, war hawks embedded within Washington and NATO have continued to advance an aggressive and provocative posture with 16 advisers to Biden heralding from the Center for New American Security (the mostly Democratic version of the Project for a New American Century neocons who flooded the George W. Bush administration and brought a series of foreign policy debacles).
Biden has been under enormous pressure to stand up to Putin from hawks in both parties like Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), who have been berating him for the chaotic exit from Afghanistan. Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel wasted little time in eviscerating Biden for the crime of having a phone call with Putin on December 7, deploring his “weak global leadership,” capitulation on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, “Afghanistan disaster,” and border failures, which she alleged were “emblematic of his America last agenda.”
This regressive thinking was displayed in full ugliness by Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) who called for a nuclear first strike on Russia on December 7, and former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who wrote that Putin’s remarks were based on a paranoid fabricated view of reality, thus fueling the fire of the war hawks.
Kuznick cited the need to return to the sort of rational approach seen between JFK and Khrushchev in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis and hoped that since China is likely a higher priority than Russia in the minds of unipolar war hawks, that perhaps some room for negotiation exists.
The problem here, Kuznick noted, is that, even should negotiations occur, international leaders believe that the United States simply cannot be trusted, as it has repeatedly broken its promises and withdrawn from one treaty after another since 2002. Even if a best-case scenario occurs whereby Biden agreed to some of Putin’s demands, there is no way the next U.S. administration can be trusted to honor said promises, which has been a major impediment in the ongoing negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal.
JFK and Nikita Khrushchev meeting at the Vienna Summit in June 1961. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Matthew Ehret: The Superiority of the Multipolar Alliance
Matthew Ehret introduced the context of Russia and China’s leadership of a new multipolar paradigm in contrast to the obsolete unipolarists obsessed with preserving their hegemony. Matthew emphasized the inevitability of the coming economic meltdown of the West, the factor of insanity embedded within the Western operating system and the de-dollarization now underway throughout Eurasia. Along with this de-dollarization, a sweeping array of economic and security agreements stretching across Eurasia, Southwest Asia, the Arctic and Africa has been unfolding with an alternative financial architecture emerging with Russian and Chinese-led alternatives to SWIFT growing fast, Indian-Russian agreements to de-dollarize and also advancement of the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) stretching from Moscow through Central Asia, Iran and thence to India.
The INSTC’s synergy with the east-west New Silk Road (especially the emerging Southern Corridor stretching from China to Syria via Iran and Iraq) was also brought up. Ehret emphasized his belief that there appears to be a policy of cutting off all trade, communications and economic cooperation between those countries invited to Biden’s December 8-9 “so-called” Democracy Summit vs the multipolar “bad authoritarian” nations not invited.
The great irony is that it is the win-win paradigm of cooperation, interconnectivity, and long-term infrastructure creation that represents a way of thinking that the U.S. once believed in during saner years under President Kennedy who exemplified this paradigm with his October 22, 1963 offer to the Soviet Union “to jointly put a Russian and American on the Moon within the decade”.
Such thinking was profoundly non-zero sum, and would have successfully broken the zero-sum logic of the Cold War had it not been sabotaged with the President’s murder. It is this superior way of thinking that gives the Greater Eurasian Partnership the definitive edge needed to break the rigged rules of the great game today in a lawful way, and it is the concordance of this logic to the principles of natural law that give the Greater Eurasian Partnership the moral and creative flexibility needed to break the rigid logic of those seeking world government.
Alex Krainer: Watch the Game Masters, not the Puppets
Alex Krainer opened his presentation by warning that the insanity pervasive across the Western liberal order is isolated to the puppets, but that on a higher level (ie. where significant policy is made above national puppet governments by a banking cartel and financial elites), there is a very clear rhyme and reason animating global strategy. This strategy is behind the relentless efforts to provoke a violent reaction from Russia and China in both Ukraine and Taiwan.
Krainer re-emphasized that at this higher level (where an integration of banking, intelligence and military affairs unite), the cold hard logic of empire stands as an unbreakable iron rod devoid of humility, flexibility or morality. This system is driven relentlessly by a drive to eliminate rivals, excludes the possibility of cooperation, seeks only domination and exerts vast control over nominally “right” or “left” sides of the party systems in the West.
This is why Krainer believes no solution to today’s crisis will be found within the current political forces active in Western governments. Since no qualitative change is possible under current conditions, Alex believes Putin’s decision to stand firm and resolutely at this time with a clear red line and list of demands creates the sort of external pressure that the morally bankrupt Western system requires that cannot be changed from within.
It is hoped that Putin’s new strategy will flush out the most insane fanatics of the West from the shadows and into the surface, which may also allow for fissures between radical vs moderate elements of the political establishment to polarize among themselves inducing battles over policy to arise which could not occur otherwise. Being an economist, Krainer added the economic insight that the Western financial cartels are currently starved for collateral having overextended themselves far into a debt-driven speculative frenzy over decades devoid of any actual systems of value sustaining hyperbolically growing rates of fictitious capital. It is here that the desire to gain control of Eurasian collateral is so high with Russia’s debt: GDP rate being only 16% compared to the 180+% in the USA, all of which is needed to run a credit creation cycle.
Jeremy Kuzmarov: The Crisis of MICIMATT and the Loss of Sanity
Jeremy Kuzmarov re-emphasized the importance of not losing sight of the hidden agendas operating above the puppets on the stage. He discussed the role of the military industrial complex that desperately needed a new villain after the Afghan debacle fell apart and hence the trumpeting of the “Russian threat” was needed to justify the record-breaking defense budget pushed by both Biden and the Congress. Kuzmarov warned of the vast media and academia black out of dissenting voices opposed to the current war drive, referencing the case of former CIA analyst Ray McGovern who has been entirely silenced by the mainstream media despite his illustrious career briefing presidents for decades.
Ray McGovern: A voice of sanity and truth who has been silenced. [Source: covertactionmagazine.com]
Kuzmarov referenced McGovern’s term MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Corporate-Intelligence-Media-Academic-Think-Tank Complex) as a modern mutation which has parasitically taken over all influential branches of society, resulting even in so-called progressive liberals like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez supporting war measures against Russia, while promoting totalitarian programs at home.
Mila Melnichuk: Perceptions vs Reality
Mila Melnichuk raised the issue of the manipulation of perceptions vs objective reality. Much effort is made by powerful forces representing NATO to induce both the Ukrainian government and people to perceive Russia as a threat and NATO as salvation.
Yet despite this manipulation, Melnichuk pointed out that there is still nothing approximating a consensus about joining NATO within the broader population (with more than half the population surveyed wishing Ukraine be kept out of the alliance). Mila pointed to the importance of the Minsk agreements which demand certain basic constitutional changes in Kyiv in order to guarantee autonomous region status to the pro-Russian Donetsk and Donbass republics. She pointed out that it is likely that Russia will recognize these territories as autonomous republics without any need for military intervention.
Melnichuk went further to propose a broader reform of international security beyond the borders of Ukraine as the western system has proven itself ineffective at achieving the objectives of security. A Russian-NATO council should be re-established, and NATO should cease provoking a violent reaction from Russia.
Jim Jatras: It’s Time to Pray
Jim Jatras began his presentation with a systemic overview asserting that “things are going to be happening on the macro level that are baked into the cake” and that “the world order built up over the last few decades is a house of cards and something is going to crack” both domestically and internationally. Jim pointed to the collapsing status of the dollar and the often over-looked danger of a civil war within the deeply divided United States as cultural civil war has already been launched across “wokeism” in the military, education, media, and beyond.
While Ukraine is at “the tip of the sphere” internationally, Jim pointed out that “the bigger problem has been the expansion of NATO” where the veneer of “democracy” has been wiped away many times over with nations like Montenegro being absorbed into the security organization despite the majority of its citizens completely rejecting it. Jatras made the point that assuming Western unipolarists might be trusted to agree to any formal security guarantees is akin to expecting Bolsheviks of the 1920s agreeing to reject international revolution or the labor theory of value.
Citing Patrick Armstrong’s recent article “We’ve Seen the Ultimatum- What is the “or else?”,Jatras summarized a series of possible options going forward, asking what is the “or else” which Moscow is threatening should her red lines be crossed? What would Moscow’s countermeasures look like?
Here Jatras notes one reasonable measure would be publicizing a list of NATO targets that would receive the full response of Russia’s defense systems under the condition of war, the idea being that such a list might force a shift in the calculus of European NATO states whose fear of total annihilation might shake them out of their stupor. While back-channel diplomacy run via the networks of the Vatican and Russian orthodox church should be attempted, Jim didn’t see much hope in that domain and suggested that the best course of action is to pray.
Addendum: Written contribution to the Roundtable by Professor Herbert Reginbogin of The Catholic University of America
Russian President Vladimir Putin is a man leading a country that in the last few months has amassed tens of thousands of soldiers and advanced military equipment on Ukraine’s border, now asserting that it is Ukraine which is planning an invasion of Russia. Putin claimed (without evidence) that the U.S. intends to arm Ukraine with hypersonic missiles. “They just have to understand that we have nowhere left to retreat,” Putin said during his four-hour television interview with journalists.
Under this circumstance a Russian proposal was issued on December 17 to resolve issues between the U.S. and Russia proposing the instrumentalization of neutrality and neutralization to resolve geostrategic conflicts between both countries. The proposal should be recognized as an effort of goodwill but also distortion of the facts with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal going beyond the Ukraine conflict but to include the in-between states of the West and Russia by advocating nuclear disarmament of Eastern and Central Europe, restrictive conventional military exercises, and military assets in the territories belonging to the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The U.S. should go beyond the concept of neutrality and neutralization as a geopolitical instrument by advocating these concepts as statecraft that is not only limited by geography and history for the in-between states but as statecraft that assures them strategic competitiveness to sustain and uphold neutrality and neutralization as an armed neutral to deter any country from invading their territories like Ukraine.
Moreover, the West should underscore that strategic competitiveness as a neutral must have mutual assurances from the U.S. and Russia regarding energy policy and the fight against corruption attributed by other outside parties to combat attempts to undermine and destabilize a neutral country like Ukraine.
These mutual assurances will also spill over to restricting U.S.-Russian use of gray zones of diplomatic and military coercion through mutual agreements of engagements in the international world order. Lastly, the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church should continue their back-channel diplomacy of dialogue to deal with the separation of the Ukraine Orthodox Church to restore greater harmony among the institutions and their flock as this will also impact President Putin’s decision making as many Russians are of this faith.
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Matthew Ehret is a journalist and co-founder of the Rising Tide Foundation. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Patriot Review, and Senior Fellow at the American University of Moscow. Matthew is a regular author on several political/cultural websites including The Cradle, Washington Times, Los Angeles Review of Books: China Channel, Strategic Culture, and Off-Guardian. In 2021 he authored the two volume Clash of the Two Americas. Matthew can be reached at: [email protected].
In his new two volume series The Clash of the Two Americas, Matthew Ehret introduces a new analysis of American history from the vantage point that the globally-extended supranational shadow government that managed the British Empire was never fully defeated and has acted within the USA itself since 1776 as a continuous multi-generational fifth column managing every significant event and assassination of American presidents for the next 250 years.
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Officers have fired rubber bullets and tear gas at anti-lockdown protesters, including children.
Pregnant women arrested.
Pastors thrown in jail.
Australia has unleashed such control that many are calling it a police state.
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As 2021 winds down to its last couple of days, I am writing to toot our horn a bit. You see, the Ron Paul Liberty Report has spent this year – and the previous year – in the trenches fighting what can only be described as the greatest assault on Americans’ civil liberties since slavery.
All of a sudden we saw that our house of liberty was built on sand – that the elites made billions with their boots on our necks while the rest of us suffered. Never again!
You have probably received many solicitations for end-of-year support from organizations that put their finger to the wind to see when it’s safe to come out in favor of liberty and freedom. As you know, Ron Paul has never played that game.
From the very first moment they started ramping up an authoritarian response to a virus, Ron Paul was calling their bluff. He published “The Coronavirus Hoax” on the Ron Paul Institute website in March, 2020, just as President Trump was following his malevolent covid advisors toward lockdowns and tyranny.
It certainly was not the “cautious” thing to say – and we received some nasty notes from a few supporters – but Ron Paul always speaks the truth regardless of whether it is popular at the time.
In this prescient March 2020 article he wrote:
Governments love crises because when the people are fearful they are more willing to give up freedoms for promises that the government will take care of them.
Did he call this whole thing or what? Governments use “crises” to frighten the people into submitting their liberties to the “authorities” in exchange for protections that governments never deliver.
And how well did the government protect us from illness and death from this coronavirus? About as well as it protected us against a terror attack on 9/11.
Senator Rand Paul said it best as a guest on a recent episode of the Ron Paul Institute’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:
I would venture to say that thousands of people die in our country every month now because [Fauci] has deemphasized the idea that there are therapeutics.
The mainstream media is doing a great job amplifying Sen. Paul’s Liberty Report statements – of course with the intention of ridiculing the Senator.
But we’re past that. Their game is up.
We’ve travelled down this road together these past two years. Dr. Paul and I scouring the media every morning to try and bring the latest bit of truth to our growing viewership. As the mainstream media loses viewers by the millions, the Ron Paul Liberty Report GAINS viewers by the millions!
Our influence is growing thanks to your generous support. But we cannot continue to produce a top-quality news and analysis program every day without you. Behind the camera there are so many expenses that we must meet if we are to continue.
And we are not just the Ron Paul Liberty Report! This year the Ron Paul Institute held two sold-out conferences, in Houston and Washington, DC, including speakers like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Rep. Thomas Massie! We also held our second Ron Paul Scholars Seminar – a foreign policy boot camp for a terrific group of upper division undergrads and grad students! And don’t forget the thousand-plus articles we publish each year!
Without the Ron Paul Institute and the Liberty Report who would be left to tell the unvarnished truth?
Time is running out to get all the tax credit for your donation to the Ron Paul Institute – 501(c)3 Charity – for 2021! Please act NOW before midnight on December 31st to keep the Ron Paul Institute and Liberty Report alive and growing in 2022.
The bad guys are not giving in. They are not giving up. We can stop them in 2022…but we need your help!
Hope to see all of you at a future Ron Paul Institute event in 2022!
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A record number of journalists are imprisoned throughout the world, according to the annual prison index released by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). But that number excludes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
CPJ, which is based in New York, opposes the United States Justice Department’s prosecution against Assange. However, for the third year, the press freedom organization declined to classify him as a jailed journalist.
In the organization’s press release on the 2021 index, it states, “No journalists were jailed in North America at the time of the census deadline.” That may be true, but it obscures what the U.S. government is doing to keep a journalist detained in the United Kingdom.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), based in Paris, previously joined with CPJ on press freedom campaigns. They also keep an annual tally of journalists in detention, yet unlike CPJ, RSF included Assange in their 2021 round-up.
Screen shot from Reporters Without Borders’ Round-Up of Journalists Detained, Killed, or Held Hostage and Missing in 2021
“Held in London’s Belmarsh maximum-security prison since April 2019, the U.S. government continues to pursue Assange’s extradition on the basis of 18 charges connected with Wikileaks’ publication in 2010 of hundreds of thousands of leaked classified documents revealing war crimes and human rights violations that have never been prosecuted,” RSF acknowledged.
Assange is listed among other examples of detained journalists, including Zhang Zhan, Raman Pratasevich, and Pham Doan Trang.
CPJ was asked for comment on the continued exclusion of Assange from their annual index, and a press person replied, “CPJ has [previously] explained the reason for Mr. Assange’s absence from this particular list”—linking to a 2019 post on their website.
Seventeen charges under the Espionage Act were announced by the Justice Department in May 2019. One computer crime charge was announced in April 2019 as well—the same month Assange was expelled from the Ecuador embassy, arrested by British authorities, and detained at Belmarsh.
When Assange was first omitted from CPJ’s annual index in 2019, the organization referred reporters with questions to their methodology.
“CPJ defines journalists as people who cover news or comment on public affairs through any media—including in print, in photographs, on radio, on television, and online. We take up cases involving staff journalists, freelancers, stringers, bloggers, and citizen journalists.”
Robert Mahoney, CPJ’s deputy executive director, wrote a post in defense of the decision to exclude Assange.
“After extensive research and consideration, CPJ chose not to list Assange as a journalist, in part because his role has just as often been as a source and because WikiLeaks does not generally perform as a news outlet with an editorial process,” Mahoney argued.
Yet Assange is not a source. He did not work for any of the agencies, where employees or contractors had access to the materials. U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning was the source.
John Goetz, who worked for German newspaper Der Spiegel when it partnered with WikiLeaks on the Afghanistan War Logs, submitted testimony for Assange’s defense during his extradition hearing in September 2020. He described “significant innovations in the field of investigative journalism” that he observed.
“Many of us at Der Spiegel [had] long wanted to publish to publish online documents, which proved the accuracy of our stories, yet before WikiLeaks, that was uncommon. It was WikiLeaks that first initiated large journalistic partnerships, something that is now almost common; for example, the ICIJ partnership around the ‘Panama Papers.’”
Goetz added, “At the time, the idea that major publications would work together violated much of what I had learned. WikiLeaks pioneered the online dropbox for submissions to newsrooms, which is now commonplace in media around the world.”
“The emphasis placed by WikiLeaks on secure communications in order to protect its materials and journalistic sources, which back in 2010 was unheard of, has since become the norm amongst investigative journalists.”
