Why’s the US Manufacturing Another Crisis in Nicaragua?

November 8th, 2021 by Andrew Korybko

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There’s the chance that the US’ Hybrid War on Nicaragua could become a proxy struggle for influence with Russia, which has more strategically substantive relations with that country than China does.

Nicaragua’s presidential elections on Sunday were slammed by US President Joe Biden as a so-called “pantomime” in a statement that he released later that same day. He described incumbent President Daniel Ortega as “no different from the Somoza family that Ortega and the Sandinistas fought four decades ago.” Biden also promised that “the United States, in close coordination with other members of the international community, will use all diplomatic and economic tools at our disposal to support the people of Nicaragua and hold accountable the Ortega-Murillo government and those that facilitate its abuses.” This can be interpreted as a threat to intensify his country’s Hybrid War on Nicaragua.

Objectively speaking, the US is manufacturing another crisis in Nicaragua. The first major one in recent memory was when former President Reagan supported the anti-Sandinista “Contras” during a decade-long proxy war. That conflict was fought on the pretext that Nicaragua might represent another “domino” whose “fall” to socialist rebels risked triggering a chain reaction throughout the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. In the contemporary context, no such fears are credible, yet that didn’t stop former US President Trump from setting the gears into motion for the impending crisis that his successor seems slated to worsen.

I covered Trump’s initial aggressions over the years in the following analyses:

The strategic context has evolved since then, which necessitates some analytical clarifications.

First, the originally suspected reason for this Hybrid War – to stop China’s reported plans to build a Transoceanic Canal – aren’t relevant any longer since no tangible progress was ever made in this respect. Second, the primary motivation in the present day is to destroy all regional countries in the US’ self-proclaimed “sphere of influence” that don’t bend to its hegemonic will. Third, this is the latest in a series of hemispheric regime change campaigns that can be described as “Operation Condor 2.0”. Fourth, Nicaragua has thus far withstood the US’ prior pressure campaign, which is why it’s poised to be intensified in the coming future. And fifth, this intensification might pose serious threats to its stability.

If the US’ pressure campaign that it plans to advance in coordination with its regional vassals doesn’t succeed in weakening Nicaragua’s “Democratic Security” (counter-Hybrid Warfare tactics and strategies such as those against Color Revolution threats that were implemented ahead of the election in order to avert that regime change scenario), then it can’t be ruled out that it might once again resort to kinetic proxy warfare. Neighboring Honduras, which is under the control of a US-installed leader, could easily reprise its historical role in supporting such forces. Any significant destabilization of Nicaragua could trigger a refugee crisis that could quickly spread throughout the region and worsen the existing one.

There’s also the chance that the US’ Hybrid War on Nicaragua could become a proxy struggle for influence with Russia, which has more strategically substantive relations with that country than China does. A 2019 article titled “Russia And Nicaragua: Progress In Bilateral Cooperation” provides a detailed summary of the most important developments in their ties over the past few decades. It reveals that relations, especially in the military dimension, were comprehensively strengthened over the last 10 years. With this in mind, Moscow might decide to support Managua during any forthcoming crisis through the emergency provisioning of more arms and perhaps other forms of support like advisors.

The US might cynically benefit from that scenario, at least in terms of the optics that it intends to project to the domestic and foreign audiences. Its perception managers could expand their fearmongering narratives about Russia by misportraying it as “supporting a rogue dictator against the democratic will of his people”. This could also be exploited as the pretext for expanding the US’ regional military presence, which would serve the ulterior purpose of distracting from its recent humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan. Further pressure could also be applied against Nicaragua’s Cuban and Venezuelan allies too on the pretext of responding to their potentially similar Russian-like assistance to that country.

Should this be part of the motivation behind intensifying the US’ Hybrid War on Nicaragua after that country’s latest elections, then observers can conclude that it’s most likely being led by the neoconservative faction of its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”). They’re obsessed with “containing” Russia and are opposed in principle to some of their more pragmatic peers’ efforts to broker a so-called “non-aggression pact” with it for responsibly regulating their rivalry. If they can succeed in worsening this Hybrid War and prompting some form of Russian military support to Nicaragua in response, then they might sabotage incipient progress on that front.

It’ll of course remain to be seen what form this intensified pressure campaign will take and whether Russia will respond to it through any meaningful military support for Nicaragua, but everything appears to be moving in that general direction considering Biden’s latest hostile statement of intent. What this goes to show is that he’s continuing his predecessor’s policy of overthrowing independent regional governments, which was itself built upon the progress that Obama made in this respect. The US will never allow independent governments to peacefully develop within its so-called “sphere of influence”. It demands full compliance with its hegemonic demands under the threat of Hybrid War if they refuse.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Tunisian Democracy Transitions Away from Muslim Brotherhood

November 8th, 2021 by Steven Sahiounie

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Tunisia has issued an international arrest warrant against former president Moncef Marzouki, it was reported on November 4.  The charges may be connected to allegations Marzouki had conspired against state security after he had asked France to end support of the current administration last month.

President Kais Saied accused “traitors that seek refuge overseas” of threatening Tunisia’s sovereignty and urged the new Justice Minister Leila Jaffel to open an inquiry.

Marzouki fled Tunisia for France, the former colonial power in Tunisia, and he told Al Jazeera TV he was not surprised by the arrest warrant.  He had been President from 2011 to 2014. Al Jazeera TV is the state media of Qatar, which supports the Muslim Brotherhood globally.

“Tunisia is a free and independent state and there can be no interference in its affairs,” Saied said at the first meeting of a new cabinet.

Marzouki has called Saied’s moves a “coup d’etat”, and urged French President Macron to “reject any support for this regime and this man who has plotted against the revolution and abolished the constitution”, while addressing anti-Saied demonstrators in Paris on October 30.

“Democratic France should not be on the side of the dictatorial regime,” Marzouki said, in a speech that was widely shared online.

Analysts have said Tunisia is in a revolt against the Muslim Brotherhood, and also in a struggle for accountable government.

On October 3, more than 5,000 demonstrators showed support for Saied, while about 3,000 rallied against him in Tunis.

Supporters on the main street in central Tunis shouted, “The people want the dissolution of parliament,” and “We are all Kais Saied, we are all Tunisia.”

Saied introduced a new government in October and has promised a national “dialogue”, after first naming geologist Najla Bouden as prime minister on September 29, as Tunisia’s first woman prime minister.

Saied said on Thursday that he intended to speed up the end of the exceptional measures announced on July 25.

“These exceptional measures were decided in an attempt to rescue the country and our people,” Saied saidin a video.

In his speech to the ministerial council, Saied said he was determined to “guarantee the rights and freedom of all citizens, in accordance with the constitution.”

“Tunisia has entered a new phase that requires new approaches and visions to manage public affairs,” he added.

Many in Tunisia wondered whether a single ruler, who had the power to get things done, might be better than political chaos and economic failure.

Corrupt members of Parliament combined with increasing inflation and poverty among the people were at the root of the street protests and general dissatisfaction.

Despite Saied’s increasingly authoritarian actions, he told Tunisian rights groups Monday that he remains committed to civil liberties and the democratic process, and he has said the freeze of parliament will be temporary.

Saied’s move to freeze the legislature and fire the prime minister on July 25 followed protests that appeared largely aimed at the Ennahda party, with videos on social media showing demonstrators vandalizing local party offices.

Supporters of Saied poured into the streets of the capital and other cities to celebrate after his announcement.  Ennahda called Saied’s moves a coup d’état.

Tunisians have been portrayed as people who have liberated themselves from an oppressive Islamist government, and many have lamented they got nothing out of the 2011 revolution which brought the Muslim Brotherhood party Ennahda to power.

While many demonstrators demanded democracy, others chanted for more tangible outcomes, such as an end to corruption, lower food prices, and jobs.

A Constitution, the ballot box and a Parliament did not automatically give prosperity or accountability. Parliament descended into divisions with political parties forming without offering better ideas, amid the spread of corruption.

Some western leaders had thought a liberal democracy could be parachuted in after the Arab Spring in 2011.

Saied was elected on an anti-system ticket in late 2019 and has said his action seeks to “save” Tunisia from “imminent peril” and a socio-economic crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Tunisia faces a looming fiscal crisis, with billions in debt coming due this fall. An economic collapse would pose problems not only for Tunisia but also for Europe, whose shores draw desperate Tunisian migrants in boats by the thousands each year.  The International Monetary Fund officials are wanting to negotiate a bailout.

On Friday a charity ship carrying 800 migrants asked Italy to assign it a safe port as attempts to cross the Mediterranean intensified.

“In just 48 hours, our crew has rescued over 800 people,” the German nongovernmental organization (NGO) Sea-Eye tweeted.

Italy is one of the main points of entry into Europe for migrants from North Africa, and according to figures from the interior ministry, nearly 55,000 migrants have disembarked in Italy this year, with arrivals “well distributed” between Libya and Tunisia.

Tunisia was the birthplace of the so-called “Arab Spring” which toppled Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. “Get out, get out” was the slogan that started in December 2010 and triggered protests in several countries.

The decade that followed saw Tunisians adopt a new Constitution, gain freedom of speech, and vote in free and fair elections.

In Syria and Libya, the wars which were started by the US, UK, NATO war machine have devastated the countries, killed thousands, but have not brought any peace.

Egyptians elected a Muslim Brotherhood president, Morsi, after an American NGO was successful in rigging the election, but had a second revolution to throw off the Islamist dictator, and have transitioned to President Sisi in 2013.

Saied’s popularity stems from the same grievances that propelled Arabs to protest a decade ago: corruption, unemployment, repression, and an inability to make ends meet.

Thousands of Tunisians took part in the protest calling for the “liberation of the parliament” from the control of the pro-Muslim Brotherhood Ennahda party, the Islamist party that dominated Parliament and that many Tunisians blame for the country’s ills.

Calls grew for the dissolution of parliament, which was helmed by Ennahda’s highly unpopular leader Rachid Ghannouchi.

Demonstrators gathered in front of the parliament headquarters in Tunis, raising slogans denouncing Ghannouchi’s control.  “Oh Ghannouchi, you thug, you fight souls,” “Down with the rule of the Leader,” were some of the slogans raised in videos and photos posted online.

Tunisian party leader Abir Moussi accused Muslim Brotherhood members of receiving foreign funding, having links with terrorism, and she has also called for the Muslim Brotherhood to be designated as a terrorist organization in Tunisia, as has been done in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and UAE.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia was founded in 1981 by Ghannouchi, and in the 2011 parliamentary elections, it won a plurality of 37% of the popular vote and formed a government.

In 2018, lawyers and politicians accused Ennahda of forming a secret organization that has infiltrated security forces and the judiciary and also claimed the party was behind the 2013 assassinations of Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, two progressive political leaders.

Media coverage in Turkey, which is ruled by President Erdogan of the AKP party, which is a Muslim Brotherhood party, reflects support for Ghannouchi.

Saied met US Ambassador Donald Blome on October 14, coinciding with a US congressional meeting entitled “Tunisia: Examining the State of Democracy and Next Steps for US Policy”. Saied “informed (Blome) of the State of Tunisia’s annoyance at the situation in Tunisia being included in the proceedings of the American Congress”, according to the presidency’s Facebook page.

The US-NATO ‘regime change’ projects in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria have failed and created horrific suffering.  The west tried to use the Muslim Brotherhood to topple governments, but in Tunis, Egypt, Libya, and Syria the people have resisted the Radical Islamic political ideology.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) Tuesday held a roundtable discussion on federal COVID vaccine mandates with a panel of people injured by COVID vaccines and scientists from some of the most prestigious research organizations in the world, including The BMJ and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Peter Doshi, a senior editor at The BMJ and associate professor of pharmaceutical health services research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, and Retsef Levi, a health system and analytics professor at MIT, expressed doubts about COVID vaccine efficacy and the failures of the scientific community.

“I’m saddened we’re super-saturated as a society right now in the attitude of ‘everybody knows,’ which has shut down intellectual curiosity and led to self-censorship,” said Doshi.

Doshi said we’re not in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” If hospitalizations and deaths are almost exclusively occuring in the unvaccinated “why would booster shots be necessary?” Doshi asked. “And why would the statistics be so different in the UK, where most COVID hospitalizations and deaths are among the fully vaccinated?”

“There’s a disconnect there, and something to be curious about,” Doshi said. “There’s something not adding up.”

Doshi argued the public was lied to in early 2021, when health officials including Dr. Anthony Fauci, claimed COVID vaccine trial data proved the vaccine saved lives.

After presenting the trial data for the vaccines authorized for use in the U.S., Doshi pointed out “there were similar numbers in the vaccine and placebo groups.” He argued those “who claimed the trial showed the vaccine was highly effective in saving lives were wrong” and that “the trials did not demonstrate this.”

Doshi talked about anti-vaxxers and criticized the official definition of the term. He presented the panel the official Merriam-Webster definition of anti-vaxxer: “A person who opposes the use of vaccines or regulations mandating vaccination.”

“The second part [of the definition] stunned me,” said Doshi.

“There are entire countries from the United Kingdom to Japan which do not mandate childhood vaccines,” he said. “There are no mandates, and I would wager that perhaps a majority of the world’s population meet this definition of an anti-vaxxer.”

Doshi told the panel that “vaccine” is another definition “worth checking on.”

“I argue these products which everyone calls MRNA vaccines are qualitatively different from standard vaccines,” Doshi said. “So I found it fascinating to learn that Merriam Webster changed the definition of vaccine early this year.”

“mRNA products did not meet the definition of vaccine that has been in place for over 15 years, but the definition was expanded such that mRNA products are now vaccines,” Doshi said.

He then argued that just because we’re calling the COVID shot a “vaccine” doesn’t mean “these new products are just like all other childhood vaccines which get mandated.”

“Each product is a different product, and if people are OK with mandating something simply because it’s a vaccine, I believe it’s time to inject some critical thinking into the conversation,” Doshi said.

He also criticized the fact that society is vaccinating and mandating the vaccine for large portions of the public despite the raw data on the safety and efficacy of the vaccines not being available yet.

“So while we are told to keep following the science, what we are following is not a scientific process based on open data, we are following a process where the data are secret, and in my view there is something very unscientific about that,” Doshi said.

Levi told the panel “scientists in the most prestigious journals assert that the vaccine is safe, failing to report on serious side effects such as deaths.”

He explained that national emergency services calls in Israel for cardiac arrest among young individuals under 40 years old saw a dramatic increase — more than 25% — in parallel to the COVD vaccination campaign.

“We wrote an academic paper raising concerns regarding these statistics and called on the authorities to check on this … needless to say they never got back to us.”

Levi claimed the government attempted to censor the research by calling its credibility into question. “They called the research fake,” Levi said.

Levi warned the panel:

“These vaccines have serious and unknown side effects, and we need to use them with caution.”

Watch here (Doshi starts at 1:18:40 and Levi starts at 1:49:07):

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Jeremy Loffredo is a freelance reporter for The Defender. His investigative reporting has been featured in The Grayzone and Unlimited Hangout. Jeremy formerly produced news programs at RT America.

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Does Repeatedly Calling China a Threat Reify It?

November 8th, 2021 by Kim Petersen

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Hegemony requires a coordinated mechanism to be in place for a belligerent entity to designate enemies, attack the leader(s) of the designated enemy, control the narrative (i.e., lie), launch unprovoked attacks that murder a citizenry, destroy the economic basis of the named enemy, loot its resources, topple the enemy’s leadership, and replace the leadership with one deemed acceptable to the attacking entity. Such a mechanism is multifaceted, and it requires a government, industry, military, and media that operate as a unit, along with other supporting facets. The United States is an entity that functions to support capitalism, imperialism, militarism, and situate itself as the global hegemon. The profit from the violence is funneled to the American plutocratic class.

One supporting facet of empire is the think tanks that are called upon to produce propaganda and disseminate disinformation through its mass media. In the US, one highly influential think tank is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

In the book Wall Street’s Think Tank, author Laurence Shoup examines the CFR think tank. In its review of Shoup’s book, the socialist magazine Monthly Review wrote:

The Council on Foreign Relations is the world’s most powerful private foreign-policy think tank and membership organization. Dominated by Wall Street, it claims among its members a high percentage of past and present top U.S. government officials as well as corporate leaders and influential figures in the fields of education, media, law, and nonprofit work… Shoup argues that the CFR now operates in an era of “Neoliberal Geopolitics,” a worldwide paradigm that its members helped to establish and that reflects the interests of the U.S. ruling capitalist class.

If the US is going to wage serial wars, then it knows that it needs to stir up patriotic fervor to rally public support for the fighting forces. Therefore, it is critically important to control the narrative. In the case of the CFR, it has its own in-house media to assuage the message — the journal Foreign Affairs.

In an article on 2 November, Foreign Affairs (FA) continues to demonize China, but it also cautions against the US putting all its militaristic eggs in the China basket. It calls for a balancing of US foreign policy. After all, there are plenty of other designated enemies out there.

FA: “In view of its global economic weight, rapidly expanding military capabilities, illiberal values, and growing assertiveness, Beijing poses a formidable long-term threat to American security and freedom.”

Analysis: From the Chinese perspective, the same could be said of the US — but magnified. The US is still the largest economy by the GNP metric. It has by far the largest military budget in the world, one that exceeds the spending of the next 11 countries. Moreover, the US has been deeply immersed in warring ever since its founding in 1776 — a founding based in the genocide of the Original Peoples. How is that for assertiveness? In contrast, China has not been at war for over 40 years, and this war lasted less than four weeks. So who poses “a formidable long-term threat” to who? Is the Chinese navy conducting so-called freedom-of-navigation exercises through waters off the coast of the US?

Why this tendentious freedom-of-navigation descriptor? When has China ever stated that marine traffic was not permitted through the South China Sea? Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said, “With the joint efforts of countries in the region including China, passage through the South China sea has been smooth and safe for a period of time, and not a single vessel has ever reported that its navigation is hindered or safety threatened in the South China Sea. The US allegation of ‘freedom of navigation’ in the South China Sea threatened is simply untenable.”

Yet, FA says that Biden must keep challenging China on passage through the South China Sea. Obviously, there is nothing peaceful about US maneuvers in the South China Sea as Zhao noted, “[T]he US willfully sends large-scale advanced vessels and aircraft to the South China Sea for military reconnaissance and drills and illegally intruded into China’s territorial waters and space and water and air space adjacent to islands and reefs. Since the beginning of this year, the US side has conducted close-in reconnaissance for nearly 2,000 times and over 20 large-scale military drills on the sea targeting China.”

Moreover, is China encircling the US with military bases, as the US has encircled China?


Lastly, what is launching wars if not a decidedly illiberal value. It seems that right off the bat that FA has been hoisted on its own petard.

FA: “Biden has said that Chinese President Xi Jinping is ‘deadly earnest on becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world.’”

Analysis: What level of readership intelligence is FA targeting? Isn’t the proper response: so what? After all, which country strives to be insignificant or inconsequential? Isn’t striving for esteem bound with the essence of patriotism, love of country? Cheer for your team?

FA: “At the Pentagon, China is said to be the ‘pacing threat,’ while Secretary of State Antony Blinken describes U.S. relations with it as ‘the biggest geopolitical test’ of the twenty-first century. Going further, the undersecretary for policy at the U.S. Defense Department has described China strategy as involving not one element of national power, or even the entirety of the U.S. government, but rather a ‘whole-of-societyapproach.’”

Analysis: As for pacing threat, US Department of Defense chief Lloyd Austin defined it thus: “It means that China is the only country that can pose a systemic challenge to the United States in the sense of challenging us, economically, technologically, politically and militarily.” Do Austin and his colleagues mean that everything is hunky dory so long as China doesn’t develop too much to upset the US top dog?

FA: “And among the primary rationales for Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan has been to free up resources for China instead.”

Analysis: Should the US have continued to sacrifice the lives and well-being of its soldiers in Afghanistan? And it should be mentioned to continue threatening the lives and livelihoods of Afghanis? Wasting trillions of dollars to subdue goat herders with AK-47s is usually not a great strategy (with all due respect to goat herders bravely resisting foreign invaders).

In the aftermath of the US pullout, China sits well positioned to engage in win-win trade with Afghanistan and expand the Belt and Road Initiative.

FA: “In view of Beijing’s ascendance, it is entirely reasonable for American policymakers to seek to devote new diplomatic, economic, and military resources to the challenge.”

Analysis: How long do the American politicians figure they can keep a nation of 1.4 billion people down? And they can’t do this because China is rising. It has eliminated poverty. It leads in supercomputer technology. China has built the world’s fastest programmable quantum computers, said to be 10 million times faster than the world’s current fastest supercomputer. China has built the world’s first integrated quantum communication network, “combining over 700 optical fibers on the ground with two ground-to-satellite links to achieve quantum key distribution over a total distance of 4,600 kilometers for users across the country.” In AI, China claimed 35% of the global robotics patents between 2005 and 2019 (25,000), almost three times more than the 9,500 robotics patents received by the US during the same time. China has also made massive strides in space exploration. And this is just a snippet of China’s growing technological and scientific prominence. (For more see Godfree Roberts’s extremely informative China resource).

FA: “Defending Asia against Chinese hegemony is important…”

Analysis: In The Governance of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014, location 3918) chairman Xi Jinping said with crystal clarity,

As China continues to grow, some people start to worry. Some take a dark view of China and assume that it will inevitably become a threat as it develops further. They even portray China as a terrifying Mephisto who will someday suck the soul of the world. Such absurdity couldn’t be more ridiculous, yet some people, regrettably, never tire of preaching it. This shows that prejudice is indeed hard to overcome.

The American side, however, likes to think that if it parrots the China-hegemon mantra often enough that it must be so in the minds of others; this is despite Chinese officials on several occasions stating otherwise. Do not actions speak louder than words?

Noam Chomsky got it right when he responded to the threat of China:

I mean, everyone talks about the threat. When everyone says the same thing about some complex topic, what should come to your mind is, wait a minute, nothing can be that simple. Something’s wrong. That’s the immediate light that should go off in your brain when you ever hear unanimity on some complex topic. So let’s ask, what’s the Chinese threat?

FA: “Beijing sees the United States and Europe as two power centers rather than one allied bloc and has long sought to drive wedges into the transatlantic relationship… China needs to understand that the United States and its allies are united in countering its economic and military pressure…”

Analysis: The fact that FA merely opines that this is so (and opinion it is since no substantiation was provided for such a claim) is hardly compelling. Besides a simple comparison between China and the US reveals the inanity of the FA article: Which country resorts to initiating sanctions against other countries? Which country is engaged in warring against other countries?

The FA article ends with a rather damning quotation: “As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said, ‘In the 40 years since Vietnam, we have a perfect record in predicting where we will use military force next. We’ve never once gotten it right.’”

If the US would ever decide to use military force against China (which it won’t because that would risk a nuclear conflagration in which there are no winners as that would end life on Earth as we know it), then it would have gotten it wrong for the last time.

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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter who lived several years in China. He can be emailed at: kimohp@gmail. Twitter: @kimpetersen. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Health Is Personal and Medicine Must be Personal Too

November 8th, 2021 by Joel S. Hirschhorn

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This article defines a more effective public health strategy for the current COVID pandemic.  The core issue is that there is a huge array of reactions to both COVID infections and vaccines based on diverse biology, genetics and medical conditions of individuals.  Missing from current policy is recognition and support of personalized medical methods.

First, medical history tells us the wisdom of making the medicine fit the person. This is the cornerstone of what is called personalized or individualized medicine.  Good physicians also find the combination of drugs to best address an illness or disease.  This contrasts with mass use of off-the-shelf, one-size-fits all drugs.  Proposed here is an approach to tailor or fine tune medical solutions to individual biologic and genetic characteristics, and personal medical needs and circumstances.

As an example of how trying to get the public to accept a mass medicine is the case of seasonal flu vaccines.  A large fraction of the public does not take them.  During the 2019-2020 season, 63.8% of children between six months and 17 years got a flu shot.  Among adults, just 48.4% of people got flu shots.

Why is this?  Because it is common knowledge that their efficacy rate is relatively low.  On average, people who get the flu shot are between 40% and 60% less likely to catch the virus than unvaccinated individuals.  The truth is that the annual flu vaccine does not fit every individual.  Even though there is little medical evidence that taking a flu vaccine poses significant health risks.  But people know that the flu infection fatality rate is relatively low.  Many individuals make a sensible risk/benefit analysis, concluding that there are insufficient benefits.  Others, especially older people with serious medical conditions and possibly weak immune systems get annual flu shots.  The public health system has allowed a personalized approach to seasonal flu vaccines.

And it turns out, based on government data, that low risk is also the case for the current COVID pandemic.  For the vast majority of people getting coronavirus infection either means no symptoms or only mild ones not much different than the flu or a very bad cold, and which pass in relatively few days.  Here is the reported truth about low coronavirus death risks for healthy people: “CDC showed that 94 % of the reported deaths had multiple comorbidities, thereby reducing the CDC’s numbers attributed strictly to COVID-19 to about 35,000 for all age groups.”  This stands in contrast to the widely reported total of over 730,000 COVID related deaths.  What this shows is the huge variations in how people respond to COVID infections because of their innate differences.

What COVID infected people do get is natural immunity to this virus that abundant medical research and clinical studies have shown is better than vaccine immunity.  The latter declines in about six months, whereas natural immunity lasts longer and better defends against new variants.

Combination of medicines

Besides making the medicine fit the patient. is established clinical wisdom for using a combination of drugs.  And often, in this pandemic, some doctors use a combination that includes more than several generic medicines and, especially in hospitals, government approved drugs.  Also widely used are vitamins and supplements.  The eminent Dr. Peter McCollough has been the leading proponent of using individualized combinations to treat and prevent COVID infection disease.  All this is an alternative to the strategy of mass vaccination for everyone.

Today, anyone without too much work can find a host of combination protocols to treat and prevent COVID.

The missed opportunity discussed early in the pandemic

Between the early 2020 months of the pandemic and the roll out of mass vaccination in late 2020 there was interest in applying the personalized medicine approach to managing the pandemic.’

Consider what the Mayo Center for Individualized Medicine said for the COVID-19 response.  The document detailed a number of initiatives Mayo was pursuing to address the pandemic by obtaining medical data that could lead to personalized pandemic solutions.  This is what Mayo wanted to do:

“When COVID-19 spread across the U.S. in March 2020, the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine urgently responded to accelerate research, development, translation and implementation of novel tests, lifesaving treatments and diagnostics.  Now, collaborative teams of scientists are continuing to unravel the mysteries of the novel virus, including using advanced genetic sequencing technologies to investigate how the virus can infiltrate a person’s immune system and wreak havoc on organs, tissue and blood vessels, leaving some patients with long-term effects.”

A September 2020 article had the intriguing title “How to use precision medicine to personalize COVID-19 treatment according to the patient’s genes.”  Here are excerpts:

“In recent years, a gene-centric approach to precision medicine has been promoted as the future of medicine. It underlies the massive effort funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health to collect over a million DNA samples under the “All of Us” initiative that began in 2015.

But the imagined future did not include COVID-19.  In the rush to find a COVID-19 vaccine and effective therapies, precision medicine has been insignificant.  Why is this?  And what are its potential contributions?

If precision medicine is the future of medicine, then its application to pandemics generally, and COVID-19 in particular, may yet prove to be highly significant.  But its role so far has been limited. Precision medicine must consider more than just genetics.  It requires an integrative “omic” approach that must collect information from multiple sources – beyond just genes – and at scales ranging from molecules to society.

The situation becomes yet more complicated for infectious diseases.  Viruses and bacteria have their own genomes that interact in complex ways with the cells in the people they infect. The genome of SARS-CoV-2 underlying COVID-19 has been extensively sequenced.  Its mutations are identified and traced worldwide, helping epidemiologists understand the spread of the virus.  However, the interactions between SARS-CoV-2 RNA and human DNA, and the effect on people of the virus’s mutations, remain unknown.”

…there is an opportunity to begin gathering the kinds of data that would allow for a more comprehensive precision medicine approach – one that is fully aware of the complex interactions between genomes and social behavior.

The NIH has said:

“The National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program has announced a significant increase in the COVID-19 data available in its precision medicine database, adding survey responses from more than 37,000 additional participants, and virus-related diagnosis and treatment data from the nearly 215,000 participant electronic health records (EHRs) that are currently available.”

The specialty germane to a personalized pandemic strategy is called pharmacogenomics.  It is the study of the role of the genome in drug response.  It combines pharmacology and genomics to discover how the genetic makeup of an individual affects their response to drugs, including vaccines.

It deals with the influence of acquired and inherited genetic variation on drug response in patients by correlating genetic factors of an individual with drug or vaccine absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination.  It deals with the effects of multiple genes on drug and vaccine response.

The central goal of pharmacogenomics is to develop rational means to optimize drug therapy, including vaccination, with respect to the patients’ genotype, to ensure maximum efficiency with minimal adverse effects.

By using pharmacogenomics, the goal is that pharmaceutical drug treatments, including vaccination, can replace or at least complement what is dubbed as the “one-drug-fits-all” approach.  Pharmacogenomics also attempts to eliminate the trial-and-error method of prescribing, allowing physicians to take into consideration their patient’s genes, the functionality of these genes, and how this may affect the efficacy of the patient’s current or future treatments (and where applicable, provide an explanation for the failure of past treatments).

An August 2020 journal article was titled “Pharmacogenomics of COVID-19 therapies.”  Here are its optimistic views and findings:

“Pharmacogenomics may allow individualization of these drugs thereby improving efficacy and safety.  …Pharmacogenomics may help clinicians to choose proper first-line agents and initial dosing that would be most likely achieve adequate drug exposure among critically ill patients; those who cannot afford a failure of ineffective therapy. It is also important to minimize the risks of toxicity because COVID-19 particularly affects those with comorbidities on other drug therapies.  … We found evidence that several genetic variants may alter the pharmacokinetics of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, ribavirin, lopinavir/ritonavir and possibly tocilizumab, which hypothetically may affect clinical response and toxicity in the treatment of COVID-19.  … These data support the collection of DNA samples for pharmacogenomic studies of the hundreds of currently ongoing clinical trials of COVID-19 therapies. One of the biggest success stories in the field of pharmacogenomics was for a drug used to treat another, highly lethal, infectious disease: abacavir for HIV.  … In an acute illness such as COVID-19, pharmacogenetics would only be useful if the genetic test results were already available (i.e., pre-emptive pharmacogenetic testing) or rapidly available (i.e., point-of-care genetic testing).  … In the face of unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, collaborative efforts among the medical communities are more important than ever to improve the efficacy of these treatments and ensure safety.  Some large national COVID-19 trials are evaluating pharmacogenomics, which will inform the role of pharmacogenomics markers for future clinical use.”

A July 2020 NPR show was titled “Research On Personalized Medicine May Help COVID-19 Treatments.”  This was deemed newsworthy:

The nationwide All of Us Research Program aims to tailor medical treatments of all kinds, including treatments that may be developed for the new coronavirus.  So far more than 271,000 people nationwide have signed up to share data with the initiative.  All of Us started under President Barack Obama in 2018 and involves institutions across the country.

“This is an exciting opportunity for our participants to have a direct impact on COVID-19 research, watching how their participation in this historic effort is truly making a difference,” said Dr. Elizabeth Burnside.  “This focused initiative could be especially important for members of communities that are often underrepresented in health research and who may question the overall and personal benefit of research participation.”

In sum, there was legitimate medical interest early in the pandemic to use personalized medicine, in which drugs and drug combinations are optimized for individuals or certain population demographics.  The central goal is minimization of drug and vaccine toxicities and adverse reactions and deaths.

But one thing is now clear.  The personalized approach to managing the COVID pandemic has not been aggressively pursued by public health agencies.  They have placed their resources and hopes with mass vaccination, both encouraged, coerced and increasingly mandated.  The hope that we can vaccinate ourselves out of this pandemic has lost credibility.

In contrast, an alternative personalized approach, used by hundreds of physicians, based on generic medicines, vitamins and supplements have been more blocked than supported by the public health establishment as detailed in Pandemic Blunder.

Proposed new public health strategy

Part One: Individuals decide either on their own or with the advice of their personal physician to be vaccinated for COVID.  And to accept what government officials have decided are the best COVID medical solutions for outpatients and inpatients.

Part Two: Individuals choose a preferred medical professional who, on the basis of their education, training, experience and successful clinical results, offers alternatives to vaccination and government promoted medical solutions for outpatients and inpatients.  The medical professional uses the patient’s medical history, conditions, needs and unique personal biologic and genetic circumstances to reach the best personalized medical solution.

The new public health strategy is, therefore, twofold.  Widely available vaccination becomes focused or finely tuned to meet the desires and needs of part of the population.  Along with use of the second part there is no sacrifice of true public health protection in the pandemic.

Part Two of the strategy directly addresses the widespread resistance to COVID vaccination by some Americans.

This is a rational perspective consistent with the belief in medical freedom.  If one believes that there are some certain medical benefits of COVID vaccines, then traditional medical practice supports use of them on an individual therapeutic basis.  This is a free personal decision, perhaps in consultation with their physician to accept that COVID vaccine risks are outweighed by its benefits.

Risks and benefits may be based on personal research of available medical information on vaccines.  Or on information from government agencies, often without advice from their doctor.

Not to be ignored is increasing negative information on COVID vaccines reaching the public.  One recent example from a published medical research article is that “cost-benefit analysis showed very conservatively that there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic.”  From this same study: within “eight days post-inoculation (where day zero is the day of inoculation), sixty percent of all post-inoculation deaths are reported in VAERS.” This study concluded: “It is unclear why this mass inoculation for all groups is being done, being allowed, and being promoted.”

In seeking to implement the wisdom of fit the medicine to the person, requires accepting the science that no two people, medically, genetically and biologically speaking, are exactly the same; this cannot be disputed.  This is why using pharmacogenomics has a role to play.  Looking at average statistical vaccine outcomes ignores and disrespects individual biologics, medical conditions, concerns and needs.  This is an overselling of vaccines.

Americans have always wanted to see themselves as unique individuals.  This translates to medical actions.  Mass vaccination for everyone ignores and devalues this traditional belief by Americans.

There are also legitimate concerns that giving informed consent to a shot has not been based on a full, easily understood presentation of data on risks for different kinds of people with various medical histories.

Those who are resisting vaccination have a right to question that government agencies have not strictly followed medical science, data and experience.  For example, a vast literature concludes that stay-at-home mandates, lockdowns and masking have not been effective in controlling pandemic impacts.

And there is now considerable evidence that those who are vaccinated can get breakthrough infections and spread the virus.  “We have data now through the first week of August from the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, showing that… over 60 percent of seniors over the age of 65 in the hospital with Covid have been vaccinated,” noted the esteemed Dr. Peter McCullough recently.

This erodes the credibility of public health agencies and their medical authority and destroys public trust in federal agencies implementing pandemic policies.

The fallacy of only one medical solution

If the government would let some part of the public choose personalized treatment to deal with COVID infection and another part to choose vaccination (and other government actions) why is that not an acceptable public health policy?  The two-part strategy will become increasingly important as the government promotes or mandates regular booster shots over months or years.

Choice is rational if, indeed, there are personalized treatment options other than vaccination that can be obtained from some medical professionals.  Indeed, there is now a vast medical literature on treatment protocols not only to cure but also to prevent COVID infection.  They are being used very successfully by hundreds of American physicians.

And some information reaching the public like the very successful use of the generic ivermectin in India and Indonesia reinforces the inclination of some people to seek alternative medical solutions.  Also, that 100 to 200 members of Congress have used this generic.

Moreover, now there is also a vast medical literature, increasingly known to the public, supporting the strong effectiveness of natural immunity obtained through previous COVID infection.  It is a rational personal decision to conclude that one’s natural immunity is sufficient medical protection without taking on any vaccine risks.  They have the right to seek a medical professional that agrees with that medical reality.

The only conceivable “loser” for this approach would be vaccine makers having a smaller market.

Physicians should have the freedom to advise their patients to either use a generic medicine treatment protocol or help document their natural immunity (with valid testing) to allow patients to embrace personalized medical action rather than be vaccinated.

In this two-part policy approach, of promoting a choice between personalized medical protection versus mass vaccination, the entire population could be fully protected without sacrificing medical freedom and without various forms of vaccine mandates.  Public health does not require total public acceptance of one medical solution.

This strategy is consistent with what many physicians said early in the pandemic.  Namely that vaccination should be targeted on those with the highest risks of serious COVID impacts, not the entire population.  It is widely known by the public and accepted by the medical establishment that this pandemic does not pose a serious threat of either illness or death for people below the age of about 70, unless they have serious comorbidities or serious illnesses.  Infection fatality rates for most of the public do not argue for vaccination.

Much of the public wants and deserves the choice to use something other than a vaccine shot to protect themselves.  That choice becomes operational only if the government allows and supports medical professionals to offer their patients alternatives to vaccines.

Here is the ethical and medical truth: Protecting individual health trumps protecting public health but is not antithetical to protecting public health.  Overly coercive public health actions, such as vaccine mandates, are antithetical to protecting individual health for many people who fear even low probability negative reactions to vaccines.

Here is the ultimate medical truth: When all available medical science and means are fully used then the result is safely protecting public health without sacrificing medical freedom of both physicians and individuals.

The current strategy has failed

As we approach two years of dealing with this pandemic there is abundant evidence that the emphasis on mass vaccination has largely failed.  The US has the highest number of COVID deaths on the planet.  Even now, after wide use of the mass vaccination approach, recent 2,000 daily deaths are related to COVID infection.  Every week more people are counted as COVID deaths than the 3,000 people who died in the 9/11 disaster.

Not to be ignored is the widely cited journal study titled “Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States.”

Breakthrough infections among the fully vaccinated are mounting.  Because after about six months vaccines lose much of their effectiveness, especially against variants.  And fully vaccinated people can and do carry and transmit the coronavirus.

If one wants first-hand accounts of how US physicians have documented their own negative impacts of COVID vaccines as well as those of their patients, then read a number of their affidavits.

Conclusions

A new public health strategy that no longer adheres to single-minded mass vaccination can obtain broad public support.  Now is the time to endorse and support personalized medicine applied to the pandemic.

Much of the public may not yet know this.  But missing from the new CDC definition of vaccine as of September 1, 2021 are these key phrases: “protecting the person from that disease” and “to produce immunity.”  The new vaccine definition should reduce public confidence in current COVID vaccines.  In fact, these changes reflect what is now known about the limitations of these vaccines.  Fully vaccinated people can still get COVID disease and really do not have long lasting effective immunity to it.

Promoting choice is a far better public health approach than wide use of authoritarian pandemic controls that have devastated lives and produced mental stress and many collateral deaths.

On that last point, CDC has now recognized mood disorders put people at high risk for severe COVID cases.  Compare pre-pandemic 2019 to 2020 when there were 53 million new cases of depression globally, a 28% increase, as reported in The Lancet.  Surely, promoting more medical choice for addressing COVID would help people stay both mentally and physically healthy.

Resistance to vaccine mandates should not be seen as unpatriotic or as creating harm for others.  Supporting personalized medicine is a way to avoid negative impacts on the American economy because of rigid, inflexible vaccine mandates that compel many Americans to accept job loss that in many ways imperil public safety.

Lastly, staying alive and safe surely is the presumed goal of all people.  We have more tools than vaccines to help people meet their goal.  Now we need the public health establishment to let all the tools be freely chosen.

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Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Pandemic Blunder and many articles on the pandemic, worked on health issues for decades. As a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he directed a medical research program between the colleges of engineering and medicine. As a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, he directed major studies on health-related subjects; he testified at over 50 US Senate and House hearings and authored hundreds of articles and op-ed articles in major newspapers. He has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and America’s Frontline Doctors.

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Phil Taylor: We are joined by John Philpot, a distinguished lawyer from Montreal who represented the accused before  the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.  We want to talk to John today because the leading personality in the Tribunal  – you can almost say a target of the prosecution – Colonel  Théoneste Bagasora, has died recently in Mali at the age of 80 and because the Western media in their coverage has been using a very inflammatory language about the Colonel  which in my view is not accurate. Fortunately we have John Philpot who was in the courtroom many times and has been very familiar with the tribunal and the cases since the beginning.  John, welcome to the programme.

John Philpot: Thank you.  We are all saddened by the death of this fine man.

PT: Well I think that’s a good note to start with because when we read the headlines,  the NY Times called Colonel Bagasora the « architect » of the genocide, others said he was the « kingpin » of the genocide, or said the « mastermind » – I guess that’s the favourite one. Now I was in the courtroom myself for the testimony of general Dallaire on the matter. His name is  coming up in relation with Bagasora and the Canadian media is making a link between the two as if there is some of a good guy-bad guy story. Now you’ve just described the Colonel in positive terms, tell us about what the court said on the issue  of the « mastermind », the « conspirator »,  the « organiser », etc.

JP: He had a long trial, was very well defended and after 7 or 8 years of trial he was found not guilty of conspiracy and that was the key finding.  For the conspiracy to commit genocide he was acquitted and this tribunal spent one or two billion dollars, they spent a lot of money, they had a lot of investigators,  they made a tremendous effort to try and convict mister Bagasora of minding the horrible events which happened in Rwanda  and the prosecutor lost despite all the efforts that the UN put behind the prosecutor.

He was found guilty at the trial of ordering some killings, in different localities, and on appeal he was cleared of ALL individual acts, that is ordering to kill someone or, for example, ordering his underlings– which he didn’t have –  to kill people, he was acquitted of all those. He was only found guilty of being negligent because he should have known and he had to know that his underlings were going to carry out some killings in those 3 days from the 7th to the 10th of April 1994.  So he was found guilty of something you might call « criminal negligence », saying that « should have known », and this doesn’t event exist I don’t think in Canadian law.  Here he would have been acquitted because that’s not a crime in Canadian law. And on appeal they reduced his sentence from life to 35 years which to me is much too much.

His trial was a relative victory against the claim of the genocide being planned and organised by a senior military figure.

PT: Yes it is so striking. They accused the four – there were four colonels –   and the were allegedly conspiring and you just laid out that at the end of the  day the charges against Bagasora were « command issues » or « should have known », etc. , and in the case of General Kabiligi – he was a general – who was allegedly one of the conspirators, he was completely acquitted …

JP: …because he wasn’t there!

PT: I want to read to you the words of someone from the CBC radio programme « As it happens » introducing their interview with General Dallaire about  Col Bagasora. They begin saying  « In the words of Romeo Dallaire, Bagasora  was the kingpin of the Rwandan genocide and the court that sentenced Col Bagasora to prison agreed ». So Dallaire said he was a kingpin and the court agreed, said the CBC announcer. But you just said that they didn’t agree!

JP: No, of course not, they had no evidence. I repeat myself, after spending a large amount of money to try and prove it,  and the judges had quite a trend to accept the prosecutors’ views,  but the defence proved, raised more than a reasonable doubt in my opinion, that this wasn’t true and he was acquitted of conspiracy. And in fact, the global conspiracy was not accepted by ANY judgment.

There were some minor agreements, alledged conspiracies in localities where the accused got together and planned but the national conspiracy did not exist. The alledged planning never existed. And it’s shocking when you think that  this tribunal said certain things and all the media and all the so-called think-tanks and all the so-called intellectuals still carry on with this story,  they have no respect for the rule of law and the rule of law at the ICTR  was biased in favor of the prosecution,  but even then it didn’t pass the test.

PT: I assume it is – for lawyers like you and others who follow this –  rather frustrating to go through the courts, hear the testimonies and at the end of the day the reporters go back to telling the same stories they had in 1994,  so one can ask « why did you bother to have a trial, the are just going to repeat the same  lies ». Maybe the conclusion about Colonel Bagasora is that because he has the title of Colonel, people assume that he was a major military leader. What was his role?

JP: He was the head of the Ministry of Defense, he was not even a soldier at the time, he was a political figure and he was not in the army, he didn’t do anything in the army, and they had to make a construct saying that he had the effective control but he was not a soldier at the time.

PT: That’s because his Minister was abroad, he was what they call the cabinet officer,  so he had to assume responsibility, right?

JP: He had some  responsibility, he was involved in some of the negotiations, but he was not  in charge of the army, he was not acting and giving orders to the army.

PT: I want to make sure we also talk about another matter that came up:  the case of your client, mister Zigiranyirazo. When his case came up there was a similar attention to it because he was called Mister Z  and he already had a reputation in Canadian media and Belgian media. They had created the idea that there was a group called Zero Network. Now I was surprised to hear Dallaire talking to « As it happened »  referred to the Zero Network and said that Bagasora was a part of it and also that the French took the leading members of the Zero Network out of Rwanda in the first 48 hours. Your client was the one individual that was claimed to be the leader or member of the Zero Network. Tell us about him.

JP: Well, Mister Zigiranyirazo was allegedly head of the Zero Network, also called the Akazu, a little group of people around the President. They allegedly conspired prior to the attack on the plane to exterminate Tutsis and led the conspired to exterminate Tutsis after the plane was shot down. Well he had a trial which lasted about 6 years of procedures and he was a acquitted on everything.  And the opposition parties came to the court and testified that these terms Akazu and Zero Network were simply terms invented by the opposition in the political disputes which began in 1991-92 up until the assassination of Pres. Habyarimana in 1994. So this is all lies and was not retained by the court. Mr Zigiranyirazo was acquitted of conspiracy and of all the other charges that he allegedly ordered such and such person to be killed, etc. So their whole organisation of a plan of how this happened pretty much fell apart. This is the story at the ICTR,  but the world don’t seem to care, they really don’t seem to care. Stories have been written, books have been written and these people who were acquitted are still sitting as you know in Arusha. Most of them cannot be transferred and cannot go  to their families which are based in Europe in general now.

PT: Yes that is one of the great injustices, you have people acquitted, which means they are innocent and should be permitted  to be with their families,   but the UN that put them on trial doesn’t fight to return them their rights that the declaration of innocence  would give them and doesn’t defend them.

JP: That’s a lesson which we should all learn and all lawyers and all interested persons should understand that international criminal law does not have the standards that national legal systems sometimes have.  I don’t want to phrase on national legal system but if Phil Taylor is acquitted on drunk driving, he is acquitted and that’s over.

PT: I am very glad we have a chance to talk about this because you were in that courtroom and won that battle. It would be helpful if we could develop some interest in actually making the court records of the ICTR available in the media here.  I think it’s bizarre that Dallaire is talking  a fairy tale about the Zero group. His credibility in this, in my opinion, is absolutely zero.  They did not find that Bagasora was a kingpin, but yet Dallaire is pirated as the guy who got it right, but he didn’t get it right on that,  he’s talking about a Zero Network you just showed that there wasn’t one, the courts found. Part of the problem is that the legend of Dallaire is confusing everyone, the media  here is so protective of him, they don’t actually treat him as a human. Because of his post traumatic stress problems he is like irreproachable.  But unfortunately he went into a courtroom and gave evidence of trying to do a lot of damage with his evidence.  I  wonder, if you look at the judgments,   they are saying here that Bagasora’s evidence was somehow crucial, I did not get that sense myself, reading the judgment, that they tought that his testimony had any significant value.

JP: It was not particularly based on it. His acquittal was based on the weakness of the prosecution’s evidence, not necessarily on his own evidence,  which is a good thing for Mr. Bagasora because they were so biased against him that had the case depended on his testimony they would have just thrown it out. But the prosecution evidence was so weak and nonsensical that Mr. Bagasora was acquitted. And then they made this artificial construct that he is liable because he should have known the intention of his so-called underlings which weren’t his underlings.

PT: Yes! Another element that strikes me about the reporting,  the  journalists did not actually look into the actual trial records or the judgment, they are going by popular anecdotes, and they are very parochial I noticed. For example, Dallaire is cited continuously in reference to Bagasora,  it’s not mentioned that Colonel Luc Marchal, a Belgian, testified in this case for the defense. He was a major figure, he was in charge of the security for the Kigali sector and the Belgian troops were major part of the drama. Yet here you have everyone saying that  Dallaire testified, he didn’t like him, in fact he  literally demonizes Bagasora, he calls him a devil,  but they don’t mention that the Belgian Colonel did not have the same view as Bagasora.

JP: Yes, Luc Marchal wrote to me two days ago because I wrote a small article basically about what we are talking today and sent it around to our friends and he wrote to me personally saying that he is so sad that such lies are propagated, that the media are making all these stories about Bagasora which is contrary to the truth.

PT: Isn’t it striking? Here is a man who put himself on a stand, took the oaths and testified for the defense, largely for Kabiligi, but he had a different view of what was going on in Kigali in 1994, April 6th, 7th and 8th. And again just to be clear, Bagosora’s authority ended on the 9th of April.  Three days where he actually had authority, some legal responsibility!

JP: Yes, exactly!

PT: And the leaders of the various units of the Rwandan Army  were not taking orders from him, they were fighting as soldiers,  people forget that the war began on the night of the assassination of the President on April 6th,  and two armies engaged on that moment.  And since I have mentioned Colonel Luc Marchal, I want to talk about another aspect to that,  which is ignored by the media here:  Bagasora was given responsibility for the deaths of the Belgian soldiers. Now that has always been highly problematic to my mind and I want to review with you what I know and tell me what you can recall of this.

PT: On the morning of April 7th there was a meeting of the Rwandan Army officers to which General Dallaire was invited – these are allegedly the conspirators in the mind of Dallaire – they have a meeting of 20 or 30 officers at Kamp Kigali. He goes to the meeting and on his way he sees a Belgian UN soldier on the ground in a struggle with Rwandan soldiers and he continued onto the meeting.  He says he saw it, he continued onto the meeting. He walked into the meeting with Rwandan Army officers, I don’t think it could have been more than a quarter of a mile from where he saw what he saw and did not say anything until the end of the meeting.  I understand you might want to talk about Bagasora being an officer and having some responsibility, but where is Dallaire culpability for not acting himself on behalf of his own fallen soldier?

JP: Well had he seen what you are just describing, he could have – I am sure he had a radio, he had a driver- he could have intervened and called for immediate  intervention to try and protect that person and so he was being negligent, and by the same talking that Mr. Bagasora was allegedly guilty, well Mr Dallaire would probably be guilty of the same negligence.

PT: If it’s negligence, you have at least two officers negligent, anyone who heard about it in a position of authority is culpable to some degree if they did not act.

JP: Absolutely!

PT: And they were not dead at that point, he could have stopped, by that story he would have a good chance of preventing it to happen, he would have had a reasonable chance of preventing the murder of the Belgian soldiers.

PT: Had he stood up among those  army officers and said « I have soldiers down here » , that was a diverse group of officers.  I have to say my own opinion is that he seems to have been treating  them like an enemy, but to what end? If he didn’t want to trust them to try to save the Belgians then he should have taken the responsibility himself with people he had the command of and see what he could do.

JP: Maybe he had another agenda which is that there was an offense  of  the RPF on their way  north of Kigali, he may have had a  second agenda  that he wanted the other party, the invaders, to take power,  that might have been his plan, his understanding.

PT: We should bring out a rather important detail for all this talk about  the evil conspiracy and how they were all devils, how Bagasora was a devil.

PT: Bagasora and Gen. Ndindiliyimana were the two key people at the meeting. Ndindiliyimana was also acquitted of all charges. He (Bagasora) was co-chairing  both the meetings that Dallaire attended while the Belgians were being  beaten to death, struggling for there lives,  and they did something else which doesn’t match the story of the great conspiracy. They chose a  new commanding officer for the entire Rwandan Armed forces, Gen. Gatsinzy. Who is he today?

JP: He is in Rwanda, I don’t know whether he is still a military but he did join the RPF, yes.

PT: He joined the RPF and at the time that they appointed him to lead the entire Rwandan Army, gave him command,  he was already known  to be an officer not being particularly enthusiastic about Habyarimana, and had actually no great interest in the war, but they gave him the job  largely out of old rules of seniority, he was the senior commander after Gen. Nsabimana who was killed along with the president.

JP: They brought him from Butare on the 9th I think.

PT: And they gave him command! This was Bagasora who Dallaire is calling a devil on CBC! Bagasora chaired the meeting where the chose Gen. Gatsinzy to lead the army. This is pathetic, is it not ?

JP: For sure.

PT: It is high comedy.

JP: I’d like to say something about Mr Bagosora. He is now at the 2/3 of his time in prison and he did not get the lease at his 2/3 of his time, unlike people in the past who were getting it. He wanted to have a few years being free either in Europe or Mali.  And he was refused that by the president of the tribunal.  I think it’s shocking that they bend the rules and found a way to not let people out, saying, once again, that he did not regret what he had done and pointed  out the same thing we point out today about the nature of his conviction. He did not have proper medical care in the last years. It’s very important that we understand that because there is a lot of other aging prisoners and I think it’s important for us to work hard to try and improve medical services.  We had some success but with the aging prisoners they have to be treated in the same way an aging prisoner would be treated  in a Canadian prison.

PT: Well  I think those are all good points.  The job before us I believe is to take this strange missionary, quasi theological and racial language out of the mouths of mainstream media who think they can call someone a  devil, whom they don’t know,  he definitely is not the devil – I understand the devil has his own work.  To speak in that way and happily say things like « I shook hands with the devil », like other journalists have repeated,  it’s like we are getting in line with this idea of demonization of the African accused.  They are all very comfortable in saying the most terrible things like « it’s another country, it’s another language, it’s another culture ».  As you said and illustrated  in your remarks, this is completely inappropriate, it’s an embarrassment to have a tribunal and to go through a whole process only to find ourselves with this kind of insulting and misleading and misinforming talk out of our journalists.

PT: I hope, John, that we can speak to you again in the future about these notions of the Akazu and the Zero Network, because it’s a myth, it’s a legend, and if we are permitted to go on lies about what happened in Rwanda,  we will go on.

JP: I know the family would be very happy that you raise these issues.

PT: Thank you.

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This interview was first published on Taylor Report.

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There have now been 2,433 fetal deaths recorded in VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) from pregnant women who have been injected with one of the COVID-19 shots. (Source.)

The vast majority of these have been from the Pfizer shot (1,862 deaths) and the Moderna shot (656 deaths.)

There have been more fetal deaths in the past 11 months following COVID-19 shots than there have been for the past 30+ years following ALL vaccines (2,198 – Source.)

Last month (October, 2021) the New England Journal of Medicine admitted that the original study used to justify the CDC and the FDA in recommending the shots to pregnant women was flawed. (Source.)

Since then, researchers in New Zealand have conducted a new study on the original data, and concluded:

A re-analysis of these figures indicates a cumulative incidence of spontaneous abortion ranging from 82% (104/127) to 91% (104/114), 7–8 times higher than the original authors’ results. (Source.)

And yet, the CDC and FDA still continue to recommend the shots for pregnant women, even though a correct analysis on the original data shows that 82% to 91% of pregnant women will suffer miscarriages if their unborn child is less than 20 weeks old. (Source.)

VAERS is a passive system that is severely under reported. The CDC and FDA have never conducted a study to determine what this under-reported factor is, but independent scientists have, and we have previously published the analysis conducted by Dr. Jessica Rose, who has determined that a conservative under-reported factor would be X41. See: STUDY: Government’s Own Data Reveals that at Least 150,000 Probably DEAD in U.S. Following COVID-19 Vaccines

This means that there have probably been at least 99,753 fetal deaths following COVID-19 injections so far.

Here is a video report we made on this last month with some very unfortunate gruesome examples of what these shots are doing to unborn babies.

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What You Need to Know About Pfizer’s Comirnaty Vaccine

November 8th, 2021 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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Pfizer/BioNTech’s Comirnaty COVID shot was approved (licensed) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in late August 2021, but only for adults, and only when carrying the Comirnaty label. No other COVID shot has been FDA approved. However, Comirnaty is currently not available, and while the experimental, emergency use authorized (EUA) Pfizer shot is substituted for Comirnaty, the two products are clearly legally distinct and not the same

A licensed vaccine is not shielded from liability until or unless it’s added to the recommended childhood vaccination schedule by the CDC. So, if you were injured by Comirnaty, you could sue Pfizer. You cannot sue if injured by the EUA Pfizer shot (or any of the other EUA COVID injections)

Even though several hundred claims have been filed with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) for injuries resulting from the COVID shots — which is the only possible avenue to obtain damages — not a single claim has been paid out

Natural immunity is much stronger than what you can achieve from the injection, which only provides antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and wanes within a few months. The shots may in fact permanently limit the kind of immune response you would make were you to later be exposed or infected with COVID

Children’s Health Defense has filed a lawsuit arguing you cannot have a vaccine that is both an emergency use product and a licensed product at the same time. That’s against the law, but the government has done it anyway. Remarkably, the request for an injunction was initially thrown out, but the CHD has not given up and is still pursuing the case

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In this interview, Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist specializing in toxicology, vaccine-induced illnesses and Gulf War illness, shares her insights into the dangers of the COVID jab, which received an emergency use authorization October 26, 2021, for children as young as 5.

We also discuss the conflicts of interest within the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that seem to be behind this reckless decision, and how the agency pulled the wool over our eyes with its approval of Pfizer/BioNTech’s Comirnaty COVID injection.

Is the COVID Jab Approved or Not?

As explained by Nass:

“All of the COVID ‘vaccines,’ and most of the COVID treatment products, have not been [FDA] approved. Approved means licensed. All except one, which is the Pfizer vaccine for adults, age 16 and up, which got approved, i.e., licensed on August 23 [2021].

But every other vaccine, and for every other age group, including the boosters, have only been authorized under emergency use authorizations (EUAs). There’s a critical difference [between licensing and EUA]. Once a drug is fully licensed, it is subject to liability.

If the company injures you with that product, you can sue them, unless it later gets put on the CDC’s childhood schedule or is recommended by the CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] [during] pregnancy, in which case it obtains a different liability shield.

It then becomes part of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP, established under the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act), and 75 cents from every dose of vaccine that is sold in the United States goes into a fund to pay for injuries that way.”

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act removed liability for all vaccines recommended by the CDC for children. Since 2016, they’ve also removed liability for vaccines given to pregnant women, a category that has become the latest “gold rush” for vaccines. Naturally, once a company is no longer liable for injuries, the profitability of the product in question increases dramatically.

Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program Is Nearly Useless

Products under emergency use have their own special government program for liability called the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). “It is a terrible program,” Nass says. CICP is an offshoot of the 2005 PREP Act.

“The PREP act enabled the CICP to be created by Congress,” Nass explains. “Congress has to allocate money for it. If you are injured by an emergency use product, you don’t get any legal process. The companies have had all their liability waived. There is a single process that is administered through HHS [Health and Human Services].

Some employees there decide whether you deserve to be compensated or not. The maximum in damages you can obtain is about $370,000 if you’re totally disabled or die, and the money is only to compensate you for lost wages or unpaid medical bills.”

So far, even though several hundred CICP claims have been filed for injuries resulting from the COVID shots, not a single claim has been paid out. This is important, because the statute of limitations is one year. “It’s getting close to running out for people who were vaccinated early,” Nass says.

If you fail to apply in time, you lose the opportunity to get any compensation entirely. “Of course, in fact, it’s really ‘an opportunity’ to apply and get nothing because almost nobody gets paid,” she says. At that point, you have no further recourse. There’s no appeals process to the judicial system.

“You can ask the HHS twice to compensate you, and if they say no, that’s it,” Nass explains. “You can attempt to sue the company that made the product, if you’re convinced it was improperly made, but the secretary of HHS has to give you the permission to sue.

You have to prove that there was willful misconduct and no one has ever reached that bar. So, there has never been a lawsuit under this. Anyway, that’s what you’re looking at. If you get the vaccine under EUA and are injured, you’re on your own. People have no idea about this when they vaccinate themselves or their children.”

Why Were the Shots Mandated?

As you know by now, president Biden decided to mandate the COVID jab for most federal employees (but not all) and private companies with 100 employees or more. “We don’t know why that is,” Nass says. It doesn’t make sense, as large numbers of Americans have already recovered from COVID-19 and have durable, long-lasting immunity already.

As correctly noted by Nass, natural immunity is much stronger than what you can achieve from the injection, which only provides antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and wears off within a few months. The shots “may in fact permanently limit the kind of immune response you would make were you to be infected with COVID later,” Nass says.

For these reasons, there’s absolutely no good reason to vaccinate people who have recovered from the infection and several bad reasons. There’s evidence showing the shot can be more harmful for those with existing immunity.

“But for reasons best known to itself, the Biden administration feels so certain it needs to vaccinate everybody that it has used illegal means to tell employers they will lose federal contracts if they don’t force their employees to be vaccinated immediately, and must fire them — if they’re health care workers, for example, or government employees, or military — if they have not been vaccinated.

Obviously that is creating a great deal of chaos, particularly within the health care industry, particularly in my state, Maine, where these draconian rules have gone into effect and many fire department, police, EMTs, nurses and doctors can no longer work.

The one thing that was necessary to push mandates forward was for the government to be able to say it had a licensed product. Before the emergency use authorization was created in 2005, you had licensed drugs and you had experimental drugs and nothing else.

There was no gray area between them. Any use of a medication or vaccine that is not fully licensed is still experimental, despite the fact that a new category of drugs has been created with emergency use authorizations.

These are still experimental drugs, so under emergency use, you can’t force people [to take them]. You have to offer them options and they have the right to refuse. Since that is part of the statute, the federal government can’t get around it.

Therefore, attorneys in the Biden administration knew they could not legally impose mandates under an EUA, and so they demanded that FDA provide a COVID vaccine full approval, aka, an unrestricted license. This was believed to enable them to impose mandates.

They must have put pressure on the FDA, and FDA gave them what they wanted, which was a license for the Pfizer vaccine called Comirnaty on August 23 [2021].”

Comirnaty Approval Includes Important Caveats

In the documents released August 23, 2021, by the FDA, there were some interesting caveats. They said the Comirnaty vaccine is essentially equivalent to the EUA vaccine and the two vaccines may be used interchangeably. However, they pointed out that the two are legally distinct. Curiously, FDA didn’t specify what these legal distinctions are.

“I concluded that the legal distinctions were the fact that under EUA, there was essentially no manufacturer liability, but once the vaccine got licensed, the manufacturer would be subject to liability claims unless and until the vaccine was placed on the childhood schedule or recommended in pregnancy, in which case it would then fall … under the NVICP,” Nass says.

“Right now, Comirnaty is still not in that injury compensation program, and it’s licensed, so it no longer falls under the CICP. So, it is in fact subject to liability if you get injured with a bottle that says Comirnaty on it. Of course, if you’re Pfizer, what do you want to do?

You don’t want to make that licensed product available until several months have gone by and Comirnaty has been put into the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. So, Pfizer and FDA have not made the licensed product available yet.

What has happened instead, in the military, is the FDA has made a secret deal with the military and said, certain emergency use lots can be considered equivalent to the licensed vaccine, and [told military medical staff] which QR codes — which lots can be used. [These specific lots] can then be given to soldiers as if they’re licensed.

Subsequently, we’re told that military clinics are actually putting Comirnaty labels onto bottles that are under EUA. Now, that probably can happen in the military, but only in the military, because there are likely to be memoranda of understanding within the military that we haven’t seen yet that say soldiers cannot sue Pfizer for injuries …

In the military, the government and Pfizer feel like they have set up a situation where nobody can sue, but in the civilian world, that has not happened, and so there is no Comirnaty available.

Yet, on the basis that FDA licensed this product, the federal government is still telling employers that they can mandate it and that they must fire employees that have not taken the vaccine, or they will lose government contracts. We’re in a very interesting situation that is ripe for litigation, and Children’s Health Defense, which is an organization I represent, is litigating some of this.

However, the litigation situation has been very difficult since the pandemic began. Cases that normally would’ve been easy wins are being thrown out by the courts, both in the U.S. and in Europe. Something strange has happened and the judges are looking for any way out, so they don’t have to rule on the merits of these cases.”

The organization Children’s Health Defense has filed a lawsuit arguing you cannot have a vaccine that is both an emergency use product and a licensed product at the same time. That’s against the law, but the federal government did it anyway. Remarkably, the request for an injunction was initially thrown out, but Children’s Health Defense hasn’t given up and is still pursuing that case.

COVID Jab Is Authorized for 5- to 11-Year-Olds in the US

As mentioned, the FDA recently authorized the EUA COVID jab for children between the ages of 5 and 11, which is simply appalling, considering they are at virtually no risk from COVID-19. I’ve not seen a single recorded case in the entire world of anyone in that age group dying of COVID that didn’t have a serious preexisting comorbidity, such as cancer.

If you have a healthy child, they are at no risk from the infection, so there’s only danger associated with this shot, which in this age group would be one-third the adult dose. Typically, when you’re giving a drug to a child, the dose is calculated based on the child’s weight. Here, they’re giving the same dose to a 5-year-old as an 11-year-old, despite there being a significant difference in weight. So, it’s pure guesswork.

Worse yet, the mRNA vaccines produce an unpredictable amount of spike protein, and even if they produce much too much, there is no way to turn off the process once you have been injected.

Despite clear safety signals, the FDA’s advisory committee authorized the Pfizer jab for 5- to 11-year-olds unanimously, 17-to-0 (with one abstaining vote). However, when you look at the roster of the FDA’s committee members1 who reviewed and voted to authorize the Pfizer shot for children as young as 5, the unanimous “yes” vote becomes less of a mystery.

Abhorrent Conflicts of Interest

As reported by National File2 and The Defender,3 the membership of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) has had staggering conflicts of interest. Members have included:

In addition to that, former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb is currently on Pfizer’s board of directors. As noted by Nass, two of the members, one permanent and one temporary, are also CDC career employees whose job it is to push vaccines at the CDC.

“If they voted against authorizing a vaccine, they would be out of a job,” Nass says. “They have no business on that committee … It’s a very unethical stew of advisory committee members …

What happened is Pfizer delivered a large package of information to the FDA on October 6, 2021. FDA staff had to go through this large packet of information on the 5- to 11-year-olds and produce their own report, which was about 40 pages long, and create talks to give to the advisory committee, and they did all of this in 17 days.

There was apparently very little critical thought that went into their presentations. Before the meeting, Children’s Health Defense, and I was one of the authors, wrote to the committee and to FDA officials saying, ‘Look, there’s all these reasons that don’t make logical or medical sense for vaccinating kids in this age group, because they almost never get very ill or die, and the side effects of the vaccine are essentially unknown.

We know there are a lot of side effects, but the federal government has concealed from us the rate at which these side effects occur. But we know that the rate from myocarditis is very high, probably at least 1 in 5,000 young males … which is a very serious side effect. It can lead, probably always leads, to some scarring. It can lead to sudden death, to heart failure.”

