Selected Articles: An Australian Horror Story

November 5th, 2021 by Global Research News

Vaxx Passports: “When You Know Everything About Your Government, that’s Democracy. When the Government Knows Everything About You, that’s Tyranny.”

By Peter Koenig, November 02, 2021

Can you imagine a Human Rights abuse that knows hardly any precedents since the German Nazi-Government in the 1930s and 40s? It is noticed, but governments just roll over it, always with lies and deceptions, and falsehoods. The EU Parliament speaks out against the EU Commission’s path towards outright tyranny.

An Australian Horror Story

By Jeremy Salt, November 04, 2021

The Premier of the Australian state of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, has just tabled legislation in parliament which is possibly the most monstrous ever introduced into a country calling itself democratic. Basically it gives Andrews the power to do whatever he wants and whenever he wants it.

Whistleblower Reveals Fraud in Pfizer COVID Vaccine Trials as 5 to 11-Year-Olds Begin to be Injected – Vaccine Deaths and Injuries to Follow

By Brian Shilhavy, November 04, 2021

The criminal CDC rubber stamped their approval to start injecting American children between the ages of 5 and 11 with the deadly Pfizer COVID-19 shot yesterday. As we have pointed out numerous times here at Health Impact News, children this young have a near ZERO statistical chance of dying from COVID-19.

History: Nazi Germany’s “Operation Barbarossa” against the Soviet Union, an Overview

By Shane Quinn, November 04, 2021

The USSR’s hierarchy was caught unprepared, and unnecessarily so, when Nazi Germany invaded their country eight decades ago on 22 June 1941, in a military offensive titled Operation Barbarossa. It was named after King Frederick Barbarossa, a red-bearded Prussian emperor who in the 12th century had waged war against the Slavs.

Does the US Military “Own the Weather”? “Weaponizing the Weather” as an Instrument of Modern Warfare?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 04, 2021

Environmental modification (ENMOD) techniques have been available to the US military for more than half a century. The issue has been amply documented and should be part of the climate change debate. The U.N. Climate Conference (COP 26) is meeting in Glasgow with delegates from some 190 countries. As in previous COP Conferences the focus in almost exclusively on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Why Won’t the CDC or FDA Reveal the VAERS Vaccine Underreporting Factor

By Steve Kirsch, November 04, 2021

The VAERS underreporting factor (URF) is required information to be known for any risk-benefit of assessment of a vaccine. The fact that this number was never calculated by the FDA or CDC means that all the safety recommendations to date have been by guessing. This has resulted in the needless loss of life of well over 150,000 Americans.

G20, Supply Chain Problems and the World Capitalist Crisis

By Abayomi Azikiwe, November 04, 2021

Rome, Italy was the scene of the annual summit of the Group of 20, popularly known as the G20, an inter-governmental organization that brings together the most industrialized countries within several geo-political regions. The group is made up of 19 states and the European Union (EU) representing a large majority of the world’s gross domestic product, the total sum of goods and services produced within a society.

CIA Plot to Kill Julian Assange: Will Perpetrators Ever Face Legal Accountability for Criminal Behavior?

By John Kiriakou, November 04, 2021

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) last week asked the CIA for information related to a Yahoo News report that the Agency in 2017 had planned to kidnap or kill Wikileaks cofounder Julian Assange outside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. Knowing the CIA, I’m sure the Agency’s Office of Congressional Affairs had a good laugh over the request, but we can talk about that a little later.

Doctors for Assange Say UK May be Liable for His Torture

By Doctors for Assange, November 04, 2021

Doctors have warned that UK officials could be held accountable for the torture of Julian Assange in an open letter published in The Lancet on International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

Glasgow Climate Summit Is an Elite Farce

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, November 04, 2021

The Glasgow summit on climate change has been a media extravaganza. The ruling elites from all continents cooped up in their national capitals due to the raging pandemic, finally got a break to throw away their masks and take to their private jets to fly off to “Global Britain” to display their leadership qualities. 

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Conforme apresentado na primeira parte deste artigo, em época de crise econômica generalizada e consequente turbulência social – caso do período entreguerras (anos 1920 e 1930) e da época atual –, costumam se fortalecer os discursos irracionais, dentre os quais o fascismo: este regime que é o ápice da ignorância e terror moderno.

Para Caio Prado Júnior, o fascismo, em suas variadas formas e intensidades de estupidez, é uma via alternativa utilizada pelos capitalistas em tempos de crise, quando a hegemonia de poder das classes dominantes (senhores do capital e seus asseclas, a chamada “direita”) se vê ameaçada diante da insatisfação popular. 

Trata-se de uma forma ainda menos democrática e mais violenta com que os capitalistas (neoliberais, liberais conservadores, etc) enfrentam situações adversas, nas quais já não conseguem controlar a nação e o povo através das corriqueiras manipulações midiáticas e eleitorais, a que denominam “democracia liberal”.

Este é um tema que, infelizmente, como vemos dia a dia nos jornais do século XXI, mantém sua insólita atualidade. 

“Diários Políticos” – notas sobre o fascismo na evolução histórica do Brasil

Para melhor nos situarmos no ponto de vista de Caio Prado sobre o fascismo (experiência que ele sofreu na pele, vivendo no cárcere e no exílio), e para compreendermos a historicidade de sua crítica e de seus embates no campo intelectual, notemos inicialmente o que destaca o historiador Boris Fausto (em História do Brasil, 1995): no final dos anos 1920, a crise da economia mundial (que estoura em 1929) veio a reforçar o “desprestígio” da democracia liberal – ou seja, deste regime que se identifica, no plano econômico, ao capitalismo. 

Nesse contexto, que abre flancos ao autoritarismo, ocorre que, logo após o intento de golpe paulista de 1932 – chamado até hoje pelo pomposo nome oligárquico (e paulistocêntrico) de “revolução constitucionalista de 1932” –, surge em São Paulo a Ação Integralista Brasileira, movimento de inspiração fascista. 

O integralismo foi uma doutrina conservadora ultranacionalista, voltada sobretudo ao enfrentamento dos comunistas e das mobilizações operárias. Em 1935, após violentos choques entre estes extremistas de direita e os militantes das esquerdas (socialistas), o governo Vargas promulga sua Lei de Segurança Nacional, endurecendo a legislação sobre ações contra a estabilidade do Estado (ou “do seu governo”), e afetando garantias civis, tais como as greves e o direito à manifestação política (tachada como “incitação” ao “ódio de classes”). 

Ao fim desse ano, o levante comunista (1935) é derrotado, o que acirraria a repressão do governo varguista contra os interesses dos trabalhadores – por exemplo, dá-se a criação da Comissão Nacional de Repressão ao Comunismo. 

A partir de então, a guinada à direita de Vargas se aprofundaria. Em 1937, um falso boletim  escrito por integralistas para incriminar os comunistas – em que se afirmava a iminência de uma revolta popular – foi o pretexto do governo para interromper o processo eleitoral e executar seu golpe de Estado. Veja-se que a tática das “fake news” sobre o “perigo comunista” não são sequer criativas.

No novo cenário político, os integralistas – que Getúlio apoiara em seu início – solidarizam-se com o golpe, esperando obterem cadeira ministerial; no entanto, foram depois desiludidos, pois Vargas centralizaria os poderes, proibindo a existência de qualquer partido (apesar de, na prática, ter tolerado que os integralistas seguissem se organizando discretamente, como forma de fustigar a militância socialista). 

Guinada fascista de Getúlio Vargas

Vargas, a partir de então, se volta definitivamente à direita, em um movimento que Caio Prado Jr. classifica como a “fascistização” do governo brasileiro. Apesar disto, vale frisar que o pensador marxista considera que anteriormente, na chamada Revolução de 1930, Vargas havia tido posição progressista, ao enfrentar as oligarquias regionais. 

A respeito deste momento histórico, é interessante observar a análise que Boris Fausto faria sobre o tema, décadas mais tarde, e que converge com a de Caio Prado: o Estado Novo representou uma aliança entre a burocracia civil e militar, e a burguesia industrial.

O fascismo como capitalismo não-ortodoxo

Caio Prado, no início dos anos 1930, em seus primeiros estudos sobre o fascismo (manuscrito sobre artigo de C. Hayder, “O Estado corporativo italiano”, 1931, do Arquivo do IEB-USP), anota que o “sindicalismo fascista” se distingue de outras correntes, especialmente: 

– pela “aceitação da classe capitalista como socialmente produtiva”;

– pela “ilegalidade da luta social”;

– pelo “princípio da colaboração de classes”.

Tal sistema se caracteriza, sintetiza ele, por uma “artificialidade completa”, apoiando-se “integralmente na ditadura”, e visando a manutenção de “salários muito baixos” e a “passividade das massas”. 

Sobre a conjuntura europeia de ascensão fascista, o autor aponta que a situação italiana é “deplorável”: “grande manada de desocupados e meio-ocupados”. 

Já em sua resenha do ensaio “Comunismo e fascismo: caráter econômico distintivo” (de Keneth Burke, revista New Masses, 1934), Caio pondera, com relação à política mundial, que “o capitalismo ortodoxo entrou em crise”, pois que sua “força básica” (que é sua capacidade de “expansão”) já “não pode mais se desenvolver”, dada a saturação do mercado. Em seguida, avalia a necessidade capitalista de integrar “política” e “produção”, o que consiste em uma espécie de “economia dirigida”, fundada nos “negócios” – ao contrário do comunismo, afirma, que procura tal “integração” por meio da “eliminação do negócio”. 

O “ideal do negócio”, com sua esperança na volta dos investimentos, necessita do expansionismo, o que se inicia pelo “imperialismo econômico”, espécie de “invasão comercial”, e vai “tendendo para uma invasão militar”. Segue-se disto que não há “lógica” na tentativa fascista de “erigir uma economia estável sobre as contradições das empresas de negócios”. 

Enfim, resume Caio: a diferença entre fascismo e comunismo é que aquele por meio do “negócio” e este pela “política”: aquele “subjuga” e este “prioriza” o trabalhador.

Um ano depois, em análise de artigo de G. Haschek (de 1935), saído na revista Annales, Caio Prado ressalta que o fascismo é um “movimento de massas, que visa superar os “antagonismos profundos” da sociedade moderna mediante o “entusiasmo nacionalista”, visando conformar uma nova elite, um “novo quadro de dirigentes”. 

Acerca do Estado Novo de Vargas

É com base em tais parâmetros conceituais que Caio Prado elabora sua interpretação política do Estado Novo, de Vargas – no que acaba por divergir da linha do líder comunista Luís Carlos Prestes, quem apoiaria Getúlio em prol da estratégia pecebista “nacional-libertadora”, em oposição à  “ameaça fascista”, que supunha externa (ameaça que, segundo Caio, pelo contrário, vinha do próprio Vargas).

Por este período, em meados dos anos 1940, agravam-se as divergências de Caio com Prestes, e também com os rumos do PCB como um todo – caminhos que ele vê como dogmáticos e centrados no modelo europeu (conforme seus “Diários Políticos”) [*].

Na próxima parte deste artigo, detenhamo-nos então nas reflexões de Caio Prado sobre a época da instauração do Estado Novo (em que trata tanto da política de Getúlio Vargas, como do movimento integralista, neste período em que considera que o Brasil vai se “fascistizando”). Para tanto, analisemos o ensaio caiopradiano pouco conhecido e ainda tão atual: “1937”. 

Yuri Martins-Fontes

 

Um marxista da América para o mundo: Mariátegui vivo a 90 anos de sua morte (I)

 

Caio Prado e o fascismo como estratégia do capitalismo em crise (Parte III)

 

Caio Prado e o fascismo como estratégia do capitalismo em crise (Parte IV)

 

 

Sobre o tema, veja-se o capítulo 1 de “Marx na América: a práxis de Caio Prado e Mariátegui” (Alameda, 2018). Chama-se “Diários Políticos” ao conjunto de cadernos manuscritos, em grande parte inéditos (pertencentes ao Arquivo do IEB-USP), em que Caio sistematicamente escreveu, durante anos, suas reflexões sociopolíticas.

Este artigo tem o propósito de popularizar o debate sobre temas marxistas; trata-se de versão reduzida do ensaio teórico “No sentido do fascismo”, capítulo do livro “Brasil e América Latina na Segunda Guerra Mundial” (Editora CRV, 2017).

Yuri Martins-Fontes : Filósofo e escritor, com doutorado em história; pesquisa o socialismo, os saberes originários e a literatura contemporânea. Coordena projetos de educação popular do Núcleo Práxis-USP e colabora com a imprensa independente. Autor dos livros “Marx na América” e “Cantos dos Infernos”, entre outras obras.

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The criminal CDC rubber stamped their approval to start injecting American children between the ages of 5 and 11 with the deadly Pfizer COVID-19 shot yesterday.

As we have pointed out numerous times here at Health Impact News, children this young have a near ZERO statistical chance of dying from COVID-19.

Here are the current number of COVID-19 deaths for this age group for the past two years.

Source.

There is plenty of evidence that the FDA and CDC already know that the Pfizer shot is going to injure many children between the ages of 5 and 11.

The doses are not as strong as the ones given to those above the age of 12, but there was one ingredient that was changed in the shots for this age group. The Exposé has reported that the ingredient that was added for this age group is known for stabilizing heart attacks.

A document prepared for the FDA Advisory Committee meeting, in which members voted seventeen to zero in favour of giving emergency use authorisation for the administration of the Pfizer Covid-19 injection to children aged 5 to 11, confirms that Pfizer have modified the formulation of their injection for children to include an ingredient that reduces the acidity of blood and is used to stabilise people who have suffered a heart attack. (Full story.)

Blood clots and heart disease are side effects that have already been observed in those who take the COVID-19 shots, especially effecting young boys.