Clearly Assange and WikiLeaks had an editorial process for the documents at issue in this case. Unlike Mahoney, Goetz does not conflate the editorial process with the reporting process.
Mark Feldstein, a former CNN and ABC News correspondent who testified at the same extradition hearing, said, “Assange has engaged in the essence of journalism: gathering and publishing newsworthy information and documents for the public.”
Former New York Times general counsel James Goodale represented the Times when they published the Pentagon Papers. He is also a senior adviser to CPJ.
In his 2013 book, Fighting For the Press, Goodale wrote, “It should be clear Assange is carrying out the digital equivalent of editing and gathering news in the digital age.”
“Assange sought out secret information by setting up a private website for the anonymous transmission of information to him,” according to Goodale. “Journalists asking sources to reveal secrets is the essence of journalism. The only thing that has changed is that online chats and a digital submission system have replaced meeting over a cup of coffee and a P.O. Box.”
CPJ executive director Joel Simon has insisted for more than a decade that it is irrelevant whether Assange is a journalist. In fact, he believes that question is not “ultimately resolvable.”
“WikiLeaks has tried to suggest that it functions as a journalistic entity,” Simon wrote in his book, The New Censorship, which was published in 2015. “I’m skeptical. WikiLeaks is best described as an anti-secrecy advocacy group that uses journalistic strategies to advance its goals.”
While Simon waffles on the matter, U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, have had no trouble resolving the question in a manner that helps them justify targeting Assange as a “malevolent foreign actor” or an “information broker,” who does not deserve press freedom protections.
The chair of CPJ’s board of directors is Kathleen Carroll, who was the executive editor of the Associated Press when WikiLeaks obtained documents from Manning. AP objected to the terms of the arrangement offered by WikiLeaks and chose not to work on the documents with WikiLeaks.
At the Nieman Conference on Secrecy and Journalism on December 16, 2010, a little more than two weeks after the first diplomatic cables were published, Carroll told an audience AP passed on partnering with WikiLeaks. The AP was unwilling to grant WikiLeaks “control over where the documents were stored and who in our organization had access to them.”
Carroll also suggested, “Assange [was] an advocate, and those of you who are journalists understand what it’s like to deal with advocates. They’re advocating for a certain point of view.”
“One of the challenges that the AP has sometimes is because we are a U.S.-based organization—We’re a global organization. We have a good chunk of revenue and customers around the world and staff there, but we’re very often shorthanded as an American organization. And it’s possible that Mr. Assange thought that we were tainted by that in some way.”
Asked if Assange informed AP of why they were denied access to the documents, Carroll said he did not say. So what Carroll suggested was entirely conjecture.
Jacob Weisberg, former editor-in-chief of Slate Group, is the vice chair of CPJ’s board of directors. He opposed Assange and WikiLeaks in 2015 when they published emails from Sony Entertainment that were hacked. He published an opinion article at Slate, which he oversaw, under the headline, “Stop Publishing the Sony Hacks.”
“News outlets should obviously cover the story of the hack itself, the effect on Sony, the question of how it happened, and who’s responsible. This is a big and legitimate news story,” Weisberg declared. “But when it comes to exploiting the fruits of the digital break-in, journalists should voluntarily withhold publication.”
“They shouldn’t hold back because they’re legally obligated to—I don’t believe they are—but because there’s no ethical justification for publishing this damaging stolen material.”
Weisberg failed to disclose that he had ties to Sony Entertainment chief executive Michael Lynton, and emails he sent were in the archive that WikiLeaks published.
Washington Post columnist Erik Wemple contended Weisberg should have included a disclosure. Weisberg denied the existence of any conflict of interest and countered, “I continue to think that writing articles based on these emails is a massive violation of privacy—now including mine—without any compelling justification.”
In November 2020, CPJ executive director Joel Simon outlined some of the press freedom issues President Joe Biden needed to deal with after President Donald Trump’s administration fueled contempt for journalists. Remarkably, it contained no mention of the prosecution of Assange.
For what it’s worth, Assange has an International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) press card. Since 2010, he also has been a member of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), a trade union in Australia.
Every day that CPJ denies Assange a place in their jailed journalist index dilutes their credibility, as well as the ability of their advocacy to meaningfully contribute to an end to the U.S. government’s concerted attack on journalism.
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Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof, host of the “Dissenter Weekly,” co-host of the podcast “Unauthorized Disclosure,” and member of Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).
Featured image: Committee to Protect Journalists executive director Joel Simon (Screen shot from CPJ promo video on YouTube)
This text was first published on April 4 2019 in the context of the Florence International Conference: No War, No NATO whichcentred on the key relationship between US-NATO military operations directed against targeted countries and the imposition of far-reaching neoliberal economic reforms both before and in the wake of US-NATO military interventions.
At the height of the Ukraine Crisis, a World War III Scenario Looms. Nuclear War is Contemplated. The Future of Humanity is Threatened.
What are the Solutions:
NATO Exit under Art. 13. Notice of Denunciation
A Worldwide Antiwar Movement
The Disabling of War Propaganda
Sanity in US Foreign Policy
Diplomacy and Peace Negotiations,
The Closing Down of the War Economy.
Michel Chossudovsky, February 25, 2023
***
This article addresses the dangers and consequences of a Third World War as well the nature of advanced weapons systems deployed by the broader US-NATO coalition.
Extensive war crimes have been committed by NATO member states.
The object of the 2019 Florence Venue is NATO-EXIT. The Dismantling of NATO and the closure of US military bases.
There is a (somewhat contradictory) clause within the Treaty of the Atlantic Alliance (Article 13) which enables withdrawal from NATO. This clause has to be examined and a strategy must be envisaged.
The request of a NATO Member State to withdraw from the Treaty rests with the Government of the United States of America. What are the legal implications of this clause?
In our conclusion we will address what types of actions are required by mass movements to reach this objective, bearing in mind that since the war on Iraq (2003), protest movements have been coopted and manipulated. While global warming makes the headlines, the dangers of nuclear war are barely mentioned. Why?
Introduction and Overview
Washington’s unspoken hegemonic objective is Worldwide militarization and economic conquest. This imperial design is carried out through acts of war, military intervention, coups d’Etat, regime change, US sponsored insurgencies, cyber-warfare, economic sabotage and destabilization. “All options are on the table”.
We are at an important threshold in our history
In relation to all previous wars, today’s advanced military arsenal includes nuclear, biological, chemical and electromagnetic weapons which have the ability to destroy human life on a Worldwide scale.
War Propanganda
This military agenda is supported by an extensive propaganda apparatus.
The dangers of a World War are casually dismissed. War is portrayed as a humanitarian endeavor. The Mainstream media contends that war is a peace-making undertaking and that NATO should be granted the Nobel Peace prize.
Propaganda sustains the war agenda.
It provides a human face to war criminals in high office. Without media disinformation which upholds war as a peacemaking endeavor, America’s military agenda would collapse like a house of cards.
The imminent dangers of modern warfare are not front page news.
War is portrayed as a Peace-making endeavour. War Becomes Peace, Realities are turned upside down.
When the Lie becomes the Truth, there is no turning backwards. War criminals are portrayed as peace-makers.
War and Globalization. The Neoliberal Agenda
War and globalization go hand in hand. Militarization supports the imposition of macro-economic restructuring on targeted countries. It imposes military spending in support of the war economy at the expense of the civilian economy. It leads to economic destabilization and the demise of national institutions.
Military interventions are coupled with concurrent acts of economic sabotage and financial manipulation. The ultimate objective is conquest of both human and natural resources as well as political institutions.
Acts of war support a process of outright economic conquest. America’s hegemonic project is to transform sovereign countries into open territories. Debt conditionalities are imposed by foreign creditors. In turn, large sectors of the World population are impoverished through the concurrent imposition of deadly macro-economic reforms.
9/11 and the Invasion of Afghanistan. NATO and the “Global War on Terrorism”
The September 11, 2001 attacks (9/11) constitute an important and historical threshold. On the 12th of September 2001, the North Atlantic Council in Brussels invoking for the first time the doctrine of collective security (art. 5 of the Washington Treaty) adopted the following resolution:
“if it is determined that the [September 11, 2001] attack against the United States was directed from abroad [Afghanistan] against “The North Atlantic area“, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty”. (emphasis added)
This historic decision was supported by media propaganda. There was no attack against the US by a foreign power. There were no Afghan jet fighters in the skies of New York. There was a terror event. But it was not an act of war by a foreign power against the United States of America.
Without a shred of evidence, Afghanistan was tagged as the state sponsor of the 9/11 high-jackers, all of whom were Saudi nationals. Allegedly Afghanistan was “protecting” 9/11 terror mastermind Osama bin Laden (who was an “intelligence asset”, recruited in the early 1980s by the CIA ). Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts were known. On the 10th of September (as documented by Dan Rather CBS News) Osama had been admitted to the urology department of a military hospital in Rawalpindi, by America’s staunchest ally Pakistan.
Moreover, in the course of September and early October 2001, the Afghan Taliban government on two occasions contacted the US State Department through diplomatic channels and offered to extradite bin Laden to the U.S. This issue was not covered by the media.
Bush responded:” We do not negotiate with terrorists”.
Barely 4 weeks following the 9/11 attack on October 7, 2001, US-NATO invaded Afghanistan, invoking the doctrine of collective security. There was no evidence that “Afghanistan had attacked America” on September 11, 2001.
It is worth noting, confirmed by military analysts that you do not prepare a large scale theatre war in Central Asia, thousands of miles away in a matter of 28 days. This issue was casually dismissed by the mainstream media. The war on Afghanistan had been prepared PRIOR to 9/11.
US-NATO’s Role in Recruiting and Financing Al Qaeda Affiliated Terrorists
NATO has self-proclaimed mandate to go after the terrorists.
Yet there is ample evidence that NATO was involved in supporting as well as recruiting Al Qaeda affiliated mercenaries in Kosovo, Libya and Syria.(among other countries)
Video: NATO is Helping to Fight Terrorism Every Day (Source NATO)
In Syria, from Day One (March 17, 2011), the Islamist “freedom fighters” were supported, trained and equipped by NATO and Turkey’s High Command. According to Israeli intelligence sources (Debka, August 14, 2011):
NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent. … NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011)
This initiative, which was also supported by Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States involved a process of organized recruitment of thousands of jihadist “freedom fighters”, reminiscent of the enlistment of the Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-89).
In NATO’s war on Libya in 2011, support was channelled to the Al Qaeda affiliated jihadist opposition to the Gadaffi government.
The Legitimacy of “Humanitarian Warfare”
The twisted justifications for US-NATO led wars are:
“The Just War” (Jus ad Bellum). NATO contends that all itswars are morally justifiable. This is tantamount to legitimizing extensive war crimes.
“The Global War on Terrorism”. The counter-terrorism campaign is fake. Amply documented, NATO is involved in supporting and recruiting jihadist mercenaries (Syria 2011).
“Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) with a view to instilling (Trump style) Western “democracy” Worldwide.
Pre-emptive war as a means of “self-defense”, Attack them before they attack us. This doctrine also pertains to nuclear weapons, i.e. blow up the planet as a means of ‘self-defense”
RussiaGate, “Self-defense” against Russia under the doctrine of collective security
Pivot to Asia, Targeting China.
Financing US-NATO led Wars
In recent developments, President Trump has proposed major spending cuts in health, education, social infrastructure “while seeking a large increase for the Pentagon”. At the outset of his administration, president Trump confirmed that he was increasing the budget for the nuclear weapons program launched by Obama from 1.0 trillion to 1.2 trillion dollars. The stated objective was to make the world safer.
Throughout the EU, extended military spending coupled with austerity measures is leading to the demise of what was called the “Welfare State”.
NATO is committed to increasing military spending. It is the right thing to do to “keep our people secure, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
This favors the weapons producers at the expense of social programs. Mass movements against neoliberal economic policy and social inequality (Yellow Vests) cannot, therefore, be divorced from the anti-war movement.
Globalization and the Corporate Power Structures
Global warfare sustains the Neoliberal Agenda and vice versa.
Neoliberalism broadly defined is not limited to a set of economic paradigms and structural reforms. What we are dealing with is an imperial project broadly serving powerful global overlapping interests:
Wall Street and the Global Banking Apparatus
The Military Industrial Complex,
Big Oil,
the Biotech conglomerates, Bayer-Monsanto et al
Big Pharma,
The Global Narcotics Economy and Organized Crime,
the Media Conglomerates and the Information and Communication Technology Giants.
The military agenda is geared towards supporting and endorsing these powerful interests groups. There is of course within these sectors, mounting conflict between global conglomerates, each of which have their lobby groups.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
NATO and the De Facto US Military Occupation of Western Europe
70 years ago NATO was born. In April 1949, The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established what was designated as the doctrine of “Collective Security” under Art. 5 of the Washington Treaty.
NATO has a sordid history of aggression and war crimes:
Ever since its founding in April 1949, NATO has served as the vehicle to spur the arms race in the name of ‘peace through strength’. In that very same year, the Truman Administration in the United States secretly developed “Operation Dropshot’ to launch a devastating ‘first-strike’ against the former Soviet Union to completely obliterate that country. Throughout the ‘cold war’ years, the U.S. and its NATO allies always maintained an overwhelming military superiority over the USSR and the Warsaw Pact – a fact that they cynically concealed from public view at the time, but now readily admit. (Canadian Peace Congress)
The unspoken objective of NATO –which is of significance to our debate in Florence–, was to sustain under a different label, the de facto “military occupation” of Western Europe. The US not only continues to “occupy” World War II “axis countries” (Italy, Germany), it has used the NATO emblem to install US military bases throughout Western Europe, as well as in Eastern Europe in the wake of the Cold War, extending into the Balkans in the wake of NATO’s war on Yugoslavia.
Today, NATO consists of 29 member states, most of which have US military facilities on their territory, with the largest deployments of US forces in Germany and Italy. Bear in mind these are not NATO bases. The latter are limited to command and logistics: e.g. SHAPE Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, Casteau, Belgium, NATO Allied Command Transformation, Norfolk, Virginia
12 founding member states in 1949 Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal,
A number of other countries have established partnership agreements with NATO. Israel is a de facto member of NATO, based on an agreement reached in 2003. In turn, the US has established a host of military alliances on a regional basis.
Under the semblance of a multi-national military alliance, the Pentagon dominates NATO decision-making. The US controls NATO command structures, which are embedded into those of the US. The Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) as well as the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT) are Americans appointed by Washington. NATO current Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is essentially a bureaucrat. He does not call the shots.
Two other key command structures Allied Command Transformation (ACT) and Allied Command Operations (ACO), “responsible for the planning and execution of all NATO military operations” were added in 2002.
Under the terms of the military alliance, NATO member states are harnessed into endorsing Washington’s imperial design of World conquest under the doctrine of collective security.
In 1949, NATO became a Cold War instrument which prevented and undermined the development of trade, political, social and cultural relations between Western Europe and the Soviet block including Eastern Europe.
For Washington, with the Pentagon pulling the strings, NATO has become a convenient military “multi-state proxy”.
The strategic objectives of the US with regard to NATO are:
The de facto US Military Occupation of Western, Eastern Europe and Canada through the establishment of US military bases in most NATO member states
The imposition of US Foreign Policy, requiring the acceptance (under the doctrine of collective security) of all US war plans by NATO member states (including military deployments on Russia’s doorstep)
A mechanism whereby the Pentagon finances its wars and military operations through contributions by each NATO member state, at tax-payers expense;
The conduct of US-led wars under the emblem of the NATO military alliance, thereby obliging NATO member states to deploy their military capabilities as well as “do the dirty work for us”, i.e. killing and destruction on behalf of Washington.
The extension of US influence in the post war period into the former colonies of Western European countries (France, Belgium, Italy, Britain)
Military Occupation is tagged as “Protection” and the governments of NATO member states are actually “Paying the U.S. to Occupy their countries”. It is all for a good cause. “Make the World Safer”:
“The biggest indignity yet was the ludicrous demand that NATO allies pay to host the American troops permanently garrisoned there – to essentially bankroll their own occupations. Last week, it was reported the US would begin asking some of its most hospitable allies – those nations home to hundreds of thousands of soldiers – to foot the bill for the cost of keeping them “safe.”(H. Busyinzki),
I should mention that in addition to recommending NATO for the Nobel Peace Prize, the media relentlessly presents NATO as an instrument of peace-making.
US Military Bases and Global Military Alliances
The Pentagon’s grip extends well beyond the 29 NATO member states. It also includes partner countries as well as a broad system of military alliances in all major regions of the World including Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, East Asia (Japan, South Korea) and Oceania. Israel is a de facto NATO member state.
Military alliances and military occupation go hand in hand.
More generally the creation of military alliances has become a means to install US military bases in a large number of countries, including countries which were the victims of US led wars and military interventions. (eg Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iraq)
With the exception of NATO Strategic Command and its Logistics bases, there are no NATO military bases.
There are US bases located in host countries (including NATO member states) as well as national military bases under the jurisdiction of the NATO member states, often in a joint arrangement with the US.
Today there are approximately 39 US military bases in Germany (based on official sources), many of which are under a system of joint command with Germany and NATO.
Of significance, beyond the scope of this article, are the broad structures of military alliances of Russia and China under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Turkey (a member of NATO) is now collaborating with Russia as well as Iran. America’s staunchest ally Pakistan is now a full member of the SCO and is actively collaborating with China.