Trials in Young Children Were Insufficient

As explained by Nass, in the clinical trial, there were two groups of children. The first group was enrolled for two to three months, while the second group was enrolled for just 17 days after receiving the second dose. (Pfizer added the second group because FDA claimed there weren’t enough volunteers in the first group.)

These two groups comprised over 3,000 children who got the jab and 1,500 or 2,000 who got a placebo. None suffered serious side effects. This was then translated into the claim that the injection was safe. However, as noted by Nass:

“They didn’t look at safety in all these kids. Even though FDA had said, ‘Add kids to your clinical trial,’ Pfizer created a ‘safety subset’ of one-tenth of the vaccinated subjects.

It was this small number of kids from whom they drew blood to show they had adequate levels of neutralizing antibodies, which was a surrogate for efficacy, because they didn’t have enough cases of COVID in this abbreviated trial to show that the vaccine actually works in this age group.”

Even though the advisory committee acknowledged that the blood test done for efficacy had not been validated, and wasn’t reliable evidence of effectiveness, they still decided that all children, regardless of health status, would benefit from the injection.

They also ignored the fact that at least half the children are already immune, and giving them the injection will provide no additional benefit in terms of immunity, while putting them at increased risk for serious side effects.

“Nobody said, ‘Look, the parents of healthy kids may be dying for a vaccine, but that’s because we haven’t told them the truth about the vaccine. We haven’t told them their kids don’t need it. We haven’t told them it’s going to potentially damage future immunity.

We haven’t told them they’re at higher risk of side effects than if they never had COVID. We’re not allowing them to go get antibody tests to establish that they’re already immune and therefore should be waved from being vaccinated.’

The committee members were aware of all this stuff, but in the end [they voted yes] … apart from one very smart member of the committee who works for the National Institutes of Health. He abstained. He didn’t have the guts to vote no, but he knew this was a bad idea.”

Children Are Being Injected Without Parental Consent

While all of that is bad enough, parents of young children now face the possibility of their children being injected against their will and without their knowledge. Nass comments:

“As I said, we don’t know why the government wants everybody vaccinated, but there’s probably a reason that goes beyond protecting us from COVID.

The government got the FDA to authorize the vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds on May 10 [2021], and subsequently that group, which is about 6 million kids, has been getting vaccinated across the country. That’s under emergency use so, again, you can’t sue.

But something kind of evil happened, which was many cities began vaccinating 12- to 15-year-olds in the absence of parental permission. So, a child could show up with their friends or a friend’s mother at a vaccine center and get vaccinated with no one asking about their medical history, nobody calling the parents. No notation got entered into the child’s medical record that they were vaccinated.

Vaccinators were told to make their own assessment. If they thought this child could give consent, go ahead and vaccinate. Now, that is a gross violation of our laws, and yet it was happening in Boston, in Philadelphia, in Seattle, in San Francisco, and we have good documentation of it.

The government currently is planning for mobile vaccination clinics for kids and vaccinations in schools, and they may take this program of vaccinating without parental consent down to the 5- to 11-year-olds …

In fact, we may see clinics popping up that don’t require informed consent in the 5- to 11-year-old group. Let me just mention that the chief medical officer in Canada’s British Columbia said they have brought laws that allow children of any age to consent for themselves. Think about that. A baby can consent for vaccinations for itself. It would be funny if it wasn’t so diabolical.”

All of this goes against the most basic concept of medical ethics, which is informed consent. No one has the right to perform a medical procedure on you without your consent, or the consent of a legal guardian. The government, again, without establishing any new laws, is simply bypassing the legal system.

Will Young Children Be at Risk for Myocarditis?

Based on her review of the scientific literature, Nass suspects younger children in the now COVID jab-approved, 5- to 11-year-old age group will be at exponentially higher risk of myocarditis and other side effects compared to the 12- to 15-year group, where we’ve already seen a documented increase.

“In the letter that Children’s Health Defense wrote to the advisory committee for the FDA, we created a graph based on the reporting rate of myocarditis versus age, and we showed there was an exponential curve.

Men aged 65 and up had a rate that was 1/100th the rate of boys aged 12 to 17. If that exponential curve keeps going up, the rate in the 5- to 11-year-olds could be even dramatically higher. In those young men, a 1 in 5,000 rate was reported to VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System]. That’s not a real rate.

That just tells us how many people got diagnosed with myocarditis, and then went to the trouble of reporting it to the FDA. The FDA and CDC have a large number of other databases from which they can gather rates of illness.

VAERS is considered passive reporting. It is not considered fit for purpose to establish illness rates because we don’t know how many people report. Do 1 in 10 report, 1 in 100, 1 in 50? Nobody knows.

However, again, because everything is crazy since the pandemic came in, the CDC has tried to pull the wool over our eyes and has claimed that the rate of anaphylaxis in the population from COVID vaccines is identical to their reporting rate to VAERS. We know that’s not true.

On the CDC’s website, that’s what they have. Elsewhere on the website, they say you can’t take a VAERS rate and call it an actual rate of reactions, but they’ve done that [for anaphylaxis]. And they’re trying to obfuscate the fact that they’re not giving you real rates, and sort of pretending that the myocarditis rate is probably the VAERS reporting rate of myocarditis, although they’re not saying so directly.”

Nass goes on to recount an example from the smallpox vaccine, which also caused myocarditis. A military study that just looked at cases sent to specialists found roughly 1 in 15,000 developed myocarditis. A military immunologist then dug deeper, and drew blood on soldiers before and after vaccination, and found a myocarditis rate of 1 in 220 after receiving the smallpox vaccine.

However, 1 soldier in 30 developed subclinical myocarditis where troponin rose from normal to more than two times the upper limits of normal. While asymptomatic, 1 in 30 had measurable inflammation of the heart. “Right now, in terms of what the rate is for COVID, nobody is looking, no federal agency wants to find out the real rate,” Nass says.

You Can’t Find Problems You Refuse to Look For

A simple study that measures troponin levels — a marker for heart inflammation and damage — before and after each dose, could easily determine what the real rate of myocarditis is, yet that is not being done.

“This is what we’re dealing with,” Nass says. “All these databases, which is about a dozen different databases, that CDC and FDA said they could access to determine the rates of side effects after vaccination with COVID vaccines, they’re either not being used or being used improperly,” Nass says.

“It was discovered that a new algorithm was being used to study the VAERS database that only came into use in January 2021, immediately after the vaccines were authorized, and the algorithm was developed such that you compare two vaccines to each other.

If the pattern of side effects was similar between the two vaccines — which is often the case because there’s a limited number of general vaccine adverse reactions — even if one vaccine has a thousand times more side effects as the one it is being compared to, by using this flawed algorithm, if the pattern of reactions was the same, even though the rates were 1,000 times higher for one, the algorithm would fail to detect a problem.

That is the algorithm they’re using to analyze VAERS [data]. They’re also using bad methods … to analyze the vaccine safety database, which encompasses 12 million Americans who enrolled in HMOs around the country. The CDC pays for access to their electronic medical records and their data.

Somehow when these databases have been looked at carefully, they’re finding very low rates of myocarditis in boys, approximately equal to the VAERS reporting. It was said months ago, ‘We can’t find a safety signal for myocarditis. We’re not finding an anaphylaxis signal. we’re not finding a Bell’s palsy signal.’

The FDA’s and CDC’s algorithms couldn’t pick up for most known side effects. So, there’s something wrong with the analytic methods that are being used, but the agencies haven’t told us precisely what they are. What we do know is that the rates of side effects that are being reported to VAERS are phenomenal.

They’re orders of magnitude higher than for any previous vaccines used in the United States. An order of magnitude is 10-fold, so rates of reported adverse reactions are 10 to 100 times higher than what has been reported for any other vaccine. Reported deaths after COVID in the United States are 17,000+. It’s off the charts.

Other side effects reported after COVID vaccinations total over 800,000. Again, more deaths and more side effects than have ever been reported for every vaccine combined in use in the U.S. cumulatively over 30 years.”

Despite all this shocking data, our federal agencies look the other way, pretending as if nothing is happening, and no matter how many people approach them — with lawsuits, with public comments, reaching out to politicians — they refuse to address blatantly obvious concerns. This is clear evidence that they’re acting with intentional malice.

The FDA and CDC are supposed to protect the public. They’re supposed to identify safety concerns. They’re not supposed to act as marketing firms for drug companies, but that’s precisely what they’ve been converted to.

New Formulations Have Never Been Tested

Another truly egregious fact is that Pfizer has altered its formulation, allegedly to make it more stable, but this new formulation has never been included in any of the trials. Nass explains:

“During the October 26, 2021, VRBPAC [Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee] meeting, Pfizer said, ‘Look, we want to give the vaccines in doctor’s offices and we’ve found a way to stabilize the vaccine so we don’t need those ultra-cold fridges anymore. We can put these vials in a doctor’s office and, once defrosted, they can sit in a regular fridge 10 weeks and they’ll be fine.’

Some committee members asked, ‘OK, what’d you do? How did you make this marvelous discovery?’ And they said, ‘We went from the phosphate buffered saline buffer to a Tris buffer, and we slightly changed some electrolytes.’ A committee member asked, ‘OK, how did that make it so much more stable?’ And everybody in the meeting from FDA and Pfizer looked at each other and said, ‘We don’t know.’

An hour later, Pfizer had one of their chemists get on the line, but he couldn’t explain how the change in buffer led to a huge increase in stability, either. Then, later in the meeting, one of the members of the committee asked, ‘Did you use this new formulation in the clinical trial?’

And Dr. Bill Gruber, the lead Pfizer representative, said, ‘No, we didn’t.’ In other words, Pfizer plans, with FDA connivance, to use an entirely new vaccine formulation in children, after their clinical trials used the old formulation. This is grossly illegal. They’ve got a new formulation of vaccine. It wasn’t tested in humans. And they’re about to use it on 28 million American kids.”

It’s nothing short of a dystopian nightmare. Completely surreal. You can’t make this stuff up. Yet as shocking as all this is, earlier this year, Dr. Anthony Fauci projected that these COVID jabs would be available for everyone, from infants to the elderly. Now they’ve got the 5-year-olds, and there’s every reason to suspect they’ll go after newborns and infants next.

Whose Babies Will Be Offered Up as Sacrificial Lambs?

According to Nass, Pfizer and the FDA have struck a deal that will allow Pfizer to test on babies even younger than 6 months old, even if there’s no intention to inject infants that young. Those trials may begin as early as the end of January 2022.

“This arrangement between FDA and Pfizer will give Pfizer its extra six months of patent protection, whether or not these vaccines are intended to be used in those age groups. So, you can look at these trials as a way of almost sacrificing little children, because when you start a trial, you don’t know what the dangers are going to be.

I could be wrong, but I doubt we’re going to give these to newborn babies the way we give the hepatitis B vaccine on the date of birth, yet they will be tested in very young babies. The question is, whose babies get tested? In the past, sometimes the babies that got tested were foster children, wards of the state. Sometimes parents offer up their children. But there will be clinical trials.”

When will we get the data from those trials? It turns out that in the agreements reached between Pfizer and the FDA, some of those trials won’t conclude until 2024, 2025 and 2027. The goal here is to vaccinate all Americans, children and adults, within the coming few months or a year, yet it’ll be five years before we actually know from clinical trials what the side effects may be.

We’re Living in Clown World

As noted by Nass, this is yet another crime. It may fulfill the letter of the law, but it doesn’t fulfill the meaning of the law. It makes no sense to run clinical trials that won’t be completed until five years after your mass vaccination program has been completed and the entire population is injected.

“It’s just a joke to do that,” Nass says. “But FDA has become Clown World, and what they do now is to perform a charade of all the normal regulatory processes that they are expected to do, but they’re only doing them in an abbreviated or peculiar manner so that they don’t really collect the important data.

For example, the control group has been vaccinated two months into the Pfizer trials, which effectively obscures side effects that develop after two months. Blood is not tested for evidence of myocarditis or blood clots using simple tests (troponin and D-dimer levels).

For all the Americans out there who haven’t spent 20 years examining the FDA procedures like I have, these FDA advisory committee meetings are it’s designed to make you think a real regulatory process is going on, when it’s not. Instead we are all guinea pigs, but no one is collecting the data that would normally be required to authorize or approve a vaccine. Therefore, in my opinion, nobody should get these shots.“

To make matters even worse, it’s actually illegal to grant EUAs for these vaccines, because there are drugs that can prevent the condition (COVID), as well as treat it. EUAs can only be granted if there are no existing approved, available alternatives to prevent or treat the infection.

The effective drugs most have already heard of are ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, but there are a number of other drugs that also have profound effects on COVID, Nass says, including TriCor and cyproheptadine (Periactin).

TriCor, or fenofibrate, emulsifies lipid nanoparticles and fatty conglomerations that contain viruses and inflammatory substances. The drug essentially allows your body to break down the viral and inflammatory debris better. As such, it might also help combat complications caused by the nanoliposomes in the COVID shot.

According to Nass, Pepcid at high doses of up to 80 milligrams three times a day is also useful for treatment. Dr. Robert Malone is starting a clinical trial using a combination of Pepcid and celecoxib (brand name Celebrex). Many are also recommending aspirin to prevent platelet activation and clotting.

I believe a far better alternative to aspirin is lumbrokinase, and/or serapeptase. Both are fibrinolytic enzymes that address blood clotting. You can develop sensitivity to them, so I recommend alternating the two on alternate days for about three months if you’ve had COVID.

You could rule out blood clotting by doing a D-dimer test. If your D-dimer is normal, you don’t need an anticlotting agent. If clotting is a concern, you could also use NAC in addition to these fibrinolytic enzymes. It too helps break up clots and prevent clot formation.

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Notes

1 FDA Members Office of Vaccine Research and Review Meeting Roster

2 National File October 26, 2021

3 The Defender November 1, 2021

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Chilean laboratory shares, through the Dirección Correcta radio program, exclusive photos of graphene oxide found in vaccination vials from Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Sinovac.

Just as Dr. Pablo Campra Madrid published a study on the actual content of COVID vaccines, a similar one is being written in Chile on the vaccines administered in that country. 

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San Francisco plans to extend its indoor proof-of-vaccination requirements to children 5 to 11 years old, the first major U.S. city to do so, following the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s announcement Wednesday recommending the Pfizer-BioNTech lower-dose Covid vaccine for this age group.

The city, which has a proof-of-vaccination mandate for everyone 12 and older to access indoor activities, like restaurants, gyms and sporting events, said that San Franciscans should start preparing to show immunization cards for children 5 to 11 in the coming months.

“We definitely want to wait and make sure that children have an opportunity to get vaccinated,” San Francisco Health Officer Dr. Susan Philip said during a Tuesday town hall on Covid-19 vaccination. “That will happen no sooner than about eight weeks after the vaccine is available to kids. So there will be a limited time in which there will not be those requirements, but then at some point, 5 to 11-year-olds will also have to show proof of vaccination to access some of those same settings.”

The CDC announcement expands immunization recommendations to about 28 million children across the country. Regardless of possible proof-of-vaccination mandates, Dr. Michael Cabana, the physician-in-chief at The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York, said that vaccinating younger children is “another step towards returning to normalcy.”

“It not only protects children but protects anyone that might be around kids, so there’s a community protection that’s going to occur as more people get vaccinated,” Cabana said.

Cabana also said that younger children might experience “some discomfort” from the shot, but that for most children, the Pfizer vaccine is “generally very, very safe.” He said the risk is low for community safety, which Philip echoed as she closed the town hall by saying she plans to have her own children vaccinated.

“I believe in this vaccine and the process it has taken to get to us, and I’m very eager to have both my 9 and my 6-year-old get vaccinated as soon as we possibly can,” Philip said.

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Austria Moves Closer to Imposing Lockdown on the Unvaccinated

November 8th, 2021 by Paul Joseph Watson

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Austria has moved closer to imposing a full lockdown on the unvaccinated after those who haven’t had the jab were banned from entering a long list of public spaces.

“The entry ban will come into effect next week and will apply to cafes, bars, restaurants, theaters, ski lodges, hotels, hairdressers and any event involving more than 25 people,” reports RT.

The measures will impact the 36 per cent of residents who haven’t been fully immunized and have been introduced in response to rising COVID cases.

“The evolution is exceptional and the occupancies of intensive-care beds are increasing significantly faster than we had expected,” said Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg.

After providing a four week buffer period for those who have received one dose of the vaccine and can provide a negative PCR test, the option to provide a negative test will be removed.

As we highlighted last month, the government has put a limit on the occupancy of intensive care units which, if breached, will trigger lockdown measures being imposed solely on the unvaccinated.

Once the number reaches 600, or one third of total capacity, the new rules will be triggered. That number now stands at 352 but is rising by 10 per day.

Such measures will extend beyond vaccine passports, mandating that people who are unjabbed stay at home and only leave for “essential” reasons such as buying food.

This will probably be enforced in a similar way to how the first lockdown was enforced, with police performing spot checks on people asking if they have permission to be outside.

Austria would be the first major country to exclusively impose ‘stay at home’ measures on the unvaccinated, but it could eventually be replicated elsewhere, despite the waning immunity that the vaccine itself offers.

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COP26: Wall Street Rolls Out Climate Finance

November 8th, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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The US climate envoy John Kerry is getting down to the real business at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow after President Joe Biden has had his photo-ops, made his idiosyncratic public remarks and flew back home. 

The Xinhua new agency reported that Kerry and the Chinese delegation will “continue their dialogue and exchanges” at Glasgow — that is, with Xie Zhenhua, China’s special envoy for climate change, and Zhao Yingmin, head of the Chinese delegation to COP26 and vice minister of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

For Kerry’s negotiating brief at Glasgow in the coming days, China will be the single most important interlocutor. The Chinese President Xi Jinping in his written speech at the Glasgow summit has put forward three proposals:

“First, we need to uphold multilateral consensus… Second, we need to focus on concrete actions. Visions will come true only when we act on them.

“Parties need to honour their commitments, set realistic targets and visions, and do their best according to national conditions to deliver their climate action measures. Developed countries should not only do more themselves, but should also provide support to help developing countries do better. Third, we need to accelerate the green transition… and explore a new pathway forward that coordinates development with conservation.” 

It is against such a backdrop that Biden tried to walk and chew the gum at the same time at Glasgow by publicly ridiculing his Chinese counterpart and then leaving the stage to Kerry to do the real business. 

But a forceful commentary by Xinhua reminded Biden that “China and the United States are the world’s top two economies. They are not destined to be rivals as some narrow-minded China hawks in Washington predict… This is even truer when the global community has to face a torrent of pressing planetary challenges, like climate change and terrorism.”

To be sure, climate finance and climate justice will be the key templates that the world community is watching. Kerry hinted Tuesday that major announcements on climate finance are in the offing. “A hundred billion dollars doesn’t do it, folks,” Kerry said to a gaggle of press.

“It’s trillions of dollars that are needed. And the only way that we will get this done is if trillions of dollars are forthcoming… there are tens of trillions of dollars announced that are available to be invested in this transition,” he said.  

But developing countries have been hearing similar pledges for 13 years now and need them to become a reality quickly. The rich countries’ reaction to the Covid pandemic shows that when they feel the need to act, they can act rapidly. But the massive amount of inequity in the vaccine distribution also mirrors the dynamic that surrounds the climate crisis. 

What was on display on the part of political leaders at the Glasgow summit can only be described as dishonest recalcitrance, as an activist told the BBC. Inequities are at the heart of the climate crisis.

While raising high expectations, Kerry was actually referring to a pledge that developed countries had made in 2009 to mobilise $100 billion by the year 2020 to help the developing countries to reduce emissions and adapt to the impact of climate change. In Paris six years ago, they actually pledged to increase this to 2025 — that is $100 billion each year from 2020 to 2022. 

The reporting on climate financing is opaque. So, some eye-rolling is warranted and it is too soon to celebrate. Especially, as it’s unclear who will provide the “tens of trillions” of dollars Kerry promised. 

Yahoo News, reading the tea leaves, anticipates that it sounds like the private sector will play a major role in climate finance.

“Let me give you an example,” Kerry said when asked by Yahoo News who would be providing the funds. “My office worked with the six largest banks in America — Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, State Street, Bank of America and JPMorgan — they publicly stood up a number of months ago, it wasn’t much noticed, and they announced that they will, over the next 10 years, they will invest $4.1 trillion.”  

So, that’s it. The big buck will be coming as loans and investments (as against grants.) Wall Street is moving in.  

Significantly, Xi Jinping had emphasised in his written speech that China “will foster a green, low-carbon and circular economic system at a faster pace, press ahead with industrial structure adjustment… We will speed up the transition to green and low-carbon energy, vigorously develop renewable energy, and plan and build large wind and photovoltaic power stations…

‘Specific implementation plans for key areas such as energy, industry, construction and transport, and for key sectors such as coal, electricity, iron and steel, and cement will be rolled out, coupled with supporting measures in terms of science and technology, carbon sink, finance and taxation, and financial incentives. Taken together, these measures will form a “1+N” policy framework for delivering carbon peak and carbon neutrality, with a clearly-defined timetable, roadmap and blueprint.” read more

Clearly, China’s “dual carbon” goals are expected to unleash vast market opportunities for US companies to hitchhike on what will be the biggest “green revolution” in the coming decades. 

As the 4th China International Import Expo (CIIE) began in Shanghai on Thursday, Chinese media reported that “low carbon became a buzzword” at the event. Chinese organisers set up a special area called “low-carbon energy and environmental protection technology exhibition zone,” and about 50 global companies are exhibiting carbon-related products and technologies that can help Chinese companies shift to clean energy. 

In a keynote address at the opening ceremony of the CIIE titled Let the Breeze of Openness Bring Warmth to the World, Xi Jinping stressed that “opening up is the hallmark of contemporary China.” He said, “China will firmly promote high-standard opening up… China will deeply engage in international cooperation on green and low-carbon development and the digital economy, and work actively for joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement.” read more

Xinhua reported that around 200 American companies are attending the CIIE, which is the world’s first dedicated import exhibition. The exhibition area taken by the US companies has been one of the largest.

For sure, while Kerry talks of climate finance in Glasgow, China walks the talk in Shanghai. On Thursday, China’s Sinopec announced the signing of two mega contracts with US companies to buy 4 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) annually for 20 years, the largest long-term LNG deal ever signed between the two countries.

Apart from its relevance to China’s energy transition, the massive LNG deal marks advancement of phase one of China-US trade deal (committing Beijing to increase energy imports from the US by $52.4 billion), which in turn opens the pathway to resolve other pending trade issues, especially removal of tariffs on Chinese products as reciprocal move by Washington.

Quite obviously, the deck is being cleared for a productive meeting between Xi Jinping and Biden that is expected to take place within this year, with cooperation in climate change providing its most profound breakthrough.

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Featured image: Low-carbon Energy and Environmental Protection Technology Special Exhibition Zone, 4th CIIE, Shanghai, Nov. 4, 2021 (Source: Indian Punchline)

Noch haben wir die Wahl – doch die Falle schnappt bald zu

November 8th, 2021 by Dr. Rudolf Hänsel

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Nach Auffassung des weltweit respektierten Wirtschaftsprofessors Michel Chossudovsky erleben wir derzeit die „schlimmste Krise der modernen Geschichte“ (1). Nach der Devise „Divide et impera“ wird gegen die Zivilgesellschaft ein Wirtschafts- und Sozialkrieg geführt. Dabei wird versucht, die Bevölkerung in Untergruppen – Geimpfte versus Ungeimpfte – aufzuspalten, die sich gegeneinander wenden, anstatt sich als Gruppe gegen den gemeinsamen Feind zu stellen, die mächtige Finanz-„Elite. Um die beabsichtigte Etablierung ihrer diabolischen Weltherrschafts-Agenda durchzusetzen, wird die zahlenmäßig immer größer werdende Gruppe der Aufklärer und freien Geister aus verschiedenen Berufsgruppen medial auf das Schlimmste diskreditiert und mit illegalen Gewaltmaßnahmen aus der Volksgemeinschaft auszugrenzen versucht. Nur wenn wir Bürger den Mut aufbringen, uns mit diesen „Aufklärern“ zu solidarisieren und ihnen kameradschaftlich zur Seite zu stehen, werden wir als Spezies Mensch überleben, unser bisheriges „Menschsein“ bewahren und die wirtschaftlichen wie sozialen Folgeschäden dieses unerklärten Krieges abfedern können. Doch noch zögern die meisten Bürger, obwohl die Lage bereits bitter ernst ist.   

Kropotkin: Mit dem Prinzip der gegenseitigen Hilfe erfolgreicher überleben

Der russische Universalgelehrte Peter Kropotkin (1842 bis 1921) kritisiert in seinem 1902 erschienenen Buch „Gegenseitige Hilfe in Tier- und Menschenwelt“ die Thesen herkömmlicher sozialdarwinistischer Auffassungen und stellt dem „Kampf ums Dasein“ das Konzept der „Gegenseitigen Hilfe“ gegenüber. Beide zusammen sieht er als Faktoren der Evolution. Die höher organisierten Lebewesen leben in Verbänden, Gruppen und Herden; in ihnen hat sich ein Herdeninstinkt herausgebildet, der mitunter die Arterhaltung über die Selbsterhaltung stellt. Diejenigen Lebewesen, die das Prinzip der gegenseitigen Hilfe umsetzen, würden erfolgreicher überleben.

In der Menschenwelt spielen soziale Gefühle und gesellschaftliche Verbundenheit sicherlich eine ebenso große Rolle wie der Wille zur Macht und der Eigennutz. Der Mensch ist der Hingabe und der Selbstaufopferung fähig. Nach den Erkenntnissen der naturwissenschaftlichen Tiefenpsychologie, die auf Kropotkins Forschungen aufbaut, ist der Mensch ein naturgegeben soziales, auf die Gemeinschaft der Mitmenschen ausgerichtetes Wesen. Vor ihm müssen wir keine Angst haben. Er möchte in Freiheit und Frieden leben, ohne Gewalt und Krieg – so wie wir alle. Assoziieren wir uns mit ihm, um als Spezies zu überleben.

Rabelais: „Habt den Geist frei und werfet ab alle Ängstlichkeit!“

Francois Rabelais (1494 bis 1553) war ein Schriftsteller der Renaissance, Humanist, Arzt sowie Pfarrer. Seine Maxime lautete: „Nicht nach Satzung leben, sondern nach eigener freier Wahl!“ Folgerichtig verweigerte er jede Autorität (2). Seine Worte und Lebenshaltung möchte man gerne auch heutigen Zeitgenossen nahelegen.

Derjenige erwachsene Bürger, der um die Entstehung seiner irrationalen Ängste, seiner Dämonenfurcht und seiner Autoritätsgefühle in der Kindheit weiß, wird sie eines Tages überwinden können. Das absichtliche Schüren von Ängsten skrupelloser Herrscher wird er als bewährtes Disziplinierungs- und Herrschaftsinstrument durchschauen und den üblichen Reflex des absoluten Gehorsams nicht mehr zeigen. Auch freut er sich darauf, sich mit seinen Artgenossen zusammen zu schließen und mit ihnen zusammen zu wirken. Er hat dann keine Angst mehr vor ihnen.

Auch wird er Politiker nicht mehr als respektable Autoritäten ansehen und zu ihnen aufblicken wie ein Kind, ihnen nicht mehr leichtfertig die Macht übergeben und die Lösung der Menschheitsprobleme delegieren. Er bringt vielmehr den Mut auf, sich seines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen und seinem gesunden Menschenverstand zu vertrauen.

Eine große charakterliche Herausforderung wird es sein, sich von den Aubeutern des real existierenden Kapitalismus nicht korrumpieren zu lassen wie viele Politiker, Ärzte und Wissenschaftler. Es ist grässlich, was der Kapitalismus mit seinem Geldproblem, was dessen Ausbeutung mit dem Menschen macht. Das Geld vernichtet den Menschen, vernichtet die Beziehung, macht ihn korrupt. Es ist immer der Kampf um das Brot. Das Geld ist das kapitalistische Prinzip des Lebens. Würden wir dieses System aufgeben und eine Gemeinschaft bilden, wo das alles nicht in Frage kommt, dann gäbe es keine Ausbeuter, keine Kapitalisten, keine Kriege und keine Angst. Dann entstünde ein anderer Mensch.

Hopkins: „Auf der Straße in den Totalitarismus“

Noch haben wir die Wahl, doch die Falle schnappt bald zu: Entweder entscheiden wir uns für die uneingeschränkte Solidarität mit den Aufklärern und freien Geistern oder wir entscheiden uns für die Gewalt, das heißt, für die staatliche Gewaltherrschaft nach der Devise „Teile und herrsche“.

In einem neueren Artikel prangert der US-amerikanische Schriftsteller C. J. Hopkins die totalitären Corona-Maßnahmen scharf an und sieht den Westen auf der Straße in den Totalitarismus. Beendet wird der Artikel mit der Aufforderung:

„Entscheiden Sie sich für eine Seite…jetzt…oder es wird eine Seite für Sie gewählt“ (3)

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Rektor a.D., Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe.

Noten

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/bastille-2-0-real-regime-change-building-protest-resistance-against-covid-19-agenda/5758805

2. Hagen, Friedrich (1977). Jean Meslier oder ein Atheist im Priesterrock. Leverkusen und Köln, S. 29

3. https://www.freiewelt.net/nachricht/cj-hopkins-der-westen-ist-auf-der-strasse-in-den-totalitarismus-10085880

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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We Still Have a Choice – But the Trap Will Soon Snap Shut

November 8th, 2021 by Dr. Rudolf Hänsel

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According to the globally respected economics professor Michel Chossudovsky, we are currently experiencing the “worst crisis in modern history” (1). According to the motto “divide et impera”, an economic and social war is being waged against civil society. The attempt is to divide the population into sub-groups – vaccinated versus unvaccinated – which turn against each other instead of standing as a group against the common enemy, the powerful financial “elite”. In order to enforce the intended establishment of their diabolical world domination agenda, the numerically ever-growing group of enlightened and free spirits from various professional groups is discredited in the worst possible way by the media, and attempts are made to exclude them from the national community by illegal violent measures.

Only if we citizens muster the courage to show solidarity with these “enlightened people” and stand by their side in comradeship will we survive as a human species, preserve our previous “humanity” and be able to cushion the economic and social consequential damages of this undeclared war. But most citizens are still hesitating, although the situation is already bitterly serious.

Kropotkin: Surviving more successfully with the principle of mutual aid

In his book “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution”, published in 1902, the Russian polymath Peter Kropotkin (1842 to 1921) criticises the theses of conventional Social Darwinist views and contrasts the “struggle for existence” with the concept of “mutual aid”. He sees both together as factors of evolution. The more highly organised living beings live in associations, groups and herds; in them a herd instinct has developed which sometimes places the preservation of the species above self-preservation. Those living beings that implement the principle of mutual aid would survive more successfully.

In the human world, social feelings and social connectedness certainly play as great a role as the will to power and self-interest. Man is capable of devotion and self-sacrifice. According to the findings of scientific depth psychology, which builds on Kropotkin’s research, man is a naturally social being, oriented towards the community of fellow human beings. We do not have to be afraid of him. He wants to live in freedom and peace, without violence and war – just like all of us. Let us associate ourselves with him in order to survive as a species.

Rabelais: “Have a free mind and cast off all fearfulness!”

Francois Rabelais (1494 to 1553) was a Renaissance writer, humanist, physician as well as a priest. His maxim was: “Do not live by statute, but by your own free choice!” Consequently, he refused all authority (2). His words and attitude to life are something we would like to encourage our contemporaries to follow.

The adult citizen who knows about the origin of his irrational fears, his fear of demons and his feelings of authority in childhood will one day be able to overcome them. He will see through the deliberate stoking of fears by unscrupulous rulers as a tried and tested instrument of discipline and domination and will no longer show the usual reflex of absolute obedience. He also looks forward to joining forces with his conspecifics and working together with them. He will then no longer be afraid of them.

He will also no longer regard politicians as respectable authorities and look up to them like a child, no longer lightly hand over power to them and delegate the solution of humanity’s problems. Rather, he will muster the courage to use his own mind and trust his common sense.

It will be a great character challenge not to be corrupted by the predators of real existing capitalism like many politicians, doctors and scientists. It is horrible what capitalism does with its money problem, what its exploitation does with the human being. Money destroys people, destroys relationships, corrupts them. It is always the struggle for bread. Money is the capitalist principle of life. If we would give up this system and form a community where all this is out of the question, then there would be no exploiters, no capitalists, no wars and no fear. Then a different human being would emerge.

Hopkins: “On the road to totalitarianism”

We still have a choice, but the trap is about to snap shut: either we choose unrestricted solidarity with the enlightened and free spirits or we choose violence, that is, state tyranny according to the motto “divide and rule”.

In a recent article, the US writer C. J. Hopkins strongly denounces the totalitarian Corona measures and sees the West on the road to totalitarianism. The article ends with the exhortation:

“Choose a side…now…or a side will be chosen for you” (3).

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Dr Rudolf Hänsel is a retired rector, educationalist and psychologist.

Notes

(1) https://www.globalresearch.ca/bastille-2-0-real-regime-change-building-protest-resistance-against-covid-19-agenda/5758805

(2) Hagen, Friedrich (1977). Jean Meslier or an atheist in a priest’s skirt. Leverkusen and Cologne, p. 29

(3) https://www.freiewelt.net/nachricht/cj-hopkins-der-westen-ist-auf-der-strasse-in-den-totalitarismus-10085880 

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A Quest for Wisdom: Inspiring Purpose on the Path of Life

November 8th, 2021 by Edward Curtin

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This is a fascinating and beautiful book, one of those gems you serendipitously discover and shake your head at your good fortune.  Although it is new and I received it as a gift, it reminds me of a few books I have discovered over the years while rummaging through used bookstores that have startled me into a new perspective on life.  Ironically, these books have advised me, whether explicitly or implicitly, to be done with books, because what I was seeking cannot be found in them, for it floats on the wind.  But this paradox is their secret.  Such discoveries are memorable, and this is a memorable book in so many ways.

Despite having read more books than I wish to remember, I had never heard of David Lorimer until being informed by a friend.  A Scottish writer, poet, editor, and lecturer of great accomplishments, he is the editor of The Paradigm Explorer and was the Director of the Scientific and Medical Network from 1986-2000 where he is now Program Director.  He has written or edited over a dozen books.

He is one of a dying breed: a true intellectual with a soul, for his writing covers the waterfront, by which I mean the vast ocean of philosophy, science, theology, literature, psychology, spirituality, politics, etc.  A Quest for Wisdom[isbn.nu] is precisely what its name implies.  It is a compendium of wide-ranging essays written over the past forty years in pursuit of the meaning of life and the sagacity to realize one never arrives at wisdom since it is a process, not a product.  Like living.

His opening essay on Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz and wrote so pofoundly about it in Man’s Search for Meaning, [isbn.nu] sets the stage for all the essays that follow.  For Frankl’s life and work, and the stories he tells about it, are about experiential, not theoretical, discoveries in the world where one finds oneself – even Auschwitz – where he learned that Nietzsche’s words were true: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” He discovered that along life’s path – between life and death, happiness and suffering, peaks and valleys, yesterday and tomorrow, etc. – is where we always find ourselves by responding to the questions life asks us. He tells us, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

We are always in-between, and it is our attitude and conduct that allows us to freely will the meaning of our lives, no matter what.  Frankl came to call this search for meaning logotherapy, or meaning therapy, by which an individual is always free to choose one’s stance or course of action, and it is by such choosing that the greatness of life can be measured and meaning confirmed in any single moment, even retrospectively.  He maintains that modern people are disorientated and living in “an existential vacuum,” pursuing happiness when it cannot be pursued since it is a derivative, a side effect, and “it is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.”  Happiness falls out of our pockets when we aren’t looking. Additionally, as Lorimer writes about Frankl, “He rejects psychoanalytical determinism…and the actualization of the self through any form of gratification.”

So does Lorimer, for he is an in-between man (as we all are if only we realized it), whether he is writing about Frankl, the absurd and the mysterious, the Tao, science and spirituality, the brain and the mind, near death experiences (“near” being the key word), Albert Schweitzer, Dag Hammarskjöld, freedom and determinism, ethics and politics, etc.

Whatever subject he touches, he illuminates, leaving the reader to interrogate oneself.  I find such questions in every essay in this book, and the path to answer them snaking through its pages.

I was especially touched by his 2008 essay, which was originally a memorial lecture, about his friend the Irish writer and philosopher John Moriarty, who died in 2007.  Moriarty’s work was rooted in the wild land of western Ireland, a place whose rugged beauty has sprouted many a passionate artist and visionary who have drunk deep of the mythical spiritual connections of Irish culture and natural beauty.  He was a brilliant thinker and storyteller – that mysterious quality that seems so Irish – who left an academic career to seek deeper truths in nature.  Influenced by D. H. Lawrence, Wordsworth, Yeats, Boehme, Melville, and Nietzsche, among other visionary seeking artists, he discovered a Blakean sense of reality that counteracted the deification of Reason and emphasized the need to recover our souls through sympathetic knowing that involved an embrace of intuition that went beyond cognition.   Lorimer writes:

Or, as John would put it, we have fallen out of our story and need to find a new one. Not only a new story, but also a new way of seeing and being, of relating as a part to the whole, as individuals to society, as cells to the body…To be is to have the potential to become something else, a potential which we don’t always fulfill, in spite of life’s invitations and initiations…We too easily retreat into fear, we batten down the hatches in the name of security, which is a mere shadow of peace.

Lorimer is clearly not anti-science, since for thirty-five years he has been deeply involved with the Scientific and Medical Network.  But he has long realized the limitations of science and all the essays touch on this theme in one way or another.  Wisdom is his goal, not knowledge.  He mentions Iain McGilchrist’s work in this regard – The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World – wherein McGilchrist argues for a reemphasis on the master right hemisphere “with its creative and holistic mode of perception,” rather than the left hemisphere with its logical, scientific mode of perception.  “Two voyages,” says Lorimer, “two modes of perception, which should coexist in a state of mutual respect.  The rational and the intuitive are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.”  Nevertheless, in his pursuit of wisdom, Lorimer, despite his nod to this mutuality, has discovered that the recovery of soul and meaning can only be found beyond cognition and Kantian categories.

His essay on “Tao and the Path towards Integration,” drawing on Carl Jung and Herman Hesse, et al., is a lucid exploration of what Jung calls “the vocation to personality.”  This is the call life puts to everyone but many refuse to hear or answer: “Become who you are,” in Nietzsche’s enigmatic words, advice that is as much a question as a declaration.  Lorimer writes:

Those who have not been confronted with this question will often consider those who have as peculiar, adding that there is no such thing as a vocation to personality, and their sense of being isolated and different is a form of spiritual arrogance; they should concern themselves with the really important things in life, viz ‘getting on’, and leading an inconspicuously normal existence.

These restless-busyness people are caught on the treadmill of getting and spending, and in their alienation from their true selves must disdain those who seek wholeness by grasping life’s polarities and paradoxes.  Stillness in movement, being in becoming.  Paradox: from Latin para = contrary to, and doxa = opinion.  Contrary to common belief or expectation.

In “Cultivating a Sense of Beauty,” Lorimer uses his etymological understanding – which is so important for deep thinking and which he uses liberally throughout the book – to explain “the beauty of holiness, and the correspondence between beauty and truth.”  He is not some bliss-ninny who is in the interior soul decoration business devoid of political consciousness and care.  Far from it.  He understands the connection between real beauty in its deepest sense and its connection to love for all existence and the responsibility that this confers on everyone to resist war and all forms of political oppression.  What Camus tried to do: To serve beauty and suffering.  “The English word ‘beauty’, like the French ‘beauté, is derived from the Latin ‘beare’ meaning to bless or gladden, and the ‘beatus’, blessed are the happy.” Appropriately, Lorimer quotes Wordsworth from “Intimations of Immortality.”

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, its fears,
To me the meanest flower that grows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Whether he is writing about Albert Schweitzer, Swedenborg, Voltaire, Dag Hammarskjöld, Peter Deunov (a Bulgarian mystic I first learned about here), he weaves their thought and witness into his overarching theme of the search for wisdom.  Wisdom not in the navel-gazing sense but in the larger sense as wisdom for creating a world of truth, peace, and justice.

In the middle of the book’s three sections, called “Consciousness, Death, and Transformation,” he offers various intriguing pieces that explore near death experiences and the philosophical, experiential, and scientific arguments for their reality.  In this rejection of the materialist conception of mind, brain, and consciousness, he relies on thinkers such as William James and Henri Bergson, but especially the Swedish scientist, philosopher, theologian, and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) who had many psychic and spiritual experiences that have been both accepted as inspired and rejected as hokum. Lorimer reminds us that Swedenborg was not some nutcase but was a brilliant and accomplished thinker.  “It’s not well known that Swedenborg wrote a 700-page book on the brain, in which he was the first to suggest complementary roles for the two hemispheres.” Likewise,  Lorimer’s work with The Scientific and Medical Network and the Galileo Commission over the decades roots his writing on this topic in the work of many prominent neuroscientists and is far from New Age gibberish.  It is serious work that demands serious attention.  He accurately writes:

The problem of death will not disappear if we ignore it. Sooner or later we must come to terms with our own nature and destiny.What is the nature of man, of death, and what are the nature of the implications of death for the way in which we live our lives?  The first two questions amount to asking about the nature of consciousness.

In the third and final section – “Taking Responsibility: Ethics and Society” – Lorimer, drawing often on Albert Schweitzer who has deeply influenced him, applies the natural consequences of the soulful wisdom he embraces in the first two sections.  In the face of endless wars, poverty, ecological degradation, and the threat of nuclear war, etc., he writes, “Those who have the interests of humanity at heart cannot simply stand back in helplessness and despair: they must act themselves and arouse those around them to similar action or else abdicate their humanity by not shouldering their responsibility.”  This can be accomplished through a commitment to truth, love, peaceableness, kindness, and non-violent action, first at the individual level but crucially then when a sufficient number of people can be organized for this effort.  “This in turn demands a spiritual commitment and an initial step of faith or confidence, which the person who wishes to devote him- and herself to humanity cannot not afford to make.”

His essay on Dag Hammarskjöld, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, who was a key ally of President John F. Kennedy in their work for peace and decolonialization and who, like JFK, was assassinated by CIA organized forces, is a perfect example of such faith and commitment in a true public servant.  Hammarskjöld was a deeply spiritual man, a mystical political man of action, and Lorimer, drawing on Hammarskjöld’s own writing, shows how he embodied all the qualities found in one who was truly wise: self-effacement, stillness in action, detachment, humility, forgiveness, and courage in the face of the unknown.  He quotes Hammarskjöld:

Now, when I have overcome my fears – of others, of myself, of the underlying darkness – at the frontier of the unheard-of: Here ends the known. But, from a source beyond it, something fills my being with its possibilities.

I am reminded of JFK’s love of Abraham Lincoln’s prayer, which Kennedy lived by in the dark times before his assassination, which he anticipated: “I know there is a God – and I see a storm coming.  If he has a place for me, I believe that I am ready.”

The last essay in this illuminating and inspiring book – “Towards a Culture of Love-an Ethic of Interconnectedness” – was written in 2007, and all of them go back many decades, but in case a reader of this review may wonder where Lorimer stands today, he has added an afterword with a postscript in which he writes briefly about today’s assault on heresy, dissidence, and those who have been falsely called “conspiracy theorists” in the CIA’s weaponized term.  I mention that to make clear that A Quest for Wisdom is not an encouragement to navel gazing and some sort of pseudo-spirituality.  It is a call to a spiritual awakening in today’s fight against radical evil.  He makes clear that the conspiracy theorist label is being unjustly used against those who question the JFK assassination, the 9/11 Commission Report, Covid-19, etc.  He says we are being subjected to a major information war and extensive censorship of non-mainstream views.”  He sums it up this way:

Over the past few months we have witnessed a new episode of Inquisition and the implicit creation of an online Index of Prohibited Material. There has been a steep rise in censorship by social media companies of views at variance with mainstream narratives: dissident content is summarily removed. Heretical and subversive views are not tolerated, open debate is stifled in favor of officially sanctioned orthodoxy, whistle-blowers are abused and demonized. Manipulated by fear and on a flimsy pretext of security, we are in danger of abjectly surrendering the very freedom of thought and expression that our ancestors fought so courageously to secure in the eighteenth century and which constitutes the essence of our Enlightenment legacy…

These are the words of a wise man and the author of a wonderful book.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

Featured image is from Amazon


He is the author of Seeking the Truth in a Country of Lies

To order his book click the cover page.

“Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies is a dazzling journey into the heart of many issues — political, philosophical, and personal — that should concern us all.  Ed Curtin has the touch of the poet and the eye of an eagle.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Edward Curtin puts our propaganda-stuffed heads in a guillotine, then in a flash takes us on a redemptive walk in the woods — from inferno to paradiso.  Walk with Ed and his friends — Daniel Berrigan, Albert Camus, George Orwell, and many others — through the darkest, most-firefly-filled woods on this earth.” James W. Douglass, author, JFK and the Unspeakable

“A powerful exposé of the CIA and our secret state… Curtin is a passionate long-time reform advocate; his stories will rouse your heart.” Oliver Stone, filmmaker, writer, and director

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Mandatory Vaccine Agenda Is Step-by-Step Repealing Religious and Philosophical Exemptions

By Makia Freeman, November 07, 2021

The Mandatory Vaccine Agenda is a worldwide plan which has been picking up steam lately. Unfortunately for the causes of individual rights, medical autonomy and sovereignty, natural health and freedom in general, many countries and US states have been accelerating the push to force all children to be vaccinated.

How Vaccine Hysteria Could Spark A Totalitarian Nightmare

By Lee Hieb, M.D., November 07, 2021

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been vilified for making a very simple statement – that parents (and presumably patients themselves) should have the freedom to choose whether to vaccinate their children. I have been asked for years what I thought about vaccination, so let me lay out the issues.

“Herd Stupidity”: The Manufactured Covid Crisis, the Gene-based mRNA “Vaccine” and “The Pinnacles of Wealth and Power”

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, November 07, 2021

The pandemic is contrived for sinister motives. Everything connected with Covid is Junk Science foisted on a fearful and gullible world. The virus, the lock downs, the masks, the abuse of PCR for diagnosis, the temperature checks at commercial entrances, the ubiquitous little bottles of alcohol, the relentless propaganda and most especially the soon-to-be-mandatory lethal injections are all Junk Science.

Fake Mortality Data: Italian Institute of Health Reduces Official Covid Death Toll from 130,000 to 4,000.

By Paul Joseph Watson, November 07, 2021

The Italian Higher Institute of Health has drastically reduced the country’s official COVID death toll number by over 97 per cent after changing the definition of a fatality to someone who died from COVID rather than with COVID.

Video: Covid-19 Criminality

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Ariel Noyola Rodriguez, November 07, 2021

Assuming that 10% of deaths and adverse events are reported (a very conservative assumption according to Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc, p. 6) The mRNA “Vaccine” would have resulted in at least 380,000 deaths and 63 million “adverse events” for a combined population of approximately 830 million (UK, EU, US).

Court Stops Louisiana’s Largest Healthcare System from Imposing COVID Jab Mandate on Employees

By Ashley Sadler, November 07, 2021

The panel of three judges on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Shreveport issued a temporary restraining order on October 28, blocking Ochsner Health System from firing or disciplining any of its 32,000 employees who have refused to comply with the system’s COVID-19 injection requirement.

What Is the Number Needed to Vaccinate (NNTV) to Prevent a Single COVID-19 Fatality in Kids 5 to 11 Based on the Pfizer EUA Application?

By Toby Rogers, November 07, 2021

The Number Needed to Treat (NNT) in order to prevent a single case, hospitalization, ICU admission, or death, is a standard way to measure the effectiveness of any drug. It’s an important tool because it enables policymakers to evaluate tradeoffs between a new drug, a different existing drug, or doing nothing.

Biden’s Federal Vaccine Mandate Has Finally Been Issued – And It Will Deploy a National Policing Force to Ensure Compliance

By Kyle Becker, November 07, 2021

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will also be policing workplaces nationwide to ensure compliance with the unlawful mandate.

Sandinistas Poised to Win Election in Nicaragua Despite U.S. Sabotage and Smears

By Prof. Yader Lanuza, November 07, 2021

The Nicaraguan elections are on Nov. 7, 2021. The U.S. government, the media that does its bidding, and even some self-described “leftists,” present a Nicaragua in “turmoil” and “crisis”—and the elections as a farce.

Scientists Sue the FDA for Data It Relied Upon to License Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine

By Aaron Siri, November 07, 2021

The FDA repeatedly promised “full transparency” with regard to Covid-19 vaccines, including reaffirming “the FDA’s commitment to transparency” when licensing Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.

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First published on December 16, 2021.

The situation in late 2022 is far more serious.

Previously healthy U.S. airline pilots are passing away at an unprecedented rate.

Pilots are required to be in tip-top physical condition, but in 2021, the entire airline industry conspired against the pilot’s individual health and threatened them with termination if they did not partake in the covid-19 vaccine experiment. As a result, over one hundred young pilots have mysteriously passed away in 2021, as countless other pilots suffer silently from adverse events and depleted immune systems.

A total of one hundred eleven pilots died in the first eight months of this year! This is a 1,750% increase from 2020, when the world was supposed to be in the middle of a pandemic. A list of the deceased individuals was published in the Air Line Pilot Association magazine. In comparison, there were 6 airline pilot deaths in 2020, and only one death in 2019.

Surge in pilot deaths is a warning sign to all

Most of the 111 deaths occurred after the covid-19 jabs were rolled out en masse. Because there are no medical codes for vaccine-induced death, most of the deaths are blamed on other causes. These causes may be related to the pathological evidence behind vaccine injuries, but are never coded as such. Pathological evidence is often ignored, and the deaths of young men and women are often referred to as “sudden” or “unexplained” – with no pathological investigation.

Only 5 deaths were recorded from January-March in 2021, when vaccine uptake was low. Peculiarly, a total of (39) deaths occurred in July and (34) occurred in August — right after governments and private companies used vaccine mandates to violate the privacy of their employees and punish them. Even though these intimidation tactics are illegal, these vaccine mandates were used to scare pilots into submission. Like in many professional fields, pilots went against their own beliefs and against their private medical situation, accepting the subjugation. Many complied with the vaccine mandates because the discrimination was so strong, equal opportunities were being shuttered and personal health decisions were not being honored. Many were afraid to lose their job and their future career prospects, so they lined up, hoping for the best while justifying the medical tyranny.

Deadly vaccine issues have been pushed aside for decades, as the world wakes up to the industry’s hidden horrors

Young, previously healthy athletes are seeing the same trend in mortality as the pilots are. Goodsciencing.com tracked over 300 post-vaccine medical incidents from January 1 to December 10. These incidents involved young, previously healthy athletes who suddenly collapsed on the playing field in 2021. Out of these unexplained medical incidents, 170 of the athletes ended up dead. These trends are not surprising, because pharmacovigilance data collected around the world shows that the mRNA vaccines are causing heart inflammation, autoimmune issues, and immune depletion, leading to sudden cardiac arrest, neurological dysfunction and severe infections. CovidVaccineVictims.com retains a memorial for people who passed away as a result of this horrendously forceful, ghastly genetic experiment.

The issues with vaccination have been brushed aside for decades, ever since the 1986 Childhood Vaccine Injury Act granted legal protections for vaccine companies in the United States. Enjoying legal immunity for over thirty years, vaccine makers made a mockery of the rule of law, exempting themselves from legal accountability when their products harm people. Today, mRNA vaccine makers have entered into contracts with governments around the world to exempt their operations from any judicial responsibility or a jury trial. Vaccine makers are operating above the law and will continue to get away with genocide if the rule of law is not restored. The mRNA vaccine makers have plans for endless boosters now. Their dominion over governments and their endless money supply will allow them to steal, kill and destroy using propaganda, coercion and force.

Sources include:

SteveKirsch.substack.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

GoodSciencing.com

NaturalNews.com

Publications.aap.org

CovidVaccineVictims.com

In this article published in early September 2019 (several months prior to the Covid crisis), Makia Freeman reviews (with foresight) various initiatives to introduce mandatory vaccination. This happened in the months leading up to the so-called pandemic

***

The Mandatory Vaccine Agenda is a worldwide plan which has been picking up steam lately. Unfortunately for the causes of individual rights, medical autonomy and sovereignty, natural health and freedom in general, many countries and US states have been accelerating the push to force all children to be vaccinated.

Last week sometime around August 27th 2019, Hawaii enacted a law (HAR 11-157) for mandatory vaccination of children attending school (all school, including pre-school, kindergarten, primary, secondary and tertiary [college/university]).

On June 13th 2019, New York quickly pushed through a bill (A 2371) in one day to repeal religious exemptions to vaccination.

On June 30th 2015, California passed a law (SB 277) forbidding religious and philosophical exemptions and mandating vaccines for any children in daycare, preschool and K-12 schools (which went into effect on July 1st 2016). Clearly, all kinds of exemptions – medical exemptions, religious exemptions and philosophical exemptions – are on the chopping block, no matter where you live.

This mandatory vaccine agenda is a worldwide issue. The nets are closing in. It’s time to inform yourself, take a stand and then do what you can to stand up for freedom – unless you want your loved ones to be forcibly injected with a Big Pharma cocktail of proven toxins and carcinogens.

Recent Rollouts of the Mandatory Vaccine Agenda Around the World

In July 2019, Germany passed a law making the measles vaccine compulsory for all children, as well as childminders and staff in day-care centers, schools, medical facilities and communal facilities such as refugee shelters. Many other European nations already have mandatory vaccines on the books, such as Italy, which passed a 2017 law that declared 10 vaccinations were compulsory for children up to age 16.

The Italian law carries a €500 noncompliance fine, while the German law carries a €2500 noncompliance fine. The Australian Federal Government passed its infamous No Jab No Pay law in 2015, and some Australian state governments (Victoria, NSW and Queensland) introduced No Jab No Play in 2017, both of which withheld child care benefits and rebates for parents who did not vaccinate their children. The Australian law set fines of up to AUD$30,000 for centers that admit unvaccinated children. Importantly, the Australian Government explicitly took the line that there would be no religious exemptions or philosophical exemptions allowed.

The Implications of US State Laws Repealing Religious and Philosophical Exemptions

Meanwhile, in the USA, the mandatory vaccine agenda is striking on both coasts. The above-mentioned 2015 California law which eliminated religious and philosophical exemptions was actually preceded by a 2011 law (AB 499) which allowed minors 12 years old and older to consent to vaccines (including the HPV vaccine) for sexually transmitted diseases without the knowledge or consent of their parents!

The New York law which eliminated the religious exemption has garnered a lot of attention – and a lawsuit. Robert Kennedy Jr. (son of RFK and nephew of JFK), along with civil rights attorney Michael Sussman, filed a suit against the law on behalf of 55 families holding different religious beliefs. Their lawsuit went all the way to the New York State Supreme Court where, unfortunately, it was struck down on August 23rd 2019, by Judge Denise Hartman:

“The lawsuit challenged the constitutionality and legality of the law repealing religious exemption to vaccination based on the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion and the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and, additionally, argued that the new law forces plaintiff’s to either engage in compelled speech or violate New York’s mandatory education laws … In considering the accounts of 330 parents who had submitted sworn affidavits to the court explaining how they planned to leave the state or home-school them rather than vaccinate them, Judge Hartman acknowledged the “magnitude of disruption and potential harm” families may suffer if they are forced to violate their religious beliefs and vaccinate their children, teach them at home or leave the state. However, she wrote, “The Court is hard-pressed to conclude that the plaintiffs have shown that the balance of equities tips decidedly their favor.” … She wrote, “Because plaintiffs have not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits, the Supreme Court denies the request for a preliminary injunction; the legislative repeal of the religious exemption remains in effect.” She noted that, “For at least a quarter of a century, the courts have repeatedly upheld the states’ compulsory vaccination laws.”

Hartman cited a number of legal precedents in her ruling, one of which is the famous 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts case. In that case, the US Federal Supreme Court ruled upheld a Massachusetts law allowing the government to use “police power” to “keep in view the welfare, comfort and safety of the many” by mandating smallpox vaccinations for all residents. In other words, collectivism and utilitarianism triumphed over individual rights due to the perceived – because it’s a matter of perception – safety of the community that is supposedly conferred by artificial immunity via vaccination. This 1905 case set an unfortunate precedent; in 1927, the US Supreme Court ruled in Buck v Bell that states have the constitutional authority to involuntarily sterilize citizens the state considers to be a threat to the public health. Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared:

“The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes.”

Speaking of vaccines and sterilization, remember how an association of Kenyan Catholic bishops discovered that the WHO (World Health Organization), part of the Rockefeller UN (United Nations), was caught sterilizing women in Africa by secretly injecting them with a contraceptive hidden in the vaccine? Hmmm … oh yeah, that’s right: it also happened in Asia and Central America:

“Tetanus vaccination resembling the protocol being applied in this WHO/UNICEF campaign has previously been given in Mexico, Nicaragua and the Philippines. The vaccine given in these countries was a fertility regulating vaccine composed of tetanus toxoid as a carrier for the beta subunit of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG). Subsequent research amongst those girls and women immunized has been shown to have made them permanently infertile … The development of the fertility regulating vaccines was commissioned and sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1972. By 1992, a vaccine against the hormone of pregnancy called Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) using the tetanus vaccine as a carrier had been developed.”

Step-by-Step: Medical Freedom to Medical Fascism

I have covered in other articles how governments take a mile whenever you give them an inch. They don’t need much excuse to carry out all sorts of atrocities against their own citizens, including experimentation.

This is the problem at the heart of the matter: if you grant the State the right to decide what goes into your body what freedom do you have left? Those dedicated to freedom must realize that we cannot allow outside so-called “authorities” to EVER decide that for us, no matter how convincing the appeals to public safety, national security, herd/community immunity, etc. History shows it’s just a small step from mandatory vaccinations to sterilizations to whatever comes next. What could that be? Forced child-rearing by women on behalf of society (for the “greater good” of course)? Forced microchipping? Forced AI nanobots in your blood stream? Forced transhumanist brain hookups to the AI cloud?

US map states medical religious philosophical exemptions

This map of US states shows the current medical, religious & philosophical exemptions as of Sept. 2nd 2019. How long until all of these are restricted, repealed and eliminated as per the agenda? Image credit: National Vaccine Information Center

In the Crosshairs: Medical, Religious and Philosophical Exemptions

The pattern is clear. The mandatory vaccine agenda is marching step-by-step to eliminate all kinds of exemptions: medical, religious and philosophical. The above quoted National Vaccine Information Center article also states the following about New York restricting medical exemptions. The trend is obvious; the State is now turning the tables with the burden of proof, so you have to prove why you don’t get a vaccine, rather than them having to prove why you do get one. Bureaucrats are trying to hold all the power and assess whether you deserve to have any medical freedom or not:

“Six days before Judge Hartman issued her opinion, on Aug. 17, 2019, New York State Department of Health officials issued emergency regulations restricting medical exemptions to vaccination for children attending school or daycare. According to health officials, the new regulations will prevent parents from obtaining medical exemptions for their children for health reasons that public health officials do not consider valid vaccine contraindications qualifying for a medical vaccine exemptions.

The new regulations require doctors granting a child a medical exemption to vaccination to complete a state form specifically outlining medical reasons for why a child cannot receive each state mandated vaccine. If those reasons do not conform to state-approved vaccine contraindication guidelines, the medical exemption will not be accepted by the state and the child cannot attend school or daycare unless all state mandated vaccines are administered.”

By the way, if you think medical exemptions are easy to get, listen to this short compilation of answers from various medical clinics around California who refused to write them, even for children who had anaphylactic reactions after getting a vaccine!

“Sorry, our doctors don’t write medical exemptions.”

Vaccines Contain Provably Toxic and Carcinogenic Ingredients

As a recap, remember that vaccines contain known toxins and harmful agents including carcinogens like mercury and formaldehyde. For more detail on this, read Toxic Vaccine Adjuvants & Ingredients: The Top 10. You have to gasp at the sheer amount of doublethink involved when public health officials, doctors or nurses try to claim that taking a particular vaccine saves people from cancer. Logically speaking, how can a vaccine save anyone from cancer when it itself contains cancer-causing ingredients? By the way, not all vaccines are even properly tested, such as the Flumist vaccine, which was not tested for carcinogenic or mutagenic response.

Vaccines Can Cause Disease via Viral Shedding

Yes, it’s the deep dark secret Big Pharma doesn’t want anyone talking about. Do you know what viral shedding is? It is the phenomenon where a live attenuated viral vaccine can cause vaccinated persons to shed the vaccine strain virus for a period of days, weeks or months after they take the vaccine, leading to symptoms of the very disease the vaccine was intended to prevent, and opening up the possibility they could infect others. In the 2017 mumps outbreak, over 90% were vaccinated! Check out this video showing vaccines linked to infections in multiple states across the USA. Some vaccine inserts state that recipients are contagious for 28-42 days after receiving the vaccine!

Yes, Vaccines Do Sometimes Cause Death

Finally, if the gravity of this issue hasn’t grabbed you yet, then take a look at this. Vaccines cause death sometimes, and this is even admitted by Big Pharma and Western Medicine apologists. Of course, there are a lot of disclaimers and propagation of doubt via the insertion of words like “coincidental adverse events”, “temporally associated with vaccination,” and “plausible theoretical risk of death.” Here’s what this 2015 study Deaths following vaccination: What does the evidence show? found:

“Rare cases where a known or plausible theoretical risk of death following vaccination exists include anaphylaxis, vaccine-strain systemic infection after administration of live vaccines to severely immunocompromised persons, intussusception after rotavirus vaccine, Guillain-Barré syndrome after inactivated influenza vaccine, fall-related injuries associated with syncope after vaccination, yellow fever vaccine-associated viscerotropic disease or associated neurologic disease, serious complications from smallpox vaccine including eczema vaccinatum, progressive vaccinia, postvaccinal encephalitis, myocarditis, and dilated cardiomyopathy, and vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis from oral poliovirus vaccine.”

Recall also Bill Gates’ admissions (not admission, but admissions, plural) that vaccines “reduce population growth”

Final Thoughts on the Mandatory Vaccine Agenda

No matter what you think of vaccines, mandatory vaccination is brute medical fascism which denies the universal right of patients to informed consent while assuming that vaccines are ‘safe and effective’, a hackneyed platitude and outrageous piece of disinformation. Vaccines are implicated in numerous instances of seizure, autism, brain damage, paralysis and death. The causal link between vaccines and horrible injury/death has been proven many times in courts all over the world. The timing is rapidly approaching where you will not be able to sit on the fence any more. Even if you are pro-vaccination, you can take a stand against the mandatory vaccine agenda as it removes choice and freedom. Let those who want to have vaccines take them; the herd immunity argument is pseudoscience and makes no logical sense, since if vaccines really work, then the vaccinated need have no fear of the unvaccinated ‘spreading disease’, since the vaccinated will be protected.

We must never allow the government to tell us what we can or cannot put into our bodies, or we will have descended into slaves. There is already a lot of legal precedent or case law where the US government has granted itself the authority to force-vaccinate people. This indicates the solution may have to be beyond the courts and judicial system, and something more along the lines of a mass awakened movement of civil disobedience. Getting any official, whether a nurse, doctor, school principal, health superintendent, bureaucrat or politician to sign this form making them take personal responsibility could be part of the answer.

If you don’t make your voice heard on this issue, there’s nowhere to run and hide. The mandatory vaccine agenda will soon be arriving at a town or school near you – then what are you going to do?

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on The Freedom Articles.

Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative media / independent news site The Freedom Articles and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com. Makia is on Steemit and FB.

Sources

*https://health.hawaii.gov/docd/advisories/proposed-amendments-to-hawaii-administrative-rules-har-11-157-examination-and-immunization/

*https://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/July-2019/ny-religious-exemption-repeal-violates-rights.aspx

*https://www.nvic.org/Vaccine-Laws/state-vaccine-requirements/california.aspx

*https://www.thelocal.de/20190717/germany-makes-measles-vaccination-compulsory-for-children

*https://www.wvlt.tv/content/news/Italy-approves-mandatory-vaccine-program-437515213.html

*https://thefreedomarticles.com/australian-mandatory-vaccines-no-jab-no-pay/

*https://thevaccinereaction.org/2019/08/judge-denies-injunction-of-ny-law-repealing-religious-vaccine-exemption/

*https://www.kenya-today.com/news/catholic-warning-neonatal-tetanus-vaccine-wto-deadly-bad-women-reproductivity

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNNVVCqqVLM

*https://thefreedomarticles.com/toxic-vaccine-adjuvants-the-top-10/

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiS2J5y_oW0

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVf_hTClzT8

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_hp0QVhG5s

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiC-gj_Zoik

*https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4599698/

*https://thefreedomarticles.com/bill-gates-vaccines-reduce-population-growth/

*https://www.nvic.org/vaccine-laws/state-vaccine-requirements.aspx

Featured image is from The Freedom Articles

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How Vaccine Hysteria Could Spark A Totalitarian Nightmare

November 7th, 2021 by Lee Hieb, M.D.

Incisive and carefully documented article (with foresight) by Dr. Lee Hieb, focussing on fundamental issues pertaining to the vaccine, first published by Global Research in early 2015.

***

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been vilified for making a very simple statement – that parents (and presumably patients themselves) should have the freedom to choose whether to vaccinate their children. I have been asked for years what I thought about vaccination, so let me lay out the issues.

Before getting into the science, lets discuss the philosophy:

1. The voices shrieking to forcibly vaccinate people are the same voices shrieking to support a woman’s right to choose abortion under Roe v. Wade. If a woman’s body is sacrosanct, if she has the right to choose to deliver a child or not, if she has total authority over her body, how can she not have the right to accept or refuse a vaccination?

2. Medical ethics are clear: No one should be forced to undergo a medical treatment without informed consent and without their agreement to the treatment. We condemn the forced sterilization of the ’20s and ’30s, the Tuskegee medical experiments infecting black inmates and the Nazi medicine that included involuntary “Euthanasia,” experimentation and sterilization. How can we force vaccination without consent? Vaccination is a medical treatment with risks including death. It is totally antithetical to all ethics in medicine to mandate that risk to others.