In addition to this change in formulation for the Pfizer shots for younger children, Andrew White from the National File has reported that the FDA just recently approved the “first oral blood thinning medication for children.”

The Food and Drug Administration approved the “first oral blood thinning medication for children” a few months ahead of their COVID-19 vaccine rollout for children ages 5-11.

In late June 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a drug called Pradaxa; oral pellets to treat children 3 months to less than 12 years of age with venous thromboembolism, a condition that involves blood clots forming in the veins. Pradaxa is the “first FDA-approved blood thinning medication that children can take by mouth,” reads the FDA News Release.

“With today’s approval of Pradaxa, pediatric patients have another therapeutic option to treat and prevent potentially deadly blood clots,” said Ann Farrell, M.D., director of the Division of Non-Malignant Hematology for the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

A few months later, the FDA authorized children ages 5-11 to be injected with the Pfizer COVID-19 shot. (Full story.)

So they know what is in the future for this age group, and they are preparing for it.

Are you?

Pfizer is the largest criminal organization in the world, as we have reported numerous times over the years here at Health Impact News. They have settled some of the largest criminal cases for fraud with the DOJ in the history of the United States.

And now just as pharmacies around the U.S. begin to start injecting young children with the criminal Pfizer shot, a whistleblower has come forward and published a report in the BMJ stating that Pfizer did not conduct proper safety trials before the COVID-19 shots were given emergency use authorization.

Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial

BMJ Investigation

Excerpts:

Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal covid-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight. Paul D Thacker reports.

In autumn 2020 Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive, Albert Bourla, released an open letter to the billions of people around the world who were investing their hopes in a safe and effective covid-19 vaccine to end the pandemic. “As I’ve said before, we are operating at the speed of science,” Bourla wrote, explaining to the public when they could expect a Pfizer vaccine to be authorised in the United States.

But, for researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety.

A regional director who was employed at the research organisation Ventavia Research Group has told The BMJ that the company falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial. Staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the volume of problems they were finding.

After repeatedly notifying Ventavia of these problems, the regional director, Brook Jackson, emailed a complaint to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ventavia fired her later the same day. Jackson has provided The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails.

Poor laboratory management

On its website Ventavia calls itself the largest privately owned clinical research company in Texas and lists many awards it has won for its contract work.

But Jackson has told The BMJ that, during the two weeks she was employed at Ventavia in September 2020, she repeatedly informed her superiors of poor laboratory management, patient safety concerns, and data integrity issues.

Jackson was a trained clinical trial auditor who previously held a director of operations position and came to Ventavia with more than 15 years’ experience in clinical research coordination and management.

Exasperated that Ventavia was not dealing with the problems, Jackson documented several matters late one night, taking photos on her mobile phone.

One photo, provided to The BMJ, showed needles discarded in a plastic biohazard bag instead of a sharps container box. Another showed vaccine packaging materials with trial participants’ identification numbers written on them left out in the open, potentially unblinding participants. Ventavia executives later questioned Jackson for taking the photos.

Early and inadvertent unblinding may have occurred on a far wider scale. According to the trial’s design, unblinded staff were responsible for preparing and administering the study drug (Pfizer’s vaccine or a placebo).

This was to be done to preserve the blinding of trial participants and all other site staff, including the principal investigator. However, at Ventavia, Jackson told The BMJ that drug assignment confirmation printouts were being left in participants’ charts, accessible to blinded personnel.

As a corrective action taken in September, two months into trial recruitment and with around 1000 participants already enrolled, quality assurance checklists were updated with instructions for staff to remove drug assignments from charts.

In a recording of a meeting in late September2020 between Jackson and two directors a Ventavia executive can be heard explaining that the company wasn’t able to quantify the types and number of errors they were finding when examining the trial paperwork for quality control. “In my mind, it’s something new every day,” a Ventavia executive says. “We know that it’s significant.”

Ventavia was not keeping up with data entry queries, shows an email sent by ICON, the contract research organisation with which Pfizer partnered on the trial. ICON reminded Ventavia in a September 2020 email: “The expectation for this study is that all queries are addressed within 24hrs.”

ICON then highlighted over 100 outstanding queries older than three days in yellow. Examples included two individuals for which “Subject has reported with Severe symptoms/reactions … Per protocol, subjects experiencing Grade 3 local reactions should be contacted. Please confirm if an UNPLANNED CONTACT was made and update the corresponding form as appropriate.”

According to the trial protocol a telephone contact should have occurred “to ascertain further details and determine whether a site visit is clinically indicated.”

Worries over FDA inspection

Documents show that problems had been going on for weeks.

In a list of “action items” circulated among Ventavia leaders in early August 2020, shortly after the trial began and before Jackson’s hiring, a Ventavia executive identified three site staff members with whom to “Go over e-diary issue/falsifying data, etc.” One of them was “verbally counseled for changing data and not noting late entry,” a note indicates.

At several points during the late September meeting Jackson and the Ventavia executives discussed the possibility of the FDA showing up for an inspection. “We’re going to get some kind of letter of information at least, when the FDA gets here . . . know it,” an executive stated.

Read the full report at The BMJ.

Pfizer is Targeting Your Children

Pfizer is spending a lot of money buying politicians and also marketing their killer shots to your children. The people behind this mega-corporation are not nice people, and they do not care about your children.

Like many of the super rich and famous, you can be sure that pedophiles and child sex traffickers can be found among them. Your children are simply a market for them to make money off of.

Here is a video they produced portraying young children who sign up for their vaccine trials as “super heros.” Following their commercial I have included video and images of what actually happens to many of these children in the REAL world after they take the shots.

This is on our Bitchute and Rumble channels.

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The Sandinista party won with 62% of the vote in the 2011 elections and with 72.5% in 2016.

Polls show the Sandinista Party winning as much as 70% of the vote in the November 7 election, when more than three million people will vote for President and Vice President, 90 National Assembly Deputies and 20 Central American Parliament Deputies.

The likely reason for such a high vote for the Sandinista party is that people want the advances their families have experienced since 2007, like universal free health care and education to continue. Nicaragua has made the greatest investment in infrastructure with the newest health facilities and the best roads in the region.

New Departmental Hospital in Chinandega, one of 22 built since 2007. [Source: el19digital.com]

Since 2007 poverty has been cut in half, maternal mortality has dropped by 70%, infant mortality by 61% with a 66% reduction in chronic malnutrition in children 6 to 12 years old. With a high percentage of small and medium-scale farmers and much government investment in training and loans, they have achieved 90% food sufficiency.

In the last 14 years potable water access has risen from 65% to 92%; electricity coverage has increased from 54% to 99%; and 80% of the energy is produced from renewables. In fact Nicaragua is number three in the world in renewable energy. In gender equality Nicaragua has gone from 62nd to 5th in the world and it holds first place in the world for women’s health and survival, women’s educational attainment and women cabinet ministers.

A picture containing outdoor, mountain, city, marketplace Description automatically generated

Panoramic view of the city of Managua, which has boomed under Sandinista rule. [Source: qcostarica.com]

The satisfaction of the population with public services, Nicaragua’s transparency, lack of corruption and good project execution is even recognized by international banks.

U.S. Strategy

The U.S. strategy in the 2021 elections is to denounce them as illegitimate before they even take place.

The U.S. has intervened in every election since Nicaragua’s first free and fair election which took place in 1984. That year, the U.S. used the Contra War and the U.S. economic blockade to twist the arms of the population. But when polls showed the Sandinista Party winning by a large margin, they told “their” candidate, Arturo Cruz, to drop out and say he was not participating because the elections were not going to be free and fair.

RAIN: a CIA Regime-Change Plan

A United States Agency for International Development (USAID) regime change document was leaked to independent Nicaraguan journalist William Grigsby in July of 2020 from the U.S. embassy.

RAIN—Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua, RFTOP No: 72052420R00004—is a Terms of Reference contract for hiring a company to oversee what it refers to as “transition”—a word used more than 30 times in the document. It was written in the spring of 2020 and much of the U.S. destabilization activity to try to get the Sandinistas out of power has likely been under this plan.

“The purpose of this activity is to provide rapid responsive…assistance to create the conditions for, and support, a peaceful transition to democracy in Nicaragua [regime change].” “RAIN will contribute to the Mission’s…objective of enabling the environment for Nicaragua’s transition to democracy.”

“…targeted short-term…activities during Nicaragua’s transition that require rapid-response programming support until other funds, mechanisms and actors can be mobilized.”

“Rain will pursue these activities against a variety of scenarios…

  1. Free, fair and transparent elections lead to an orderly transition [the U.S.-backed party wins].
  2. A sudden political transition occurs following a crisis [including a health crisis] leads to a new government [a coup d’état].
  3. Transition does not happen in an orderly and timely manner. In the case that a transition does not happen and the regime is able to hold onto power…by winning fairly, then RAIN…will relate to bridging to…longer-term activities…”

“…Any national election could yield a result accepted by Nicaraguans and the International community [recognition that the Sandinistas could win in free and fair elections].”

“If the regime remains resilient RAIN…will have the ability to respond…outside of other USAID programming [covertly], to…needs to maintain civil society on track…”

“A delayed transition may require greater emphasis on…civil society leadership, with discreet technical assistance types of activities…”

“In the case of a coup, RAIN [the U.S., the CIA] takes actions to show the new government is legitimate [like U.S. recognition of the new government].

In the case of a Sudden Transition [coup], RAIN will likely require more use of Rapid Response Funds…with attention to potential for conflict, legitimacy of new government actors and setting up the transition for success.”

U.S. Actions to Isolate Nicaragua

On September 24 at the United Nations, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the presidents of Mexico and all Central American countries except for Nicaragua and gave them the order to isolate Nicaragua.

It is very unlikely that this will happen, despite all of these countries behaving in a relatively subservient way to the U.S.

The economic relations between the Central American countries are very powerful and the commerce between them is strong. They buy and sell many products from one another. The transportation would be very difficult to stop given that Central America is an isthmus and Nicaragua is right in the middle.

And each of the counties already has lots of problems; they likely do not want a problem with Nicaragua. They have good relations with Nicaragua—Nicaragua is very respectful of them. The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) has always wanted to achieve the integration of Central America.

Sanctions: Another Form of War

When the U.S. first considered sanctions on Cuba in 1960, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory said that the purpose of a blockade on Cuba is to “bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

The U.S. passed illegal unilateral coercive measures [sanctions] against Nicaragua in 2018. The Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act (NICA Act)—which passed the House of Representatives unanimously—directs the Executive Branch to “oppose new loans or agreements with Nicaragua through the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund; and directs agencies to create a ‘civil society’ engagement strategy [increasing support for opposition groups], among other actions.”

Donald Trump Signs the Nica Act to Pressure Ortega - Confidencial

Donald Trump signs the draconian NICA Act on December 20, 2018. The bill passed the House in a 435-0 vote, meaning that even progressive darlings in “the squad” supported it. [Source: confidencial.com]

The Nica Act was to punish Nicaragua for not being a subservient colony; it is not based on any wrong-doing. For example the multilateral lenders only praise Nicaragua for its transparency and efficiency in project execution, going so far as to specifically say it is not corrupt.

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

Protest outside the Capitol against U.S. sanctions on Nicaragua. [Source: afgj.org]

The NICA Act reduced multilateral loans, hurting development, and impacted health care during a pandemic. Due to the pandemic and two strong hurricanes in November 2020, some of the institutions have provided loans but primarily Covid-19 related.

A number of members of the government have been sanctioned as individuals, like Paul Oquist, Minister for National Policies, who has since died. Oquist was an internationally recognized expert on climate change and co-chair of the Green Climate Fund in 2018. Born in the U.S., he gave up his U.S. citizenship in the 1980s in protest of the Contra War.

On October 16, 2021 the Pope tweeted this about sanctions:

In order to punish Nicaragua further for having a growing economy, outrunning the other Central American nations in health care, education, infrastructure, and all statistics related to poverty, and for having the lowest Covid death rate in the region, Congress is now on the verge of passing further sanctions called the RENACER Act.

Activists lobbying against this bill learned from congressional aides that members of Congress have received great pressure from the U.S. government through USAID, Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and others.

The RENACER (Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform) Act is a form of coercion to try to get Nicaraguans to vote against the Sandinista government. Nicaraguans know what sanctions mean for their economy. RENACER would make development financing even more difficult to get and could possibly make the economy scream.

NicaNote: Stop the RENACER Act! Further Action is still necessary! - Alliance for Global Justice

[Source: afgj.org]

The bill has passed the Senate and will likely go to the floor of the House soon. The bill would already have passed without a formal vote, like the NICA Act, if it were not for impressive lobbying efforts by constituent friends of Nicaragua.

The RENACER Act applies targeted sanctions to card-carrying Sandinista members, some 2.1 million people, a third of the population.

U.S. Funding of Propaganda

USAID provided U.S. $234,062,569 to Nicaraguan civil society from 2015 to 2021; and with the NED, IRI (International Republican Institute), NDI (National Republican Institute) and others, the U.S. openly gave more than $300 million to their Nicaraguan operatives and the non-governmental organizations they manage.

NED Grant Search

[Source: ned.org]

Below is some of the funding for media outlets that stirred up anti-Sandinista hatred and distrust of the government, in favor of the 2018 U.S.-directed coup. The media created and/or funded slick websites, online magazines, social media, radio, tv and syndicated shows and the only newspaper that existed at the time, rabidly anti-Sandinista.

U.S. Funds for Anti-Sandinista Propaganda Outlets

In 2007 when the Sandinista Party returned to the presidency, U.S. agencies began providing funds to create media, like web-based outlets and social media pages to invent and spread lies, fake news and disinformation about Nicaragua to influence both Nicaraguans and international audiences. The U.S.-funded fake news outlets are the sources used by the U.S. mainstream media. U.S. citizens’ tax dollars are used to fund propaganda in Nicaragua that you then read in your local paper.