Geographic Combat Commands. US Military Bases Worldwide
America’s System of Geographic Combat Commands was established in the wake of World War II. It constitutes the foundations of global warfare, leading to the deployment of US Air, Navy and Land forces Worldwide, including the militarization of outer space and the deployment of nuclear weapons. In turn, all major theater wars are coordinated by US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska,
The United States currently has more than 800 formal military bases in 80 countries. In turn, US-led military and economic alliances have played a key role in extending America’s sphere of influence.Once these military bases are established in countries, they remain. The host country becomes a de facto ally of the US.
From a strategic point of view with modern day warfare, the geographic combat commands are in some regards obsolete. They are largely geared towards controlling countries which host US military bases. They do not constitute an effective structure for waging strategic military operations against Russia or China.
800+ US Military Bases. Where are they Located
Joint Forces command agreements are signed between the US and its allies. The host countries must not only endorse US military doctrine, they also contribute sizeable financial resources which are used to fund US military operations. In this regard, NATO member states contribute financially to sustaining the US-led military apparatus.
The map below is incomplete. It does not include US bases under Joint Command
America’s allies are also caught in the nexus of sustaining the US weapons industry (“defense contractors”) through multibillion dollar purchase.
Nuclear War and Nuclear Weapons
“The Privatization of Nuclear War”
US Military Contractors Set the Stage
US-NATO interventions are presented as peacemaking endeavors. A new generation of “more usable” “low yield” nuclear weapons are categorized as “harmless to civilians”. This initiative was first formulated during the George W. Bush administration. The concepts are contained in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, adopted by the Senate in 2002.
Hiroshima Day 2003: Secret Meeting at Strategic Command Headquarters
On August 6, 2003, on Hiroshima Day, commemorating when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (August 6 1945), a secret meeting was held behind closed doors at Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
Senior executives from the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex were in attendance. This mingling of defense contractors, scientists and policy-makers was not intended to commemorate Hiroshima. The meeting was intended to set the stage for the development of a new generation of “smaller”, “safer” and “more usable” nuclear weapons, to be used in the “in-theater nuclear wars” of the 21st Century.
In a cruel irony, the participants to this secret meeting, which excluded members of Congress, arrived on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing and departed on the anniversary of the attack on Nagasaki. More than 150 military contractors, scientists from the weapons labs, and other government officials gathered at the headquarters of the US Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska to plot and plan for the possibility of “full-scale nuclear war”, calling for the production of a new generation of nuclear weapons – more “usable” so-called “mini-nukes” and earth penetrating “bunker busters” armed with atomic warheads.
According to a leaked draft of the agenda, the secret meeting included discussions on “mini-nukes” and “bunker-buster” bombs with nuclear war heads “for possible use against rogue states”:
Participants intimated:
“We need to change our nuclear strategy from the Cold War to one that can deal with emerging threats… The meeting will give some thought to how we guarantee the efficacy of the (nuclear) stockpile.”
The post 9/11 nuclear weapons doctrine was in the making, with America’s major defense contractors directly involved in the decision-making process.
The Hiroshima Day 2003 meetings had set the stage for the “privatization of nuclear war”. Corporations not only reap multibillion-dollar profits from the production of nuclear bombs, they also have a direct voice in setting the agenda regarding the use and deployment of nuclear weapons.
The nuclear weapons industry, which includes the production of nuclear devices as well as the missile delivery systems, etc., is controlled by a handful of defense contractors with Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grunman, Raytheon and Boeing in the lead. It is worth noting that barely a week prior to the historic August 6, 2003 meeting, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) disbanded its advisory committee which provided an “independent oversight” on the US nuclear arsenal, including the testing and/or use of new nuclear devices. (The above text is an excerpt from Michel Chossudovsky’s Towards a World War Three Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War. Global Research, Montreal, 2011)
Dangerous Crossroads: The Future of Humanity is Threatened
Needless to say, the World is at a dangerous crossroads. The future of humanity is threatened. Lies and fabrications permeate US-NATO military doctrine. Those who decide believe in their own propaganda. Not only do they believe that tactical nuclear weapons are peace-making bombs, they are now putting forth the concept of a “Winnable Third World War”. Taking out China and Russia is on the drawing board of the Pentagon.
We are at the juncture of the most serious crisis in World history. A Third World War using nuclear weapons is terminal. This is not an understatement.
Military interventions are not limited to conventional warfare. What is at stake is a process of global warfare using advanced weapons systems. The safeguards of the Cold War era have been scrapped. The concept of “Mutually Assured Destruction” pertaining to the use of nuclear weapons has been replaced by the doctrine of preemptive nuclear war.
The INF Treaty is defunct. Nuclear weapons are portrayed by the media as peace-making bombs. They are no longer tagged as Weapons of Mass Destruction. They are to be used in what the Pentagon calls “bloody nose” operations.
In the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) under the Bush administration, the Pentagon introduced the notion of pre-emptive nuclear war, namely the use of nuclear weapons on a first strike basis as a means of “self defense”.
The new generation of so-called tactical nuclear weapons (mininukes) has been been categorized as “low yield” and “more usable. The US Senate in 2002 approved their use in the conventional war theater. They are contemplated for use against North Korea and Iran.
They are tagged as “safe to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground.” These “low yield” tactical nuclear bombs have an explosive capacity between one third and twelve times a Hiroshima bomb.
“More Usable” “Low Yield Nuclear Weapons Deployed in Five Non-Nuclear Weapons States: Germany, Italy, Belgium,The Netherlands, Turkey
The “Official” Nuclear Weapons States
Five countries, the US, UK, France, China and Russia are considered to be “nuclear weapons states” (NWS), “an internationally recognized status conferred by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)”. Three other “Non NPT countries” (i.e. non-signatory states of the NPT) including India, Pakistan and North Korea, have recognized possessing nuclear weapons.
It is worth noting that North Korea was the only declared nuclear weapons state which voted YES at the UN General Assembly, in favor of the prohibition of nuclear weapons under Resolution L.41.
Nobody knows about this. WHY: Because the mainstream media has not mentioned it (“Fake News” through Omission) or as in the case of The Guardian and Bloomberg, the DPRK was casually lumped together with the other nuclear weapons states which voted NO (against the resolution).
“Oops News”. “We made a mistake”. We did not really check the UN General Assembly documents.
Israel: “Undeclared Nuclear State”
Israel is identified as an “undeclared nuclear state”. It produces and deploys nuclear warheads directed against military and civilian targets in the Middle East including Tehran.
Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy and Turkey: erroneously categorised as Non-Nuclear Weapons States”
The nuclear weapons capabilities of these five countries including delivery procedures are formally acknowledged. The US has supplied some 480 B61. thermonuclear bombs to five so-called “non-nuclear states”, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. In recent developments the B61.11 mini-nukes are to replaced by the recently developed B61.12. Based on 2014 data Italy possesses 50 B61 tactical nuclear weapons at its Aviano base. It is unclear whether these bombs are under US or National Command.
Casually disregarded by the Vienna based UN Nuclear Watchdog (IAEA), the US has actively contributed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Western Europe. As part of this European stockpiling, Turkey, which is a partner of the US-led coalition against Iran along with Israel, possesses some 90 thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs at the Incirlik nuclear air base. (National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe , February 2005) By the recognised definition, these five countries are “undeclared nuclear weapons states”.
The stockpiling and deployment of tactical B61 in these five “non-nuclear states” are intended for targets in the Middle East. Moreover, in accordance with “NATO strike plans”, these thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs (stockpiled by the “non-nuclear States”) could be launched “against targets in Russia or countries in the Middle East such as Syria and Iran” ( quoted in National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe, February 2005)
Click to See Details and Map of Nuclear Facilities located in 5 European “Non-Nuclear States”
The stockpiled weapons are B61 thermonuclear bombs. All the weapons are gravity bombs of the B61-3, -4, and -10 types.2 . Those estimates were based on private and public statements by a number of government sources and assumptions about the weapon storage capacity at each base .(National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe , February 2005)
Germany: Nuclear Weapons Producer
Among the five “undeclared nuclear states”, “Germany remains the most heavily nuclearized country with three nuclear bases (two of which are fully operational) and may store as many as 150 [B61 bunker buster ] bombs” (Ibid). In accordance with “NATO strike plans” (mentioned above) these tactical nuclear weapons are also targeted at the Middle East. While Germany is not categorized officially as a nuclear power, it produces nuclear warheads for the French Navy. It stockpiles nuclear warheads (made in America) and it has the capabilities of delivering nuclear weapons.
Moreover, The European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company – EADS , a Franco-German-Spanish joint venture, controlled by Deutsche Aerospace and the powerful Daimler Group is Europe’s second largest military producer, supplying .France’s M51 nuclear missile. Germany imports and deploys nuclear weapons from the US. It also produces nuclear warheads which are exported to France. Yet it is classified as a non-nuclear state.
Fidel’s Message on the Dangers of Nuclear War
In 2010, October 12 to 15, 2010, I had extensive and detailed discussions with Fidel Castro in Havana, pertaining to the dangers of nuclear war, the global economic crisis and the nature of the New World Order.
Fidel Castro and Michel Chossudovsky, Havana, October 2010
These meetings resulted in a wide-ranging and fruitful interview which was subsequently published by Global Research.
Recorded on the last day of the Conversations, October 15, 2010, Fidel Castro made the following statement:
In a nuclear war the “collateral damage” would be the life of all humanity.
Let us have the courage to proclaim that all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything that is used to make war, must disappear!
“The use of nuclear weapons in a new war would mean the end of humanity. This was candidly foreseen by scientist Albert Einstein who was able to measure their destructive capability to generate millions of degrees of heat, which would vaporize everything within a wide radius of action. This brilliant researcher had promoted the development of this weapon so that it would not become available to the genocidal Nazi regime.
Each and every government in the world has the obligation to respect the right to life of each and every nation and of the totality of all the peoples on the planet.
Today there is an imminent risk of war with the use of that kind of weapon and I don’t harbour the least doubt that an attack by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran would inevitably evolve towards a global nuclear conflict.
The World’s peoples have an obligation to demand of their political leaders their Right to Live. When the life of humankind, of your people and your most beloved human beings run such a risk, nobody can afford to be indifferent; not one minute can be lost in demanding respect for that right; tomorrow will be too late.
Albert Einstein himself stated unmistakably: “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”. We fully comprehend what he wanted to convey, and he was absolutely right, yet in the wake of a global nuclear war, there wouldn’t be anybody around to make use of those sticks and stones.
There would be “collateral damage”, as the American political and military leaders always affirm, to justify the deaths of innocent people.
In a nuclear war the “collateral damage” would be the life of all humanity.
Let us have the courage to proclaim that all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything that is used to make war, must disappear!”
Fidel Castro Ruz, October 15, 2010
Flashback: The Unspoken History of Nuclear War
The Manhattan Project established in 1939 together with Britain and Canada developed the first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What was the purpose of the Manhattan Project? The official explanation is that it was America’s response to Nazi Germany’s intent to develop the atomic bomb. Bear in mind, the Manhattan project was launched in 1939, two years prior to America’s participation in World War II.
What is never mentioned in the history of nuclear weapons is that the Manhattan Project had formulated a plan to use nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union as early as 1942. In other words, the Nuclear Arms Race was not the product of the Cold War. It took it roots during World War II when the US and the Soviet Union were allies. And present US military doctrine is largely a continuation of the nuclear weapons program initiated under the Manhattan Project:
All major cities of the Soviet Union were included in the list of 66 “strategic” targets. The tables below categorize each city in terms of area in square miles and the corresponding number of atomic bombs required to annihilate and kill the inhabitants of selected urban areas.
Six atomic bombs were to be used to destroy each of the larger cities including Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent, Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa.
The Pentagon estimated that a total of 204 atomic bombs would be required to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”. The targets for a nuclear attack consisted of sixty-six major cities.
To undertake this operation the “optimum” number of bombs required was of the order of 466 (see document below)
The document outlining this diabolical military agenda had been released in September 1945, barely one month after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (6 and 9 August, 1945) and two years before the onset of the Cold War (1947).
Video produced by South Front
The secret plan dated September 15, 1945 (two weeks after the surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945 aboard the USS Missouri, see image below) , however, had been formulated at an earlier period, namely at the height of World War II, at a time when America and the Soviet Union were close allies.
War with Russia and China
Nuclear Weapons were contemplated to be used against Russia since 1942, and against China since October 1949
Currently, there are detailed plans by the US military (which are in the public domaine) to wage war against both Russia and China.
Four non-compliant countries including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have been singled out.
At the outset of 2019, War against China and Russia is on the drawing board of the Pentagon. The use of nuclear weapons is contemplated on a preemptive first strike basis.
Recent reports (2015-2018) commissioned by the Pentagon confirm the details of Washington’s military agenda against China and Russia (see reports by the Rand Corporation’s War against China project and the 2018 National Defense Strategy Commission, War against China and Russia.
On March 1st, 2018 president Vladimir Putin unveiled an array of advanced military technologies in response to renewed US threats to wipe the Russian Federation off the Map, as contained in Trump’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.
Below is a review of detailed war plans against Russia and China. These plans are in the public domaine. They are based on the premise that the US can win a nuclear war.
In May 2014, the Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA) was introduced in the US Senate (S 2277), calling for the militarization of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States and the stationing of US and NATO troops on Russia’s doorstep:
Directs the President to: (1) implement a plan for increasing U.S. and NATO support for the armed forces of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and other NATO member-states; and (2) direct the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO to seek consideration for permanently basing NATO forces in such countries.
In 2018: the US National Defense Strategy Commission report entitled “Providing for the Common Defense” outlines the contours of a war with Russia
The thrust of the report is that “global peace and stability” and “America’s own security, prosperity, and global leadership” are threatened by Russia and China.
Across Eurasia, grayzone aggression is steadily undermining the security of U.S. allies and partners and eroding American influence. Regional military balances in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Pacific have shifted in decidedly adverse ways.
What the report recommends is the conduct of “preemptive” action against both China and Russia, with a view to sustaining US military superiority.
The United States needs more than just new capabilities; it urgently requires new operational concepts that expand U.S. options and constrain those of China, Russia, and other actors.
While the report does describe a possible war scenario with Russia or China, it recommends a sizeable increase in the US military budget. A recommendation which is currently carried out by president Trump.
War with China Scenario
In 2015, a detailed report by the Rand Corporation commissioned by the US Army outlines a war scenario with China
Whereas a clear U.S. victory once seemed probable, it is increasingly likely that a conflict could involve inconclusive fighting with steep losses on both sides. The United States cannot expect to control a conflict it cannot dominate militarily.
The report is notoriously ambiguous. It focusses on how a war can be avoided while analyzing the circumstances under which a preemptive war against China is a win for the US:
The presumption of this report is that China is threatening us, which justifies pre-emptive warfare. There is no evidence of a Chinese military threat. The purpose of the RAND report is that Chinese policymakers will read it. What we are dealing with is a process of military intimidation including veiled threats:
While the primary audience for this study is the U.S. policy community, we hope that Chinese policymakers will also think through possible courses and consequences of war with the United States, includ ing potential damage to China’s economic development and threats to China’s equilibrium and cohesion. We find little in the public domain to indicate that the Chinese political leadership has given this matter the attention it deserves.
The Report outlines “Four Analytic Scenarios” on how a war with China could be carried out:
The path of war might be defined mainly by two variables: intensity (from mild to severe) and duration (from a few days to a year or more). Thus, we analyze four cases: brief and severe, long and severe, brief and mild, and long and mild. The main determinant of intensity is whether, at the outset, U.S. and Chinese political leaders grant or deny their respective militaries permission to execute their plans to attack opposing forces unhesitatingly.
The concluding comments of the report underscore the potential weakness of China in relation to US-allied forces “…they do not point to Chinese dominance or victory.”
The report creates an ideological war narrative. It is flawed in terms of its understanding of modern warfare and weapons systems. It is largely a propaganda ploy directed against the Chinese leadership. It totally ignores Chinese history and China’s military perceptions which are largely based on defending the Nation’s historical national borders.
While the US, according to the report, does not contemplate the use nuclear weapons, the report examines the circumstances under which China might use nukes against the US to avoid defeat.The analysis is diabolical:
Thus, it cannot be entirely excluded that the Chinese leadership would decide that only the use of nuclear weapons would prevent total defeat and the state’s destruction. However, even under such desperate conditions, the resort to nuclear weapons would not be China’s only option: It could instead accept defeat. Indeed, because U.S. nuclear retaliation would make the destruction of the state and collapse of the country all the more certain, accepting defeat would be a better option (depending on the severity of U.S. terms) than nuclear escalation. This logic, along with China’s ingrained no-first-use policy, suggests that Chinese first use is most improbable. (p. 30)
In other words, China has the option of being totally destroyed or surrendering to the US. The report concludes as follows:
In a nutshell, despite military trends that favor it, China could not win, and might lose, a severe war with the United States in 2025, especially if prolonged. Moreover, the economic costs and political dangers of such a war could imperil China’s stability, end its development, and undermine the legitimacy of the state. (p 68)
Unconventional Warfare (UW)
Included in the Pentagon’s arsenal is the use of various instruments of subversion including the support of terrorist insurgencies as outlined the Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare manual (leaked by Wikileaks).