3. Science is never “concluded.” Mr. Obama and other ideologues may think the truth is finalized (“The science is indisputable”), but the reality is our understanding of disease and treatment are constantly being updated. Just like Newton’s mechanical paradigm of the universe was supplanted by Einsteinian physics, and physicists today modify that view, medical “truth” is not the truth for long. In an attempt to quantify change in medicine, years ago a cardiology journal discussed “The Half-life of Truth.” cardiologists looked back in their journal at 20-year-old articles to see how much of what was believed then was still believed to be true. The answer? 50 percent. So in cardiology, at least – and in all of medicine to greater or lesser degree – only half of what we believe now will still be true in 20 or so years. The last word on vaccination is not in. It hasn’t even begun to be written.

4. If you believe absolutely in the benefit and protective value of vaccination, why does it matter what others do? Or don’t do? If you believe you need vaccination to be healthy and protected, then by all means vaccinate your child and yourself. Why should you even be concerned what your neighbor chooses to do for his child – if vaccination works? The idea of herd immunity is still based on the idea that in individual cases vaccines actually are protective.

5. If you think the government has the right to forcibly vaccinate people – for the good of society – what is to prevent them from forcibly sterilizing people, or forcibly euthanizing people, or forcibly implanting a tracking device – for the good of society? You make think those examples are extreme (although two-thirds have happened), but the principle is the same. You are allowing government to have ultimate authority over your body.

Here’s the help you’ll need to prepare your household for the realities of living under a government-dictated health-care system — order Dr. Hieb’s “Surviving the Medical Meltdown: Your Guide to Living Through the Disaster of Obamacare”

So, I’ve been asked, “Why not vaccinate your children? Why not take the influenza vaccine?”

Well, I believe the choice is up to you. I’ve covered my thinking about the influenza vaccine in an article in the Journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, available online, but here are some facts about childhood vaccines that make me think twice about their use. I traced these points back to the source, so these are not blindly reprinted from hearsay Internet articles. In some cases I found public references to be wrong but the data to be correct when I got to the source. Much of this comes from government reporting. Anyone can research disease incidence by reading MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) from the CDC and accessing the search engine for VAERS (Vaccine complication reporting site) at http://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/index.php.

1. Since 2005 (and even before that), there have been no deaths in the U.S. from measles, but there have been 86 deaths from MMR vaccine – 68 of them in children under 3 years old. And there were nearly 2,000 disabled, per the aforementioned VAERS data.

2. In countries which use BCG vaccinations against tuberculosis, the incidence of Type I diabetes in children under 14 is nearly double. (“Infectious Disease in Clinical Practice” no. 6 pages 449-454, 1997)

3. As reported in Lancet in 1995, inflammatory bowel disease (i.e. Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis) is 13 times more prevalent in persons vaccinated for measles.

4. In a nested case-control study within the General Practice Research Database (GPRD) in the United Kingdom, patients who had a first MS (Multiple Sclerosis) diagnosis recorded were compared with controls. The authors concluded that immunization with the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine is associated with a threefold increased risk of developing MS (Hernan et al., 2004). No increased risk of MS was associated with other vaccines, which included tetanus and influenza vaccinations.

5. In 1982 William Torch, a prolific researcher and publisher on Neurologic topics, presented a paper (later published) at the American Academy of Neurology reviewing SIDS deaths. He reported that in 100 consecutive cases, 70 percent of SIDS deaths occurred within three weeks of pertussis vaccination. In very convincing confirmation, a Japanese prefecture stopped vaccinating after associating SIDS with the pertussis vaccine. It is worth reading the entire description from Viera Scheibner, PhD:

In 1975, about 37 Crib Sudden Deaths were linked to vaccination in Japan. Doctors in one prefecture boycotted vaccinations, and refused to vaccinate. The Japanese government paid attention and stopped vaccinating children below the age of 2 years. When immunization was delayed until a child was 24 months of age, Sudden Infant Death cases and claims for vaccine related deaths disappeared. Japan zoomed from a high 17th place in infant mortality rate to the lowest infant mortality rate in the world when they stopped vaccinating. Japan didn’t vaccinate any children below the age of 2 years between 1975 and 1988, for 13 years. But then in 1988, Japanese parents were given the choice to start vaccinating anywhere between 3 months and 48 months. The Ministry study group studied 2,720 SIDS cases occurring between 1980 and 1992 and they established that their very low SIDS rate quadrupled.

6. A mail survey was done of 635 children in the Netherlands in 2004. German measles and whooping cough (pertussis) were twice as common in unvaccinated children. However, throat inflammations, ear infections, rheumatologic complaints, seizures and febrile convulsions were much more common in the vaccinated group. Aggressive behavioral episodes were eight times more frequent in vaccinated children, and sleep disordered more often. Tonsils were removed in 33 percent of children who had been vaccinated vs. 7.3 percent unvaccinated.

7. In 1947, the first reports of brain inflammation and chronic brain damage, including death, after pertussis vaccination began to be published (Brody, 1947; Byers and Moll, 1948, Low, 1955, Berg, 1958; Strom, 1960, 1967; Dick, 1967, 1974; Kuhlenkampff, 1974; Stewart, 1977, 1979). But it took more than 40 years of collective evidence before academic medicine decided it was true –1981 National Childhood Encephalopathy Study (NCES) and in 1991 and 1994 by the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences.

In 1991, after reviewing vaccine safety, the Institute of Medicine admitted, “In the course of its review, the committee encountered many gaps and limitations in knowledge bearing directly or indirectly on the safety of vaccines. These include inadequate understanding of the biologic mechanisms underlying adverse events following natural infection or immunization, insufficient or inconsistent information from case reports and case series, inadequate size or length of followup of many population based epidemiologic studies [and] few experimental studies published in relation to the number of epidemiologic studies published.”

So the next question is: Does vaccination work? Does it really protect you against disease? The answer is variable. Smallpox vaccine seems to be nearly universally protective against the very fatal disease of smallpox, and use of vaccine led to the eradication of the disease in the wild. But the dirty little secret in recent outbreaks of mumps, measles and pertussis is – they are occurring in vaccinated people in highly vaccinated populations!

In 2006 an epidemic of mumps broke out in my state of Iowa. Ultimately, 11 states reported 2,597 cases of mumps. The majority of mumps cases (1,487) were reported from Iowa. As reported in “Mumps Epidemic – Iowa, 2006,” “Despite control efforts and a highly vaccinated population, this epidemic has spread across Iowa and potentially to neighboring states.” According to the CDC,

“During the prevaccine era, nearly everyone in the United States experienced mumps, and 90 percent of cases occurred among children, although 97 percent of children entering school in Iowa had received two doses of MMR vaccine. ”

Of note, this outbreak mostly occurred in young adults of college age who had received the vaccine. Only 6 percent of those affected were known to be unvaccinated, 12 percent received one dose of MMR vaccine, 51 percent had two doses of MMR vaccine, and 31 percent (mostly adults) were not sure of their immunization history.

In 2008-2009, Australia had epidemics of whooping cough and measles. Health authorities there must reveal the vaccination status of children in epidemics. Eighty-four percent of Australian children who got whooping cough were fully vaccinated, and 78 percent who got measles had record of measles vaccination.

In the 2010 outbreak of whooping cough in California, well over half the victims were fully vaccinated.

Whooping cough continuously declined in the U.S. from over 100,000 cases in 1922 to around 1978 when 2,063 cases were reported. That year, pertussis vaccine became mandated for school attendance. Beginning around 1995, when the U.S. had 5,137 cases, the incidence has increased, to 2012 when over 48,000 cases were reported, including 20 deaths. The majority of deaths were in newborns under three months of age. Why is this happening? It is not because people are not becoming vaccinated. The CDC says more than 84 percent of children under 3 years old have been vaccinated with four doses of pertussis vaccine. But the current vaccine does not include all strains of pertussis. And the most vulnerable to the disease – the small infants – are not able to take the vaccine. Since older children and adults are much less likely to die of whooping cough, the question that must be asked is this: Is vaccination effective in producing antibody transfer from mother to infant? Or is it better to allow the natural disease to occur?

Finally, it turns out that death and disability from many childhood diseases is preventable by means other than vaccination. Vitamin A has been known since the 1930s to reduce mortality from measles by 60 percent. Vitamin D is protective against viral illness. And numerous authors and studies have shown the damaging effects of chemical antipyretics (fever lowering drugs) on the natural course of disease – a practice still sadly in widespread use in America. Better understanding of disease mechanisms, utilizing nutritional support and better scientific care of the sick child are safer alternatives to widespread vaccination.

Perhaps one of the best perspectives on the whole vaccination paradigm is provided by Dr. Harold Buttram, M.D., FAACP:

As one of today’s senior citizens who grew up in a Midwestern state in the 1930s, and as a doctor who has treated many children, I may have a special vantage point of time and experience in regard to the changes that have taken place in the health of America’s children since the relatively innocent times of the 1930s. At summer camps in the New Mexico Mountains that I was fortunate to attend, no boy had allergies, none was on medication, and no boy was ever sick with the common ailments of today. It was much the same in schools. I don’t recall ever seeing a child with easily recognized behaviors now described as hyperactivity (ADHD) or autism.

Today in stark contrast, approximately one-third of our youngsters are afflicted with the 4-A Disorders (Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies), as described and documented by Dr. Kenneth Bock. School budgets are being strained to the breaking points in providing special education classes for autistic and learning disabled children. Allergy problems are proliferating, as indicated by long lines of children at school nursing stations for their noontime medications.

Could today’s infant and childhood vaccine programs, with their steadily increasing numbers of vaccines, be a contributory cause of this ominous health trend? As reflected in the U.S. Congressional Hearings (1999 to December 2004) on issues of vaccine safety, in which major deficiencies in vaccine safety testing were disclosed, it is a real possibility that vaccines may be one of the major, if not the major cause of this trend.

I, too, am old enough to remember these times. We are changing the pattern of disease, but not necessarily making our children nor ourselves healthier. We are converting benign childhood disease into more severe adult disease. Consider the chickenpox vaccine. We used to have chickenpox parties where small children were purposely exposed to kids sick with chickenpox. In those days, every mother or grandmother knew it was safer for toddlers to get the disease early and not wait until teenage years. Now we vaccinate, but of course that vaccine is only effective for 15-20 years, so now adults must constantly be revaccinated or run the risk of getting a life-threatening severe form of chickenpox. The shingles uptick is directly attributable to the lack of re-exposure of older people to the wild chickpox virus. But not to worry – the drug companies can sell us a shingles vaccine for a disease their previous vaccine created.

We have forgotten that for most normal children, childhood diseases are benign. As recounted about mumps in the Iowa Department of Public Health Manual,

“it is more common in infants, children and young adults. Of people who are not immunized, >85 percent will have mumps by adulthood, but symptoms may have been mild and therefore not recognized.”

At the end of the day, the issue here is one of freedom, and freedom is the freedom to choose – even if we make a bad choice. The argument that I must vaccinate my children for the good of the community is not only scientifically questionable, it is an unethical precept. It is the argument all dictators and totalitarians have used. “Comrade, you must work tirelessly for the good of the collective. You must give up your money and property for the good of the collective, and now … you must allow us to inject your children with what we deem is good for the collective.” If Americans don’t stand up against this, then we are lost. Because we have lost ownership of ourselves. Our bodies are no longer solely ours – we and our children are able to be commandeered for the “greater good.”

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Excess Deaths from the “Vaccine” Point to a Depopulation Agenda

November 7th, 2021 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

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“I think it’s highly likely that the next phase will involve death [from Covid “vaccine”] on a scale which will dwarf the claims of ‘covid-19 deaths’ to date.” — Dr. Mike Yeadon, former Pfizer Vice President and Chief Science Officer

There is no evidence that Big Pharma’s Covid “vaccines” are effective and no evidence that they are safe. Indeed, all the evidence is to the contrary. The “vaccines” were rushed into use before they were tested or approved on the basis of the falsehoods that there was a deadly pandemic afoot for which there were no cures.

These lies were soon exposed. Except for people with serious illnesses who were left untreated, Covid had a low fatality rate. Doctors soon discovered that HCQ and Ivermectin were both preventatives and cures, but the medical establishment and the presstitutes joined Big Pharma and Fauci in suppressing the information.

The large number of alleged Covid cases was manufactured by the use of the PCR test intentionally run at high cycles known to produce mainly false positives.

The fear that was orchestrated prepped frightened and gullible people for the “vaccine.”

Now the results of the “vaccine” are in. These are the known facts:

The jabs do not protect. Thus the advent of booster jabs and the protocol that the vaccinated continue to wear masks.

The “vaccine” is associated with a high rate of deaths and injuries, rates far higher than rates associated with vaccines and medicines the use of which was stopped.

The vaccinated spread the virus more easily than the unvaccinated.

The majority of hospitalized Covid patients are vaccinated people and people suffering adverse reactions to the “vaccine.”

The “vaccine” permanently impairs your natural immunity.

Deaths and injuries rise with the rate of vaccination. The larger the percentage of a population vaccinated, the higher the excess deaths.

Covid attacks the elderly with comorbidities who are left untreated; the vaccine attacks the young. The US military is comprised mainly of young people, so why is the military being forced to be vaccinated with a killer substance? Along with military deaths and injuries there will be a reduction in military readiness. See this.

In this important article, Mike Whitney provides evidence that mortality rises with vaccination. As the authorities know this, the only reason for them to persist with illegally mandated mass vaccination is that they have a depopulation agenda.

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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.

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The Italian Higher Institute of Health has drastically reduced the country’s official COVID death toll number by over 97 per cent after changing the definition of a fatality to someone who died from COVID rather than with COVID.

Italian newspaper Il Tempo reports that the Institute has revised downward the number of people who have died from COVID rather than with COVID from 130,000 to under 4,000.

Of the of the 130,468 deaths registered as official COVID deaths since the start of the pandemic, only 3,783 are directly attributable to the virus alone.

“All the other Italians who lost their lives had from between one and five pre-existing diseases. Of those aged over 67 who died, 7% had more than three co-morbidities, and 18% at least two,” writes Young.

“According to the Institute, 65.8% of Italians who died after being infected with Covid were ill with arterial hypertension (high blood pressure), 23.5% had dementia, 29.3% had diabetes, and 24.8% atrial fibrillation. Add to that, 17.4% had lung problems, 16.3% had had cancer in the last five years and 15.7% suffered from previous heart failures.”

The Institute’s new definition of a COVID death means that COVID has killed fewer people in Italy than (whisper it) the average bout of seasonal flu.

If a similar change were made by other national governments, the official COVID death toll would be cut by a margin of greater than 90 per cent.

Don’t expect many others to follow suit though, given that governments have invested so much of their authority in hyping the the threat posed by the virus.

For example, behavioral psychologists in the UK worked with the state to deliberately “exaggerate” the threat of COVID via “unethical” and “totalitarian” methods of propaganda in order to terrify the public into mass compliance.

And it worked.

survey conducted after the first lockdown found that the average Brit thought 100 times more people had died from COVID than the official death toll.

Now we come to understand that the official killed ‘by COVID’ and not ‘with COVID’ figure is less than one tenth what is officially reported as the total COVID death toll.

Despite the change, Italy may yet take the decision to make the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory, although how such a scheme would be imposed remains unspecified.

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The CDC caused an uproar in early September 2021, after it changed its definitions of “vaccination” and “vaccine.” For years, the CDC had set definitions for vaccination/vaccine that discussed immunity. This all changed on September 1, 2021.

The prior CDC Definitions of Vaccine and Vaccination (August 26, 2021):

Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but can also be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.

Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.

The CDC Definitions of Vaccine and Vaccination since September 1, 2021:

Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.

Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.

People noticed. Representative Thomas Massie was among the first to discuss the change, noting the definition went from “immunity” to “protection”.

To many observers, it appeared the CDC changed the definitions because of the waning effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines. For example, the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine falls over time, with an Israeli study reported in August 2021 as showing the vaccine being “only 16% effective against symptomatic infection for those individuals who had two doses of the shot back in January.”  The CDC recognizes the waning effectiveness, thus explaining their promotion of booster shots.

Of course, the usual suspects defended the CDC. The Washington Post, for example, cast doubt that the CDC changed the definition because of issues with the COVID-19 vaccines. The CDC tried to downplay the change, stating “slight changes in wording over time … haven’t impacted the overall definition.”

Internal CDC E-Mails

CDC emails we obtained via the Freedom of Information Act reveal CDC worries with how the performance of the COVID-19 vaccines didn’t match the CDC’s own definition of “vaccine”/“vaccination”. The CDC’s Ministry of Truth went hard at work in the face of legitimate public questions on this issue.

In one August 2021 e-mail, a CDC employee cited to complaints that “Right-wing covid-19 deniers are using your ‘vaccine’ definition to argue that mRNA vaccines are not vaccines…”

After taking some suggestions, the CDC’s Lead Health Communication Specialist went up the food chain to propose changes to the definitions: “I need to update this page Immunization Basics | CDC since these definitions are outdated and being used by some to say COVID-19 vaccines are not vaccines per CDC’s own definition.”

Getting no response, there was a follow-up e-mail a week later: “The definition of vaccine we have posted is problematic and people are using it to claim the COVID-19 vaccine is not a vaccine based on our own definition.”

The change of the “vaccination” definition was eventually approved on August 31. The next day, on September 1, they approved the change to the “vaccine” definition from discussing immunity to protection (seen below).

There you have it. Affirmative action for the multinational corporations. Why have them improve their vaccines when you can just change the definition of vaccine to fit their ineffective vaccines?

Congrats to all the skeptics out there – you raised enough hell that the the CDC went and tried to change reality.

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Video: Covid-19 Criminality

November 7th, 2021 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

First published on June 13, 2021

Worldwide, people have been misled both by their governments and the media as to the causes and devastating consequences of the Covid-19 “pandemic”. 

SARS-2 is upheld as the “killer virus”.  And now the Covid vaccine is presented to public opinion as the “solution”, which will allow us to resume a “normal life”.

The covid vaccine project is profit driven. It is supported by corrupt governments.  

Is it safe? Were the standard animal lab tests using mice or ferrets conducted?

Or did Pfizer, Moderna, et al “go straight to human “guinea pigs.”?  

We are dealing with Very High Numbers  

Assuming that 10% of deaths and adverse events are reported (a very conservative assumption according to Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc, p. 6) The mRNA “Vaccine” would have resulted in at least 380,000 deaths and 63 million “adverse events” for a combined population of approximately 830 million (UK, EU, US). 

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In this video report, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky addresses the issue of Big Pharma criminality.  

click lower right corner to view in full screen

Video: produced by Ariel Noyola Rodriguez, Global Research, June 2021

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See Michel Chossudovsky’s E-Book consisting of ten chapters:

The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

 

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A Louisiana court ruled that the state’s largest healthcare system may not force its employees to get the COVID-19 jab at least until the legality of the mandate is formally resolved.

The panel of three judges on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Shreveport issued a temporary restraining order on October 28, blocking Ochsner Health System from firing or disciplining any of its 32,000 employees who have refused to comply with the system’s COVID-19 injection requirement.

The decision, which came only a day before the mandate was set to take effect, was issued in response to a lawsuit filed by a group of Oschner employees who would have faced discipline or termination if the court had not moved to stall enforcement of the requirement.

The lawsuit was brought forward by some 39 Oschner employees, including 20 registered nurses, four surgical technicians, a licensed practical nurse, a nurse practitioner, a physician, and a respiratory therapist, among others.

Naming Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport and Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport St. Mary as defendants, the plaintiffs argued that the mandate runs afoul of Louisiana’s Constitution and state laws that permit residents to make their own medical decisions.

While a lower-court judge had previously dismissed the lawsuit, the appeals court said in its October 28 decision that the Oschner employees may not be fired or disciplined for failure to get the COVID-19 jab at least until they have a chance to make their arguments in a hearing.

Attorney Jimmy Faircloth, who has filed several lawsuits on behalf of Louisiana employees arguing for the right to make their own health care decisions, told NOLA.com the court’s decision to issue a temporary restraining order is a good sign.

“To get a temporary restraining order, you must convince the court when you file something that you have a substantial likelihood of success,” Faircloth said. “This very important issue is a resounding wakeup call to all the employers in the state that have been hoodwinked into believing that you can do this.”

According to a report by US News, Oschner Health has “expressed disappointment” in the ruling.

Thomas said in response to the court’s decision the health system is “deferring our compliance deadline for all Ochsner LSU Health employees across facilities in Shreveport and Monroe until the matter is settled,” but said “Ochsner Health intends to appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court and is confident we will prevail.”

It’s unclear whether the temporary restraining order will lead to a permanent protection of employees’ rights to refuse the jab, but it appears likely the court will ultimately dismiss the plaintiffs’ request.

Attorney Joel Friedman, a Tulane Law School professor who specializes in labor law, told NOLA.com the temporary restraining order “just postpones the inevitable,” arguing that “[t]here’s no violation of any right to privacy here because the government has a compelling interest to require vaccinations under the circumstances to promote public health.”

Threatening to fire workers for non-compliance with the COVID injection mandate is not the only move Oschner has made to push for widespread vaccination, even among non-employees.

Before the court’s ruling, Oschner took a step beyond mandating the experimental, abortion-tainted COVID-19 drugs for its employees, announcing it would institute a “spousal COVID vaccine fee” set to take effect in 2022 that would hike insurance rates for employees whose spouses covered under the same plan have opted not to get the jab.

The Federalist reported that under the requirements, which add a $100 premium per pay period for those with unvaccinated spouses, “[e]mployees of Louisiana’s largest hospital system could lose more than 5 percent of their annual paycheck to totalitarian vaccine mandates, even if they themselves are vaccinated.”

It is unclear whether the spousal vaccine policy will be affected by any future hearing in response to the Oschner employee lawsuit.

The court also has not yet publicized when a hearing on the matter of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for Oschner Health employees is to take place.

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The British army did not investigate five bush fires its soldiers sparked in Kenya weeks before they ignited an even larger inferno that destroyed thousands of acres of East African wildlife reserve and left one man dead.

The British government wants to evade compensating for the environmental impact of the bush fires by claiming “sovereign immunity” for its military exercises in the former UK colony. If it succeeds, not only will the UK not provide compensation, it will also continue ignoring the trauma, restlessness, health issues and displacement caused to local communities.

The revelation comes days before the Ministry of Defence (MOD) is due in court to defend itself against a compensation claim being brought by 1,400 Kenyans. They blame British troops for accidentally burning down 12,000 acres (nearly 50 square kilometres) of land in central Kenya earlier this year.

Declassified understands that UK government lawyers are urgently trying to stop a Kenyan judge from hearing a class action suit on Monday at Nanyuki High Court, 150km north of Nairobi.

The lawyers are expected to argue that the British military has “sovereign immunity” for their actions in the former UK colony.

One man, Linus Murangiri, was crushed to death by a vehicle as local people rushed to help put out the fire in Lolldaiga Conservancy on 23 March. The fire burnt for at least four days in a prized wildlife reserve on the foothills of Mount Kenya – a tourist destination popular with the royal family.

A British soldier in Kenya posted on Snapchat during the incident: “Caused a fire, killed an elephant and feel terrible about it but hey-ho, when in Rome.” Eyewitnesses said it smelt “like a barbecue”. The Kenya Wildlife Service claims no elephants, which are known to roam in the area, died.

Speaking on Kenyan TV during the fire, UK High Commissioner in Nairobi Jane Marriott said:

“Accidents do happen. It’s not great and we’re really sorry and we really wish it hadn’t happened…We’re doing everything we can to mitigate those circumstances and put in place measures to ensure it never happens again.”

When asked by a journalist if there had been another fire three weeks earlier, Marriott said:

“I haven’t seen any confirmed reports of another fire, but you know fires do happen. It’s very volatile conditions up there with the high winds – tinder box, combustible grass at the moment and the rains are late.”

Warnings ignored

Although Marriott claims she was unaware of an earlier fire, Declassified has found that in the four weeks leading up to the Lolldaiga disaster British soldiers sparked five other blazes while training on grassland near Mount Kenya.

A freedom of information response from the MOD reveals:

  • 24 February: Fire at Ole Maisor ranch burnt 200 by 500 metre area.
  • 27 February: Fire at Mpala ranch burnt “less than 200m by 200m”.
  • 28 February: Fire at Archers Post burnt “less than 200m by 200m”.
  • 1 March: Fire at Ol Doinyo Lemboro burnt “less than 200m by 200m”.
  • 1 March: Fire at Ole Maisor ranch burnt “approximately 200m by 800m”.

None of these fires were investigated. The army also admitted to causing another two fires in Kenya in 2019, but when asked for further details said “no documents are held” as they “did not meet the threshold for investigation.”

The MOD’s Defence Infrastructure Organisation said it was “only required to investigate significant fires when a loss of equipment, injury or significant environmental damage has occurred.”

Regarding the largest fire on 23 March, the MOD press office told Declassified:

“The British Army has conducted an internal investigation into the fire on Lolldaiga Conservancy. As this is part of an ongoing court case, it would be inappropriate to comment any further.”

UK army training areas in Kenya

The British army has access to 155,000 hectares of land across nine sites in Kenya for training exercises. Many of the sites are in Laikipia county, a district that was known as the White Highlands during colonial times because European settlers occupied so much of its land.

Britain granted independence in 1963 after brutally suppressing an uprising by the Kenya Land and Freedom Army – also known as the Mau Mau.

The African Centre for Corrective and Preventive Action (ACCPA), a campaign group which is part of the lawsuit, told Declassified it believed the British government would try to use the “state immunity” argument “to silence us” in Laikipia’s environmental court on Monday.

James Mwangi, the ACCPA’s chairman, said in a statement:

“While the recent fire at Lolldaiga has raised so much concern in both countries, it certainly hasn’t been the only fire caused by British soldiers in the course of their training at the Lolldaiga Conservancy. A few years back in 2017 and 2015 there were similar fires that spread to homesteads, destroying property and harboring health issues to the nearby residents.

“Often, we are mobilized to give much needed aid to put out the fire, sustaining injuries in the process as was the case with Linus Murangiri who died in the fire, and once the fire is out no other concern is raised to the community. Reports arising from the investigations were never disclosed to the immediate community, nor measures put in place to curb future occurrences.

“This explains why the British army was not in a position to stop the current fires which lasted for over a week. Unsurprisingly, and like in other incidents, the military resumed training not much bothered with the trauma, restlessness, health issues and displacement the fire had caused to my community.”

“Scorched environment”

The British army has regularly held military exercises in Kenya to prepare troops for tours of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mwangi told Declassified:

“Growing up at Lolldaiga is incomparable to any other experiences in most parts of Kenya. British soldiers in full military gear aboard long military convoys, tanks and armored carriers often colour the dusty roads leading to Lolldaiga Conservancy. The following weeks would be followed with heavy bombardments, low flying crafts, explosions and smoke only comparable to real battlefield events.”

Mwangi said that during the training, “shock and sleepless nights would be the norm and the wild animals, as if in retaliation or defence from the invasion of their habitat, intrude the communities killing people and destroying crops”.

“After a couple of weeks”, he added, “the officers vacate, leaving a trail of scorched environment, military waste, undetonated grenades, and burnt vegetation.”

Mwangi claimed unexploded ordnance has caused injuries to children and the elderly. In 2015, 10-year-old Ekisonga Nyasasai was hospitalised after stepping on an explosive near Archers Post, which Kenyan MPs claimed had been left behind by British troops.

The MOD says it clears land after exercises, although it has previously paid millions in compensation to hundreds of Kenyans bereaved or maimed by abandoned UK explosives.

The ACCPA chairman also claims that British military exercises pollute the local water supply. “Years of unsustainable environmental use have turned the live nourishing waters from Lolldaiga Hills into waters of death and misery,” he said.

“Rampant cases of miscarriages, unprecedented bolivine blindness in cattle and blurred vision among the majority of the population indicate presence of pollutants and chemicals in the soil and water.” A local preacher and his one-year-old child were hospitalised for smoke inhalation during the most recent fire at Lolldaiga, according to a BBC report.

Mwangi believes UK forces have not taken enough steps to protect the environment.

“British military training at Lolldaiga has been ongoing for about four decades now,” he said. “No environmental assessment test has been made for all these years, to ascertain the sustainability of the training activities in a water catchment area adjacent to a community of about 2,000 households and an approximate population of about 10,000 people including children.”

The litigation over the Lolldiaga fire comes at a time when the UK is seeking to consolidate its military presence in East Africa. This January, Britain’s defence secretary Ben Wallace opened a newly refurbished headquarters for the British army in Kenya, which cost £70 million.

Then in July, Wallace signed a new five-year defence co-operation agreement with Kenya, due to be ratified by both country’s parliaments. Under the previous agreement, Britain paid a very small sum, around £175,000 a year, to lease space at certain Kenyan military facilities.  Since the fire at Lolldaiga, the British army claims to have distributed 100,000 seedlings to the conservancy.

Declassified has previously revealed concerns about the environmental impact of British military bases in Cyprus, Belize and Oman.

The British High Commissioner to Kenya was asked to comment.

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NNTV, the standard policy tool that Pharma, the FDA, & CDC no longer want to talk about

A funny thing happened this afternoon. Not funny as in “haha”. More like funny as in, “ohhhhh that’s how the FDA rigs the process.”

I was reading the CDC’s “Guidance for Health Economics Studies Presented to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), 2019 Update” and I realized that the FDA’s woeful risk-benefit analysis in connection with Pfizer’s EUA application to jab children ages 5 to 11 violates many of the principles of the CDC’s Guidance document. The CDC “Guidance” document describes 21 things that every health economics study in connection with vaccines must do and the FDA risk-benefit analysis violated at least half of them.

Today I want to focus on a single factor: the Number Needed to Vaccinate (NNTV). In four separate places the CDC Guidance document mentions the importance of coming up with a Number Needed to Vaccinate (NNTV). I did not recall seeing an NNTV in the FDA risk-benefit document. So I checked the FDA’s risk-benefit analysis again and sure enough, there was no mention of an NNTV.

Because the FDA failed to provide an NNTV, I will attempt to provide it here.

First a little background. The Number Needed to Treat (NNT) in order to prevent a single case, hospitalization, ICU admission, or death, is a standard way to measure the effectiveness of any drug. It’s an important tool because it enables policymakers to evaluate tradeoffs between a new drug, a different existing drug, or doing nothing. In vaccine research the equivalent term is Number Needed to Vaccinate (NNTV, sometimes also written as NNV) in order to prevent a single case, hospitalization, ICU admission, or death (those are 4 different NNTVs that one could calculate).

Pharma HATES talking about NNTV and they hate talking about NNTV even more when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines because the NNTV is so ridiculously high that this vaccine could not pass any honest risk-benefit analysis.

Indeed about a year ago I innocently asked on Twitter what the NNTV is for coronavirus vaccines.

Pharma sent a swarm of trolls in to attack me and Pharma goons published hits pieces on me outside of Twitter to punish me for even asking the question. Of course none of the Pharma trolls provided an estimate of the NNTV for COVID-19 shots. That tells us that we are exactly over the target.

Various health economists have calculated a NNTV for COVID-19 vaccines.

  • Ronald Brown, a health economist in Canada, estimated that the NNTV to prevent a single case of coronavirus is from 88 to 142.
  • Others have calculated the NNTV to prevent a single case at 256.
  • German and Dutch researchers, using a large (500k) data set from a field study in Israel calculated an NNTV between 200 and 700 to prevent one case of COVID-19 for the mRNA shot marketed by Pfizer. They went further and figured out that the “NNTV to prevent one death is between 9,000 and 100,000 (95% confidence interval), with 16,000 as a point estimate.”

You can see why Pharma hates this number so much (I can picture Pharma’s various PR firms sending out an “All hands on deck!” message right now to tell their trolls to attack this article). One would have to inject a lot of people to see any benefit and the more people who are injected the more the potential benefits are offset by the considerable side-effects from the shots.

Furthermore, the NNTV to prevent a single case is not a very meaningful measure because most people, particularly children, recover on their own (or even more quickly with ivermectin if treated early). The numbers that health policy makers should really want to know are the NNTV to prevent a single hospitalization, ICU admission, or death. But with the NNTV to prevent a single case already so high, and with significant adverse events from coronavirus vaccines averaging about 15% nationwide, Pharma and the FDA dare not calculate an NNTV for hospitalizations, ICU, and deaths, because then no one would ever take this product (bye bye $93 billion in annual revenue).

Increased all cause mortality in the Pfizer clinical trial of adults

As Bobby Kennedy explains, Pfizer’s clinical trial in adults showed alarming increases in all cause mortality in the vaccinated:

In Pfizer’s 6 month clinical trial in adults — there was 1 covid death out of 22,000 in the vaccine (“treatment”) group and 2 Covid deaths out of 22,000 in the placebo group (see Table s4). So NNTV = 22,000. The catch is there were 5 heart attack deaths in the vaccine group and only 1 in placebo group. So for every 1 life saved from Covid, the Pfizer vaccine kills 4 from heart attacks. All cause mortality in the 6 month study was 20 in vaccine group and 14 in placebo group. So a 42% all cause mortality increase among the vaccinated. The vaccine loses practically all efficacy after 6 months so they had to curtail the study. They unblinded and offered the vaccine to the placebo group. At that point the rising harm line had long ago intersected the sinking efficacy line.

Former NY Times investigative reporter Alex Berenson also wrote about the bad outcomes for the vaccinated in the Pfizer clinical trial in adults (here). Berenson received a lifetime ban from Twitter for posting Pfizer’s own clinical trial data.

Pfizer learned their lesson with the adult trial and so when they conducted a trial of their mRNA vaccine in children ages 5 to 11 they intentionally made it too small (only 2,300 participants) and too short (only followed up for 2 months) in order to hide harms.

Estimating an NNTV in children ages 5 to 11 using Pfizer’s own clinical trial data

All of the NNTV estimates above are based on data from adults. In kids the NNTV will be even higher (the lower the risk, the higher the NNTV to prevent a single bad outcome). Children ages 5 to 11 are at extremely low risk of death from coronavirus. In a meta-analysis combining data from 5 studies, Stanford researchers Cathrine Axfors and John Ioannidis found a median infection fatality rate (IFR) of 0.0027% in children ages 0-19. In children ages 5 to 11 the IFR is even lower. Depending on the study one looks at, COVID-19 is slightly less dangerous or roughly equivalent to the flu in children.

So how many children would need to be injected with Pharma’s mRNA shot in order to prevent a single hospitalization, ICU admission, or death?

Let’s examine Pfizer’s EUA application and the FDA’s risk-benefit analysis. By Pfizer’s own admission, there were zero hospitalization, ICU admissions, or deaths, in the treatment or control group in their study of 2,300 children ages 5 to 11.

So the Number Needed to Vaccinate in order to prevent a single hospitalization, ICU admission, or death, according to Pfizer’s own data, is infinity. ∞. Not the good kind of infinity as in God or love or time or the universe. This is the bad kind of infinity as in you could vaccinate every child age 5 to 11 in the U.S. and not prevent a single hospitalization, ICU admission, or death from coronavirus according to Pfizer’s own clinical trial data as submitted to the FDA. Of course Pfizer likes this kind of infinity because it means infinite profits. [Technically speaking the result is “undefined” because mathematically one cannot divide by zero, but you get my point.]

Estimating an NNTV and risk-benefit model in children ages 5 to 11 using the limited data that are available

Everyone knows that Pfizer was not even trying to conduct a responsible clinical trial of their mRNA shot in kids ages 5 to 11. Pfizer could have submitted to the FDA a paper napkin with the words “Iz Gud!” written in crayon and the VRBPAC would have approved the shot. They are all in the cartel together and they are all looking forward to their massive payoff/payday.

But let’s not be like Pharma. Instead, let’s attempt to come up with a best guess estimate based on real world data. Over time, others will develop a much more sophisticated estimate (for example, Walach, Klement, & Aukema, 2021 estimated an NNTV for 3 different populations based on “days post dose”). But for our purposes here I think there is a much easier way to come up with a ballpark NNTV estimate for children ages 5 to 11.

Here’s the benefits model:

  • As of October 30, 2021, the CDC stated that 170 children ages 5 to 11 have died of COVID-19-related illness since the start of the pandemic. (That represents less than 0.1% of all coronavirus-related deaths nationwide even though children that age make up 8.7% of the U.S. population).
  • The Pfizer mRNA shot only “works” for about 6 months (it increases risk in the first month, provides moderate protection in months 2 through 4 and then effectiveness begins to wane, which is why all of the FDA modeling only used a 6 month time-frame). So any modeling would have to be based on vaccine effectiveness in connection with the 57 (170/3) children who might otherwise have died of COVID-related illness during a 6-month period.
  • At best, the Pfizer mRNA shot might be 80% effective against hospitalizations and death. That number comes directly from the FDA modeling (p. 32). I am bending over backwards to give Pfizer the benefit of considerable doubt because again, the Pfizer clinical trial showed NO reduction in hospitalizations or death in this age group. So injecting all 28,384,878 children ages 5 to 11 with two doses of Pfizer (which is what the Biden administration wants to do) would save, at most, 45 lives (0.8 effectiveness x 57 fatalities that otherwise would have occurred during that time period = 45).
  • So then the NNTV to prevent a single fatality in this age group is 630,775 (28,384,878 / 45). But it’s a two dose regimen so if one wants to calculate the NNTV per injection the number doubles to 1,261,550. It’s literally the worst NNTV in the history of vaccination.

If you inject that many children, you certainly will have lots and lots of serious side effects including disability and death. So let’s look at the risk side of the equation.

Here’s the risk model:

  • Because the Pfizer clinical trial has no useable data, I have to immuno-bridge from the nearest age group.
  • 31,761,099 people (so just about 10% more people than in the 5 to 11 age bracket) ages 12 to 24 have gotten at least one coronavirus shot.
  • The COVID-19 vaccine program has only existed for 10 months and younger people have only had access more recently (children 12 to 15 have had access for five months; since May 10) — so we’re looking at roughly the same observational time period as modeled above.
  • During that time, there are 128 reports of fatal side effects following coronavirus mRNA injections in people 12 to 24. (That’s through October 22, 2021. There is a reporting lag though so the actual number of reports that have been filed is surely higher).
  • Kirsch, Rose, and Crawford (2021) estimate that VAERS undercounts fatal reactions by a factor of 41 which would put the total fatal side effects in this age-range at 5,248. (Kirsch et al. represents a conservative estimate because others have put the underreporting factor at 100.)
  • With potentially deadly side effects including myo- and pericarditis disproportionately impacting youth it is reasonable to think that over time the rate of fatal side effects from mRNA shots in children ages 5 to 11 might be similar to those in ages 12 to 24.

So, to put it simply, the Biden administration plan would kill 5,248 children via Pfizer mRNA shots in order to save 45 children from dying of coronavirus.

For every one child saved by the shot, another 117 would be killed by the shot.

The Pfizer mRNA shot fails any honest risk-benefit analysis in children ages 5 to 11.

Even under the best circumstances, estimating NNTV and modeling risk vs. benefits is fraught. In the current situation, with a new and novel bioengineered virus, where Pfizer’s data are intentionally underpowered to hide harms, and the FDA, CDC, & Biden Administration are doing everything in their power to push dangerous drugs on kids, making good policy decisions is even more difficult.

If the FDA or CDC want to calculate a different NNTV (and explain how they arrived at that number) I’m all ears. But we all know that the FDA refused to calculate an NNTV not because they forgot, but because they knew the number was so high that it would destroy the case for mRNA vaccines in children this age. Your move CDC — your own Guidance document states that you must provide this number.

Update: CDC finally mentions NNTV, but . . . 

Toward the end of the six-hour CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) Nov. 2 meeting where the committee voted to recommend Pfizer’s EUA vaccine for children 5 – 11, there was finally a mention of NNTV. It was on slide 36 of a presentation by CDC official D.r Sara Oliver. Unfortunately the CDC estimate was untethered from reality. I’ll explain:

Oliver claimed the NNTV to prevent a single case is 10, even though the best lower bound estimate is 88 and other estimates are 200 or higher (see calculations here and here).

Then she claimed the NNTV to prevent a single hospitalization is between 2,213 and 8,187. This is dishonest and a violation of scientific norms.

NNTV is calculated by dividing 1 by the Absolute Risk Reduction. There was no Absolute Risk Reduction in hospitalizations in the Pfizer clinical trial in kids 5 to 11, because no one was hospitalized in either the treatment or control group. 1/0 is “undefined” not 8,187.

Oliver made no estimate of NNTV to prevent a single COVID-19-related death because that is also undefined (again, there were no COVID-related deaths in the treatment or placebo group in the trial so the absolute risk reduction was zero).

Oliver also did not model injuries or deaths from the vaccine (she immuno-bridged from an older age group to show benefits but ignored the reported harms from the vaccine in the older age group).

I should also note that my estimates of NNTV were based on CDC data showing 170 deaths from COVID-19-related illness in kids ages 5 to 11 over the last 18 months (I got the number directly from the CDC COVID tracking website).

However at the ACIP meeting, the CDC said the number of children in this age group who have died of COVID-19-related illness is 94.

If 94 is the correct number to use, then the NNTV to prevent a single death from COVID-19 related illness in this age group would be 28,384,878 / 31 = 915,641. But it’s a two-dose regimen, so if one wants to calculate the NNTV-per-injection the number doubles to 1,831,282.

I imagine that at most, half of American parents will be foolish enough to inject this toxic product into their kids. At a 50% uptake rate, the ACIP decision to approve the Pfizer shot will likely kill 2,624 children via adverse reactions in order to potentially save 12 from COVID-19-related illness.

Now you know why the CDC did not release the meeting materials prior to the ACIP meeting — they could not stand up to any public scrutiny.

Update 11/05/21:

I see that El Gato Malo engaged in a similar set of calculations back in September when Pfizer first released its “results.” He faced the same challenges as I did — namely, there is no usable data from Pfizer and so one has to pull from others sources. He builds a steel man case (the most generous possible defense of the Pfizer product) and yet his results are still in line with mine (my numbers are higher though because I use a lower estimate of vaccine effectiveness and correct for VAERS underreporting). So again, even under the most generous assumptions, the Pfizer mRNA shot fails any honest risk benefit assessment in connection with children 5 to 11.

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“US regulators finalize rule requiring Americans who work at big companies to get vaccinated by Jan. 4 or test weekly,” the AP reported on Thursday without providing further details.

“The Biden administration ordered U.S. companies Thursday to ensure their employees are fully vaccinated or regularly tested for Covid-19 by Jan. 4 — giving them a reprieve over the holidays before the long-awaited and hotly contested mandate takes affect,” CNBC reported.

“The administration on Thursday also pushed back the deadline for federal contractors to comply with a stricter set of vaccine requirements for staff from Dec. 8 to Jan. 4 to match the deadline set for other private companies and health-care providers,” the report added.

“The newly released rules, issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Labor Department, apply to businesses with 100 or more employees,” the report noted. “All unvaccinated workers must begin wearing masks by Dec. 5 and provide a negative Covid test on a weekly basis after the January deadline, according to the requirements. Companies are not required to pay for or provide the tests unless they are otherwise required to by state or local laws or in labor union contracts. Anyone who tests positive is prohibited from going into work.”

“Companies also have until Dec. 5 to offer paid time for employees to get vaccinated and paid sick leave for them to recover from any side effects,” the report added.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will also be policing workplaces nationwide to ensure compliance with the unlawful mandate.

“OSHA, which polices workplace safety for the Labor Department, will provide sample implementation plans and fact sheets among other materials to help companies adopt the new rules,” CNBC reported.

“OSHA will also conduct on-site workplace inspections to make sure companies comply with the rules, a senior administration official said. Penalties for noncompliance can range from $13,653 per serious violation to $136,532 if a company willfully violates the rules,” the report added.

“The vaccine mandate, which covers 84 million people employed in the private sector, represents the most expansive use of federal power to protect workers from Covid-19 since the virus was declared a pandemic in March 2020,” it continued.

“Biden’s vaccine mandate for large employers begins Jan 4, with hefty fines for noncompliance,” Disclose reported. “OSHA plans to send out agents to check that workplaces are in compliance with the rule. For willful violations, a company can be fined up to $136,532. The standard penalty is $13,653 for a single violation.”

According to the latest data, 75% of the U.S. population has had at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, while 67% are considered to be “fully vaccinated,” although the administration has now endorsed “boosters” since the vaccines’ efficacy wears off so quickly. Covid cases are down over 50% since September, even as Covid vaccines do not prevent transmission or significantly slow the spread of Covid.

Twenty-four state attorney generals in mid-September threatened to sue the Biden administration over the federal vaccine mandate after it was announced by executive order. These state AGs delivered a letter to the Biden administration that is worth reading in full.

“We, the Attorneys General of 24 states, write in opposition to your attempt to mandate the vaccination of private citizens,” the AGs’ letter reads. “On September 9, you announced that you would be ordering the Department of Labor to issue an emergency temporary standard, under the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act , which would mandate that private sector employers require most of their employees to either get a COVID-19 shot, submit to weekly testing, or be fired. Your plan is disastrous and counterproductive. From a policy perspective, this edict is unlikely to win hearts and minds-it will simply drive further skepticism. And at least some Americans will simply leave the job market instead of complying.”

“This will further strain an already-too-tight labor market, burdening companies and (therefore) threatening the jobs of even those who have received a vaccine,” the letter continues. “Worse still, many of those who decide to leave their jobs rather than follow your directive will be essential healthcare workers. This is no idle speculation. A New York hospital recently announced its plans to stop delivering babies after several staff members resigned in the face of New York’s mandate} And recent polling suggests those frontline healthcare workers are not outliers. 2 Thus, Mr. President, your vaccination mandate represents not only a threat to individual liberty, but a public health disaster that will displace vulnerable workers and exacerbate a nationwide hospital staffing crisis, with severe consequences for all Americans.”

“This government edict is also likely to increase skepticism of vaccines. You emphasized at your September 9 announcement ‘that the vaccines provide very strong protection from severe illness from COVID-19 … [and] the world’s leading scientists confirm that if you are fully vaccinated, your risk of severe illness from COVID-19 is very low’,” the letter continues. “You further stated that ‘only one of out of every 160,000 fully vaccinated Americans was hospitalized for COVID per day.’ And you said ‘the science makes clear’ that ‘if you’re fully vaccinated, you’re highly protected from severe illness, even if you get COVID-19.’ The mandate, however, sends exactly the opposite signal: it suggests that the vaccinated need protection from those who, for whatever personal reason, choose not to or cannot receive a COVID-19 shot. That is hardly a statement of confidence in the efficacy of vaccines.”

“The policy also fails to account for differences between employees that may justify more nuanced treatment by employers,” the letter states. “Most glaringly, your policy inexplicably fails to recognize natural immunity. Indeed, the CDC estimated that by late May 2021, over 120 million Americans had already been infected, and that number is likely tens of millions higher today.4 And your sweeping mandate fails to account for the fact that many workers-for example, those who work from home or work outdoors-are at almost no risk of exposure from their co-workers regardless of vaccine status. A one-size-fits-all policy is not reasoned decision-making. It is power for power’s sake.”

“Your edict is also illegal,” the letter adds. “You propose to enforce your mandate through the rarely used emergency temporary standard provision in the OSH Act. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Department has attempted to adopt an emergency temporary standard only one other time since 1983 (and that one exception came in June of this year and is being challenged). An emergency temporary standard does not have to go through notice and comment and can be made effective immediately upon publication. Because of this lack of process and oversight, courts have viewed these standards with suspicion. Between 1971 and 1983, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued nine emergency temporary standards. Of those, six were challenged. The courts fully vacated or stayed the standards in four cases, partially stayed the standards in another, and upheld only one of the six.”

“Courts are skeptical because the law demands it,” the letter continues. “To justify an emergency temporary standard, OSHA must determine that ’employees are exposed to grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards …. ‘ and it must conclude that ‘such emergency standard is necessary to protect employees from such danger.’ Each of the italicized phrases defeats your attempt to rely on this statute. First, while ‘grave danger’ is left undefined, your own statements during the announcement that those who are vaccinated have little chance of hospitalization or death undercut any assertion that there is ‘grave danger.’ Moreover, many Americans who have recovered from COVID-19 have obtained a level of natural immunity, and the statistics are clear that young people without co-morbidities have a low risk of hospitalization from COVID-19. You thus cannot plausibly meet the high burden of showing that employees in general are in grave danger.”

“What is more, the COVID-19 virus is not the sort of ‘substance,’ ‘agent,’ or ‘hazard’ to which the statute refers,” the attorney generals point out. “OSHA, as its full name suggests, exists to ensure occupational safety. In other words, it deals with work-related hazards, not all hazards one might encounter anywhere in the world. Congress made this clear in empowering OSHA to establish workplace standards not concerning whatever it likes, but rather ’employment and places of employment. ‘ The findings Congress passed with the law say the bill was motivated by a concern that ‘personal injuries and illnesses arising out of work situations impose a substantial burden upon . . . interstate commerce.’ Congress expressly intended to encourage ’employers and employees in their efforts to reduce the number of occupational safety and health hazards at their places of employment’.”

“When used in the context of a law directed toward occupational safety, the words ‘substances,’ ‘agents,’ and ‘hazards’ relate to the dangers presented by the job itself-for example, chemicals used at job sites and tools used to carry out tasks-not to dangers existing in the world generally. And indeed, this is consistent with how the Act elsewhere uses these words. One provision, for example, requires the government to prepare a report ‘listing all toxic substances in industrial usage.’ Another provision repeatedly imposes duties and powers regarding ‘substances’ and ‘agents’ to which employees are exposed as part of their employment. Still another requires studies regarding ‘the contamination of workers’ homes with hazardous chemicals and substances, including infectious agents, transported from the workplaces of such workers.’ All of these provisions are most naturally focused on dangers occurring at work because of one’s work, as opposed to dangers occurring in society generally, including at work.”

“Finally, broadly mandating vaccinations (or weekly COVID-19 testing) for 80 million Americans, simply because they work at a business of a certain size, hardly seems ‘necessary’ to meet any such danger,” the attorney generals note. “On the contrary, it is vastly overbroad and inexact. There are many less intrusive means to combat the spread of COVID-19 other than requiring vaccinations or COVID- 19 testing. The risks of COVID-19 spread also vary widely depending on the nature of the business in question, many of which can have their employees, for example, work remotely. The one-size­fits-almost-all approach you have decreed makes clear that you intend to use the OSH act as a pretext to impose an unprecedented, controversial public health measure on a nationwide basis that only incidentally concerns the workplace.”

The Biden administration will now undoubtedly be sued in federal court over this egregious overreach, which is not even a ‘law’ since it is not based on federal legislation.

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The Kids Are Dropping from the Murder Vaccine

November 7th, 2021 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

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He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The Nicaraguan elections are on Nov. 7, 2021. The U.S. government, the media that does its bidding, and even some self-described “leftists,” present a Nicaragua in “turmoil” and “crisis”—and the elections as a farce.

These attacks against the Sandinista government also emanate from academics, intellectuals, and journalists with ties to the members of the now-defunct Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), an organization with no political relevance or popular support whose members pretend to be leftist to an international audience but support the Nicaraguan right-wing and do the bidding of the U.S—betraying both Sandinismo and Nicaragua.

The people and organizations spewing these anti-Sandinista reports have taken it upon themselves to speak on behalf of Nicaraguans, whom they claim live in some sort of authoritarian nightmare that only U.S. intervention and the “international community” can fix.

Inside Nicaragua something else is afoot. The country is peaceful, getting ready for year-end activities that begin in November. People are going about their everyday business with interest but not obsession with the elections, as usually occurs in the U.S., where every inane and self-serving photo-op and publicist-generated skirmish is reported ad nauseum.

No doubt there is plenty of news reported about the elections. For example, poll after poll, in various regions of the country, show majority support (about 2/3) for the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)’s ticket, with Daniel Ortega at the helm; in the North of the country, the support is even higher.

About 180 international electoral “companions” will observe the elections. Some 245,000 Nicaraguans will be involved in working the elections as poll watchers, polling station board members, electoral police, and voting center coordinators. All parties registered their poll representatives by October 14. In conjunction with the Ministry of Health, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) issued a range of health measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, which include the avoidance of massive in-person events while prioritizing virtual platforms.

In-person events must be carried out in open areas with no more than 200 people. No caravans are allowed. With regards to voting, in late July, Nicaraguan citizens had the opportunity to update and check their address to verify their polling station; citizens can also check online. The CSE also notes that one cannot vote with witnesses or with a photocopy of one’s ID—although expired IDs can be used to vote, a measure taken to increase participation of the electorate. On Nov. 1 electoral material was sent to the 153 municipalities of the country. In sum, CSE, the Nicaraguan government, and the citizenry are very well organized and ready for the elections.

[Source: twitter.com]

The issues that will determine election outcomes are straightforward. Nicaraguans are concerned, among other things, about their economic well-being. The Nicaraguan economy’s strong and enviable financial performance came to a screeching halt due to the U.S.-backed coup d’état in 2018. As a consequence, thousands of people have left the country in search of work and economic stability—something that continues to be cynically reported in Western media as massive emigration due to government crackdowns, which is demonstrably false.

Since the failed U.S.-backed coup, the Sandinista government has gone into hyperdrive to recover the economic trajectory it was on prior to the U.S.-funded attack. All economic indicators, particularly this year, suggest that Nicaragua is, in fact, recovering at neck-breaking speed, including an expected 6-8% GDP growth in 2021, to the chagrin of their aggressors.

Nevertheless, some families have had more difficulty than others, leading some to consider—and some of them to depart for—the United States.

U.S. Aggression and Subsequent Migration

During the electoral campaign, the Biden team promised a more humane, just, and rule-bound immigration regime in contrast to Trump’s. They communicated to Central Americans that they would be treated more fairly and even welcomed at the U.S. border.

The advertisement campaign worked. People in the U.S. and all over the world—including in Nicaragua—believed what they said. Thousands embarked on their journey to the United States, believing they would be allowed in.

In addition, in the U.S., immigrant workers seem necessary due to increasing layoffs following vaccine mandates among blue-collar workers and U.S. citizen worker resistance to ever devolving labor conditions, including low pay, non-existent benefits, COVID fears, and increasing demand.

Despite the Biden team backtracking once in office, with Kamala Harris telling Central American immigrants “do not come,” border agents whipping migrants on horseback, increased roadblocks to asylum claims, and a continuation of many of Trump’s policies to varying degrees, people decided to depart for the U.S.…in droves.

Due to U.S. imposition of unfettered imperial neoliberal policies in Northern Triangle countries, Central American migrants who appear at the U.S.-border (if not caught and diverted by Mexico) largely come from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Nevertheless, U.S. intervention has also reached the shores of Nicaragua, not just with the U.S.-backed coup d’état in 2018, but with subsequent meddling and sanctioning that has made it more difficult for the Sandinista government to look after its people.

Maria Elvira Salazar Nicaragua Congress Felix Maradiaga

Far-right Florida Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar holding up photos of U.S.-funded coup leaders Felix Maradiaga and Arturo Cruz at a hearing on Nicaragua. [Source: thegrayzone.com]

Hurricanes Eta and Iota made things worse. Consequently, some Nicaraguans have left for the U.S., in search of what they are prevented from achieving in Nicaragua due to U.S. intervention and attacks.

Moreover, due to U.S. political aggression against Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba, migrants from these countries seem to be treated more favorably than others at the U.S. border.

Consequently, and predictably, since 2018, Nicaraguan migration to the United States has increased after historic lows in the years prior due to economic growth and enviable social governance of the socialist-oriented Sandinista government.

Even in this context, the number of migrants from Nicaragua to the United States is smallcompared to overall immigration and from Northern Triangle migrants, in particular. Western media outlets admit that the apprehensions this year—that are part of longer emigration patterns since the 2018 U.S.-backed coup d’état—are at a historic high “since at least a decade.”

In fact, since the Sandinistas returned to power in 2007, border patrol “encounters” at the U.S. border “hovered” around only 1,000. Nicaraguans, in short, were not emigrating to the U.S. prior to the 2018 US-backed coup and their numbers at the U.S.-Mexico border now are very low compared to those of their Northern neighbors.

Paradoxically, the good governance of the Sandinista government meant low migration to the United States, precisely what the U.S. government claims it wants.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I’ve had informal conversations with some young adults in my town, on the outskirts of the city of Estelí, about emigration. Leading up to and including the summer 2021 (winter in Nicaragua), in the town where I live, some young people questioned: Should I stay or should I go?

Esteli-Nicaragua , (pop. 119,000) is situated in the north central highlands (elevation 844 meters), surrounded by forested … | Nicaragua travel, Nicaragua, Managua

Town of Estelí. [Source: pinterest.com]

In the surrounding communities, including my own, some young people did leave—about 20 in total, I am told. They constitute a very, very small percentage of the young people in my and surrounding towns. Whatever the exact (small) number, enough people have left for individuals here to know someone who left or heard about someone who left for the U.S.

The increase in apprehensions into the summer 2021 by U.S. Customs and Border Protection is consistent with these anecdotal accounts. When I asked about the reasons emigrants decided to leave, these young adults tell me that emigrants left due to economic aspirations and difficulties.

NO ONE mentioned government repression, authoritarianism, fear due to their political leanings, or any other political reason, regardless of their political inclination. All of them tell me that the people who left did so because of economic pursuits and the belief that the U.S. president was letting everyone in.

It is important to point out that the people leaving tend to have enough money to pay for the trip, including the fees for a coyote. Some of the people who crossed successfully and are working in the U.S. usually have someone helping them settle.

Some of the people whom I spoke with also mentioned that they were considering or had considered leaving for the U.S. Again, they told me that they could probably make more money in the U.S. and it was unclear that they were going to make the money they desired in Nicaragua.

The reasons for deciding not to take the trip include: (1) not having money to take the trip; (2) family members do not want them to take the trip; (3) they thought about leaving because their friends had left and were doing well, but that, upon consideration, it was better not to do it—too risky or because they were doing just fine in Nicaragua.

Even among those who considered but did not actually leave for the U.S., “political repression” did not figure in their decision. The reports of difficulties on the way to the US, including deaths, also had a sobering effect on wanting to go North.

COVID-19 in Nicaragua Amidst Western Aggression

COVID-19 has exacerbated economic difficulties that stem from the 2018 U.S.-backed coup. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua has engaged in a herculean effort to secure vaccines for its people.

Western aggression—coupled with Western greed—has limited vaccines for Nicaragua.

This summer was a tough one for families whose members came down with COVID-19, making people more worried. Economic desires/needs and COVID worries converged to pushed some to consider—and some to head for—the United States.

In my town, after a wave of vaccinations reached Estelí, the talk of heading to the U.S., however, waned. This is supported by data that shows a decrease in migration apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border later in the summer 2021. The latest wave of vaccinations in Estelí on Oct. 7th, as with the rest of the country, showed high demand for vaccinations. The Ministry of Health organized four points for vaccinations.

In all of them, people started making lines the day before to assure a poke. Experienced with the massive demand for vaccinations against COVID-19, the Ministry of Health started working and organizing the lines the day before vaccinations were to occur, handing out numbers so that people knew early whether they would be able to get vaccinated. They started vaccinating people at midnight the day of the announced vaccination, so as to not keep people waiting any longer. In a nearby municipality, San Nicolas, the wait times were much shorter.

Just a couple of weeks later, the arrival of the Cuban (Abdala and Soberana 02) and Russian vaccines (Sputnik Light) designated to vaccinate children between 2 – 17 and those over 18 – 29, respectively, further allayed people’s concerns.

Vacunas cubanas contra Covid-19 llegarán en próximas horas Managua. Radio La Primerísima

Cuban vaccines. [Source: radiolapremerisima.com]

Later, more Sputnik V and Pfizer vaccines also arrived. Unlike the United States, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua is not pursuing vaccine mandates. Vaccination is 100% voluntary.

Even without mandates, the demand for vaccines is high, which reflects the amount of trust that the population has for the government. Given the way the oligarchs and empire have used the pandemic to score economic and political points, including a marketing and media campaign against non-Western vaccines, among some more well-to-do people, there is a desire for “American” vaccines.

No doubt some in the Nicaraguan population have been manipulated with the ruse that “American” vaccines are “better.” Consequently, recently, some Nicaraguans went over to Honduras to get the Pfizer vaccine, having bought the propaganda. Western media outlets cynically and falsely reported that Nicaraguans deciding to get vaccinated in Honduras were doing so because of vaccine shortages in Nicaragua.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The arrival of the 1,200,00 Cuban vaccines in Nicaragua has increased access. One no longer sees the lines for vaccines we were accustomed to.

Recently, the government announced the arrival of an additional 3,200,000 Sputnik Light vaccines. Importantly, the percentage of Nicaraguans who have gone abroad to get vaccinated, whether in Honduras, the U.S., or anywhere else, is negligible.

On Nov. 4, the Sandinista government announced that about 49% of the entire population (over 3 million people) have been vaccinated. Among the Nicaraguan working-class (most of the country), trust in the Cuban and Russian vaccines is equal to that of “American” vaccines. In fact, a few people whom I know that received Sputnik Light are even happier because it requires only one jab. Some of these working-class people speak about the “ignorance” of those who only want the “American” vaccines.

I personally know one case of an individual who decided to go to Honduras to vaccinate his 14-year-old child within days of having the option of vaccinating him with the Cuban vaccine. This individual’s mother—the child’s grandmother—died the day he went. He was unable to see her alive again.

There was another terrible case in which a couple of people were injured in a car accident on the way back to Nicaragua from Honduras after getting the vaccine. Recently, the Nicaraguan government returned about 100,000 Pfizer doses to Honduras, which had lent these to the Nicaraguan government in early October so that it could vaccinate pregnant women and lactating mothers. Vaccination initiatives are part of the very successful policies that the Sandinista government has implemented due to COVID-19.

Despite criticism and the lies on which it was based, the Nicaraguan government never implemented lockdowns, knowing that most of the population must work daily to provide for their necessities. In Latin American, people whose countries have enforced lockdowns have suffered dire consequences.

Economic elites have the option of taking a plane and going to the United States to get vaccinated, which is a widespread phenomenon throughout Latin America. The working classes do not have that luxury, so media campaigns against Russian and Cuban vaccines only hurt the most disadvantaged when they are swayed by the highly destructive Western rhetoric against non-Western vaccines, because they will be left without an option should they want to get vaccinated.

The United States knows that if it subjects Nicaraguans to material suffering through economic attacks such as the NICA Act and the RENACER Act (approved by the House of Representatives on Nov. 3), some people will undoubtedly blame the Sandinista government for their individual economic suffering.

Already, some Nicaraguans do blame the government for their stagnated economic well-being, either unaware of the attacks the U.S. is launching or propagandized to minimize their importance.

NicaNotes: Stop US-Directed Regime Change in Nicaragua; Stop the RENACER Act! - Alliance for Global Justice

Protestors gather at the capitol to protest the RENACER Act. [Source: afgj.org]

Elections, Western Aggression, and Migration: An Old Story with a New Virus

Despite economic suffering generated by the U.S.-backed coup d’état in 2018, which was subsequently exacerbated with COVID-19 and Eta and Iota hurricanes, emigration to the United States is not as widespread as reported, certainly much lower compared to emigration from the Northern Triangle.

Nicaragua accounts for only 3% of the total apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border this year thus far. The emigration of the Nicaraguans that do leave stem from mostly economic causes, which can be directly traced to the 2018 U.S.-backed coup—difficulties that the worldwide pandemic and natural disasters has exacerbated.

Uncertainty associated with U.S. threats of economic unilateral coercive measures if the FSLN wins the presidential elections is no doubt another “push” factor for those who remember the economic blockade the U.S. imposed on Nicaragua in the 1980s and its disastrous consequences.

A picture containing text, scene, platform, way Description automatically generated

U.S. Sanctions emptied the shelves at supermarkets in Nicaragua in the 1980s. [Source: havanatimes.org]

Therefore, migration to the U.S., in the Nicaraguan case such as it is now, can be largely traced to imperial intervention and subsequent imperial neglect and abuse. It’s not, as Western media repeatedly regurgitate, a consequence of political repression, a claim that is not supported but nevertheless used to manufacture consent against the Sandinista government so as to justify—and demobilize opposition to—imperial aggression.

Importantly, all of these challenges in Nicaragua have not considerably dampened support for the Sandinista government. The latest poll, released on Nov. 3, 2021, just days before the elections, articulates, once again, massive support for the FSLN with Daniel Ortega’s leadership and predicts an easy win for the FSLN coalition.

The only “crisis” in Nicaragua is the one the U.S. and its imperial lackeys want to inflict upon the country. Without a single vote cast, the U.S., the European Union and Western media—and some U.S.- and Western-controlled international organizations—have already dismissed the upcoming election as a “fraud,” despite there being five opposition candidates on the ballot running against Ortega.

By the looks of it and their announced plans, the United States and their allies will work hard to delegitimize the Nicaraguan elections and subsequent FSLN win at the ballot box. They have spared no regime change effort against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

For example, just days before the election, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter suspended the accounts of pro-Sandinista journalists and activists with the lie that the accounts were generated by “a troll farm run by the government of Nicaragua and the [FSLN].” The people who were censored have spoken out against this attack, which they suffered simply for being Sandinistas or supporting Sandinistas.

U.S. agents have misrepresented and exploited land disputes in Nicaragua’s autonomous Indigenous territories to the UN Human Rights Council and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In a bizarre turn of events, judging by apocalyptic Western media reports and U.S. (and some European) politician rhetoric, the Nicaraguan election seems to be much more of an alarming and consequential event for Western elites than for Nicaraguans who, for the most part, want to continue leaving in peace, building their lives on the rights and privileges they have grown accustomed to since Sandinista returned to power.

A U.S. citizen would be astounded at the amount of support that the Sandinista government provides to its people, especially because in the United States, policies enacted by the government represent, to an exceeding degree, the interest of its elites.

Among its initiatives, the Nicaraguan Sandinista government has launched Vivienda Digna, Hambre Cero, Usura Cero as well as others that reduced poverty.

For the next few years, the FLSN has articulated a bold plan to further reduce poverty and increase the well-being of all Nicaraguans, which extends what they have been working on since returning to power. Their efforts have, thus far, garnered international recognition.

The achievements of the Sandinista government over the past 14 years have yet to be fully catalogued and recognized. The achievements with regards to public health have been trulyastonishing, and great strides have been made in other domains, including public education, electricity and clean water access, housing for the poor, support for small and medium businesses, treatment of its indigenous communities, food sovereignty, and many, many more.