U.S. Money to Influence the November 2021 Elections

Much of the U.S. money for media was channeled through the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (VBCF), run by Cristiana Chamorro, daughter of former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.

In the lead-up to the current elections USAID provided Chamorro’s Foundation with $998,958 in 2020 and $1.6 million in 2020-2021. Part of that money is reflected below, together with funding for other NGOs.

USAID Funding to Influence the November 2021 Elections. [Source: radiolaprimerisima.com]

After Nicaragua passed laws to keep foreign money out of Nicaraguan politics in the fall of 2020, Chamorro shut down the Foundation in early 2021 in order not to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires nonprofits to provide information on foreign funds received and evidence of how the funds were used.

According to Nicaraguan journalist William Grigsby and former Contra leader turned news analyst, Enrique Quiñones, Chamorro transferred some $7 million to her personal accounts.

Chamorro has been under house arrest since June 2 and, along with about nine others associated with the Foundation, including her brother Pedro Joaquin, is being investigated for money laundering and other crimes. The newspaper La Prensa and a number of its executives are also being investigated for fraud and money laundering.

It is interesting to note that important USAID partners like the VBCF used to be listed on the USAID website; just in the last year that information has been redacted.

The Nicaraguan Public Ministry has accused or is investigating more than 30 people for crimes like fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and treason. Many of those accused of conspiracy, treason and other crimes were involved in the 2018 coup attempt.’

A Month of Anti-Government Protest in Nicaragua - The Atlantic

Demonstrators’ fire homemade mortars during coup attempt against Daniel Ortega in May 2018. [Source: theatlantic.com]

They are not being investigated for that because, in June 2019, the government gave amnesty to everyone involved in the coup. The current accusations are for requesting sanctions and other forms of war from a foreign country and for taking part in a new coup attempt.

Since these investigations began in June, the U.S. media have fallen into line accusing Nicaragua of wrongdoing. Their headlines stated that Nicaragua was jailing presidential pre-candidates to ensure that the Sandinistas would win.

First of all, the polls show the Sandinistas winning with anywhere from 63% to 75% of the vote. Secondly, the five people the media say were pre-candidates were not even members of a party.

Under Nicaragua’s Electoral Law, parties do not officially pick candidates until August and there is no such thing as a pre-candidate. In any case, along with an Alliance that includes the FSLN and eight other officially recognized parties, six more parties are running, many more than in any election in the U.S. The government provides campaign funds to the parties.

All but one of the parties with representatives in the National Assembly are running. And the party that won second place in 2016, the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC) is running.

Influencing Nicaraguan Voters Through Covid-19 Scare Tactics

The U.S.-directed media in Nicaragua—and its echo chamber in the international press that have carried out health terrorism since Covid-19—began asserting that many more people are sick and dying than is the case. This is part of the media distortion described above.

Unfortunately due to these lies, as Covid-19 was beginning, some people did not go to the hospital for fear of getting sicker like the U.S.-backed media purported. And some of these people died.

Nicaragua spends one-fifth of its budget on health care and has invested many millions in new infrastructure and equipment, including 22 new hospitals.

Nicaragua has had far fewer cases of Covid-19 per capita than any country in the Americas: The IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation), which calculates excess deaths worldwide, shows 268 deaths for Nicaragua, 7,521 for Costa Rica and 10,760 for Honduras.

According to a study conducted by the Spanish travel agency Planyts, Nicaragua is one of the ten safest countries for travel during the pandemic, and the only country listed in the Americas. The study used data from Oxford University and the World Health Organization.

Despite this, the U.S. embassy lists Nicaragua as a level 4—do not travel—country, whereas Honduras, much more dangerous for Covid-19 or simply for murder and violence, is listed as Level 3.

The U.S. also practices vaccine diplomacy: It has given vaccines to all of the Central American nations—except Nicaragua. Although Nicaragua has been vaccinating since March, only in October did it get larger quantities of vaccines from Spain, Russia, India and the COVAX Mechanism. With more than 1,000 vaccination posts around the country everyone can get vaccinated and already more than 2.3 million people have been vaccinated.

The U.S.-backed Media Say People are Fleeing Political Persecution

This is another lie the U.S. has ramped up for the elections. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the yearly average number of Nicaraguans apprehended at the border between 2015 and 2018 was 2,292, very small compared to 63,741 Hondurans.

The U.S. Border Patrol has encountered more Nicaraguans in 2021 (33,000), but still low compared to Honduras (218,000) and El Salvador (73,000). Tom Ricker of the Quixote Center says the push factors include Covid-affected economies for all the migrants, wrecked tourism, which provided a lot of employment in Nicaragua; destruction of crops by two major hurricanes in 2020 affecting Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua; 2018 sanctions (NICA Act) and the threat of more sanctions; prior to Covid-19 there were seasonal jobs in Costa Rica, but now there are more people returning to Nicaragua.

Meta/Facebook Subversion

On October 31, the United States launched a new anti-democratic campaign days before the election. It did this through Meta (Facebook) which censored about 1,000 accounts and pages of activists, communicators and digital platforms in Nicaragua, simply because they expressed their support for the Sandinista Revolution. Facebook executives claimed that these were “trolls” (fake accounts), which is totally false. I know many of them. They are real people who share the truth and show the world the progress that Nicaragua has made in the last 14 years of the Sandinista government.

In 2018 it was shown that the U.S. financed actual bot farms outside of Nicaragua, call centers in El Salvador as well as Miami were bringing in online traffic in an attempt to destabilize the country and push a coup attempt through social media—these were completely fake accounts spreading violence and fake news against the Sandinista government.

The U.S. is an expert at this. The bot farms continue to this day and Facebook does nothing to stop them, because they are spreading the disinformation the U.S. wants. These fake opposition accounts are easy to spot because they have absolutely no personal information or photos on their profiles, usually only a generic opposition image as their profile picture, and repeating the same messages (comments) over and over to push the U.S. narrative.

Honduras and U.S. Double Standards

Honduras will also have elections in November, but the U.S. is not trying to oust the government even though its president, Juan Orlando Hernández, blatantly rigged elections, stole from Honduran social services, and has been accused of protecting drug traffickers and helping to flood the U.S. with cocaine.

Supporters of former candidate Salvador Nasralla march to protest the re-election of Honduras' President Juan Orlando Hernandez in Tegucigalpa, Honduras January 12, 2018. banner reads:

Protesters call Hernández a narco-dictator. [Source: covertactionmagazine.com]

W.T. Whitney, Jr., wrote in People’s World:

Honduras’s poverty rate is 70%…Violence at the hands of criminal gangs, narcotraffickers, and the police is pervasive and usually goes unpunished. According to insightcrime.org, Honduras was Latin America’s third most violent country in 2019 and a year later it registered the region’s third highest murder rate…Honduras, followed by Guatemala and Mexico, registered the highest rate of emigration to wherever between 1990 and 2020…

What Will the Impact Be on Nicaragua’s Elections?

The U.S. government has been extremely successful in terms of getting the U.S. press, in chorus, to denigrate Nicaragua’s Sandinista government for being a “dictatorship.”

It has been even more successful at keeping all the good news of Nicaragua’s amazing social and economic advances out of the press.

The government of Nicaragua reaffirmed at the United Nations General Assembly that, in the November 7 election, it is not the U.S. Empire that will choose but the Nicaraguan people.

During his UN speech, Foreign Minister Denis Moncada ratified Nicaragua’s commitment to continue working for peace, security and tranquility of individuals, families and communities. Statistically, every aspect of life has improved under the Sandinistas and the intention to vote Sandinista has increased monthly in the polls.

It appears that U.S. sanctions, coercion, and disinformation will have little effect on how Nicaraguans vote.

*

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Nan McCurdy works for the United Methodist Church of the U.S., currently in the state of Puebla, Mexico. She lived in Nicaragua more than thirty years. Nan can be reached at [email protected].

Doctors for Assange Say UK May be Liable for His Torture

November 4th, 2021 by Doctors for Assange

Important text first published on June 22, 2020

***

In a new letter to the British Medical journal The Lancet, Doctors for Assange say that the British government may be held legally responsible for the torture of the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher.

***

Here is the doctors’ statement followed by the letter to The Lancet and the doctors’ letter to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Robert Buckland.

UK officials may be legally culpable in the torture of Julian Assange

Doctors have warned that UK officials could be held accountable for the torture of Julian Assange in an open letter published in The Lancet on International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

The 216 undersigned physicians and psychologists from 33 countries have accused UK and U.S. government officials of intensifying Julian Assange’s psychological torture in spite of the world’s leading authorities on human rights and international law calling for his immediate release from prison.

Clinical Psychologist and Australian co-author of the publication, ‘The ongoing torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange’, Dr Lissa Johnson said the failure to properly treat Mr Assange may amount to an act of torture in which state officials, from parliament to court to prison, risk being judged complicit.

“Our letter is published just two days after the US Department of Justice announced a new superseding indictment against Assange representing yet another escalation in psychological torture tactics,” said Dr Johnson.

“Introducing extra charges at this late stage, right before the defence evidence deadline and over a year after the indictment deadline, when documents given to the prison generally take two weeks to be passed on, when he has not been supplied with a computer and when he is unable to meet with lawyers under Coronavirus lockdown, serves to ramp up his helplessness in the face of threat and is a key psychological torture tactic,” she said.

The doctors note that torture is prohibited under UK law, warning that UK officials could be judged “complicit”, including for their “silent acquiescence and consent”. They write that Assange at medical risk due to escalating abuses of his “fundamental human and legal rights at the hands of judicial, prison, and contracted security authorities”.

The letter follows Julian Assange’s failure to attend four court hearings in a row on medical grounds. The authors charge UK and US authorities with “collective persecution and judicial harassment” in which “Mr Assange has been unable to engage in his own defence or even participate in his own hearings.”

A copy of the Lancet letter has been sent to the UK Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Robert Buckland. It coincides with two open letters to Buckland from 36 members of the European Parliament and 11 current and former politicians from 9 nations, calling for Julian Assange’s immediate release on bail in light of Covid-19, which places him “at grave medical risk” given his medical history, including persistent respiratory issues, the doctors warn.

In a 60 Minutes Australia interview on Sunday night, Julian Assange’s fiancé, Stella Moris, stressed that Julian Assange is “very unwell”, expressing her fears that he may not survive.

NHS doctor and producer of the documentary ‘The Great NHS Heist’, Dr Bob Gill, said,

“Mr Assange’s life is being slowly extinguished to punish him and silence others who dare to bravely expose the lies of the powerful. Left unchallenged this single act threatens the very existence of civil society and propagates our collective drift to corporate-state authoritarianism.”

Dr Paul Hobday, author of The Deceit Syndrome, added:

“The psychological torture and violation of  the fundamental rights of a journalist and publisher who has been convicted of no crime should alarm and disgust anyone believing in an accountable transparent and fair democracy. This should haunt for a long time those responsible and those who remain silent….All journalists should be wary and vigilant of this perilous atmosphere.”

Professor Thomas G. Schulze of the Executive Committee of the World Psychiatric Association said,

“As a fellow human being, as a doctor, in particular as a psychiatrist, it is my duty to report torture wherever and whenever it happens.” Schulze added that physical and psychological torture are “equally devastating”.

Professor William R. Hogan of the University of Florida stressed that

“Mr. Assange must be released immediately, to treat the effects of his torture inflicted by an English court of law.”

Contact: [email protected] https://doctorsassange.org.

Letter to The Lancet

Letter to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Robert Buckland

To: The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Robert Buckland QC

Subject: Lancet letter re Julian Assange

Dear Mr Buckland,

Today, the world’s pre-eminent medical journal, The Lancet, carries a letter on behalf of 216 doctors from 33 countries regarding the human rights, health and torture of Australian citizen and journalist Mr Julian Assange.

Mr Assange faces extradition to the United States under the Espionage Act for journalistic activity. He is being subjected to prolonged psychological torture while in UK custody as assessed by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, and is being arbitrarily detained in Belmarsh prison according to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

On December 4 2019, we wrote to you, as UK Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, demanding an urgent response from the UK Government to end the torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. Our letter followed an earlier appeal, on November 22 2019, to the UK Home Secretary. We have received no response from the UK Government to either letter.

Following the UK Government’s lack of response, on February 17 2020 The Lancet published our calls to end the torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. Today, we explain in The Lancet that Mr Assange’s torture at the hands of UK officials has only intensified since that time.

We join the world’s leading authorities in human rights and international law calling for the UK Government to release Mr Assange from prison and cease the extradition proceedings against him, which are serving as vehicles for his ongoing torture and medical neglect, placing his life at risk. We urge you to listen to the world’s leading human rights authorities and experts in international law, the worlds leading press freedom authorities, current and former politicians from around the world, and doctors, all of whom are imploring you to end Mr Assange’s abuse, on legal, democratic, human rights and medical grounds.

The convergence of warnings from as broad a base of civil society as this underlines the fact that Mr Assange’s life and health are inseparable from the life and health of our democracies. The fundamental rights upon which those democracies are founded risk ending up on life support along with Mr Assange if his torture and medical neglect are not brought to an end, immediately.

The letter will be available on the online edition of The Lancet here (in advance of the print edition) when the embargo lifts on 23 June at 23:30 (GMT): https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31444-6 

Please be advised that a press release regarding the letter and this email will be issued worldwide.