The emphasis is on using “surrogates”, namely irregular forces, non-state and paramilitary terrorist entities which will do the dirty work for us:
UW [Unconventional Warfare] must be conducted by, with, or through surrogates; and such surrogates must be irregular forces. Moreover, this definition is consistent with the historical reasons that the United States has conducted UW. UW has been conducted in support of both an insurgency, such as the Contras in 1980s Nicaragua, and resistance movements to defeat an occupying power, such as the Mujahideen in 1980s Afghanistan. UW has also been conducted in support of pending or ongoing conventional military operations (p. 1-2)
The stated purpose outlined in Army Field Manual is to use UW to support “insurgencies” and “resistance movements”. The “War on Terrorism” (WAT) is also defined as part of the UW arsenal:
“UW remains an enduring and effective means of warfighting and is recognized as a central effort in the WOT…
ARSOF namely Army Special Forces “support the WOT by providing forces trained and equipped”.
The report focusses on the use of special forces which are integrated into the fabric of the War on Terrorism (WOT). What this means in practice is the processing of embedding of US-NATO forces in Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist insurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc.
Unconventional Warfare (UW) also extends into the realm of financial manipulation, acts of sabotage, cyberwarfare etc. The Army Field Manual on UW also details and condones the instruments of Irregular Warfare (IW) which may resort to illegal activities such as the Iran-Contra:
“Transnational criminal activities, including narco-trafficking, illicit arms dealing, and illegal financial transactions, that support or sustain IW.”
The Anti-war Movement: How to Reverse the Tide
Pursuant to the Florence April 7, 2019 Stop NATO Conference, concrete actions would consist in:
demanding the withdrawal from NATO by the 29 member states leading to the abolition of NATO.
closing down of US bases and military facilities in all NATO member states
the withdrawal of all US military personnel from NATO member countries
the repeal of payments of NATO member countries for the financing of US military bases and facilities
freezing of military budgets, reallocating resources to civilian social programs.
The mass movement would integrate anti-war protest with the campaign against the gamut of neoliberal economic reforms.
To achieve these objectives, what is required is the development of a broad based grassroots network which seeks to disable patterns of authority and decision making pertaining to war and the economy. This is by no means an easy and straightforward undertaking. The NGOs funded by Wall Street control a variety of “protest movements”. Since the Iraq war(2003) the anti-war movement is virtually non existent.
This network would be established nationally and internationally at all levels of society, towns and villages, work places, parishes. Trade unions, farmers organizations, professional associations, business associations, student unions, veterans associations, church groups would be called upon to integrate the antiwar organizational structure. Of crucial importance, this movement should extend into the Armed Forces as a means to breaking the legitimacy of war both within the command structure as well as among service men and women.
A related task (as a priority) would be to disable war propaganda through an effective campaign against media disinformation. (including support of the online independent and alternative media). This is no easy task given the wave of censorship against freedom of speech as well as the online manipulation of search engines and social media referrals.
What has to be achieved as a first priority is to dismantle the propaganda apparatus which sustains the legitimacy of war and neoliberalism. In that regard, the independent media has failed. The power structures behind the mainstream media, social media, etc, must be confronted.
Without this network of media disinformation, the war criminals in high office wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
Beware however of the flow of ideas emanating from several alleged progressive NGOs and “Left intellectuals” who are often financed by the establishment foundations. These are the entities which organize the so-called protest movements, generously funded by corporate foundations.
Intellectuals should not be the driving force of a Worldwide anti-war movement. What is required is a democratization of research and analysis, which serves to support a mass grass roots movement. The complexity of the global system (its military,economic, political dimensions) must be understood by the grassroots of the movement.
Changes within the Armed Forces, Security, Intelligence Law Enforcement apparatus are required with a view to eventually democratizing the command structures. Democratizing the decision-making apparatus of police and law enforcement is also something to be contemplated.
It is worth mentioning that while millions of people across the World have gathered under the banner of “Global Warming” and Climate Change, todays wars including Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela are not mentioned. Nor are the dangers of a Third World War.
The issue of poverty and Worldwide unemployment resulting from the imposition of neoliberal reforms is also sidetracked.
And the police apparatus is repressing the Yellow Vest movement.
There is also the unspoken issue pertaining to “Left intellectuals” who are often coopted into playing lip service in favor of US-NATO humanitarian wars including Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), not to mention Syria (2011) and Libya (2011).
While climate change is a legitimate concern, why are these protest movements limited to global warming. The answer is that many of the key organizations involved are generously funded by Wall Street foundations, including the Rockefellers, Tides, Soros., et al.
The Wall Street protagonists of war and neoliberalism are funding dissent against Wall Street. It’s what I would describe as “manufactured dissent”.
Challenging the Corporate Media
The corporate media would be directly challenged including major news outlets, which are responsible for channelling disinformation into the news chain. This endeavor would require a parallel process at the grass roots level, of sensitizing and educating fellow citizens on the nature of the war and the global crisis, as well as effectively “spreading the word” through advanced networking, through alternative media outlets on the internet, etc. It would also require a broad based campaign against the search engines involved in media censorship on behalf of the Pentagon.
The creation of such a movement, which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of the structures of political authority, requires a degree of solidarity, unity and commitment unparalleled in World history. It would require breaking down political and ideological barriers within society and acting with a single voice. It would also require eventually unseating the war criminals in high office, and indicting them for war crimes.
Abandon the Battlefield: Refuse to Fight
The military oath taken at the time of induction demands unbending support and allegiance to the US Constitution, while also demanding that US troops obey orders from their President and Commander in Chief:
“I,____________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God”
The President and Commander in Chief Donald Trump [now Joe Bidenhas blatantly violated all tenets of domestic and international law. So that making an oath to “obey orders from the President” is tantamount to violating rather than defending the US Constitution.
“The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) 809.ART.90 (20), makes it clear that military personnel need to obey the “lawful command of his superior officer,” 891.ART.91 (2), the “lawful order of a warrant officer”, 892.ART.92 (1) the “lawful general order”, 892.ART.92 (2) “lawful order”. In each case, military personnel have an obligation and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.” (Lawrence Mosqueda, An Advisory to US Troops A Duty to Disobey All Unlawful Orders,
The Commander in Chief is a war criminal. According to Principle 6 of the Nuremberg Charter:
“The fact that a person [e.g. Coalition troops] acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
Let us make that “moral choice” possible, to enlisted American, and US-NATO Coalition servicemen and women.
Disobey unlawful orders! Abandon the battlefield! … Refuse to fight in a war which blatantly violates international law.
But this is not a choice which enlisted men and women can make individually.
It is a collective and societal choice, which requires an organizational structure.
Across the land in North America, Western and Eastern Europe and in all NATO coalition countries, the new anti-war movement must assist enlisted men and women to make that moral choice possible, to abandon military service at US military bases around the World, as well as in the battlefield in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in Syria and Yemen.
This will not be an easy task. Committees at local levels must be set up across the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Japan among other countries, which have troops engaged in US led military operations.
We call upon veterans’ associations and local communities to support this process.
US-NATO coalition servicemen and women including senior military officers are victims of internal propaganda. This movement needs to dismantle the internal disinformation campaign. It must effectively reverse the indoctrination of coalition troops, who are led to believe that they are fighting “a just war”: “a war against terrorists”, a war against the Russians, who are threatening the security of America. It must also, as mentioned earlier, “democratize” the command structures.
The legitimacy of the US military authority must be broken.
What has to be achieved:
Reveal the criminal nature of this military project,
Break once and for all the lies and falsehoods which sustain the “political consensus” in favor of a pre-emptive nuclear war.
Undermine war propaganda, reveal the media lies, reverse the tide of disinformation, wage a consistent campaign against the corporate media
Break the legitimacy of the war-mongers in high office.
Dismantle the US sponsored military adventure and its corporate sponsors.
Bring Home the Troops
Repeal the illusion that the State is committed to protecting its citizens.
Uphold 9/11 Truth. Reveal the falsehoods behind 9/11 which are used to justify the Middle East Central Asian war under the banner of the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT)
Expose how a profit driven war serves the vested interests of the banks, the defense contractors, the oil giants, the media giants and the biotech conglomerates
Challenge the corporate media which deliberately obfuscates the causes and consequences of this war,
Reveal and take cognizance of the unspoken and tragic outcome of a war waged with nuclear weapons.
Call for the Dismantling of NATO
Implement the prosecution of war criminals in high office
Close down the weapons assembly plants and implement the foreclosure of major weapons producers
Close down all US military bases in the US and around the World
Develop an antiwar movement within the Armed Forces and establish bridges between the Armed Forces and the civilian antiwar movement
Forcefully pressure governments of both NATO and non-NATO countries to withdraw from the US led global military agenda.
Develop a consistent antiwar movement in Israel. Inform the citizens of Israel of the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israeli attack on Iran.
Confront the pro-war lobby groups including the pro-Israeli groups in the US
Dismantle the homeland security state, call for the repeal of the PATRIOT legislation
Call for the removal of the military from civilian law enforcement. In the US, call for the enforcement of the Posse Comitatus Act
Call for the demilitarization of outer space and the repeal of Star Wars
Call for the freezing of military budgets as well as a reallocation of resources in favor of the civilian economy
People across the land, nationally and internationally, must mobilize against this diabolical military agenda, the authority of the State and its officials must be forcefully challenged.
War can be prevented if people forcefully confront their governments, pressure their elected representatives, organize at the local level in towns, villages and municipalities, spread the word, inform their fellow citizens on the implications of a nuclear war, initiate debate and discussion within the armed forces.
What is required is the development of a broad and well organized grassroots antiwar network which challenges the structures of power and authority, the nature of the economic system, the vast amounts of money used to fund the war, the shear size of the so-called defense industry.
What is required is a mass movement of people which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of war, a global people’s movement which criminalizes war.
What is needed is to break the conspiracy of silence, expose the media lies and distortions, confront the criminal nature of the US Administration and of those governments which support it, its war agenda as well as its so-called “Homeland Security agenda” which has already defined the contours of a police State.
The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US and its NATO allies have embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity.
It is essential to bring the US war project to the forefront of political debate, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Political and military leaders who are opposed to the war must take a firm stance, from within their respective institutions. Citizens must take a stance individually and collectively against war.
We call upon people across the land, in North America, Western Europe, Israel, The Arab World, Turkey and around the world to rise up against this military project, against their governments which are supportive of US-NATO led wars, against the corporate media which serves to camouflage the devastating impacts of modern warfare.
The military agenda supports a profit driven destructive global economic system which impoverishes large sectors of the world population.
This war is sheer madness.
The Lie must be exposed for what it is and what it does.
It sanctions the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children.
It destroys families and people. It destroys the commitment of people towards their fellow human beings.
It prevents people from expressing their solidarity for those who suffer. It upholds war and the police state as the sole avenue.
It destroys both nationalism and internationalism.
Breaking the lie means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force.
This profit driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.
Let us reverse the tide.
Challenge the war criminals in high office and the powerful corporate lobby groups which support them.
Break the American inquisition.
Undermine the US-NATO-Israel military crusade.
Close down the weapons factories and the military bases.
Bring home the troops.
Members of the armed forces should disobey orders and refuse to participate in a criminal war.
First published by Global research on November 28, 2017
Global Research has received from Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia (1981-2003, 2018-2020) an important message, addressed to Muslims in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Yemen.
This message, however, is also addressed to the U.S. and its indefectible British ally which have relentlessly supported Saudi Arabia’s war against the people of Yemen, a criminal act tantamount to genocide under international law.
The U.S. has been instrumental in supporting the naval blockade on the delivery of food and medicine to Yemen’s starving children. In turn, the corporate media has payed lip service to the inaction of Western governments and their self-proclaimed “international community”. Both the US and Britain have sold billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia, while also advising them on the conduct of military operations. In the words of Rep. Ron Paul
“[Why does] Washington support Saudi Arabia – a tyrannical state with one of the worst human rights record on earth – as it commits by what any measure is a genocide against the Yemeni people?”
Let us endorse this important message by Tun Mahathir who in the course of the last twelve years has sought to criminalize war as well as create the required legal conditions for the indictment of the political architects of modern warfare.
The Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War
In 2005, after having served as Prime Minister of Malaysia for 22 years, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad initiated a pathbreaking endeavor which consisted in criminalizing all acts of war. This historic initiative under the helm of Tun Dr. Mahathir resulted in the formulation of “The Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War”:
“Killings in war are as criminal as the killings within societies in times of peace. Since killings in peace time are subject to the domestic law of crime, killings in war must likewise be subject to the international law of crimes. This should be so irrespective of whether these killings in war are authorized or permitted by domestic law.”
The full text of the December 2005 Declaration to criminalize war is included below.
Read the Declaration carefully. It is an important document.
Tun Mahathir “has a dream” that one day all wars will be abolished.
The signatories of the December 2005 Declaration share Tun’s resolve to criminalize war.
We call on our readers to share that dream, to send Tun Mahathir’s message far and wide, to change the course of history.
***
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, November 28 2017, January 4, 2022
***
Open letter from Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad to the Muslim community in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Yemen
The Kuala Lumpur Declaration to Criminalize War
Text of Declaration
15 December 2005
THE Kuala Lumpur Global Peace Forum of concerned peoples from all five continents
UNITED in the belief that peace is the essential condition for the survival and well-being of the human race,
DETERMINED to promote peace and save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,
OUTRAGED over the frequent resort to war in the settlement of disputes between nations,
DISTURBED that militarists are preparing for more wars,
TROUBLED that use of armed force increases insecurity for all,
TERRIFIED that the possession of nuclear weapons and the imminent risk of nuclear war will lead to the annihilation of life on earth.
From Left to Right: Francis A.Boyle, Helen Caldicott, Denis J. Halliday, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Hans-Christof Von Sponeck, Michel Chossudovsky, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
To achieve peace we now declare that:
Wars increasingly involve the killing of innocent people and are, therefore, abhorrent and criminal.
Killings in war are as criminal as the killings within societies in times of peace.
Since killings in peace time are subject to the domestic law of crime, killings in war must likewise be subject to the international law of crimes. This should be so irrespective of whether these killings in war are authorized or permitted by domestic law.
All commercial, financial, industrial and scientific activities that aid and abet war should be criminalised.
All national leaders who initiate aggression must be subjected to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
All nations must strengthen the resolve to accept the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter and institute methods to settle international disputes by peaceful means and to renounce war.
Armed force shall not be used except when authorised by a Resolution passed by two-thirds majority of the total membership of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
All legislators and all members of Government must affirm their belief in peace and pledge to strive for peace.
Political parties all over the world must include peace as one of their principal objectives.
Non-Governmental Organisations committed to the promotion of peace should be set up in all nations.
Public servants and professionals, in particular in the medical, legal, educational and scientific fields, must promote peace and campaign actively against war.
The media must actively oppose war and the incitement to war and consciously promote the peaceful settlement of international disputes.
Entertainment media must cease to glorify war and violence and should instead cultivate the ethos of peace.
All religious leaders must condemn war and promote peace.
To these ends the Forum resolves to establish a permanent Secretariat in Kuala Lumpur to –
IMPLEMENT this Initiative.
OPPOSE policies and programmes that incite war.
SEEK the cooperation of NGOs worldwide to achieve the goals of this Initiative.
One of the things that happens to our immune systems with age is that a preponderance of naïve B-cells (in youth) gives way to a diverse body of memory B-cells (in older adults), each trained to respond to a specific pathogen from the past. (Valter Longo claims that fasting eliminates some of the memory B-cells, which are replaced by naïve B-cells upon re-feeding.)
We know that old and young people have very different responses to COVID and to the COVID vaccines. There is a link between the B-cell story and the differential responses of old and young if we look at a recently re-discovered phenomenon called original antigenic sin. (The term was coined in a 1960 article on influenza.)
The innate immune system is our first and best line of defense. It is strongest in youth. Neutrophils engulf and digest bacteria and viruses. In addition to neutrophils and natural killer cells, there are short proteins in mucus membranes that protect us.
The mucus layer also contains substances that kill pathogens or inhibit their growth. Among the most abundant of these are antimicrobial peptides, called defensins, which are found in all animals and plants. They are generally short (12–50 amino acids), positively charged, and have hydrophobic or amphipathic domains in their folded structure. They constitute a diverse family with a broad spectrum of antimicrobial activity, including the ability to kill or inactivate Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria, fungi (including yeasts), parasites (including protozoa and nematodes), and even enveloped viruses like HIV. Defensins are also the most abundant protein type in neutrophils (see below), which use them to kill phagocytosed pathogens. It is still uncertain how defensins kill pathogens.
—Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th Edition
How do these simple, generic defenses distinguish invaders from self? There are certain molecules that are characteristic of bacteria and absent in eukaryotes.
The pathogen-associated immunostimulants are of various types. Procaryotic translation initiation differs from eucaryotic translation initiation in that formylated methionine, rather than regular methionine, is generally used as the first amino acid. Therefore, any peptide containing formylmethionine at the N-terminus must be of bacterial origin. Formylmethionine-containing peptides act as very potent chemoattractants for neutrophils, which migrate quickly to the source of such peptides and engulf the bacteria that are producing them….Short sequences in bacterial DNA can also act as immunostimulants.
—Mol Biol of Cell, 4th Ed
Innate immunity is based on inflammation. I’ve seen several sources that describe how the brilliant, all-purpose system of innate immunity turns to chronic, un-targeted inflammation with age, but no explanation as to how the inflammatory response loses its way and attacks the body generally.
The great resistance that young people have to the COVID virus seems to be due to a strong innate immune system; conversely, the second line of defense, the adaptive immune system, which older people rely on, seems to have more trouble with COVID.