Families moving into new houses in Cuidad Belen

Families moving into government-built houses in Cuidad Belen. [Source: qcostarica.com]

Of course, these achievements are never reported in Western media because they contradict the “dictator” narrative against Daniel Ortega that the United States and its allies use as part of their multi-pronged effort to destroy the socialist-oriented, highly successful FSLN government.

The U.S. and their lackeys are trying to tapar el sol con un dedo—block the sun with one finger!

But the achievements of the socialist-oriented Sandinista government, while fuzzy for a Western audience, are crystal clear for Nicaraguans, especially its working class (most of the population).

The expected, resounding victory of Daniel Ortega from the FSLN coalition is not a function of authoritarianism, but a consequence of the work the Sandinista government has done for the Nicaraguan population and the trust they’ve garnered as a result. One project at a time.

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Yazer Lanuza is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Lanuza’s research examines the causes and consequences of social inequality in three domains: education, family and the criminal justice system. He focuses largely, though not exclusively, on the experiences of immigrants and their offspring from Latin America and Asia. Yader can be reached at: [email protected].

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The FDA repeatedly promised “full transparency” with regard to Covid-19 vaccines, including reaffirming “the FDA’s commitment to transparency” when licensing Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.  

Transparency regarding this product means, if nothing else, sharing the data the FDA relied upon to license this vaccine.  The definition of “transparency” literally includes “accessibility of information.”  So, when the FDA denies a request to expedite release of this data from a group of highly credentialed scientists from major universities across the country, is that transparency?

If the FDA is committed to transparency, why must a federal lawsuit be filed to timely obtain this data?   Why has the FDA, weeks after the filing of a federal lawsuit, still not agreed to timely release this data?  Why does the FDA persist in delaying its release when even federal law states that, once licensed, the “data and information in the biological product file [for the licensed vaccine] are immediately available for public disclosure.”

Transparency demands the FDA immediately disclose the data it relied upon to license the Pfizer vaccine.  Not tomorrow.  Today.  Scientists, health care professionals, and every person in this country, especially those mandated to receive this product, should have access to the data now.

It is incredible enough that the federal government has mandated Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for millions of Americans when it has given Pfizer complete financial immunity for harms caused by this product.  So, you can’t say no, you can’t sue for harm, and you can’t see the data underlying the government’s claim that the product is safe and effective.  Some might describe such conduct as authoritarian.  Of course, such a claim would likely get censored.  And censoring will, of course, help anyone claiming such a mandate is authoritarian understand they are misguided.

Feel free to peruse the complaint filed in the federal lawsuit against the very transparent FDA.  Should have another update on this in a few weeks.

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Researchers found fast food from popular chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and Pizza Hut contain harmful chemicals linked to a suite of health problems.

As Americans devour a fast-food burger in the car or gobble up a chicken burrito in front of the TV, some may bite into phthalates, according to a new study in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology.

This is the first study to directly measure the amount of phthalates present in common fast foods in the U.S. and adds to mounting evidence linking phthalate exposure to fast food consumption.

A group of synthetic chemicals widely used to make plastic more flexible, phthalates are as ubiquitous in modern life as their host plastic products, ranging from toys to personal care products to food packages. Easily absorbed by human bodies, phthalates have been shown in human and animal studies to disrupt our endocrine system by heisting hormone receptors—such as the estrogen receptors or the retinoic acid X receptors—and turning on and off the switches for gene expressions. The chemicals have been linked to a wide range of health impacts, including birth and reproduction problems, impaired brain development, diabetes, and cancer.

“Phthalates are everywhere,” Lariah Edwards, a postdoctoral scientist at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health and the lead author of the paper, told EHN. “There’s enough evidence for us to be concerned.”

The researchers collected 64 fast food items—including hamburgers, fries, chicken nuggets, chicken burritos, cheese pizza—from six popular fast food chains (McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Domino’s Pizza, Taco Bell, and Chipotle) in San Antonio, Texas as well as three pairs of gloves used to handle these foods from three of the restaurants and tested them for eight common phthalates (DEHP, DnBP, BBzP, DMP, DiBP, DnOP, DiNP, and DEP). Additionally, they looked at levels of three replacement plasticizers, chemicals used to substitute banned phthalates, in the foods and gloves collected.

Among the 67 food and glove samples analyzed in this study, all eight phthalates except DMP were detected. Specifically, 52 (81%) of the samples contained a phthalate called DnBP while 45 (70%) contained DEHP. Mounting scientific evidence has linked both chemicals to fertility and reproductive problems in humans as well as increased risks for learning, attention, and behavioral disorders in childhood.

Additionally, the new study found that, in general, foods containing meats, such as cheeseburgers and chicken burritos, had higher levels of chemicals compared to those that don’t.

Jessie Buckley, an environmental epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in this study, told EHN the findings speak to fast foods as “a double whammy”: offering lower nutrition values and pernicious chemicals.

Regrettable substitution chemicals

In addition to traditional phthalates, the authors of the study also investigated the amount of three common replacement plasticizers, cousin chemicals synthesized to replace some of the banned phthalates, in the food and glove samples. The results showed that all three replacement plasticizers—DEHT, DINCH, and DEHA—were present.

“I was really excited to see that this study included those,” said Buckley who, among many other scientists, is working to investigate the health impacts of these novel plasticizers which scientists still know little about.

Currently in the U.S., “a chemical isn’t a problem until it’s proven dangerous,” Douglas Ruden, an environmental toxicologist who studies phthalates at Wayne State University but was not involved in this study, told EHN. Therefore, although the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission banned the use of eight phthalates in children’s toys and child-care products in 2017, the plastic industry is able to replace the prohibited phthalates with slightly tweaked plasticizer chemicals.

“It is like whack-a-mole,” said Ruden, referring to the tug-a-war between scientists trying to assess the health and safety of potentially harmful new plasticizers and their evolving successors.

Moreover, the phthalates banned by the Consumer Product Safety Commission are not outlawed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in food packaging materials. As a result, some of the prohibited phthalates, such as DiBP and DiNP, still could be found in food products—such as the ones collected in this study, potentially making their way back to children.

The discrepancy in phthalate regulations “just doesn’t make any sense,” Stephanie Engel, an environmental and perinatal epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina who was not involved in this study, told EHN. “I think it is critical that the U.S. regulatory agencies focus on common sense regulations that remove phthalates from consumer products.”

Engel’s research found that mothers’ exposure to phthalates is associated with increased risk of ADHD and ADHD-like behaviors and other behavioral issues in children down the road.

Nutritional disparities 

One limitation of this study is that the researchers collected a relatively small number of fast food items in one city. Nonetheless, both Engel and Ruden think the paper offered an important first step to shed light on the extent to which phthalates exist in fast food.

This study also illuminates the health and nutritional disparities among under-resourced communities, which are more likely to consume fast foods and thus more susceptible to phthalate exposure. Between 2013 and 2016, more than one-third of U.S adults consumed fast food on any given day, with non-Hispanic Black adults consuming the most (42.4%), according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Children and adolescents are in a similar boat: CDC data showedthat between 2015 and 2018, 36.3% of them consumed fast food on a given day, with non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic adolescents consuming the most.

“That’s something to think about,” said Edwards, the study author. “I hope that my science can inform those whose job is to look at policy and figure out ways to strengthen and better protect public health.”

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Just in time for the UN’s policy push for “30 x 30” – 30% of the earth to be “conserved” by 2030 – a new Wall Street asset class puts up for sale the processes underpinning all life.

A month before the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (known as COP26) kicked off in Scotland, a new asset class was launched by the New York Stock Exchange that will “open up a new feeding ground for predatory Wall Street banks and financial institutions that will allow them to dominate not just the human economy, but the entire natural world.” So writes Whitney Webb in an article titled “Wall Street’s Takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class”:

Called a natural asset company, or NAC, the vehicle will allow for the formation of specialized corporations “that hold the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water.” These NACs will then maintain, manage and grow the natural assets they commodify, with the end goal of maximizing the aspects of that natural asset that are deemed by the company to be profitable.

The vehicle is allegedly designed to preserve and restore Nature’s assets; but when Wall Street gets involved, profit and exploitation are not far behind. Webb writes:

[E]ven the creators of NACs admit that the ultimate goal is to extract near-infinite profits from the natural processes they seek to quantify and then monetize….

Framed with the lofty talk of “sustainability” and “conservation”, media reports on the move in outlets like Fortune couldn’t avoid noting that NACs open the doors to “a new form of sustainable investment” which “has enthralled the likes of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink over the past several years even though there remain big, unanswered questions about it.”

BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, with nearly $9.5 trillion under management. That is more than the gross domestic product of every country in the world except the U.S. and China. BlackRock also runs a massive technology platform that oversees at least $21.6 trillion in assets. It and two other megalithic asset managers, State Street and Vanguard (BlackRock’s largest shareholder), already effectively own much of the world. Adding “natural asset companies” to their portfolios could make them owners of the foundations of all life.

A $4 Quadrillion Asset — The Earth Itself

Partnering with the New York Stock Exchange team launching the NAC is the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG), major investors in which are the Rockefeller Foundation and the Inter-American Development Bank, notorious for imposing neo-colonialist agendas through debt entrapment. According to IEG’s website:

We are pioneering a new asset class based on natural assets and the mechanism to convert them to financial capital. These assets are essential, making life on Earth possible and enjoyable. They include biological systems that provide clean air, water, foods, medicines, a stable climate, human health and societal potential.

The potential of this asset class is immense. Nature’s economy is larger than our current industrial economy ….

The immense potential of “Nature’s Economy” is estimated by IEG at $4,000 trillion ($4 quadrillion).

Webb cites researcher and journalist Cory Morningstar, who maintains that one of the aims of creating “Nature’s Economy” and packaging it via NACs is to drastically advance massive land grab efforts made by Wall Street and the oligarch class in recent years, including those made by Wall Street firms and billionaires like Bill Gates during the COVID crisis. The land grabs facilitated through the development of NACs, however, will largely target indigenous communities in the developing world. Morningstar observes:

The public launch of NACs strategically preceded the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the biggest biodiversity conference in a decade. Under the pretext of turning 30% of the globe into “protected areas”, the largest global land grab in history is underway. Built on a foundation of white supremacy, this proposal will displace hundreds of millions, furthering the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples.

The UN’s “30 x 30”

The land grab of which Morningstar speaks is embodied in a draft agreement called the “Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework,” currently being negotiated among the 186 governments that are signatories to the Convention for Biological Diversity. Part I of its 15th meeting (COP15) closed on October 15, just ahead of COP26 (the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties) hosted in Glasgow from October 31 through November 12. COP26 focuses on climate change, while COP 15 focuses on preserving diversity. Part II of COP15 will be held in 2022. The draft text for the COP 15 nature pact includes a core pledge to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030.

In September 2020, 128 environmental and human rights NGOs and experts warned that the 30 x 30 plan could result in severe human rights violations and irreversible social harm for some of the world’s poorest people. Based on figures from a paper published in the academic journal Nature, they argued that the new target could displace or dispossess as many as 300 million people. Stephen Corry of Survival International contended:

The call to make 30% of the globe into “Protected Areas” is really a colossal land grab as big as Europe’s colonial era, and it’ll bring as much suffering and death. Let’s not be fooled by the hype from the conservation NGOs and their UN and government funders. This has nothing to do with climate change, protecting biodiversity or avoiding pandemics – in fact it’s more likely to make all of them worse. It’s really all about money, land and resource control, and an all out assault on human diversity. This planned dispossession of hundreds of millions of people risks eradicating human diversity and self-sufficiency – the real keys to our being able to slow climate change and protect biodiversity.

30 x 30 in the United States

The 30 x 30 target was incorporated in President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad dated January 27, 2021, which includes at Sec. 219 “the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.”

How that is to be done is not clearly specified, but proponents insist it is not a “land grab.” Critics, however, contend there is no other way to pull it off. Only about 12% of land and water in the U.S. is now considered to be “in conservation,” including wilderness lands, national parks, national wildlife refuges, state parks, national monuments, and private lands with permanent conservation easements (contracts to surrender a portion of property rights to a land trust or the federal government). According to environmental expert Dr. Bonner Cohen, raising that figure to 30%, adding 600 million acres to the total, “means putting this land and water (mostly land) off limits to any productive use in perpetuity. To accomplish this goal, the federal government will have to buy up – through eminent domain or other pressures on landowners making them ‘willing sellers’ of their property – millions of acres of private land.”

In July 2021, 15 governors wrote to the Administration opposing the plan, led by Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska. Ricketts said in a press release:

This requires restricting a land area the size of the State of Nebraska every year, each year, for the next nine years, or in other words a landmass twice the size of Texas by 2030.

This goal is especially radical given that the President has no constitutional authority to take action to conserve 30% of the land and water.

The Real Threat to Mother Nature

The federal government may have no constitutional authority to take the land, but a megalithic private firm such as BlackRock could do it simply by making farmers and local residents an offer they can’t refuse. This ploy has already been demonstrated in the housing market.

According to a survey reported in The Guardian on October 12, 2021, nearly 40% of U.S. households are facing serious financial problems, including struggling to afford medical care and food; and 30% of lower income households (those earning under $50,000 per year) said they had lost all their savings during the coronavirus pandemic. In the first quarter of 2021, 15% of U.S. home sales went to large corporate investors including BlackRock, which beat out families in search of homes just by offering substantially more than the asking price. Sometimes whole neighborhoods were bought up at once for conversion into rental properties.

BlackRock’s chairman Larry Fink is on the board of the World Economic Forum, which until recently featured a controversial promotional video declaring “You will own nothing, and you’ll be happy.”

We all want a clean environment, and we want to preserve species biodiversity. But that includes human biodiversity – acknowledging the rights of rural landowners and Indigenous peoples, the land’s natural stewards. The greatest threat to the land is not the people living on it but those well-heeled investors who swoop in to buy up the rights to it, financializing the earth for profit.

Not just private property but those public lands and infrastructure once known as “the commons” are now under threat. We face an existential moment in our economic history, in which accumulated private wealth is acquiring carte blanche control of the essentials of life. Whether that juggernaut can be stopped remains to be seen, but the first step in any defensive action is to be aware of the threat at our doorsteps.

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This article was first posted under a different title on ScheerPost.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of DebtThe Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is by AdobeStock

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***

The Middle East has become one of the world’s most climate change-affected regions, with severe droughts, devastating wildfires, massive floods and pollution affecting millions of lives and making some areas nearly unliveable.

Greenhouse gas emissions – a major cause of global warming – have tripled globally over the past three decades, with the Middle East and North Africa region, which stretches from Morocco to Iran, warming by twice the global average, with a rise of four degrees Celsius.

But as world leaders meet at COP26, the United Nations Climate Conference in Glasgow, there is one source of emissions unlikely to face the scrutiny of discussion – states are not obliged to publicly disclose the emission levels of their militaries.

Researchers and climate advocates have argued that of particular concern is the US military, the planet’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum and, correspondingly, the single largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world, whose past two decades of waging wars in the Middle East have also left the world damaged by its greenhouse gas emissions.

“The US military emissions are the largest that I know of in the world. US military emissions, because it is the United States’ single largest energy consumer, are enormous,” Neta Crawford, co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University, told Middle East Eye.

“If the United States is really serious about leading the world on climate change and, in particular, the mitigation of emissions, then it needs to look at the military and military industry.”

Fuel consumption

According to an estimate from the Cost of War Project, the US military produced around 1.2bn tonnes of CO2 emissions between 2001 and 2017, with 400 million of those tonnes directly accountable to the post-9/11 wars – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Syria.

Crawford noted that emissions from the US military were “larger than the emissions of entire countries in any one year; big countries with industry like Denmark, and Portugal”.

If the US military was a nation state in the Middle East, it would rank as the region’s eighth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

In 2017, the US military bought an average of 269,230 barrels of oil each day, burning a total of more than 25 million tonnes of CO2 that year, according to data obtained by researchers at Durham University and Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.

The most damaging source of US military emissions is the burning of jet fuel, which contributes between two and four times more to global warming than other types of fuel, because it is burned at higher altitudes.

Oliver Belcher, an associate professor at Durham University and one of the researchers, said “jet fuels are the highest pollutant in terms of hydrocarbons; they have the most detrimental effects on the atmosphere”.

Graph showing the total amount of emissions from Middle East countries, as well as the US military

Graph showing the total amount of emissions – reported by the World Bank – from Middle East countries, as well as the US military (MEE)

Military industrial complex

The consumption of fuel, however, only tells part of the story. The logistics of supplying the entire US military all over the world has an enormous carbon footprint “that’s probably been under-appreciated”, Belcher noted.

The agency that runs these operations, the Defence Logistics Agency Energy (DLA-E), oversees the delivery of fuel to more than 2,000 military posts, camps, and stations in 38 countries, as well as 230 locations where the US military has bunker contracts, which provide commercial ship propulsion fuels for military vessels worldwide.

“The supply chains that that agency runs also has a carbon footprint entailed in it because obviously moving material through any infrastructure is going to imply a carbon cost,” Belcher said.

However, “calculating military missions and accounting for them at all, is extremely difficult”, according to the researcher.

“Keeping track of how many vehicles have gone to and fro, for how long, how many times have they refilled fuel, all that basic everyday stuff that it takes to maintain operations in a military theatre, that’s very difficult to get numbers on, yet that’s the real nuts and bolts.”

Meanwhile, emissions from the manufacturing of weapons systems, munitions, and other equipment add another layer to the American military’s climate impact.

“Even though the [US military] emissions have declined, the military is still an enormously significant emitter. Because it bolsters and essentially pushes industry through its acquisition, research and development processes, it drives industrial emissions as well,” Crawford said.

The Cost of War Projected has estimated that the amount of CO2 emissions as a result of US military industry during the post-9/11 wars is roughly 153 million tonnes each year.

“In any one year, it is likely that the emissions of the DoD are about the same as military industrial emissions,” Crawford said.

Burn pits and other destabilising military actions

Beyond the US military’s contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, the Middle East’s climate and landscape has also been deeply affected by more direct actions, such as the burning of waste and training exercises.

At stations hosting US troops across the Middle East, the American military resorted to setting fire to their garbage as a means to get rid of it, releasing a myriad of toxic pollutants into the air for anyone around to breathe.

These burn pits were a common practice by the US military in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Bahrain, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

After throwing their waste – including chemicals, paint, medical and human waste, munitions, petroleum, plastics and Styrofoam – onto an open pit, jet fuel was poured onto it and set ablaze.

An assessment by the Pentagon found there were nearly 40 sites in which burn pits were used by the military, however some estimates from veterans’ groups put the number in the triple digits.

Numerous studies have shown that the pollution stemming from these burn pits have caused severe health complications for American veterans, and are likely to have affected civilians, contractors, and locals working on those military bases.

The burn pits were dubbed the new “Agent Orange”, referring to the chemical herbicide used by US soldiers in Vietnam and later proven to have caused cancers, birth defects and neurological problems among the Vietnamese people.

In an April 2019 memo to Congress, the Pentagon acknowledged that it still had nine active burn pits at bases throughout the Middle East and Afghanistan.

An assessment by the Pentagon found there a number of sites where burn pits were used in the Middle East.

An assessment by the Pentagon found there a number of sites where burn pits were used in the Middle East (MEE)

According to the Pentagon, the majority of sites where burn pits were used were in Iraq

According to the Pentagon, the majority of sites where burn pits were used were in Iraq (MEE)

In addition to pollution, US military activities, training exercises, and other operations that take place in the desert have helped contribute to dust storms that can travel across the region. There has been a subsequent increase in people’s overall risk of dying from dust exposure.

Barrak Alahmed, a PhD candidate in Population Health Sciences at Harvard University, told MEE that he and a team of researchers had seen a yearly increase in dust levels in the region surrounding Iraq between 2001 and 2017.

While he could not pinpoint US military operations as the direct result of these storms, he noted they definitely made the region more susceptible to them.

“Heavy military vehicles and explosions destabilise and disintegrate the desert soil making it easier to blowout and create dust storms that can travel long distances affecting many other Middle Eastern countries,” Alahmed said.

“We have done a number of studies in Kuwait – one of the most affected countries by dust storms. We found that dust days increase the overall risk of dying, and more specifically we found that migrant workers were most vulnerable to dust exposure.”

A need for accountability

In 1997, the international community came together to address the climate crisis and signed the Kyoto Protocol, which mandated that 37 industrialised nations and the European Union cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet the US, which never ratified the agreement, requested an exemption on revealing its military emissions on the grounds of protecting national security.

Then in 2015, the Paris Climate accord was adopted, which included a measure in which countries could voluntarily report on military emissions.

However, there has yet to be any incentive or requirement for nations to do so, and the issue of military emissions remains absent from the COP26 agenda.

The only way to truly reduce these emissions, climate researchers argue, is to force countries, especially the US, to report on their military’s carbon emissions and work to reduce them.

On 9 November, advocates will launch a new website, dedicated to reporting on these emissions and allowing the public to see what is often left out of climate discussions.

“There needs to be some sort of accounting mechanism innovated within the military to account for these submissions,” Belcher said. “And this is one area where pressure should be applied.”

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Featured image: In 2017, the US military bought an average of 269,230 barrels of oil each day, burning a total of more than 25 million tonnes of CO2 that year (MEE)

Hypersonic Panic and Competitive Terror

November 7th, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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During his eventful time in office, US President Donald Trump took much delight in reflecting about the lethal toys of his country’s military, actual or hypothetical.  These included a hypersonic capability which, his military advisors had warned, was being mastered by adversaries.  Such devices, comprising hypersonic cruise missiles and hypersonic boost-glide vehicles, have been touted as opening a new arms race, given their ability not merely to travel at five times the speed of sound – as a general rule – but also show deft manoeuvrability to evade defences.  

Undeterred by any rival capability, Trump claimed in May 2020 that the US military had come up with a “super duper” weapon that could travel at 17 times the speed of sound. “We are building, right now, incredible military equipment at a level that nobody has ever seen before.”  Ever adolescent in poking fun at his rivals, Trump also claimed that the missile dwarfed Russian and Chinese equivalents.  Russia, he claimed, had one travelling at five times the speed of sound; China was working on a device that could move at the same speed, if not at six times.  Pentagon officials were not exactly forthcoming about the details, leaving the fantasists to speculate.

In 2019, Russia deployed its own intercontinental hypersonic missile, the Avangard strategic system, featuring a hypersonic glide vehicle astride an intercontinental ballistic missile. “It’s a weapon of the future, capable of penetrating both existing and prospective missile defence systems,” claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin at the time.  The President claimed to have reason to crow.  “Today, we have a unique situation in our new and recent history.  They (other countries) are trying to catch up with us. Not a single country possesses hypersonic weapons, let alone continental-range hypersonic weapons.”

For all of this claimed prowess, nothing quite creased the brows of Pentagon officials quite as China’s July 27 hypersonic missile test.  General Mark  Milley, chairman of the Joint of Chief of Staff, said in a Bloomberg interview this October that it was “a very significant event” and was “very concerning”.  The test was first reported by the Financial Times on October 16, which also noted, without additional detail, a second hypersonic systems test on August 13.

The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force had already caught the attention of US military planners in the last decade with advances in the field.  The Dongfeng-17 (D-17) hypersonic boost-glide missile, for instance, made its appearance in 2014 and was found to be dismayingly accurate, striking their targets within metres.

The July test, however, was another matter, even if it missed its target by 19 miles and had been described by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian as a “routine test” of space vehicle technology.  It had used, for instance, a variant of the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, a low-orbit missile delivery method pioneered by the Soviets to frustrate detection.  It got the drummers from the military-industrial complex all riled up, despite the US having been actively involved in the development of hypersonic weapons since the early 2000s.  In the imperial mindset, any seemingly successful experiment by the military of another power, notably an adversary, is bound to cause a titter of panic.  Pin pricks can be treated as grave threats, even to a power that outspends the combined military budgets of the next seven states.

When it comes to the perceived advances of Beijing and Moscow, Alexander Fedorov of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology offers a mild corrective.  Russia had “experience without money, China has money without much experience, and the United States has both, although it revived its efforts later than did Russia or China and is now playing catch-up.”

The US military establishment prefers a gloomier reading, a point they can then sell to Congress that Freedom’s Land is being somehow outpaced by upstarts and usurpers.  George Hayes, chief executive at defence contractor Raytheon, spoke disapprovingly of the US as being a laggard in the hypersonic field, being “years behind” China.  Michael Griffin, former undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, told NPR that “it is an arms race” which “we didn’t start”, thereby providing moral reassurance for future additions to it. Milley was also not averse to inflating the significance of the July test.  “I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it’s very close to that.  It has all of our attention.”

USA Today certainly wished its readers to give it all their attention.  “That method of delivery also means the US could be attacked by flights over the South Pole.  American defense systems concentrate on missile attacks from the north.”

The Biden administration has already requested $3.8 billion for hypersonic research for the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2022 budget.  This is a sharp increase from the previous total of $3.2 billion, which was itself an inflation from the $2.6 billion figure the year before that.  In June, Vice Admiral Jon Hill, director of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), warned the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces of current and impending risks, thereby making the case for more cash to be thrown at the enterprise.  As things stood, “US aircraft carriers are already facing risks from hypersonic weapons that are now entering the inventory of American adversaries and the Navy has developed early defences for the threat.”

The prospect of yet another arms race (do they ever learn?) can only cause the sane to be worried.  Zhao Tong, senior fellow with the nuclear policy program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes that such weapons “introduce more technological uncertainties and ambiguities compared with traditional ballistic missiles, which will increase the possibility of misjudgement and overreaction during military conflicts”.  Just the sort of thing a planet troubled by climate change and pandemics needs.

Hypersonic panic is here to stay, and defence contractors are rubbing their hands and hoping to grease a few palms.  Hayes is one of them, expecting that the US would “have weapons to challenge the adversaries but most importantly, I think our focus is how do we develop counter-hypersonics.  That’s where the challenge will be.”  The National Review is in full agreement, encouraging the US to “deploy missile-defense interceptors in Australia and more sensors in space, as well as work toward directed-energy weapons that would be the best counter to hypersonic missiles.”  Yet another competitive front for military lunacy is in the offing, even before it has earnestly begun.

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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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***

A few days before the Nicaraguan presidential elections on November 7, Facebook and other social media companies began closing down many of the pages used by Sandinista supporters in their campaign to re-elect President Daniel Ortega. This blatant censorship move was said to be because they had discovered “troll farms” operated by government agencies. But many of the 1,500 accounts closed appear simply to belong to pro-Sandinista journalists or young commentators. TikTok, Twitter and Instagram took similar action, and Google said that it has closed 82 YouTube channels and three blogs in a related operation.

Among those closed were several well-known pro-Sandinista accounts with thousands of followers on Facebook-owned Instagram, including those of the online new sites Barricada, Redvolución and Red de Comunicadores.[1] They even suspended the popular fashion organization Nicaragua Diseña.[2] When such websites attempted to create new accounts, they were also blocked.

Censorship extended to neutral websites covering the election. For example, Carta Bodan’s daily newsletter on November 2 carried brief descriptions of five opposition candidates.[3] When colleagues tried to share this link on their Facebook pages it was rejected. The fact that there are five opponents of Daniel Ortega standing might be an inconvenient truth, of course, given that many of the reports of Facebook’s censorship repeated the U.S. government’s contention that the Nicaraguan elections are a “sham” with no real opponents (despite the fact that two of the parties standing were in government between 1990 and 2007).[4]

Facebook’s head of security, Nathaniel Gleicher, tweeted justifications for its actions, even admitting that “this is a domestic op, with links to multiple gov’t institutions and the FSLN party. We don’t see evidence of foreign actors behind this campaign.” Gleicher failed to respond to accusations that huge numbers of genuine accounts had been disabled.[5]

The Grayzone’s Ben Norton contacted several pro-Sandinista journalists and commentators who had lost their Facebook or Twitter accounts.[6] These included young Sandinista Ligia Sevilla, who attempted to show her genuine status on her Twitter account, which was immediately suspended.[7] The same happened to well-known Sandinista activist Daniela Cienfuegos.[8] Darling Huete, a journalist, had the same experience.[9] Some, like ElCuervoNica,[10] managed to set up alternative accounts. Effectively many commentators suffered double censorship: blocked because they were falsely accused of being bots, then prevented from proving that the accusations were false when they posted videos of themselves as real people. One journalist who complained to Facebook was simply told that “For security reasons we can’t tell you why your account was removed.”

Exploring the motivations for Facebook’s actions, Norton points out its government connections. For example, Gleicher was director for cybersecurity policy at the National Security Council and previously worked at the Department of Justice. Other senior Facebook executives involved have similar government connections.

International media such as Reuters and the BBC simply took Facebook’s justification at face value – that it had disabled a “cross-government troll operation.”[11] Even media such as Aljazeera, often critical of the U.S. government, carried reports on what Facebook had done without adverse comment.[12] Apart from The Grayzone, only the U.K.’s Morning Star appears to have criticized Facebook’s decisions.[13] Anti-Sandinista news sites, such as Artículo 66, listed the accounts affected, calling them “propaganda” and disseminators of “false news,” even though they are themselves well-established propaganda sources for the opposition.[14] None questioned why this had occurred days before a crucial election, or how it happened that action was coordinated across different social media outlets. The Financial Times reported, without comment, that the Facebook pages were followed by 784,500 users, even though this might have alerted them to the fact that most if not all the pages were genuine.[15]

The Financial Times even compared the alleged Nicaraguan government’s operation to that of the Russian government’s St. Petersburg troll farm, accused of meddling in two recent U.S. elections.[16] It ignored a crucial difference: that the Nicaraguan accounts closed were engaged in campaigning during their own country’s elections, not interfering in anyone else’s. Even more obviously, having made this comparison, it failed to ask why Facebook is itself interfering in an election campaign, and whether it is doing so at the behest of the U.S. government.

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John Perry is a writer living in Masaya, Nicaragua.

Notes

[1] Original links: https://instagram.com/barricada79; https://instagram.com/redvolucionnic; https://instagram.com/somosredjs

[2] Original link: https://www.instagram.com/nicaragua_disena/

[3] See http://cartabodan.net/boletin/01nov21pm.html

[4] “Blinken accuses Nicaragua’s Ortega of preparing ‘sham election’,” https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/blinken-accuses-nicaraguas-ortega-preparing-sham-election-2021-10-22/

[5] See https://twitter.com/ngleicher/status/1455241703678365696

[6] “Meet the Nicaraguans Facebook falsely branded bots and censored days before elections,” https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/02/facebook-twitter-purge-sandinista-nicaragua/

[7] See https://twitter.com/ligiasevilla_

[8] See https://twitter.com/dani100sweet

[9] See https://twitter.com/DarlingHHuete

[10] See https://twitter.com/elcuerv0nica

[11] See “Facebook says it removed troll farm run by Nicaraguan government,” https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/facebook-says-it-removed-troll-farm-run-by-nicaraguan-government-2021-11-01/ xxx and “Cómo funcionaba la ‘granja de troles’ desmantelada por Facebook en Nicaragua,” https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-59136577

[12] “Facebook says it shut down Nicaraguan government-run troll farm,” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/1/facebook-says-it-shut-down-nicaraguan-government-run-troll-farm

[13] “Facebook accused of censoring Sandinista media organisations ahead of Sunday’s election,” https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/facebook-accused-of-censoring-sandinista-media-organisations-ahead-of-sunday-election

[14] “Estas son las cuentas de troles orteguistas,” https://www.articulo66.com/2021/11/01/troles-orteguistas-facebook-instagram-cuentas-eliminadas-manipulacion-nicaragua/

[15] “Nicaragua’s government accused by Facebook of running social media troll farm,” https://www.ft.com/content/0998f9ac-7e37-430e-a411-2456b9124e7c

[16] “Russian troll farm makes US comeback,” https://www.ft.com/content/447724b0-bc98-4690-a150-674f451d1b3e

Featured image is from COHA

First published on November 7, 2015

Related: The Roots of Russia: From the Early East Slavs to the Grand Duchy of Moscow (part 1); A Superpower Rises: Foundation of the Russian Empire (part 2), The Road to the Revolutions (part 3)

Introduction

Part 3 of this series set out the political, economic and intellectual context leading to the Russian Revolutions. This one is an attempt to explain the dynamics of the revolutionary era: how did factors as diverse as the country’s participation to WWI, constitutional reforms and economic conditions combine to enable the Bolsheviks to take down the tsarist regime?

The February Revolution (March 1917 in the Gregorian calendar) was a revolution focused around Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). The Russian Revolution of 1905 is considered as a major factor to explain what sparked the February Revolution. In particular, the events of Bloody Sunday triggered massive unrests. A council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created and the beginning of a communist movement began.

Meanwhile, a Provisional Government was formed by members of the Imperial parliament or Duma. The Soviets, which stand for “workers’ councils”, initially permitted the Provisional Government to rule while they kept control over various militias. It took place in the context of major military setbacks during the First World War. After the entry of the Ottoman Empire on the side of the Central Powers in October 1914, Russia was deprived of a critical trade route which led to a minor economic crisis and Russia’s inability to provide munitions to their army. As a result, the army leadership considered they did not have the means to quell the revolution and Nicholas II was soon to become the last Emperor of Russia. [1]

The disruption of agriculture was also a considerable problem in Russia, but it was not caused by poor harvests, which had not been significantly altered during war-time. The indirect reason was that the government had been printing off millions of ruble notes in order to finance the war, and by 1917 inflation had made prices increase up to four times what they had been in 1914.

The peasantry made no gain in the sale of their products, since it was largely taken away by the middlemen on whom they depended. Consequently, they tended to revert to subsistence farming. Therefore, the cities were constantly in a situation of food shortage.

In the meantime, rising prices led to higher wages expectations in the factories. In January and February 1916, revolutionary propaganda partially financed by German funds resulted in widespread strikes.

The overall outcome was a growing criticism of the government. The original patriotic excitement, which had caused the name of St. Petersburg to be changed to the less German-sounding Petrograd, may have subsided a little but heavy losses during the war strengthened thoughts that Nicholas II was unfit to rule. [2]

A period of dual power followed the February Revolution, during which the Soviets had the allegiance of the political left and the lower classes while the Provisional Government held state power. Many uprisings and strikes occurred during this period. The Bolsheviks campaigned to stop Russia’s involvement in WWI. They managed to turn workers militias under their control into the Red Guards (later the Red Army). [3]

Meanwhile, the Social Democrat leaders in exile had voted in favor of their respective governments. In Paris, Plekhanov had adopted a violently anti-German stand, while Parvus supported the German war effort as the best means of ensuring a revolution in Russia. The Mensheviks, i.e the faction opposing the Bolsheviks within the Social-Democratic Party since a dispute between Lenin and Martov occurred in 1904, largely maintained that Russia had the right to defend itself against Germany, although Martov demanded an end to the war and a settlement on the basis of national self-determination, with no annexations or indemnities. These views were shared by Trotsky, one of the Bolshevik leaders, at a conference in Zimmerwald in September 1915. [4]

The Bolsheviks’ plan, as theorized by Lenin in State and Revolution was to turn the global war into a civil war of the proletarian soldiers against their own governments, and should a proletarian victory emerge from this in Russia, then their duty would be to spread the revolution across Europe. However, it should be noted that at this point Lenin had fewer than 10,000 followers. Then, his leading role in executing the successful Petrograd protests earned him a larger audience due to his strategic skills. [5]

In September 1915, a combination of Octobrists (advocates of Nicholas II’s October Manifesto moderate constitutionalism, not to be confused with revolutionaries) and Kadets (members of the Constitutional Democratic Party) in the Duma demanded the forming of a responsible government. The Tsar rejected the proposal. He had now taken over the position of commander-in-chief and left most of the day-to-day government in the hands of the Empress who was fiercely unpopular, owing to her German origins and the influence that Rasputin, a so-called mystic, was thought to exercise over her. In the October Revolution (November in the Gregorian calendar), the Bolshevik party, led by Lenin, overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various ministries, established a political police (the Cheka) and seized control of the countryside. As noted in previous parts of this series, the Tsarist regime’s inability to accept reasonable constitutional reforms (combined with poor economic policies) was once again a direct explanation of the emergence of violent alternatives. [6]

Revolution and Counterrevolution

Under Nicholas II, individuals were expected to show deference to the social hierarchy combined with an exalted sense of duty to the country. Religious faith was instrumental in helping political authorities to maintain order in harsh economic and social conditions through the influence of the clergy. In this regard, and maybe to a greater extent than any other modern monarch, Nicholas II attached his fate and the future of his dynasty to the concept of the ruler as a saintly and infallible father to his people. Indeed, Article 4 of the 1906 Constitution would concern “the essence of the supreme autocratic power”, stating that obedience to the Tsar was being mandated by God himself.

This absolutist belief made Nicholas II unwilling to allow the progressive reforms that would have alleviated the suffering of its subjects. In order to preserve the ultimate authority of the crown in the wake of the 1905 revolution which incited him to decree limited civil rights and democratic representation, he worked to restrain these liberties. [7]

However, as shown in previous parts of this series, Russian intellectuals had been promoting ideals such as the dignity of the individual and the urge to lean the political system towards democratic representation since the Age of Enlightenment. Not surprisingly, a growing opposition movement had begun to challenge the Romanov monarchy openly well before the turmoil of World War I.

A famous incident known as “Bloody Sunday” (January 1905, not to be confused with events unfolding under the same denomination, especially in South Africa in 1900 and Ireland in 1972) immediately comes to mind: Father Gapon led a massive crowd to the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg to present a petition to the tsar and the official response was Cossacks opening fire on the crowd, killing hundreds. Following this brutal massacre, a general strike was declared demanding a democratic republic.

As a result, one can argue that Bloody Sunday marked the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1905. Strikes were soon to be overflowed by acts of vandalism, mutinies, anti-Jewish pogroms and assassinations of government officials. In several cities, workers formed Soviets (councils) to direct revolutionary activity. At the end of the year, armed uprisings took place in Moscow, Poland and Latvia. Meanwhile, activists from the professional Union of Unions and local assemblies (zemstva) formed the Constitutional Democratic Party, whose members were to known under the informal name of Kadets. [8]

The outcome of the 1905 revolution can be deemed as unclear.

In late 1905, Nicholas issued the October Manifesto, which contained promises to provide changes to Russia’s political system as well as the recognition of basic civil liberties for most citizens. More precisely, it included the creation of a national Duma (parliament), universal male suffrage and essential civil freedoms (conscience, speech, assembly and association). However, the socialists rejected the concessions as insufficient and tried to organize new strikes.  One recurrent argument was that this new legislative body was flawed from its inception, because the Tsar maintained the power to veto any legislation he wished and the power to disband the body if he and the Duma could not reach an agreement.

In 1906, the first Russian constitution was established as a revision of the 1832 Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire. It restricted the State Duma’s authority in many ways, including a complete lack of parliamentary control over the appointment or dismissal of cabinet ministers. Trade unions and strikes were legalized, provided that they did not engage in what were considered as “illegal political activities” by the police. [9]

The representatives who accepted these changes formed a political party, the Octobrists. As for the Kadets, they advocated universal suffrage. Because of their continued involvement in armed uprisings, parties of Marxist inspiration were undecided whether to participate in the upcoming Duma elections.

Meanwhile, conservative factions in general actively opposed the reforms. [10]

Nevertheless, the regime continued to function through this chaotic time and managed to restore order in the cities, the countryside, and the army despite additional pressure from anarchist groups (hundreds of officials were murdered). The Tsar’s ability to secure a loan from France before the first Duma met gave him even more momentum to replace former Finance minister Witte (a longtime advocate of constitutional monarchy and the mastermind of Russia’s early industrialization policy) with the much more conservative Stolypin as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, the equivalent of Prime Minister. [11]

In March 1906, the First Duma was elected. The Kadets and their allies held a dominant position. Consequently, relations between the Stolypin government and the Duma were hostile from the beginning. A lasting disagreement over the new constitution and peasant reform led to the dissolution of the Duma and the scheduling of new elections. No significant improvement occurred however, when the Second Duma met in 1907. [12]

The Stolypin Government and the Coup of June 1907

In June 1907, The Tsar promulgated a new electoral law which considerably reduced the electoral weight of non-Russian and lower-class voters in order to increase the weight of the nobility while dissolving the Second Duma. This so-called “Coup of June 1907” had the desired short-term aim of restoring political stability. The Third Duma was dominated by Octobrists for the first time but disagreements with the government still occurred over several issues, including the reform of the peasant court system, the introduction of zemstva in western provinces, the establishment of workers’ insurance organizations under police supervision and the autonomous status of Finland. [13]

Within the above-mentioned public policies, Stolypin’s most ambitious move was his peasant reform program. It would allow the establishment of private property and reorganize communes. The political reward expected by Stolypin was the emergence of a class of conservative landowning farmers loyal to the Tsar. However, by 1914 only about 10 percent of peasant communes had been dissolved because most peasants did not want to permit outsiders to buy land or to lose the safety of the commune.

From 1907 to 1914, it must be noted, nevertheless, that the economy grew significantly thanks to the generation of domestic capital channeled through recently formed rural banks and cooperatives. By 1914 Russian steel production reached the level of France and Austria–Hungary, while Russia’s economic growth rate was one of the highest in the world. A lasting concern about Russia’s economy was its external debt level, which stood at almost 4 billion rubles in 1914, and would obviously rise substantially when the country engaged in World War I. [14]

A Far East Rush and Renewed Balkan Rivalry

In 1905, Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese war was the first major military victory of an Asian power over a European one in the modern era. Therefore, Russia’s defeat was met with shock in the West while Japan’s prestige rose greatly as it came to be seen as a modern nation in terms of military power. The almost entire Baltic and Pacific Russian fleets were gone and the country’s international esteem in the process. This was of enormous importance in the perspective of the future World War I. Indeed, Russia was France’s and Serbia’s ally, and that defeat would give additional confidence to Germany and Austria-Hungary when respectively planning for war with France and Serbia. [15]

Back to the immediate consequences of the Treaty of Portsmouth, Russia recognized Japan’s influence in Korea (later annexed through the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910) and southern Manchuria as well as British ascendancy in Afghanistan, southern Persia and Tibet. The tsarist regime also had to cede the southern half of Sakhalin Island to Japan and to sign over its 25-year leasehold rights to Port Arthur, including the naval base. However, Russia managed to maintain its sphere of influence in northern Persia and northern Manchuria.

Then, Russia and Japan recognized each other’s spheres of influence in Inner Mongolia after China’s republican revolution of 1911. Russia also protected its strategic and financial position by entering the Triple Entente with Britain and France.

In the long term, a decreased competition from Russia in the Far East, the weakening of European nations during World War I and the Great Depression that followed allowed Japan to plan military efforts to dominate China and the rest of Asia. These maneuvers eventually led to the Second Sino-Japanese War which defined the Pacific War theatres of World War II. [16]

In Europe, Austria–Hungary and Russia resumed their rivalry in the Balkans, focusing on Bosnia and Serbia. In 1908, Izvolsky, the recently appointed Russian Foreign Minister, traded support on the annexation of Bosnia by Austria–Hungary for its consent to revise the Treaty of Paris (1856) which granted neutrality to the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. Izvolsky’s move would have given Russia special navigational rights but it was blocked by Great Britain, while Austria proceeded with the annexation with support from Germany.

A little bit later, in 1913, Greece, Serbia and Romania defeated Bulgaria in the Second Balkan War. Consequently, Austria–Hungary took control of Bulgaria, which was now Serbia’s territorial rival in the region, and Germany remained the Ottoman Empire’s protector. To counter the Austrian influence, Russia extended its ties to Serbia. Great Power politics and its complex system of alliances in the Balkans were particularly unstable at the eve of World War I. [17]

In June 1914, the heir to the throne of Austria–Hungary (Archduke Franz Ferdinand) was assassinated by a Serbian citizen. Austria–Hungary held the Serbian government responsible and delivered an ultimatum whose last phase consisted in Serbia allowing 100,000 Austro-Hungarian troops to occupy its territory. When it was rejected, Austria–Hungary responded with force. Russia defended Serbia and through the system of alliances this local conflict soon turned into a global one, with France backing Russia and Germany supporting Austria–Hungary. [18]

The Great War and its Effects on Russian Politics

A weakened Russia expected significant gains from a victory in the war, including: control of Constantinople along with the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, as mentioned earlier; alteration of Austria–Hungary’s influence in Central & Eastern Europe in the interests of Slavic peoples of the region and Romania; territorial acquisitions in East Prussia from Germany, in eastern Galicia from Austria and northeastern Anatolia from the Ottoman Empire. However, the German and Ottoman fleets managed to prevent Russia from exporting goods and importing supplies through the Baltic and Black seas. This combined with bureaucratic ineptitude and successive military failures soon turned a majority of the Russian population against its government. [19]

In the larger scheme of Great Power politics, dispute within colonial powers for control of oil fields in the Middle East along with transportation routes to Europe was another reason (if not the most important one, according to William Engdahl) to explain the escalation leading to the outbreak of the war. [20]

On Russia’s side, one of the Tsar’s principal motives for risking war was clearly his desire to restore the prestige lost following the Russo-Japanese war.

Besides, as pointed out in part 1 of this series, the Russian Empire had always been an agglomeration of diverse ethnicities, which entailed significant signs of disunity in the past. Therefore, he also sought to foster a greater sense of national unity with a war against a common and ancient enemy. The perspective of a shared peril would partially mitigate the social unrest over the persistent issues of poverty, inequality, and harsh working conditions. Unfortunately for him, this patriotic unity did not last long.

Despite anti-German demonstrations in the first few weeks of the war, the most widespread reaction appears to have been skepticism and fatalism. The desire to defend their land fueled by general hostility towards the Kaiser did not necessarily translate into enthusiasm for the war-mongering Tsar and its government. Instead, World War I led to the massive slaughter of Russian troops which undermined the monarchy to the point of collapse. [21]

Bound by treaty, Russia entered World War I at the defense of fellow Slavic nation Serbia and opened hostilities with Austria-Hungary and Germany in support of its French ally. Russian offensives into East Prussia drew enough German troops from the western front to allow Great Britain, France and Belgium to stop the German advance. It came at a huge cost, though: one of Russia’s two invading armies was almost totally destroyed at the Battle of Tannenberg (over 30,000 Russian troops were killed or wounded and 90,000 captured, while Germany suffered about 20,000 casualties).

Adding insult to injury, Nicholas II took direct command of the army in the autumn of 1915, making him personally responsible for Russia’s future losses, while leaving his German-born wife Alexandra in charge of the government. It did not take long before reports of incompetence and corruption in the Imperial government began to emerge. More precisely, the growing influence of Rasputin on the Imperial family was widely resented. The fact that he had openly warned the Tsar over the dangers of a war with Germany added further suspicion around him. In late 1916, Rasputin’s assassination would end the scandal without restoring the credibility of the government. Along with court intrigues, increasing conflict between the Duma and the Tsar weakened the entire power structure. [22]

Meanwhile on the front, the German army was better trained, better led and better supplied than its Russian counterpart. Furthermore, Germany controlled the Baltic Sea and its Ottoman ally had its grip on the Black Sea, which cut Russia off from most of its foreign supplies and potential markets. As a result, it did not take long before the Tsar’s forces were thrown out of Poland and Galicia (the northeastern region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) during the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive campaign. Some Russian troops were even sent to the front bearing no arms. By the end of October 1916, Russia had lost between 1,600,000 and 1,800,000 men, 2,000,000 became prisoners and 1,000,000 were missing. At that time, Russia came to the rescue of Romania, which had just entered the war, thereby extending the eastern front to the Black Sea Not surprisingly, mutinies followed. According to Allan Wildman, the crisis in morale “was rooted fundamentally in the feeling of utter despair that the slaughter would ever end and that anything resembling victory could be achieved.” [23]

Besides, there were many signs that the war was leading the national economy on the brink of collapse. The main problems with the war economy were rising prices due to increased public debt to finance the war and food shortages. By the end of 1915, inflation dragged real incomes down at an alarming rate while the lack of food supply made it very difficult to buy even what one could afford. It was particularly hard in the capital, Petrograd (as St. Petersburg had been called since 1914, to Russianize the Germanic name), where distance from supplies and poor transportation networks worsened the situation. Consequently, strikes and crime increased steadily from the middle of 1915. Factory workers, who had won the right to representation in sections of the War Industries Committee, used them as organs of political opposition. The countryside also was becoming subject to unrest, mainly because a satisfactory land reform had yet to me made in the opinion of many peasants. [24]

In this context, government officials wondered how long the people’s patience would last. In November 1916, the State Duma issued a warning report to Nicholas II as discontent grew. It stated that a terrible disaster would inevitably occur unless a constitutional form of government was put in place. Once again, the Tsar ignored these warnings. Ultimately, his inept administration would end up costing him both his reign and his life. [25]

Economic & Social Factors Leading to the Russian Revolutions

Along with the side effects of the war economy discussed above, basic economic and social conditions can be named as deep explanations of workers’ discontent. At that time, the economic and social reality for most people was low real wages, an average 10-hour workday six days a week (many worked up to 12 hours a day), a high level of professional injury risk because of poor safety conditions and overcrowded housing with often deplorable sanitary conditions (no running water, waste management issues).

However, urbanization made it easier for workers to gather and to get exposed to new ideas about the political and social order in Russia. Indeed, by 1914 no less than 40% of Russian workers were employed in factories of +1,000 workers (compared to 30% in 1901), another 40% worked in 100-1,000 facilities and the 20% remaining in 1-100 businesses. To get a better understanding of the importance of these figures, one can compare them with those for the USA the same year, which stood at 20, 45 and 35% respectively. Besides, and still roughly speaking, the population of St Petersburg grew from 1 million to 1.9 million between 1890 and 1910, with Moscow experiencing similar growth. As a result, this new generation of factory workers was much more likely to get involved into various demonstrations of protest than the peasantry had been in previous times. [26]

Furthermore, conscription took away skilled workers who had to be replaced with unskilled peasants, which could not result in anything else than a dramatic decrease in productivity and quality, including regarding military gear. Finally, the poorly-equipped soldiers themselves began to turn against the Tsar. [27]

The February Revolution  

In short, according to Rabinowitch, the February Revolutionwas the consequence of “prewar political and economic instability, technological backwardness, and fundamental social divisions, coupled with gross mismanagement of the war effort, continuing military defeats, domestic economic dislocation, and outrageous scandals surrounding the monarchy”. On February 23rd, 1917 for International Women’s Day, thousands of women textile workers began a strike in Petrograd to protest against the lack of food.  Fearing that a famine was looming they called on other workers to join them. [28]

In the next days, almost the entire city was on strike. The February Revolution officially began on February 26th when soldiers openly sided with the strikers, after the Tsar dispatched troops to shoot at demonstrators and ordered the Duma to disband. Governmental authority in the capital collapsed and symbols of the regime were torn down around the city. To restore law and order, the liberal bloc of the parliament urged to establish a provisional government headed by Prince Lvov, a descendant of Rurik, the founder of the Russian nation.

Meanwhile, the socialists organized elections among soldiers and workers to form a council (soviet) of deputies, which would act as an organ of popular power that could pressure the Provisional Government, considered as “bourgeois”. [29]

In the Winter Palace, the Army Chiefs and the Tsar’s remaining ministers (those who had not fled) suggested that he abdicates the throne. Nicholas II did so on March 2nd, and nominated his brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, to succeed him. But the latter realized that he would have little support so he declined the proposition the next day.

On March 9th, Nicholas II and his family were placed under house arrest by the Provisional Government at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo (literally Tsar’s Village, renamed Pushkin in 1937). Four days earlier, the socialists had formed a rival government body, the Petrograd Soviet. These two entities competed for power over Russia during a period known as “Dual Power”. [30]

From March to October, Russia under “Dual Power”

As early as March 1st, the Petrograd Soviet asserted its supremacy over the upcoming Provisional Government when it issued Order No. 1, which stated:

“The orders of the Military Commission of the State Duma (i.e part of the organization which became the Provisional Government) shall be executed only in such cases as do not conflict with the orders and resolution of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.”, Point 4 of Order No. 1, March 1st, 1917. [31]

According to Robert Service, the Provisional Government’s lack of political legitimacy (as it was not a publicly elected body, having been self-proclaimed by committee members of the Duma) prevented it from questioning the Petrograd Soviet’s on legal ground. Instead, it called for elections to be held later.

On the other hand, the Petrograd Soviet could not deny this “arrangement” because on top of its own political agenda were precisely the introduction of extensive democratic reforms such as the replacement of the monarchy by a republic, preparation of elections to a constituent assembly, guaranteed civil rights, governmental oversight on police and military actions, abolition of religious and ethnic discrimination. [32]

Due to the democratization of politics after the February Revolution, which legalized formerly banned political parties, Lenin took the opportunity to go back to Russia after living in exile in Switzerland. However, the possibility to return to Russia did not mean it had suddenly become easy. Hoping that his activities would weaken Russia or even, if the Bolsheviks came to power, lead to Russia’s withdrawal from the war, German officials arranged for Lenin to pass through their territory. [33]

Shortly after, the head of the Provisional Government resigned following a series of political crises that became known as the “July Days”, which saw approximately half a million people come out onto the streets of Petrograd in protest, calling for “all power to the Soviets”. Nonetheless, Lenin failed to organize a coup on this occasion. The crowd, lacking leadership, disbanded and the government survived.

Kerensky became its new head. He was more progressive than his predecessor but not radical enough for the Bolsheviks and the large part of the Russian population who could not stand the deepening economic crisis and the continuation of the war any longer.  As minister of war and later Prime Minister, Kerensky promoted freedom of speech which materialized by the release of thousands of political prisoners but he was no more successful than his predecessors regarding the war issue.

In the meantime, the Petrograd Soviet joined with other soviets from all around the country to create a national movement. Lenin fled to Finland as the Provisional Government issued arrest warrants against prominent Bolsheviks (including Trotsky), in response to their attempted coup. Lenin would put his time in exile to use by working on his book State and Revolution while continuing to lead the party. [34]

However, the Bolshevik failure in the July Days proved temporary, thanks to a massive growth in membership. Indeed, from February to September 1917 the party’s audience increased almost tenfold, thereby overtaking the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries as majority factions in Petrograd and Moscow.

In August, misleading communication led General Kornilov, the recently appointed Supreme Commander of Russian military forces, to believe that the government had already fallen at the hands of rebels, or was in serious danger thereof. Consequently, he ordered troops to the capital to try his own coup. Ironically, Kerensky himself asked for Bolshevik assistance in order to secure his position. The Kornilov Affair failed mainly due to the Bolsheviks’ control over railroad and telegraph workers who proved instrumental in stopping the General’s troops. Because of the lack of details surrounding this episode in Russian history, Richard Pipes questioned Kerensky’s involvement in a possible false flag attack: “There is no evidence of a Kornilov plot, but there is plenty of evidence of Kerensky’s duplicity”. [35]

In early September, the Petrograd Soviet managed to free all jailed Bolsheviks and Trotsky became its chairman. The garrisons in Petrograd, Moscow, the Northern and Western fronts, and the sailors of the Baltic Fleet openly declared through their elected representative body Tsentrobalt that they did not recognize the authority of the Provisional Government anymore and would not carry out any of its commands as a result.

By October, Lenin felt there was no legal danger regarding his return to Petrograd in order to have a second opportunity for revolution. He therefore began pressing for the immediate overthrow of the Kerensky government by the Bolsheviks. The Bolshevik Central Committee promptly drafted a resolution, calling for the dissolution of the Provisional Government in favor of the Petrograd Soviet. It was passed 10–2, with Lev Kamenev (Trotsky’s brother-in-law) and Grigory Zinoviev (not related to Alexander Zinoviev, the later Soviet critic who would became famous for his novel Yawning Heights) opposing the project.

Meanwhile, strikes continued all over the country: in Petrograd, Moscow, Baku (one of the most ancient oil-extracting center in the world, the first oil well being drilled in 1846), the Donbas (one of the richest mining regions), the Urals (under the influence of metalworkers), while railroad workers disrupted traffic on 44 railway lines … Moreover, there had been over four thousand peasant uprisings against landowners by October 1917. [36]

October Revolution  

The Bolsheviks used their influence on the Petrograd Soviet to organize the revolutionary forces. Under the authority of the Military Revolutionary Committee, Bolshevik Red Guards began the takeover of government buildings on October 24th (O.S.). The Winter Palace was captured the following day.

The effectiveness of the October coup is a direct result of the improvement in planning by Bolshevik leaders, compared to the February one. Since Lenin was not present during the takeover of the Winter Palace (contrary to the official version of the events, as promoted for example in the propaganda movie October: Ten Days That Shook the World by Sergei Eisenstein, released in 1928), it has been argued that it was Trotsky’s organization and direction that actually led the revolution. [37]

Indeed, Bolshevik troops took over Petrograd in the early hours of the night, facing little opposition. The “Storming of the Winter Palace” narrative, which is none other than the actual title of a 1920 mass spectacle attended by 100,000 spectators, came later to make the event look more heroic. The insurrection was perfectly timed and organized. It “only” resulted in the death of two people and the arrest of eighteen. [38]

Once the Congress of Soviets successfully claimed power from the Provisional Government after the fall of the Winter Palace, the revolution was complete.

On October 26th (O.S.), the Congress elected a Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) as the basis of a new government, before the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, and passed the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land. The latter legalized the actions of the peasants who seized private land and redistributed it among themselves throughout Russia. The alliance between factory workers and peasants became symbolized by the Hammer and Sickle on the Soviet flag. Other decrees included nationalization of all Russian banks along with confiscation of private bank accounts and repudiation of all foreign debts, seizure of The Church’s properties (Lenin was a great admirer of the French revolution) and new labor law (higher wages, introduction of an eight-hour working day and control of the factories was given to the soviets). Ironically, the new government officially called itself “provisional” until the Assembly was dissolved. [39]

The Council of People’s Commissars promptly organized a political repression campaign by arresting the leaders of opposition parties, thereby tearing apart freedom of speech and association promises. In the process, major members of the Constituent Assembly, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) as well as Menshevik leaders were imprisoned in The Peter and Paul Fortress in Petrograd. On 20 December 1917, the Cheka was created by decree of Lenin, marking the official end of democratic hopes under Bolshevik auspices.

However, one could argue that this move was more the result of political calculus than a change of convictions. Indeed, members of the Soviets were originally freely elected. When the Bolsheviks realized that they had little support outside of the industrialized areas of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, they decided to prevent non-Bolsheviks from membership.

Because of the Bolsheviks’ decision to continue on the autocratic path of previous centuries, constitutional monarchists and liberals gathered their forces into the White Army, which immediately declared war against the Bolsheviks’ Red Army, thereby opening a new phase in Russian History, that of Civil War. [40]

Unkept Democratic Promises, Ethnical Diversity and Foreign Interference: a Dangerous Mix

Due to the anti-democratic stance of the Bolsheviks, many people called for another series of political reforms, a fourth Russian revolution, so to speak.  Besides, the Whites had backing from Great Britain, France, the USA and Japan, which feared that the government would default on its foreign loans and that the communist ideology would spread in the West, setting the stage for Truman’s future “Containment” strategy. Despite powerful external interference, providing substantial military aid to the loosely-equipped anti-Bolshevik forces, they were ultimately defeated. [41]

One explanation for the Bolsheviks’ lack of success outside the two main cities of the empire is the latter’s ethnical diversity, which has been pointed out in previous parts of this series.

Some regions intended to take advantage of the political turmoil in order to claim independence, using their right to self-determination stated in the November 1917 Declaration of Rights of Nations of Russia. For instance, the Ukrainian Rada, which had declared autonomy on June 23rd 1917, created the Ukrainian People’s Republic on November 20th, with the support of the Ukrainian Congress of Soviets. Meanwhile, the Mensheviks seized power in Georgia on October 27th and declared it an independent republic. The following day, the Bolsheviks officially lost the support of the peasantry when the Executive Committee of Peasants Soviets declared about recent actions that it “refutes with indignation all participation of the organized peasantry in this criminal violation of the will of the working class”. In Estonia, two rival governments emerged: the Estonian Provincial Assembly proclaimed itself the supreme legal authority of Estonia on November 28th, while an Estonian Bolshevik sympathizer, Jaan Anvelt, was recognized by the Soviet government as Estonia’s ruler on December 8th,  although forces loyal to Anvelt only controlled the capital. Estonia would eventually clear its territory from Red Guards forces in 1919. [42]

In January 1918, the Constituent Assembly met for the first time and refused to become a puppet of the Bolshevik regime, it was dissolved.  Henceforth, all vestiges of democracy were removed.

One month later, the Red Army overthrew the White-supported Kokand autonomy of Turkestan.

Because it seemed to consolidate Bolshevik power in Central Asia, the Allied Forces began to intervene, with the main support to White troops coming from Great Britain. Along with military supply, three prominent British military commanders were sent to the area: Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey, whom the Bolsheviks managed to expel from Tashkent, now the capital of Uzbekistan; General Malleson, who assisted the Mensheviks in Ashkhabad (the capital of today’s Turkmenistan) with a small Anglo-Indian force but failed to gain control of Tashkent, Khiva and Bukhara; Major-General Dunsterville, who was drove out of Central Asia by the Bolsheviks only a month after his arrival in August 1918. [43]

In this particularly difficult context, Lenin must be credited for his ability to free his country from the war problem. Indeed, in March 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed with Germany, thereby ending Russia’s participation in the First World War. It was a major blow in territorial terms, for Russia lost Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus and Finland, as well as the territories captured from the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Right after Germany’s defeat, the Soviet government cancelled this treaty but it was too late to avoid further internal opposition, this time mainly from nationalists and conservatives, who could not bear that so many buffer states had fallen into the German sphere of influence. [44]

On the Eastern front, the Revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion broke out in May 1918. Rebel peasants supported by the Mensheviks and the legionaries took control of Samara and Saratov, establishing the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, known as the Komuch. Then, they took Chelyabinsk the next month. The Komuch introduced an eight-hour working day along with “restorative” actions, such as returning both land and factories to their former owners.

In the meantime, Russian officers’ organizations overthrew the Bolsheviks in Omsk and Petropavlovsk. It took less than a month for the Whites to control most of the Trans-Siberian Railroad from the Ural regions to Lake Baikal and Bolshevik power in Siberia was eliminated during the summer, resulting in the formation of the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia in Omsk.

After the fall of Kazan, Lenin called for the dispatch of Petrograd workers to the Kazan Front. [45]

Execution of the Imperial Family

The Provisional Government had placed Nicholas II and his family under house arrest in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, as early as March 1917. Four months later, the Kerensky government evacuated the Romanovs to Tobolsk in the Urals, allegedly to protect them from rising tension. Then in May 1918, as the force of the White movement grew, they were moved again, to Yekaterinburg this time, which was a Bolshevik stronghold.

On July 16th, 1918 the Tsar, along with his wife, his children, his physician and several servants were taken into the basement and killed. According to Edvard Radzinsky, the order came directly from Lenin and Sverdlov, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. However, it seems that there is no evidence that the order came from the top, as it has long been believed. That was the conclusion of Vladimir Solovyov, Russia’s chief investigator, in 2011. M. Solovyov noted however that “when they heard that the whole family had been shot, they officially approved the shooting. None of the organizers nor the participants suffered any punishment,” Therefore, the execution may have been carried out on the initiative of local Bolshevik officials, an option later implicitly approved in Moscow. [46]

A Full-Scale War

On July 26th, 1918 the Whites captured Ekaterinburg thereby extending their gains westwards.

It was too much for War Commissar Trotsky who would not tolerate that the ongoing series of reverses at the front could extend any longer. Consequently, he instituted increasingly harsh techniques (death penalty, kidnapping of renegade soldiers’ families) in order to prevent mutinies or desertions in the Red Army. On the battlefield, the Cheka special investigations forces, known as Special Punitive Brigades, followed the Red Army to enforce Trotsky’s will. The next month, he authorized the formation of barrier troops stationed behind unreliable Red Army units, with orders to shoot anyone withdrawing from the battle-line without authorization. It must be noted that similar techniques were used by the other side. [47]

In September 1918, the Siberian Provisional Government (Komuch) and other local anti-Soviet governments met in Ufa and agreed to form a new Provisional All-Russian Government in Omsk, run by a Directory composed of three Socialist-Revolutionaries (Avksentiev, Boldyrev and Zenzinov) and two Kadets (Vinogradov and Vologodskii). Insurgent Cossack units from Siberia, the Urals, Lake Baikal, Orenburg, Semirechye, and Ussuri were under the orders of Boldyrev, who was chosen as Commander in Chief of the newly created government.

Meanwhile on the Volga, Colonel Kappel’s White detachment had captured Kazan on August 7th, only to see the Reds retake the city almost exactly one month later. On September 11th, Simbirsk fell and on October 8th it was Samara’s turn, pushing the Whites back eastwards to Ufa and Orenburg.

In Omsk, the new War Minister Kolchak of the Provisional Government led a successful coup on November 18th. As a result, the members of the Directory were arrested and Kolchak proclaimed himself “Supreme Ruler of Russia”. [48]

By mid-December 1918, White armies had to leave Ufa, but managed to balance this failure by taking Perm on Christmas Eve. One explanation to this change in momentum in favor of the Bolsheviks lies in the Cossacks’ inability to capitalize on their earlier successes. Moreover, they began to run short of supplies by 1919. As a result, Cossack forces rapidly fell apart when the Soviet counter-offensive led by Antonov-Ovseenko took place in January.

On February 3rd, 1919 the Red Army captured Kiev a strategic place of the utmost importance, considering its status of large city and epicenter of the Russian nation (see the first two parts of this series). In the meantime, the British government pulled their military forces out of Central Asia.

However, the White Army was able to break communication between Moscow and Tashkent, which completely cut Central Asia off from the Red Army forces in Siberia. The Bolsheviks’ response was to hold a second regional conference in March. In its wake, a regional bureau of Muslim organizations of the Russian Bolshevik Party was formed in order to try to gain support among the native population by giving them a better representation. [49]

On the eastern front, the general offensive of the Whites began at the beginning of March 1919, which mainly resulted in Ufa switching side again. By mid-April, the White Army were stopped at the Glazov-Chistopol-Bugulma-Buguruslan-Sharlyk line while the Reds were preparing their counter-offensive against Kolchak’s forces for the end of the month.

In the west, the Red Army eventually captured Yelabuga on May 26th, Sarapul on June 2nd and Izevsk on June 7th. However, they were chased from Crimea and from the Odessa area in mid-June.