Yours sincerely,

Doctors for Assange

Signatories for Doctors for Assange

As of 22 June 2020

Dr Victoria Abdelnur, MD Specialist in Integrative Trauma Therapy (Germany & Argentina)

Dr Mariagiulia Agnoletto, MD Specialist in Psychiatry ASST Monza San Gerardo Hospital, Monza (Italy)

Dr Vittorio Agnoletto, MD Università degli Studi di Milano Statale, Milano (Italy)

Dr Thomas Alexander, MD (United States)

Dr Sonia Allam, MBChB FRCA Consultant in Anaesthesia and Pre-operative Assessment, Forth Valley Royal Hospital, Scotland (United Kingdom)

Dr Talal Alrubaie, MBChB MSc MD Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist (Austria)

Dr Nicolette van Amerongen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, General Medical Practitioner (retired) (Netherlands)

Dr Norbert Andersch, MD MRCPsych Consultant Neurologist and Psychiatrist, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (retired); Lecturer in Psychopathology at Sigmund Freud Private University, Vienna-Berlin-Paris (Germany & United Kingdom)

Dr Olli Arjamaa, Ophthalmology, Physiology and Endocrinology (Finland)

Dr Narmin Baraheni, MD FRCOG (United Kingdom)

Prof Jürg Barben, Head, Division of Paediatric Pulmonology & CF Centre, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Switzerland (Switzerland)

Dr Marianne Beaucamp, MD Fachärztin (Specialist) in Neurology & Psychiatry Psychoanalyst and Psychotherapist (retired), Munich (Germany)

Dr Thed Beaucamp, MD Fachärztin (Specialist) in Neurology, Psychiatry & Psychosomatic Medicine Psychoanalyst and Psychotherapist (retired), Munich (Germany)

Dr Mark L Beauchamp, Internal Medicine, Post Acute Long Term Care (United States)

Dr Margaret Beavis, MBBS FRACGP MPH General Medical Practitioner (Australia)

Dr Susanne Bejerot, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, School of Health and Medical Sciences, Örebro University (Sweden)

Dr David Bell, Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, London (United Kingdom)

Dr Wilfried Benik, General Medical Practitioner (Germany)

Dr Ernst Berger, MD, University Professor, Specialist in Psychiatry and Neurology, Specialist in Child Psychiatry, Psychotherapist, Former head of Human Rights Commission of Austrian Ombudsman Board MUW Klinik f. Kinder- u. Jugendpsychiatrie (Austria)

Prof Osmund Bertel, Professor, MD (Switzerland)

Dr Matthew Bivens, MD APHMFP HMFP, Specialist in Emergency Medicine, Emergency Department attending physician, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Emergency Department attending physician, St. Luke’s Hospital; EMS Medical Director, St. Luke’s Hospital; Chair, Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility (United States)

Dr Uday Bodhankar, MBBS, DCH, MD, Pediatrician, Executive Director, Commonwealth Association for Health and Disability, Deputy Chairperson, Commonwealth Health Professions Alliance, UK, Adjunct Associate Professor Pediatrics, Sydney (India & United Kingdom) 10

Dr Brenda Bonnici, B Pharm (Hons), M Pharm (Regulatory Affairs), PhD (Neuropharmacology); Consultant Patient Information (Switzerland)

Dr Jean Sébastien Borde, Nephrologist, Sainte hospital (France)

Dr Damien Boyd, MBBS FANZCA, Senior Staff Specialist, Anaesthetics Department, St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney (Australia)

Mr Patrick John Ramsay Boyd, (signed John Boyd) MRCS LRCP MBBS FRCS FEBU Consultant Urologist (retired) (United Kingdom)

Dr Guillermo Calderón, Specialist in general psychiatry, Medical Assistant Specialist, Puntarenas (Costa Rica)

Dr Hannah Caller, MBBS DCH Paediatrician, Homerton University Hospital, London (United Kingdom)

Dr Franco Camandona, MD Specialist in Obstetrics & Gynaecology E.O. Ospedali Galliera, Genova (Italy)

Dr Betty Carlisle, Correctional Health (United States)

Dr Ola Carlsson, Radiology (Sweden)

Dr Stephen Caswell, Clinical Psychologist BSc (Hons) MSc PGDip DClinPsych (United Kingdom)

Dr Sylvia Chandler, MBChB MRCGP BA MA General Medical Practitioner (retired) (United Kingdom)

Dr Julie Chase, Chartered psychologist (United Kingdom)

Dr Frances Chavez, MD Family Medicine (United States)

Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, M.B., B.S., F.R.C.S.(Eng.), M.Appl.Sci.(OHS), M.Pol.Econ., Former CEO of the Sydney Peace Foundation (Australia)

Dr Marco Chiesa, MD FRCPsych Consultant Psychiatrist and Visiting Professor, University College London (United Kingdom)

Dr Usman Choudhry, MBChB, MRCP, Anaesthetic & Intensive Care (United Kingdom)

Dr Carla Ciccone, MD, Specialist in Obstetrics & Gynaecology AORN MOSCATI, Avellino (Italy)

Dr Miriam Cnop, MD PhD Professor of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels (Belgium)

Dr Gareth Crouch, MBBS FRACS, Cardiothoracic Surgeon (Australia & New Zealand)

Prof David Curtis, London (United Kingdom)

Dr C Dassos, MB BS General Medical Practitioner (Australia)

Dr Richard Davies, MPsych (Clinical)/PhD, Clinical Psychologist (Australia)

Dr Chrissa Deligianni, MD Pediatrician (Greece)

Dr Owen Dempsey, MBBS BSc MSc PhD General Medical Practitioner (retired) (United Kingdom)

Dr James Deutsch, MD, PhD, FRCPC, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto (Canada)

Dr H R Dhammika, MBBS Medical Officer, Dehiattakandiya Base Hospital, Dehiattakandiya (Sri Lanka) 11

Dr Peter Diamond, MD Anesthesiologist, Connecticut (United States)

Dr Flavia Donati, MD Specialist in Psychiatry and Psychoanalyst, Rome (Italy)

Dr Thorsten Dorn, Endocrinology and Diabetes, Karlsruhe (Germany)

Dr Tim Dowson, MBChB MRCGP MSc MPhil Specialised General Medical Practitioner in Substance Misuse, Leeds (United Kingdom)

Dr Donal Duffin, MB MRCP (London) MRCGP Consultant Physician NHS (retired) (United Kingdom)

Dr Eugene Egan, MB FFARCSI MSc (Republic of Ireland)

Dr Iris Eggeling, Specialist in Diagnostics (Radiology and Nuclear Medicine) (Germany)

Miss Kamilia El-Farra, MBChB FRCOG MPhil (Medical Law and Ethics) Consultant Gynaecologist, Essex (United Kingdom)

Dr Leif Elinder, MD Specialist in Paediatric Medicine (Sweden & New Zealand)

Dr Toril Enger, MD, Consultant (Norway)

Mr Jan Engert, Internal Medicine (Germany)

Dr Beata Farmanbar, MD General Medical Practitioner (Sweden)

Dr Ibrahim Faud Ibrahim, MD Physician Hematologist, Dallas, Texas (United States)

Dr Eduardo Fernandez, MD, PhD, Consultant Neurologist (United Kingdom)

Dr Gloria Fernandez-Esparrach, Gastroenterology, Hospital Clinic, Barcelona (Catalonia)

Dr Teresa Forcades, Internal Medicine, Public Health (Spain)

Dr Brian Foresman, MD Board certified, General Surgery (United States)

Dr Tomasz Fortuna, MD RCPsych (affiliated) Forensic Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Adult Psychotherapist and Psychoanalyst, British Psychoanalytical Society and Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London (United Kingdom)

Dr C Stephen Frost, BSc MBChB Specialist in Diagnostic Radiology (Stockholm, Sweden) (United Kingdom & Sweden)

Dr Prasantha Gamage, MBBS MEDICINE (Sri Lanka)

Dr Pilar Garcia, PH, Dermatology, University Sant Pau Hospital Barcelona (Catalonia)

Dr Peter Garrett, MA MD FRCP Independent writer and humanitarian physician; Visiting Lecturer in Nephrology at the University of Ulster (United Kingdom)

Dr Martin Gelin, Dental Surgeon (Sweden & Australia)

Dr Danielle Gelles, General Medical Practitioner (Germany)

Dr Athanassios Giannis, PhD MD, Specialist in Medicinal Chemistry / Chemical Biology, Professor at the University of Leipzig, Institute for Organic Chemistry (Germany)

Dr Rachel Gibbons, MBBS BSc MRCPsych. M.Inst.Psychoanal. Mem.Inst.G.A Consultant Psychiatrist (United Kingdom)

Dr Bob Gill, MBChB MRCGP General Medical Practitioner (United Kingdom)

Dr Eva Glagau, MD (Germany)

Dr Barbara Golden, MD CAPGAN (United Kingdom) 12

Ms Elizabeth Gordon, MS FRCS Consultant Surgeon (retired); Co-founder of Freedom from Torture (United Kingdom)

Ms Angelika Göser, Karlsruhe (Germany)

Prof Derek A Gould, MBChB MRCP DMRD FRCR Consultant Interventional Radiologist (retired): BSIR Gold Medal, 2010; over 110 peer-reviewed publications in journals and chapters (United Kingdom)

Dr Moray Grigor, MB ChB MRCGP DCCH (United Kingdom)

Dr Jenny Grounds, MD General Medical Practitioner, Riddells Creek, Victoria; Treasurer, Medical Association for Prevention of War, Australia (Australia)

Dr Andrew Gunn, MBBS BA MAPhil FRACGP, General Medical Practitioner, Senior Lecturer at University of Quensland, Former Editor of New Doctor, National Treasurer of the Doctors Reform Society (Australia)

Dr Jürg Hammer, Paediatric Critical Care (Switzerland)

Dr Catherine Harkness, General Medical Practitioner (retired) (United Kingdom)

Dr Sonia Henry, BPhty MBBS, General Medical Practitioner, Published Author (Australia)

Dr Barbara Hinkelmann, Pediatrician, Neonatologist, Senior Consultant (Germany & Sweden)

Dr Paul Hobday, MBBS FRCGP DRCOG DFSRH DPM General Medical Practitioner (retired) (United Kingdom)

Prof William Hogan, MD, Specialist in Internal Medicine, Professor of Biomedical Informatics (United States)

Dr Richard House, Psychotherapist (retired), Chartered Psychologist, AFBPsS Cert.Couns (United Kingdom)

Dr Mats B Humble, MD, PhD, Senior lecturer in Psychiatry, Örebro University (Sweden)

Dr Reinhard Huss, MBCHB, MD, MPH, International Public Health, University of Leeds (retired) (United Kingdom)

Dr Vivek Jain, Primary Care Physician, Clinical Instructor, (Psychiatry residency training graduate) (United States)

Mr David Jameson-Evans, MBBS FRCS Consultant Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgeon (retired) (United Kingdom)

Dr Ove Johansson, Chief Medical Doctor (Överläkare), formerly at the Karolinska University Hospital (Sweden)

Dr Bob Johnson, MRCPsych MRCGP Diploma in Psychotherapy Neurology & Psychiatry (Psychiatric Institute New York) MA (Psychol) PhD (Med Computing) MBCS DPM MRCS Consultant Psychiatrist (retired); Formerly Head of Therapy, Ashworth Maximum Security Hospital, Liverpool; Formally Consultant Psychiatrist, Special Unit, C-Wing, Parkhurst Prison, Isle of Wight (United Kingdom)

Dr Lissa Johnson, BA BSc(Hons, Psych) MPsych(Clin) PhD Clinical Psychologist (Australia)

Dr Sandra Johnson, Yass River (Australia)

Dr Anna Kacperek, MRCPsych Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, London (United Kingdom)

Dr Alyson Kakakios (Australia)

Mr Fivos Kakavitsas, Spec. GP, Greek NHS, Corfu Primary Care Health Center (Greece) 13

Dr Kerstin Käll, MD, PhD, specialist in psychiatry, working mainly in addiction medicine at the Psychiatric Clinic, University Hospital, Linköping (Sweden)

Dr Sujeewa Indrajith Karunananda, MBBS, MD (Psychiatry) Acting Psychiatrist, District Base Hospital, Medirigiriya (Sri Lanka)

Dr Cath Keaney, BSc MBBS DCH FRACGP (Australia)

Ms Kameta Khasboulatova, Neurologist (Belgium)

Dr Sarah Leila Khosravi, MBChB Medicine and Surgery, University of Liverpool, Paediatrics, Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Trust, London (United Kingdom)

Dr Christoph Kind, Courtenay (Canada)

Dr Jessica Kirker, MBChB DipPsychiat MRCPsych FRANZCP MemberBPAS Psychoanalyst and Consultant Medical Psychotherapist (retired) (United Kingdom)

Mrs Vasiliki Korvesi, Radiologist (Greece)

Dr Aviraj Kumar, MS (Germany)

Dr Amine Larnaout, MD Psychiatrist, Assistant Professor, Razi Hospital, Tunis Medecine Faculty, Tunis El Manar University (Tunisia)

Dr Anne Lemaire, General Medical Practitioner (Belgium & Portugal)

Mr Kwok On Leung, MBBS (HK), FRACS (Hong Kong)

Dr Henry Lindner, MD (United States)

Dr Valeria Mages, MD (Germany)

Dr Alberto Gutiérrez Mardones, PhD, Chief Medical Doctor (Överläkare), Karolinska University Hospital (Sweden)

Dr Teresa Maristany, Radiology (Catalonia)

Dr Robert Marr, MD, MBBS, Master of Public Health, FFPHM, General Medical Practitioner and Public Health Doctor (Australia)

Ms Mercè Marzo, Research (Catalonia)

Dr Willi Mast, MD Facharzt für Allgemeinmedizin, Gelsenkirchen (Germany)