Original antigenic sin (OAS): When the immune system first encounters a pathogen, a tiny subset of randomly-generated antibodies that happens to match a subregion (about 120 AA bases) of some protein in the invader is copied in an exponential process that leads to enormous amplification. Thereafter, the body has a memory of some protein fragments of the pathogen, but not others. When the same pathogen is detected months or years later, the immune system will favor its remembered response, rather than exploring its naïve cells for a new one.
The problem called “original sin” arises when the new invader is a related pathogen, not identical to the one first encountered. The immune system recognizes some subsequences, and figures, based on its memory, “we’ve got this one covered”. But sometimes the response that worked well with the original pathogen is sub-optimal for the new one. The body may fail to fight off a new virus simply because it has encountered a similar one in the past. This is the phenomenon that Thomas Francis dubbed “original sin”.
The relevance to present-day pandemic epidemiology is this: Coronaviruses are ubiquitous, and have been around longer than humans; we have all been exposed to many of them. When our bodies first encounter SARS-CoV-2, they are likely to yawn and say, “this looks a lot like something I’ve seen before”. And indeed, this seems to work well for a lot of bodies. No less a light than John Ioannidis has estimated that up to 80% of people cast off the COVID virus with symptoms so mild that they never know they had it. But there are other people for whom the remembered response to some generic coronavirus is not sufficient, and their immune systems get stuck in an obsolete paradigm. Original sin.
“Original sin” can apply to vaccines as well. The COVID spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor, and has this in common with spike proteins from many past coronaviruses. This makes it likely that parts of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein have similar regions to other common coronaviruses from the past, (including the original 2003 SARS). The spike protein, of course, is the element of the virus that was chosen by all Western vaccine manufacturers to induce with their vaccine products. So we see a possible reason why young people and old people have such different reactions to the vaccine: young people are responding to the vaccine from the innate immune systems, while older people are responding by selectively amplifying antibodies from their immune memory.
Age and Vaccine Side Effects
The current crop of mRNA vaccines have caused in 11 months about twice as many adverse reactions, including deaths, as the total of all previous vaccines in the 30-year history of VAERS. These post-vaccination events deserve to be counted and addressed. CDC is in denial.
Reported heart attacks (9,746 cases) and deaths (19,532) after vaccination are skewed toward older people. The average age for heart attacks is 62. [these numbers from OpenVAERS]
Myocarditis and pericarditis (15,403) are skewed toward the young, average age 32, and toward boys more than girls.
When adults do have myocarditis following the jab, it is equally likely to be after the first or second dose. But when young people (<20) get myocarditis, it is most likely to be after the second dose. My interpretation: Adults have been around the block, and they have seen spike proteins before. Their response to the vaccine is from memory B cells. Young people are more likely to be responding from naïve B cells. Something terrible (that I don’t claim to explain) happens when they see the same antigen 3 weeks later.
Neurological damage, including Bell’s Palsy, paralysis, and Guillain-Barre, peak in middle ages (average age 50)
Middle-aged people are also more likely than the young or old to have anaphylactic responses to the vaccines (8,301 total cases). This is surprising, not only in light of the elevated inflammatory response in older people, but also because the old are more likely to have a problem from original sin.
OVS?
A related phenomenon might be called original vaccination sin. It is peculiar to the newer, cheaper crop of vaccines that are based on a single protein extracted from the virus, rather than on a weakened whole virus, which had been the basis of classic vaccines.
When we develop a vaccine for a pandemic virus based on one small subset of the viral genome, quite predictably, the virus squirm its way out of this artificial barrier by mutating exactly that part of its genome that the vaccine targets. The new variant, with mutations in just the target part of its genome, expands in just a few months from a rare sub-species to become the dominant infection.
Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical manufacturers are geared up to mass-produce a vaccine that no longer targets the current version of the virus. A seasoned Dutch vaccine specialist predicted back in April that just this would happen. As the omicron variant emerges with 37 mutations in the spike protein, scientists who certainly know better feign surprise that so many mutations could arise so quickly, and in just the part of the virus that vaccinated individuals respond to. A high school student’s understanding of natural selection makes it obvious why the COVID virus is mutating in this way.
The good news is that these mutations are likely to make the virus less deadly. The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 is not an ordinary, evolved spike protein which is evolved to bind well to a receptor and gain entrance to a host cell. This spike protein was engineered in a bioweapons lab to be toxic in multiple ways (in addition, of course, to binding to ACE-2), to break off and enter the bloodstream, spreading its damage far and wide. So when the spike protein mutates to avoid the vaccine, it is likely to become less toxic (while retaining the ability to bind to ACE-2, because that’s what helps the virus to transmit itself.)
OAS and ADE
ADE = antibody-dependent enhancement (or pathogenic priming) is much better known these days than OAS. ADE or PP refers to any situation in which having been exposed to a virus or bacterium once, the patient becomes sicker on the second exposure. It is much discussed now because of the fear that vaccines could induce ADE, so that some vaccinated people might have worse cases of COVID than if they had not been vaccinated. And indeed there is some evidence for this.
There is no agreement in the community about why ADE happens in some patients some of the time, and there is not even good agreement about how to define ADE. It is possible that the antibody binding to the virus can actually enhance its ability to infect, rather than marking it for destruction.
Some of the definitions of ADE are broad enough to encompass OAS. For example, here is a definition from AAAS. Derek Lowe describes ADE:
Dengue fever is a classic example, because it infects humans through four distinct serotypes. If you are infected with one of these and raise a successful immune response, you may well be at increased risk of serious infection with one of the other serotypes. The neutralizing antibodies for one of the types are often not neutralizing for the others, but instead allow that cell-antibody-receptor mechanism to kick in (easier infection of human monocytes), known as “extrinsic ADE”. There’s also an “intrinsic ADE” seen with dengue, which leads to greater viral replication inside infected monocyte cells before they burst and release their contents. The mechanisms for that are still being worked out, but seem to involve suppression of cytokine pathways.
Memory B cells producing antibodies of high affinity and specificity established following a primary exposure to one subset of antigens can prevent or significantly dampen responses by naive B cells to new antigens if they are part of a profile that includes antigens present during the primary exposure (5, 6). This is not a problem if the memory response produces neutralizing antibodies to antigens associated with the secondary exposure; however, problems do arise if memory B cells produce nonneutralizing antibodies to the antigens shared between primary and secondary exposures as reported recently in humans exposed to related human coronaviruses (hCoVs) and later infected with SARS-CoV-2 (7, 8). In such a scenario, not only can the memory response be ineffective, it can significantly attenuate the response of newly activated B cells that could have responded effectively to new antigens absent from the original priming event.
The bottom line
. Our immune systems are more complex than we understand. They are brilliantly effective most of the time, but respond to novel stimuli in ways we can’t predict. In general, it seems true that educating the immune system about a pathogen in advance adds protection when that pathogen is encountered later. But there are known and unknown mechanisms by which previous exposure can make a new infection worse.
Vaccine development is an experimental science. The immune system is modified in permanent ways, and there is no theory to tell us whether the benefits or the detriments of an intervention will play out over the years. There is no substitute for long-term trials.
I’ll save the best news for last
The Delta variant had significantly lower mortality than the Wuhan original SARS-CoV-2. Omicron is the up-and-coming strain of COVID, and it has a dramatically lower mortality. There is a simple explanation for this direction of evolution, and I think it’s something we can count on.
In general, viruses evolve to become more contagious and less harmful. It’s in the virus’s interest to co-exist with the host, doing no harm, so it can spread freely. In the case of COVID-19, this evolution has been more rapid and more dramatic than usual. Here’t why:
The spike protein is the part of the virus that is engineered as a bioweapon. The spike protein is responsible for damage to arteries, to nerves, and to the heart that make COVID a fearsome disease. But the spike protein is also the only part of the virus that is induced by the vaccines. Hundreds of millions of people have immunity to the spike protein and nothing else. The virus can continue to spread to the extent that it evades vaccine immunity, and the best way to evade vaccine immunity is via mutations to the spike protein. [recent survey from the SF bay area] These mutations tend to de-fang the spike protein, which was engineered by humans to have multiple toxic effects.
The vaccines are doing their job by guiding the evolution of the virus toward a more benign form. The end game will be that those of us who have not already lived through COVID will be exposed to omicron or something even more benign, and we’ll come through with a lifetime of immunity to all new COVID strains.
We bring to the attention of Global Research readers this outstanding article and carefully researched article by Linda Bonvie and Mary Beth Pfeiffer which is part of a publishing collaboration between Rescue and Trial Site News.
When a Texas cattleman, seventy-nine, died last September in New Mexico after contracting covid, his family never anticipated the worldwide headlines that would ensue. In a ballyhooed press conference, New Mexico Human Services Secretary Dr. David Scrase, the state’s top health chief, announced New Mexico’s first ivermectin “overdose,” soon adding a second fatality allegedly from “ivermectin toxicity.”
Now, Scrase has acknowledged that his repeated, what he called “offhand,” assertions were groundless. Two deaths were not caused by ivermectin, a long-used generic drug that was emerging as a covid treatment. Instead, he said that the pair died because they “actually just delayed their care with covid.”
That is a big difference.
Scrase backpedaled on December 1 in a little-noticed online press briefing and only after we pressed his agency to provide evidence for its claims of so-called “ivermectin deaths.” Officials had repeatedly said they were awaiting a toxicology report on the cattleman’s death. Yet we learned that the report was never even ordered or done, and, moreover, the man’s death was ruled by the state’s coroner as being from “natural” causes.
Not a single media outlet reported Scrase’s admission, even as dozens, including the The Hill and TheNew York Times, had eagerly covered his original assertions about ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015. “I don’t want more people to die,” read one early headline, quoting Scrase. “It’s the wrong medicine for something really serious,” Scrase said in the Times article.
Doctors, scientists, and toxicologists worldwide were puzzled by the assertions, because ivermectin is an extraordinarily safe, FDA-approved drug. A fixture on the WHO’s list of 100 essential medicines all hospital systems are recommended to carry, nearly four billion doses have been given in four decades.
New Mexico became a key player in a broad pattern of governmental deception late last summer to portray ivermectin as dangerous, in tandem with three related developments. Research strongly supported the drug’s efficacy against covid; prescriptions were soaring; and public health officials were single-mindedly focused not on treatment but on vaccination.
We previously reported that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s tweeted warning last August against using ivermectin meant for livestock was prompted by incorrect—and unverified—information from Mississippi. Health officials there had posted an alert suggesting the state’s poison control center was deluged with hundreds of calls over ingestion of livestock ivermectin; in reality, we found, four reports were received.
But, fueled by bits of contorted evidence like this, the anti-ivermectin train was unstoppable. We have now learned that, in the rush to bury a drug described as “astonishingly safe” and long used globally to quell animal and human parasites, FDA was not alone.
Emails we obtained from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control show that an influential August 26 national health alert on ivermectin was spurred, like the FDA tweet, by a sliver of evidence: just three cases of alleged ivermectin side effects, two involving animal formulations. No patient died; one appeared to have been hospitalized, and one declined any medical help.
Nonetheless, those three reports, obtained by Atlanta-based CDC from the Georgia poison control center, sealed the decision to issue the nation’s highest-level health warning, according to the emails.
Shortly after learning of three cases, CDC’s Michael Yeh writes, “we have evidence of significant toxicity.”
That email was written seventy-two minutes after brief information on three reports arrived in a separate email.
While CDC’s intention might have been to protect people, the alert is emblematic of what had become a national obsession: Portray an early treatment for covid—whether in the animal or human form—as potentially toxic.
In an email later that day, Yeh laid out the evidence. The most serious case involved a man, seventy-seven, who had was said to have taken a dose of ivermectin “apparently meant for an 1800 lb. bovine.” He had “hallucinations and tremors, which improved but he was eventually diagnosed with COVID-19” for which he needed only supplemental oxygen, Yeh notes.
In two other cases, a woman who took the human form of the drug was said to have suffered “some confusion.” Another woman had “subjective visual disturbances” after taking “a product meant for sheep” but declined medical help. These side effects are in keeping with what the National Institutes of Health calls a “well-tolerated” anti-parasitic drug with such adverse effects as “dizziness, pruritis, nausea, or diarrhea.”
French researchers published a review last March of 350 ivermectin articles in the medical literature and found adverse effects to be “infrequent and usually mild to moderate.” The study, by the French drugmaker MedinCell, noted that no deaths were reported even after accidental overdoses or suicide attempts.
In view of ivermectin’s well-established safety profile, our request for CDC documents under the Freedom of Information Act sought the rationale for the health alert and specifically asked for the data CDC used from the American Association of Poison Control Centers, to which state centers report. (AAPCC had refused to provide it.)
In response to the FOIA request, CDC asserted, quite remarkably, that it “no longer possesses or has access to the data” because its “licensing agreement” with AAPCC had lapsed. The data might have specified, for example, just how many calls were related either to animal or human formulations; the alert instead lumps all reports together, making it difficult to fathom the extent of livestock ivermectin use.
The CDC asserts in a letter to us that it no longer possesses the data on which a national health alert was based.
This context, of course, was missing from CDC’s alert. Calls to poison control centers for use of animal and human ivermectin grew five- to eight-fold from “pre-pandemic levels,” the alert ominously reported. At the same time, it said, ivermectin prescriptions had soared twenty-four-fold—in a perfectly legal trend led by physicians but one the CDC clearly found unacceptable and alarming.
No distinction was made between animal and human formulations in the alert, whichwas peppered with phrases like “ivermectin misuse and overdose;” “seizures, coma, and death;” “sheep drench,” “severe illness,” and “rapid increase.” The message: Don’t use either form, even as seventy-one studies show 64 percent of 50,180 patients improved after taking ivermectin for covid.
Despite the alert and New Mexico’s unfounded pronouncements, no one has died from ivermectin poisoning among 2,112 cases logged by AAPCC from January 1 to December 14, 2021. Two percent of those reports, about forty-two, involved a “major” effect, an AAPCC bulletin states. Seventy percent were dismissed as having no effect, “nontoxic exposure,” and the like.
One category of those calls might rightfully have been classified as anti-ivermectin hysteria. New Mexico, for example, urged citizens to report any known ivermectin use to the state’s poison control center, even if “someone you know has taken it.”
“Ivermectin is one of the safest medications on this planet; far safer than aspirin or acetaminophen,” he said. “This is a fairy tale. Disney could not come up with a better fairy tale.”
But it was no kind of fantasy for the cattleman’s family when he got sick. It was a painful experience with a politicized health system.
A “Very Puzzling” Phone Call
It wasn’t a secret that a cattleman, who died while in New Mexico from covid, took an animal formulation of ivermectin. It is a drug he was well versed in using, having routinely administered it to his herds in Texas.
Others in the family also used Ivomec, a liquid formulation of ivermectin for cattle, since news spread of ivermectin’s effectiveness against covid. “Practically everyone I know takes it,” we were told by a close family friend and business associate of the Texan. (We are withholding the man’s name at the family’s request.)
Ivermectin is just one of 167 drugs tested for safety and approved by the FDA for both animals and humans. Yet those who take either form of ivermectin for covid have been characterized as being anti-science and influenced by “misinformation.”
The Texan is one of two individuals who, according to repeated statements from New Mexico officials, died from “ivermectin toxicity.” While their identities were not revealed by the department of health, a source familiar with the cases released them to us during this investigation.
Documents and interviews with those knowledgeable about the death of the rancher tell a different story than the narrative put forth by New Mexico health officials.
When the cattleman arrived at the ER on the evening of September 2 with his wife, he was soon diagnosed as suffering from acute dehydration as well as being covid positive.
His daughter arrived at the hospital several hours later.
In an interview, she told of the surprise eightieth birthday party for her dad the weekend before, where eight of the eleven family members attending ended up with covid. Everyone seemed to have mild symptoms, she recalled.
With her dad in New Mexico and not feeling well, she suggested he be checked out. “My father was not very good at keeping himself hydrated,” she said, and at that point he didn’t seem to be drinking at all.
He arrived at the hospital dehydrated to the point that his kidneys had become damaged, doctors told the family. Lacking a proper dialysis machine at the Lincoln County Medical Center, the family was told that they were trying to locate another hospital to send him to. Unfortunately, he never made it out of Ruidoso, dying on September 3.
But what happened while his wife and daughter anxiously waited outside the ICU, soon after being informed that the Texan was likely going to pass away, struck them as most peculiar.
His daughter recalled a “very puzzling” phone call her mother received—so disturbing, in fact, that she felt like “yanking the phone from her.”
An unknown man was on the line asking if her father took ivermectin. It was the only time she remembers that particular drug being discussed in the hospital. “I feel like they were pushing her. It was really irritating,” she said, adding, “it was not a doctor or nurse, but mom cannot remember who it was or what they represented.”
They were most interested, she recalled, in grilling her mother about her dad’s use of Ivomec.
At the very next press briefing, Dr. Scrase announced that a “reliable source” reported the state’s “first death” from someone who took ivermectin. While he hedged his bets about the role of ivermectin—and mentioned delayed care—he nonetheless repeatedly characterized the man’s death and one other as specifically being caused by ivermectin.
However, the cattleman’s death certificate, filed at the end of September, says otherwise. It stated he passed away from “natural” causes. His death was not listed as requiring any type of “pending investigation,” and the medical examiner’s office confirmed the fact that no autopsy or toxicology report was done.
But Dr. Scrase’s original tale proved to be very popular with the media. USA Today liked it so much the paper released several versions. “Two die of ivermectin poisoning,” it announced the same day the death certificate was officiated. Five days after that, a headline in The Hill trumpeted,“New Mexico reports two deaths from ivermectin.”