Then in September, a White offensive was launched against the Tobol front, as a last attempt to change the course of events in Central Asia. On October 14th, the Reds counterattacked and forced what would become an uninterrupted retreat of the Whites to the east. [50]

In September 1919, the high tide of the White movement against the Soviets had been reached. By this time, counter-revolutionary forces were overextended. Lacking all necessary military and human supplies, the army led by Denikin was decisively defeated in a series of battles in the couple of months. On December 17th, the Red Army recaptured Kiev and the defeated Cossacks fled back towards the Black Sea. [51]

The Struggle for Petrograd

General Yudenich had spent the summer organizing the Northwestern Army in Estonia with local and British support. In October 1919, he tried to take Petrograd with around 20,000 soldiers.

Trotsky personally organized the city’s defenses because some members of the Bolshevik central committee in Moscow were willing to give up Petrograd. He declared, “It is impossible for a little army of 15,000 ex-officers to master a working class capital of 700,000 inhabitants.” [52]

Trotsky armed all available workers and ordered the transfer of military forces from Moscow. Within a few weeks the Red Army outnumbered Yudenich’s forces by three to one. The latter decided to withdraw his troops due to a lack of supplies, repeatedly asking permission to cross the border to Estonia. However, the Estonian government had entered into peace negotiations with the Soviet Government on September 16th, so White units who retreated across the border were disarmed and interned. This move did not prevent the Reds from attacking Estonian army positions, as a result fighting continued until a ceasefire came into effect on January 3rd, 1920. The majority of Yudenich’s soldiers went into exile following the Treaty of Tartu. [53]

A Red Wave to Complete the Revolutionary Era

In European Russia and Siberia, communication disruptions ceased to be a problem by mid-November 1919. Thanks to Bolshevik successes north of Central Asia, communication lines with Moscow were re-established, and the Red Army was able to claim victory over the White Army in Turkestan.

Besides, the Bolsheviks captured Omsk on November 14th and Kolchak lost control of his government shortly after this defeat. By December, White forces in Siberia were shattered. Their retreat of the eastern front lasted three months, when the survivors reached the Chita area and joined Semyonov’s Cossack forces after crossing Lake Baikal. The latter was supported by Japan and managed to hold Chita for a time. When Japanese soldiers withdrew from Transbaikalia, Semenov’s position would become untenable. He was eventually repulsed from Transbaikalia by the Red Army and took refuge in China in November 1920. [54]

At the beginning of 1920, most of the White troops deployed in South Russia were rapidly retreating towards the Don, to Rostov. Denikin hoped to reform his troops but the White Army was not able to hold the Don area. At the end of February 1920, White troops started to retreat across Kuban towards Novorossiysk. Then, around 40,000 men were evacuated by White and Allied ships from Novorossiysk to Crimea, while about 20,000 others were left behind. Following this disastrous evacuation process, Denikin stepped down and was replaced by Wrangel as the new Commander-in-Chief of the White Army. The latter managed to reshape a decent army that remained an active force in Crimea throughout 1920. [55]

In Ukraine, the Bolshevik government signed a political and military alliance with anarchist Makhno’s Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army, also known as the Black Guards, which until then fought against both sides in the wake of Ukraine’s annexation to Germany by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Black Guards were able to defeat several regiments of Wrangel’s troops in the southern part of the country, forcing him to retreat before harvest time.

At this point, Wrangel decided to attack north in an attempt to take advantage of recent defeats of the Red Army at the end of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920. This move failed and White troops were forced to retreat again to Crimea in November 1920, pursued by both the Red and Black forces. On November 14th, 1920 Wrangel and the remains of his army were evacuated to Constantinople, thereby ending the Civil War in Southern Russia. [56]

Right after the defeat of Wrangel, the Red Army repealed its alliance with Makhno and attacked his Black Guards, as part of a campaign to liquidate Ukrainian anarchists, which began with an attempted assassination of Makhno by the Cheka. The uninterrupted use of political repression by the Bolshevik government combined with crop seizure policies in a famine context fueled anger within the civil society, which resulted in a naval mutiny in Kronstadt carried out by Soviet Baltic sailors and former Red Army soldiers, followed by peasant revolts. When delegates representing the Kronstadt sailors arrived in Petrograd for negotiations, they raised 15 demands which mainly concerned the right to freedom. The Government’s response was to firmly denounce the requests as a reminiscence of Social Revolutionary ideas, a political party that refused to cooperate with the Bolsheviks. Obviously, these revolts were quelled and even entailed 10, 000 casualties before the Red Army entered the city of Kronstadt. Exile seemed like the last option available to rebels. Anti-anarchists attacks by the Bolsheviks increased in ferocity throughout 1921. [57]

By 1921, the Bolsheviks had defeated their internal enemies, with the notable exception of White forces gathered in Vladivostok. On the international stage, however, some newly independent states did not fall under their control: Poland (which received Western Ukraine and Western Belarus when the Peace of Riga was signed with Russia in March 1921), Finland (which also annexed a part of the Russian Kola peninsula), the Baltic States, the Moldavian Democratic Republic (which joined Romania).

On October 25th, 1922, Vladivostok fell to the Red Army and the Provisional Government was dismantled. Three days later, the Treaty of Creation of the USSR was signed by the Russian, Ukrainian, Transcaucasian and Byelorussian soviets. [58]

Conclusion

Part 4 of this series was aimed at articulating the various elements which led to the Russian Revolutions. Without pretending to be exhaustive, it hopefully pointed out the dynamics of this complex moment in Russia’s history. With tsarism gone, a new chapter opens, that of the USSR.

In a long period perspective, the apparent unification of the Russian political system seemed to solve the problem of ethnic diversity. The primary challenge faced by Bolshevik leaders would be to find a solution to the country’s economic distress while keeping political dissension carefully tamed. Any failure on these two historic issues would jeopardize the future of the new power structure …

Julien Paolantoni graduated in Economics, Public Law and International Relations from Sciences Po Bordeaux and the University of Bordeaux. He also holds the professional certificate delivered by the French Financial Markets Authority and can be reached at: [email protected]

Notes

[1] Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924, Penguin Books, 1998

[2] Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir M. Khrustalev, The Fall of the Romanovs: Political Dreams and Personal Struggles in a Time of Revolution, Yale University Press, 1997

[3] Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, Oxford University Press, 2008

[4] Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir M. Khrustalev, op. cit.

[5] Vladimir I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, Penguin Classics, 1993 (1st ed.: 1917)

[6] Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution, Vintage, 1991

[7] Dominic Lieven, Nicholas II: Emperor of All the Russias, John Murray Publishers Ltd, 1993

[8] “The Last Years of the Autocracy” in Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), Russia: A Country Study, Department of the Army, 1998

[9] G.M Kropotkin, “The Ruling Bureaucracy and the “New Order” of Russian Statehood After the Manifesto of 17 October 1905,”, Russian Studies in History, Vol.46, 2008

[10] In Marx’s conception of politics, direct action (violent or not) is inseparable from other forms of political participation. For more details on his political thought, see political sociology textbooks such as Dominique Colas, Sociologie politique, PUF, 2008 (1ère ed. : 1994)

[11] Orlando Figes, Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History, Metropolitan Books, 2014

[12] Ibid.

[13] Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, op. cit.

[14] Peter Gatrell, Russia’s First World War: A Social and Economic History, Routledge, 2005

[15] Gary P. Cox,  “Review of The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero”. Journal of Military History, Vol. 70, 2006

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, op. cit.

[20] F. William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Progressive Press, 2012 (1st ed.: 1992)

[21] Hubertus F. Jahn, Patriotic Culture in Russia During World War I, Cornell University Press, 1998          

[22] Allan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, Princeton University Press, 2014 (1st ed.: 1980)

[23] Ibid.

[24] Nicholas Riasanovsky and Mark Steinberg, A History of Russia, Oxford University Press, 8th Edition, 2010

[25] “The Last Years of the Autocracy”, op.cit

[26] Victoria E. Bonnell, Roots of Rebellion: Workers’ Politics and Organizations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1900-1914, University of California Press, 1984

[27] Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, op. cit.

[28] Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd, Indiana University Press, 2008

[29] Rex A. Wade, The Russian Revolution, 1917, Cambridge University Press, 2005

[30] Ian F.W. Beckett, The Great war, Routledge, 2007

[31] Robert P. Browder and Aleksandr F. Kerensky, The Russian Provisional Government, 1917: Documents, Stanford University Press, 1961

[32] Robert Service, A History of Modern Russia: From Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin, Harvard University Press, 2005

[33] Ian F.W. Beckett, op. cit.

[34] Sheila Fitzpatrick, op. cit.

[35] Richard Pipes, Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution, Vintage, 1997

[36] Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, op. cit.

[37] Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921, Verso, 2003

[38] Ian F.W. Beckett, op. cit.

[39] Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, op. cit.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Nicholas Riasanovsky and Mark Steinberg, op. cit.

[42] John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014 (1st ed.: 1922)

[43} Edward A. Allworth (Ed.), Central Asia: One Hundred Thirty Years of Russian Dominance, Duke University Press Books,  2012 (1st ed.: 1989)

[44] W. Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory: A History Of The Russian Civil War, 1918-1921, Da Capo Press, 1999

[45] Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War, Pegasus, 2009

[46] Edvard Radzinsky, The Last Tsar: The Life And Death Of Nicholas II, Knopf, 1993

[47] Dmitri Volkogonov, Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary, Free Press, 2007 (1st ed.: 1996)

[48] Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, op. cit.

[49] Edward A. Allworth (Ed.), op. cit.

[50] Evan Mawdsley, op. cit.

[51] Ibid.

[52] W. Bruce Lincoln, op. cit.

[53] Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, op. cit.

[54] Evan Mawdsley, op. cit.

[55] Ibid.

[56] Ibid.

[57] Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, op. cit.

[58] Nicholas Riasanovsky and Mark Steinberg, op. cit. 

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The Black Alliance for Peace condemns the efforts of Congress to manipulate the electoral process in Nicaragua through illegal sanctions, subversion and the coordination of a deliberate misinformation campaign meant to delegitimize the country’s elections even before they take place. 

As part of that effort the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “RENACER ACT” 387-35 that is meant to impose more sanctions on the country’s President Daniel Ortega but is really a punitive act against the Nicaraguan people for continuing to support their own political project.

“It is white supremacist, colonial hubris that on the same day that the so-called progressives in the House of Representatives indicated they might abandon their insistence on passing the  minimum human rights provisions in the Build Back Better legislation, those same progressives voted to impose more economic sanctions on the second poorest country in the region that, despite its poverty, guarantees universal healthcare and free education, two human rights guarantees that workers in the U.S. are still denied,” states Ajamu Baraka, BAP’s National Organizer

On November 7th, the people of Nicaragua will go to the polls to reaffirm the commitment to their revolutionary democratic project, a project that began in 1979 when the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) defeated a vicious, neocolonial, gangster regime of Anastasio Somoza that was put in power by the United States only to have those efforts reversed by a U.S. imposed counterrevolutionary war that resulted in the electoral defeat of the FSLN in 1990.

With the return of the FSLN to power in 2007, it once again became a target for U.S. aggression and electoral subversion. The U.S. and its European allies questioned the legitimacy of the FSLN despite its overwhelming electoral victories that the U.S. characterized as fraudulent.

Therefore, since it is impossible to get fair and accurate information on Nicaragua from the propaganda organs pretending to be news outlets in the U.S. The Alliance is sending a delegation to observe the process for itself and report back to its membership and the Black communities across the U.S.

Netfa Freeman, member of BAP’s Coordinating Committee who will be on the delegation provided the explanation for why BAP is involved with the process in Nicaragua in the article, “Why Black Revolutionaries Must Stand with the People of Nicaragua,” that “for Black revolutionaries, committed to People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs), that center decolonial self-determination, social justice and socialism, support for these struggles was not an issue of “solidarity” but of a common struggle.”

The U.S. should concentrate on reversing the genocidal policies in the U.S. that has resulted in hundred of thousands of unnecessary deaths from conditions and consequences of Covid in Black and Brown communities and the anti-democratic practices of economic elites that have been systematically looting the public coffers since the economic collapse of 2008-09.

But instead, the U.S. meddles in the internal affairs of countries around the world confirming its international reputation as the number one threat to international peace and number one violator of human rights on the planet.

The “democratic” fascism that the U.S. oligarchy imposes on global South nations  is both flagrant and insidious, knowing no geographic boundaries. Instead of repression, BAP demands that the U.S. state adhere to international law and respect the sovereignty of Nicaragua and its right to self-determination. By cooperating with the people of Nicaragua, U.S. authorities just might learn something about human rights and civilization.

No compromise! No retreat!

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We Are Guinea Pigs in a Worldwide Experiment on Microplastics

November 7th, 2021 by Prof. John Meeker

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above

Important article first published in 2018.

A dramatic increase in the environmental impacts of plastics has occurred in the course of the 2020-21 Covid Crisis. According to the Scientific American:

“COVID-19 triggered an estimated global use of 129 billion face masks and 65 billion gloves every month. If we stitched together all of the masks manufactured already, and projected to be produced, we’d be able to cover the entire landmass of Switzerland”

“Mismanagement of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a monthly estimated use of 129 billion face masks and 65 billion gloves globally, is resulting in widespread environmental contamination” (ACS Publications)

Global Research, November 07, 2021

***

One of the main problems with plastics is that although we may only need them fleetingly – seconds in the case of microbeads in personal care products, or minutes as in plastic grocery bags – they stick around for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, much of this plastic ends up as environmental pollution. We’ve all seen the gruesome images of a sea turtle killed by a plastic bag, or the array of bottle caps, toothbrush fragments, and other plastic items found in the stomach of an albatross carcass. But what about the tiny microplastics that aren’t as readily visible?

Much of the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic waste in our oceans is made up of microplastics. These are defined as plastic beads, fibers or fragments with a diameter of less than five thousand micrometers (μm), equal to one-half centimeter. Nanoplastics are thousands of times tinier, with a diameter of less than 0.1 μm, and are also likely to be widely present. By comparison, a human hair ranges from about 15 to 180 μm across. Some of these microplastics are deliberately engineered like microbeads in a facial scrub. Others result from the break down of larger plastic items.

I’m an environmental epidemiologist with a research group that studies exposure to chemicals commonly found in consumer products, including plastics, and how they affect human reproduction and development. Microplastics interest me because they are now turning up everywhere and we know virtually nothing about how they might impact human health. So are these tiny pieces of plastic damaging our bodies?

There are plastics and then the chemicals that are added to them

There are numerous types of commonly used plastics with differing structures, properties, and chemical additives to make them stronger, more flexible, more rigid, more resilient to UV, or to prevent microbial growth or the spread of fire. Over the past couple of decades concern has grown over the potential danger to human health posed by unavoidable exposures to plastic additives. Because these substances are not chemically bound to the plastic, they leach from the products in which they are used.

Certain chemicals – phthalates, bisphenol A, flame retardants – added to plastics to provide beneficial qualities may in turn disrupt hormones or other important functions following exposure. This could further lead to adverse reproductive and developmental effects or cancer. To date, most of the concerns for human health has focused on these additives in the plastics but not the plastics themselves.

Image on the right: Bisphenol A (BPA) is commonly used in rigid polycarbonate plastics such as water cooler bottles. By nikkytok/shutterstock.com

Recent studies have reported on the ecotoxicity of microplastics. They harm microscopic aquatic creatures called zooplankton by becoming embedded after ingestion, and they also adhere to seaweed, fish and eggs that marine animals eat, causing these plastics to move up the food web. Among certain small marine species, microplastics have been shown to reduce growth, hinder reproduction, and shorten the lifespan.

A drop in the size or health of these smaller organism populations could have significant ripple effects throughout the food chain. Laboratory toxicology experiments, particularly among mammals, are few but have shown that high doses of microplastics adversely impacted liver function, altered metabolism and other important biological reactions in mice, and tended to gather in certain tissues in a manner that was related to the size of the particles . Furthermore, once in the environment microplastics can preferentially bind to, and subsequently serve as a vehicle for, other harmful chemicals such as toxic persistent organic pollutants and pathogens such as Vibrio spp, which causes food poisoning.

Microplastics, microplastics everywhere

As for human exposure, no direct studies have been conducted but microplastics have been found in virtually all bodies of water on the planet, and on agricultural lands. They have been found in shellfish, sea salt, honey, beer, tap water, bottled water, and even air. Thus, ingestion and inhalation of microplastics are of concern as routes of exposure.

The uptake, distribution, accumulation (and interaction with tissues and organs), metabolism, elimination, and ultimate toxicity of microplastics in the body will depend on many factors. These factors include size, shape, type of plastic, surface properties, biopersistence, and the presence of chemical additives or other toxic agents the microplastics may have picked up the environment.

Given that human exposure to microplastics is widespread, results from animal studies are certainly a cause for concern and an important factor for risk assessment. But, alas, lab animals and wildlife are often not accurate proxies for what might happen in humans due to differences among species or exposure scenarios.

In addition, unlike in clinical trials for a new drug, it is not ethical for us to randomly assign groups of people for treatment – microplastics, for example – or placebo and modulate dose levels to see how exposures might impact human health. So we are left with observational epidemiology studies, which can be messy to conduct and are by definition reactive and unable to fully prove causation. There are different types of observational studies but we generally measure exposures, health outcomes, and other relevant information as best we can within a group of people who are going about their lives, and then look for statistical relationships in the collected data.

The worldwide plastic experiment

In the worst case, workers who are exposed to high levels of toxicants as part of their job become sentinel species, and people in our communities are perceived as guinea pigs while scientists wait and watch for what might happen as exposures occur.

There are many historical and recent examples of environmental threats that we identified after it was too late. Likewise, because exposures to microplastics are already occurring we need to consider how we can measure the effects on human health and act quickly to better understand the issue so it can be addressed appropriately. As an epidemiologist I know this certainly won’t be easy.

Which individuals and populations are exposed to high levels of microplastics? How is the exposure happening? How can we measure or estimate exposure? What aspect of the plastic is most relevant – is it size, shape or chemical makeup of these plastics? Or is it the toxicants or pathogens that attach to them? Or all of the above? What health effects are of most concern? What life stages are most sensitive to exposure? Is the fetus most at risk? Or are adolescents? Or people with preexisting conditions? Is duration of exposure, peak exposure, or cumulative exposure most important? How do health risks from plastic microparticles compare to the health and safety benefits of plastic?

To help us answer these questions, scientists who study exposures to chemicals, environmental epidemiologists, and other researchers need to utilize and stretch their various techniques, tools, and study designs to explore each of these smaller questions to figure out whether microplastics are harmful to human health. It could take many years or even decades before we are able to get a firm grasp of whether microplastics are toxic to humans.

Shifting from plastics to green alternatives

Whether or not we ever find adverse human health effects in association with microplastics, it’s clear we must take action to reduce the amount and toll of plastics on our environment. In addition to remediation efforts for the massive amount of plastic pollution already out there, better materials design through greater application of green chemistry principles is one positive step we can take. We can also reduce single-use plastics, introduce effective recycling programs on a global scale, and implement policies at the national level, like phasing out microbeads or banning certain additives, or locally at the city, county, or state level.

There is no question that synthetic plastics have made our lives safer and more convenient over the past half-century or so – keeping foods fresh, providing crucial parts for cars and aircraft, preventing electronics from starting or spreading fires, contributing to medical treatment and care, and helping deliver clean water to parts of the world that would not otherwise have access. The applications are endless and we rely on these materials. Data on rates and trends for plastic production and waste generation are nothing short of staggering.

In the near-term the most effective strategy may involve each one of us taking stock of our plastic usage and disposal habits, compare that with our actual needs and what we could be doing differently, and adjust accordingly.

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Prof. John Meeker is Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, University of Michigan.

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FDA Lets Pfizer Test Experimental COVID-19 Vaccine on U.S. Children

November 6th, 2021 by Children’s Health Defense

Important article published in October 2020, shortly prior to launching of the mRNA vaccine one year ago in early November 2020. 

***

Americans have been following COVID-19 vaccine trial developments for weeks, watching companies jockey for frontrunner status like contestants in a reality TV show. And though participants in some of the studies (by Moderna, Oxford, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer) have surfaced with reactions serious enough to pause several of the trials, market analysts remain “bullish” about the near-term prospects for approval of these liability-free products by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

On Oct. 16, Pfizer’s CEO indicated the company would likely file for FDA Emergency Use Authorization for its experimental BNT162b2 vaccine in late November. That statement came three days after Pfizer announced that it had received FDA permission to administer the unproven vaccine to children as young as 12, becoming the first company in the U.S. to include young participants in Phase 3 trials. In the UK, Oxford and AstraZeneca gained approval to test their vaccine in children aged 5-12 back in May, a couple of months before two of their adult clinical trial participants developed transverse myelitis.

To date, Pfizer has administered two doses of vaccine to almost 35,000 adult participants in five countries. Unworried by the dramatic side effects reported by some of these adults — including high fever, pounding headaches, body aches, exhaustion and shivering intense enough to crack teeth — more than 90 parents have already expressed interest in volunteering their teenagers.

Are these parents (perhaps left unemployed by coronavirus restrictions) tempted by the financial incentives offered to clinical trial participants, reportedly anywhere from $1200 to $2000? Otherwise, their motivation for wanting to throw their children into the experimental fray is unclear; as the director of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital stated, “most of the time, what a coronavirus causes is a cold” that does not even make children “sick enough to where a parent says they need to go to a doctor.”

The Cincinnati physician has, nonetheless, just started giving Pfizer’s shot to 16- and 17-year-olds (and soon to 12-15-year-olds). To entice additional young participants, he tells parents that the COVID-19 death rate in children is “not zero” — but declines to spell out that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the survival rate in those age 19 and under is 99.997%. Using similarly vague language, a Memorial Sloan-Kettering health policy expert said that a COVID-19 vaccine’s benefits for the young would likely be “secondary’ in nature” but characterized the gesture as “an act of service to help protect others.”

However, reports in Pediatrics and other journals assert that children are not a source of infection and are far more likely to acquire COVID-19 from adults “rather than transmitting it to them.” In other words, policymakers expect children to accept a risk-benefit equation heavily tilted toward risk.

Corporate bad guy

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer — the second-largest drug and biotech company in the world and the fourth-highest earner of vaccine revenues — has seen a 7% increase in its share value this year. However, though Pfizer claims to be a standard-bearer for “quality, safety and value,” it has a corporate rap sheet a mile long. Pfizer is routinely mired in controversies involving alleged price-fixing, bribery, kickbacks, tax avoidance, regulatory misdirection and other unsavory practices and has also repeatedly paid fines for environmental violations at its research and manufacturing plants.

Critics point to decades of aggressive and questionable marketing. In 2009, this behavior earned Pfizer the dubious distinction of paying the largest-ever criminal fine at the time — $2.3 billion — for fraudulent and illegal promotion of four drugs, including a painkiller marketed at “dangerously high” doses. In 2016, a British regulator levied a $106 million fine against Pfizer for a 2600% increase in the price of a widely prescribed anti-epilepsy drug that increased the National Health Services’ expenditures from one year to the next — for a single drug—from $2.5 million to $63 million.

Perhaps to compensate for its unpleasant track record, Pfizer is the top drug company spender in state elections, even outspending the industry’s own lobbying group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRM). As a just-published analysis of drug company political spending by STAT and the National Institute on Money and Politics shows, Pfizer’s “prolific” state-level spending ($778,000 since January 2019) “mirrors its behavior at the federal level, where its [political action committee] was also the top political spender among drug companies” — roughly $1 million over the same time period. The report pointedly notes that while the amounts paid out to legislators represent a “pittance” for a company earning tens of billions a year, “those small chunks of corporate change can have a significant impact.”

Pfizer’s vaccines

Pfizer is responsible for two vaccines on the U.S. childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule: the pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar-13 (given to children under 5 and also to older adults) and the meningococcal vaccine Trumenba (approved for 10 – 25-year-olds). Package inserts link the two vaccines to a large number of serious adverse events, including anaphylaxis and other allergic reactions, severe headaches and chronic muscle and joint pain. Among the roughly 40 harms listed in the Prevnar-13 insert are sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and half a dozen other fatal outcomes.

Pfizer developed its COVID-19 vaccine — which uses experimental messenger RNA (mRNA) technology — in partnership with the German biopharma company BioNTech. Although mRNA vaccines must be stored in special ultra-low-temperature freezers that pose certain logistic obstacles, Pfizer is gung-ho on the never-before-approved approach because it bypasses the more costly and difficult methods used in traditional vaccine production. It does this by essentially turning recipients into “vaccine factories” — with long-term risks that are unknown.

Pfizer and BioNTech brought their COVID-19 vaccine candidates “from concept into clinical development” in under three months, perhaps helped along by the current Pfizer CEO’s efforts to restructure Pfizer into a more “nimble” company. At the same time, observers who now place Pfizer at the head of the pack for COVID-19 vaccines credit the company’s “well-oiled system,” remarking that “Pfizer’s incredibly organized and is always … a couple steps ahead, planning where they want to go.”

Conflicts of interest and revolving doors

In the summer of 2019, after having served as the Trump administration’s FDA commissioner for two years, Scott Gottlieb passed through the revolving door to join Pfizer’s board of directors as well as becoming a regular contributor on CNBC. For the past four decades, stepping onto pharmaceutical boards has been par for the course for departing FDA commissioners, though Gottlieb may have upped the ante by also joining the boards of the AI- and big-data-reliant genetic testing start-up, Tempus, and the biotech company Illumina.

While at the FDA, Gottlieb presided over a record number of drug approvals. According to one commentator, this “trail-blazing” FDA stint and Gottlieb’s focus on “hustling up the [drug approval] process … helped endear him to the industry, making him one of the most popular commissioners in FDA history.” As the director of a consumer watchdog group put it, “He’s basically been a shill for pharmaceutical corporations for much of his career.” Two months before stepping down from the agency, Gottlieb attracted notice when he strongly denied any link between vaccines and autism while publicly threatening that the federal government might be “forced” to intervene in states with vaccine exemptions to make vaccines mandatory across the board.

Gottlieb’s affiliation with CNBC may explain why he has been a frequent public face during the coronavirus pandemic, promoting the U.S. as a world leader in the vaccine race but also vocally endorsing measures like universal masking, universal testing and restaurant and school shutdowns. On October 19, Gottlieb dourly told Americans that the U.S. is “entering a pretty difficult period” and that “the hardest part is probably [still] ahead.” Ironically, around the same time that Gottlieb was using positive test results to hype ongoing restrictive measures, a former Pfizer vice-president and chief science officer in the UK characterized mass testing as “inappropriate,” asserting that “it is impossible for the positives to be much other than false.” Discussing the harsh policies that have been particularly disastrous for children, the former Pfizer executive agreed that they have essentially been based on “completely fake data.”

Kids at risk

Reporter Whitney Webb recently outlined how Operation Warp Speed is awarding contracts to vaccine companies through a nongovernmental defense contractor intermediary, a tactic that shields the contracts from oversight and federal regulation. Meanwhile, Moncef Slaoui — who heads up the Operation Warp Speed initiative — stated that after a round of testing in adolescents, he expects the leading coronavirus vaccines to also be tested in toddlers and babies. Parents would do well to keep their children on the sidelines of these experiments. If vaccine clinical trials, including Pfizer’s, are already generating concerning results in adults capable of describing their symptoms, what will happen when preverbal babies experience similar adverse outcomes?

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According to such modern climate experts as Bill Gates, Greta Thunberg, Michael Bloomberg, Mark Carney, Al Gore, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Prince Charles and Klaus Schwab, carbon dioxide (CO2) must be stopped at all cost. Images of submerged cities, drowning polar bears and burning deserts taking over civilization flash before our eyes repeatedly in schools, mainstream media and films.

The Paris Climate Accords demand that all nations reduce their emissions to pre-industrial levels and the COP26 Summit in Glasgow will certainly demand that these reductions be made legally binding and enforceable by new global governance mechanisms.

But is CO2 really the existential threat it is being made out to be?

I would like to take a few moments to entertain the hypothesis that we may be drinking some poisonous Kool-Aid in a modern-day Jonestown cult and we are just minutes away from a hearty “bottoms up”.

While some of the questions and facts you are about to read are considered heretical in certain quarters, I think that history has shown that it is only by permitting the mind to question sacred cows at the risk of being denounced as “heretical” that any creative progress can be made. With this thought in mind, I will venture the risk and only ask that you accompany me for this thought experiment with an open mind.

A Preface on Climategate

Back in November 17, 2009, a major scandal erupted when the 61 Mb of emails internally circulated among the directors and researchers at East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) were made public. To this day, it has not been verified if the scandal occurred via an internal leak or a hack, but what was verified throughout the hundreds of emails between director Phil Jones and the teams of climatologists staffing the CRU, was that vast scales of fraud were occurring. Jones himself was caught red handed[1] demanding that data sets be ignored and massaged in order to justify the climate models that had all been used to sell the idea that CO2 was driving startling rates of warming.

East Anglia’s CRU is the world’s foremost center of data set centralization and climate model generation which feed directly into the UN’s Independent Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and which in turn feeds into every major NGO, school, corporation and government. The other central control point of data selection and model generation (for both climate change and covid-19 data sets) is an Oxford-based operation called “Our World In Data”, funded in large measure by the UK government and Bill Gates[2].

Climategate couldn’t have come at a worse time, as the COP15 Climate Summit was scheduled for December 2009 where the world’s first legally binding carbon reduction treaties were expected to finalize an end to sovereign nation states. The terrible publicity of climategate essentially caused the event to become a big goose egg, as Chinese and Indian delegates refused to play along, and ensured that all teeth were removed from any binding carbon caps[3].

In December 2009, former chief economic advisor to Putin, Dr. Andrei Illarionov stated that Russia had sent data to East Anglia’s CRU from 476 meteorological stations covering over 20% of the globe’s surface hosting a wide range of data from as far back as 1865 to 2005. Dr. Illarionov explained[4] that he was dismayed to see that Phil Jones and the CRU entirely ignored the data from all but 121 stations, and from those stations they did use, they artificially cherry-picked data that gave off the false result that temperatures between 1860-1965 were 0.67 degrees colder than they truly were while temperatures from 1965-2005 were made artificially high.

After being suspended for a few months, a UK review panel absolved Jones from his transgressions and re-installed him into his old position of carbon data gatekeeper at the CRU.

Development Greens the Earth

Many people were taken aback by the findings published by a team of scientists analyzing the results of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. NASA’s website[5] described the findings (published on February 11, 2019[6]) in the following way: “The research team found that global green leaf area has increased by 5 percent since the early 2000s, an area equivalent to all of the Amazon rainforests. At least 25 percent of that gain came in China.”

Up until this study’s publication, scientists were not certain what role human economic activity played in this anomalous greening of the earth.

The NASA study demonstrated that this dramatic rate of greening between 2000-2017 was being driven largely by China and India’s combined efforts at eradicating poverty which involves both reforestation, desert greening efforts (see China’s Move South Water North megaproject[7]), agricultural innovation and also, general industrial growth policies. The latter policies represent genuine efforts by Asian nations to wipe out poverty by investments into large scale infrastructure… a practice once used in the west before the days of “post-industrialism” induced a collective insanity of consumerism in the early 1970s.

A perplexed reader might now be heard to ask: but how can industrial growth have anything to do with greening of the planet?

One simple answer is: carbon dioxide.

CO2: An Innocent Victim 

As children, we are taught that CO2 is an integral part of our ecosystem and that plants love it.

The processes of photosynthesis which evolved over long spans of time with the advent of the chlorophyll molecule eons ago requires constant infusions of carbon dioxide that are broken down along with H2O, releasing oxygen back into the biosphere. Over time, free oxygen slowly formed the earth’s ozone layer and fueled the rise of ever higher life forms that relied on this “plant waste” for life.

Today, large amounts of carbon dioxide is regularly generated by biotic and abiotic activity from living animals, decaying biomass as well as volcanos which constantly emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases. A surprisingly small portion of that naturally occurring CO2 is caused by human economic activity.

Taking the entire composition of greenhouse gases together, water vapour makes up 95% of the bulk, carbon dioxide makes up 3.6%, nitrous oxide (0.9%), methane (0.3%), and aerosols about 0.07%.

Of the sum total of the 3.6% carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, approximately 0.9% is caused by human activity. To restate this statistic: Human CO2 makes up less than 1% of the 3.6% of the total greenhouse gases influencing our climate.

During the mid-20th century, a belief began to emerge among some fringe climate scientists that the 400 parts per million (PPM) average carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the “natural and ideal amount”, such that any upset of this mathematical average would supposedly result in destruction of biodiversity. These same mathematicians also presumed that the biosphere could be defined as closed systems such that rules of entropy were the natural organizing principles- ignoring the obvious fact that ecosystems are OPEN, connected to oceans of active cosmic radiations from other stars, galaxies, supernova and more while being mediated by nested arrays of electromagnetic fields.

As film maker Adam Curtis demonstrated in his All Watched Over By Machines of Love and Grace (2011)[8], this belief slowly moved from the fringe into mainstream thinking despite the fact that it is simply wrong.

Beyond the facts already presented above, another persuasive piece of evidence can be found in carbon dioxide generators which are commonly purchased by anyone managing a greenhouse[9]. These widely-used generators increase CO2 to amounts as high as 1,500 PPM. What is the effect of such increases? Healthier, happier, greener plants and vegetables.

Temperature and CO2: Who Leads in this Dance?

Amidst the frantic alarms sounding daily over the impending climate emergency threatening the world, we often forget to ask if anyone ever actually proved the claim that CO2 drives the climate?

To begin to answer this question, let’s start with a graph showcasing the rise of human industrial CO2 from 1751-2015 broken down into various regions of the earth. What we can see is consistent increase from the mid 19th century until 1950, when a vast spike of emission rate increases can be viewed. This increase obviously accompanies world population growth and the correlated agro-industrial output.

Next, let us look at the global mean temperature changes from 1880-present.

Here several anomalies strike the thinking mind.

For starters, absolutely no warming accompanies the period of intensive industrial growth of 1940-1977. In fact during this period, many climate scientists were ringing the alarm over an impending ice age![10]

Another anomaly: Since carbon dioxide emissions have increased continuously over the past 20 years, one would expect to see a correlated spike in warming trends. However, this expected correlation is entirely absent between the year 1998 and 2012 when warming tappers off to a near standstill sometimes called “the global warming pause” of 1998-2012[11]. This has been an embarrassment for all modellers whose scare-mongering predictions have fallen to pieces to the point that they can only pretend this pause doesn’t exist. Again, the question must be asked: why would this anomaly appear if CO2 drove temperature?

Let’s take one more anomaly from our temperature records before digging into the hard proof that CO2 does not cause temperature changes: The medieval warming period [see graph].

While certain analysts [12] have attempted to erase this warming period from existence with things like the famous “hockey stick” model crafted with the help of East Anglia’s Phil Jones, the fact remains that from 1000-1350 A.D. global mean temperatures were significantly warmer than anything we are currently living through. The Vikings in Greenland had no coal plants or SUVs, and yet mean temperatures were still warmer than today by a long shot. Why?

Perhaps taking a wider look at the CO2: climate correlation might give us a better idea of what is actually happening.

Below we can see a chart taking 600,000 years of data into account. It is certainly the case that CO2 and temperature have a connection on these scales… but correlation is not causation, and as the author of How to Lie with Statistics[13] famously stated “a well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler’s Big Lie; it misleads, yet it cannot be pinned on you.”

When a 70,000 year sampling is inspected, we find the slight of hand fully exposed by observing the peaks and troughs of temperature and CO2. If the later were truly the driving force as the Great Resetters of our day proclaim, then CO2 peaks and troughs would happen before temperature, but the evidence shows us the inverse. Let’s look at one more example of an 800 year CO2/temperature lag about 130,000 years ago…

Going back even further into the climate records, it has been revealed that during many of the past ice ages, carbon dioxide had risen up to 800% higher than our current levels, despite the fact that human activity played zero role[14].

A Brief Look at Space Weather

Technically, I could end right now and feel like any honest jury would conclude that CO2 has been falsely framed for murder. But I would like to introduce one more dramatic piece of evidence that gets us back on the path of a true science of climate change and ecosystems management: Astroclimatology.

The fact that the earth is but one of a multitude of spherical bodies in space speedily revolving around an incredibly active sun within the outskirts of a galaxy within a broader cluster of galaxies is often ignored by many computer modelling statisticians for a very simple reason. Anyone who has been conditioned to look at the universe through a filter of linear computer models is obsessed with control, and is incredibly uncomfortable with the unknown. The amount of actual factors shaping the weather, ice ages, and volcanism are so complex, vast and mostly undiscovered that computer modellers would prefer to simply pretend they don’t exist… or if they do acknowledge such celestial phenomena to have any function in climate change, it is often dismissed as “negligible”.

Despite this culture of laziness and dishonesty, the question is worth asking: WHY does evidence of climate change occur across so many other planets and moons of our solar system? Ice caps on Mars melt periodically[15] and have been melting at faster rates in recent years. Why is this happening? Could the sun’s coronal mass ejections, solar wind, or electromagnetic field be affecting climate change within the solar system as one unifying process?

Often Venus with its atmosphere of 96.5% CO2 is used as a warning for people on the earth what sort of terrible oven we will create by producing more CO2. It is hot after all with temperatures averaging 467 degrees Celsius (872 degrees Fahrenheit). However, if CO2 were truly to blame for the heating, then why is Mars so cold with temperatures averaging minus 125 degrees Celsius (-195 degrees Fahrenheit) despite the fact that it’s atmosphere is 95% CO2?

Similarly, what role does cosmic radiation play in driving climate change? Based on the recent discoveries of Heinrich Svensmark and his team in Denmark, strong correlations were found linking cloud formation, climate and cosmic radiation flux over time. Cosmic radiation flux into the earth is a continuous process mediated by the earth’s magnetic field as well as the oscillating magnetic field of the sun which shapes the entire solar system as we revolve around the galactic center of the Milky Way every 225-250 million years. Svensmark’s discovery was outlined beautifully in the 2011 documentary The Cloud Mystery.[16]

A Return to a True Science of Climate

The point to re-emphasize is that the weather is, and always has been, a complex process shaped by galactic forces that have driven a miraculous system of life on the earth over hundreds of millions of years.

During this time amounting to approximately two revolutions around the galactic center, living matter has transformed from relatively boring (high entropy) single celled organisms, through a continuous process of increased complexity, and increased power of self-direction (low entropy). Up until now, there is no actual evidence that this process is a closed system and as such, that any fixed state of no change/heat death is controlling its behavior. While some might deny this claim, citing the redshifts of galaxies as proof that the universe is in fact dying (or inversely had a starting point “in time” 13.6 billion years ago before there was nothing), I refer you to the work of Halton Arp[17].

This process has been characterized by non-linear discontinuities of living matter emerging where only nonliving matter previously existed, followed later by conscious life having appeared where only non-conscious life had been found and most recently self-conscious life endowed with creative reason appearing onto the scene. While this process has been punctuated by sometimes violent mass-extinction cycles, the overall direction of life has not been shaped by randomness, chance or chaos, but rather improvement, perfectibility and harmony.

When humanity appeared onto the scene, a new phenomenon began expressing itself in a form which the great Russian academician Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) described as the Noosphere (as opposed to the lithosphere and biosphere). Vernadsky understood this new geological force to be driven by human creative reason, and devoted his life to teaching the world that the law of humanity must accord with the law of nature stating:

“The noösphere is a new geological phenomenon on our planet. In it, for the first time, man becomes a large-scale geological force. He can, and must, rebuild the province of his life by his work and thought, rebuild it radically in comparison with the past. Wider and wider creative possibilities open before him. It may be that the generation of our grandchildren will approach their blossoming”.[18]

In Vernadsky’s mind, neither the noosphere, nor the biosphere obeyed a law of mathematical equilibrium or statis, but was rather governed by an asymmetrical harmony and progress from lower to higher states of organization. It was only by coming to understand the principles of nature that mankind became morally and intellectually fit to improve upon nature by turning deserts green, harnessing the power of the atom or applying scientific progress to health and agriculture. Some of his most important insights were published in his Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomena (1938), Evolution of Species and Living Matter (1928) Some Words About the Noosphere (1943), and The Transition of the Biosphere to the Noosphere (1938).[19]

Despite the lasting contributions made by Vernadsky to human knowledge, here we sit, 76 years after the end of WW2 tolerating an unscientific policy of mass decarbonization which threatens to radically undermine civilization for countless generations.

Is this change being forced upon humanity? Unlike the forces of fascism and imperialism of the past, today’s terrible self-implosion of civilization is occurring via the consent of those intended to perish under a Great Reset via the collective guilt for the crime of simply being human. It has become the norm for the majority of today’s children to think of themselves as belonging not to a beautiful species made in the image of a Creator, but rather to a parasitic race guilty for the crime of sinning against nature.

So let’s take this opportunity to re-introduce truth back into climate science, and let the social engineers drooling over a Great Reset scream and whine as nations choose a new open system paradigm of life and anti-entropy rather than a closed system world of decay and heat death. This positive new paradigm of cooperation, scientific and technological progress, and cultural optimism is getting stronger by the day led by Russia, China and other nations joining the international New Silk Road. Most importantly, let’s finally absolve CO2 of its accused sins, and celebrate this wonderful little molecule as our friend and ally.

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Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , a BRI Expert on Tactical talk, and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the‘Untold History of Canada’ book series, and Clash of the Two Americas. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation .

Notes

[1] The Evidence of Climate Fraud, By Marc Sheppard, American Thinker Nov. 21, 2009

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/funding

[3] How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room by Mark Lynas, London Guardian, Dec. 22, 2009

[4] ClimateGate Fallout: Russian Think Tank Says Temperature Data was ‘Cherry-Picked’, Media Research Center, December 2009

[5] China and India Lead the Way in Greening, NASA Earth Observatory, Feb. 12, 2019

[6] China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management, Nature Sustainability, Feb. 11, 2019

[7] China’s South-to-North Water Diversion Project benefits 120 million people, CGTN, Dec. 13, 2020

[8] Watch full documentary here: https://watchdocumentaries.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/

[9] To examine one of many models of CO2 generators, visit: https://johnsonco2.com/co2-generators/

[10] The 1970s Ice Age Scare, by Steve Goddard, May 12, 2013

[11] https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/28/study-global-warming-hiatus-aka-the-pause-was-real/

[12]  Dr. Tim Ball Defeats Michael ‘Hockey Stick’ Mann’s Climate Lawsuit, Aug. 24, 2019, Climate Change Dispatch

[13] How to Lie with Statistics, by Darrell Huff, 1954 https://archive.org/details/how-to-lie-with-statistics-darrell-huff/page/23/mode/2up

[14] Ice age occurred when CO2 levels were 800 percent higher than now, IceAgeNow.info, July 23, 2016

[15] Mars is Melting, Science.nasa.gov, Aug 7, 2003

[16] To watch the full documentary, visit: https://youtu.be/ANMTPF1blpQ

[17] A Look Into Halton Arp’s “Peculiar Galaxies” and its Implications for the World We Live In, by Matthew Ehret, Rising Tide Foundation https://risingtidefoundation.net/2020/10/13/a-look-into-arps-peculiar-galaxies/

[18] Some Words About the Noosphere by V.I. Vernadsky, 1943, republished in 21st Century Science and Technology, Spring 2005 TS5467.SP05 (21sci-tech.com)

[19] To access all of these referenced works by Vernadsky, visit: https://risingtidefoundation.net/vladimir-vernadsky/

Featured image is from EcoWatch

Climate Science: Is it Currently Designed to Answer Questions?

November 6th, 2021 by Prof. Richard S. Lindzen

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Important article by MIT Prof. Richard S. Lintzen.

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Abstract

For a variety of inter-related cultural, organizational, and political reasons, progress in climate science and the actual solution of scientific problems in this field have moved at a much slower rate than would normally be possible.

Not all these factors are unique to climate science, but the heavy influence of politics has served to amplify the role of the other factors. By cultural factors, I primarily refer to the change in the scientific paradigm from a dialectic opposition between theory and observation to an emphasis on simulation and observational programs. The latter serves to almost eliminate the dialectical focus of the former.

Whereas the former had the potential for convergence, the latter is much less effective. The institutional factor has many components. One is the inordinate growth of administration in universities and the consequent increase in importance of grant overhead. This leads to an emphasis on large programs that never end. Another is the hierarchical nature of formal scientific organizations whereby a small executive council can speak on behalf of thousands of scientists as well as govern the distribution of ‘carrots and sticks’ whereby reputations are made and broken. The above factors are all amplified by the need for government funding.

When an issue becomes a vital part of a political agenda, as is the case with climate, then the politically desired position becomes a goal rather than a consequence of scientific research. This paper will deal with the origin of the cultural changes and with specific examples of the operation and interaction of these factors. In particular, we will show how political bodies act to control scientific institutions, how scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions, and how opposition to these positions is disposed of.

1. Introduction.

Although the focus of this paper is on climate science, some of the problems pertain to science more generally. Science has traditionally been held to involve the creative opposition of theory and observation wherein each tests the other in such a manner as to converge on a better understanding of the natural world. Success was rewarded by recognition, though the degree of recognition was weighted according to both the practical consequences of the success and the philosophical and aesthetic power of the success. As science undertook more ambitious problems, and the cost and scale of operations increased, the need for funds undoubtedly shifted emphasis to practical relevance though numerous examples from the past assured a strong base level of confidence in the utility of science. Moreover, the many success stories established ‘science’ as a source of authority and integrity. Thus, almost all modern movements claimed scientific foundations for their aims. Early on, this fostered a profound misuse of science, since science is primarily a successful mode of inquiry rather than a source of authority.

Until the post World War II period, little in the way of structure existed for the formal support of science by government (at least in the US which is where my own observations are most relevant). In the aftermath of the Second World War, the major contributions of science to the war effort (radar, the A-bomb), to health (penicillin), etc. were evident. Vannevar Bush (in his report, Science: The Endless Frontier, 1945) noted the many practical roles that validated the importance of science to the nation, and argued that the government need only adequately support basic science in order for further benefits to emerge. The scientific community felt this paradigm to be an entirely appropriate response by a grateful nation. The next 20 years witnessed truly impressive scientific productivity which firmly established the United States as the creative center of the scientific world.

The Bush paradigm seemed amply justified. (This period and its follow-up are also discussed by Miller, 2007, with special but not total emphasis on the NIH (National Institutes of Health).) However, something changed in the late 60’s. In a variety of fields it has been suggested that the rate of new discoveries and achievements slowed appreciably (despite increasing publications) [2], and it is being suggested that either the Bush paradigm ceased to be valid or that it may never have been valid in the first place. I believe that the former is correct. What then happened in the 1960’s to produce this change?

It is my impression that by the end of the 60’s scientists, themselves, came to feel that the real basis for support was not gratitude (and the associated trust that support would bring further benefit) but fear: fear of the Soviet Union, fear of cancer, etc. Many will conclude that this was merely an awakening of a naive scientific community to reality, and they may well be right. However, between the perceptions of gratitude and fear as the basis for support lies a world of difference in incentive structure. If one thinks the basis is gratitude, then one obviously will respond by contributions that will elicit more gratitude. The perpetuation of fear, on the other hand, militates against solving problems. This change in perception proceeded largely without comment. However, the end of the cold war, by eliminating a large part of the fear-base forced a reassessment of the situation. Most thinking has been devoted to the emphasis of other sources of fear: competitiveness, health, resource depletion and the environment.

What may have caused this change in perception is unclear, because so many separate but potentially relevant things occurred almost simultaneously. The space race reinstituted the model of large scale focused efforts such as the moon landing program. For another, the 60’s saw the first major postwar funding cuts for science in the US. The budgetary pressures of the Vietnam War may have demanded savings someplace, but the fact that science was regarded as, to some extent, dispensable, came as a shock to many scientists. So did the massive increase in management structures and bureaucracy which took control of science out of the hands of working scientists. All of this may be related to the demographic pressures resulting from the baby boomers entering the workforce and the post -sputnik emphasis on science. Sorting this out goes well beyond my present aim which is merely to consider the consequences of fear as a perceived basis of support.

Fear has several advantages over gratitude. Gratitude is intrinsically limited, if only by the finite creative capacity of the scientific community. Moreover, as pointed out by a colleague at MIT, appealing to people’s gratitude and trust is usually less effective than pulling a gun. In other words, fear can motivate greater generosity. Sputnik provided a notable example in this regard; though it did not immediately alter the perceptions of most scientists, it did lead to a great increase in the number of scientists, which contributed to the previously mentioned demographic pressure. Science since the sixties has been characterized by the large programs that this generosity encourages.

Moreover, the fact that fear provides little incentive for scientists to do anything more than perpetuate problems, significantly reduces the dependence of the scientific enterprise on unique skills and talents. The combination of increased scale and diminished emphasis on unique talent is, from a certain point of view, a devastating combination which greatly increases the potential for the political direction of science, and the creation of dependent constituencies. With these new constituencies, such obvious controls as peer review and detailed accountability, begin to fail and even serve to perpetuate the defects of the system. Miller (2007) specifically addresses how the system especially favors dogmatism and conformity.

The creation of the government bureaucracy, and the increasing body of regulations accompanying government funding, called, in turn, for a massive increase in the administrative staff at universities and research centers. The support for this staff comes from the overhead on government grants, and, in turn, produces an active pressure for the solicitation of more and larger grants [3].

One result of the above appears to have been the deemphasis of theory because of its intrinsic difficulty and small scale, the encouragement of simulation instead (with its call for large capital investment in computation), and the encouragement of large programs unconstrained by specific goals [4]. In brief, we have the new paradigm where simulation and programs have replaced theory and observation, where government largely determines the nature of scientific activity, and where the primary role of professional societies is the lobbying of the government for special advantage.

This new paradigm for science and its dependence on fear based support may not constitute corruption per se, but it does serve to make the system particularly vulnerable to corruption. Much of the remainder of this paper will illustrate the exploitation of this vulnerability in the area of climate research. The situation is particularly acute for a small weak field like climatology. As a field, it has traditionally been a subfield within such disciplines as meteorology, oceanography, geography, geochemistry, etc. These fields, themselves are small and immature. At the same time, these fields can be trivially associated with natural disasters. Finally, climate science has been targeted by a major political movement, environmentalism, as the focus of their efforts, wherein the natural disasters of the earth system, have come to be identified with man’s activities – engendering fear as well as an agenda for societal reform and control. The remainder of this paper will briefly describe how this has been playing out with respect to the climate issue.

2. Conscious Efforts to Politicize Climate Science

The above described changes in scientific culture were both the cause and effect of the growth of ‘big science,’ and the concomitant rise in importance of large organizations. However, all such organizations, whether professional societies, research laboratories, advisory bodies (such as the national academies), government departments and agencies (including NASA, NOAA, EPA, NSF, etc.), and even universities are hierarchical structures where positions and policies are determined by small executive councils or even single individuals. This greatly facilitates any conscious effort to politicize science via influence in such bodies where a handful of individuals (often not even scientists) speak on behalf of organizations that include thousands of scientists, and even enforce specific scientific positions and agendas. The temptation to politicize science is overwhelming and longstanding. Public trust in science has always been high, and political organizations have long sought to improve their own credibility by associating their goals with ‘science’ – even if this involves misrepresenting the science.

Professional societies represent a somewhat special case. Originally created to provide a means for communication within professions – organizing meetings and publishing journals – they also provided, in some instances, professional certification, and public outreach. The central offices of such societies were scattered throughout the US, and rarely located in Washington. Increasingly, however, such societies require impressive presences in Washington where they engage in interactions with the federal government. Of course, the nominal interaction involves lobbying for special advantage, but increasingly, the interaction consists in issuing policy and scientific statements on behalf of the society. Such statements, however, hardly represent independent representation of membership positions. For example, the primary spokesman for the American Meteorological Society in Washington is Anthony Socci who is neither an elected official of the AMS nor a contributor to climate science. Rather, he is a former staffer for Al Gore.

Returning to the matter of scientific organizations, we find a variety of patterns of influence. The most obvious to recognize (though frequently kept from public view), consists in prominent individuals within the environmental movement simultaneously holding and using influential positions within the scientific organization. Thus, John Firor long served as administrative director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. This position was purely administrative, and Firor did not claim any scientific credentials in the atmospheric sciences at the time I was on the staff of NCAR. However, I noticed that beginning in the 1980’s, Firor was frequently speaking on the dangers of global warming as an expert from NCAR. When Firor died last November, his obituary noted that he had also been Board Chairman at Environmental Defense– a major environmental advocacy group – from 1975-1980 [5].

The UK Meteorological Office also has a board, and its chairman, Robert Napier, was previously the Chief Executive for World Wildlife Fund – UK. Bill Hare, a lawyer and Campaign Director for Greenpeace, frequently speaks as a ‘scientist’ representing the Potsdam Institute, Germany’s main global warming research center. John Holdren, who currently directs the Woods Hole Research Center (an environmental advocacy center not to be confused with the far better known Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a research center), is also a professor in Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and has served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science among numerous other positions including serving on the board of the MacArthur Foundation from 1991 until 2005. He was also a Clinton-Gore Administration spokesman on global warming.

The making of academic appointments to global warming alarmists is hardly a unique occurrence. The case of Michael Oppenheimer is noteworthy in this regard. With few contributions to climate science (his postdoctoral research was in astro-chemistry), and none to the physics of climate, Oppenheimer became the Barbara Streisand Scientist at Environmental Defense [6]. He was subsequently appointed to a professorship at Princeton University, and is now, regularly, referred to as a prominent climate scientist by Oprah (a popular television hostess), NPR (National Public Radio), etc. To be sure, Oppenheimer did coauthor an early absurdly alarmist volume (Oppenheimer and Robert Boyle, 1990: Dead Heat, The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect), and he has served as a lead author with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) [7].

One could go on at some length with such examples, but a more common form of infiltration consists in simply getting a couple of seats on the council of an organization (or on the advisory panels of government agencies). This is sufficient to veto any statements or decisions that they are opposed to. Eventually, this enables the production of statements supporting their position – if only as a quid pro quo for permitting other business to get done. Sometimes, as in the production of the 1993 report of the NAS, Policy Implications of Global Warming, the environmental activists, having largely gotten their way in the preparation of the report where they were strongly represented as ‘stake holders,’ decided, nonetheless, to issue a minority statement suggesting that the NAS report had not gone ‘far enough.’ The influence of the environmental movement has effectively made support for global warming, not only a core element of political correctness, but also a requirement for the numerous prizes and awards given to scientists. That said, when it comes to professional societies, there is often no need at all for overt infiltration since issues like global warming have become a part of both political correctness and (in the US) partisan politics, and there will usually be council members who are committed in this manner.

The situation with America’s National Academy of Science is somewhat more complicated. The Academy is divided into many disciplinary sections whose primary task is the nomination of candidates for membership in the Academy [8]. Typically, support by more than 85% of the membership of any section is needed for nomination. However, once a candidate is elected, the candidate is free to affiliate with any section. The vetting procedure is generally rigorous, but for over 20 years, there was a Temporary Nominating Group for the Global Environment to provide a back door for the election of candidates who were environmental activists, bypassing the conventional vetting procedure. Members, so elected, proceeded to join existing sections where they hold a veto power over the election of any scientists unsympathetic to their position. Moreover, they are almost immediately appointed to positions on the executive council, and other influential bodies within the Academy. One of the members elected via the Temporary Nominating Group, Ralph Cicerone, is now president of the National Academy. Prior to that, he was on the nominating committee for the presidency. It should be added that there is generally only a single candidate for president. Others elected to the NAS via this route include Paul Ehrlich, James Hansen, Steven Schneider, John Holdren and Susan Solomon.

It is, of course, possible to corrupt science without specifically corrupting institutions. For example, the environmental movement often cloaks its propaganda in scientific garb without the aid of any existing scientific body. One technique is simply to give a name to an environmental advocacy group that will suggest to the public, that the group is a scientific rather than an environmental group. Two obvious examples are the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Woods Hole Research Center [9,10]. The former conducted an intensive advertising campaign about ten years ago in which they urged people to look to them for authoritative information on global warming.

This campaign did not get very far – if only because the Union of Concerned Scientists had little or no scientific expertise in climate. A possibly more effective attempt along these lines occurred in the wake of Michael Crichton’s best selling adventure, State of Fear, which pointed out the questionable nature of the global warming issue, as well as the dangers to society arising from the exploitation of this issue. Environmental Media Services (a project of Fenton Communications, a large public relations firm serving left wing and environmental causes; they are responsible for the alar scare as well as Cindy Sheehan’s anti-war campaign.) created a website, realclimate.org, as an ‘authoritative’ source for the ‘truth’ about climate. This time, real scientists who were also environmental activists, were recruited to organize this web site and ‘discredit’ any science or scientist that questioned catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

The web site serves primarily as a support group for believers in catastrophe, constantly reassuring them that there is no reason to reduce their worrying. Of course, even the above represent potentially unnecessary complexity compared to the longstanding technique of simply publicly claiming that all scientists agree with whatever catastrophe is being promoted. Newsweek already made such a claim in 1988. Such a claim serves at least two purposes. First, the bulk of the educated public is unable to follow scientific arguments; ‘knowing’ that all scientists agree relieves them of any need to do so. Second, such a claim serves as a warning to scientists that the topic at issue is a bit of a minefield that they would do well to avoid.

The myth of scientific consensus is also perpetuated in the web’s Wikipedia where climate articles are vetted by William Connolley, who regularly runs for office in England as a Green Party candidate. No deviation from the politically correct line is permitted.

Perhaps the most impressive exploitation of climate science for political purposes has been the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by two UN agencies, UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program) and WMO (World Meteorological Organization), and the agreement of all major countries at the 1992 Rio Conference to accept the IPCC as authoritative. Formally, the IPCC summarizes the peer reviewed literature on climate every five years. On the face of it, this is an innocent and straightforward task. One might reasonably wonder why it takes 100’s of scientists five years of constant travelling throughout the world in order to perform this task. The charge to the IPCC is not simply to summarize, but rather to provide the science with which to support the negotiating process whose aim is to control greenhouse gas levels. This is a political rather than a scientific charge. That said, the participating scientists have some leeway in which to reasonably describe matters, since the primary document that the public associates with the IPCC is not the extensive report prepared by the scientists, but rather the Summary for Policymakers which is written by an assemblage of representative from governments and NGO’s, with only a small scientific representation [11, 12].

3. Science in the service of politics

Given the above, it would not be surprising if working scientists would make special efforts to support the global warming hypothesis. There is ample evidence that this is happening on a large scale. A few examples will illustrate this situation. Data that challenges the hypothesis are simply changed. In some instances, data that was thought to support the hypothesis is found not to, and is then changed. The changes are sometimes quite blatant, but more often are somewhat more subtle. The crucial point is that geophysical data is almost always at least somewhat uncertain, and methodological errors are constantly being discovered. Bias can be introduced by simply considering only those errors that change answers in the desired direction. The desired direction in the case of climate is to bring the data into agreement with models, even though the models have displayed minimal skill in explaining or predicting climate. Model projections, it should be recalled, are the basis for our greenhouse concerns. That corrections to climate data should be called for, is not at all surprising, but that such corrections should always be in the ‘needed’ direction is exceedingly unlikely. Although the situation suggests overt dishonesty, it is entirely possible, in today’s scientific environment, that many scientists feel that it is the role of science to vindicate the greenhouse paradigm for climate change as well as the credibility of models. Comparisons of models with data are, for example, referred to as model validation studies rather than model tests.

The first two examples involve paleoclimate simulations and reconstructions. Here, the purpose has been to show that both the models and the greenhouse paradigm can explain past climate regimes, thus lending confidence to the use of both to anticipate future changes. In both cases (the Eocene about 50 million years ago, and the Last Glacial Maximum about 18 thousand years ago), the original data were in conflict with the greenhouse paradigm as implemented in current models, and in both cases, lengthy efforts were made to bring the data into agreement with the models.

In the first example, the original data analysis for the Eocene (Shackleton and Boersma, 1981) showed the polar regions to have been so much warmer than the present that a type of alligator existed on Spitzbergen as did florae and fauna in Minnesota that could not have survived frosts. At the same time, however, equatorial temperatures were found to be about 4K colder than at present. The first attempts to simulate the Eocene (Barron, 1987) assumed that the warming would be due to high levels of CO2, and using a climate GCM (General Circulation Model), he obtained relatively uniform warming at all latitudes, with the meridional gradients remaining much as they are today. This behavior continues to be the case with current GCMs (Huber, 2008). As a result, paleoclimatologists have devoted much effort to ‘correcting’ their data, but, until very recently, they were unable to bring temperatures at the equator higher than today’s (Schrag, 1999, Pearson et al, 2000). However, the latest paper (Huber, 2008) suggests that the equatorial data no longer constrains equatorial temperatures at all, and any values may have existed. All of this is quite remarkable since there is now evidence that current meridional distributions of temperature depend critically on the presence of ice, and that the model behavior results from improper tuning wherein present distributions remain even when ice is absent.

The second example begins with the results of a major attempt to observationally reconstruct the global climate of the last glacial maximum (CLIMAP, 1976). Here it was found that although extratropical temperatures were much colder, equatorial temperatures were little different from today’s. There were immediate attempts to simulate this climate with GCMs and reduced levels of CO2. Once again the result was lower temperatures at all latitudes (Bush and Philander, 1998a,b), and once again, numerous efforts were made to ‘correct’ the data. After much argument, the current position appears to be that tropical temperatures may have been a couple of degrees cooler than today’s. However, papers appeared claiming far lower temperatures (Crowley, 2000). We will deal further with this issue in the next section where we describe papers that show that the climate associated with ice ages is well described by the Milankovich Hypothesis that does not call for any role for CO2.

Both of the above examples probably involved legitimate corrections, but only corrections that sought to bring observations into agreement with models were initially considered, thus avoiding the creative conflict between theory and data that has characterized the past successes of science. To be sure, however, the case of the Last Glacial Maximum shows that climate science still retains a capacity for self-correction.

The next example has achieved a much higher degree of notoriety than the previous two. In the first IPCC assessment (IPCC, 1990), the traditional picture of the climate of the past 1100 years was presented. In this picture, there was a medieval warm period that was somewhat warmer than the present as well as the little ice age that was cooler. The presence of a period warmer than the present in the absence of any anthropogenic greenhouse gases was deemed an embarrassment for those holding that present warming could only be accounted for by the activities of man. Not surprisingly, efforts were made to get rid of the medieval warm period (According to Demming, 2005, Jonathan Overpeck, in an email, remarked that one had to get rid of the medieval warm period. Overpeck is one of organizers in Appendix 1.).

The most infamous effort was that due to Mann et al (1998, 1999 [13]) which used primarily a few handfuls of tree ring records to obtain a reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperature going back eventually a thousand years that no longer showed a medieval warm period. Indeed, it showed a slight cooling for almost a thousand years culminating in a sharp warming beginning in the nineteenth century. The curve came to be known as the hockey stick, and featured prominently in the next IPCC report, where it was then suggested that the present warming was unprecedented in the past 1000 years. The study immediately encountered severe questions concerning both the proxy data and its statistical analysis (interestingly, the most penetrating critiques came from outside the field: McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003, 2005a,b). This led to two independent assessments of the hockey stick (Wegman,2006, North, 2006), both of which found the statistics inadequate for the claims. The story is given in detail in Holland (2007).

Since the existence of a medieval warm period is amply documented in historical accounts for the North Atlantic region (Soon et al, 2003), Mann et al countered that the warming had to be regional but not characteristic of the whole northern hemisphere. Given that an underlying assumption of their analysis was that the geographic pattern of warming had to have remained constant, this would have invalidated the analysis ab initio without reference to the specifics of the statistics. Indeed, the 4th IPCC (IPCC, 2007) assessment no longer featured the hockey stick, but the claim that current warming is unprecedented remains, and Mann et al’s reconstruction is still shown in Chapter 6 of the 4th IPCC assessment, buried among other reconstructions. Here too, we will return to this matter briefly in the next section.

The fourth example is perhaps the strangest. For many years, the global mean temperature record showed cooling from about 1940 until the early 70’s. This, in fact, led to the concern for global cooling during the 1970’s. The IPCC regularly, through the 4th assessment, boasted of the ability of models to simulate this cooling (while failing to emphasize that each model required a different specification of completely undetermined aerosol cooling in order to achieve this simulation (Kiehl, 2007)). Improvements in our understanding of aerosols are increasingly making such arbitrary tuning somewhat embarrassing, and, no longer surprisingly, the data has been ‘corrected’ to get rid of the mid 20th century cooling (Thompson et al, 2008). This may, in fact, be a legitimate correction (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3114). The embarrassment may lie in the continuous claims of modelers to have simulated the allegedly incorrect data.

The fifth example deals with the fingerprint of warming. It has long been noted that greenhouse warming is primarily centered in the upper troposphere (Lindzen, 1999) and, indeed, model’s show that the maximum rate of warming is found in the upper tropical troposphere (Lee, et al, 2007). Lindzen (2007) noted that temperature data from both satellites and balloons failed to show such a maximum. This, in turn, permitted one to bound the greenhouse contribution to surface warming, and led to an estimate of climate sensitivity that was appreciably less than found in current models. Once the implications of the observations were clearly identified, it was only a matter of time before the data were ‘corrected.’ The first attempt came quickly (Vinnikov et al, 2006) wherein the satellite data was reworked to show large warming in the upper troposphere, but the methodology was too blatant for the paper to be commonly cited [14]. There followed an attempt wherein the temperature data was rejected, and where temperature trends were inferred from wind data (Allen and Sherwood, 2008).

Over sufficiently long periods, there is a balance between vertical wind shear and meridional temperature gradients (the thermal wind balance), and, with various assumptions concerning boundary conditions, one can, indeed, infer temperature trends, but the process involves a more complex, indirect, and uncertain procedure than is involved in directly measuring temperature. Moreover, as Pielke et al (2008) have noted, the results display a variety of inconsistencies. They are nonetheless held to resolve the discrepancy with models. More recently, Solomon et al (2009) have claimed further “corrections” to the data

The sixth example takes us into astrophysics. Since the 1970’s, considerable attention has been given to something known as the Early Faint Sun Paradox. This paradox was first publicized by Sagan and Mullen (1972). They noted that the standard model for the sun robustly required that the sun brighten with time so that 2-3 billion years ago, it was about 30% dimmer than it is today (recall that a doubling of CO2 corresponds to only a 2% change in the radiative budget). One would have expected that the earth would have been frozen over, but the geological evidence suggested that the ocean was unfrozen. Attempts were made to account for this by an enhanced greenhouse effect. Sagan and Mullen (1972) suggested an ammonia rich atmosphere might work. Others suggested an atmosphere with as much as several bars of CO2 (recall that currently CO2 is about 380 parts per million of a 1 bar atmosphere).