Dr Antonis Mavromatos, MD, MSc, PhD candidate, Psychiatry Resident, Attikon University General Hospital, Athens, Greece (Greece)

Dr Tom McGinn, MD FACP. Gastroenterologist (United States)

Dr Daniel McQueen, MRCPsych, Consultant Psychiatrist, Child and Family Department, The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust Tavistock Centre (United Kingdom)

Dr Janet Menage, MA MBChB General Medical Practitioner (retired); qualified Psychological Counsellor; author of published research into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (United Kingdom)

Prof Arturo Menéndez Cabezas, PhD, MD, Medical Sciences, University of Medical Sciences, Camagüey, Cuba (Cuba)

Prof Alan Meyers, MD MPH Emeritus Professor of Paediatrics, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts (United States)

Dr Salique Miah, BSc MBChB FRCEM DTM&H ARCS Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Manchester (United Kingdom) 14

Dr Carine Minne, FRCPsych Consultant Psychiatrist in Forensic Psychotherapy; Psychoanalyst, London (United Kingdom)

Dr Fathima Mirza, MBBS (Sri Lanka)

Prof Lluis Mont, Professor of Cardiology. University of Barcelona (Catalonia)

Dr David Morgan, DClinPsych MSc Fellow of British Psychoanalytic Society Psychoanalyst, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Consultant Psychotherapist (United Kingdom)

Dr Helen Murrell, MBChB MRCGP General Medical Practitioner, Gateshead (United Kingdom)

Prof Tony Nelson, Clinical Professional Consultant and Professor of Practice, Department of Paediatrics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong)

Dr Síofra Nic an Bhreithiún, MB MICGP, General Medical Practitioner (Republic of Ireland)

Prof Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Med Dr (Psychiatry, PhD), Professor Emeritus. Former head of Research group on International and Cross-Cultural Injury Epidemiology, Karolinska Institute, Sweden. Formerly Research Fellow, Harvard Medical School. Chair, Swedish Doctors for Human Rights -SWEDHR (Sweden)

Dr Alison Anne Noonan, MBBS (Sydney) MD (Rome) MA (Sydney) ANZSJA IAAP AAGP IAP Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst, Specialist Outreach Northern Territory, Executive Medical Association for Prevention of War (NSW) (Australia)

Dr Maria Ntasiou, MD, Pulmonologist, Director in Primary Health (Greece)

Mr Brendan O’Brien, MB (GP retired) (United Kingdom)

Dr Peadar O’Grady, Consultant Child Psychiatrist, Critical Psychiatry Network, Dublin (Republic of Ireland)

Dr Gunnar Olofsson, MD, PhD, Consultant in Surgery & Urology (Sweden)

Ms Blanca Oms, Physician. Neurology specialist. Public hospital (Catalonia)

Dr Michael Orgel, MD, Specialist in Addiction (retired), former Chief of Medical Services, Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic Drug Detox and Aftercare Project, San Francisco, US; former Medical Director, Community Drug Dependency Services, Bay Community NHS Trust, Lancaster, England; former Consultant in Substance Abuse NHS Lothian, Edinburgh Community Drug Problem Service and Edinburgh Harm Reduction (United Kingdom & United States)

Dr Lena Oske, Medical Doctor, Specialist in General Medicine, Skåne Health Services (Sweden)

Dr Markéta Paarová, Internal and pulmonary medicine (Czech Republic)

Dr Pablo Paulsen, General Practitioner, Medical Doctor, Chiropractor, Naturopath, Physical Therapist, M.Sc. (MD, DC, ND, PT, M.Sc.) (Chile)

Dr Nenad Pavic, MD, Gynecology and Obstetrics, Basel (Switzerland)

Dr Alison Payne, BSc MBChB DRCOG MRCGP prev FRNZGP General Medical Practitioner, Coventry; special interest in mental health/trauma and refugee health (United Kingdom)

Dr Peter Pech, MD Specialist in Diagnostic Radiology (sub-specialty Paediatric Radiology), Akademiska Sjukhuset (Uppsala University Hospital), Uppsala (Sweden)

Mr Alexander Pergamenchikov, Buchs (Switzerland)

Dr Tomasz Pierscionek, MRes MBBS MRCPsych PGDip (United Kingdom) 15

Prof Allyson M Pollock, MBChB MSc FFPH FRCGP FRCP (Ed) Professor of Public Health, Newcastle University (United Kingdom)

Dr Laura Pölsler, MD, Specialist in Medical Genetics, Institute of Human Genetics, Department of Genetics, Innsbruck Medical University (Austria)

Ms Athina Pouliou, Ear, Nose and Throat Doctor (Greece)

Dr Efstratios Prousalis, General Dental Practitioner, DDS 2008, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki (Greece)

Dr Joseph M Pullara, MD Hospitalist Physician Olympic Medical Center and Emergency Medicine Physician Forks Community Hospital Washington (United States)

Dr Luc Quintin, MD PhD, Staff Anesthesiologist-Intensivist (retired), Senior Investigator (retired) Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France)

Dr Chandana Ranasinghe, MBBS Degree, general practitioner (Sri Lanka)

Dr Ullrich Raupp, MD Specialist in Psychotherapy, Child Psychiatry and Child Neurology; Psychodynamic Supervisor (DGSv) Wesel, Germany (Germany)

Dr Abdulsatar Ravalia, FRCA Consultant Anaesthetist (United Kingdom)

Dr Momsen Reincke, Charité – Universitätsmedizin, BerlCharité Universtiätsmedizin – Department of Neurology, Berlin, Germany (Germany)

Dr Daniel Robinson, BMed, MMed (Crit Care), General Medical Practitioner (Australia)

Prof Anders Romelsjö, Med Dr (PhD), Professor Emeritus. Formerly at the Department of Social Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Sweden. Vice-Chair, Swedish Doctors for Human Rights -SWEDHR (Sweden)

Dr Andrew Rork, DO (United States)

Dr Maria Rossi, MD Specialist in Nephrology San Gerardo Hospital Monza (retired) (Italy)

Dr Gunther Ruckl, MD, PhD, Pediatrician (retired) (United States)

Dr Salvatore Rudilosso, MD, PhD, Neurologist (Italy)

Dr Fiona Russell, BMBS MPHTM FRACP PhD, Paediatrician (Australia)

Dr Leopoldo Salmaso, MD, Specialist in Infectious and Tropical Diseases and Public Health, University of Padova (Italy & Tanzania)

Prof Andrew Samuels, Professor of Analytical Psychology, University of Essex (recently retired); Honorary/Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths and Roehampton (both London), New York and Macau City Universities; Former Chair, UK Council for Psychotherapy (2009–2012); Founder Board Member of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; Founder of Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social (United Kingdom)

Dr Stephanus Schmiedel, Neurologic Rehabilitation (Germany)

Dr Effie Schultz, Johannesburg (South Africa)

Prof Thomas G Schulze, MD, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA, Institute of Psychiatric Phenomics and Genomics (IPPG), University Hospital, LMU Munich; President of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics; Member of Executive Committee of the World Psychiatric Association; former President of the American Psychopathological Association (Germany & United States)

Ms Christine Schütze, Psychologist (Germany) 16

Mr John H Scurr, BSc MBBS FRCS Consultant General and Vascular Surgeon, University College Hospital, London (United Kingdom)

Dr Peter Shannon, MBBS (UWA) DPM (Melb) FRANZCP Adult Psychiatrist (retired) (Australia)

Dr Walter Siegrist, FMH, Specialist in Internal Medicine (Switzerland)

Dr Gustaw Sikora, MD PhD F Inst Psychoanalysis Fellow of British Psychoanalytic Society Specialist Psychiatrist (diploids obtained in Poland and registered in the UK); Psychoanalyst; currently in private practice (United Kingdom & Poland)

Dr Keerti Singh, MBBS, MD (United Kingdom)

Dr Lars Sjöstrand, Consultant Psychiatrist, Addiction Center Stockholm (Beroendecentrum Stockholm) (Sweden)

Dr Wilhelm Skogstad, MRCPsych BPAS IPA Psychiatrist & Psychoanalyst, London, United Kingdom (United Kingdom & Germany)

Miss Sophie Slovak, Resident in Psychiatry (France)

Dr Paul Snelling, MB, ChB, BMedSci, FRACP. Nephrologist, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (Australia)

Dr Dilek Sonntag, Clinical Psychologist, Psychotherapist (Germany)

Dr Robert Spalthoff, MD, Clinical Psychiatry and researcher in Schizophrenia and neuroimaging, Saxonian Hospital in Altscherbitz (Germany)

Dr James Squire, Family Medical Practitioner (United States)

Dr John Stace, MBBS (UNSW) FRACGP FACRRM FRACMA MHA (UNSW) Country Doctor (retired), Perth (Australia)

Dr Jill Stein, MD, Internist, Lexington, Massachusetts, Green Party nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 and 2016 elections (United States)

Dr Carmen Subias, Physician (Catalonia)

Dr Derek Summerfield, BSc (Hons) MBBS MRCPsych Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London (United Kingdom)

Dr Mashhood Syed, Birmingham (United Kingdom)

Dr Rob Tandy, MBBS MRCPsych Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalyst; Unit Head, Psychoanalytic Treatment Unit, Tavistock and Portman, London; City & Hackney Primary Care Psychotherapy Consultation Service, St Leonard’s Hospital, London (United Kingdom)

Dr Noel Thomas, MA MBChB DCH DobsRCOG DTM&H MFHom General Medical Practitioner; homeopath; has assisted on health/education projects in six developing countries Maesteg, Wales (United Kingdom)

Dr Philip Thomas, MBChB DPM MPhil MD Formerly Professor of Philosophy Diversity & Mental Health, University of Central Lancashire; Formally Consultant Psychiatrist (United Kingdom)

Dr Llúcia Titó Espinagosa, Gastroenterology (Catalonia)

Dr Gianni Tognoni, MD Istituto Mario Negri, Milano (Italy)

Dr Jean-Pierre Unger, MD DTM&H MPH PhD, Associate Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Visiting Professor at the University of Newcastle (Belgium & United Kingdom)

Dr Cici Verhoef, Psychiatrist (Netherlands) 17

Prof Eduard Vieta, University of Barcelona (Catalonia)

Dr Sebastião Viola, Lic Med MRCPsych Consultant Psychiatrist, Cardiff (United Kingdom)

Dr Howard Waitzkin, MD PhD FACP, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico, Adjunct Professor, Internal Medicine, University of Illinois (United States)

Dr Peter Walger, MD Consultant, Infectious Disease Specialist, Bonn-Duesseldorf-Berlin (Germany)

Dr Sue Wareham, OAM MBBS General Medical Practitioner (retired) (Australia)

Dr Elizabeth Waterston, MD General Medical Practitioner (retired), Newcastle upon Tyne (United Kingdom)

Dr Victor John Webster, Surgeon (Upper GI laparoscopic) MB BS (Adel) FRCS(Eng) FRACS (gen surg) Cert HST (RACS Eng) (retired) (Australia)

Dr Jeffrey Weeks, DD (Japan)

Dr Steinar Westin, MD PhD, Professor of Social Medicine and former General Practitioner (Norway)

Dr Mareike Wild (Germany)

Dr Eric Windgassen, MRCPsych PGDipMBA Consultant Psychiatrist (retired) (United Kingdom)

Dr David Wolkoff, MD (United States)

Dr Pam Wortley, MBBS MRCGP General Medical Practitioner (retired), Sunderland (United Kingdom)

Dr Matthew Yakimoff, BOralH (DSc) GDipDent General Dental Practitioner (Australia)

Dr Anton Ysewyn, Consultant Neurologist, Maria Ziekenhuis (St Mary Hospital), Pelt (Belgium)

Dr Rosemary Yuille, BSc (Hons Anatomy) MBBS (Hons) General Medical Practitioner (retired), Canberra (Australia)

Dr Jelena Zagorcic, MD, General Medical Practitioner (retired) (Serbia)

Dr Felicity de Zulueta, Emeritus Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust; Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer in Traumatic Studies, King’s College London (United Kingdom)

Dr Paquita de Zulueta, MBBChir MA (Cantab) MA (Medical Law & Ethics) MRCP FRCGP PGDipCBT CBT Therapist and Coach; Senior Tutor Medical Ethics; Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer, Dept of Primary Care & Population Health, Imperial College London (United Kingdom)

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Video: Ethiopia’s State of Emergency

November 4th, 2021 by South Front

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The Ethiopian central government, headed by Nobel Peace Prize-awarded Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed seems to have poked the wasp’s nest in Tigray too much.

On November 3rd, the country is in a state of emergency, with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and their allies marching towards the capital – Addis Ababa.

The alleged reason behind the state of emergency is that it aims to “protect civilians from atrocities being committed by the terrorist TPLF group in several parts of the country.”

The true reason is that the government is struggling to fight against the TPLF and their principal ally, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA). Both groups are designated as terrorist by the central government.

Over the October 31st weekend, Tigrayan forces said they had pushed further south and taken Kombolcha and Dessie, two towns on the A2 highway leading into Addis Ababa. Kombolcha is also on the transport corridor connecting Addis Ababa to Djibouti and the outside world.

Recent reports claim that the advance units of the TPLF and OLA have now joined forces on the battlefield just south of Kombolcha. Although the two groups announced a formal military alliance several months ago, this is the first account of developments in the clashes between the OLA and Federal government forces until now.

The Ethiopian government has denied the claims that Tigrayan forces had taken Dessie. However, Ahmed’s government issued a statement accusing Tigrayan forces of killing 100 youths in Kombolcha, about 380 km north of Addis Ababa.

TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda said that no blood had to be spilled in Kombolcha, as no form of resistance was mounted in the city. The government kept silent, all but confirming the Tigrayans’ claims.