The New Mexico Department of Health has yet to respond to any questions about why a straightforward correction was not made to the media early on regarding the two deaths that were erroneously attributed to ivermectin. It is also not clear why at a recent press briefing the agency was continuing to perpetuate this fallacy even after admitting it was untruthful, rather than correcting the record—and why they have alleged another ivermectin-related death, again without offering any evidence to that effect.
The second supposed ivermectin death involved a thirty-eight-year-old woman from Cuba, New Mexico, reportedly of Navajo heritage. An autopsy was done, but the results have yet to be released.
While Scrase has acknowledged that the two deaths were from covid, not ivermectin, he nonetheless announced what he called yet a “third” ivermectin death at his December 1 briefing.
The new death, Scrase said, is a “60-year-old man who took a horse preparation. This gentleman took 150 milligrams, [suffered] liver failure, kidney failure and actually died from the ivermectin without the covid.”
As with the first two cases, the cause of death remains to be seen.
According to Dr. Marik, 150 milligrams of ivermectin can be safely tolerated. “I do not know of a single case of liver failure and organ failure due to ivermectin,” he wrote in an email.
Both the CDC and New Mexico Department of Health declined to answer questions for this article.
Despite ongoing requests by the New Mexico Department of Health for residents to report any ivermectin use, as this slide displayed during a December 1 press conference shows, only 29 calls came into the state’s poison control center for most all of 2021. The graphic also states that ivermectin caused three deaths in the state, despite the fact that during that very same press briefing it was acknowledged that the first two of the alleged deaths were due to covid, not ivermectin (with no evidence released to support the third claim).
Ivermectin dosages are missing or, in one case, described as “concentration unknown.” One woman “was sent to the hospital, but her baseline mental status was unclear.” Another woman was to be contacted for follow-up after declining aid, but there is no indication this was done.
These anecdotal bits are the threads from which a mythical tapestry about so-called “ivermectin toxicity” has been woven. This myth lives on in easily accessed online articles.
FDA claimed last March to have “received multiple reports” of injury and hospitalization after people took livestock ivermectin. In reality, the agency relied on four reports, a spokesperson said in an email. CDC officials referenced the FDA “consumer warning” when planning their own contribution to the myth of ivermectin harm.
It matters little that false Mississippi figures were corrected (at our behest) by The New York Times, twice, and The Washington Post. What matters is the hurricane of fear, whipped up by New Mexico, Mississippi, the FDA, and CDC—and abetted by media—made ivermectin into something it was not.
So where do we stand as vaccines fail and cases rise?
On October 28, WisPolitics.com reported the case of a family that failed to convince a court to give FDA-approved ivermectin to their dying loved one.
“There have been multiple reports nationally,” the website reported, “of people taking the version of the drug intended for animals to combat COVID-19 and sickening themselves in the process.”
Unsupported in the medical literature, the false image of ivermectin convinced doctors in that case to suggest that “the prescribed dosage may be lethal.”
Indeed, the invented peril, rather than promise, of ivermectin has become ingrained in the national media and consciousness.
It is no longer a conspiracy theory: In the course of this year’s World Health Summit, Stefan Oelrich, CEO of pharmaceutical giant Bayer, referred to the mRNA jabs as “cell and gene therapy” in his speech.
Mockingly, he explained that if one had asked people two years ago about their willingness to be “injected with gene therapy”, a “95 percent rejection rate” would have been likely. In his speech he also emphasized the good cooperation with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to achieve a “sustainable” world – working together to reduce birth rates and shrink the world’s population.
At the summit held from October 24 to 26, 2021, German Health Minister Jens Spahn, the EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Bayer manager Oelrich addressed the audience. The latter described the experimental mRNA injections as “cell and gene therapy”.
Oelrich also made other interesting statements that revealed his end goal.
The Bayer chief is a member of the Board of Management of Bayer AG and has been Head of the Pharmaceuticals Department since November 2018. Previously, he was on the board of directors of Sanofi. From 1989 to 2011 Oelrich held various management positions at Bayer AG. He is also a member of the supervisory board of the Charité University Hospital in Berlin. So he has decades of experience in the pharmaceutical industry.
“We’re really making this leap – we as a company, Bayer – with cell and gene therapies… ultimately, the mRNA vaccines are an example of this cell and gene therapy. I always like to say, if we had done a public survey two years ago– ‘would you be willing to inject gene or cell therapy into your body?’ – we would probably have had a rejection rate of 95 percent,” said Oelrich.
In addition to gene therapy, Oelrich also mentioned the role that his company, together with other prominent institutions and personalities, has played in the implementation of contraceptives.
“We also have to concentrate on what is socially responsible outside of Europe and ensure that we act sustainably there. Last year we made a commitment to give one hundred million women around the world additional access to contraceptives. We invested 400 million this year in new facilities to manufacture long-acting contraceptives for women […] Together with Bill and Melinda Gates we are working very closely on family planning initiatives,” Oelrich revealed, indicating that one of the ways to achieve a “sustainable” world is to reduce the number of births and therefore the world’s population.
Oelrich is in the service of the “Great Reset”, the radical plan to establish world dictatorship. This was designed under the leadership of Klaus Schwab and the globalist elite who meet once a year at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. In the announcement of the “Great Reset”, the WEF also wrote that the COVID-19 “pandemic” would be ideally suited to achieve this goal.
The Bayer chief added that the “silver lining” of the pandemic was that it “has shown how quickly we can radically change our lifestyle – almost immediately, the crisis forced companies and individuals to abandon practices that had long been considered indispensable, from frequent air travel to work in the office”.
The World Economic Forum also recently published two articles advancing the notion of eating insects. European member states have now certified house crickets, yellow mealworms, and grasshoppers as food fit to be sold at supermarkets. These items will be cheaper than traditional sources of protein and will be sold in frozen, dried, and powdered forms, according to Bloomberg.
The Biden administration is signaling that COVID-19, and all current and future variants therein, are part of the new and permanent way of life.
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COVID-19 is being codified in the permanent regulatory state. The contracts for the continuance of the public health emergency supply procurements are coming through the Defense Department [Announcement Here]
Many people feared that various government agencies, those who used the pandemic to gain raw power over U.S. citizens, would never relinquish their new authorities. This latest announcement would indicate long term plans that are likely to end no sooner than when we stop taking off our shoes at the airport TSA checkpoints.
It’s a smart Machiavellian move to use the DoD as the regulatory mechanism for the permanent state of emergency, as their spending authorities carry wide discretion and are supported by both wings of the UniParty and permanent security state, ie. The Fourth Branch of Government.
(Via Daily Mail) – The Biden administration struck a $137 million deal to build a new factory in the U.S. to ramp up production of COVID-19 testing kits – but the new facility won’t be completed until late 2024 at the earliest.
MilliporeSigma, a brand formed by Germany’s Merck KGaA, will build a new factory in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, the Defense Department announced as the U.S. hit a high record of 489,267 COVID cases on Wednesday
While the contract gives the company three years to complete the facility, it is not immediately clear when it will ramp up to full production, which is expected to pump out 83.3 million tests per month.
‘Construction is expected to begin the second half of 2022 and initial planning and preparatory work is already underway,’ a MilliporeSigma spokesperson told DailyMail.com. ‘We estimate that the facility will be capable of providing lateral flow membranes in the latter part of 2024.’
The individual said that the production of lateral flow membrane is ‘critical for rapid diagnostic tests’ that will not only help with COVID-19 detection, but also with ‘any future public health emergencies.’ (read more)
Once we get on their Ronacoaster, we can’t get off until the ride’s over. And apparently, if we let the government keep going, the ride is never over.
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If you are a lucky reader, you chance upon a book that makes your hair stand on end in wonder and sends a shiver down your spine. This book does that, for it is deft, digressive, and capricious in ways that leave you wondering what whim set the author’s mind so ablaze to dare to set this story to paper.
Was it a flight from reality or to reality? But what is reality?
There is no cage within which you can categorize this writing: no fable, mystery, novella, myth, etc. – they all fail to grasp its essence. Like a song or a wild bird, it flies free from all attempts to pin it down. Emanuel Garcia writes luminescent words that vibrate in the reader’s heart and soul, and set the mind on fire contemplating the strangeness of existence. It leads one to ask oneself: What do you desire? What is desire? Where does it lead us?
I had to read the book very slowly, a few pages at a time, and often before sleep and dreams. My passage from reading to sleeping felt like walking across a bridge in the twilight, crossing a river or a canal, and when dawn arrived, to cross back. I would often then reread those pages in the morning before proceeding to the next bridge that night. Sometimes I would get lost, but that lostness drew me into a waking dream state that the writing had conjured. It was eerie, but in the alluring way one hears a gypsy violinist’s haunting tune drifting from a twisting alley. A siren call.
Video: Readings from a New Novella
On its face, this brief jewel – 125 pages – is about Donato and Olympia and their enigmatic love affair in and about the environs of Venice, Italy, the city of masks, secrets, and labyrinthine ways.
The city called La Serenissima, The Most Serene Woman, whose nickname belies the tempestuous Olympia and the wildly sexed Donato, whose love and desire for women and what they represent snakes through the book. Only a eunuch would fail to understand Donato, who has written this book as a gift for Olympia, who, in her own way, makes Donato the writer seem pedestrian by comparison. But her passions are slightly different; she is a deeply wounded wild mystical woman, entrancingly beautiful and prone to drift out of this world for periods of time.
Her gypsy mother died when she was six-years-old and, although her life-long grieving father doted on her, she found solace in visitations from the angels Michael and Gabriel and Jesus’s mother Mary and Mary Magdalene. She would visit churches for the peace it brought her to sing with her beautiful bell-like soprano. A serene tigress is she, prone to despair and faith, strange sexual activities devoid of emotion, and intense love and insight.
Being a writer and not being sure why he writes or to what end, Donato takes twenty years to spin out this story for Olympia. It is what he calls a “caprice,” sudden motive-less writing done on a whim that he considers “the absolute jewel of literature.” In it, the mundane and imaginative mix, as do dreams and waking life. Perhaps living is whimsical and condenses the years when one steps out of the cage and just writes when possessed by language. For Donato discovers, of course, that in writing about Olympia, he is writing about himself, and in writing about another couple, Emilia and Marcello, and all their mutual interactions, both sexual and artistic, he is holding up a mirror to the multifaceted and complicated nature of everyone.
What are we doing with our lives and why? What does it mean to be yourself? What do we want? What is the nature of wanting? And prayer? Why write anything at all – my musings on this enchanting book or the book itself? Who is it all for? Does Emanuel/Donato/ me or you need an audience for our deepest caprices, our secrets, our deepest wishes? What’s it all about, Alfie?
If you wish to be transported out of this sorry world for a while to a place where you can wonder, read Olympia; it is a marvelous book. It will take you in circles, like the closed circle of infinity represented by a ring.
Such an exploration brought me back to where I started, and it felt as though I knew the place for the first time, this life where the seen, unseen, and the unforeseen meld into a work of art that we call literature, and life.
Emanuel Garcia is not just a wonderful writer but a medical doctor, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and a brave and brilliant Renaissance man. Here he is interviewed by Tessa Lina.
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Edward Curtin, prominent author, researcher and sociologist, Western Massachusetts, U.S. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
There is no doubt that the business model of today is driven by a fear campaign when it comes to the Covid-19 scamdemic. The corona virus hysteria drives people who are scared to death of the many covid-19 variants in existence today and in the future will to get tested the minute a new variant is reported by the mainstream media.
All of the key players from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute of Health (NIH), the World Health Organization (WHO) and other “health authorities” are all in on it.
Covid-19 testing or the RT-PCR tests is big business, make no mistake about it. It’s just like the face diapers (um…I meant face masks) where I see people setting up tables strictly selling boxes of face diapers on the street.
We can say, Covid-19 is a new industry of money-making opportunities of all sorts.
Hospitals are charging up to $650 for a simple, molecular covid test that costs $50 or less to run, according to Medicare claims analyzed for KHN by Hospital Pricing Specialists (HPS). Charges by large health systems range from $20 to $1,419 per test, a new national survey by KFF shows. And some free-standing emergency rooms are charging more than $1,000 per test
The article mentioned that there has been more than 400 million tests given since the Covid-19 was announced in 2020:
As the pandemic enters its second year, no procedure has been more frequent than tests for the virus causing it. Gargantuan volume — 400 million tests and counting, for one type — combined with loose rules on prices have made the service a bonanza for hospitals and clinics, new data shows.
Lab companies have been booking record profits by charging $100 per test. Even in-network prices negotiated and paid by insurance companies often run much more than that and, according to one measure, have been rising on average in recent months. Insurers and other payers “have no bargaining power in this game” because there is no price cap in some situations, said Ge Bai, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who has studied test economics. When charges run far beyond the cost of the tests “it’s predatory,” she said. “It’s price gouging”
Some hospitals, for example, New York-Presbyterian Hospital charges $440 for the PCR covid-19 tests although the national average is $159. So just imagine the profits money-hungry hospitals are making:
The listed charge for a basic PCR covid test at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles is $480. New York-Presbyterian Hospital lists $440 as the gross charge as well as the cash price. Those amounts are far above the $159 national average for the diagnostic test, which predominated during the first year of the pandemic, at more than 3,000 hospitals checked by HPS
By the way, this is not a new development, Reuters reported back in July 2020 ‘How U.S. made Covid-19 tests a profitable disaster’ suggested that Covid testing is pretty lucrative business given the fact that fear of a particular disease will play a long-term role in producing permanent customers. Here is an excerpt from Reuters that reported on the profits of certain companies who produce the test kits:
A U.S. patient with Covid-19 symptoms gets tested, then waits over a week for the results. The story is by now familiar and sometimes tragic. Yet the stock market is telling a different tale. Shares in companies like Quest Diagnostics and Laboratory Corporation of America are soaring. Quest’s Chief Financial Officer Mark Guinan said on Thursday that detecting Covid-19 brings “good margins.” In other words, testing has become a profitable disaster.
Commercial labs were hit hard by the pandemic, but their market values have recovered sharply. Within a month of its early March high of just over $15 billion Quest’s fell by around a third, but is now $17 billion. LabCorp too has recouped its pre-pandemic peak of $19 billion. Coronavirus diagnosis has more than filled the gap left as other procedures go on hiatus. Analysts polled by Refinitiv now predict Quest, which reported a 6.4% decline in quarterly revenue on Thursday, will earn $1 billion this year – over 10% more than they estimated six months ago.
No wonder: testing is lucrative. Last year Quest made on average $42 in revenue per procedure, based on numbers from its financial filings, and the average processing cost was $29. For Covid-19, the basic price set by government-backed insurer Medicare is $100. True, pandemic testing is unusually fiddly and more reliant on humans than some other types. But even with double the normal level of expense, to reflect the extra quirks and intricacies of the coronavirus, the company’s coronavirus-test margin would be one-third higher than it generates from its regular activities
One last important note to consider, the RT-PCR test is basically a fraud that has been consistently reported by the alternative media and other sources.
On November 27th, 2020, the Corman-Drosten Review Reportwhich was produced by the International Consortium of Scientist in Life Sciences (ICSLS) said that
“if someone is tested by PCR as positive when a threshold of 35 cycles or higher is used(as is the case in most laboratories in Europe & the US),the probability that said person is actually infected is less than 3%, the probability that said result is a false positive is 97%. “
Bottom line, it is a fear campaign that created a steady stream of scared consumers every time a new variant is introduced to the public for a product that basically does not work. It’s all a health scam, a money-making machine, at the end of the day, it is business as usual.
Timothy Alexander Guzman is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on political, economic, media and historical spheres. He has been published in www.Globalresearch.ca, The Progressive Mind, European Union Examiner, News Beacon Ireland, www.whatreallyhappened.com, EIN News and a number of other alternative news sites. He is a graduate of Hunter College in New York City.
Beginning eight decades ago on 5 December 1941, the Soviet Army’s counterattack against the Wehrmacht, principally along the outskirts of Moscow, was a major event in the Second World War and a significant occurrence in modern history. The Red Army counteroffensive officially lasted from early December 1941 until 7 May 1942.
The counterattack was titled by the Russians as the Winter Campaign of 1941-1942, and it provided evidence, both to themselves and the watching world, that the Wehrmacht was not invincible. The failure of Operation Barbarossa further placed a serious question mark over whether the Germans could win the war at all.
Very thankfully indeed, Moscow, the Soviet Union’s largest and most important city, was saved from Nazi occupation. The commencement of the counterattack brought relief and hope to many people across Europe and beyond, who had despaired at the thought of a Nazi-dominated world.
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Yet while the Soviet Army managed to drive the Wehrmacht back from the gates of Moscow, they were unable to turn the counteroffensive into a rout; which, in that event, would most probably have led to the German Army’s disintegration in the winter of 1941-42; and therefore the premature conclusion of the war, in Europe at least. French military leader Napoleon’s armed forces, after all, had crumbled within 6 months of their June 1812 invasion of Russia.