Finally, Kasting and colleagues tried to resolve the paradox with large amounts of methane. For a variety of reasons, all these efforts were deemed inadequate [15] (Haqqmisra et al, 2008). There followed a remarkable attempt to get rid of the standard model of the sun (Sackman and Boothroyd, 2003). This is not exactly the same as altering the data, but the spirit is the same. The paper claimed to have gotten rid of the paradox. However, in fact, the altered model still calls for substantial brightening, and, moreover, does not seem to have gotten much acceptance among solar modelers.

My last specific example involves the social sciences. Given that it has been maintained since at least 1988 that all scientists agree about alarming global warming, it is embarrassing to have scientists objecting to the alarm. To ‘settle’ the matter, a certain Naomi Oreskes published a paper in Science (Oreskes, 2004) purporting to have surveyed the literature and not have found a single paper questioning the alarm (Al Gore offers this study as proof of his own correctness in “Inconvenient Truth.”). Both Benny Peiser (a British sociologist) and Dennis Bray (an historian of science) noted obvious methodological errors, but Science refused to publish these rebuttals with no regard for the technical merits of the criticisms presented [16]. Moreover, Oreskes was a featured speaker at the celebration of Spencer Weart’s thirty years as head of the American Institute of Physics’ Center for History of Physics. Weart, himself, had written a history of the global warming issue (Weart, 2003) where he repeated, without checking, the slander taken from a screed by Ross Gelbspan (The Heat is On) in which I was accused of being a tool of the fossil fuel industry. Weart also writes with glowing approval of Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. As far as Oreskes’ claim goes, it is clearly absurd [17]. A more carefully done study revealed a very different picture (Schulte, 2007)

The above examples do not include the most convenient means whereby nominal scientists can support global warming alarm: namely, the matter of impacts. Here, scientists who generally have no knowledge of climate physics at all, are supported to assume the worst projections of global warming and imaginatively suggest the implications of such warming for whatever field they happen to be working in. This has led to the bizarre claims that global warming will contribute to kidney stones, obesity, cockroaches, noxious weeds, sexual imbalance in fish, etc. The scientists who participate in such exercises quite naturally are supportive of the catastrophic global warming hypothesis despite their ignorance of the underlying science [18].

4. Pressures to inhibit inquiry and problem solving

It is often argued that in science the truth must eventually emerge. This may well be true, but, so far, attempts to deal with the science of climate change objectively have been largely forced to conceal such truths as may call into question global warming alarmism (even if only implicitly). The usual vehicle is peer review, and the changes imposed were often made in order to get a given paper published. Publication is, of course, essential for funding, promotion, etc. The following examples are but a few from cases that I am personally familiar with. These, almost certainly, barely scratch the surface. What is generally involved, is simply the inclusion of an irrelevant comment supporting global warming accepted wisdom. When the substance of the paper is described, it is generally claimed that the added comment represents the ‘true’ intent of the paper. In addition to the following examples, Appendix 2 offers excellent examples of ‘spin control.’.

As mentioned in the previous section, one of the reports assessing the Mann et al Hockey Stick was prepared by a committee of the US National Research Counsel (a branch of the National Academy) chaired by Gerald North (North, 2006). The report concluded that the analysis used was totally unreliable for periods longer ago than about 400 years. In point of fact, the only basis for the 400 year choice was that this brought one to the midst of the Little Ice Age, and there is essentially nothing surprising about a conclusion that we are now warmer. Still, without any basis at all, the report also concluded that despite the inadequacy of the Mann et al analysis, the conclusion might still be correct. It was this baseless conjecture that received most of the publicity surrounding the report.

In a recent paper, Roe (2006) showed that the orbital variations in high latitude summer insolation correlate excellently with changes in glaciation – once one relates the insolation properly to the rate of change of glaciation rather than to the glaciation itself. This provided excellent support for the Milankovich hypothesis. Nothing in the brief paper suggested the need for any other mechanism. Nonetheless, Roe apparently felt compelled to include an irrelevant caveat stating that the paper had no intention of ruling out a role for CO2.

Choi and Ho (2006, 2008) published interesting papers on the optical properties of high tropical cirrus that largely confirmed earlier results by Lindzen, Chou and Hou (2001) on an important negative feedback (the iris effect – something that we will describe later in this section) that would greatly reduce the sensitivity of climate to increasing greenhouse gases. A proper comparison required that the results be normalized by a measure of total convective activity, and, indeed, such a comparison was made in the original version of Choi and Ho’s paper. However, reviewers insisted that the normalization be removed from the final version of the paper which left the relationship to the earlier paper unclear.

Horvath and Soden (2008) found observational confirmation of many aspects of the iris effect, but accompanied these results with a repetition of criticisms of the iris effect that were irrelevant and even contradictory to their own paper. The point, apparently, was to suggest that despite their findings, there might be other reasons to discard the iris effect. Later in this section, I will return to these criticisms. However, the situation is far from unique. I have received preprints of papers wherein support for the iris was found, but where this was omitted in the published version of the papers

In another example, I had originally submitted a paper mentioned in the previous section (Lindzen, 2007) to American Scientist, the periodical of the scientific honorary society in the US, Sigma Xi, at the recommendation of a former officer of that society. There followed a year of discussions, with an editor, David Schneider, insisting that I find a coauthor who would illustrate why my paper was wrong. He argued that publishing something that contradicted the IPCC was equivalent to publishing a paper that claimed that ‘Einstein’s general theory of relativity is bunk.’ I suggested that it would be more appropriate for American Scientist to solicit a separate paper taking a view opposed to mine. This was unacceptable to Schneider, so I ended up publishing the paper elsewhere. Needless to add, Schneider has no background in climate physics. At the same time, a committee consisting almost entirely in environmental activists led by Peter Raven, the ubiquitous John Holdren, Richard Moss, Michael MacCracken, and Rosina Bierbaum were issuing a joint Sigma Xi – United Nations Foundation (the latter headed by former Senator and former Undersecretary of State Tim Wirth [19] and founded by Ted Turner) report endorsing global warming alarm, to a degree going far beyond the latest IPCC report. I should add that simple disagreement with conclusions of the IPCC has become a common basis for rejecting papers for publication in professional journals – as long as the disagreement suggests reduced alarm. An example will be presented later in this section.

Despite all the posturing about global warming, more and more people are becoming aware of the fact that global mean temperatures have not increased statistically significantly since 1995. One need only look at the temperature records posted on the web by the Hadley Centre. The way this is acknowledged in the literature forms a good example of the spin that is currently required to maintain global warming alarm. Recall that the major claim of the IPCC 4th Assessment was that there was a 90% certainty that most of the warming of the preceding 50 years was due to man (whatever that might mean). This required the assumption that what is known as natural internal variability (ie, the variability that exists without any external forcing and represents the fact that the climate system is never in equilibrium) is adequately handled by the existing climate models.

The absence of any net global warming over the last dozen years or so, suggests that this assumption may be wrong. Smith et al (2007) (Smith is with the Hadley Centre in the UK) acknowledged this by pointing out that initial conditions had to reflect the disequilibrium at some starting date, and when these conditions were ‘correctly’ chosen, it was possible to better replicate the period without warming. This acknowledgment of error was accompanied by the totally unjustified assertion that global warming would resume with a vengeance in 2009 [20]. As 2009 approaches and the vengeful warming seems less likely to occur, a new paper came out (this time from the Max Planck Institute: Keenlyside et al, 2008) moving the date for anticipated resumption of warming to 2015. It is indeed a remarkable step backwards for science to consider models that have failed to predict the observed behavior of the climate to nonetheless have the same validity as the data [21].

Tim Palmer, a prominent atmospheric scientist at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, is quoted by Fred Pearce (Pearce, 2008) in the New Scientist as follows: “Politicians seem to think that the science is a done deal,” says Tim Palmer. “I don’t want to undermine the IPCC, but the forecasts, especially for regional climate change, are immensely uncertain.” Pearce, however, continues “Palmer .. does not doubt that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has done a good job alerting the world to the problem of global climate change. But he and his fellow climate scientists are acutely aware that the IPCC’s predictions of how the global change will affect local climates are little more than guesswork. They fear that if the IPCC’s predictions turn out to be wrong, it will provoke a crisis in confidence that undermines the whole climate change debate. On top of this, some climate scientists believe that even the IPCC’s global forecasts leave much to be desired. …” Normally, one would think that undermining the credibility of something that is wrong is appropriate.

Even in the present unhealthy state of science, papers that are overtly contradictory to the catastrophic warming scenario do get published (though not without generally being substantially watered down during the review process). They are then often subject to the remarkable process of ‘discreditation.’ This process consists in immediately soliciting attack papers that are published quickly as independent articles rather than comments. The importance of this procedure is as follows. Normally such criticisms are published as comments, and the original authors are able to respond immediately following the comment. Both the comment and reply are published together. By publishing the criticism as an article, the reply is published as a correspondence, which is usually delayed by several months, and the critics are permitted an immediate reply. As a rule, the reply of the original authors is ignored in subsequent references.

In 2001, I published a paper (Lindzen, Chou and Hou) that used geostationary satellite data to suggest the existence of a strong negative feedback that we referred to as the Iris Effect. The gist of the feedback is that upper level stratiform clouds in the tropics arise by detrainment from cumulonimbus towers, that the radiative impact of the stratiform clouds is primarily in the infrared where they serve as powerful greenhouse components, and that the extent of the detrainment decreases markedly with increased surface temperature. The negative feedback resulted from the fact that the greenhouse warming due to the stratiform clouds diminished as the surface temperature increased, and increased as the surface temperature decreased – thus resisting the changes in surface temperature. The impact of the observed effect was sufficient to greatly reduce the model sensitivities to increasing CO2, and it was, moreover, shown that models failed to display the observed cloud behavior. The paper received an unusually intense review from four reviewers.

Once the paper appeared, the peer review editor of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Irwin Abrams, was replaced by a new editor, Jeffrey Rosenfeld (holding the newly created position of Editor in Chief), and the new editor almost immediately accepted a paper criticizing our paper (Hartmann and Michelsen, 2002), publishing it as a separate paper rather than a response to our paper (which would have been the usual and appropriate procedure). In the usual procedure, the original authors are permitted to respond in the same issue. In the present case, the response was delayed by several months. Moreover, the new editor chose to label the criticism as follows: “Careful analysis of data reveals no shrinkage of tropical cloud anvil area with increasing SST.”

In fact, this criticism was easily dismissed. The claim of Hartmann and Michelsen was that the effect we observed was due to the intrusion of midlatitude non- convective clouds into the tropics. If this were true, then the effect should have diminished as one restricted observations more closely to the equator, but as we showed (Lindzen, Chou and Hou, 2002), exactly the opposite was found. There were also separately published papers (again violating normal protocols allowing for immediate response) by Lin et al, 2002 and Fu, Baker and Hartmann, 2002, that criticized our paper by claiming that since the instruments on the geostationary satellite could not see the thin stratiform clouds that formed the tails of the clouds we could see, that we were not entitled to assume that the tails existed. Without the tails, the radiative impact of the clouds would be primarily in the visible where the behavior we observed would lead to a positive feedback; with the tails the effect is a negative feedback. The tails had long been observed, and the notion that they abruptly disappeared when not observed by an insufficiently sensitive sensor was absurd on the face of it, and the use of better instruments by Choi and Ho (2006, 2008) confirmed the robustness of the tails and the strong dominance of the infrared impact. However, as we have already seen, virtually any mention of the iris effect tends to be accompanied with a reference to the criticisms, a claim that the theory is ‘discredited,’ and absolutely no mention of the responses. This is even required of papers that are actually supporting the iris effect.

Vincent Courtillot et al (2007) encountered a similar problem. (Courtillot, it should be noted, is the director of the Institute for the Study of the Globe at the University of Paris.) They found that time series for magnetic field variations appeared to correlate well with temperature measurements – suggesting a possible non-anthropogenic source of forcing. This was immediately criticized by Bard and Delaygue (2008), and Courtillot et al were given the conventional right to reply which they did in a reasonably convincing manner. What followed, however, was highly unusual. Raymond Pierrehumbert (a professor of meteorology at the University of Chicago and a fanatical environmentalist) posted a blog supporting Bard and Delaygue, accusing Courtillot et al of fraud, and worse. Alan Robock (a coauthor of Vinnikov et al mentioned in the preceding section) perpetuated the slander in a letter circulated to all officers of the American Geophysical Union. The matter was then taken up (in December of 2007) by major French newspapers (LeMonde, Liberation, and Le Figaro) that treated Pierrehumbert’s defamation as fact. As in the previous case, all references to the work of Courtillot et al refer to it as ‘discredited’ and no mention is made of their response. Moreover, a major argument against the position of Courtillot et al is that it contradicted the claim of the IPCC.

In 2005, I was invited by Erneso Zedillo to give a paper at a symposium he was organizing at his Center for Sustainability Studies at Yale. The stated topic of the symposium was Global Warming Policy After 2012, and the proceedings were to appear in a book to by entitled Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto. Only two papers dealing with global warming science were presented: mine and one by Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute. The remaining papers all essentially assumed an alarming scenario and proceeded to discuss economics, impacts, and policy. Rahmstorf and I took opposing positions, but there was no exchange at the meeting, and Rahmstorf had to run off to another meeting. As agreed, I submitted the manuscript of my talk, but publication was interminably delayed, perhaps because of the presence of my paper. In any event, the Brookings Institute (a centrist Democratic Party think tank) agreed to publish the volume. When the volume finally appeared (Zedillo, 2008), I was somewhat shocked to see that Rahmstorf’s paper had been modified from what he presented, and had been turned into an attack not only on my paper but on me personally [22]. I had received no warning of this; nor was I given any opportunity to reply. Inquiries to the editor and the publisher went unanswered. Moreover, the Rahmstorf paper was moved so that it immediately followed my paper. The reader is welcome to get a copy of the exchange, including my response, on my web site (Lindzen-Rahmstorf Exchange, 2008), and judge the exchange for himself.

One of the more bizarre tools of global warming revisionism is the posthumous alteration of skeptical positions.

Thus, the recent deaths of two active and professionally prominent skeptics, Robert Jastrow (the founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, now headed by James Hansen), and Reid Bryson (a well known climatologist at the University of Wisconsin) were accompanied by obituaries suggesting deathbed conversions to global warming alarm.

The death of another active and prominent skeptic, William Nierenberg (former director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute), led to the creation of a Nierenberg Prize that is annually awarded to an environmental activist. The most recent recipient was James Hansen who Nierenberg detested.

Perhaps the most extraordinary example of this phenomenon involves a paper by Singer, Starr, and Revelle (1991). In this paper, it was concluded that we knew too little about climate to implement any drastic measures. Revelle, it may be recalled, was the professor that Gore credits with introducing him to the horrors of CO2 induced warming. There followed an intense effort led by a research associate at Harvard, Justin Lancaster, in coordination with Gore staffers, to have Revelle’s name posthumously removed from the published paper. It was claimed that Singer had pressured an old and incompetent man to allow his name to be used. To be sure, everyone who knew Revelle, felt that he had been alert until his death. There followed a law suit by Singer, where the court found in Singer’s favor. The matter is described in detail in Singer (2003).

Occasionally, prominent individual scientists do publicly express skepticism. The means for silencing them are fairly straightforward.

Will Happer, director of research at the Department of Energy (and a professor of physics at Princeton University) was simply fired from his government position after expressing doubts about environmental issues in general. His case is described in Happer (2003).

Michael Griffin, NASA’s administrator, publicly expressed reservations concerning global warming alarm in 2007. This was followed by a barrage of ad hominem attacks from individuals including James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer. Griffin has since stopped making any public statements on this matter.

Freeman Dyson, an acknowledged great in theoretical physics, managed to publish a piece in New York Review of Books (Dyson, 2008), where in the course of reviewing books by Nordhaus and Zedillo (the latter having been referred to earlier), he expressed cautious support for the existence of substantial doubt concerning global warming. This was followed by a series of angry letters as well as condemnation on the realclimate.org web site including ad hominem attacks. Given that Dyson is retired, however, there seems little more that global warming enthusiasts can do. However, we may hear of a deathbed conversion in the future.

5. Dangers for science and society

This paper has attempted to show how changes in the structure of scientific activity over the past half century have led to extreme vulnerability to political manipulation. In the case of climate change, these vulnerabilities have been exploited to a remarkable extent. The dangers that the above situation poses for both science and society are too numerous to be discussed in any sort of adequate way in this paper. It should be stressed that the climate change issue, itself, constitutes a major example of the dangers intrinsic to the structural changes in science.

As concerns the specific dangers pertaining to the climate change issue, we are already seeing that the tentative policy moves associated with ‘climate mitigation’ are contributing to deforestation, food riots, potential trade wars, inflation, energy speculation and overt corruption as in the case of ENRON (one of the leading lobbyists for Kyoto prior to its collapse). There is little question that global warming has been exploited many governments and corporations (and not just by ENRON; Lehman Brothers, for example, was also heavily promoting global warming alarm, and relying on the advice of James Hansen, etc.) for their own purposes, but it is unclear to what extent such exploitation has played an initiating role in the issue. The developing world has come to realize that the proposed measures endanger their legitimate hopes to escape poverty, and, in the case of India, they have, encouragingly, led to an assessment of climate issues independent of the ‘official’ wisdom (Government of India, 2008 [23]).

For purposes of this paper, however, I simply want to briefly note the specific implications for science and its interaction with society. Although society is undoubtedly aware of the imperfections of science, it has rarely encountered a situation such as the current global warming hysteria where institutional science has so thoroughly committed itself to policies which call for massive sacrifices in well being world wide. Past scientific errors did not lead the public to discard the view that science on the whole was a valuable effort. However, the extraordinarily shallow basis for the commitment to climate catastrophe, and the widespread tendency of scientists to use unscientific means to arouse the public’s concerns, is becoming increasingly evident, and the result could be a reversal of the trust that arose from the triumphs of science and technology during the World War II period.

Further, the reliance by the scientific community on fear as a basis for support, may, indeed, have severely degraded the ability of science to usefully address problems that need addressing. It should also be noted that not all the lessons of the World War II period have been positive. Massive crash programs such as the Manhattan Project are not appropriate to all scientific problems. In particular, such programs are unlikely to be effective in fields where the basic science is not yet in place. Rather, they are best suited to problems where the needs are primarily in the realm of engineering.

Although the change in scientific culture has played an important role in making science more vulnerable to exploitation by politics, the resolution of specific issues may be possible without explicitly addressing the structural problems in science. In the US, where global warming has become enmeshed in partisan politics, there is a natural opposition to exploitation which is not specifically based on science itself. However, the restoration of the traditional scientific paradigm will call for more serious efforts. Such changes are unlikely to come from any fiat. Nor is it likely to be implemented by the large science bureaucracies that have helped create the problem in the first place. A potentially effective approach would be to change the incentive structure of science. The current support mechanisms for science is one where the solution of a scientific problem is rewarded by ending support.

This hardly encourages the solution of problems or the search for actual answers. Nor does it encourage meaningfully testing hypotheses. The alternative calls for a measure of societal trust, patience, and commitment to elitism that hardly seems consonant with the contemporary attitudes. It may, however, be possible to make a significant beginning by carefully reducing the funding for science. Many scientists would be willing to accept a lower level of funding in return for greater freedom and stability. Other scientists may find the trade-off unacceptable and drop out of the enterprise. The result, over a period of time, could be a gradual restoration of a better incentive structure.

One ought not underestimate the institutional resistance to such changes, but the alternatives are proving to be much worse. Some years ago, I described some of what I have discussed here at a meeting in Erice (Lindzen, 2005). Richard Garwin (who some regard as the inventor of the H-bomb) rose indignantly to state that he did not want to hear such things. Quite frankly, I also don’t want to hear such things. However, I fear that ignoring such things will hardly constitute a solution, and a solution may be necessary for the sake of the scientific enterprise.

Acknowledgments. The author wishes to thank Dennis Ambler, Willie Soon, Lubos Motl and Nigel Lawson for useful comments and assistance.

Notes

1. This paper was prepared for a meeting sponsored by Euresis (Associazone per la promozione e la diffusione della cultura e del lavoro scientifico) and the Templeton Foundation on Creativity and Creative Inspiration in Mathematics, Science, and Engineering: Developing a Vision for the Future. The meeting was held in San Marino from 29-31 August 2008. Its Proceedings are expected to be published in 2009.
2. At some level, this is obvious. Theoretical physics is still dealing with the standard model though there is an active search for something better. Molecular biology is still working off of the discovery of DNA. Many of the basic laws of physics resulted from individual efforts in the 17th-19th Centuries. The profound advances in technology should not disguise the fact that the bulk of the underlying science is more than 40 years old. This is certainly the case in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences. That said, it should not be forgotten that sometimes progress slows because the problem is difficult. Sometimes, it slows because the existing results are simply correct as is the case with DNA. Structural problems are not always the only factor involved.
3. It is sometimes thought that government involvement automatically implies large bureaucracies, and lengthy regulations. This was not exactly the case in the 20 years following the second world war. Much of the support in the physical sciences came from the armed forces for which science support remained a relatively negligible portion of their budgets. For example, meteorology at MIT was supported by the Air Force. Group grants were made for five year periods and renewed on the basis of a site visit. When the National Science Foundation was created, it functioned with a small permanent staff supplemented by ‘rotators’ who served on leave from universities for a few years. Unfortunately, during the Vietnam War, the US Senate banned the military from supporting non-military research (Mansfield Amendment). This shifted support to agencies whose sole function was to support science. That said, today all agencies supporting science have large ‘supporting’ bureaucracies.
4. In fairness, such programs should be distinguished from team efforts which are sometimes appropriate and successful: classification of groups in mathematics, human genome
project, etc.
5. A personal memoir from Al Grable sent to Sherwood Idso in 1993 is interesting in this regard. Grable served as a Department of Agriculture observer to the National Research Council’s National Climate Board. Such observers are generally posted by agencies to boards that they are funding. In any event, Grable describes a motion presented at a Board meeting in 1980 by Walter Orr Roberts, the director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and by Joseph Smagorinsky, director of NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton, to censure Sherwood Idso for criticizing climate models with high sensitivities due to water vapor feedbacks (in the models), because of their inadequate handling of cooling due to surface evaporation. A member of that board, Sylvan Wittwer, noted that it was not the role of such boards to censure specific scientific positions since the appropriate procedure would be to let science decide in the fullness of time, and the matter was dropped. In point of fact, there is evidence that models do significantly understate the increase of evaporative cooling with temperature (Held and Soden, 2006). Moreover, this memoir makes clear that the water vapor feedback was considered central to the whole global warming issue from the very beginning.
6. It should be acknowledged that Oppenheimer has quite a few papers with climate in the title – especially in the last two years. However, these are largely papers concerned with policy and advocacy, assuming significant warming. Such articles probably constitute the bulk of articles on climate. It is probably also fair to say that such articles contribute little if anything to understanding the phenomenon.
7. Certain names and organizations come up repeatedly in this paper. This is hardly an accident. In 1989, following the public debut of the issue in the US in Tim Wirth’s and Al Gore’s famous Senate hearing featuring Jim Hansen associating the warm summer of 1988 with global warming, the Climate Action Network was created. This organization of over 280 ENGO’s has been at the center of the climate debates since then. The Climate Action Network, is an umbrella NGO that coordinates the advocacy efforts of its members, particularly in relation to the UN negotiations. Organized around seven regional nodes in North and Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa, CAN represents the majority of environmental groups advocating on climate change, and it has embodied the voice of the environmental community in the climate negotiations since it was established.
The founding of the Climate Action Network can be traced back to the early involvement of scientists from the research ENGO community. These individuals, including Michael Oppenheimer from Environmental Defense, Gordon Goodman of the Stockholm Environmental Institute (formerly the Beijer Institute), and George Woodwell of the Woods Hole Research
Center were instrumental in organizing the scientific workshops in Villach and Bellagio on Developing Policy Responses to Climate Change’ in 1987 as well as the Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere in June 1988. It should be noted that the current director of the Woods Hole Research Center is John Holdren. In 1989, several months after the Toronto Conference, the emerging group of climate scientists and activists from the US, Europe, and developing countries were brought together at a meeting in Germany, with funding from Environmental Defense and the German Marshall Fund. The German Marshall Fund is still funding NGO activity in Europe: http://www.gmfus.org/event/detail.cfm?id=453&parent_type=E (Pulver, 2004).
8. The reports attributed to the National Academy are not, to any major extent, the work of Academy Members. Rather, they are the product of the National Research Council, which consists in a staff of over 1000 who are paid largely by the organizations soliciting the reports. The committees that prepare the reports are mostly scientists who are not Academy Members, and who serve without pay.
9. One might reasonably add the Pew Charitable Trust to this list. Although they advertise themselves as a neutral body, they have merged with the National Environmental Trust, whose director, Philip Clapp, became deputy managing director of the combined body. Clapp (the head of the legislative practice of a large Washington law firm, and a consultant on mergers and acquisitions to investment banking firms), according to his recent obituary, was ‘an early and vocal advocate on climate change issues and a promoter of the international agreement concluded in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. Mr. Clapp continued to attend subsequent global warming talks even after the US Congress did not ratify the Kyoto accord.’
10. John Holdren has defended the use of the phrase ‘Research Center’ since research is carried out with sponsorship by National Science Foundation, the National Oceanographic Administration, and NASA. However, it is hardly uncommon to find sponsorship of the activities of environmental NGO’s by federal funding agencies
11. Appendix 1 is the invitation to the planning session for the 5th assessment. It clearly emphasizes strengthening rather than checking the IPCC position. Appendix 2 reproduces a commentary by Stephen McIntyre on the recent OfCom findings concerning a British TV program opposing global warming alarmism. The response of the IPCC officials makes it eminently clear that the IPCC is fundamentally a political body. If further evidence were needed, one simply has to observe the fact that the IPCC Summary for Policymakers will selectively cite results to emphasize negative consequences. Thus the summary for Working Group II observes that global warming will result in “Hundreds of millions of people exposed to increased water stress.” This, however, is based on work (Arnell, 2004) which actually shows that by the 2080s the net global population at risk declines by up to 2.1 billion people (depending on which scenario one wants to emphasize)! The IPCC further ignores the capacity to build reservoirs to alleviate those areas they project as subject to drought (I am indebted to Indur Goklany for noting this example.)
12. Appendix 3 is a recent op-ed from the Boston Globe, written by the aforementioned John Holdren. What is interesting about this piece is that what little science it invokes is overtly incorrect. Rather, it points to the success of the above process of taking over scientific institutions as evidence of the correctness of global warming alarmism. The 3 atmospheric scientists who are explicitly mentioned are chemists with no particular expertise in climate, itself. While, Holdren makes much of the importance of expertise, he fails to note that he, himself, is hardly a contributor to the science of climate. Holdren and Paul Ehrlich (of Population Bomb fame; in that work he predicted famine and food riots for the US in the 1980’s) are responsible for the I=PAT formula. Holdren, somewhat disingenuously claims that this is merely a mathematical identity where I is environmental impact, P is population, A is GDP/P and T is I/GDP. However, in popular usage, A has become affluence and T has become technology (viz Schneider, 1997; see also Wikipedia).
13. The 1998 paper actually only goes back to 1400 CE, and acknowledges that there is no useful resolution of spatial patterns of variability going further back. It is the 1999 paper that then goes back 1000 years.
14. Of course, Vinnikov et al did mention it. When I gave a lecture at Rutgers University in October 2007, Alan Robock, a professor at Rutgers and a coauthor of Vinnikov et al declared that the ‘latest data’ resolved the discrepancy wherein the model fingerprint could not be found in the data.
15. Haqqmisra, a graduate student at the Pennsylvania State University, is apparently still seeking greenhouse solutions to the paradox.
16. The refusal was not altogether surprising. The editor of Science, at the time, was Donald Kennedy, a biologist (and colleague of Paul Ehrlich and Stephen Schneider, both also members of Stanford’s biology department), who had served as president of Stanford University. His term, as president, ended with his involvement in fiscal irregularities such as charging to research overhead such expenses as the maintenance of the presidential yacht and the provision of flowers for his daughter’s wedding – offering peculiar evidence for the importance of grant overhead to administrators. Kennedy had editorially declared that the debate concerning global warming was over and that skeptical articles would not be considered. More recently, he has published a relatively pure example of Orwellian double-speak (Kennedy, 2008) wherein he called for better media coverage of global warming, where by ‘better’ he meant more carefully ignoring any questions about global warming alarm. As one might expect, Kennedy made extensive use of Oreskes’ paper. He also made the remarkably dishonest claim that the IPCC Summary for Policymakers was much more conservative than the scientific text.
17. Oreskes, apart from overt errors, merely considered support to consist in agreement that there had been some warming, and that anthropogenic CO2 contributed part of the warming. Such innocent conclusions have essentially nothing to do with catastrophic projections. Moreover, most of the papers she looked at didn’t even address these issues; they simply didn’t question these conclusions.
18. Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Potsdam Institute, home of Greenpeace’s Bill Hare, now has a Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
19. Tim Wirth chaired the hearing where Jim Hansen rolled out the alleged global warming relation to the hot summer of 1988 (viz Section 2). He is noted for having arranged for the hearing room to have open windows to let in the heat so that Hansen would be seen to be sweating for the television cameras. Wirth is also frequently quoted as having said “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
20. When I referred to the Smith et al paper at a hearing of the European Parliament, Professor Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute (which I mentioned in the previous section with respect to its connection to Greenpeace) loudly protested that I was being ‘dishonest’ by not emphasizing what he referred to as the main point in Smith et al: namely that global warming would return with a vengeance.
21. The matter of ‘spin control’ warrants a paper by itself. In connection with the absence of warming over the past 13 years, the common response is that 7 of the last 10 warmest years in the record occurred during the past decade. This is actually to be expected, given that we are in a warm period, and the temperature is always fluctuating. However, it has nothing to do with trends.
22. The strange identification of the CO2 caused global warming paradigm with general relativity theory, mentioned earlier in this section, is repeated by Rahmstorf. This repetition of odd claims may be a consequence of the networking described in footnote 7.
23. A curious aspect of the profoundly unalarming Indian report is the prominent involvement in the preparation of the report by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri (an economist and long term UN bureaucrat) who heads the IPCC. Dr. Pachauri has recently been urging westerners to reduce meat consumption in order to save the earth from destruction by global warming.

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US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman released an extended and very manipulative statement ahead of his visit to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. This American official intended to set the narrative that his country’s Mainstream Media (MSM) proxies should follow for intensifying their information warfare against that country. The US’ Hybrid War on Ethiopia threatens to get worse since there aren’t any signs that this victimized state will bend to the aggressor’s pressure as hinted at in Feltman’s statement. It’s therefore worthwhile to analyze exactly what he said in order to expose the means through which his country is expected to intensify its Hybrid War campaign. What comes next is a collection of quotes from Feltman’s statement followed by an analytical interpretation of each excerpt.

The Criminal Predictably Feigns Innocence Once He’s Caught

“Having spent time in the Horn during my UN career, I knew the strategic importance of the Horn’s geography, demographics, politics, and security: importance not only in Africa but across the Red Sea and beyond. But had that same prescient person back in 2015 asked me to envision what my primary concerns would be in 2021 as Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa, I would have guessed that Somalia, still troubled today, would top the list. I would never have imagined Ethiopia – an exporter of stability via peacekeeping and a longstanding, important partner of the United States – to be consuming the bulk of my time and my conversations with Secretary Blinken and the White House.”

Feltman is falsely making it seem like he and his country have nothing to do with the Hybrid War on Ethiopia. This is intended to misportray themselves as “innocent” against the growing mountain of credible claims related to their leading involvement in this ongoing regime change campaign being waged through terrorist means by the TPLF and its allies. He’s trying to come off as a friend even though he’s an enemy. In fact, considering his high-level position in the US government, he’s likely orchestrating this campaign to a large extent.

The Envoy’s Counterproductive Puppet Innuendo Discredits His Envisioned Mediation Role

“At the start of my third month as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, I represented Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Addis at the funeral of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a man I had never met. To my embarrassment, you can still see on YouTube just how banal my words were. The UN, with its uneasy balancing act between the lofty principles of the Charter and the parochial interests of 193 member states and their leaders, does not habitually criticize deceased heads of state or government.

My remarks that day bypassed entirely the subject of human rights in emphasizing the Meles’ economic legacy. I had no idea that a ceremonial, representational appearance would, nearly a decade later, be fodder for misinformation on social media that the newly appointed U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa was somehow hopelessly partisan in favor of a man I never actually met. This distortion highlights the strong views that exist on Meles’ legacy on today’s Ethiopia. It is also a reminder that Ethiopia’s social media is, if nothing else, wondrously creative.”

The US envoy wants Ethiopians to think that he secretly despised former TPLF leader Zenawi even though the video evidence strongly suggests otherwise and that he was indeed sincere with every single one of his words about that man and his legacy. There are two ironies that are blatantly obvious in this excerpt from Feltman’s statement. First, this present representative of the same country that supposedly preaches the “universal value” of “free speech” is dishonestly describing those who took his words at face value as having participated in spreading so-called “misinformation on social media”.

Although Feltman claims that he never met Zenawi, he still represented an organization comprised of countless officials who did. It’s disingenuous to attempt to deflect from the US’ strident support of the TPLF across the decades by implying that his own words on that man’s legacy that he offered while working in an official capacity at the UN weren’t sincere. Not only that, but this dishonest deflection attempt seamlessly segues into the second irony contained in this excerpt.

If one takes his recent words at face value, then it suggests that Feltman was behaving as a puppet by saying things that he was ordered to but which were meant to deceive the international community. Of course, no objective observer of US-Ethiopian relations should doubt Washington’s historic support for the TPLF, but going with this train of thought for a moment, it raises questions about this envoy’s credibility in the present if he hinted as a short-term narrative deflection tactic that he was formerly a UN puppet. This should discredit Feltman’s envisioned mediation role since he can’t be trusted.

Feltman Plants The Seeds For A Powerful Infowar Innuendo Attack Against PM Abiy

“What I also recall about that first trip to Addis was the whispering — whispering in the Sheraton, whispering on the margins of the funeral events, whispering even in gardens outside; conscious efforts to place cell phones at considerable distance from conversations; fingers pointing to ears then ceilings to as a reminder that walls in Addis have ears. What, people were whispering, would happen to Ethiopia now? Ethiopians had endured some very dark days in their modern history. Whatever one thought of his domination of Ethiopian politics, in the wake of Meles’ death, the Ethiopians I met in September 2012 were contemplating their uncertain future with foreboding.”

Upon one’s first review of his statement, this excerpt seems to be an unnecessarily dramatic inclusion, but it’ll later on be revealed that it was meant to plant the seeds for a powerful infowar innuendo attack against Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Feltman will return to this anecdote near the end of his speech to imply a comparison between the period of prevailing uncertainty about Ethiopia’s future following Zenawi’s passing and the present day when it comes to the future of PM Abiy’s government and Ethiopia more broadly. This will be commented upon more at the appropriate part of this analysis but is being brought up at the moment to draw attention to Feltman’s pernicious infowar tactics.

The US Won’t Succeed In Dividing & Ruling Eritrea & Ethiopia

“We even hoped that the reconciliation Prime Minister Abiy promoted between Ethiopia and Eritrea might create a positive side effect of an improved Eritrean-U.S. relationship. That is what we desired. Washington supported the lifting of sanctions that had been imposed on Eritrea by the UN Security Council, in hopes of turning a new page. Unfortunately, Eritrea did not reciprocate and continues to this day to play a destructive, destabilizing role in the region, including its deadly role inside Ethiopia. Few countries in the world have a worse human rights record than Eritrea.”

The US wants to divide and rule Eritrea and Ethiopia as part of its larger Hybrid War against the Horn of Africa aimed at placing this geostrategic region under American hegemony. Feltman’s speech was supposed to be about US-Ethiopian relations, not US-Eritrean ones, but he exploited this pretext to rant about the latter. The purpose in doing so is to revive his country’s infowar narrative against that country which is primarily driven by “humanitarian imperialism”, ergo his irrelevant claim about the US’ stance towards Eritrea’s human rights record and its alleged role in the region.

Feltman Surprisingly Told The Truth About PM Abiy’s American-Friendly Intentions

“The Prime Minister has assured me on several occasions of the importance he places on Ethiopian-U.S. ties and told me of his affectionate memories of his own time in, and connections with, the United States.”

Credit should be given where it’s due, and Feltman told the truth about PM Abiy’s intentions to foster very friendly relations with the US. The problem, however, is that he included this in his statement for the wrong reasons in order to subsequently make it seem like the Ethiopian leader went rogue.

Blaming Trump Isn’t A Credible Excuse For Biden Continuing His Proxy War Policies

“But starting in 2020, solidarity between our two governments started to crack. To Ethiopia’s understandable annoyance, the previous administration halted some U.S. assistance programs in the misguided belief that Ethiopia might then reconsider its rejection of a draft tripartite agreement tabled by the Trump Administration regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a symbol of national pride for all Ethiopians.”

The Biden Administration always tries to blame former US President Trump for everything that’s going wrong in the world even though the former largely continued the latter’s proxy war policies in the New Cold War that it’s waging against China. Trump used the dam as a pretext for pressuring Ethiopia to curtail its ties with that superpower instead of continuing its pragmatic policy of balancing between that country and America. If the US was really against GERD, it would have taken aggressive action to stop its construction a decade ago instead of politicize the issue during the height of its tensions with China.

Don’t Believe The Biden Administration’s Supposedly “Peaceful” & “Pragmatic” Intentions

“Soon after taking office, the Biden-Harris Administration recognized the urgent need for meaningful Egyptian-Ethiopian-Sudanese negotiations leading to a mutually acceptable agreement on the filling and operation of the GERD. To that end, the new administration quickly made clear that it rejected Trump Administration’s approach and disconnected any assistance considerations from the GERD. We believe that Egypt’s need for water security, Sudan’s safety concerns, and Ethiopia’s development goals can be reconciled through good faith negotiations on the GERD, and the United States will continue to be actively involved with all parties to that end.”

Feltman is once against twisting the truth. Although the US superficially claims to have “peaceful” and “pragmatic” intentions when it comes to GERD, it’s actually meddling in an issue that’s none of its business and is trying to disguise this fact through unconvincing neutral-sounding rhetoric. The reality is that the Biden Administration intensified its predecessor’s then-incipient Hybrid War on Ethiopia by taking it to the present extreme. This disproves the claims that the US has “peaceful” and “pragmatic” intentions. To the contrary, the Biden Administration comprehensively escalated Trump’s pressure campaign against Ethiopia, which serves as clear evidence of strategic continuity.

Feltman Tacitly Threatens To “Balkanize” Ethiopia If It Doesn’t Treat The TPLF As An Equal

“At the same time, the incoming Administration was alarmed by the growing crisis in Ethiopia’s northern state of Tigray and worried it would have disastrous consequences for the stability and people of Ethiopia. The Biden-Harris transition team called for the Ethiopian authorities and Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (or TPLF) and to “take urgent steps to end the conflict, enable humanitarian access, and protect civilians.”

Since taking office, the Administration has consistently sought to engage the Government of Ethiopia and encourage a different path. As true partners should, we’ve tried to be candid in sharing our best advice, namely: this military conflict, if it continues, will have disastrous consequences for Ethiopia’s unity, territorial integrity, and stability – and Ethiopia’s relations with the United States and international community. We’ve repeatedly offered to help Ethiopia’s leaders pursue a different path.”

Feltman is making it seem like the conflict came out of nowhere and that his country has a neutral position towards pertinent developments. This false portrayal of reality is tacitly in support of the TPLF since that group started the war and is the only reason why it’s continued into the present day. By pressuring Ethiopia’s internationally recognized government to treat this terrorist-designated organization as an equal, the US is by default attempting to influence its internal affairs.

Ethiopia’s leaders have the sovereign right to pursue whichever path they so choose in the interests of their people per the electoral mandate that they recently received. Nevertheless, Feltman ominously hints at the potential punishment that his country might inflict against Ethiopia if it doesn’t comply with America’s demands to treat the TPLF as an equal when talking about the “disastrous consequences for [its] unity, territorial integrity, and stability”. In other words, “Balkanization” (formal partition).

The US’ Criticism Of The TPLF Means Nothing Without Tangible Action Against It

“Some critics of U.S. policy claim the United States has an inherent bias toward the TPLF. This could not be farther from the truth. We have consistently condemned the TPLF’s expansion of the war outside of Tigray and continue to call on the TPLF to withdraw from Afar and Amhara.”

As part of its efforts to deceive Ethiopians about its supposedly “peaceful” and “pragmatic” intentions, Feltman lied that there’s no truth to the claims that his country is biased towards the TPLF, which is debunked by the fact that the US never took tangible action against it.

Feltman Exposes Himself By Justifying The TPLF’s Invasions Of The Afar & Amhara Regions

“That expansion of the war, however, is as predictable as it is unacceptable given that the Ethiopian government began cutting off humanitarian relief and access to Tigray in June, which continues to this day despite horrifying conditions of reported widespread famine and near-famine conditions that have shocked the world: In Tigray, 90 percent of the population requires aid, and up to 900,000 people are facing famine-like conditions. This is happening in a country that has the expertise and experience to address famine, if the will were there.”

Feltman shamelessly justified the TPLF’s invasions of the Afar and Amhara Regions literally one sentence after claiming that “[it] could not be further from the truth” to say that “the United States has an inherent bias towards the TPLF”. He referred to the discredited claims that the government was weaponizing aid to the Tigray Region as a collective punishment against its people. The envoy’s devious intentions are made clear by his innuendo that there wouldn’t be any famine to begin with “if the will were there” by the government to prevent it. This is “humanitarian imperialism” par excellence.

Ethiopia’s Pro-Sovereignty Moves Against Corrupt UN Meddling Are Misportrayed As “Genocide”

“The government’s unprecedented expulsion of key UN officials—more UN humanitarian staff expelled in a single day by the Ethiopian government than Bashar al-Assad’s regime has expelled in 10 years of war in Syria— and the investigation and, in some cases, closure of internationally renowned humanitarian organizations further erodes the ability of the international community to reach those in need, not only in Tigray but also those victims of the TPLF incursions in Afar and Amhara we are committed to help. This unfortunately suggests an intentional effort by the authorities to deprive Ethiopians who are suffering of receiving life-saving assistance.”

Ethiopia has every right under international law to expel foreign officials like it recent did when it came to corrupt UN ones that were meddling in its internal affairs. Instead of acknowledging this crucial foundation of the “rules-based order” that his country has recently become so fond of preaching to the world about, Feltman misportrays it as advancing the false “genocide” narrative when saying that “This unfortunately suggests an intentional effort by the authorities to deprive Ethiopians who are suffering of receiving life-saving assistance.” To cite his own earlier words, “This could not be further from the truth”, yet he’s shamelessly lying in order to advance his country’s infowar against Ethiopia.

False “Mass Starvation” Claims Are Meant To Promote “Humanitarian Imperialism”

“The humanitarian conditions in Tigray are unacceptable. No government can tolerate an armed insurgency — we get that. But no government should be adopting policies or allowing practices that result in mass starvation of its own citizens.”

Feltman very clearly intended – or perhaps was ordered – to advance his country’s “humanitarian imperialism” agenda against Ethiopia as evidenced by his false claims that the government is purposely carrying out the “mass starvation of its own citizens.” This lie forms the basis of the US’ infowar.

America’s Implied Message Is “No More Business As Usual Until The TPLF Returns To Power”

“As the war approaches its one-year anniversary, the United States and others cannot continue “business as usual” relations with the Government of Ethiopia. The extraordinary partnership we have enjoyed is not sustainable while the military conflict continues to expand, threatening the stability and unity of one of Africa’s most influential countries and the fundamental well-being of its people.”

Feltman was surprisingly truthful in this respect because it’s factually the case that his country “cannot continue ‘business as usual’” until the Ethiopian government capitulates to the US-backed TPLF’s political demands. After all, the US is historically biased in support of that group as was earlier argued so it naturally follows that “business as usual” cannot continue until its allies return to power.

The US Spit In Ethiopia’s Face In Response To The Latter’s Friendly Outreaches

“While Ethiopian officials have attempted to separate the conduct of the war from the Ethiopian-U.S. bilateral relationship, there is a direct, causal relationship between what is happening on the ground as a result of the policies of the Ethiopian government and the subsequent decisions that have been taken or are being contemplated by the U.S. Administration.”

The US envoy basically admitted that his country spit in Ethiopia’s face by interfering in its internal affairs through political and economic means in response to that country’s consistently friendly outreaches of wanting to retain its historically excellent relations with America despite the ongoing conflict. There’s no reason not to separate bilateral ties and the war. Doing otherwise is meddling.

Feltman Reaffirms The US’ “Humanitarian Imperialism”

“The unfortunate deterioration in our relationship derives from the atrocities of the conflict in northern Ethiopia and the reports of the use of food as a weapon of war, which as UN Security Council Resolution 2417 reiterates, may constitute a war crime. We are reacting to behavior no person of conscience can accept and in manner which should come as no surprise to any party to the conflict.”

Once again, Feltman reaffirmed that “humanitarian imperialism” is the basis upon which the US is waging its Hybrid War against Ethiopia by claiming that all of its meddling is an unsurprising and conscionable response to implied genocide and war crimes. This is historical revisionism, however, since it was the US-backed TPLF that started and continued the war as well as weaponized humanitarian aid.

It Isn’t A “False Assertion” To Claim That The US Wants Regime Change In Ethiopia

“We’ve attempted to maintain a frank and open dialogue with the government. Instead of responding to our concerns and our offer to support mediation of the conflict, many in the government falsely assert that the United States seeks to replace the Abiy government with another TPLF-dominated regime. This is just not true. We know full well and respect the view of the overwhelming majority of the Ethiopian public who oppose a return to Meles-style rule.”

The information warfare component of the US’ Hybrid War on Ethiopia relies heavily on gaslighting by claiming that its critics are crazy and/or accusing them of exactly what the US itself is actually doing. This is once again evidenced by Feltman trying to discredit claims that his country wants regime change in Ethiopia as supposedly being “false assertions”. He also contradicted himself since his earlier cited eulogy of Zenawi very strongly suggested that he fully supported all of the former TPLF leader’s policies.

Feltman Once Again Implies His Preference For The TPLF’s Return To Power

“The United States seeks a relationship with all people in Ethiopia; we want to see stability and prosperity restored to the entire country and for Ethiopia to regain its position as a regional and global leader. Such an outcome requires Ethiopia’s leaders to put down their guns and find a formula for peaceful co-existence.”

Recalling his eulogy of Zenawi, it can rightly be interpreted that Feltman implied his preference for the TPLF’s return to when talking about his desire to see Ethiopia “regain its position as a regional and global leader.” After all, that’s precisely the role that he said that former TPLF leader had achieved for that country, which he implies will return once the group itself returns to power.

The US Envoy Inadvertently Acknowledged That Ethiopia Has A Popular Mandate To Wage War

“We had hoped that recent political events inside Ethiopia would have led the Prime Minister to pivot from war to peace. Elections in June and September produced a super parliamentary majority for the Prime Minister’s Prosperity Party.”

Feltman inadvertently acknowledged that PM Abiy has a popular mandate to wage war. This represents the genuine desire of the Ethiopian people to neutralize the US-backed TPLF-led terrorist threat to their country. Peace will inevitably follow the TPLF and its allies’ defeat.

It’s The TPLF, Not PM Abiy’s Government, That’s Exploiting Long-Standing Ethnic Grievances

“The Prime Minister now has the power and the opportunity to embrace peace. Instead, we see the situation getting worse, not better. The government has exploited long-standing ethnic grievances with divisive rhetoric. It has launched a bombing campaign while using drones from questionable sources, including reportedly from U.S. adversaries, and promoted mass mobilization of militia, doing grave damage to Ethiopia’s security institutions.”

As the reader has likely already realized by now, Feltman is shameless when it comes the lies that he spews in his extensive statement about Ethiopia. Among the ones that takes the cake, however, is his claim that PM Abiy’s government is the one exploiting long-standing ethnic grievances, which is actually what the TPLF has traditionally done and continues to do. Furthermore, Feltman is trying to discredit Ethiopia’s right to have non-US arms partners and mobilize local militias against terrorist threats.

Feltman’s Earlier Infowar Seeds Finally Grow Into A Powerful Infowar Innuendo Attack

“The situation on the ground today is even more alarming than it was a few months ago. And that whispering phenomenon in Addis that I found so indicative back on the margins of Meles’ funeral in 2012? It’s back. That democratic opening that was so inspiring when Abiy Ahmed became prime minister appears to be another victim of the war.”

As was earlier mentioned, Feltman’s infowar seeds finally grew into a powerful infowar innuendo attack comparing PM Abiy to the almost universally despised Zenawi. This is meant to manipulate the international community into thinking that the incumbent leader is equally hated at the grassroots level, which in turn is intended to secure their support for the US-backed TPLF-led regime change against him.

Feltman Tacitly Threatens A 20-Year Proxy War If Ethiopia Doesn’t Treat The TPLF As An Equal

“Studies show the average modern civil war now lasts 20 years. I repeat: 20 years. A multi-decade civil war in Ethiopia would be disastrous for its future and its people. We urge the Government of Ethiopia to give peace a chance, to choose a different path and engage in dialogue without preconditions.”

Not only did Feltman earlier convey a tacit threat to “Balkanize” Ethiopia if it doesn’t treat the TPLF as an equal, but since its planned counteroffensive could very well succeed, he’s now threatening that the US will commit to waging a 20-year proxy war against the country if it doesn’t fully submit right now.

“Bosnification” (Internal Partition) Is The US’ Alternative To “Balkanization” (Formal Partition)

“Ethiopians can set an agenda for talks on issues, including internal border disputes and the role of the central government versus the federal states, that must be resolved peacefully and constitutionally rather than through violence.”

Put another way, the US wants to internally partition Ethiopia via TPLF-led efforts to “Bosnify” this country along identity lines as an alternative to “Balkanizing” it via formal partition. The first-mentioned is quicker, less costly, and is more peaceful, thus making it preferred from the US’ perspective.

He Also Tacitly Threatens Ethiopia’s Isolation From The West If It Doesn’t Comply With US Demands

“As I told a group of Ethiopian officials during a private retreat we hosted in June in Washington, the Ethiopian-U.S. relationship was then at a crossroads. I think the same is true for Ethiopia’s broader relations with an important cross-section of the international community. We could proceed down one path that would inevitably lead to sanctions and other measures, or we go down another path on which we could revitalize the positive, promising bilateral relationship that was expanding to new heights after Prime Minister Abiy took office. The United States wants the latter.”

In other words, not only will the US punish Ethiopia by seeking its “Balkanization” via a threatened 20-year long proxy war if it doesn’t fully submit to American demands to treat the TPLF as an equal right now, but Feltman is also tacitly threatening to pressure his country’s Western vassals to isolate the Horn of Africa leader. Considering the “humanitarian imperialist” drivers behind this Hybrid War, it also can’t be discounted that the US will seek to assemble a Libyan-like “coalition of the willing” to attack Ethiopia under the manipulative “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) pretext as part of its “other measures”.

Furthermore, Feltman Tacitly Admits That The US Is Leading Global Efforts Against Ethiopia

“We are prepared to exercise leadership in the international community to energize the support needed for Ethiopia’s recovery from war and to realize the Prime Minister’s ambitious economic and job-creation agenda. That remains our desired destination. But I emphasized to the June delegation—as I have repeatedly conveyed to the Prime Minister and other senior officials before and since—Ethiopia, not the United States, is in the driver’s seat. Prolonging the war, dodging genuine negotiations to lead to de-escalation and a negotiated ceasefire, and refusing to allow unhindered humanitarian access to avert catastrophe are actions that are taking Ethiopia in a dangerous direction.”

This excerpt can be interpreted as Feltman’s tacit admission that the US is leading global efforts against Ethiopia. That’s why he said that it’ll “exercise leadership in the international community to energize support for Ethiopia’s recovery from war” if only PM Abiy submits to his country’s demands to treat the almost universally despised and terrorist-designated TPLF as an equal. It’s that group, not the Ethiopian government, that’s “prolonging the war…and refusing to allow unhindered humanitarian access to avert catastrophe”. Like was earlier remarked regarding the gaslighting aspect of the US’ infowar against Ethiopia, Feltman is accusing the Ethiopian Government of doing exactly what the US-backed TPLF does.

The American Hybrid War On Ethiopia Might Intensify In Days, Not Weeks

“Unfortunately, now, at the beginning of November, that crossroad I described in June is behind us. It’s not yet too late to retrace our steps toward the path not taken, but the change in direction must occur in days, not weeks. It requires the Ethiopian government to address concerns that we have been raising for months. (We are also insisting that the TPLF stop its military advance, refrain from threatening Addis, and prepare for talks. Eritrea must cease its destructive interference and withdraw its troops entirely from Ethiopia.)”

Feltman’s tacitly implied threats to isolate Ethiopia from its Western partners throughout the course of a potentially 20-year proxy war aimed at “Balkanizing” that country might turn into action in days instead of weeks if the government doesn’t fully submit to US demands right now. In addition, he’s also once again trying to divide Eritrea and Ethiopia by making the former part of this issue even though he has no right to decide who the internationally recognized Ethiopian government requests military and other assistance from in its ongoing War on Terror. The US wants to make this the world’s next crisis.

The US’ Priority Is The Opposite Of Ethiopia’s “Unity And Integrity”

“Our priority is the unity and integrity of the Ethiopian state and our commitment to the Ethiopian people.”

The truth is the opposite: the US wants to “Bosnify” (internally partition) Ethiopia via the return of a TPLF-led government otherwise it threatened to “Balkanize” (formally partition) it as punishment.

Feltman Threatens That The Hybrid War Will Expand Nationwide If Ethiopia Doesn’t Soon Submit

“In closing, I want to note that my remarks have concentrated primarily on the war in northern Ethiopia, since the violence, humanitarian catastrophe, and atrocities in northern Ethiopia — Tigray, Amhara, Afar — are the issues prompting U.S. consideration of new measures, including sanctions under the new Executive Order and the question of AGOA eligibility. But we are also deeply concerned with violence and tensions elsewhere in Ethiopia.

If not addressed through dialogue and consensus, these problems can contribute to the deterioration of the integrity of the state. Ending the war in northern Ethiopia will allow government officials and others to concentrate on the processes necessary to address tensions elsewhere and to rebuild a national consensus on the country’s future that includes enduring protections of the rights of members of minority groups.”

Keeping in mind insight that was shared earlier regarding the US’ complementary “Bosnification”/”Balkanization” plans for Ethiopia, this particular excerpt can be interpreted as Feltman threatening that the American Hybrid War against this diverse country will expand nationwide if it doesn’t soon submit. This is particularly important to keep in mind ahead of this analysis’ conclusion which will soon touch upon the next predicted phase of this campaign.

This US’ thuggish threats expose its external exacerbation of Ethiopia’s preexisting identity conflicts. Its envoy is already attempting to precondition the international community into expecting such a scenario in other parts of the country. All of this is intended to facilitate the TPLF’s efforts to encourage other terrorist groups to follow its lead with similarly implied American support as that group has already received. There’s no longer any doubt that the US wants “Bosnification” or “Balkanization” for Ethiopia.

The US Demands That Ethiopia Bow Down To It Or Face The Wrath Of A 20-Year-Long Hybrid War

“Ending the war is the best path to a more stable, more prosperous country. And ending the war will also enable us to renew a more affirmative Ethiopian-U.S. bilateral relationship, a partnership that benefits both countries. We urge Ethiopian leaders- from all parties – to take the steps necessary to arrest the current trajectory and permit its peoples and its partners to restore the promise that Prime Minister Abiy so compellingly outlined at the start of his premiership.”

Feltman’s final words mean the opposite of what they seem. He’s saying that peace isn’t possible unless Ethiopia immediately bows down to the US otherwise it’ll face the wrath of the 20-year-long Hybrid War that he threatened. Moreover, PM Abiy never wavered from his promise to restore Ethiopian unity. To the contrary, he’s actively advancing it with an unprecedented popular mandate as proven by the Prosperity Party’s parliamentary supermajority by continuing his War on Terror.

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Ethiopia is unlikely to submit to the US, which is why Feltman issued his extended and manipulative statement which tacitly implied all sorts of terrible threats for that country’s future. It preceded the TPLF’s efforts to establish a nationwide front of similarly banned organizations in an attempt to “legitimize” their US-backed Hybrid War in the eyes of the international community. This is also meant to establish the basis upon which Ethiopia can be “Bosnified” or “Balkanized” in the event that this terrorist group wins the war. The TPLF is doing so at this particular point in time due to its American patron’s political-strategic advice. Feltman didn’t come to Ethiopia to mediate peace, he came to deliver an ultimatum threatening a 20-year proxy war if his hosts don’t immediately surrender.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

Journalism in the Crosshairs: The Julian Assange Case

November 6th, 2021 by Michael Welch

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

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“Reality is an aspect of property. It must be seized. And investigative journalism is the noble art of seizing reality back from the powerful.”
― Julian Assange, Julian Assange – The Unauthorised Autobiography

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

A series of crimes and misdemeanors were conducted during the Iraq and Afghan wars by members of the United States military were revealed to the general public. Official documents and video footage showed that it happened. It was indisputable. [1][2]

In the face of this evidence, U.S. officials sprang into action, but not so much to get to the bottom of these horrendous outrages. To date, of the people responsible for gunning down to death 18 civilians during the 2007 Collateral Murder incident revealed in April 2010, not a single one has been held responsible. No, the object of the U.S. government’s fury was the man who founded the non-profit organization that published it. His name is Julian Assange. [3]

Assange has been dogged by the American government for 11 years. He has been dodging an allegation of sexual assault in Sweden which was eventually withdrawn. He declared political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy and stayed there for seven years. He was targeted by an indictment manufactured with the assistance of accusations from former Wikileaks volunteer Sigurdur Thordarson who finally admitted he lied earlier this year. He had been dealing with the CIA spying on him, his lawyers thanks to the Spanish security firm ‘protecting’ his Ecuador abode.

Now he is struggling with a prison sentence at Belmarsh Prison, described by a local group Prison Phone as “Britain’s toughest prison.” He has spent two and a half years there, and may be facing many more. He has been through an extradition hearing in the fall of last year, and just recently faced an appeal of the bloc of extradition.

All this because he published the information of a whistle-blower. Something we would expect any journalistic media organization to do.

The only difference is that the ease with which entire documents can be uploaded constitutes a major threat to government’s ability to conceal information. Something that won’t be tolerated in the era when so much is being concealed in the new era of waging a Global War on Terrorism.

This week’s episode of the Global Research News Hour is entitled Journalism in the Cross-Hairs: The Julian Assange Case. It explores the unique characteristics of both Julian Assange the man and Wikileaks the technology in nailing the U.S. military (criminal) apparatus in a weak spot. Over the course of 60 minutes, we will be joined by several individuals who have devoted significant attention to his cause and to the quest for his release.

Stella Moris is a South African lawyer who met Julian Assange when she joined the legal team. She eventually became his partner and fiancée and had two sons with him.

John Shipton if the father of Julian Assange, and has traveled abroad to promote his son’s release.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He blew the whistle on the CIA’s use of torture and ended up serving 23 months in prison.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and has been a correspondent for the Boston Globe, The Sunday Times of London, and the Wall Street Journal among other publications.

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. He has written a scholarly paper on Wikileaks and ran for the Wikileaks Party alongside Assange during the 2013 Australian Senate elections. 

Megan Sherman is an English musician, poet and activist deeply inspired by John Lennon. She has a bachelors degree in Modern History and Politics. Julian Assange profoundly influenced her in a good way. She is also a contributor to Global Research.

John Pilger is a world-renowned journalist and filmmaker. The author of several books and maker of over 60 documentaries (the latest being The Coming War on China and The Dirty War on the NHS), Pilger has won dozens of prestigious awards and has been honored by several universities.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 331)

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Notes:

  1. Anorak News (October 23, 2010), ‘Julian Assange’s Wikileaks Press Conference: Full Text Of Speech On Iraq Civilian Dead
  2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-military-leaks
  3. Yost, Pete (November 29, 2010).  “Holder says WikiLeaks under criminal investigation”Boston Globe. Associated Press.
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Incisive report by the Daily Mail.

Excerpts below

A consumer rights advocacy group has released a report revealing that COVID vaccine producer Pfizer has secret government contracts and used power to ‘shift risk and maximize profits.’

Pfizer has 73 formalized deals for its COVID-19 vaccine but of those, only five have been formally published by governments and include ‘significant redactions,’ Public Citizen found.

The seven known contracts reviewed by Public Citizen are worth more than $5 billion.

The advocacy group – which gained access to several leaked, unredacted contracts – claims the Manhattan-based pharmaceutical giant’s contracts ‘consistently place Pfizer’s interests before public health imperatives.’

The report accuses Pfizer of including secret language blocking donations of its own doses, opposing an intellectual property waiver that could have allowed for the sharing of technology, having ‘unilateral authority for other decisions’ and more.

Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine – the first to receive emergency use authorization in the U.S. – has become the most popular worldwide, with 3.5 billion doses purchased.

Pfizer has 73 formalized deals for its COVID-19 vaccine but of those contracts, only five have been formally published by governments and are heavily redacted. The known contracts are worth $5 billion and were reviewed by Public Citizen, which outlined its findings (pictured)

Pfizer has 73 formalized deals for its COVID-19 vaccine but of those contracts, only five have been formally published by governments and are heavily redacted. The known contracts are worth $5 billion and were reviewed by Public Citizen, which outlined its findings (pictured)

Experts predict its sales to double in 2022, the Washington Post reported.

Due to the fact that information in several contracts remains redacted, it is unknown exactly what the total cost of all agreements are.

The details and obligations outlined in numerous contracts also remain undisclosed.

Experts allege that secret contracts poses risks to others.

‘Hiding contracts from public view or publishing documents filled with redacted text means we don’t know how or when vaccines will arrive, what happens if things go wrong and the level of financial risk buyers are absorbing,’ Tom Wright, research manager at the Transparency International Health Program, said.

Public Citizen gained access to Pfizer’s contracts with the US, UK, Albania, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic, European Commission and Peru.

‘The contracts offer a rare glimpse into the power one pharmaceutical corporation has gained to silence governments, throttle supply, shift risk and maximize profits in the worst public health crisis in a century,’ the group’s report alleges.

Contract experts, who reportedly analyzed the leaked documents, claim that Pfizer uses ‘unfair and abusive’ contractual terms in negotiations that give them the right to silence governments.

Read the complete Daily Mail Online article here.

Our thanks to the Daily Mail

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The Covid-19 Timeline. No Evidence of a “Pandemic”

November 5th, 2021 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

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***

We are at the crossroads of one of the most serious crises in World history. We are living history, yet our understanding of the sequence of events since January 2020 has been blurred.

Worldwide, people have been misled both by their governments and the media as to the causes and devastating consequences of the Covid-19 “pandemic”.

Below is a detailed Timeline

For further details see Chapter II of Michel Chossudovsky’s E Book (13 Chapters) entitled

The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

To access the E-Book click the link above

***

The Covid-19 Timeline

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Prior to January 2020

August 1, 2019:  Glaxo-Smith-Kline (GSK) and Pfizer announce the establishment of a corporate partnership in Consumer Health Products including Vaccines. 

September 19, 2019: The ID-2020 Alliance. Establishing a Vaccine Digital Passport 

GAVI held their Summit in New York, entitled “Rising to the Good ID Challenge”. The  focus was on the establishment under the auspices of GAVI (Alliance for Vaccine Identity) of a vaccine with an embedded digital passport. The stated objective was the creation of a global digital data base.

“With the opportunity for immunization to serve as a platform for digital identity, the program harnesses existing birth registration and vaccination operations to provide newborns with a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity. The program will also explore and assess several leading infant biometric technologies to offer a persistent digital identity from birth …

“We are implementing a forward-looking approach to digital identity that gives individuals control over their own personal information, while still building off existing systems and programs,” 

October 18, 2019. Event 201. The 201 Pandemic Simulation Exercise

The coronavirus was initially named 2019-nCoV by the WHO, the same name (with the exception of the placement of the date) as that adopted at the October 18, 2019 201 Simulation exercise under the auspices of the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, Centre for Heath Security (an event sponsored by the Gates Foundation and World Economic Forum).(Event 201)

“A Global Pandemic Exercise”

“In October 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a pandemic tabletop exercise called Event 201 with partners, the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. …  For the scenario, we modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction.

Instead, the exercise served to highlight preparedness and response challenges that would likely arise in a very severe pandemic. We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 outbreak will kill 65 million people.

Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019.“We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 [which was also used as the name of the simulation] outbreak will kill 65 million people.

.Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019.

December 12, 2019 — “The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission claims this date to be the earliest original onset date of the 59 patients with unexplained viral pneumonia. (Timeline and Early Chronology)

December 31, 2019: First cases of pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan, Hubei Province. reported to the WHO.  “A total of 44 cases were reported: 11 patients are severely ill, while the remaining 33 are in stable condition.” 

January 2020

January 1, 2020: Chinese health authorities close the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan following Western media reports claiming that wild animals sold there may have been the source of the virus. This initial assessment was subsequently refuted by Chinese scientists.

January 7, 2020: The Chinese authorities “identify a new type of virus” which (according to reports) was isolated  on 7 January 2020. No specific details were provided regarding the process of isolation of the virus. According to several scientists, the identity as well as the process of the isolation of the virus have not been confirmed. (For further details, see Chapter X). The number of cases is exceedingly low. “44 cases of pneumonia even though viral-specific nucleic acids were found in only 15 patients”. No evidence of an unfolding epidemic in China. 

January 11, 2020 – The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announces the first death caused by the coronavirus.

January 22, 2020: WHO. Members of the WHO Emergency Committee “expressed divergent views on whether this event constitutes a PHEIC [Public Health Emergency of International Concern] or not”. The Committee meeting was reconvened on January 23, 2020, overlapping with the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos (January 21-24, 2020). The small number of cases in China did not justify a PHEIC. 