The state of emergency appears to be an attempt to create an even bigger sense of urgency among citizens, and to form an image of the Tigrayan’s as savage terrorists, leaving desolation in their wake.

However, the real reason is that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s forces have proven largely incapable of fighting against the Tigrayan forces. On October 31st, Ahmed called on all citizens to mobilize. The Amhara regional government has issued a similar call, urging all citizens to join the fight.

The Tigrayan forces have been fighting the government for the past year in a widening war that first pitted federal troops against the TPLF, which dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly 30 years before Abiy was appointed in 2018.

In the last several weeks, the central government began using the country’s air force to strike Tigray’s capital – Mekelle, and other supposed TPLF positions. The only “success” that these air raids achieved is to prompt Ahmed’s adversaries to begin their offensive and start marching on the capital, in order to bring these hostilities to an end.

The central government was the one that initiated a unilateral ceasefire back in June, and then months later began violating it, before it ultimately abandoned it.

It is ironic that the Prime Minister, awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, has brought the country to the brink of a catastrophic civil war which, if not halted, could end up tearing the country apart completely.

The rhetoric of both sides has continued to degenerate, with Federal government officials referring to the TPLF as a terrorist group and, more ominous, a cancer and a weed to be eradicated from Ethiopian society. Recent statements from the TPLF spokesmen describe the Federal government, Amhara regional government and Eritrean government as an ‘axis of evil’.

The prospects for a negotiated solution to the crisis are further away than ever. Even as it continues to deny its losses on the battlefield, the Federal government is making frantic preparations for a last ditch defence of the seat of government in Addis Ababa.

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The beginning of Globalization goes back to the outcomes of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus that brought him, on October 1492, to the shore of an island in the Caribbean Sea. It was the starting point of a brutal and bloody intervention of European sea powers in the history of American peoples, a region of the world that had, up to then, remained insulated from regular relationships with Europe, Africa and Asia.

The Spanish conquistadors and their Portuguese, British, French and Dutch counterparts together conquered the whole geographical area, commonly known as the Americas [1], by causing the death of the vast majority of the indigenous population in order to exploit the natural resources (in particular gold and silver) [2]. Simultaneously, European powers started the conquest of Asia. Later on, they completed their domination in Australia and finally Africa.

In 1500, just at the beginning of the brutal intervention of the Spaniards and the Portuguese in Central and South America, this region had at least 18 million inhabitants (some authors put forward much larger figures of close to 100 million [3]). One century later, only around 8 million inhabitants were left (including European settlers and the first African slaves). In the case of most islands of the Caribbean Sea, the whole indigenous population had been wiped out. It is worth recalling that during a long period of time, Europeans, supported by the Vatican [4], did not consider indigenous people from the Americas as human beings [5]. A convenient justification for exploitation and extermination.

In North America, the European colonisation started during the 17th century, mainly led by England and France, before undergoing a rapid expansion during the 18thcentury, an era also marked by massive importation of African slaves. Indigenous populations were either wiped out or driven outside the settlement zones of European settlers. In 1700, the indigenous population constituted three-quarters of the population; in 1820, their proportion had dropped down to 3%.

Until the forced integration of the Americas in global commerce, the main axis of intercontinental trade exchanges involved China, India and Europe [6]. Trade between Europe and China followed terrestrial and maritime routes (via the Black sea) [7]. The main route linking Europe to India (whether from the state of Gujarat in North-West India, or from Kerala and the Calicut or Cochin harbours in the South-West) passed through the Mediterranean Sea, Alexandria, Syria, the Arabian Peninsula and finally the Arabian Sea. India also played an active role in trade exchanges between China and Europe.

Until the 15th century, technical progress achieved in Europe relied upon technology transfers from Asia and the Arab world. At the end of the 15th century and during the 16th century, trade started to follow other routes. When the Genoese, Christopher Columbus, serving under the Spanish crown, opened the maritime route towards the “Americas” [8] by sailing west through the Atlantic, the Portuguese sailor, Vasco da Gama, made for India, also through the Atlantic but heading south. He sailed along the Western coasts of Africa from North to South, veering East after crossing the Cape of Good Hope in the south of Africa [9]. Ferdinand Magellan is known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East Indies across the Pacific to open a maritime trade route in which he discovered the inter-oceanic passage bearing thereafter his name and achieved the first European navigation from the Atlantic to Asia. This expedition, where Magellan was killed in the Battle of Mactan (present-day Philippines) in 1521, resulted in the first circumnavigation of the Earth when one of the expedition’s two remaining ships of five eventually returned to Spain in 1522.

Violence, coercion and robbery were central to the methods employed by Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan to serve the interests of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns. During the following centuries, European powers and their servants would systematically use terror, extermination and extortion, combined with the search for compliant local allies. Several peoples worldwide would witness the brutal deviation of their history’s course under the whips of the conquistadors, settlers and European capital. Other peoples would suffer from an even more terrible fate since they were wiped out or reduced to the situation of foreigners in their own countries. Still others were uprooted by force from one continent to another to serve as slaves.

Admittedly, prior to the 15th century of the Christian era, history had been marked on several occasions by conquests, domination and barbarity without however touching the whole planet. What is striking of the last five centuries is that European powers started conquering the whole world and, within three centuries, interlinked (almost) all peoples of the world through brutal ways. During the same time, the capitalist logic finally succeeded in dominating all other modes of production (without necessarily eliminating them entirely).

At the end of the 15th century, capitalist commercialisation of the world received a first boost, subsequently followed by others, namely the 19th century diffusion of the industrial revolution from Western Europe and the “late” colonisation of Africa by the European powers. The first international economic crisis (in industry, finance and trade) exploded at the beginning of the 19th century, leading to the first debt crises [10]. The 20th century has been the scene of two World Wars, with Europe as their epicentre, and unsuccessful attempts to implement socialism. In the seventies, the turn of global capitalism towards neo-liberalism, and the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet block and China have provided a new boost to globalisation.

Second intercontinental voyage of Vasco da Gama (1502): Lisbon – Cape of Good Hope – Eastern Africa – India (Kerala)

After a first voyage to India in 1497-1499, Vasco da Gama was again assigned by the Portuguese crown to return there with a fleet of twenty ships. He left Lisbon in February 1502. Fifteen ships would have to come back while five (under the command of da Gama’s uncle) would stay behind, both to protect Portuguese bases in India and to block ships leaving towards the Red Sea, thus shutting off trade between the two areas. Da Gama rounded the Cape in June, stopping in Sofala, East Africa, to buy gold [11]. In Kilwa, he forced the local sovereign to make an annual payment of pearls and gold before making for India. Off Cannanore (70km north of Calicut – today Kozhikode), Da Gama waited for Arab ships returning from the Red Sea, to seize a ship, on route from Mecca, with pilgrims and a valuable cargo. Part of the cargo was seized and the ship set on fire, resulting in the death of most of its passengers and crew. Next stop was Cannanore where he swapped gifts (gold for precious stones) with the local sovereign without making business, estimating that the price of spices were too high. He sailed for Cochin (today Kochi), stopped his ships in front of Calicut and asked the sovereign to expel the whole Muslim trading community (4000 households) who used the harbor as a base for commerce with the Red Sea.

Following the Samudri’s (local Hindu sovereign) refusal, Vasco da Gama ordered the bombardment of the town, following in the footsteps of another Portuguese sailor, Pedro Cabal, in 1500. He set for Cochin at the beginning of November where he bought spices in exchange of silver, copper and textiles stolen from the sunken ship. A permanent trading post was established in Cochin and five ships were left there to protect Portuguese interests.

Before leaving India for Portugal, Da Gama’s fleet was attacked by more than thirty ships financed by Calicut Muslim traders. A Portuguese bombardment led to their defeat. Consequently, a part of Calicut’s Muslim trading community decided to base their operations elsewhere. Those naval battles clearly demonstrate the violence and criminal nature of the action of Vasco da Gama and the Portuguese fleet.

Da Gama returned to Lisbon in October 1503 with thirteen of his ships and approximately 1700 tons of spices, that is, around the same amount imported from the Middle East at the end of the 15th century by Venice. Portuguese profit margins from this trade were much larger than those of Venetians. A major part of the spices was sold in Europe via Antwerp, the major harbour of the Spanish Netherlands, then the most important European harbour.

“SAIGON 1883 – Scene on the Chinese Arroyo, near the Saigon confluence” by manhhai is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Maritime Chinese expeditions during the 15th century

Europeans were not the only ones travelling far away and discovering new maritime routes.

But they were the most aggressive and the most conquering.

Several decades before Vasco da Gama, between 1405 and 1433, seven Chinese expeditions headed West and notably visited Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, the Arabian peninsula (the Strait of Ormuz and the Red Sea), the Eastern Coast of Africa (notably Mogadishu and Malindi).

Under Emperor Yongle, the Ming marine “included approximately a total of 3800 ships, among which were 1350 patrol boats and 1350 battle ships incorporated into defence or insular bases, a main fleet of 400 heavy battleships stationed near Nanking and 400 loading ships for cereal transportation. Moreover, there were more than 20 treasure-boats, ships equipped to undertake large scale action [12]. They were five times larger than any ship of Da Gama, 120 meters long and nearly 50 meters wide. The large boats possessed 15 watertight compartments so that a damaged ship would not sink and could be repaired at sea. Their intentions were pacifist but their military force was sufficiently imposing to fend off attacks that only took place three times. The first expedition aimed towards India and its spices. Others were geared towards exploring the Eastern Coast of Africa, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.

The main goal of these voyages was to establish good relationships by offering gifts and escorting ambassadors or sovereigns that were coming to or leaving China. No attempt was ever made to establish bases for trade or military purposes. The Chinese were looking for new plants for medicinal needs and one of the missions comprised 180 members of the medical profession. In contrast, during the first voyage of Vasco da Gama to India, his crew included approximately 160 men, among whom were gunners, musicians and three Arab interpreters. After 1433, the Chinese abandoned their lengthy maritime expeditions and gave priority to internal development.

In 1500, standards of living were comparable

When, at the end of the 15th Century, Western European powers launched their conquests of the rest of the world, European standards of living and level of development were no higher than those of other large areas of the world. China was unquestionably ahead of Western Europe in many ways: in people’s living conditions, in the sciences, infrastructure [13] and agricultural and manufacturing processes. India was more or less on a par with Europe, as far as living conditions and quality of manufactured goods were concerned (Indian textiles and iron were of better quality than European products) [14]. The Inca civilisation in the Andes in Southern America and the Aztecs in Mexico were also flourishing and very advanced. We should be cautious when defining criteria for measuring development and avoid limiting ourselves to the calculation of GDP per capita. Having said that, even if we take this measure and add life expectancy and quality of food available, the Europeans did not live any better than the inhabitants of other large areas of the world, prior to their conquering expeditions.

“Monet ship painting” by The Getty is marked with CC0 1.0

Intra-Asian trade before the European powers burst onto the scene

In 1500 Asia’s population was five times that of Western Europe. The Indian population alone was twice that of Western Europe. Hence, it represented a very large market, with a network of Asian traders operating between East Africa and Western India, and between Eastern India and Indonesia. East of the Malacca Straits, trade was dominated by China.

Asian traders knew the seasonal wind patterns and navigation hazards of the Indian Ocean well. There were many experienced sailors in the area, and they had a wealth of scientific literature available on astronomy and navigation. Their navigation tools had little to envy those of the Portuguese.

From East Africa to Malacca (in the narrow straits separating Sumatra from Malaysia), Asian trade was conducted by communities of merchants who did their business without armed gunships nor heavy government intervention. Things changed radically with the methods used by the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French, serving state and merchant interests. The maritime expeditions launched by the European powers to various parts of Asia increased considerably, as shown in the table below (from Maddison, 2001). It shows clearly that Portugal was the indisputable European power in Asia in the 16th Century. The following century it was replaced by the Dutch, who remained dominant throughout the 18th Century, and the English were in second place.

Table 2. Number of ships sent to Asia by seven European countries, 1500-1800

Great Britain joins the other European powers in the conquest of the world
‘In the 16th Century, England’s main occupations outside Europe were piracy and reconnaissance trips to explore the possibility of setting up a colonial empire. The most daring act was the royal support given to Drake’s (1577-80) expedition which, with five ships and 116 crew, rounded the Strait of Magellan, captured and plundered the treasure-laden Spanish ships off the Chilean and Peruvian coasts, set up useful contacts with the spice islands of the Molucca Sea, Java, Cape of Good Hope and Guinea on the way home’ [15]. At the end of the 16th Century, Great Britain scored the decisive victory which sealed its status as a naval power when it defeated the Spanish Armada off the British coast.

From that moment on, Britain plunged into the conquest of the New World and Asia. In the New World it set up sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean and, from the 1620s on, was an active participant in the trading of slaves imported from Africa. Simultaneously, between 1607 and 1713 it set up fifteen colonies of settlement in North America, thirteen of which ended up declaring their independence and becoming, in 1776, the United States, while the other two stayed within the British circle and were to become part of Canada.

In Asia, the British crown adopted a different policy: rather than settler colonies, it set up a system of exploitation colonies, starting with India. To this end, the British state granted its protection to the East India Company (an association of merchants in competition with other similar groups in Great Britain) in 1600. In 1702 the State bestowed a trade monopoly on the East India Company and threw itself into the fight for the subcontinent, which ended with the British victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, giving them control of Bengal. For a little over two centuries, Great Britain applied an uncompromising protectionist economic policy, and once it had become the dominant economic power during the 19th Century, it imposed an imperialist free-trade policy. For example, with the help of gunboats, it imposed ‘free trade’ on China, forcing the latter to buy Indian opium while allowing the British to buy Chinese tea for resale on the European market with the proceeds of the opium sales.