It was for reasons like these that the Russian Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the most celebrated commander of World War II, bluntly termed the Soviet counteroffensive to be a “failure”. Zhukov wrote in his memoirs, “The History of the Great Fatherland War still comes to a generally positive conclusion about the winter offensive of our forces, despite the lack of success. I do not agree with this evaluation. The embellishment of history, one could say, is a sad attempt to paint over failure. If you consider our losses and what results were achieved, it will be clear that it was a Pyrrhic victory”. (1)
Zhukov was not exaggerating; he was a frontline general who could see what was going on before his eyes, and he had the resolve to voice his thoughts. As Zhukov noted, Red Army personnel losses during the counteroffensive were heavy, much higher than German casualties in what is often considered a landmark Soviet triumph. Altogether, during the three months of January, February and March 1942, the Soviet Army lost 620,000 men (2). By comparison, in the same period the Germans lost 136,000 men, well under a quarter of Russian casualties. (3)
The experienced British historian Evan Mawdsley, who focuses for the large part on Russian history, has presented the above casualty figures in his study of the Nazi-Soviet War. Mawdsley also stated, “German losses on the Eastern front, in the three and a quarter months through to the end of September 1941, numbered 185,000” and that “All told, the Red Army lost 177 divisions in 1941, most of them in the June–September period. Soviet military losses, up to the end of September 1941, have been given as at least 2,050,000”. (4)
Joseph Stalin had said shortly after the Wehrmacht’s defeat of France in June 1940, “we would be able to confront the Germans on an equal basis only by 1943” (5). This prediction was a far-sighted and accurate one. The Red Army “would only show great progress with Operation Bagration in Belorussia in June 1944”, Mawdsley highlighted. (6)
Stalin is not recorded as mentioning why the Red Army was trailing the Wehrmacht by such a distance in the early 1940s; and considering that he was in charge of the USSR, for appreciably longer than Adolf Hitler was in power in Germany.
The Soviet military’s shortcomings were at least in part because, as Marshal Zhukov said after the war, of “the enormous damage Stalin had inflicted on the country by his massacre of the top echelons of the army command” (7).
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Zhukov’s opinion is backed by others like Leopold Trepper, a leading Soviet intelligence operative and anti-Nazi Resistance fighter, who wrote that with the purges, “The Red Army, bled white, was hardly an army at all now, and it would not be again for years”. (8)
Meanwhile, as the Soviet counteroffensive began the Red Army, between December 1941 and March 1942, would receive 117 new divisions to bolster its ranks. The main opposing force, German Army Group Centre, was supplemented with a meagre 9 divisions during that time. (9)
By 26 November 1941 the Germans had suffered 743,112 casualties, not including the sick or frostbitten – and at the end of February 1942, total German losses on the Eastern front amounted to 1,005,636 men; this equates to about 31% of the original German invasion force, according to military scholar Donald J. Goodspeed, who has provided these various statistics (10). In comparison, the Soviet Army had suffered around 5.5 million casualties come the early spring of 1942.
Hitler placed immense store in the millions of casualties his divisions had inflicted on the Red Army (11). By late February 1942 he was again confident in ultimate victory. A jovial Hitler declared to his close colleagues at the Wolfsschanze headquarters, “Sunday will be the 1st of March. Boys, you can’t imagine what that means to me – how much the last three months have worn out my strength, tested my nervous resistance”. (12)
During December 1941 and in the months ahead, many German commanders in varying degrees continued to believe in victory. Goodspeed observed that the Wehrmacht hierarchy “reasoned that they were still better summer soldiers than the Russians, and that they should therefore fight in the summertime” in order to “build up their shattered armies for another great drive in 1942”. (13)
Hitler and the generals’ confidence would prove misplaced. The Soviets could afford far greater losses in personnel than the Germans, and this should have been no real surprise. The Soviet Union’s population in 1941 was about 193 million, that is 80 million or so more than the Third Reich’s populace. The Soviet counterattack grand strategy called for an assault along a broad front, 800 miles in width, from Leningrad in the north to the Crimean peninsula in the south (14). Its aim was to deliver a succession of blows that would gravely undermine the Germans and their Axis allies, resulting in the enemy’s swift collapse, or so it was envisaged.
This strategy was formulated with decisive input by Stalin, in conjunction with the Supreme High Command (Stavka). Zhukov was in firm disagreement with the counteroffensive’s strategic design. In his memoirs Zhukov wrote that he alone “dared to voice criticism” about the plan to Stalin and Stavka. (15)
For the counterattack, Zhukov favoured amassing their forces and directing them in a smashing thrust through the middle “against the enemy centre of gravity”. This strategy may well have inflicted a grievous hit, which the Germans would have struggled to recover from. Instead, with the dispersal of Soviet divisions across an extended front, the strength of the blow was diluted. Zhukov felt that he lacked the forces necessary to reach his goals.
Of the Russian counteroffensive strategy Mawdsley realised, “The Stavka made the same mistake that Hitler and his High Command had made in 1941, assuming the enemy to be exhausted and shattered. It also attempted, as the Germans did in Operation Barbarossa, to attack everywhere. Zhukov’s view was that it would have been much wiser to concentrate resources and get to the line Staraia Russa–Velikie Luki–Vitebsk-Smolensk-Briansk”. (16)
Zhukov’s favoured striking line was 350 miles in breadth, as opposed to the 800 miles which Stalin preferred. Despite Zhukov’s misgivings about Soviet strategy, his still significant role in the counterattack got off to an impressive start from 6 December 1941. Zhukov found himself in opposition to one of the Wehrmacht’s most prominent generals, Heinz Guderian, commanding the 2nd Panzer Army.
There was severe bloodshed on both sides but Zhukov’s divisions prevailed over those of Guderian, by forcing the latter to retreat over more than 50 miles of ground (17). Zhukov’s reputation, now already high in the Soviet Union, was deservedly enhanced further.
English historian Chris Bellamy revealed how Zhukov expounded, in a directive of 13 December 1941, that Soviet troops should force the enemy to retreat 130 to 160 kilometres (80 to 100 miles) west of Moscow (18). Once that was accomplished, Zhukov continued that the Red Army should thereafter “spend the rest of the winter driving the Germans back another 150 kilometres (93 miles) or so to the line east of Smolensk [230 miles west of Moscow] from which they had launched Typhoon in early October”. (19)
Zhukov’s scaled-down ambitions for the counteroffensive were realistic, but even then would fall a good distance short. Zhukov complained bitterly that many Soviet units elsewhere had been poorly led and “were continually trying to attack the Germans frontally, rather than being smart and working their way round the sides”. (20)
Mawdsley wrote, “In reality the Red Army was a very weak instrument in the winter of 1941-42, manned by untrained conscripts and poorly equipped. In January 1942, the whole Red Army had only 600 heavy tanks and 800 medium tanks, plus 6,300 light tanks; in contrast, the figure for January 1943 was 2,000 heavies [tanks], no fewer than 7,600 mediums, and 11,000 lights”. (21)
Hitler was aware that Napoleon’s Grand Armée had dissolved in full retreat 129 years before (22). Undeterred by this, in the face of Soviet counterattacks, some senior German commanders wanted a retirement far west of Moscow, to the Berezina or Niemen rivers (stretching across Belarus and Lithuania).
Such a retreat in mid-December, through knee and waist-deep snow, could have resulted in the destruction of the German Army. At a minimum, vast quantities of artillery and other equipment would undoubtedly have been lost – and during a season which “turned out to be one of the most severe winters on record”, a research study noted in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. (23)
By 20 February 1942, the Germans had suffered 112,627 frostbite casualties (24). This problem did not afflict the Russians to anything like the same degree; because the latter were warmly clad and had a working railway system right behind them, while they were used to fighting in winter conditions. Stalin said after the Soviets had finally overcome Finland in March 1940, “It is not true that the army’s fighting capacity decreases in wintertime… We are a northern country”. (25)
In the middle of December 1941 Hitler issued his standfast order. He demanded that German officers, from herein, compel the soldiers under them to hold their ground at whatever cost. Hitler went on that German troops in the field should ignore the danger, when enemy forces have “broken through on the flanks or in the rear. This is the only way to gain the time necessary, to bring up the reinforcements from Germany and the West that I have ordered”. (26)
Hitler had previously interfered fatally in German strategic planning, most notably by postponing the advance on Moscow by six weeks in August 1941; but his hold-at-all-cost order was in all likelihood the correct decision, and it may have rescued the Wehrmacht that winter. (27)
The Germans prudently made no attempt to retain a continuous line from Leningrad to the Crimea. Hitler and the German High Command (OHK) agreed on implementing a series of strongpoints, known as “hedgehogs” (28). These fortified positions were often erected beside large German supply depots, located from north to south, in such urban areas under Nazi occupation as Shlisselburg, Novgorod, Rzhev, Vyazma, Bryansk and Kharkov, etc. Subsidiary strongpoints were then constructed beside the principal strongholds.
The reality on the ground was more complicated than this; for the German hedgehogs were sometimes established in response to local Soviet tactical successes, rather than simply through the will of the Germans (29). Breakthroughs by Russian soldiers on the flanks were deemed acceptable by Wehrmacht commanders, since any Soviet division that proceeded too far was in danger of being cut off, and trapped behind German lines.
In early January 1942, Stalin came to the conclusion that total victory over the Nazis could be achieved that very year. On 10 January Stalin dispatched a directive to his generals outlining, “Our task is not to give the Germans a breathing space, to drive them westwards without a halt, force them to exhaust their reserves before springtime when we shall have fresh big reserves, while the Germans will have no more reserves; this will ensure the complete defeat of the Nazi forces in 1942”. (30)
As events would show, such directives were too ambitious and underestimated the Wehrmacht’s resilience. Mawdsley wrote, “Stalin’s January 1942 strategy of wearing down German reserves before the spring did not work… In fact, however, on much of the front the Germans were able to hold on to the territory they had reached in early December 1941. Even at Rostov and Moscow, they had only had to fall back 50 to 150 miles. They were still very deep in Soviet territory. In the north and centre they would hold this line until late 1943”. (31)
Remarkably, by May 1944 German Army Group Centre was still only 290 miles from Moscow at its closest point; whereas Soviet forces were 550 miles from Berlin in the early summer of 1944. (32)
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Shane Quinn is a Journalist and renowned Historian, focussing on geopolitics and the history of World War II, based in Ireland.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
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Notes
1 Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 (Hodder Arnold, 23 Feb. 2007) p. 127
2 Ibid., p. 147
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., pp. 85-86
5 Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Pan; Reprints edition, 16 April 2010) p. 406
6 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 148
7 Andrei Gromyko, Memories: From Stalin to Gorbachev (Arrow Books Limited, 1 Jan. 1989) p. 216
8 Leopold Trepper, The Great Game: Memoirs of a Master Spy (Michael Joseph Ltd; First Edition, 1 May 1977) p. 67
9 Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 2nd edition, 3 April 1985) p. 407
10 Ibid.
11 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 110
12 Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Table Talk, New Foreword by Gerhard L. Weinberg (Enigma Books, 30 April 2008) p. 257
13 Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 405
14 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 120
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., p. 128
17 Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 404
18 Chris Bellamy, Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (Pan; Main Market edition, 21 Aug. 2009) p. 332
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid., p. 331
21 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 148
22 Ibid., p. 119
23 J. Neumann and H. Flohn, Great Historical Events That Were Significantly Affected by the Weather: Part 8, Germany’s War on the Soviet Union, 1941–45. Long-range Weather Forecasts for 1941–42 and Climatological Studies, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Jstor
24 John Toland, Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 3 Feb. 2007) Part 8, The Fourth Horseman
25 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, pp. 107-108
26 Ibid., p. 121
27 Goodspeed, The German Wars, pp. 405-406
28 Ibid., p. 406
29 Ibid., p. 407
30 Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953 (Yale University Press; 1st Edition, 14 Nov. 2006) p. 116
31 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 147
32 Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., Hitler’s Field Marshals and Their Battles (Guild Publishers, 1988) p. 274
Yesterday I received the following notice from the University of California, effective immediately, where I have served for almost fifteen years as Professor at UCI School of Medicine and Director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health:
This termination has been an opportunity for me to reflect on my time at UCI, especially my time there during the Covid pandemic. Two years ago I never could have imagined that the University would dismiss me and other doctors, nurses, faculty, staff, and students for this arbitrary and capricious reason. I want to share a bit of my story, not because I am unique but simply because my experience is representative of what many others—who do not necessarily have a public voice—have experienced since these mandates went into effect.
I worked in-person at the hospital every day during the pandemic, seeing patients in our clinic, psychiatric wards, emergency room, and hospital wards—including Covid patients in the ER, ICU, and medicine wards. As our chief ethics consultant, I had countless conversations with families of patients dying of Covid, and tried my best to console and guide them in their grief.
When our pregnant residents were worried about consulting on Covid patients, the administration reassured these residents that they had no elevated risks from Covid—a claim without any evidential basis at the time, and which we now know to be false. I saw the Covid consults for these worried residents, even when I was not covering the consult service.
I also remember in the early weeks of the pandemic when N-95 masks were in short supply and the hospital kept them under lock and key. Hospital administrators yelled at nurses for wearing surgical or cloth masks (this was before masks became all the rage after the CDC suggested, with little evidence, that they might help). At that early stage the truth was we didn’t know whether masks worked or not, and nurses were doing the best they could under pressure in a situation of uncertainty.
The administrators yelled and ridiculed them, not wanting to admit the real issue was that we simply did not have enough masks. So I called local construction companies and sourced 600 N-95s from them. I supplied some to the residents in our department and my attending colleagues in the ER, then donated the rest to the hospital. Meanwhile the University administrators—the same ones who fired me yesterday—were working safely from home and did not have to fret about PPE shortages.
In 2020 I worked nights and weekends, uncompensated, helping the UC Office of the President draft the UC policies for triaging scarce resources and allocating vaccines during the pandemic. Knowing that our ventilator triage policy was publicly sensitive, the Office of the President asked me and the chair of the drafting committee to serve as public spokespersons to answer questions about this policy and explain the principles and rationale to the public (they even provided me with media training).
I was the only faculty member at UCI who directed courses across all four years of our medical student curriculum, so I knew the students as well as anyone at the University. The Dean asked me to address the students when they were first sent home in the early days of the pandemic. While I disagreed with the decision to send them home—after all, what were they here for if not to learn to practice medicine, especially during a pandemic?—I nevertheless encouraged them to continue to engage with pandemic response efforts outside the hospital. I published those remarks to encourage students at other schools.
Our dean sent this to the deans at the other UC schools, one of whom suggested that I give the graduation speech at all the campuses that year. Three years ago, the UCI school of medicine deans asked me to give the White Coat Ceremony keynote address to the incoming medical students because, as they told me, “you are the best lecturer in the medical school.” For many years, the psychiatry clerkship I directed was the highest rated clinical course at the medical school.
Everyone at the University seemed to be a fan of my work until suddenly they were not.
Once I challenged one of their policies I immediately became a “threat to the health and safety of the community.” No amount of empirical evidence about natural immunity or vaccine safety and efficacy mattered at all. The University’s leadership was not interested in scientific debate or ethical deliberation.
When I was placed on unpaid suspension I was not permitted to use my paid time off—that is to say, I was ordered to stay off campus because I was not vaccinated, but I also could not take vacation at home because… I was not vaccinated. In violation of every basic principle of just and fair employment, the University tried to prevent me from doing any outside professional activities while I was on unpaid suspension. In an effort to pressure me to resign, they wanted to restrict my ability to earn an income not only at the University but outside the University as well. It was dizzying and at times surreal.
Now it’s officially over. I do not regret my time at the University. Indeed, I will miss my colleagues, the residents, and the medical students. I will miss teaching and supervising and doing ethics consults on some of the most challenging cases in the hospital. As I wrote to my colleagues at the University earlier this week:
While this is not how I pictured saying goodbye, I wanted to at least write to all of you before my access to your email addresses is shut down. It has been a pleasure and an honor to work with all of you during my fifteen years at UCI, and with many of you as far back as my four years of residency training at UCI. I love academic medicine and had hoped to stay at UCI until retirement, but that is not in the cards. Since being placed on leave on October 1, I have missed all very much and I hope that you all have been doing well. I apologize for any inconvenience that my absence has caused my fellow attendings who are covering my clinical/teaching duties or the residents that I was supervising.
To the residents, it’s been a tremendous privilege teaching and supervising you. Our program is fortunate to have such dedicated and talented residents, and I am confident that all of you will thrive in your careers. Thank you for your dedication to teaching our medical students. To the attendings, you are a tremendous group of colleagues and friends. I will very much miss working with all of you. I’ve learned a lot from every one of you, and I know that our department will continue to flourish as long as this group of attendings continues to anchor the clinical, teaching, and research enterprises. I write this literally with tears, and will maintain many fond memories of my time working with all of you. To the staff, you are terrific and so essential to everything we do. Thank you for all your dedicated work on behalf of our patients, students, residents, fellows, and attendings—and a for all the help you’ve provided to me every day.
I would have reached out to all of you sooner but was ordered by the University not to conduct any University-related business after being placed on leave on October 1, and I have not been allowed to return to campus since then (except to move out of my office). The University maintains that my termination is unrelated to my lawsuit challenging the UC vaccine mandate in federal court on behalf of covid-recovered individuals with infection-induced (natural) immunity. The decision to terminate me comes from the UC Office of the President and not from our department. I have nothing but gratitude and goodwill toward our department leadership and toward everyone at UCI. Indeed, I bear no resentment toward anyone at UC, including the people who twice denied my medical exemption or those who chose to fire me. Life is too short to bear a grudge.
I likewise want to thank all of you readers for your support and encouragement over the past several months. I trust that other doors and new opportunities will open up for me in the New Year as I transition into private practice and expand my work at the Zephyr Institute, where I direct the Health and Human Flourishing Program, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where I direct the Bioethics and American Democracy Program.