The meeting of the Emergency Committee convened by the WHO Director-General under the International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) expressed divergent views on whether this event constitutes a PHEIC or not. At that time, the advice was that the event did not constitute a PHEIC, but the Committee members agreed on the urgency of the situation and suggested that the Committee should be reconvened in a matter of days to examine the situation further.

Video: click the lower right corner to access full-screen.

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January 21-24, 2020: The Role of the World Economic Forum (WEF)

January 21-24, 2020: Consultations at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland under auspices of  the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) for development of a vaccine program. CEPI is a WEF-Gates partnership. With support from CEPI, Seattle based Moderna will manufacture an mRNA vaccine against 2019-nCoV,

“The Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of NIH, collaborated with Moderna to design the vaccine.” 

The evidence suggests that the 2019 nCoV vaccine project was already underway in 2019. (See Chapter VIII). It was officially announced at Davos, 2 weeks after the January 7, 2020 announcement by the Chinese authorities, and barely a  week prior to the official launching of the WHO’s Worldwide Public Health Emergency on January 30.

The WEF-Gates-CEPI Vaccine Announcement precedes the WHO’s Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

See WEF video 

Dominant financial interests, billionaire foundations and international financial institutions played a key role in launching the WHO Public Health Emergency (PHEIC).

In the week preceding this historic WHO decision. The PHEIC was the object of “consultations” at the World Economic Forum (WEF), Davos (January 21-24). The WHO Director General Dr. Tedros was present at Davos. Were these consultations instrumental in influencing the WHO’s historic decision on January 30th.

Was there a Conflict of Interest as defined by the WHO? The WHO’s largest donor is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which together with the WEF and CEPI had already announced in Davos the development of a Covid-19 vaccine prior to the historic January 30th launching of the PHEIC.

The WHO Director General had the backing of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Big Pharma and the World Economic Forum (WEF). There are indications that the decision for the WHO to declare a Global Health Emergency was taken on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (January 21-24) overlapping with the Geneva January 22 meeting of the Emergency Committee.

The  WHO’s Director General Tedros was present at Davos 2020.

January 28, 2020:  The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that the novela corona virus had been isolated. (See Chapter X of E- Book)

January 30, 2020: The WHO’s Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC)

The first stage of this crisis was launched by the WHO on January 30th. While officially it was not designated as a “Pandemic”, it nonetheless contributed to spearheading the fear campaign.

From the very outset, the estimates of “confirmed positive cases” have been part of a “Numbers Game”.

In some cases the statistics were simply not mentioned and in other cases the numbers were selectively inflated with a view to creating panic.

Not mentioned by the media: The number of “confirmed cases” based on faulty estimates (PCR) used to justify this far reaching decision was ridiculously low.

The Worldwide population outside China is of the order of 6.4 billion. On January 30, 2020 outside China there were:

83 cases in 18 countries, and only 7 of them had no history of travel in China. (see WHO, January 30, 2020).

On January 29, 2020, the day preceding the launching of the PHEI (recorded by the WHO), there were 5  cases in the US, 3 in Canada, 4 in France, 4 in Germany.

There was no “scientific basis” to justify the launching of a Worldwide public health emergency.

Screenshot of WHO table, January 29, 2020,

Those low numbers  (not mentioned by the media) did not prevent the launching of a Worldwide fear campaign.

January 31, 2020:  President Trump’s Decision to Suspend Air Travel with China

On the following day (January 31, 2020), Trump announced that he would deny entry to the US of both Chinese and foreign nationals “who have traveled in China in the last 14 days”. This immediately triggered a crisis in air travel,  transportation, US-China trade relations as well as freight and shipping transactions.

Whereas the WHO  “[did] not recommend any travel or trade restrictions” the five so-called “confirmed cases” in the US were sufficient to “justify” President Trump’s January 31st 2020 decision to suspend air travel to China while precipitating a hate campaign against ethnic Chinese throughout the Western World.

This historic January 31st decision paved the way towards the disruption of international commodity trade as well as the imposition of Worldwide restrictions on air travel. It was eventually instrumental to the bankruptcy of major airlines. 

“Fake media” immediately went into high gear. China was held responsible for “spreading infection” Worldwide.

Early February 2020: the acronym of the coronavirus was changed from nCoV- 2019 (its name under the October Event 201 John Hopkins Simulation Exercise before it was identified in early January 2020) to SARS-nCoV-2. Covid-19 indicates the disease triggered by SARS-CoV-2

February 20-21, 2020. Worldwide Covid Data Outside China: The Diamond Princess Cruise Ship 

While China reported a total of 75,567 cases of COVID-19, (February 20) the confirmed cases outside China were abysmally low and the statistics based in large part on the the PCR test used to confirm the “Worldwide spread of the virus” were questionable to say the least. Moreover, out of the 75,567 cases in China, a large percentage had recovered. And recovery figures were not acknowledged by the media. 


On the day of Dr. Tedros’ historic press conference intimating that a pandemic was imminent (February 20, 2020) the recorded number of confirmed cases outside China was 1073 of which 621 were passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship (stranded in Japanese territorial waters).

From a statistical point of view, the WHO decision pointing to a potential “spread of the virus Worldwide” did not make sense.

On February 20th, 57.9 % of the Worldwide Covid-19 “confirmed cases” were from the Diamond Princess, hardly representative of  a Worldwide “statistical trend”.The official story is as follows:

  • A Hong Kong based passenger who had disembarked from the Diamond Princess in Hong Kong on January 25 developed pneumonia and was tested positive for the novela coronavirus on January 30.
  • He was reported to have travelled on January 10, to Shenzhen on mainland China (which borders on Hong Kong’s new territories).
  • The Diamond Princess arrived at Yokohama on February 3. A quarantine was imposed on the cruiser See NCBI study.
  • Many passengers fell sick due to the confinement on the boat.
  • All the passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess undertook the PCR test.
  • The number of confirmed cases increased to 691 on February 23.

Scan Source: NCBI Study

Read carefully: From the standpoint of assessing Worldwide statistical trends, the data doesn’t stand up. Without the Diamond Princess data, the so-called confirmed cases worldwide outside China on February 20th 2020 were of the order of 452, out of a population of 6.4 billion. 

Examine the WHO Graph below. The blue indicates the confirmed cases on the Diamond Princess (international conveyance) (which arrived in Yokohama on February 3, 2020), many of whom were sick, confined to their rooms for more than two weeks (quarantine imposed by Japan). All passengers and crew took the RT-PCR test (which does not detect or identify Covid-19).

Needless to say, this so-called data was instrumental to spearheading the fear campaign and the collapse of financial markets in the course of the month of February 2020.

 

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Announces that the Pandemic Is Imminent

February 20th, 2020: At a press conference on Thursday the 20th of February afternoon (CET Time) in a briefing in Geneva, the WHO Director General. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that he was

“concerned that the chance to contain the coronavirus outbreak was “closing” …

“I believe the window of opportunity is still there, but that the window is narrowing.”

There were only 1076 cases outside China (including the Diamond Press:

Screenshot, WHO Press Conference, February 20th, 2020

Note: The tabulated data above for February 20, 2020 indicates 1073 cases. 1076 cases in WHO Press Conference)

These “shock and awe” statements contributed to heightening the fear campaign, despite the fact that the number of confirmed cases outside China was exceedingly low. 

The February Financial Crash 

February 20-21, 2020 marks the beginning of the 2020 Financial Crash (See Chapter IV of E Book)

Excluding the Diamond Princess, 452 so-called “confirmed cases” Worldwide outside China, for a population of 6.4 billion recorded by the WHO on February 20th, 15 in the US, 8 in Canada, 9 in the UK. (See table right, February 20, 2020). Those are the figures used to justify Dr. Tedros’ warnings: “the window is narrowing”:

A larger number of cases outside China were recorded in South Korea (153 cases according to WHO) and Italy (recorded by national authorities).

WHO data recorded on February 20, 2020,  at the outset of the so-called Covid Financial Crash (right)

The statement by Dr. Tedros (based on flawed concepts, statistics and ridiculously low numbers), set the stage for  the February financial collapse. (See Chapter IV).

February 24:  Moderna Inc supported by CEPI  announced  that its experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, known as mRNA-1273, was ready for human testing.

February 28, 2020: A  WHO vaccination campaign was announced by WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

More than 20 vaccines are in development globally, and several therapeutics are in clinical trials. We expect the first results in a few weeks.

It is worth noting that the campaign to develop vaccines was initiated prior to decision of the WHO to launch a Global Public Health Emergency. It was first announced at the WEF meeting at Davos (21-24 January) by CEPI.

Early March: China: More than 50% of the infected patients recovered. A total of 49,856 patients had recovered from COVID-19 and were discharged from hospitals in China. (WHO) 

What this means is that the total number of  “confirmed infected cases” in China was 30,448. (Namely 80,304 minus 49,856 = 30,448  (80,304 is the total number on confirmed cases in China (WHO data, March 3, 2020). No evidence of a pandemic in China.

These developments concerning “recovery” were not reported by the Western media.

March 5, WHO Director General confirms that outside China there are 2055 cases reported in 33 countries. Around 80% of those cases were from three countries (South Korea, Iran, Italy).

March 7: USA: The number of “confirmed cases” (infected and recovered) in the United States in early March was of the order of 430, rising to about 600 (March 8). A rapid rise in covid positive cases was recorded in the the course of month of March. 

Compare these figures to those pertaining to Influenza B Virus: The CDC estimated for 2019-2020 “at least 15 million virus flu illnesses… 140,000 hospitalizations and 8,200 deaths. (The Hill)

March 7:  China: No Pandemic in China. Reported new cases in China fall to double digit. 99 cases recorded on March 7.  All of the new cases outside Hubei province were categorized as  “imported infections”(from foreign countries). The reliability of the data remains to be established:

99 newly confirmed cases including 74 in Hubei Province, … The new cases included 24 imported infections — 17 in Gansu Province, three in Beijing, three in Shanghai and one in Guangdong Province.

March 11, 2020: The Historic Covid-19 Pandemic, Lockdown, Confinement, Social Engineering, Closing Down of 190 National Economies

The WHO Director General had already set the stage in his February 21st Press Conference .

 “the world should do more to prepare for a possible coronavirus pandemic”. The WHO had called upon countries to be “in a phase of preparedness”.

The WHO officially declared a Worldwide pandemic at a time when there were 118,000 confirmed cases and 4291 deaths Worldwide (including China). (March 11, 2020, according to press conference). What do these “statistics” tell you?

The number of confirmed cases outside China (6.4 billion population) was of the order of  44279 and 1440 deaths (figures recorded by the WHO for March 11, (on March 12) (see table right). These are the figures used to justify the lockdown and the closing down of 190 national economies. 

(The number of deaths attributed to Covid-19 outside China mentioned in Tedros’s press conference was 4291).

In the US, recorded on March 11, 2020, there were according to John Hopkins: 1,335 “cases” and 29 deaths (“presumptive” plus PCR confirmed). No evidence of a pandemic on March 11, 2020. 

Immediately following the March 11, 2020 WHO announcement, the fear campaign went into high gear. (The economic and financial impacts are reviewed in Chapter IV)

March 16, 2020: Moderna  mRNA-1273 is tested in several stages with 45 volunteers in Seattle, Washington State. The vaccine program started in early February:

“We don’t know whether this vaccine will induce an immune response, or whether it will be safe. That’s why we’re doing a trial,” Jackson stressed. “It’s not at the stage where it would be possible or prudent to give it to the general population.” (AP, March 16, 2020)

March 18, 20. 2020. Lockdown in the United States

November 8, 2020. The Covid-19 Vaccine is launched

Mid to Late December 2020: Worldwide Implementation of the Covid-19 vaccine program

January 20, 2021. The WHO Confirms that the Covid-19 PCR Test is Flawed 

What this implies is that the estimate of Covid-19 cases are totally invalid 

For details see Chapter III of E-Book.

January 2021 Onwards): Rising trend in vaccine related deaths and adverse events.

May- June 2021; The Delta Variant and “The Fourth Wave” are announced.  

The alleged dangers of the Delta Variant are being used to speed up the vaccination program as well as the imposition of the vaccine passport.

August- October 2021: The imposition of a vaccine passport in several Western countries.

***

 

The above text is based on Chapter II of  Michel Chossudovsky’s E-Book (13 Chapters) entitled

The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

***

About the Author

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.

He has undertaken field research in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific and has written extensively on the economies of developing countries with a focus on poverty and social inequality. He has also undertaken research in Health Economics (UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC),  UNFPA, CIDA, WHO, Government of Venezuela, John Hopkins International Journal of Health Services (1979, 1983)

He is the author of twelve books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005),  The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015).

He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at [email protected]

See Michel Chossudovsky, Biographical Note

Michel Chossudovsky’s Articles on Global Research

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Latest Developments in the Hybrid War on Ethiopia

November 5th, 2021 by Andrew Korybko

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Everything has suddenly intensified in Ethiopia due to the strategically timed convergence of the various components connected to the US’ Hybrid War against that country.

Military Offensives

Ethiopia is facing an unprecedented Hybrid War onslaught comprised of military, political, economic, and information components which requires a comprehensive strategy for countering. Everyone is bracing for a large-scale battle sometime in the coming future due to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front’s (TPLF) advance towards the capital of Addis Ababa over the past few days and the federal government’s subsequent promulgation of a state of emergency.

This terrorist-designated group is tacitly supported by the US through indirect means via the provisioning of material assistance to it through corrupt UN forces and Washington’s equating of the TPLF with the internationally recognized Ethiopian government on the political front. This backing emboldened them to invade the neighboring Afar and Amhara Regions over the summer following the military’s withdrawal from the Tigray Region that was carried out in support of the government’s unilateral ceasefire declaration at the time, continue committing war crimes with scant international criticism, and thus threaten the very existence of the Ethiopian state.

Political Offensives

The authorities plan to employ their state of emergency to ensure the defense of the capital and thereafter push back against the terrorist forces. They’ve encouraged their compatriots to join the war effort, which all patriotic members of society should do without a second thought considering everything that’s at stake. The potential return of the TPLF to power would disempower the Ethiopian people by further institutionalizing their externally exploited identity differences through the “Bosnification” scenario so as to indefinitely divide and rule them on that basis. This serves the interests of that group’s foreign patrons, particularly Egypt, which wants to prevent Ethiopia’s emergence as an African power. In effect, the de facto internal partition of the country into a checkerboard of quasi-independent identity-centric statelets could reverse its federal government’s visionary hydroelectric power generating policies, which would prevent Ethiopia from ever reaching its full developmental potential. By making it forever dependent on foreign energy imports, Egypt would ensure that Ethiopia never rises again.

Economic Offensives

There’s also a more directly focused economic dimension to this Hybrid War that isn’t any less important than the military and political ones. This concerns the US’ plans to revoke Ethiopia’s access to the American market through the “African Growth and Opportunity Act” (AGOA) at the beginning of next year. It’s intended to provoke financial panic and thus immediately worsen the economic situation in the country. The purpose in doing so is to manipulate the population to the point where they lose confidence in their government at one of the most crucial moments in Ethiopian history. Even if anti-government riots can’t be provoked to advance a Color Revolutionscenario due to the preventive measures in place connected to the recent state of emergency, the US at the very least hopes that the Ethiopian people will lose hope and thus become less enthusiastic about defending their country. After all, it’s significant to note that this announcement coincided with the TPLF’s latest military advances.

Infowar Offensives

Not only that, but all this happened around the same time that a UN report was released blaming both sides of the conflict for war crimes. Despite this pretense of neutrality, it’s expected that international pressure will overwhelmingly be directed against the Ethiopian government in an attempt to discredit it in the eyes of everyone. This will complement prior efforts to implicate the state in the so-called “genocide” that the TPLF and its supporters have claimed it’s committing. The weaponization of this information warfare narrative is meant to put immense pressure on the government by pushing the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) scenario from Libya under similarly faux “humanitarian” pretexts. In the current context of the country’s conflict, this could be employed as a backup plan if the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) succeed in pushing back the TPLF. The military, political, economic, and information aspects of the American Hybrid War on Ethiopia are all coordinated and converging at this particular point in time in order to provoke an existential crisis for the country.

Military Defenses

Having identified the most prominent dimensions of this conflict, it’s now time to discuss the means through which the state is responding to them. The military component was already touched upon with respect to the newly promulgated state of emergency and associated measures for the defense of Addis Ababa. Open source details on this are scarce due to their confidential nature during this time of war so it’s difficult to objectively assess their effectiveness thus far but it can be assumed that the state will do its utmost to ensure everyone’s security considering everything that’s at stake for it and the people that its tasked to protect. As such, observers are expecting a major battle sometime in the coming future, especially since talks between the warring sides presently seem out of the question as each has maximalist demands of the other: the TPLF wants to return to power at all costs while the internationally recognized Ethiopian government regards the group as foreign-backed terrorists with whom no negotiation is possible.

Political Defenses

On the political front, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has passionately promoted the cause of national unity. He and his government have emphasized the existential nature of the conflict and urged their compatriots to rally behind their civilization-state. By articulating the exact nature of the threat that the TPLF poses to Ethiopia, they’ve ensured that the population is fully aware of what’s at stake. There can be no excuses among those who don’t support their country at this pivotal moment in its history. Those who decline to do so by default sympathize with the TPLF’s “Bosnification” vision of further institutionalizing their identity differences in order to divide and rule Ethiopia’s diverse people for the benefit of that group’s foreign patrons, especially Egypt. The enormous socio-economic progress of the past few years would be reversed and the country’s population will likely be plunged into an indefinite period of impoverishment. Furthermore, the TPLF can be expected to sell off national assets to its foreign patrons as a quid pro quo for their support in returning it to power. The Ethiopian Renaissance would thus end in a nightmare and Africa’s historical icon of independence would lose its sovereignty.

Economic Defenses

In terms of economically defending Ethiopia, the solution is more nebulous though the state likely expected to have its AGOA access to the American market revoked for political reasons based on faux “humanitarian” pretexts following the US’ threat to this end a few months ago. It’ll be challenging to replace the role that AGOA had for the Ethiopian economy though it isn’t impossible. Ethiopia should immediately reach out to its Chinese, Russian, Indian, Turkish, and other partners to explore the possibility of obtaining similar access to their markets as it had to the American one. This will take time, though, so it’s expected that there will still be some serious short-term economic and possibly also domestic political consequences at the very least. Some of this can be counteracted through the provisions entailed in the recently promulgated state of emergency as well as the state’s efforts in explaining the existential nature of this conflict for the country. The first is aimed at ensuring hard security in the sense of preventing or responding to unrest that might be triggered by this economic provocation while the second is meant to retain the hearts and minds of the Ethiopian people during this time of crisis.

Infowar Defenses

The state has struggled to respond to the information warfare dimension of this latest American Hybrid War despite its best efforts due to the pressure that the US has put upon its allied Mainstream Media outlets to suppress the truth about what’s happening in Ethiopia. Nevertheless, that country’s activists and their supporters across the world have taken to social media to raise awareness of this on their own, with the most popular campaign at the moment being the #NoMore one promoted by the Horn Of Africa Hub. They aim to inform everyone that the Ethiopian people are united in their opposition to the TPLF’s divide-and-rule vision, foreign imperialist plots, Mainstream Media lies, and related issues. This campaign could potentially go viral and thus break through the US’ “information firewall” for censoring the truth about this Hybrid War. It’s therefore a major asset to the state’s efforts since it could positively reshape the perceptions of those who’ve been indoctrinated by information warfare into falling for false narratives about this conflict. The example being set by these Ethiopian activists and their allies could prospectively be replicated to defend other countries from similar Hybrid War onslaughts in the future.

Concluding Thoughts

Everything has suddenly intensified in Ethiopia due to the strategically timed convergence of the various components connected to the US’ Hybrid War against that country. There’s no doubt that the situation will likely get worse before it gets better, though it’s difficult to put a timeframe on when that might happen. The TPLF and its foreign patrons are pushing Ethiopia to the brink of total war. They’ve in effect expanded their strategy of provoking humanitarian crises for political ends from their native Tigray Region to the entire country after being emboldened by the US, Egypt, and corrupt UN forces. This is meant to inflict painful hardships on all of its people in an attempt to provoke them into turning against their government. Be that as it may, the success of this strategy disproportionately depends on manipulating the population’s perceptions. So long as the state can retain a sense of national unity in the face of this existential threat, then the TPLF will struggle to destroy it from within through political, economic, and infowar means. That would in turn drastically raise the importance of the military aspect of this conflict, thus possibly setting Ethiopia up for a series of major battles to determine the ultimate outcome of this war.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

Image: Rockefeller Center, NYC

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“Fast, accurate genomic sequencing information is the key to ending the Covid-19 pandemic and the suffering it has caused. Yet today only 14 countries, all of which have developed economies, are sequencing five percent or more of their cases and sharing them through global databases.”

This wonderful, generous comment stems from Mr. Rajiv J. Shah, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. He added,

“For that reason, The Rockefeller Foundation is strengthening global sequencing capacity – to end this pandemic for all as soon as possible.”

The “Genome Collection Program” may last until the end of UN Agenda 2030, when the Global Genome Data Bank should be completed. The Rockefeller Foundation wants to spend US$ 20 million on this project. That’s, of course, peanuts compared to the wealth of personal information and control mechanism the Rockefeller Foundation will have acquired.

At present, the Rockefeller Foundation says there are only 14 countries – “developed” countries that is – “so far sequencing 5% or more of their cases and sharing them through global databases.”

This is the full report of the latest Rockefeller never-ending saga towards a globalist world, a globalist control of the human DNA, and a globalist approach to the Rockefeller-Gates et al eugenist agenda. See here.

What better tool than total DNA control of individuals and of different ethnic groups and races to gain control of the world population?

Does it have a bearing on the issue of “population reduction”?

 

With full DNA control of the world population and algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) to bring about any combination these powerful elites control peoples lives. Potentially, diseases and viruses could be tailor-made to affect certain ethnic groups or races and to leave others intact, untouched from the disease.

A trial run had actually taken place with the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak in China in 2002-2003. Preceding this epidemic, hundreds of scientists from Harvard and other reputed US universities were discovered roaming the rural areas of Anhui province, collecting DNA samples from the Chinese population.

The name of Yang Huanming, the director of sequencing work for the Chinese Human Genome Project, was omitted from the Dec. 20 installment of “The Body Hunters” series on Harvard University’s genetic research in Anhui province. Yang said, “I hope that Harvard and the School of Public Health will understand that the [recruiting] methods they used in China are unacceptable to the Chinese.” …

They came from distant farming villages … “We were told there would be free medical care,” he said. “So of course everybody came out.”

There was a catch, however: Residents had to give blood.  ….

This was no ordinary blood drive. It was genetic research, a pamphlet explained to participants. But many couldn’t read, and few could have guessed at the tangle of scientific and business dreams that lay behind the project.

DNA from this region was coveted in the West. Researchers at Harvard University and its corporate sponsor, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., believed the isolated population here and elsewhere in the mountainous Anhui province held a treasure of unpolluted genetic material that could yield medical breakthroughs and perhaps millions in biotech profits.

Because it was unusually homogenous and made medical research easier, the DNA in the local population’s blood “was more valuable than gold,” the lead Harvard researcher reportedly told colleagues. Ounce for ounce, that would prove a sound estimate. ( John Pomfret; Deborah Nelson, Washington Post, emphasis added)

The 2002-2003 SARS Coronavirus

The Harvard researchers were eventually discovered and kicked out of the country. But it was too late. They had enough DNA samples to design a coronavirus especially for the Chinese genome.

The SARS coronavirus, targeting the Chinese, hit China in 2002 and lasted through 2003. The disease incidence was 8,096 cases with a known 774 deaths. Almost all of the cases and deaths were in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. A handful people affected elsewhere, like in the US and in Europe, were all of Chinese origin. It was a perfectly targeted virus? Was it a prelude to what was to follow some two decades later?

In any case, the Chinese knew about the tailor-made virus after discovering Harvard students collecting Chinese DNA – which is why they were so well prepared when the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 “epidemic” hit.

In relation to SARS-CoV-2, the cases were so few and far in between, it would be an exaggeration to call it a “pandemic”.  Nevertheless, the Chinese immediately locked down Wuhan and later a considerable stretch of Hubei Province, some 50 million people – and other regions where SARS-CoV-2, later called Covid-19 by the WHO, was discovered.

China knew and knows that they are a “target” for the west which perceives China as a threat and her different approach to “worldwide cooperation” with a more egalitarian economic system, which doesn’t necessarily fit the western model.  In fact, SARS-CoV-2, alias Covid-19, has to this date never been isolated.

As the world was watching – and in particular the Gates and the Rockefellers – how China would deal with the virus which was initially most likely again attacking the Chinese genome – were other strands released throughout the world? Some of them adapted to a particular genome, like in Italy and Iran?

In hindsight it became clear, that this Covid “outbreak” was a mere experiment to check out people’s reaction and to prepare politicians who had been coopted into this 10-year UN Agenda 2030 for possibly much worse to come – and lasting. However, we can stop it, if we get off our horses riding in comfort.

According to some estimates, there are more than 20 different variations floating around but the deviation from one variation to another is on average around 5% or less. With every new mutation the already low mortality rate decreases further.

Of course, the latest Rockefeller Foundation’s plan – see above, and again here — to create a “Pandemic Prevention Institute” – all out of the goodness of their hearts – is like a bad joke, not to call it full-fledged hypocrisy, when one knows the background to this story – this monster plan of controlling humankind’s genome.

While the Rockefeller Foundation’s Master Plan officially is to prevent viral diseases, all the activities described in their website (above) are targeting research into genome manipulation, not to control viral diseases, but potentially to control humanity WITH viral and other diseases. Thus, the contrary to what they say is the purpose of their 20-million-dollar plan. Once their worldwide genome / DNA inventory is complete – or even before – they would theoretically “be able to decide who is to live and who is to die”. Algorithms and AI will help.

All the while, the Rockefeller Foundation’s monster plan is working to expand global genomic sequencing capacity in collaboration with a range of organizations across several key geographies, such as sub-Saharan Africa, the US, and Asia, all officially in view of preventing Covid – the benign flu-like disease from spreading farther and to contain it. The plan, they pretend to be the official objective, includes several institutions with which to collaborate to eventually stop the “deadly” disease:

  • GISAID InitiativeGlobal Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data – from vision to reality. It is an initiative created by the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations in 2008, to “counter” the Avian flu. “GISAID’s role today is to accelerate the advancement of its pathogen data sharing platform and to further incentivize the global community of data generators to rapidly share outbreak data to enable real-time public health responses.”

Clearly, the real agenda is DNA data collection, on a global basis. It’s the Globalists at work with every activity they undertake.

  • CSIR-Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology – is working “on behalf of a consortium of pathogen genomics sequencing centers to develop targeted sampling strategies, optimize bioinformatics tools, and enable real-time understanding of viral evolution, while building a long-term pathogen genomics and surveillance platform across India”. This discloses openly their intention, if people are getting as far as reading the details into it.
  • Stellenbosch University “to refine sampling, expand bioinformatics pipelines, catalyze surveillance-informed public health decision-making, and expand local knowledge through fellowships and workforce development programs throughout Africa.”
    Here too, no secrets. A program of DNA research throughout Africa, focusing on tribal differences. This may be important when it comes to who is who in exploiting natural resources for the northern elite and who is apt to grow food for the remaining western societies. Knowing their genome, may make it easy to discard the considered “useless” eaters.
  • U.S. Regional Accelerators for Genomic Surveillance to provide strategic coordination and operational support towards improved and diversified regional surveillance efforts across a network of institutions, including the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Louisiana State University Health Shreveport; University of Florida, in collaboration with the University of Central Florida; and University of Wisconsin-Madison.
    This is key to get the major universities (health faculties) on board. Once coopted into this evil globalist program, it may not be easy to skip out – there is always an element of blackmailing that may be used to keep potential deserters on board. These are old “carrot and stick” strategies, dating back to way before the Roman Empire. They still work. Look at all the reputed scientists that keep nodding along with the Covid lies – cowardice for personal benefits. Maybe a placebo, instead of an mRNA-gene modifying experimental vaxx?

Additionally, The Rockefeller Foundation and the World Health Organization are co-leading a working group on genomic surveillance within the ACT-A Diagnostics pillar. This group will complement the groups set around the WHO Global Risk Monitoring Framework for variants and consultations and will focus on harmonizing, coordinating, and accelerating priority activities across country, regional and global partners by building on existing initiatives and avoiding duplication.

This says it all. The World Health Organization (WHO) is coopted into driving not only the Rockefeller-Gates-WEF’s depopulation agenda, but remain the lead UN agency on which the world has to rely on for any epidemic health advice. After all, WHO was created by the Rockefellers in 1948. It was then already the idea to bring health under one roof, so it can be easier manipulated.

And at the same time, Rockefeller’s power from Standard Oil, which had a worldwide monopoly on petrol gradually converted a natural plant-based pharmaceutical industry into a petrochemical-based gigantic pharma-industry, today going hand-in-hand with petrol as the world’s monopoly on energy.

As a sideline, in 2020, 84% of the world’s energy is hydrocarbon based, almost unchanged since 2000 (86%) – and this despite 26 COPs – the 26th one currently ongoing in Glasgow, wasting horrendous financial and energy resources (producing untold amounts of CO2) to make the world believe that our “leaders” will stop Mother Earth’s climate from changing. COP stands for “Conference of the Parties”.

What an arrogance. Do they really not know that all those temperature and climate changes that Mother Earth experienced over millions of years, have their origins in solar activities? – What a hypocrisy! A hypocrisy that couldn’t show to the world any better, what western leaders actually are all about: US President, Joe Biden came to the Glasgow COP26 with a 84-car motorcade. Bringing the cars by air to Scotland plus driving them – and all the surrounding security, emits within a week about the same amount of CO2 as a small country in a year. – That’s COP26; the conference of the climate masters. Our world is just perfect – and with the growing Covid tyranny – it’s getting more perfect by the day.

“DNA, More Valuable Than Gold” 

Back to the DNA collection – the Global Genome Data Bank. The WEF has already designed the next generation of Vaccination Certificates, or “Green Passes”. It’s blood-based. Yes, blood-based.

Recall the statement of Lead Harvard Researcher in Anhui Province (quoted above) the DNA in the local population’s blood “was more valuable than gold,” (Washington Post)

To make sure that you have had your mRNA gene-modifying killer vaccine-shot, in the form of one of the multiple boosters that will soon become compulsory, there will be blood-sample spots around countries. So as to extend your Covid-vaxx certificate, you will have to give a blood sample. See this.

Again, as a “mandatory” rule for the elite’s “Dark Cult”, they have to inform the people what they are up to. So, they do with this reportThe Rockefeller Foundation Announces Key Grants & Collaborations to Strengthen Global Genomic Sequencing & Data Sharing” in disguise, of course.

This project, the establishment of a Global Genome Bank – along with full digitization of everything, including the human brain, would be the death knell of our civilization. As blunt as that. But it would not be the end of the world. Historians say there have already been 6 cradles of civilization on earth. See this. Maybe more, if you consider Atlantis. They all self-destructed in one way or another. And so may we.

But it doesn’t have to be.

We could all step out of the current matrix of tyranny in unison, in solidarity in an awakened spirit, out of this tyranny and start a parallel society.

Remember, they are few and we are many.

Also remember, it doesn’t matter if they – the elitist “diabolical Cult” takes over all our earned and accumulated resources, assets. We don’t need them in a “new” world. We need peace and solidarity to start from scratch. Money is an instrument that only has value, because we have given it value.

In a higher spirit, which the Dark Cult never can reach, there is life without money. We just have to be bold enough to try it.

Although, we are all born “free” – and freedom is a human right, but it is a human right that is not given for granted – we have to fight for it. – And fight we will.

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Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @crg_globalresearch. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He is also a non-resident Sr. Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

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

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Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

Ventura County nurses from differ­ent sectors and specialties are coming forward to blow the whistle on what they deem serious lapses in local health care practices, mostly related to COVID-re­lated protocols, “vaccine” mandates and politically and financially motivated bul­lying of medical staff, which these health care workers say is seriously compromis­ing the general quality of local care.

The Guardian spoke with multiple nurses of various ages and at different stages in their careers, all of whom work in medical care settings or hospitals in Ven­tura County. Each preferred to speak un­der a pseudonym for now. Each described seriously declining standards of care, at­mospheres of intimidation and fear in hospitals, and distrust and disillusionment among medical professionals.

“Before COVID, nurses, staff and the community were confident in treatment modalities and in doctors’ competencies,” says one nurse. But now, “People are con­fused.”

“They’re very confused,” agrees a veter­an Ventura County nurse. “I think doctors are confused.… I don’t think the commu­nity’s confident. I’m not.… Because where’s the truth?”

Most shocking, perhaps, is how doctors and administrators refuse to re­port the rising number of unexplained medical problems in otherwise healthy people as potential adverse reactions to COVID-19 experimental vaccine shots. To suggest that these shots are the cause of any medical problem — or that they are contributing to the alarming rise in non-COVID-related hospital popula­tions — invites professional ridicule.

“Nobody is considering that [these medical problems] could be vaccine-re­lated,” says an ICU nurse in a county hospital. “It’s not even in question. You might as well say you want to start treat­ing people with crystals and burning sage. If you say it’s the vaccine, they look at you and say, ‘It’s the safest thing ever produced. Why would you say that?’”

Yet, doctors are at a loss to explain the increase in non-COVID-related ailments, including a reported increase in heart at­tacks in young people, mainly men, who received the COVID-19 vaccines.

Doctors “just chalk it up to genes,” one nurse says.

‘Bury the Bodies in the Parking Lot’

When nurse Daniel first heard of the novel coronavirus spreading in China in December 2019, he immediately bought N95 masks for his family. His superiors told him to prepare for a “worst-case sce­nario.”

“I made a video to each of my kids and my wife, just in case,” he says. “[Our hospi­tal was] saying, ‘Every floor will have venti­lators. There’s not enough PPE. Nurses and doctors are dying in Italy. Somebody’s go­ing to have to bury the bodies in the park­ing lot because that’s how many people are going to die.’ That’s the picture they paint­ed, all these people you respect and have gone to school a lot longer than I have and have accolades by their names.”

Daniel sent his wife and kids to live elsewhere for a month and a half while he prepared to handle the rush of dead and dying. What happened next, he says, was that “nobody came.”

“I was getting called off a shift almost every other week because there was such a low patient population in the hospital,” he says. “Not only did ventilators not happen, but we had only six COVID patients in our ICU. The hospital had canceled all these elective surgeries, and we were not getting even a tenth of the ventilated patients they said it would be. Not even close.”
Initial predictions were so off that “it was like they carried the zero several times. That’s the magnitude.”

But by spring 2021, “an interesting thing” happened, he says. In the wake of widespread vaccinations, the number of non-COVID patients “really started pick­ing up.”

“Pneumonia cases, stroke cases,” he says. “We’ve had more strokes than nor­mal. Women in particular with venous sinus embolisms. We’re seeing a lot of au­toimmune issues: rashes on the body, the body attacking the nervous system, pro­ducing symptoms like a weakening of the muscles.”

One patient came in with severe respi­ratory distress and went into respiratory failure, with symptoms first showing three weeks after he took the Pfizer shot.

“His lungs were completely destroyed, totally wrecked,” says Daniel. “He had ground-glass opacity on the CAT scan, which is a hallmark of COVID.”

The patient’s doctors insisted it was an exceedingly rare condition, though the man had never suffered respiratory distress before. When the man’s wife brought up the possibility of vaccine-related damage, the doctor simply said, “No.”

“It was a non-starter to the discussion,” Daniel says. “He did not want to talk to her about it. It was just crazy talk [to him].”

One fit, healthy nurse in her twenties whom Daniel knows went into cardiac arrest three weeks after she received the Pfizer shot. An aortic dissection ruptured a portion of her aorta like a balloon. She was resuscitated, underwent open-heart surgery and made a full recovery. But she could not abide the suggestion that the COVID vaccine shots had caused it.

“She said, ‘It’s not possible. It’s not the vaccine,’” Daniel says of the woman. “She’s petite and doesn’t have any condition that would lead to this. … Sometimes you can’t accept information because it’s affecting you on a deeply emotional level. People don’t want to admit they were wrong — they were fooled. Some have staked their lives on this decision, and nothing’s going to change that.”

Adverse reactions among those who took one of the vaccines continue, he says, but go virtually unreported.

“If you look at our hospital’s reporting on adverse reactions, this vaccine would have no adverse reactions,” he says.

No VAERS Reporting

Angela, a nurse for more than 25 years, confirms that in her hospital’s emergency room, they say they are seeing more heart problems in young adults, which are never reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Re­porting System (VAERS) as potential ad­verse reactions to COVID “vaccinations.”

Another nurse, Jennifer, says ER nurs­es privately say they are seeing “all the clot­ting, bleeding and things you would expect from the vaccine six months later — brain bleeds, heart attacks in younger 50-year-olds. No doctor will admit this is from the vaccine. They won’t make the VAERS re­port.”

When Daniel asked fellow nurses and practitioners if they report to VAERS, they looked at him like, “What’s that?”

“I’ve seen people in their thirties [with these problems], and the doctor’s just like, ‘Oh, you have s—y genes,’” he says. “I’m like, are you kidding me?”

All nurses interviewed say they are seeing “ground-glass opacity” results in the CT scans of people’s lungs who recently took the experimental vaccines — and that this is never reported to VAERS.

“Doctors and intensivists [treat it like] a ludicrous thought,” says one ICU nurse. “Nobody is putting it on their differential diagnosis.”

‘Voodoo Statistics’

For that and other reasons, COVID-re­lated data amounts to what one nurse calls “voodoo statistics.” In her particular unit and others, they are no longer testing ev­erybody for COVID. Rather, they began testing only those who are symptomatic — with shortness of breath, for example — and those who say they are unvaccinated.

Why?

“They don’t want their numbers to skyrocket when all the vaccinated people come in,” says Jennifer.

“Or they don’t want to report that they’re seeing 80 percent of the people in the ER are vaccinated, but only 40 percent of the county is vaccinated,” adds another nurse. “That’s an odd statistic. … Is there an adverse effect occurring from these shots that’s not being reported? If they’re not screening people ubiquitously, there’s a slant to whatever numbers are coming in. That stuff is not going to be elucidated in the data.”

But with “vaccinated” people increas­ingly hospitalized with actual COVID or adverse reactions, the way forward be­comes murkier.

“These vaccines are non-sterilizing. They allow you to carry and transmit the virus,” points out one nurse. “It does not solve the contagion issue. The virus is still spreading among the vaccinated.”

For example, in a recent group of COVID patients at one hospital, the sickest ones were double-vaccinated.

“The first to die had both Pfizer shots,” says Daniel, who took care of the patient. “Another guy who had both shots died as well. His lungs were destroyed.”

“But they’re not talking about that,” confirms another nurse.

Medical Bullying

In the meantime, “Everybody’s getting browbeaten and told they are going to lose their livelihoods” if they don’t receive the vaccines, one hospital nurse says.

“A lot of nurses at the hospital just said, ‘Fine,’ [and took the vaccine], because no­body wants to lose their job,” says Susan, a nurse with more than 30 years of experi­ence. “But since when in the history of the country have we ever been mandated to do anything like this?”

“Unvaccinated” medical staff also are accused of being “carriers” or of being physically unfit to perform, and in at least one case, one nurse was berated by a doctor in front of colleagues.

“They do this to people like me who don’t want the vaccine,” Angela says. “They are discriminating against people who refuse the vaccine. They put us down. Pretty much, they’ve been brainwashed.”

One benefit of being tested regularly, says one nurse who will not take the vaccine, is that when “vaccinated” co-workers acquire COVID, they can’t blame their “unvaccinated” colleagues.

“I can always say, ‘Hey, I have my negative [test]. You didn’t get it from me,’” says this nurse. “Because that’s what the media’s saying, right? [But in reality] this is not a pandemic of the unvaccinated, because you’re not getting it from me because we’re being tested multiple times a week.”

‘Alone and Afraid’

Ironically, vaccinated nurses in non-COVID units remain “terrified” of COVID-positive pa­tients, say a number of nurses. “They’re freaked out. Freaked out,” according to one. As a result, they combine the day’s care into one or two visits, suiting up, ducking in and leaving as quickly as possible.

“The patient is left in the room for the majority of the time alone and afraid,” says Jennifer. “That’s someone who shouldn’t be alone and afraid.”

During the early days of the viral outbreak in 2020, a number of patients came in with non-COVID-related medical problems, tested pos­itive for COVID and were placed on the COVID floor, sometimes to die, one nurse says.

“A young person was admitted to the hospi­tal for something completely unrelated to COVID. Some type of autoimmune bowel issue,” this nurse remembers. She then tested positive for COVID and was placed on the COVID floor.

Her condition worsened, and “Nothing was re­ally done” until she went into cardiac arrest and died.

The oversight and advocacy that used to exist “is not there anymore because you have that COVID documentation, that positivity, and you’re just put on the floor and left to your own devices,” Daniel says. “This was a young person, very young and didn’t need to die, but because she had this COVID diagnosis, everyone was, ‘Fine, whatever, whatever.’ She died not from COVID but from nobody treat­ing what she was suffering from.”

Lack of family advocates has led to worse out­comes.

“You bet your butt that if someone’s mom was in there, she would have said, ‘What’s going on? We should run some tests,’” this nurse says. “How many people have died in the hospitals because no one was there to advocate for them?”

Overlooking Natural Immunity

All the nurses interviewed for this article agreed that the most overlooked subject regarding COVID is antibody tests. Doctors minimize them in favor of promoting the vaccines, even though natural im­munity convincingly offers a more robust defense against all viruses, while vaccines target one narrow characteristic.

“That’s the main thing,” says Jennifer. “If this was about immunity, they would be checking antibod­ies. The medical community, our hospitals are not checking anybody’s antibodies. We’re having to do it on our own.”

“Why aren’t they concerned about natural im­munity?” Susan echoes. “That should be their first concern. But they’re not.”
One nurse asks rhetorically: “How many people do you see come in that have had COVID before, and they’re back in the ICU? It doesn’t happen.”

They also agree, with sadness and clear alarm, that the quality of health care at California hospi­tals is rapidly declining. They cite serious mistakes in surgeries, chronic understaffing, and the loss of veteran nurses due to mandates and COVID brow­beating. These seasoned professionals cannot easily be replaced by what one nurse calls “this onslaught of new girls [who are] so green around the gills.”

“If any more doctors and nurses leave this field, we’ll turn into a third world,” says one ICU nurse. “We won’t be a premier medical destination. It’s real­ly scary to see how everything is unfolding.”

During a break in a roundtable discussion, sev­eral nurses talked about getting surgeries in out-of-town hospitals due to falling quality at their own places of employment. One said flatly, and not en­tirely jokingly, “I think I’d rather get treated by a vet­erinarian. They are probably a lot more objective and evidence-based. They’re not pushing something.”

As evidence comes in over time, the tide of opinion may be shifting against the “vaccines.”

“I know a lot of [health care workers] who will not get a booster shot,” says Daniel. “They felt like they took a huge risk. I know a lot of people who felt terrible for months after the shot, and they don’t want to experience that again. They see that it’s not protecting people from get­ting sick or even hospitalized. … A lot of people are very leery of the whole thing. Once they hear about the boost­er, they’re like, ‘Wait, what? I thought I took the risk, and it was good.’”

Many doctors he knows “regret getting the shot because they see the side-effect profile is probably much larger than is being reported.”

Standing Up for Hope

More than half the nurses the Guardian spoke with are heading for the exits and are looking to retire or move to another state to continue their careers. Some express optimism, while all express great concern for their pro­fession.

“I am so upset by all of this,” says Daniel. “I had maybe this starry-eyed view of what medicine was. I’ve lost all faith in the medical field. I think, ‘Who’s been bought and paid for now?’ It seems like money is the thing push­ing these drugs more than evidence. These doctors and even nurses — we’re supposed to be critical thinkers. The pharmaceutical companies aren’t sup­posed to make all the rules. We’re sup­posed to be advocates for our patients. But they all want to keep their jobs and not ruffle any feathers. Nobody wants to be audited or have the spying eye of the government on them as individuals or institutions.”

He feels that the medical commu­nity sees independent thinkers like him as the enemy now.

“The state sees you as an opposi­tion force, for your opinion,” he says. “All these mandates and enforcements are not based off of science; they’re based off of peer pressure. Fear, politi­cal, emotional manipulation.”

Other local nurses want to stay but will not under such invasive require­ments.

“Ventura County is a beautiful place, but not with this,” says one who raised children here.

They also speak among themselves of building private member association hospitals, where unvaccinated people can go to work.

“People are getting smart. They’re going to create their own, separate, par­allel system,” Jennifer says.

“They are going to say, enough is enough,” Susan agrees.

Angela says that by talking public­ly now, “I’m hoping more people will speak up and be bold about this. I hope there will be more people whose eyes are open, and they will have the cour­age to speak their opinions and beliefs. Freedom of choice and freedom of speech should not be infringed. This is America, and it’s becoming like China.”

Susan, who repeated “Jesus, I trust in you” countless times to get through the pandemic, says, “I do feel like this is a spiritual warfare. I do. But I know for sure, because I’m a faithful woman, that God will prevail. Good will pre­vail. I know that. And that is what we all need.”

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Archbishop Viganò’s Open Letter Regarding the Covid-19 Vaccine

November 5th, 2021 by His Excellency Carlo Maria Viganò

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Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 80, has written an open letter to America’s bishops expressing concern about various issues concerning the Coronavirus, and the vaccinations against the virus.

The central concern of the former Vatican nuncio to the United States (2011-2016) is that the testing of the various vaccines has not yet been completed, and will not be completed in many cases until 2023 or 2024.

Since there are already after nine months of vaccinations a number of reported cases of negative reactions to the vaccines, Viganò says that he, and other bishops, ought to be concerned about the announced plan of US President Joseph Biden (link) to vaccinate in the near future 28 million American children between the ages of 5 and 11.

Since these children have, statistically, faced little danger from the Coronavirus, but might face some type of negative side effect from the untested vaccines, Viganò argues that it would be more prudent to postpone such massive vaccinations plans for such young children until the testing is complete.

To persist in carrying out the plan would be a crime, Viganò maintains.

The letter contains many footnotes to scientific articles — some little noted by the mainstream media — which the archbishop believes support his arguments.

“I realize that it may be extremely unpopular to take a position against the so-called vaccines,” Viganò writes to Gomez, “but as Shepherds of the flock of the Lord we have the duty to denounce the horrible crime that is being carried out.”

Here is Viganò’s text, when he sent to me yesterday, October 26, though the text is dated October 23, four days ago. —RM

***

To His Excellency
Msgr. José Horacio Gómez
Metropolitan Archbishop of Los Angeles
President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

To Their Eminences and Excellencies
The Archbishops and Bishops of the Dioceses of the United States of America

And, for their competence:

To His Eminence
Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, s.j.
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

To His Eminence
Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller
Prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

23 October 2021

Your Eminences,

Your Excellencies,

I address you, Archbishop Gómez, as President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and to You, Cardinals Ladaria and Müller, for your competence, some serious considerations related to the so-called vaccines against Covid-19.

I believe there are some aspects of the question that now allow for a more complete evaluation of what these drugs are and what effects they cause; this evaluation ought to lead to a collegial stance, in conformity with the Magisterium of the Church and not influenced by biased information or by erroneous news spread by the producers of these drugs or by the media.

    1. Subject of the Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

The Note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines was issued last year in the absence of complete data on both the nature of the gene serum and its components. I point out to You that the subject of the Note is limited to “the moral aspects of the use of the vaccines against Covid-19 that have been developed from cell lines derived from tissues obtained from two fetuses that were not spontaneously aborted,”[1] and it states that “[w]e do not intend to judge the safety and efficacy of these vaccines, although ethically relevant and necessary, as this evaluation is the responsibility of biomedical researchers and drug agencies.”[2] Safety and effectiveness are thus not the subject of the Note, which in expressing its opinion about the “morality of use” therefore does not even express its opinion about the “morality of production” of these drugs.

    2. Safety and effectiveness of the vaccines

The safety and effectiveness of individual vaccines is determined after a period of experimentation that normally lasts for several years. In this case, the health authorities have decided to carry out experimentation on the entire world population, as an exception to the usual practice of the scientific community, international standards, and the laws of individual nations. This means that the entire population finds itself in the condition of being susceptible to suffering the adverse effects of the vaccine, at their own risk, when normally experimentation is done on a voluntary basis and carried out on a limited number of subjects, who are paid to undergo it.

I think it is clear that this is an experimental drug that has not been approved,[3] but only authorized for administration by the bodies in charge; just as I think it is evident that there are medical treatments without adverse side-effects, even though they have been systematically boycotted by the Health Institutions – WHO, CDC, EMA – and by mainstream media. Even if the Church should express a moral evaluation of the different treatments available – some of which are carried out with drugs produced with cell lines that originated in an aborted fetus, like the vaccines – it must be reiterated that there are effective treatments which cure patients and allow them to develop permanent natural immune defenses, something that the vaccines do not do. Furthermore, these treatments do not cause serious side effects, since the drugs that are used have been licensed for decades.

Other recently developed treatments are absolutely effective, inexpensive, and carry no danger for those who receive them: this is the case with the plasma treatment studied and employed with great success by the Italian doctor Giuseppe De Donno.[1]

Treatment with hyper-immune plasma was strongly discouraged and boycotted by pharmaceutical companies and doctors financed by them, because it does not cost anything and renders the analogous therapy useless, which is made in laboratories with monoclonal cells at exorbitant costs.

International standards specify that an experimental drug cannot be authorized for distribution except in the absence of an effective alternative treatment: this is why drug agencies in the USA and Europe have prevented the use of hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, hyper-immune plasma, and other therapies with proven effectiveness. There is no need to remind You that all of these agencies, along with the WHO, are financed almost entirely by the pharmaceutical companies and by foundations tied to them, and that there is a very grave conflict of interest at the highest levels,[2] about which the media are culpably silent.[3] In expressing a moral evaluation of the vaccines, the Church cannot fail to take these elements into consideration, since they cause a manipulation of scientific information, on the basis of which the judgments about their moral liceity by ecclesiastical Authority have been formulated.

    3. The experimental drugs are not vaccines in the proper sense

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, while not expressing its opinion on the effectiveness and safety of the so-called vaccines, nevertheless defines them as “vaccines,” taking for granted that they actually give immunity and protect people from active and passive contagion. This element is disavowed by the declarations coming from all of the world’s health authorities and from the WHO, according to which vaccinated people can become infected and infect others more seriously than those who are not vaccinated[4] and find that their immune defenses are drastically reduced if not even completely destroyed.

A recent study confirms that the gene serum can cause forms of acquired immuno-deficiency in those who receive it.[5] Therefore, the drugs that are called “vaccines” do not fall within the official definition of a vaccine to which the CDF’s Note presumably refers. In fact a “vaccine” is defined as a medicinal preparation aimed at inducing the production of protective antibodies by the organism, conferring specific resistance against a specific infectious disease (viral, bacterial, protozoal). This definition was recently changed by the WHO, because otherwise it would not have been able to include anti-Covid drugs, which do not induce the production of protective antibodies and do not confer a specific resistance against the SarsCoV-2 infectious disease.

Furthermore, while mRNA serums are dangerous because of the implications they have at the genetic level, the Astra Zeneca serum may be even more harmful, as recent studies show.[6]

    4. Proportionality between the costs and benefits of the vaccines

Limiting itself to an evaluation only of the morality of the use of the vaccines, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith does not take into account the proportionality between the presumed benefits of the gene serum and the short-term and long-term adverse side effects.

Worldwide, the number of deaths and grave pathologies following vaccination is increasing exponentially:[7] in only nine months these vaccines have caused more deaths than all vaccines in the last thirty years.[8] Not only this: in many nations – such as Israel for example[9] – the number of deaths after vaccination is now greater than the number of deaths from Covid.[10]

Having established that the drugs sold as vaccines do not give any significant benefit and on the contrary may cause a very high percentage of deaths or grave pathologies[11] even in subjects for whom Covid does not represent a threat,[12] I do not think that we can conclude that there is any proportionality between the potential damages and the potential benefits.

This means therefore that there is a grave moral obligation to refuse inoculation as a possible and proximate cause of permanent damages[13] or death. In the absence of benefits, there is therefore no need to expose oneself to the risks of its administration, but on the contrary there is a duty to refuse it categorically.

    5. New data on the presence of aborted fetal cell lines

Revelations from Pfizer executives have recently been released showing that the mRNA gene serums contain aborted fetal material not only for the production of the original vaccine, but also for its replication and production on a vast scale,[14] and nothing suggests that other pharmaceutical companies are an exception. Bishop Joseph Strickland[15] has also expressed himself in this regard, inviting the faithful to “say no. I’m not going to do it just because you mandate it, in that, who knows what next crazy thing will come up.” This makes the use of these drugs absolutely immoral, just as it is immoral and unacceptable to use drugs that use orphaned children for experimentation.[16]

    6. Side Effects on pregnant mothers and nursing children

Another aspect to consider is the concrete danger of grave side effects on pregnant mothers and even more serious ones on newborn children: in the United States there have been 675 miscarriages in vaccinated mothers and in the United Kingdom 521 nursing infants have died.[17] We should remember that for the so-called vaccines against Covid active vigilance was not put into effect, but only passive vigilance, which requires patients to report adverse cases themselves; this means that the data on adverse effects should be multiplied at least ten times.

    7. Components of the vaccines

I would like to point out to You that the components of the gene serums are still concealed as trade secrets, even if there are already multiple studies that have analyzed the content of the vaccines;[18] it is therefore not yet possible to completely evaluate the other critical elements and their long-term impacts, because the experimentation on the world population will end only in 2023/2025, and it is not known what the effects of the newly adopted technology are at the genetic level.[19] The presence of graphene in the doses that have been administered, reported by numerous laboratories that have analyzed its content,[20] suggests that the forced use of so-called vaccines – together with the systematic boycott of existing treatments of proven effectiveness[21] – serves the purpose of contact-tracing all vaccinated human beings throughout the world, who will be or already are connected to the Internet of Things[22] by means of a quantum link of pulsed microwave frequencies of 2.4 GHz or higher from cell towers and satellites.[23] As proof that this information is not the fruit of the fantasies of some conspiracy theorist, You should know that the European Union has chosen two projects dedicated to technological innovation as the winners of a competition: “The Human Brain” and “Graphene.” These two projects will receive one billion euro each in funding over the next ten years.[24]

I trust that Your Excellency, Archbishop Gomez, will take into serious consideration these observations of mine – which I have taken care to thoroughly verify with highly qualified Catholic doctors[25] – together with your brothers of the US Bishops’ Conference gathered in plenary Assembly from November 15 to 18, 2021 in Baltimore, so that the official position of the Catholic Church in the United States on the so-called vaccines will be revised and updated. Likewise, I ask Your Eminence, Cardinal Ladaria, to proceed as soon as possible to the revision of the Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faithon the morality of certain anti-Covid-19 vaccines.

I realize that it may be extremely unpopular to take a position against the so-called vaccines, but as Shepherds of the flock of the Lord we have the duty to denounce the horrible crime that is being carried out, whose goal is to create billions of chronically ill people and to exterminate millions and millions of people, based on the infernal ideology of the “Great Reset” formulated by the President of the World Economic ForumKlaus Schwab and endorsed by institutions and organizations around the world.[26]

The silence of so many Cardinals and Bishops, along with the inconceivable promotion of the vaccination campaign by the Holy See, represents a form of unprecedented complicity that cannot continue any longer. It is necessary to denounce this scandal, this crime against humanity, this satanic action against God.

With every passing day, thousands of people are dying or are being affected in their health by the illusion that the so-called vaccines guarantee a solution to the pandemic emergency. The Catholic Church has the duty before God and all of humanity to denounce this tremendous and horrible crime with the utmost firmness, giving clear directions and taking a stand against those who, in the name of a pseudo-science subservient to the interests of the pharmaceutical companies and the globalist elite, have only intentions of death. How Joe Biden, who also defines himself as “Catholic,” could impose vaccination on 28 million children aged 5 to 11,[27] is absolutely inconceivable, if only for the fact that there is practically zero risk of them developing the SARS-CoV-2 disease. The Holy See and the Bishops’ Conferences have the duty to express a firm condemnation in this regard, and also in relation to the very serious side effects that can result for children who are inoculated with the experimental gene serum.[28]

It is equally imperative that there be an intervention by the US Bishops’ Conference aimed at promoting the religious exemption and immediately revoking the bans imposed in this regard by many Ordinaries on their priests. Similarly, all vaccination requirements for seminarians and candidates of religious communities must be revoked. Instead, clear directives should be given about the dangers connected to the administration of the vaccine and its grave moral implications.

I am certain that You will want to consider the particular gravity of this subject, the urgency of an intervention that is enlightened by and faithful to the teaching of the Gospel, as well as the salus animarum that the Pastors of the Church must promote and defend.

In Christo Rege,  

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
Former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America

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Notes

[1] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines, 21 December 2020.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Senator Ron Johnson: We don’t have an FDA-approved vaccine in the US. The vaccine (Pfizer Comirnaty) available in Europe is approved, but the vaccine (Pfizer BNT162b2) used in America only has the use of emergency clearance. – Cfr. https://twitter.com/ChanceGardiner/status/1445262977775534081?s=20

[4] Cf. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32838270/ e https://alloranews.com/covid-19/giuseppe-de-donno-hyperimmune-plasma-doctor-takes-own-life/

[5] Pfizer has now hired 22 separate lobbying firms, all in Washington, DC, to craft drug policy in the United States. Yes, that’s the accurate #. TWENTY TWO lobbying firms. Tons of top Congressional staffers & fmr WH officials have been recruited to push Pfizer’s agenda in DC. – Cf. https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1444661196792205316

[6] Founders and researchers of pharmaceutical firms have been replaced by investment funds that seek only economic results and now finance #OMS and #EMA who decide on vaccines – Cf. https://twitter.com/CathVoicesITA/status/1448173045248581632?s=20 | In Italy there are 32000 doctors paid by BigPharma –https://www.ogginotizie.eu/ogginotizie/in-rete-il-report-aifa-32000-medici-pagati-dalle-case-farmaceutiche/

[7] Cf. https://tv.gab.com/channel/white__rabbit/view/breaking-pfizer-scientists-your-covid-antibodies-615b96bcd7e866584941980f and https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ontario-er-doctor-resigns-over-mandatory-vaccines-and-falsehoods/ > Ontario doctor resigns over forced vaccines, says 80% of ER patients with mysterious issues had both shots.

[8] Cf. https://twitter.com/alexgiudetti/status/1448528719673430016 and https://theexpose.uk/2021/10/10/comparison-reports-proves-vaccinated-developing-ade/ > A comparison of official Government reports suggest the Fully Vaccinated are developing Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome.

[9] Cf. https://climatecontrarian.com/2021/05/28/revealed-why-the-oxford-astrazeneca-jab-is-even-more-dangerous-than-the-mrna-vaccines/

[10] Autopsies performed in Germany on deaths after the vaccine, the study of pathologists, 50% of deaths after the second dose were caused by the vaccine. – Cf. https://corrierequotidiano.it/cronaca/morti-da-vaccino-patologi-il-50-dopo-la-seconda-dose/

[11] In just 9 months, death reports from Covid-19 preparations have reached 50% of ALL post-vaccine deaths administered in 30 years in the US – Cfr. https://infovax.substack.com/p/in-soli-9-mesi-le-segnalazioni-di– See also https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D8/D188F890

[12]Cf. https://visionetv.it/israele-terza-dose-il-ministero-rassicura-ma-i-cittadini-indignati-replicano-in-massa/ and https://www.gov.il/he/Departments/publications/reports/seav-25092021

[13] Cf. https://twitter.com/bisagnino/status/1448644321327022090?s=20and https://infovax.substack.com/p/morti-per-covid-19-prima-e-dopo-leand https://infovax.substack.com/p/i-tassi-di-miocarditi-post-vaccino

[14] 155,501 anaphylactic reactions reported to VAERS, with 41% of cases attributed to Pfizer – Cf.https://twitter.com/ChanceGardiner/status/1446184707964739584?s=20 and (link

[15] The post-vaccine myocarditis rates found in young Americans (12-15 years) are 19 TIMES higher than the normal background values for these age groups. – Cfr. https://infovax.substack.com/p/i-tassi-di-miocarditi-post-vaccino | Also see https://www.sirillp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Letter-Regarding-Covid-19-Vaccine-Injuries-Dr-Patricia-Lee.pdf | Investigation: Deaths among Teenage Boys have increased by 63% in the UK since they started getting the Covid-19 Vaccine according to ONS data. – Cf. https://theexpose.uk/2021/10/04/teen-boy-deaths-increased-by-63-percent-since-they-had-covid-vaccine/

[16] In Turkey, Dr. Fatih Erbakam, leader of the Welfare party, denounces the birth of children with tails, 3 arms, 4 legs, after the vaccination of parents, against Covid. – Cf. https://www.lapekoranera.it/2021/10/08/turchia-vaccino-dott-fatih-erbakam-i-bambini-nascono-con-la-coda-con-3-braccia-e-4-gambe-video/

[17] The COVID-19 vaccine was developed using a fetal cell line. So were Tylenol, ibuprofen…and ivermectin. – Cf. https://vajenda.substack.com/p/the-covid-19-vaccine-was-developed | Pfizer Whistleblower Releases Emails Hiding ‘Fetal Cell’ Usage From Public – Cf. https://thecharliekirkshow.com/columnists/charlie-kirk/posts/pfizer-whistleblower-releases-emails-hiding-fetal-cell-usage-from-public | Pfizer Told Scientists To Coverup Use Of Aborted Human Fetal Tissues In Making Vaccines Says Whistleblower – Cf. https://greatgameindia.com/coverup-aborted-fetal-tissues-vaccines/ and https://twitter.com/ChanceGardiner/status/1446120608970932231 | Process-related impurities in the ChAdOx1 nCov-19 vaccine. – Cf. https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-477964/v1

[18] US bishop slams Pfizer after emails show company wanted to hide jab’s connection to abortion – Cf. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/us-bishop-slams-pfizer-after-emails-show-company-wanted-to-hide-jabs-connection-to-abortion/

[19] Pfizer stand accused of experimenting on orphan babies to test their Covid-19 vaccine. – Cf. https://theexpose.uk/2021/10/01/breaking-pfizer-stand-accused-of-experimenting-on-orphan-babies-to-test-their-covid-19-vaccine/

[20] «CDC issues an urgent warning strongly recommending the vaccination of pregnant women», despite not having enough studies, 675 abortions in vaccinated mothers in the USA, 521 in the UK, babies who died during breastfeeding from vaccinated mothers, and Pfizer who will carry out the study only in the 2025

Cf. https://twitter.com/ChanceGardiner/status/1443701760833511426?s=20

[21] CoV-19 Vaccine Ingredients Revealed: Scanning and transmission electron microscopy reveals PEG, graphene oxide, stainless steel and even a parasite.

Cf. https://www.databaseitalia.it/rivelati-ingredienti-dei-vaccini-cov-19-microscopia-elettronica-a-scansione-e-trasmissione-rivela-ossido-di-grafene-acciaio-inossidabile-e-anche-un-parassita/

[22] See the interview to Jean-Bernard Fourtillan, professor and expert in pharmacology and toxicology:https://twitter.com/Side73Dark/status/1448316251663736840?s=20

[23] Dr. Mariano Amici, Graphene and PEG oxide in vaccines: https://www.marianoamici.com/ossido-di-grafene-e-peg-nei-vaccini/

[24] Prof. Peter McCullough, pioneer of early care, has a cracked voice evoking the abandonment to death of elderly patients.Cf.https://twitter.com/ChanceGardiner/status/1446240498029670405?s=20

[25] World Economic Forum, These are the top 10 tech trends that will shape the coming decade, according to McKinsey Cf.https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/technology-trends-2021-mckinsey

[26] Exclusive: Pfizer patent approved for monitoring vaccines around the world – Cf.https://www.databaseitalia.it/esclusivo-brevetto-pfizer-approvato-per-il-monitoraggio-dei-vaccinati-in-tutto-il-mondo-tramite-microonde-e-grafene

[27] EU: The greatest research excellence award for the “Graphene” and “Human Brain” projects – Cfr.https://www.isprambiente.gov.it/it/archivio/notizie-e-novita-normative/notizie-ispra/2013/01/ue-il-piu-grande-premio-di-eccellenza-nella-ricerca-ai-progetti-grafene-e-cervello-umano | Graphene and Human Brain Project win largest research excellence award in history, as battle for sustained science funding continues. – Cfr.https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_13_54

[28] Government, Dr. Citro: «Either they are ignorant or higher orders wanted the dead» – Cfr.https://stopcensura.online/dott-citro-contro-governo-o-sono-ignoranti-oppure-ordini-superiori-volevano-i-morti/

[29]Listen what Bill Gates said: https://twitter.com/ZombieBuster5/status/1444245496701272065

[30] White House Details Plan To “Quickly” Vaccinate 28 Million Children Age 5-11 – Cf. https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/white-house-details-plan-quickly-vaccinate-28m-children-age-5-11

[31] Robert W Malone: «This is just sick. And heartbreaking, both literally and figuratively. This must stop» Cf.https://twitter.com/rwmalonemd/status/1450869124947578880?s=21

Featured image is from the Public Domain

Into the Abyss We Go…

November 5th, 2021 by Michael Snyder

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Why won’t our politicians ever listen?  Just two days after voters made it exceedingly clear that they hate mandates, the Biden administration has announced that the nationwide OSHA mandate will go into effect on January 4th.  Are Biden and his minions this dense, or do they just not care what the American people think?  It has been estimated that the new OSHA mandate will cover approximately 80 million Americans, and it could potentially result in millions of highly qualified workers losing their jobs in early 2022.

What the Biden administration is trying to do is completely unconstitutional, and red states are already challenging it in court.  Many people may not realize it yet, but this is one of the most important turning points in U.S. history.

From an economic standpoint, this new mandate is going to be absolutely disastrous.  We are already in the midst of the worst worker shortage in all of U.S. history, and we are currently dealing with a supply chain crisis of epic proportions.  Forcing millions of Americans out of their jobs right in the middle of the upcoming winter will take both the worker shortage and the supply chain crisis to entirely new levels.