Elsewhere, Britain extended its conquests in Asia (Burma, Malaysia), in Australasia (Australia, New Zealand…), in North Africa (Egypt), and in the Near East. As for sub-Saharan Africa, until the 19th Century, its only major interest was the slave trade. Later on, the conquest of Africa became an objective.

Goa: a Portuguese enclave in India

In India, as in other parts of Asia, the English had been preceded by the Portuguese, who conquered small parcels of Indian Territory. They set up trading posts and installed religious terrorism. As such, an Inquisition court was set up in Goa in 1560, which imposed its cruelty until 1812. In 1567, all Hindu ceremonies were banned. In just over two centuries, sixteen thousand sentences were pronounced by the Goa Inquisition and thousands of Indians were burnt at the stake.

“DGJ_4709 – Greatest Love.. (view large)” by archer10 (Dennis) is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

The British Conquest of the Indies

The British, in their conquest of India, expelled their other European rivals the Dutch and the French. The latter were determined to prevail, but they could not do so. Their defeat in the Seven Years War against the British was mainly due to insufficient support from the French state [16].

To take control of India, the British systematically sought out allies amongst the local rulers and ruling classes. They did not hesitate to use force, when deemed necessary, as in the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and the violent repression of the Sepoy Rebellion in 1859. They bent the local power structures to their service and generally left the local lords in place, allowing them to continue to lead an ostentatious life although the rules of the game were dictated by others (they were powerless against the British). The division of society into castes was maintained and even reinforced, which still weighs heavily on today’s India. In effect, the division of society into classes and gender domination were reinforced by a division into castes, based on birth. Through taxation and unfair terms of trade between India and Great Britain, the Indian people contributed to the enrichment of Britain both as a country and in terms of its rich classes (merchants, industrialists and politicians). But the British are not the only ones who got rich: bankers, merchants and Indian manufacturers also accumulated immense fortunes. Thanks to them, the East India Company (EIC) and the British state managed to exert, for such a long time, a domination which the people profoundly rejected.

The example of the cotton industry

The quality of textiles and cotton produced in India was unrivalled anywhere in the world. The British tried to copy the Indian production techniques and produce cotton of comparable quality at home, but for a long time the results were quite poor. Under pressure, particularly from the owners of British cotton mills, the British government prohibited the export of Indian cotton to any part of the British Empire. London further forbade the East India Company to trade Indian cotton outside the Empire, thus closing all possible outlets for Indian textiles. Only thanks to these measures was Britain able to make its own cotton industry really profitable.

Today, while the British and other industrialized powers systematically apply the Intellectual Property Rights Treaty (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights – TRIPs) within the World Trade Organization, to demand payments from developing countries such as India, less than three centuries ago they had no qualms about copying Indian production methods and design, specifically in the textiles field. [17]

Furthermore, to increase their profits and become more competitive than the Indian cotton industry, the British owners of cotton companies decided to introduce new production techniques: steam-powered machinery and new looms and spinning machines. Through the use of force, the British fundamentally changed India’s development. Whereas up to the end of the 18th Century, the Indian economy exported high quality manufactured goods and could satisfy most domestic demands, in the 19th and 20th Century it was invaded by European products, particularly from Britain. Great Britain prevented India from exporting its manufactured goods, forced it to export increasing quantities of opium to China in the 19th Century (just as it coerced China to buy the opium) and flooded the Indian market with British manufactures. In short, it produced under-development in India.

“THIS IS NOT MY PHOTO: It is a photo of the Bund in Shanghai when Colonial powers were in control.” by roberthuffstutter is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

The destruction and grabbing of collective commons

Since the dawn of capitalism the logic of collective commons has been systematically challenged by the capitalist class through commodification and private appropriation of wealth. One of their earliest objectives, when factories started to appear in Europe just over several centuries ago, was to take away the common people’s resources and livelihoods by grabbing the lands they lived on and so force them to migrate to the cities and accept the miserable and miserably paid jobs in the factories. On farther continents under European domination their goal had been to grab the land and resources of local populations and force them into hard labour under the whip of imperialist exploiters.

From the 16th to the 19th century the various countries that one after the other fell under the yoke of capitalism all went through vast periods of destruction of collective commons, a process that has been well documented by such authors as Karl Marx (1818-1883) Capital vol. 1,4 Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) in The Accumulation of Capital, Karl Polanyi (1886-1964) The Great Transformation, Silvia Federici (1942) Caliban and the Witch. A great film by Raoul Peck about The Young Karl Marxvisualizes examples of the destruction of collective commons with dramatic scenes of the brutal repression of poor people collecting wood for fuel in German Rhineland forests and Karl Marx’s stand in support of their centuries old legal and traditional right to do so that was running contrary to capitalistic logic.

In Capital, Karl Marx describes certain forms of grabbing by the capitalist system in Europe: “The spoliation of church properties, the fraudulent alienation of the State domains, the robbery of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property, and its transformation into modern private property under circumstances of reckless terrorism, were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalistic agriculture, made the soil part and parcel of capital, and created for the town industries the necessary supply of a “free” and outlawed proletariat”. (Capital, vol. I, eighth section. Chap. 27)

While capitalist production was being imposed on Europe it was also spreading all over the globe: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation”. (Capital, vol. 1, part 8. Chap. 31)

External debt as a means of domination and subordination

Throughout the 19th century, domination through external debt was a significant part of the imperialist policy of the major capitalist powers and it continues to plague the 21st century in new forms. As a fledgling Nation during 1820-1830, Greece capitulated to the dictates of creditor powers (especially Britain and France). [18]Though Haiti was liberated from France during the French Revolution and proclaimed its independence in 1804, debt again enslaved it to France in 1825. [19]France invaded the indebted Tunisia in 1881 and turned it into a protectorate. [20]Great Britain led Egypt to the same fate in 1882. [21] From 1881, the Ottoman Empire’s direct submission to its creditors (Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and others), [22] stepped up its disintegration. In the 19th century, creditors forced China to grant territorial concessions and to fully open up its market. The heavily indebted Tsarist Russia may also have become a prey of creditor powers, had the Bolshevik revolution (1917-18) failed to repudiate the debt unilaterally.

During the second half of the 19th century different peripheral powers [23] – i.e. the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, the Russian Empire, China and Japan – had the potential to become imperialist capitalist powers. Only the last succeeded. [24] In fact, Japan had almost no recourse to external debt for its noteworthy economic development on its way to becoming an international power in the second half of the 19th century. Japan carried out a significant autonomous capitalist development following the reforms of the Meiji period (introduced in 1868). It imported the most advanced western production techniques prevailing at that time, prevented foreign interests from making financial inroads into its territory, rejected external loans and eliminated interior obstacles to the movement of indigenous capital. At the end of the 19thcentury, Japan transformed from a secular autocracy to a robust imperialist power. The absence of external debt was not the only reason why Japan became a major imperialist power through a vigorous capitalist development and an aggressive foreign policy. Other factors equally mattered but they are too many to catalogue here. However, the lack of external debt evidently played a fundamental role. [25]

On the contrary, while China surged ahead with its impressive development until the 1830s to become a leading economic power, [26] its recourse to external debt allowed the European powers and the US to gradually marginalize and control it. Again, other factors were involved, such as wars launched by Britain and France to impose free trade in China and force the country to import opium. However, external debt and its damaging consequences still played a vital role. In fact, China had to grant land and port concessions to foreign powers so that it could repay its external commitments. Rosa Luxemburg wrote that one of the methods used by the Western capitalist powers to dominate China was “Heavy war contributions” which “necessitated a public debt, China taking up European loans, resulting in European control over her finances and occupation of her fortifications; the opening of free ports was enforced, railway concessions to European capitalists extorted.” [27]Nearly a century after Rosa Luxemburg, Joseph Stiglitz took up the issue in his book Globalization and Its Discontents.

External debt and free trade

During the first half of the 19th century, All Latin American governments except that of Francia’s Paraguay adopted free trade policies under pressure from Britain.

Since the local ruling classes did not invest in processing or manufacturing activities for the domestic market, the implementation of free trade did not threaten their interests. Consequently, free import of mainly British manufactured goods hindered the development of these countries’ industrial fabric. The abandonment of protectionism destroyed a large part of the local factories and workshops, particularly in the textile sector.

In a way, we can say that the combined use of external debt and free trade was the driving force behind the development of underdevelopment in Latin America. This is of course related to the social structure of Latin American countries. The local ruling classes, including the comprador bourgeoisie, made these choices in their own interest.

Latin America’s external debt crises: 19th-21st century

Since they gained independence in the 1820s Latin American countries have experienced four debt crises. The first occurred in 1826 (ensuing from the first major international capitalist crisis originating in London in December 1825) and continued until 1840-1850. The second broke out in 1876 and ended in early 20th century. [28]The third began in 1931 following the 1929 US crisis and lasted until the late 1940s. The fourth crisis burst in 1982 when the US Federal Reserve took critical decisions on interest rates and plunging commodity prices. This crisis ended in 2003-2004 when foreign exchange revenues saw significant growth, thanks to increased commodity prices. Latin America also benefited from international interest rates, which were drastically lowered by the Fed, the ECB and the Bank of England after the Northern banking crisis erupted in 2008-2009. A fifth crisis has been brewing since.

When and how these crises break out is closely linked to the global economy and to the most industrialized economies in particular. Each debt crisis was preceded by a boom in the central economies when a part of the surplus capital was recycled into the peripheral economies. Each phase spawning the crisis (during which the debt increased sharply) corresponded to the end of a long expansionary period in the most industrialized countries. That has not happened in the current crisis because this time only China has been through a long expansionary period (along with other BRICS countries). Usually the crisis in indebted peripheral countries is caused by external factors, e.g. a recession or a financial crash striking the major industrialised economies, or a policy change in interest rates implemented by the central banks of the major powers of the time, etc.

The observations above contradict the dominant narrative propagated by the economic-historical schools of thought [29] and transmitted by the mainstream media and governments. It claims that the crisis that erupted in London in December 1825 and spread to other capitalist powers, resulted from the over-indebtedness of Latin American States; the crisis of 1870 resulted from the indebtedness of Latin America, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire; that of 1890 which nearly caused the bankruptcy of one of the principal British banks, from Argentina’s over-indebtedness; that of the 2010s, from the over-indebtedness of Greece and more generally the “PIGS” (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain).

Capitalism has continued its offensive against collective commons

Capitalism has continued its offensive against collective commons for two reasons: 1. The commons have not yet entirely disappeared and therefore they limit the total domination of capital, which consequently seeks to appropriate them or reduce them to the bare minimum. 2. Important struggles have recreated commons during the 19th and 20th centuries. These commons are constantly being challenged.

During the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, popular movements recreated social commons by developing systems of collective support: cooperatives, strike funds, solidarity funds. The victories of the Russian revolution also led to a short period of creation of common properties, until Stalinism degenerated into dictatorship and shamefully privileged a bureaucratic caste as described by Leon Trotsky in 1936 (Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed.).

In many capitalist countries (in varied degrees of development) the governments realized that to maintain social peace and even to avoid a resurgence of revolutionary movements some scraps had to be thrown to the populations. This resulted in the development of welfare states.

After WW2, from the second half of the 1940s to the end of the 1970s the wave of decolonizations mainly in Africa, Asia and the Middle-East, and the victorious revolutions in China (1949) and Cuba (1959) led to the redeployment of some collective commons notably through the nationalizations of strategic infrastructures (Suez canal in 1956 by the Nasser regime) and commodities such as copper by Salvador Allende in Chile in the early 1970s and petroleum resources (Algeria, Libya, Iraq, Iran…).

This period of reaffirming collective commons is expressed in several United Nations documents from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the 1986 Declaration on the Right of Development which in article 1 paragraph 2 affirms: “The human right to development also implies the full realization of the right of peoples to self-determination, which includes,(…) the exercise of their inalienable right to full sovereignty over all their natural wealth and resources.” [30] This inalienable right of peoples to full sovereignty over their resources is constantly challenged by the IMF, the World Bank and the majority of governments in the interests of big private corporations.

The activity of social reproduction has also come to the forefront of concerns about the commons through the work of feminist movements. As Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser write in their manifesto Feminism for the 99%, [31] “Finally, capitalist society harbours a social-reproductive contradiction: a tendency to commandeer for capital’s benefit as much ’free’reproductive labour as possible, without any concern for its replenishment. As a result, it periodically gives rise to ’crises of care,’ which exhaust women, ravage families, and stretch social energies to the breaking point (page 65). The authors’ define social reproduction as follows “It encompasses activities that sustain human beings as embodied social beings who must not only eat and sleep but also raise their children, care for their families, and maintain their communities, all while pursuing their hopes for the future. These people-making activities occur in one form or another in every society. In capitalist societies, however, they must also serve another master, namely, capital, which requires that social-reproductive work produce and replenish ‘labour power’” (page 68).

What the authors add later on brings us closer to the situation highlighted by the current multidimensional crisis of capitalism and the coronavirus pandemic: ’[Capitalism assumes]that there will always be sufficient energies to produce the labourers and sustain the social connections on which economic production, and society more generally, depend. In fact, social-reproductive capacities are not infinite, and they can be stretched to the breaking point. When a society simultaneously withdraws public support for social reproduction and conscripts its chief providers into long and gruelling hours of low-paid work, it depletes the very social capacities on which it relies. (page 73)

When a society removes public support for social reproduction and, at the same time, forces the people on whom this burden rests to do back-breaking, poorly paid work, it exhausts the social capacities on which it depends.