Now, since my university titles are gone I need to go update my bio on this site and on my website—where you can, by the way, find many of my old writings, interviews, and talks. I’ll be sending an update next week on my lawsuit and also on the Pfizer documents we recently received from the FDA, so stay tuned.
January 3rd, 2022 by Center For Biological Diversity
A judge has ruled decisively in favor of the Center for Biological Diversity’s ability to proceed with a suit over California’s oil and gas regulator committing widespread violations of environmental laws. The regulator and an oil-industry lobbying group had tried to dismiss the Center’s case, but on Wednesday the court rejected their arguments.
“The court saw right through these ridiculous delay tactics,” said Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney at the Center’s Climate Law Institute. “It’s time for Gov. Newsom and his regulators to face the music for greenlighting oil industry pollution. Rubberstamping thousands of oil and gas permits is illegal and dangerous to communities and the environment, and it needs to stop.”
The lawsuit, filed in February 2021, alleges that the California Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM, has ignored its legal obligation to analyze environmental and health harms before issuing permits and approvals for oil and gas projects across the state. In 2020 alone regulators approved nearly 2,000 permits for new oil and gas wells without proper environmental review.
Under the California Environmental Quality Act — the state’s bedrock environmental protection and community right-to-know law — state and local agencies are required to disclose, analyze and mitigate a project’s environmental harms before approving oil and gas permits. But for years CalGEM has granted approvals for new oil and gas activity without conducting any such studies. As a result, regulators have approved thousands of permits that haven’t been reviewed for health and environmental risks.
“We applaud the court’s decision. CalGEM cannot continue to evade its responsibilities to protect Californians,” said Shaleen Shanbhag, partner at Hadsell, Stormer, Renick & Dai LLP, which represents the Center in the case. “Our goal is to stop the agency’s blatant disregard of the state’s most fundamental environmental laws.”
The case will proceed to discovery, where CalGEM and Western States Petroleum Association must turn over documents related to the case.
The Center is also represented in the case by Earthrights International, Stanford Environmental Law Clinic and Schonbrun, Seplow, Harris, Hoffman & Zeldes LLP.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
War spews hell in all directions. Just ask the guys at Talon Anvil, a secret U.S. “strike cell” recently exposed by the New York Times as a unit with a reputation for ignoring the rules of engagement and killing lots and lots of civilians with drone strikes as it plays war with ISIS.
Part of the problem, a source told the Times, is that “the daily demands of overseeing strike after strike seemed to erode operators’ perspective and fray their humanity.”
In other words, participating in the endless U.S. war on terror turned them into . . . terrorists, e.g.: Early one morning, as a Predator drone circled over the Syrian farming town of Karama, the operators focused on a particular building that they decided, with virtually no evidence, was an “enemy training center” and dropped a 500-pound bomb through the roof.
“As the smoke cleared,” a former officer told the Times, “his team stared at their screens in dismay. The infrared cameras showed women and children staggering out of the partly collapsed building, some missing limbs, some dragging the dead.
“The intelligence analysts began taking screen shots and tallying the casualties. They sent an initial battle damage assessment to Talon Anvil: 23 dead or severely wounded, 30 lightly wounded, very likely civilians. Talon Anvil paused only long enough to acknowledge the message, the former officer said, then pressed on to the next target.”
Oh, the frayed humanity! Here’s what did not occur: the operators looking at what they had just done from the viewpoint of the victims. That would have amounted to more than simply “dismay.” Doing so is almost incomprehensible. Imagine a bomb suddenly piercing your roof in the middle of the night. Imagine your children suddenly dead, your arm or leg missing
Oops. My point here is that war is a collective enterprise.
Multiply this incident by the size of the U.S. military budget — virtually half the country’s discretionary spending, around a trillion dollars annually, all told. And the money is always there, ready and waiting for the security state to consume. The unending lie is that it keeps us safe. Imagine, once again, “women and children staggering out of the partly collapsed building, some missing limbs, some dragging the dead,” and savor the safety you now have.
William Astore, pondering the defense budget’s endless growth despite the collapse of our official Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, three decades ago, asks: “Why, then, does each year’s (National Defense Authorization Act) rise ever higher into the troposphere, drifting on the wind and poisoning our culture with militarism? Because, to state the obvious, Congress would rather engage in pork-barrel spending than exercise the slightest real oversight when it comes to the national security state.”
The key words may well be these: poisoning our culture with militarism.
When we wage war, we dehumanize — then kill — a specific segment of humanity. In the process, we “fray” our own humanity . . . we become less human ourselves, and thus more in sync with the evil we claim to be obliterating. This is what’s happening to us right now. How is our culture being poisoned?
One obvious way is the rate of vet suicides: around 60,000 in the last decade. And of course there is the pretend militarism of lost — and armed — souls, who have made mass murder a recurring aspect of the daily news flow. Add in hate crimes. Add in the prison-industrial complex:
“The prison industry in the United States is massive and growing,” according to the American Friends Service Committee. “Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the U.S. has increased by 700 percent, to the point that the U.S. prison population is the largest in the world both per capita and in total numbers. As of 2019, there are an estimated 2.3 million people behind bars and 4.5 million people on probation or parole. The estimated cost of the U.S. mass incarceration system is $182 billion a year, with hundreds of private companies competing for government contracts.”
Our enemies are everywhere! They’re in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. They’re massing at our southern border. And they’re here at home, packed into ghettos and poverty zones. As we wage war, we dehumanize the world, in the process shattering its complex interconnectedness. This does not make us safer.
Even the “good war” didn’t make us safer, though it’s the trophy cup that defenders of present-day militarism always hold up. Consider this observation by Paul Tritschler on just one of our late-in-the-game World War II bombing campaigns:
In March of 1945, he writes, “seemingly endless waves of B-29s roared across Tokyo, dropping one million bombs containing 2,000 tons of incendiaries. In under three hours, over 100,000 people lay dead and one million were homeless. The firebombing of 67 cities over the following five months resulted in the further deaths of at least half a million people — a deliberate policy of wiping out civilians living in the densely populated poorer districts. With no remorse, U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay openly declared,
‘They were scorched and boiled and baked to death.’ Although it didn’t dampen their enthusiasm, bomber crews said that the stench of burning flesh rose high into the air, forcing them to use oxygen masks to keep from vomiting. At the end of that five month period came atomic destruction.”
This is not about blame. This is not about shame. This is about change. .
Recently, I’ve been writing fiction, satire, parody, to expose the insanity of the pandemic scam. This article is not that. This article is fact. Buckle up.
Since the beginning of the so-called pandemic, I’ve been attacking the value of the PCR diagnostic test from many angles. The primary angle, as my readers know, is: SARS-CoV-2 was never isolated, never proved to exist.
However, I’ve also ventured into the bubble world where a few billion people blindly accept the existence of the virus—and I’ve shown that even within that world, the internal contradictions and lies abound.
One again, now, I’m entering that bubble world, since the powers-that-be are widely promoting the use of an at-home test for the “virus.” This test is self-administered. No doctor, nurse, or technician is present. What could possibly go wrong, as millions of people perform the test on themselves?
Here is the key quote: “The Reagent Solution [included in the test kit] contains a harmful chemical (see table below). If the solution contacts the skin or eye, flush with copious amounts of water. If irritation persists, seek medical advice…”
Then the FDA document lists that harmful chemical: sodium azide.
“Sodium azide is a rapidly acting, potentially deadly chemical that exists as an odorless white solid.”
Then there is this: “Sodium azide prevents the cells of the body from using oxygen. When this happens, the cells die. Sodium azide is more harmful to the heart and the brain than to other organs, because the heart and the brain use a lot of oxygen.”
Yes, as with all poisons, the degree of damage depends on the dosage, but you decide whether “potentially deadly,” as the CDC describes sodium azide, signifies a significant risk.
If you read the FDA document I referenced above, you’ll see that the reagent containing sodium azide is involved in the self-administered COVID test, and the whole test procedure is complex enough to allow fumbles and mistakes—such as a spill of the “deadly chemical.”
Don’t believe me? Try this FDA quote on for size: “To perform the test, an anterior nasal swab specimen is collected by the patient, then 6 drops of extraction reagent from a dropper bottle are added to the top hole of the swab well. The patient sample is inserted into the test card through the bottom hole of the swab well, and firmly pushed upwards until the swab tip is visible through the top hole. The swab is rotated 3 times clockwise and the card is closed, bringing the extracted sample into contact with the test strip. Test results are interpreted visually at 15 minutes based on the presence or absence of visually detectable pink/purple colored lines.”
See what I mean? Good luck.
Now let’s move on to the second problem with this at-home self-performed COVID test: it’s grossly misleading. The results are ambiguous.
The FDA document I’ve been quoting contains this gem: “The BinaxNOW COVID-19 Antigen Self Test does not differentiate between SARS-CoV and SARS…CoV-2.”
BOOM. In other words, a positive test, indicating infection, could mean nothing more than infection with the 2003 “SARS virus”—and that “epidemic” was a dud. But wait, there’s more:
“Positive results do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease.”
Double trouble. The person who tests positive could simply be housing bacteria in his body, AND whatever germ the test is detecting may not even be causing disease.
Other than that, the at-home test is perfect.
This Abbott BinaxNow at-home COVID test is the market leader. About 75% of all retail test-kit sales in the US come from Abbott.
Back in the early spring of 2020, I told you the test was the key to faking the pandemic. Now the government wants the population to perform the test-fakery on themselves. With, of course, the added danger of exposing themselves to a highly destructive chemical in the process.
But don’t worry, be happy. On many days of every week, little Tony Fauci will appear on television and inform you that testing is necessary, and he’ll omit grisly details. Trust him.
And then march forward, secure in the knowledge that lies and omissions keep us safe.
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
Coronavirus Fact-Check #14: No, 500 Children were NOT admitted to hospital with Covid this week.The press are reporting “worrying” figures in the headlines, but admit they are meaningless in the body of the text.
One of the older tricks in the book.
Two days ago Sky News reported that, in the week from December 20th to Boxing Day (December 26th, for our non-UK readers), over 500 British children had been admitted to hospital with Covid19.
the story has been picked up by other outlets too, with the Metro headlining:
More than 500 children admitted to hospital with Covid in Christmas week
More than 500 children admitted to hospital with Covid in week leading up to Boxing Day
Going on to say [our emphasis]:
A record number of new Covid infections were reported today with the easily transmissible Omicron strain being named as the driving force for the surge – now the variant is having an unprecedented impact on Britain’s younger population
Other publications cited “concerning data” that 50 babies had been admitted to hospital with Covid on Christmas day alone.
But is any of this true?
In short, no. It is a meaningless number created by deliberately misleading statistical definitions.
This is actually the easiest fact-check we’ve ever done, because Sky literally fact-checked themselves in their own subheading:
Let’s repeat that with some added emphasis:
The definition used to identify a hospital admission with coronavirus is that someone either tested positive for the virus in the 14 days before their admission, or during their stay in hospital. It could mean someone goes into hospital for a non-COVID reason and later tests positive.
So no, 512 children were not admitted to hospital for Covid infection, 512 children were admitted to hospital for potentially “non-COVID reasons”, and either tested positive while they were in hospital or had tested positive sometime in the previous two weeks.
We’ve gone over this many times before.
The official definition of a “Covid death” is death by any cause, in someone who tested positive in the month preceding their death.
The official definition of a “covid hospitalisation” is anyone who is admitted to hospital for any reason after testing positive, or tests positive while they are already in hospital for something else.
We don’t need to explain, yet again, how meaningless the resultant statistics will be if you use these definitions.
But if they keep lying about the figures, we will keep correcting them.
On November 23, while the general public was busy preparing for Thanksgiving, the WA State Department of Health (DOH) issued a press release disclosing they had launched a Digital COVID-19 Verification system.
Without any legislative oversight or approval, without any public comment period, the “DOH’s Office of Innovation and Technology, working closely with partners at MITRE, Microsoft, and the state of California, stood up WA Verify.”
Microsoft needs no explanation for its ties to global interests, but MITRE is far less well known. MITRE is a supposed nonprofit claiming to work for “public interests” but it is deeply tied to U.S. military and intelligence agencies and individuals and runs on federal funding.
Two of their board members, Halverson and Noseworthy, are connected to the World Economic Forum (WEF). WEF is a leading force behind the Great Reset that aims to eliminate personal property and put control of all aspects of life in the hands of corporate globalists. WEF supports governments implementing digital identification systems “To prepare for emerging regulation.“
The WA DOH says “The state will not be implementing a mandatory passport system” but that’s a misleading statement. A mandatory passport system is not necessary for vaccine mandates to be declared or enforced, as they already have been in WA State for many workers. The WA Verify system supports public and private vaccine mandates and makes it easier for mandates to be expanded and enforced.
With the DOH working closely with MITRE, the state’s system will coordinate with other systems set up in the U.S. and around the world, as they join others in VCI, the MITRE-affiliated coalition promoting the use of the SMART Health Card System that uses QR codes. A small sampling of other MITRE-connected systems in place:
Nothing COVID-19 related in WA State is being directed locally. From the early days of the Gates Foundation and IDMOD dictating the state’s response to today’s mandates issued through the governor, WA State is being controlled by outside global powers.
Representative government is non-existent.
As ICWA warned pre-COVID — the number one enemy to public health is the corporate-globalist captured PUBLIC HEALTH System.
What can YOU do?
Take Action Wherever You Are, join the Unity Project, and Support Those You Know Impacted by Mandates. Together united, we can rise up and peacefully reclaim our rights, our states and nation, our freedoms.
Be Prepared: Stay Out of the Hospital to End the Excuse Being Used to Perpetuate Tyranny and the Globalist Takeover.
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Remember Event 201 of 18 October 2019 in NYC, hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in partnership with the WEF (World Economic Forum) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? Of course, WHO was also present, and so were all the Globalist players, including the World Bank, IMF and – of indeed the UN and many of its sub-organization. See this.
This was a “tabletop” simulation, as they call it – of a corona pandemic that may hit the entire world population “one of these days”…
It happened less than three months later. The rest is history.
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Now, the same suspects, replacing officially the WEF by WHO as a key sponsor, used the Event of the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on October 23, 2022 for a similar “tabletop” exercise, this time called “Catastrophic Contagion” – see this.
Is it a coincidence that the venue of this Event is Brussels, Headquarters of the EU and NATO?
Strange that this surfaced only now. And be assured, the WEF was omni-present.
In fact, without the WEF nothing of this kind would happen. Because the WEF is the Executing Branch of Big Finance – the corporate finance-digito-military complex, that directs the world from the shadows of Washington.
It is strange that hardly anything surfaced from this event for almost two months. Why was it kept secret until now?
Well, instead of, or in addition to the vassalic UN organizations and Washington controlled financial institutions, like World Bank and IMF – they invited an extraordinary group of participants, consisting of 10 current and former Health Ministers and senior public health officials from Senegal, Rwanda, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, Singapore, India, Germany. Of particular interest are African countries.
There are no coincidences. WHO’s behind closed doors Assembly of Health Ministers from around the world are debating the infamous Pandemic Treaty, as these lines are written. They will soon be voting on this nefarious “Treaty”. The Pandemic Treaty, as we know, if voted in favor by a two-thirds majority will override all national authorities on matters of health; and as of 1 January 2024 will have jurisdiction above the sovereign nation states of the 194 WHO member countries.
This means, we would have a worldwide health tyranny. See this brief video (5:45 min) from a WHO insider – Dr. Vincent Carroll (18 March 2022).
Why the African countries were invited to this simulation of this very-very scary and frightening Catastrophic Contagion? – An Africa block of countries are the strong holdout – they rejected so far the Pandemic Treaty. Africans know what it means. And they even better know what it means after having experienced the covid hoax, that for some of their Presidents ended deadly. Because they – some African and one Caribbean President – opposed the vaxx agenda, they ended up dying under strange circumstances.
Why Germany’s presence?
Germany has currently the most oppressive government in Europe. Germany a EU economic and intellectual superpower, has also Europe’s strongest resistance movements – resistance against the covid and the Green (fake) Climate Agenda narrative. Resistance against the EU-Brussels directorate’s suicide pact for Europe, leading with a planned collapse of the German economy.
The hard-core Dr. Karl Lauterbach was sworn in as Federal Minister of Health, about a year ago, on December 8, 2021. Will he convince the Africans, Singaporians and Indians of the Great Good of the Pandemic Treaty for their countries and for the rest of the world?
Will there be some special incentives in terms of “development money” be waiting in the wings for those African countries? Difficult to say. But all is possible. In our Orwell world, dystopian has long become the new normal.
One thing is sure, if the WHO Pandemic Treaty is approved, the world is in deep trouble. Mother Earth may convert into a sanitary prison; that coupled with central bank digital currencies – will be the end of what we once called “freedom”, and under the eagle’s eye and iron fist of the Green Agenda, it might mean permanent lockdown.
Exiting WHO will then be of the order – along with abandoning our western monetary system as we know it. Parallel, community-bound currencies have long existed – and they can grow again, and so can people- and nature-based health systems. There are plenty of good and honest medical doctors, practicing alternative medicine that will render humanity healthier.
It may sound like the endgame. But the endgame may be blowing in the wind – and from its dust may rise a new society.
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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 worked for over 30 years 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).
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
Featured image is from The Liberation Institute
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
The Nation State: A Wrong Model for the Horn of Africa
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