But Biden is going to do it anyway.

On Thursday, we learned that January 4th has been set as the official deadline for compliance with the new OSHA mandate…

Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly. The new government rules were issued Thursday.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration says companies that fail to comply could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation.

If the company that you work for has 100 or more employees, you are covered by this mandate.

Needless to say, many employers will be frightened into submission by the extremely high financial penalties.  Those companies that are deemed to be “repeat offenders” could potentially “face a maximum fine of $136,532”

Repeat offenders or those found to be willfully noncompliant could face a maximum fine of $136,532. It is not immediately clear what constitutes a repeat offender.

Of course many businesses across the country have no intention of ever complying with this new mandate.

Realizing this is the case, the Biden administration will be secretly sending out OSHA spies to conduct surprise inspections

OSHA staffers will be doing random inspections to check if businesses are complying and employees could have to pay for their own tests out of pocket. The agency is using emergency orders that usually deal with workers exposed to ‘grave dangers’ to enforce the standards.

GOP lawmakers responded with fury and said some unvaccinated Americans were being forced to decide between putting food on the table or getting the shot, while retailers said the new rules will put an ‘unnecessary’ burden on businesses before the holiday season.

It’s official.

We now live in a dystopian nightmare.

And many local regimes are also choosing to become increasingly authoritarian.  For example, just check out the new rules for children that will soon be implemented in San Francisco

San Francisco will soon require children as young as 5 to show proof of Covid-19 vaccination to enter certain indoor public spaces like restaurants, entertainment venues and sporting events, public health officials said this week.

The local mandate already requires children and adults over the age of 12 to show proof that they are vaccinated before entering those places. Now, city health officials are planning to extend the health order to children ages 5 to 11, the group newly eligible for the shot.

America used to be the “land of the free”, but that is clearly not true anymore.

The months ahead are not going to be pleasant.  As mandates choke the life out of our economy, the ongoing shortages are going to get even worse and prices are going to go a lot higher.

In fact, we are already being told to brace ourselves for “sticker shock” when we go to buy meat…

For America’s meateaters, this is a problem. Some cuts have soared 25 percent over the past year, while others are fetching near record prices, making meat one of the biggest contributors to pandemic inflation. And industry experts expect meat to keep gaining through the holidays and beyond.

“The sticker shock is what we all need to be prepared for,” said Bindiya Vakil, chief executive officer of supply-chain consultant Resilinc. “This is here to stay, at least through the summer of 2022.”

The good news is that nobody in this country is starving at this point.

The bad news is that food prices around the world continue to escalate dramatically, and this is pushing millions upon millions of people in poorer countries into hunger.  This week, we learned that global food prices shot up another 3 percent in the month of October…

A United Nations index tracking staples from wheat to vegetable oils climbed 3% to a fresh decade high in October, threatening even higher grocery bills for households that have already been strained by the pandemic. That could also add to central banks’ inflation worries and risks worsening global hunger that’s at a multiyear high.

As I have been relentlessly warning, a plethora of factors have combined to create a “perfect storm” for food prices…

Bad weather hit harvests around the world this year, freight costs soared and labor shortages have roiled the food supply chain from farms to supermarkets. An energy crisis has also proved a headache, forcing vegetable greenhouses to go dark and causing a knock-on risk of bigger fertilizer bills for farmers.

Many of these factors will continue to intensify in 2022.

So be thankful for what you have, because in some parts of the world things are already starting to get quite crazy.

For example, in North Korea citizens are now being encouraged to eat black swan meat due to the “crippling food shortage” in that nation…

North Korea has started touting the “exceptional” health benefits of consuming black swans after breeding them, while also farming rabbits as the country battles a crippling food shortage, according to state media.

“Black swan meat is delicious and has medicinal value,” the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said in an article published Monday.

I have been warning that this was coming, and things are only going to get worse from here.

So I would stock up while you still can, because food prices are only going to go higher.

If you are one of those that may lose a job in the months ahead, I want you to know that our prayers are with you.

Don’t give up, and don’t lose hope.

I know that things are really dark right now, but sometimes the darkest valleys in life are where the light shines the brightest.

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Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com. Michael has written five other books that are available on Amazon.com including  “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”“The Beginning Of The End”“Get Prepared Now”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.

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Big Pharma with the support of national governments is waging a Worldwide crusade to enforce the inoculation of our children, despite ample evidence that the Covid-19 experimental “vaccine” is resulting in a wave of injuries and deaths. 

Global Research has taken the decision to initiate a donation campaign to contribute to the expenses of parents in legal actions against governments which are enforcing the vaccination of their children against their will.

To this end, we call upon our readers to contribute to this endeavor.

“Informed consent” and the constitutional rights of parents are being violated.

All donations collected this week will be channeled to protecting the Rights of our Children.

 

 

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The multi-billion dollar pharma giant with an incredibly tainted past, who has seen exponential profits during the pandemic as a result of taxpayers being forced to pay for the jab, has also enjoyed billions in taxpayer dollars to advertise said jab. The windfall of profits realized from vaccinating adults quickly turned the company’s sights to children as their customer base waned. Despite children facing a near zero chance of dying from COVID-19, the FDA jumped on board and quickly approved Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine for children ages 5-11.

After spending billions in taxpayer funded advertisements to convince adults to take the jab, Pfizer launched a new ad this week, which seemingly targets their new customer base — children. The company held back nothing and referred to children who got the vaccine as part of the experiment as “superheroes” with “superpowers”

Superheroes come in all sizes 🦸🏽‍♀️🦸🏻🦸🏿‍♂️🦸🏼‍♀️ Watch as real kids express thanks to their superheroes; the 5-11 year old #Covid19 vaccine clinical trial volunteers. We’re incredibly grateful to the trial participants and their families 💙 #ScienceWillWin

Watch the creepy video below:

Sadly, the kids in the video above are not heroes. None of them are of the age to consent to take a jab and they were all offered up to the pharma giant as guinea pigs by their parents.

While this ad is specifically referring to the kids whose parents allowed them to be guinea pigs as “superheroes,” the underlying tone is meant to appeal to all children.

“If I take the vaccine, I will be a superhero!”

Naturally, this ad is not very appealing to many who have a family member or friend who has suffered an adverse reaction to the jab. As a result, the dislikes on the video have already surpassed the likes and are climbing fast.

It is important to point out that the overwhelming majority of folks who get vaccinated have little to no side effect. However, to say it carries no risk and to censor those who point out those risks is highly unethical at best and downright insidious at worst.

As TFTP reported, this push to vaccinate children is in spite of the fact that children face a near-zero threat from the virus. What’s more, as Americans are quickly learning, the vaccine loses efficacy over time leading to a large number of breakthrough cases which the Centers for Disease Control can no longer sweep under the rug.

On top of breakthrough cases, there has been a record number of adverse reactions reported to the CDC and many of them include children. One of those children — who participated in the Pfizer trial and is a “superhero” according to the ad above — is Maddie de Garay, who received the Pfizer vaccine when she was 12. She is now is in a wheelchair.

Like Pfizer, Maddie’s family made an advertisement to tell her story about her experience with the vaccine. Unlike, Pfizer, however, Maddie’s ad is and has been actively censored on YouTube. What’s more, Comcast pulled the ad last week as it was slated to run before the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee met to discuss COVID-19 vaccines for children.

Another one of these “superheroes” who has been censored into oblivion is Ernesto Ramirez Jr. who was one of hundreds of children like Maddie who took the jab early on. Sadly, however, unlike Maddie, he did not survive and five days after the shot, according to his father, Ernesto dropped dead.

“I kept hearing more advertisements about how it was safe for the teenagers, so I said ‘OK,’” Ernesto’s father, Ernesto Ramirez told Fox 26 Houston journalist Ivory Hecker earlier this year. “Two or three weeks later the CDC started announcing children were having enlarged hearts.”

“A typical heart for a boy this age would be less than 250 grams,” said Dr. Peter McCullough, a Dallas physician featured in Hecker’s video. “In this case it was more than 500 grams.”

Ramirez tried to raise money for his deceased son’s funeral but because he claimed the jab killed his son, GoFundMe deleted it.

Apparently, according to big tech, only those who praise the vaccine’s efficacy are allowed a platform. If you or your child was injured by it, you have no right to speak. If you doubt why that is, try watching the video below.

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There are currently two different and opposing narratives in the public regarding the safety of the COVID-19 shots.

One view claims they are safe, and the other view claims they are not.

Both views cannot be true. One view is correct, and one view is wrong.

The view of the pharmaceutical companies producing the shots and earning great profit from them is that they are safe, and this view is backed up by the U.S. Government regulatory agencies and the officials who lead them.

Here is their official statement through the CDC, as of November 1, 2021.

Source.

Please note that in order for the pharmaceutical companies and the government health agencies to make a claim that COVID-19 “vaccines” are “safe,” there must be a safety monitoring system in place in order to make such a claim. Otherwise, their claims would be without basis, because nobody would know whether those claims are true or not.

The CDC admits this in this statement on their website. And they go on to explain that this safety monitoring system is called VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

Based on the VAERS reporting system, the CDC goes on to state:

Serious adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination are rare but may occur.

For public awareness and in the interest of transparency, CDC is providing timely updates on the following serious adverse events of interest:

They then list four adverse events they have noticed from VAERS, and also make a statement regarding deaths.

Here are the four adverse events they admit are recorded in VAERS:

  • Anaphylaxis after COVID-19 vaccination
  • Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) after Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen (J&J/Janssen) COVID-19 vaccination
  • CDC and FDA are monitoring reports of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) in people who have received the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine.
  • Myocarditis and pericarditis after COVID-19 vaccination are rare.
  • Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare.

Notice how they frequently use the word “rare” to describe these adverse events following COVID-19 vaccinations. But how many people even know about these “rare” side effects prior to receiving a COVID-19 shot?

Two of the side effects are only linked to one of the three FDA authorized COVID-19 “vaccines,” the J&J shot, which is the one least used.

The nice thing about the Government VAERS database is that it is open to the public, and anyone can search it. I use the MedAlerts front end to search the database, and you can find that here.

So anyone around the world can do their own search of the data in the VAERS database and fact-check the CDC’s claims, which represent the view of the pharmaceutical industry and the government health agencies and their heads.

And that’s what I am going to do in the rest of this article.

Please note that I am not dealing with the issue of under-reporting in VAERS in this article. Everyone admits that the data in VAERS is vastly under-reported, which is why when the CDC states that an adverse reaction that they admit is seen in VAERS is “rare” based on how many doses of the vaccine have been distributed, we should not take their statement at face value, because they actually do not know how rare it is.

So I am only going to deal with the available data to fact-check their claims, the very same data that they are using.

What I am going to do is compare the data on adverse reactions to the COVID-19 shots to the data recorded for the past 30 years for all other vaccines, as this will be a truer “apples to apples” comparison, and it is also a simple one that anyone can search themselves.

At the end of this analysis of the available data, nobody in the pharmaceutical industry or in the government health agencies can say that the data is wrong, because it is their data. They also cannot claim ignorance, because the statements they make regarding the “safety” of these COVID-19 vaccines is based on this data in VAERS, according to their own published statements.

And what we will see when we look at the data as compared to all other data from non-COVID-19 vaccines, is that they are lying, and that the COVID-19 vaccines are most definitely causing blood clots, heart disease, and deaths.

If they are lying, then they are complicit with causing these crippling injuries and deaths, and they should all be arrested immediately for being complicit to mass murder.

CDC Claim: Deaths following COVID-19 Shots are “Rare”

Let’s begin with deaths, since this is obviously the most serious adverse event following COVID-19 vaccination.

Here is the CDC claim as of November 1, 2021:

Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare. More than 423 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through November 1, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 9,367 reports of death (0.0022%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines. However, recent reports indicate a plausible causal relationship between the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and TTS, a rare and serious adverse event—blood clots with low platelets—which has caused deaths pdf icon[1.4 MB, 33 pages].

Notice that according to the CDC the only “plausible causal relationship” between a COVID-19 vaccine and death is with the J&J shot, which is linked to blood clots. And they claim that this is among 9,367 reports of death following COVID-19 shots for the past 10 months.

I am not even sure where they get this number of “9,367” from, because when we search the VAERS database for deaths following COVID-19 shots, it returns a value of 17,619. (Source.) If we exclude all the foreign reports, we still get a different value than what they are stating, with 8,068 deaths. (Source.)

So they are applying some other kind of filter to get this death count, it would seem.

For the purpose of this analysis in this article, I am going to use ALL the data in VAERS and not filter out anything, since we already know the data is vastly under-reported.

Now to determine if these reports of deaths are “rare,” let’s look at how many deaths there are from ALL vaccines that are NOT COVID-19 vaccines for the past 30+ years.

The easiest way to do this is to simply run a search for all deaths in the database, and then subtract the deaths from the COVID-19 vaccines, which as I stated above is 17,619.

Here is the result: 26,680 deaths from ALL vaccines in the database as of October 22, 2021, which covers a period of over 30 years.

17,619 of those deaths are following COVID-19 vaccines for the past 10 months. That means that for all other vaccines over the past 30 years, there have only been 9,061 deaths recorded, about 300 deaths per year. But into October of 2021, there have been already been 17,619 deaths following COVID shots.

Does this sound “rare,” or is this a national catastrophe where heads should roll and people should be locked up in jail and prosecuted?

And remember, this is THEIR DATA! They know this.

And now they are targeting children 5 to 11 years old.

Fetal Deaths

Also, the CDC and the FDA are recommending the COVID-19 shots for pregnant women, claiming it is safe for them.

But is it? What does their own data in VAERS report about fetal deaths following COVID-19 injections of pregnant women?

Through October 22, 2021 they have recorded 2,369 cases where the mother lost her baby after receiving a COVID-19 shot. (Source.)

How does that compare with fetal deaths in pregnant women following ALL vaccines that are NOT COVID-19 vaccines for the past 30+ years?

For the past 30+ years there have been 2,192 cases where the mom being given a vaccine lost her baby, about 73 a year. (Source.)

But this year, 2,369 unborn babies have already died following a COVID-19 shot injected into the pregnant mother.

Does this sound “safe” to you? Would pregnant women continue getting COVID-19 shots if they knew these statistics in the government’s own database?

CDC Claim: Blood Clots from COVID-19 Shots are “Rare”

The admission that the CDC makes for COVID-19 vaccines causing blood clots is:

Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) after Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen (J&J/Janssen) COVID-19 vaccination is rare. As of October 27, 2021, more than 15.5 million doses of the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine have been given in the United States. CDC and FDA identified 48 confirmed reports of people who got the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and later developed TTS. Women younger than 50 years old especially should be aware of the rare but increased risk of this adverse event. There are other COVID-19 vaccine options available for which this risk has not been seen. Learn more about J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and TTS.

To date, two confirmed cases of TTS following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination (Moderna) have been reported to VAERS after more than 401 million doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines administered in the United States. Based on available data, there is not an increased risk for TTS after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.

What the CDC is clearly doing here is only reporting one kind of blood clot, Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS). They claim that this is the only kind of blood clot they found, and it is only 48 cases with J&J, and 2 cases with Moderna.

But there are many kinds of blood clots, so we should not just limit our search for only TTS. If we just search for ALL cases involving any kind of “thrombosis” following COVID-19 shots, we get a value of 13,930 cases of blood clots. (Source.)

When we search for each of the 3 FDA authorized COVID-19 vaccines where blood clots are recorded along with deaths, we get 626 total deaths when blood clots are present: 381 deaths for Pfizer, 118 deaths for Moderna, and 127 deaths for J&J.

So this horrible side effect is not related to only one manufacturer.

How does this compare with cases of “thrombosis” from ALL vaccines that are NOT COVID-19 vaccines for the past 30 years? With the available data we find only 489 cases of any kind of thrombosis for ALL vaccines for the past 30+ years, resulting in only 18 deaths. (Source.)

This is not a “rare” event following COVID-19 shots. This is criminal.

And frontline doctors are confirming that they are seeing high rates of blood clots in patients who have been vaccinated for COVID-19.

Canadian doctors were the first ones to blow the whistle on this. This past July we published an interview with Dr. Charles Hoffe, a doctor who has been practicing medicine for 28 years in the small, rural town of Lytton in British Columbia, Canada.

He was the first one to state publicly that these blood clots were not rare, as he tested vaccinated patients in his province in Canada and found that 62% of them had evidence of small blood clots.

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. (Source.)

Since then an emergency medicine doctor, Dr. Rochagné Kilian, has come forward to tell the public what she was seeing in fully vaccinated patients, and the high rate of blood clots. She lost her job in order to bring this information to the public, so it is well worth listening to.

This is on our Rumble and Bitchute channel.

CDC Claim: Heart Disease from COVID-19 Shots is Rare

Here is what the CDC admits for heart disease following COVID-19 shots:

Myocarditis and pericarditis after COVID-19 vaccination are rare. As of October 27, 2021, VAERS has received 1,784 reports of myocarditis or pericarditis among people ages 30 and younger who received COVID-19 vaccine. Most cases have been reported after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna), particularly in male adolescents and young adults. Through follow-up, including medical record reviews, CDC and FDA have confirmed 1,005 reports of myocarditis or pericarditis. CDC and its partners are investigating these reports to assess whether there is a relationship to COVID-19 vaccination. Learn more about COVID-19 vaccines and myocarditis.

Notice that they admit to 1,784 reports of myocarditis or pericarditis in people under age 30, and yet still choose to call these events “rare.”

Again, myocarditis and pericarditis are just two kinds of heart diseases, so let’s select all cases where a “carditis” is listed as an adverse event following COVID-19 shots. When we expand the search of the available data, we find 9,859 cases of cardits, resulting in 136 deaths and 327 permanent disabilities. (Source.)

This is a lot more than what the CDC is telling us, because they only included 2 kinds of “carditis.”

How does this compare with reported cases of “carditis” following ALL vaccines for the past 30+ years that are NOT COVID-19 vaccines?

For the past 30+ years there have been only 913 cases of “carditis” following ALL vaccines, resulting in only 95 deaths, about 3 deaths per year. (Source.)

Heart disease following COVID-19 shots is most certainly not rare! Young people, especially athletes, are having heart attacks in record numbers this year, as almost every day now we are seeing news reports of young, healthy athletes having heart attacks, like this professional hockey player who was in the news yesterday. There’s a list of athletes dying, mostly from cardiac arrest, here.

America is Run by Criminals and Mass Murderers

Your government is lying to you. They have this data, because it is their data. They know all of this.

But who will bring them to justice?

Sadly, these people in government who run the “health” agencies are simply pawns and puppets in these crimes against humanity.

The real decision makers who are guilty of mass murder are in corporate America. We have already shown how each of the pharmaceutical companies that currently have a COVID-19 “vaccine” authorized by the FDA also employ a former FDA Commissioner. See: All 3 FDA-Authorized COVID-19 Vaccine Companies Employ Former FDA Commissioners

Charles Hugh Smith published an article today highlighting just how corrupt and evil corporate America has become.

Some excerpts:

It’s becoming a routine story: a whistleblower emerges with copious documentation, revealing the ethical / managerial rot at the very top of Corporate America icons. Recently it was Facebook that was revealed as devoting far more resources to masking corporate guile than to actually improving longstanding ethical and quality issues.

Now it’s Pfizer’s fast and loose treatment of supposedly rigorous protocols that’s been heavily documented. The prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ) stated that the whistleblower provided “The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails.”BMJ Investigation: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial.

The purpose of playing fast and loose is to maximize profits regardless of any other factors. And while corporations exist to maximize profits, the trend in Corporate America is to sacrifice everything to maximize profits and keep the putrid sewage hidden from regulators, the media and the public.

This isn’t about profit, it’s about hiding the rot that has seeped into every nook and cranny of Corporate America. The foundation of the stock market’s extreme valuations is corporate profits, and the stock market bubble is now the precarious foundation of the entire U.S. economy: should the bubble pop, everyone knows the economy and the financial system will both crash.

The usual corporate strategy–defame the whistleblower and blow smoke to cover the rot–loses traction when the rot is documented by internal memos, recordings, etc. It’s difficult for the lackeys of Corporate America to dismiss the British Medical Journal as just another tin-foil-hat outlet of “fake news,” especially with all the documentation now made public.

Lost in the obsession to profiteer and hide the rot is the notion that corporations have responsibilities to the public and their customers/users, not just to greedy managers and shareholders. These responsibilities have been tossed into the muddy ditch.

Regulations only exist in name in America. Corporate America plays by its own rules. Corporate America is not longer regulated in any consequential fashion, as the list of Pfizer’s actions reveal:

— Participants placed in a hallway after injection and not being monitored by clinical staff

— Lack of timely follow-up of patients who experienced adverse events

— Protocol deviations not being reported

— Vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures

— Mislabelled laboratory specimens, and

— Targeting of Ventavia staff for reporting these types of problems.

The last item appears in virtually every whistleblower case: the corporation doesn’t rush to fix its glaring ethical and quality issues, it rushes to silence the whistleblower and “manage the narrative” to protect its precious profits. Never mind that the public pays the price for corporations saying one thing and doing another, for hiding what they dare not let regulators, users, customers and patients learn about their practices and behind-closed-doors goals.

The Prime Directive of Corporate America is to hide the rot that’s permeated the entire corporation, starting at the top.

We shouldn’t be too surprised that Corporate America is rotten to the core–the entire status quo is rotten to the core. Ethics and regulations are annoyances to be skirted, and if some random regulator catches insiders in the act, the corporation pays an inconsequential fine and then returns to BAU–business as usual, rotten to the core.

Any citizen who desires to be well-informed would be well-served to read this report closely: BMJ Investigation: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial.

He goes on to write about an amazing database someone has put together which documents all the “Corporate fines and Settlements” over criminal cases since the 1990s. Pfizer, for example, has paid out over $8 BILLION in fines for criminal activities over the years.

As further documentation, I am honored to share a remarkable data base of Corporate Fines and Settlements from the early 1990s to the present compiled by Jon Morse. Here is Jon’s description of his project to assemble a comprehensive list of all corporate fines and settlements that can be verified by media reports:

“This spreadsheet is all the corporate fines/settlements I’ve been able to find sourced articles about, mostly in the period from the 1990s up to today (with a few 80s and 70s). This is by far the most comprehensive list of such things online. At least that I could find, because the lack of any decent list is what made me start compiling this list in the first place.”

What’s noteworthy is the sheer number of corporate violations of laws and regulations–thousands upon thousands, the vast majority of which occurred since corporate profits began their incredible ascent in the early 2000s–and the list of those paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and settlements, which reads like a who’s who of Corporate America and Top 100 Global Corporations.

I encourage you to open one of the three alphabetical tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet on Google Docs and scroll down to find your favorite super-profitable corporation.

Many have a long list of fines and settlements, and many of the fines are in excess of $100 million. Many are for blatant cartel price-fixing, not disclosing the dangers of the company’s heavily promoted medications, destroying documents to thwart an investigation of wrong-doing, etc.

In other words, these were not wrist-slaps for minor oversights of complex regulations— these are blatant violations of core laws of the land.

Jon offered this commentary on Corporate America’s slide to the bottom of the moral cesspool:

“With the increases in concentration of wealth there has been a culture of idolizing wealth, one example is how prosecutors no longer find it appropriate to put bankers and CEOs in jail. I think one side-effect of the culture changing has been an increased willingness to break the law to increase profits.

The settlements with the banks along with the ongoing investigations have shown that virtually every market is being manipulated; the stocks, metals markets, LIBOR, FOREX, everything. The companies would only break so many laws if they felt they would have a reasonable chance of getting away with it; they would also need a reason to do it, which is provided by the infinite growth model our economy is based on.”

Thank you, Jon, for compiling a tremendously important and valuable database, and for connecting this staggering list of violations to the cultural worship of maximizing private gains at any cost. I am reminded of socio-economist Immanuel Wallerstein’s description of the current system of central-state/private-corporation collusion as “a particular historical configuration of markets and state structures where private economic gain by almost any means is the paramount goal and measure of success.”

Read the full article here.

It is time to STOP the killer COVID-19 vaccine campaigns, and way past time to round up all of these murderers and lock them up.

These talking heads on TV use what is called an “appeal to authority” to try and convince the public to get these shots. The data and the science is NOT on their side, and they are not nearly as intelligent as they want you to believe they are.

I know there is great risk right now in refusing the COVID-19 shots for some people, as your livelihood and means to earn income could be at stake.

But this is NOT a sustainable path we are on, and at some point those who refused the shots are going to be needed again, and chances are you will, at some point, be able to earn income again.

Just remember one indisputable FACT:

If you risk getting a COVID-19 shot, you could die or become crippled with very serious injuries. Deaths and injuries are happening at a record pace, and they are not “rare” as is being claimed, based on the data.

If you do not take a COVID-19 shot, you cannot die from that shot.

It really is that simple.

Parents who subject their children to these shots are guilty of child abuse, and attempted murder. Keep your children home, and safe, no matter what the cost, if you truly love them.

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Giving his patients the facts about the COVID19 “vaccines” so they could offer true informed consent ended up costing Dr. Bradley Meyer his job, but that did not bother him.

In fact, in this interview on Conversations That Matter with The New American magazine’s Alex Newman, Dr. Meyer said that he would rather be in a FEMA camp than take the experimental COVID shot. Another concern from his employer was his willingness to prescribe Ivermectin and other treatments, which he found to be very effective in treating COVID.

Now, he is working to create a new healthcare center that will use advanced therapy and treatment options to help patients be healthy.

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Biden Makes Climate Pledge at Glasgow While Pushing Oil, Gas Leasing in U.S.

November 5th, 2021 by Center For Biological Diversity

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U.S. climate groups slammed the Biden administration today for ignoring climate impacts and refusing to stop oil and gas leasing on public lands despite President Biden’s Glasgow pledge to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The revised plans for February lease sales in seven western states, announced this week by the Bureau of Land Management, defer some acres to protect imperiled species but none for climate mitigation.

Groups filed formal objections to the plans in October, urging the administration to prevent additional climate pollution and harm to land, water, communities and endangered species by deferring or prohibiting new leases. The administration originally proposed to offer 734,000 acres of public lands for oil and gas leasing but has removed about 383,000 acres of greater sage grouse habitat in Wyoming.

“Just as it has the authority to stop leasing to protect imperiled species, the Biden administration has authority to stop leasing to protect our imperiled climate,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The administration’s refusal to halt fossil fuel expansion on federal lands and waters makes a mockery of the U.S. climate mission in Glasgow.”

The Biden administration has approved 3,091 new drilling permits. That rate of 332 per month outpaces the Trump administration’s 300 permits per month in fiscal years 2018-2020.

“While strong language from the Biden administration recognizing the urgency of the climate crisis is welcome, words alone offer little reprieve to the people and communities who are already acutely experiencing climate impacts,” said Kyle Tisdel with Western Environmental Law Center. “It is time for action to mirror the rhetoric, and such action must begin with managing the end of fossil fuel exploitation on public lands and waters.”

The drilling permits and new leasing, primarily in Wyoming and Colorado, come despite Biden’s January pause on new oil and gas leasing pending a review of the program. A June court order lifted the leasing pause but retained the administration’s authority over federal oil and gas.

“Candidate Biden promised to ban new leasing on public lands and waters, but President Biden is sacrificing hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands to the oil and gas industry,” said Nicole Ghio, senior fossil fuels program manager at Friends of the Earth US. “Biden has the legal authority to do the right thing for the climate and future generations. With climate negotiations underway in Glasgow, it’s time for him to show courage by standing up to Big Oil and stopping these lease sales.”

Renewed IPCC warnings and several analyses show that climate pollution from the world’s already-producing oil, gas and coal developments would push warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius. One analysis, by the International Energy Agency, shows that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees requires ending new investment in fossil fuel projects.

“While President Biden is talking a good talk on climate action, the reality is his administration is actively working to fan the flames of the climate crisis by selling more public lands for fracking,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians. “This isn’t just hypocritical, it’s outright deceitful and it truly calls into question whether the Biden administration’s climate agenda is nothing but broken promises.”

“While President Biden promoted climate action in Glasgow, he was also allowing fracking to expand on lands that belong to the American people,” said Barb Gottlieb at Physicians for Social Responsibility. “This is bad for the climate, bad for human health and bad for trust in his administration.”

“In the face of BLM’s own projection of $360 million to $7 billion in social cost of carbon emissions that will result, and despite its COP26 proclamations, the Biden administration has chosen to restart aggressive oil and gas leasing of our public lands,” said Kate Hudson, Western U.S. advocacy coordinator for Waterkeeper Alliance. “Our frontline and Native American communities, our western waterways and our planet will pay the price.”

“Leasing hundreds of thousands of acres to be drilled by the oil and gas industry in the midst of climate emergency is an unfathomable betrayal by the Biden administration,” said Collin Rees, senior campaigner at Oil Change International. “It’s doubly hypocritical during the ongoing climate talks in Glasgow, where the U.S. is desperately trying to portray itself as a global climate leader. Until President Biden stops this fossil fuel expansion that we can’t afford, his words on climate ring hollow.”

Last month nearly 700 people were arrested in Washington, D.C., after calling on President Biden to declare a climate emergency and stop new federal fossil fuel leasing and permitting.

In April more than 200 groups filed comments with the administration, demanding a formal climate review of the federal fossil fuel programs under the National Environmental Policy Act, Federal Lands Policy Management Act, Endangered Species Act and other laws.

In January 574 climate, conservation, Indigenous, religious and business groups sent then-President-elect Biden text for a proposed executive order to ban new fossil fuel leasing and permitting on federal public lands and waters.

Background

Fossil fuel production on public lands causes about a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution. Peer-reviewed science estimates that a nationwide federal fossil fuel leasing ban would reduce carbon emissions by 280 million tons per year, ranking it among the most ambitious federal climate policy proposals in recent years.

Oil, gas and coal extraction uses mines, well pads, gas lines, roads and other infrastructure that destroys habitat for wildlife, including threatened and endangered species. Oil spills and other harms from offshore drilling have done immense damage to ocean wildlife and coastal communities. Fracking and mining also pollute watersheds and waterways that provide drinking water to millions of people.

Federal fossil fuels that have not been leased to industry contain up to 450 billion tons of potential climate pollution; those already leased to industry contain up to 43 billion tons. Pollution from the world’s already producing oil and gas fields, if fully developed, would push global warming well past 1.5 degrees Celsius.

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UK farms supplying milk and dairy products for Cathedral City Cheddar, Anchor butter and Cadbury chocolate are feeding their cattle soya from a controversial agribusiness accused of contributing to widespread deforestation in Brazil, an investigation has revealed.

The farms, which sell milk to Saputo, Arla and Cadbury, source some of their animal feed from companies buying Brazilian soya exported by the US grain giant Cargill.

The investigation by the Bureau, Greenpeace Unearthed, ITV News and the Daily Mirror has uncovered the complex soya supply chains that link British dairy to environmental devastation thousands of miles away in Brazil’s Amazon and Cerrado regions.

Both are critical for biodiversity and tackling climate breakdown. The Cerrado region, where most of Brazil’s soya is grown, is home to 5% of the world’s plant and animal species.

Deforestation continues

Grupo Scheffer, one of Cargill’s Brazilian suppliers, has been linked to multiple incidents of environmental damage, including clearing swathes of tropical forest, new evidence reveals. A reporting team on the ground in the Cerrado found recent deforestation connected to a soya farmer selling to the Brazilian agribusiness empire.

The investigation also raises questions about Cargill’s sustainable soya certification. The Triple S scheme is hailed by some food companies as an environmentally friendly option, though it allows deforestation-free soya to be mixed with beans from non-certified sources, which may include farms involved in forest destruction.

Additionally, satellite images and drone footage suggest that forest may have been cleared on at least one Brazilian Triple S farm, Rafaela farm, in 2010 – an apparent breach of the scheme’s rules. Both Cargill and Grupo Scheffer, which owns the farm, dispute this, saying the coordinates the Bureau provided are not on the farm.

A Cargill spokesperson said: “Cargill has worked relentlessly to build a more sustainable soya supply chain, helping to address the urgent challenge of protecting native forests and vegetation, while supporting farmers and their communities.”

Grupo Scheffer, one of Brazil’s largest soya producers, which processed more than 560,000 tonnes of soy, corn and cotton last year, has been held responsible for a series of environmental infractions. In 2019, the company was fined more than $450,000 for illegally clearing more than 5 sq km of protected forest on Iracema farm, which neighbours the Utiariti indigenous territory. A farm manager told Bureau reporters that the property supplied Cargill with soy.

Grupo Scheffer has also been linked to a farmer who deforested more than 10 sq km in 2019 and 2020 and subsequently used fire to clear the stubble this year. Responding to this allegation, the company confirmed it had a lease agreement with the farm’s owner but said: “The hot spots detected in the property are located outside the perimeters managed by Scheffer.”

The owner of Natureza Feliz farm, Carlos Roberto Simonetti, said the deforestation was legally licensed. He confirmed that he had worked with Grupo Scheffer to produce soya for Cargill, but on an adjacent farm.

A Cargill-owned soy silo in Sapezal, Brazil, a municipality that exports vast quantities of soy to the UK (Photo: Márcio Neves/ITV)

Since 2008, Grupo Scheffer has been linked to the clearance of at least 24 sq km of forest to expand its operations, an exclusive analysis by the NGO Aidenvironment revealed. The organisation used satellite images to quantify the slash and burn activity within the limits of at least 21 farms leased by Grupo Scheffer or registered to the company and its shareholders.

Cargill, the world’s biggest food conglomerate, has previously faced allegations of its soya being linked to deforestation. Last year an investigation revealed 800 sq km of deforestation and more than 12,000 recorded fires on land used or owned by a handful of Cargill’s soya suppliers in the Cerrado since 2015.

Grupo Scheffer said it had been cultivating soybeans for 30 years in Mato Grosso state, Brazil’s agribusiness powerhouse, which is made up of three key biomes: the Cerrado tropical savanna , Amazon forest and Pantanal, the world’s largest wetlands . “Throughout this period, we have been growing and evolving in a responsible way, always respecting practices that guarantee the longevity of the soil and the environment,” the company said.

Arla’s intensive dairy unit in Cornwall, where cattle are fed on soy. The farm’s feed supplier buys from Cargill (Photo: TBIJ/ITV News)

British MPs and campaigners say the investigation’s findings reinforce the need for tough new laws to force firms to tackle deforestation in their supply chains.

Anna Jones, Greenpeace UK’s head of forests, said: “Many people will be appalled to hear that their cheese and butter are linked to forest destruction on the other side of the Atlantic. And yet huge chunks of Brazilian forests and other vital ecosystems are still being cut down to grow tonnes and tonnes of soya that’s then fed to chickens, pigs and dairy cows in the UK. The global meat and dairy industry is fuelling the climate and nature emergency, and this needs to stop.”

The British government “should seize the opportunity to end deforestation in UK supply chains” by introducing a strong deforestation law and a meat and dairy reduction strategy in line with climate science, Jones said. “This would set a clear benchmark for world leaders to follow.”

Kerry McCarthy, the shadow minister and MP for Bristol East, said: “These revelations are yet more proof that overseas deforestation is deeply embedded in UK supply chains and in everyday supermarket products.

“Even more shocking, is that much of this deforestation was legal under local laws. The government knows this is a huge problem, yet its own proposals on eliminating deforestation from supply chains will only apply if that deforestation is illegal.” The Brazilian government does not object to legal deforestation, despite its effect on the climate. Marta Giannichi, a Brazilian environment official, told ITV News that rural landowners have the right “to suppress a certain amount of vegetation”.

As well as environmental damage, Brazil’s expansion of soya and cattle ranching has come at a deadly cost. Last year, 20 Brazilians were murdered while defending the environment, making it the fourth most lethal country in the world for green defenders, according to Global Witness.

“If some of the Cerrado is still standing, it is because the traditional communities still exist,” said Valéria Santos, a coordinator of the Brazilian campaign coalition Agro é Fogo, created to fight deforestation and arson by large landowners, as well as the National Campaign in Defence of the Cerrado. “Conserving fields and forests and resisting the agribusiness expansion is part of their livelihoods, their survival.”

From Cerrado to Cornwall

Deep in the rolling Cornish countryside, largely hidden from public view, a vast factory-like complex sprawls across the hillside, its grey roofs a stark contrast to the green of the surrounding fields.

The unit isn’t a factory; it’s a giant dairy farm with more than 20 interconnected barns. Milk from the farm is sold to the multinational food company Arla, which makes Anchor butter and supplies supermarket milk in the UK, including to Asda.

The cows here, unlike many, are permanently housed all year. The farm is one of Britain’s increasing number of intensive dairy farms – or “megadairies” – modelled on US industrial milk production systems, that have sprung up in recent years. Hundreds of tiny cubicles cluster next to the main buildings; these are “calf hutches”, designed to hold young animals reared to enter the milking herd.

Critics of intensive farming say that, in recent decades, livestock diets have shifted away from grass and food waste, increasingly towards grains and proteins, including soy. Although some conventional dairy farms use soya to supplement other feed, the scale of intensive dairy units – where cattle do not graze – and need for certainty around feed means soya is preferred, industry insiders say.

The Bureau has learned that the cattle feed used on the Cornish megafarm contains soy, supplied by Mole Valley Feeds, a major supplier of animal feed to the UK dairy sector.

The Bureau’s investigation has established that Mole Valley also trucks soy-based cattle feed to dairy farms selling milk to Saputo, the parent company of Dairy Crest.

Saputo manufactures the household cheese brand Cathedral City, as well as Davidstow Cheddar, at its Cornish creamery.

Saputo farms are also supplied by a second company offering soy-based feeds, NWF Agri, which claims to feed “one in six” British dairy cattle.

Another feed company, ForFarmers, has been identified as selling soya feed rations to Arla supply farms, along with one farm selling milk products to Cadbury. Cadbury is wholly owned by the multinational snack company Mondelez.

The Bureau has established that both Mole Valley Feeds and NWF offer Cargill Triple S soya for sale in the UK. Mole Valley declined to comment, and NWF did not respond to our requests.

ForFarmers said: “In the UK ForFarmers sources its soya from three countries, of which only 14% is from Brazil” and that in that market “100% of soya bean meal used in all ruminant feed is covered by certificates from responsible soya schemes”.

Arla said it did not recognise Cargill’s Triple S as “a certification that meets our requirements of responsible production”. A spokesperson said: “Both Arla and the dairy farmers that own our cooperative are taking steps to manage our use of soya responsibly.” But they admitted: “We do not monitor the suppliers chosen by our farmer owners for their businesses.”

The dairy company added that since 2014, it had bought credits that support responsible soya farming. Arla described soya as a “small but important” part of cows’ diet and said some of its farmers were looking at homegrown alternatives such as pea protein.

Saputo said in a statement: “From early 2022, our Davidstow Farm Standards will mandate that all farms which supply to Saputo Dairy UK’s Davidstow creamery must source feed from suppliers with a sustainable soya purchasing policy.” The company said that for the past two years, it had bought credits used to support producers who cultivate soya responsibly.

A Mondelez spokesperson said: “As part of our commitment to tackling deforestation, we have made it clear that we expect all our UK dairy suppliers to work with us and contractually commit to ensuring they are sourcing 100% deforestation free feed by 2023.”

Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium, said: “Retailers are working together to tackle deforestation and drive greater uptake of certified sustainable soya in their supply chains.”

An Asda spokesperson said: “We understand the importance of sustainable soya to our customers and are committed to reducing food production linked to deforestation.” The company said it was working with suppliers on a plan to ensure all its soya is “physically certified” by 2025.

The British dairy industry used an estimated 360,000 tonnes of soya from countries including Brazil, Argentina and the US as animal feed in 2019. This volume is dwarfed only by the poultry sector’s usage of soy and makes dairy farms the UK’s second-biggest consumer of soy-based feed.

Cargill dominates the soya trade into the UK, controlling about 70% of the market. The company ships more than 100,000 tonnes of soya beans to the UK every year from Brazil’s Cerrado region alone.

Most of the soya that is exported from Brazil is produced in the Cerrado, which once covered some 2,000,000 sq km. What’s left of the biome is increasingly fragmented and degraded, and vanishing fast, as big agricultural interests in Brazil rush to keep up with global demand.

People v profit

The concentration of vast tracts of land in the hands of a few wealthy individuals brings social problems, too. Edson Ferreira Lima is part of a community of landless rural workers who recently settled in a sustainable development project in Novo Mundo, northern Mato Grosso. Here, dozens of families share a 20 sq km plot where they live and grow organic vegetables. “There are 96 families that had a very precarious life and today, thanks to God, they are doing well; they are peaceful,” he said.

Theoretically, the settlement should also include a 50 sq km forest reserve, where the community can fish and collect native fruits. But a local soybean farmer is disputing the community’s right to the land, and they are waiting for a judge to rule on the case.

Lima said that landless rural folk routinely encounter opposition, threats and violence when advocating for agrarian reform and for a space for family farmers to produce food crops sustainably.

The families worry, he said, about cancers and other long-term health problems from the intense pesticide use on the megafarms surrounding them. “During the rainy season, the residues all go down to the rivers, and it reduces the number of fish,” he said. “In these regions that now plant soybeans, we consume a very dangerous poison … it kills humans eventually.”

Wealthy landowners don’t take these harms adequately into account, Lima said. Often, they don’t even live in the region. “Their thinking is only about profit.”

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COP26 looks set to be another case of governments talking big on the climate yet doing nothing to stop the big polluters. As Jeremy Corbyn writes, ordinary people can only save our future by taking power back into our own hands.

We are in our twenty-sixth year of United Nations climate change conferences. It’s over forty years since oil companies discovered and then suppressed knowledge of climate change. Generations of schoolchildren have been taught about our warming world. And yet the crisis continues unabated. The last IPCC Working Group report set out five emissions scenarios — but even in the most optimistic case, global surface temperatures will surge for decades.

From the Joe Biden administration’s climate-finance pledges to China’s commitment not to build new coal-fired power plants, we are at last seeing some commitments from the world’s great powers. Yet there remain three problems. The level of change is inadequate; big polluters remain entrenched and capable of holding back progress; and the people first and worst hit by climate impacts are being left to suffer.

Actions lag behind words. In the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson has gone from past climate skepticism to stealing the language of the “Green Industrial Revolution” pioneered by Rebecca Long-Bailey under my leadership of the Labour Party. Sadly, he has not stolen the substance attached to the words. The government’s climate-change targets are insufficient and risk not being met, and the money they have committed is orders of magnitude less than their spending surge for weapons and war.

We are today living through a crisis that has shown grim portents of what to expect from current governments on climate change. During the coronavirus crisis, our response was derailed, and lives were lost, as a result of nationalism, profit-seeking, vaccine-hoarding, the deliberate running down of critical services by governments bent on austerity, and denial of the crisis’s seriousness.

We cannot rely on weak politicians running a system that rewards profiteering at the expense of the public good. At the events we are hosting with trade unions and civil society organizations alongside COP26, I will make a simple point: our future depends on us taking power into our own hands.

Green New Deal

To give some examples of what this looks like: climate change impacts on land and at sea are already heightening risks to livelihoods, health, biodiversity, infrastructure, and food. This is not just true for communities immediately dependent on oceans and forests — everywhere, approximately 800 million people living in extreme poverty will be most vulnerable to the food-price spikes created by disruption to food supply linked to extreme weather.

Whether it’s the millions of Indian farmers once again striking for their future, or rewilding initiatives, or land rights movements, or the Right to Food campaign here in Britain, we need global conversations about how we secure access to food for all in a warming world.

Our cities — even in the advanced economies — are already unacceptably polluted, posing serious risks to health and life. Without mitigation, heat and flooding will worsen this situation significantly. Heat waves will occur in cities, while sea level rise, storm surges, and river surges will combine to make flooding more likely. From those campaigning against decisions to put poorer and minority ethnic communities in the front lines of airline pollution, to the mutual aid networks that flourished during the coronavirus pandemic, to communities drawing up local Green New Deal plans along the lines of the successful Preston Model, we need to reimagine our towns and cities.

Many solutions to the climate emergency will come from such collaborative, bottom-up action. Yet it alone is not enough. We need governments with the vision and the backbone to rein in the fossil fuel industry once and for all, working together across borders to do so. The transition to renewables must be accelerated, and millions of people must be offered the skills and the good, well-paid jobs to get it done. The United States’ Civilian Climate Corps proposal is one step in the right direction. But it’s only the beginning of a global Green New Deal that takes carbon out of the atmosphere and puts money in workers’ pockets.

Fossil fuel extraction is not the only way that the few profit from climate change. When Texas froze earlier this year (which may well have been linked to climate change), energy companies took the opportunity to hold people to ransom with astronomical energy bills. The same risk is inherent in the United Kingdom’s current energy crisis. These situations are often used as arguments against renewable energy, rather than the arguments against disaster capitalism that they should be.

Climate-linked crises, from African desertification to North American wildfires, have one thing in common: they cause people to move. According to new research from the International Federation of Red Cross Societies, internal displacement due to disasters surged last year — both in the Global South and in advanced economies — and all 192 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies are dealing with climate impacts in some form. A global Green New Deal must do two things: provide immediate climate finance to aid adaptation and prevent displacement — and dismantle the industry profiting from displacement.

Redistributing Power

Another new paper launched before COP26 provides a disturbing figure: the world’s biggest emitters are spending up to fifteen times more on arming borders against future climate-linked refugees than they are on climate finance for the poorest countries. This “Global Climate Wall” is already driving violence at borders, drawing investment away from real climate action, and providing a false sense of security to the most powerful nations.

The $68 billion border, surveillance, and military industry that supplies it lobbies extensively to get its way, and, as the researchers point out, possesses a revolving door with its fellow climate profiteers in the fossil fuel industry. Imagine if such funding and imagination was applied to ending climate displacement, and to developing global compacts on refugee protection, on the scale of the Nansen passports granted to stateless refugees after World War I.

I previously wrote for Jacobin that the climate emergency is a class issue. It punishes the many and is driven by systems built by the few. Only a huge redistribution of power can prevent the climate crisis from deepening — and build a better world from what follows. Often, the situation seems bleak. But when we come together, we have the ideas and the power to change the world.

I was born into the generation that followed the end of World War II and into a society that rebuilt from a disaster in the interests of the many. We created new homes in new towns, invested in our children’s futures, and built our National Health Service, which stands to this day as a living monument to what compassion and a belief in the common good can accomplish.

In the face of climate change, we can do even more, using the power and resources at our disposal to preserve human life on a flourishing planet. Let’s not wait until after a crisis to rebuild.

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Jeremy Corbyn is the Labour Party member of parliament for Islington North.

Video: Kiev Given an Impetus to Pursue Escalation

November 5th, 2021 by South Front

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The situation in Eastern Ukraine is slowly simmering towards a large escalation, if the actions and rhetoric of all involved players are to be analyzed.

While the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) is largely sitting idly, unbothered by the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF), the people of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) are subject to almost daily artillery shelling.

Another threat was recently added to that, when the UAF decided to deploy the Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones on the battlefield. These combat UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicle) have not carried out any airstrikes yet, but have been used for reconnaissance.

A low number of ceasefire violations are observed each day by the DPR. Naturally, these are responded to, and Kiev’s forces usually report that some of its soldiers are reportedly wounded or killed.

Most recently, on November 2nd, a UAF serviceman was killed, in the days leading up to this, several UAF soldiers were wounded.

The DPR is much more silent about its losses, but Ukrainian volunteer battalion fighters and servicemen are quite vocal about any success they achieve on the battlefield. On October 28th, Ukraine’s Armed Forces destroyed two armored fighting vehicles, part of the Donetsk People’s Militia near the contact line.

Throughout the month of October, the DPR side has lost at least 16 fighters, mostly as a result of UAF shelling. Some of the deceased succumbed to an illness, presumably COVID-19.

Meanwhile, Kiev’s assertive actions are likely to exacerbate in the coming days, as it received quite an impetus from its premier ally – the United States. Currently, the Black Sea hosts the USS Porter guided missile destroyer, as well as the USS Mount Whitney Blue Ridge-class amphibious command ship, which is the flagship of the 6th Fleet, a significant warship without a doubt.

While the ships were entering the Black Sea, the MSM was producing reports of a concentration of forces in Russia, along the Ukrainian border.

Kiev’s Defense Ministry initially denied these reports. However, Ukraine’s parliament on November 2nd dismissed Defense Minister Andriy Taran, as his results were obviously displeasing for President Volodymyr Zelensky and Co.

In his place comes, now former, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov. He is much more aligned with the course that Kiev pursues in regard to Russia and Eastern Ukraine.

His most recent statements include the observation that “Ukraine won’t be able to adopt any well-known model of conflict resolution.”

Reznikov’s statements are quite hawkish in nature and are completely in synch with the policy of seeking conflict and escalation, he would be a suitable Defense Minister for the current Kiev government.

Around the same time, Ukraine began admitting that there is a concentration of forces along its border, despite denying it initially. Now, Kiev maintains that Russia has deployed 90,000 troops along the border, with a massive amount of hardware to boot.

Despite no indication of any potential escalation being given, former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Lieutenant General Igor Romanenko said that in a fight Moscow’s forces and its allies in Eastern Ukraine should prepare for a “bloodbath”.

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With a COVID-19 pandemic causing enormous public health issues in the Republic of South Africa, local governmental elections were held on November 1 where millions of registered voters participated.

The results indicate that the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the party which led the struggle for national liberation from the apartheid colonial system, has witnessed another erosion of electoral support.

The ANC garnered less than 50% of the votes yet far outperformed the leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, by gaining more than twice as many votes. The ANC secured 46.03% while the DA won 21.84%.

In actual numbers, the ANC votes totaled 10.6 million while the DA scored approximately 5.1 million. The third ranking party behind the ANC and DA was the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) which earned around 2.4 million votes, this represented 10.41% of the ballots cast.

Although the ANC scored seven percentage points lower than they did in the last local governmental election in 2016 (53%), the DA’s proportion of the electorate also shrunk by six percent. The EFF increased its margin by two percent from 2016. Nonetheless, the EFF remains far behind the ANC as well as the DA.

Other smaller parties such as the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the new group called ActionSA, won much smaller numbers of votes. The remaining twenty-three percent of the votes were largely scattered among numerous smaller parties and some independents.

The ANC has been reeling from internal divisions between factions for and opposed to former President Jacob Zuma, who is now undergoing criminal proceedings related to charges for corruption and refusal to testify before a commission headed by the chief justice of the Constitutional Court. Zuma has been released from prison on medical parole.

These divisions have permeated various local and national structures of the ruling party. The ANC headquarters at Luthuli House in Johannesburg has been the scene of pickets due to the inability of the party to pay salaries to its employees. Recent reports indicate that some of these problems are being corrected.

The DA is still viewed by most Africans as a party of the white middle and upper classes. They have failed to secure a significant proportion of the African electorate. Even in relation to its leaders, at least two Africans selected by the DA to ostensibly serve as president of the organization over the last decade have either been dismissed or resigned in disgust citing the pervasive racism within its ranks.

During the campaign leading up to the November 1 location election, the DA circulated racist posters in the Phoenix area of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, one of the worst centers of violence during the earlier July riots. The posters appeared to support vigilante actions by the predominantly Asian population in the municipality which resulted in the deaths of several Africans during the unrest.

The EFF headed by Julius Malema, who was expelled as the leader of the ANC Youth League several years earlier, has advocated what appears to be a radical alternative to the ruling party program. They have called for the immediate nationalization of agricultural land and mines inside the country. Yet their message has not gained more than ten percent in the recent local votes. The EFF politicians did win seats on various municipal governing structures. However, the EFF party did not secure even one council as the dominant political force.

Figures released on November 4 by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) revealed that the ANC won 167 municipal councils in comparison to 24 for the DA. In the Gauteng province, the ANC did not regain control of the mayoral seats in Johannesburg and Pretoria necessitating negotiations with other parties to determine the outcome. Within this province, the most urbanized in the country of nearly 60 million, the ANC won 36% of the total votes, a reduction of nine percent since the previous local elections five years before.

The ANC performed its best in the lesser urbanized areas of the country. They won majorities in six out of nine provinces: Eastern Cape (62.99), Free State (50.61), Northern Cape (50.55), Limpopo (68.27) and Northwest (55.4). In the three other provinces of KZN, Western Cape and Gauteng, the votes were heavily split among the opposition parties. The DA in its Western Cape base won a majority of council votes with 54.2%.

Impact of the Pandemic and the Economic Slump

South Africa has been the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic on the continent with the largest number of infections and deaths. The government of ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa has rolled out an ambitious vaccination program securing doses from numerous sources including Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer-BioTech. The use of Oxford AstraZeneca was suspended in February 2021 over concerns about its lack of effectiveness in preventing transmission of the beta variant.

There is also an agreement to locally manufacture coronavirus vaccines which would be distributed throughout Africa. A recent announcement was made stating that a joint partnership between Pfizer-BioTech and the Biovac Institute in Cape Town was formed to produce vaccines beginning in early 2022. The goal is to produce 100 million vaccines annually.

The subsequent economic and social crises precipitated by the pandemic has resulted in higher rates of unemployment. An unprecedented rate of 34% of joblessness was recorded in the second quarter of 2021. These rates disproportionately impact the African population and youth. This is largely due to the continuing gaps in educational and skills sets between the European and African population groups.

With the arrest of former President Zuma in early July, riots erupted in the KZN port city of Durban and spread to areas of Gauteng around Johannesburg. Although the unrest was sparked by supporters of Zuma, the attacks in KZN and Gauteng were focused on small and medium-sized retail outlets such as malls and liquor stores. There were no reports of property damage at factories and mines. Many people took advantage of the situation to obtain food and other consumer goods. The police and military exercised restraint in repressing the property damage and looting. Nonetheless, over 300 people were killed during the disturbances.

The fact that the riots were confined to certain urban sections of two provinces suggests that the unrest was not necessarily the result of political grievances. Seven other provinces which make up the country remained calm during this period.

High rates of poverty and unemployment appeared to be the motivating reasons behind the overwhelming majority of those who joined the looting and arson attacks on retail businesses. Police were able to recover substantial amounts of the goods taken as the family members and neighbors of those who participated in the riots called the law-enforcement authorities to return the loot. As a result of the attacks on small and medium-sized businesses many more jobs were wiped out. Overall, the riots resulted in $US3.4 billion in lost output and placed another 150,000 jobs at risk. Approximately 200 malls were impacted with some 3,000 shops looted. In addition, 200 banks and post offices were also vandalized in the disturbances.

In the lead up to the local elections there were two significant labor actions worthy of mention within this context. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) held a strike against the steel industry beginning on October 5. NUMSA, which was expelled from the ANC-allied Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) several years ago, demanded an 8% pay increase within the metals and engineering sectors. The strike lasted three weeks and was ended when the union accepted a 6% pay increase over three years.

NUMSA claims to be to the left of the COSATU-ANC-SACP alliance and has formed another trade union federation called the South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU). SAFTU attempted to form a party in 2019. However, the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP) gained less than 40,000 votes in the 2019 national elections, not even winning one percent of the electorate. SRWP did not appear to have contested the local elections held on November 1.

COSATU did call a one-day strike on October 7 to protest the high levels of unemployment and other economic issues. The trade union federation marched to the administrative center of government in Pretoria and presented a list of demands to the Ministry of Labor.

The NUMSA strike apparently did not resonate among other sectors of the working class since there has not been a wave of industrial actions in South Africa in recent months. It will be quite interesting to follow the role of labor in the aftermath of the recent elections.

Implications for the Next Three Years

There will not be a national election in South Africa until 2024. The results of the November 1 poll indicate that the political landscape will become more fragmented with the ANC still occupying a dominant role albeit with reduced electoral support.

Objectively there has not been the emergence of a viable organized political alternative to the ANC from the right or left. The party has ruled the country since the 1994 democratic breakthrough resulting in the ascendancy of the first ANC President Nelson Mandela. In every election since 1994, the ANC has won a substantial majority of the votes.

ANC Deputy Secretary General Jessie Duarte speaks on local election outcomes, Nov. 3, 2021 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

The loss of seven percentage points in its majority during the local elections will undoubtedly prompt deep reflection and calls for rectification. Jessie Duarte, the Deputy Secretary General of the ANC said that the party must “shape up” in response to the results of the elections.

Duarte also said that the party was prepared to negotiate agreements with other forces in municipal councils where there were no clear majorities. This phenomenon of “hung councils”, some 70 in this poll, were present as well after the 2016 local elections. The Deputy Secretary General attributed the low turnout in the November 1 election to the pandemic along with the current energy crisis where power outages (load shedding) have become a serious problem with the state-owned energy firm, ESKOM, being in dire need of reconstruction. Alternative energy sources other than coal are being examined in South Africa.

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

Featured image: South Africa IEC photo for local elections, Nov. 2021 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Do Not Give Up Your Rights. Dr. Julie Ponesse’s Remarkable Speech

November 5th, 2021 by Brownstone Institute

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Dr. Julie Ponesse is a professor of ethics who has taught at Ontario’s Huron University College for 20 years. She was placed on leave and banned from accessing her campus due to the vaccine mandate. She presented at the The Faith and Democracy Series on October 28, 2021. Dr. Ponesse has now taken on a new role with The Democracy Fund, a registered Canadian charity aimed at advancing civil liberties, where she serves as the pandemic ethics scholar.

Think back to a couple of years ago—fall 2019, let’s say. What were you doing then? What was your life like? What did you care about? What did you most fear? What DID YOU IMAGINE ABOUT the FUTURE?

That’s the person I would like to talk to for the next 15 minutes, + I’ll begin with my own story: At the end I’ll have a FAVOUR to ask plus a little SECRET to share.

In the fall of 2019, I was a professor of ethics and ancient philosophy; I taught students critical thinking + the importance of self-reflection, how to ask good questions and evaluate evidence, how to learn from the past and why democracy requires civic virtue.

Fast forward to September 16, 2021 when I received a “termination with cause” letter after I questioned, and refused to comply, with my employer’s vaccine mandate. I was dismissed for doing exactly what I had been hired to do. I was a professor of ethics questioning what I take to be an unethical demand. You don’t have to look very hard to see the irony.

Canada is governed by laws which are based on ethics. You could say that ethics are the bedrock beneath our democracy.

“The right to determine what shall or shall not be done with one’s own body, and to be free from non-consensual medical treatment, is a right deeply rooted in our common law.” These aren’t my words; they are the words of Justice Sydney Robins of the Ontario Court of Appeal.

With very few exceptions, each person’s body is considered inviolate in Canadian law, and this is the underlying ethos of the Nuremberg Code, a promise to humanity that we would never again endorse uninformed, non-voluntary medical decision-making, even for the patient’s own good, even for the sake of the public good.

By definition, vaccine mandates are coercive immunization strategies: in the absence of coercion — the threat of a loss of employment, for example — people would voluntarily agree to do what the mandate is trying to achieve!

Employers are holding our careers hostage, and removing our participation in the economy and in public life. Their justification is that “we are in a pandemic,” and we must therefore relinquish autonomy over our bodies for the sake of the public good.

So, let’s talk about autonomy and the public good for a minute.

In emergencies, the Parliament and provincial legislatures have a limited power to pass laws that violate certain Charter rights for the sake of the public good. But, to justify those violations, vaccine mandates would need to meet a very high threshold: COVID-19 would, for example, need to be a highly virulent pathogen for which there is no adequate treatment, and the vaccines would need to be demonstrably effective and safe.

The current state of affairs in Canada meets neither of these criteria.

Consider these facts:

1) COVID-19 has an infection facility rate not even 1% that of smallpox (and it poses even less risk to children)

2) a number of safe, highly effective pharmaceuticals exist to treat it (including monoclonal antibodies, Ivermectin, fluvoxamine, Vitamin D and Zinc), AND

3) The vaccines have reported more adverse events (including innumerable deaths) than every other vaccine on the market over the last 30 years.

In light of these facts, I have so many questions:

Why are the vaccinated granted vaccine passports and access to public spaces, when the Director of the CDC has stated that the COVID-19 vaccines cannot prevent transmission?

Why is vaccination the ONLY mitigation strategy when emerging evidence (including a recent Harvard study) shows no discernible relationship between the vaccination rate and new cases?

Why does our government continue to withhold Ivermectin as a recommended treatment when the U-S National Institutes of Health supports it, and when the state of Uttar Pradesh in India distributed it to its 230 million people, reducing its COVID death rate to almost zero? How has India surpassed Canada in Health Care?

Why are we about to vaccinate 5 year olds when COVID poses to them less risk than the potential vaccine reactions AND while there is NO effective monitoring system for the vaccines?

Why are we focused on the narrow benefits of vaccine-induced immunity when real-world studies show natural immunity is more protective, more potent, and more enduring?

Why do we shame the “vaccine hesitant” and not the “vaccine adamant”?

“Why,” as a nurse recently asked, “do the protected need to be protected from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that did not protect the protected in the first place?”

By every measure and from every angle, this is a ‘house of cards’ about to crumble

But the question that interests me is why hasn’t it crumbled already? Why are these questions not the headlines of every major newspaper in Canada every day?

Have the right people simply not seen the right data? Is it just a clerical error…on a global scale?

What has happened to our leadership? Our Prime Minister leads the battle cry:  “Don’t think you’re getting on a plane,” he threatened. Campaign promises are now segregationist public policy. Our government encourages us daily to be divisive and hateful.

How did things change so drastically? How did we Canadians change so drastically?

It’s my observation that we are facing a pandemic not just of a virus but a pandemic of compliance and complacency, in a culture of silence, censorship, and institutionalized bullying.

MainStreamd Media likes to say that we are fighting a “war of information” — that misinformation, and even questioning and doubt, have plagued this pandemic.

But it is not only information that is being weaponized, in this war; it is a person’s right to think for herself.

I have heard it said “well I don’t know that much about viruses” so I shouldn’t really have an opinion. but…

The issue is not whether you know more about virology than our public health officials; the issue is why we aren’t all calling them out for not being willing to engage with the evidence and debate someone who has a different opinion.

We should be calling not for an outcome but for a process to be reestablished.

Without that process we have no science, we have no democracy.

Without that process, we are in a kind of moral war.

But, the wars of the past have had clear and distinct boundaries: the east and the west, patriots and government.

The war we find ourselves in today is one of infiltration instead of invasion, intimidation instead of free choice, of psychological forces so insidious we come to believe the ideas are our own and that we are doing our part by giving up our rights.

As a wise colleague recently said “This is a war about the role of government. It is about our freedom to think and ask questions, and about whether individual autonomy can be downgraded to a conditional privilege or whether it remains a right. It is a war about whether you are to remain a citizen or become a subject. It is about who owns you… you or the state.”

It is about where we draw the line.

This isn’t about liberals and conservatives, pro-and anti-vaxxers, experts and lay people. Everyone should care about truth, everyone should care about the scientific and democratic processes, everyone should care about each another.

There is, I would argue, little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our freedom to debate, to criticize, to demand evidence for what our government asks of us does not survive with it.

As someone born in the 70s, I never thought THIS would be a war I would have to fight, that the right to bodily autonomy, to the free and transparent exchange of information would be at risk.

Think for a minute about the the most unimaginable harms of the last century  — the ‘final solution,’ South African apartheid, the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides. Aren’t we supposed to remember atrocities of the past so we don’t repeat them? Well, memories are short, family chains are broken, new worries eclipse the old ones, and the lessons of the past fade into ancient history only to be forgotten.

Today, the vaccinated seem to enjoy all the rights + privileges of a civilized society: freedom of movement, access to education, and the approval of governments, law makers, journalists, friends and family. Vaccination is the ticket to a CONDITIONAL return of our right to participate in Canadian society.

But as John F Kennedy said: “The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”

CONCLUSION:

I have no doubt that COVID-19 is the greatest threat to humanity we have ever faced; not because of a virus; that is just one chapter of a much longer, more complex story; but because of our response to it.

And that response is, I believe, earning its place in every medical ethics textbook that will be published in the next century.

What can we do?

As Canadian chemist and author Orlando Battista said, “An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.” 

In our world, politeness, ‘getting by,’ ‘flying under the radar’ seem to be the goals. Gone are the 60s revolutionaries, gone are the patriots of early America. We are the victims — and the soldiers — of a pandemic of compliance.

But compliance is not a virtue; it isn’t neutral, and it certainly isn’t harmless.

When Hannah Arendt covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann for the New Yorker in 1961, she expected to find a complex, arrogant, diabolical, perhaps psychotic man. What she found was quite the opposite. She was struck by his “very ordinariness.” He was “terribly and terrifyingly normal,” she wrote, a man who was “just following orders,” as he said over and over again. What she found was what she called the “banality of evil,” the thoughtless tendency of ordinary people to obey orders in order to conform without thinking for themselves.

The dismissive, well-rehearsed messaging of our public health officials has created a highly efficient machine that does not publish its evidence or engage in debate, but only issues orders that we obligingly follow. With the help of the media, its mistakes are hidden, its policies unquestioned, its dissenters silenced.

How do we break this silence? How do we regain our sanity and rebuild our democracy? Perhaps it’s time to get a little bit noisy. Studies have proven that once an idea is adopted by just 10% of the population, this is the tipping point when ideas, opinions, & beliefs will be rapidly adopted by the rest. A vocal, a **NOISY** 10% is all it takes. 

Democracy, “rule of the people,” doesn’t just allow for freedom of expression and inquiry; it requires it.

And the little SECRET I promised you at the beginning? Here it is: you AREN’T a bad person for demanding evidence, you AREN’T a bad person for trusting your instincts, and you AREN’T a bad person for wanting to think for yourself. In fact, the opposite is true.

If you are worried about a loss of justice, if you are worried about what kinds of lives will be  possible for our children, if you want your country back — the country that was once the envy of the world — then now is the time to act. There is no reason to wait, there is no luxury or excuse to wait. We need you now.

Now is the time to call our politicians and write to our newspapers. Now is the time to protest, now is the time to challenge and even disobey our government.

As Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

In other words, you don’t need a TRIBE of heroes, a MASS of heroes, a COUNTRY of heroes. You only need 1. You can do your part and you CAN make a difference. The Southwest Airlines pilots, the Canadian Mounties, the University Health Network nurses are all making a difference.

And the FAVOUR I have to ask you? We need heroes now more than ever. Our democracy is asking for volunteers … Will you be a hero, for our country, for our children? Will you be part of the noisy 10%?

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Featured image is from The Brownstone Institute