What is denounced in this passage allows us to better understand the fragility of capitalist society in the face of epidemics, the inability of governments to do what is necessary in time to best defend the population, the pressure put on workers in the essential and vital sectors to come to the aid of the population while, at the same time, as a result of the decisions of these same governments, they are underpaid, devalued and in insufficient numbers. The same can be said about the causes of the failure of governments to address the consequences of climate change and the under-equipment and lack of civil protection personnel in the face of increasingly frequent ’natural disasters’.

Public debt has been and still is systematically used as a means of grabbing commons

Debt is one of financial capitalism’s weapons of choice

Since the 1970s public debt has systematically been used as a means of grabbing commons, as much in the North as in the South. The CADTM, along with other social movements, has not ceased to denounce this since the 1980s. We have devoted a dozen books [32] and several hundred articles to this issue. It is very satisfying to see that more and more writers are now highlighting the issue of debt as a weapon against public property. [33]

Financial capitalism lives off sovereign debt

We cite once again Feminism for the 99%: ’Far from empowering states to stabilize social reproduction through public provision, it authorizes finance capital to discipline states and public in the immediate interests of private investors. Its weapon of choice is debt. Finance capital lives off of sovereign debt, which it uses to outlaw even the mildest forms of social-democratic provision, coercing states to liberalize their economies, open their markets, and impose ’austerity’ on defenceless populations. (page 77)

Some of the political policies imposed through debt repayment obligations have seriously hindered the capacity of states and populations to deal with public health crises including the coronavirus pandemic.

All through the neo-liberal offensive that has been the dominating ideological tendency since the 1980s, governments and different international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF have insisted on the “duty” to repay external debt in order to generalize a tidal wave of privatizations of many countries’ strategic economic sectors, public services and natural resources, whether in developed countries or not. As a consequence, the previously existing tendency towards reinforcing collectivism has been reversed.

The list of assaults on public properties based on public debt is long. Some have accelerated the ecological crisis and the development of zoonoses: rapid deforestation, intensive animal farming and mono-crops to gain foreign currencies in order to pay foreign debt, all of this in the framework of structural adjustment policies induced by the, already ill mentioned World Bank and IMF.

Struggle for the abolition of illegitimate debt

Some of the political policies imposed through debt repayment obligations have seriously hindered the capacity of states and populations to deal with public health crises including the coronavirus pandemic: stagnation or reduction of public health budgets, imposing compliance to medical patents, renouncing the use of generic drugs, giving up producing medical equipment domestically, preferring private sector medical treatment and medicine distribution, suppressing free access to medical care in many countries, reducing the quality of working conditions in the medical sector and introducing the private sector into numerous essential public health services.

Public debt = alienation of the State

Already, over a century and a half ago Marx put it in a nutshell: “Public debt: the alienation of the state – whether despotic, constitutional or republican – marked with its stamp the capitalistic era”. [34] Once we have become aware of the way repayment of public debt is instrumentalised to impose mortal neo-liberal capitalist policies, we know we must fight for the cancellation of illegitimate debt.

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Translated by CADTM

Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France. He is the author of Debt System (Haymarket books, Chicago, 2019), Bankocracy (2015); The Life and Crimes of an Exemplary Man (2014); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago, 2012 (see here), etc.

Sources

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  • LUXEMBURG, R. (1913), The accumulation of capital. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963.
  • MADDISON, A., (2007), Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD: Essays in MacroEconomic History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007..
  • MANDEL, E., Late Capitalism, NLB, London, 1975, 599 pp. (& later ed., publ. by Verso, London)
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  • POMERANZ, K. (2000), The Great Divergence, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
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  • SMITH, A. (1776), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, réédition de l’Université de Chicago, 1976
  • SUBRAHMANYAM, S. (1997), The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
  • WALLERSTEIN, I. (1983), Historical Capitalism with Capitalist Civilization, Verso, London, 1983.

Notes

[1] The name America comes from that of Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian sailor at the service of the Spanish crown. Indigenous peoples from the Andes (Quechuas, Aymaras, etc..) call their continent Abya-Yala

[2] Among natural resources, one must include the new biological resources brought back by the Europeans to their countries, then diffused in the remaining of their conquests and further: maize, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, capsicum, tomatoes, pineapple, cocoa and tobacco.

[3] Figures concerning the population of the Americas before the European conquest have been differently estimated. Borah estimates that the population of the Americas reached 100 million in 1500, while Biraben and Clark, in separate studies, provide estimates of nearly 40 million. Braudel evaluates the population of Americas between 60 and 80 million in 1500. Maddison adopts a much lower estimate, assuming that the population of Latin America reached 17.5 million in 1500 and reduced by more than half, a century after the conquest. In the case of Mexico, he estimates that the population went from 4.5 million in 1500 down to 1.5 million one century later (i.e. a depopulation of two-thirds of inhabitants). In this article, we adopt the conservative hypothesis as a precaution. Even within this hypothesis, the invasion and conquest of the Americas by Europeans can clearly be counted as a crime against humanity and genocide. The European powers that conquered the Americas exterminated entire peoples and the dead can be counted by the millions, most probably by tens of millions.

[4] The Spanish and Portuguese crowns who ruled South America, Central America and a fraction of the Caribbean during three centuries used, as Catholic powers, the support of the Pope to perpetrate their crimes. One must add that, at the end of the 15th century, the Spanish crowns expelled Muslims and Jews (who did not convert to Christianity) during and following the Reconquista (that ended on January 2 1492). Jews who did not renounce Judaism, emigrated and mainly took refuge in Muslim countries within the Ottoman Empire, which showed greater tolerance towards other religions.

[5] From that point of view, the message of the Pope Benedict XVI during his trip to Latin America in 2007 is very offensive against the memory of the peoples who were victims from the European domination. Indeed, far from acknowledging the crimes committed by the Catholic Church against indigenous populations of the Americas, Benedict XVI claimed that they were waiting the message of Christ, brought by the Europeans since the 15th century. Benedict XVI should answer for his words in front of the courts of justice.

[6] From Asia, Europeans brought back the production of silk textiles, cotton, the blown glass technique, cultivation of rice and sugar cane.

[7] Namely the famous Silk Road between Europe and China followed by the Venetian Marco Polo at the end of the 13th century.

[8] Officially, Christopher Columbus tried to rejoin Asia taking the Western route but we know he hoped finding new lands unknown of Europeans.

[9] Starting with the 16th century, the use of the Atlantic Ocean for travelling from Europe to Asia and the Americas marginalised the Mediterranean Sea during four centuries, until the boring of the Suez Canal. While the main European harbours were in the Mediterranean until the end of the 15 century (Venice and Genoa in particular), the European harbours open to the Atlantic gradually took over (Antwerp, London, Amsterdam)

[10] See Eric Toussaint, Your Money or Your Life. The Tiranny of Global Finance. Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2005, chapter 7. The first international debt crisis occurred at the end of the first quarter of the 19th century, simultaneously hitting Europe and the Americas (it is related to the first global crisis of overproduction of commodities). The second global debt crisis exploded at the end of the last quarter of the 19th century and its repercussions affected all continents.

[11] In coastal towns of East Africa, traders (Arabs, Indians of Gujarat and Malabar –Kerala- and Persians) were heavily involved in business, importing silk and cotton fabrics, spices and porcelain from China and exporting cotton, wood and gold. One could meet professional sailors, who were experts in the monsoon conditions of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

[12] Needham, 1971, p. 484

[13] In the 15th Century, Peking was connected to the areas which produced its food supplies by the Grand Canal which was 2300 km long and was easily navigated by barges thanks to an ingenious lock system.

[14] There have been many debates about European gross domestic product (GDP) per head compared to the rest of the world. Estimates vary enormously according to the source used. Different authors, such as Paul Bairoch, Fernand Braudel and Kenneth Pomeranz, reckon that, in 1500, European GDP per capita was no higher than that of China and India. Maddison, who strongly opposes this view (for underestimating the level of development in Western Europe), reckons that India’s per capita GDP in 1500 was $550 (1990 equivalent) and that of Western Europe $750. Whatever the disagreements between these authors, it is clear that in 1500, before the European powers set out to conquer the rest of the world, they had a per capita GDP that was at most (i.e. according to Maddison’s deductions) between 1.5 and 2 times that of India, whereas 500 years later, the difference was tenfold. It is quite reasonable to conclude that the use of violence and extortion by the European powers (later joined by the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries with significant European immigration) were largely the basis of their current economic superiority. The same reasoning can be applied to Japan, but in a different time-frame because Japan, with a GDP per capita lower than China’s between 1500 and 1800, only became an aggressive, conquering capitalist power at the end of the 19thCentury. From that time on, the growth of GDP was staggering: it increased thirty-fold between 1870 and 2000 (if we are to believe Maddison). This is the period which really made the difference between Japan and China.

[15] See Maddison, 2001 p.110

[16] See Gunder Frank, 1977 p. 237-238

[17] The Dutch did the same with Chinese porcelain production techniques, which they copied and since then present as ceramics, faience and blue and white Delft pottery.

[19] See: Sophie Perchellet, Haïti. Entre colonisation, dette et domination, CADTM-PAPDA, 2010 https://cadtm.org/Haiti-Entre-colonisation-dette-et. Ordinance of the French Emperor, 1825, Article 2. “The current inhabitants of the French part of Saint Domingue will pay an amount of 150 million francs to the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (Deposits and Consignments Fund) of France in five equal annual instalments, the first of which will be due on December 1, 1825. This is intended to compensate the former colonial rulers who demand to be compensated.” This amount was reduced to 90 million francs a few years later”.

[23] Periphery countries, compared to the major European capitalist powers (Great Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium) and the US.

[24] Jacques Adda is one of the authors to have drawn attention to this issue. See: Jacques Adda. 1996. La Mondialisation de l’économie, tome 1, p.57-58 (in French)

[25] To learn more about the factors besides the rejection of external debt, read Perry Anderson Lineages of the Absolutist State (first published by NLB, 1974. Verso Edition 1979), on Japan’s transition from feudalism to capitalism.

[26] Kenneth Pomeranz, who has been keen on highlighting the factors thwarting China’s race to become one of the major capitalist powers, does not give importance to external debt. In fact, his study focuses on the pre-1830 to 1840 era. However, his analysis is very rich and inspiring. See: Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, Princeton University Press, 2000, 382 pages.

[27] Rosa Luxemburg. 1969. L’accumulation du capital, Maspero, Paris, Vol. II, p. 60 (in French) (In English: The Accumulation of Capital. Section 3, Chapter 28)

[28] Venezuela’s refusal to repay its debt ultimately resulted in a major face-off with the imperialist powers of North America, Germany, Britain and France. In 1902, the latter sent a united military fleet to block the port of Caracas and to persuade Venezuela, through gunboat diplomacy, to resume debt repayment. Venezuela could not wrap up its payments before 1943.

[29] See the 19th century writings of Sismondi and Tugan Baranovsky in particular, as well as the headlines of the printed media and the speeches by the European governments of that period.

[30] UN, 41/128. Declaration on the Right to Development, Adopted by the General Assembly 4 December 1986, http://un-documents.net/a41r128.htm

[31] Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser, Féminism for the 99% a manifesto, available here:https://outraspalavras.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Feminism-for-the-99.pdf

[32] See Eric Toussaint, Your Money or Your Life. The Tyranny of the Global Finance, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2005; Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank, Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2010; The World Bank – A Critical Primer, Between the lines, Toronto/Pluto Press, London/David Philips Publisher, Cape Town/CADTM, Liège, 2008.

[33] See for instance Verónica Gago and Luci Cavallero, “Debt is a war against women’s autonomy” , published on 20 May 2021.

[34] Karl Marx. 1867. Capital, vol I, Part VIII: Primitive Accumulation, Chapter XXXI :Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist

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The USSR’s hierarchy was caught unprepared, and unnecessarily so, when Nazi Germany invaded their country eight decades ago on 22 June 1941, in a military offensive titled Operation Barbarossa. It was named after King Frederick Barbarossa, a red-bearded Prussian emperor who in the 12th century had waged war against the Slavs.

On the sixth day of the attack, 27 June 1941, German Army Group Center had already reached Minsk, the capital of Soviet Belarus. Amazingly it meant, at this very early stage, that the Germans were closer to Moscow than Berlin: as the crow flies, the Wehrmacht was now 430 miles from the Russian capital as opposed to 590 miles from the German capital.

After a week of fighting, the Soviets had lost around 600,000 troops and thousands of their aircraft had been destroyed, the majority of them on the ground. When on 27 June the Soviet commanders, Georgy Zhukov and Semyon Timoshenko, showed Joseph Stalin on operational maps that the Germans had advanced on Minsk, he was visibly shocked by the magnitude of the disaster. Should Stalin have been so surprised, considering the unprecedented rapidity the year before at which the Germans had blazed through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg?

In the middle of 1941, Stalin had been in charge of the Soviet Union for over a decade whereas, in Germany, Adolf Hitler was in control for little more than 8 years. By the early 1940s, the Wehrmacht was Europe’s most efficient military organization and killing machine. This was in some contrast to the larger Red Army, whose poor display against Finland’s paltry armed forces, from 30 November 1939 to 13 March 1940 (the Winter War), provided stark evidence of the harm imparted on the Soviet military by Stalin’s purges, which had begun in May 1937.

British historian Evan Mawdsley wrote that “the purges certainly played a most important part in what happened on and after 22 June 1941”. Marshal Zhukov, one of the most celebrated commanders in Russian history, was heavily critical of the purges after the war, which will be elaborated upon further here.

It can be mentioned firstly, however, that the extent of the Soviet military purges has tended to be exaggerated and distorted down the years. There were 142,000 Soviet Army commanders and commissars in 1937, just before the purges started. Mawdsley noted, “It is sometimes suggested that half the leadership of the Red Army was wiped out, which was certainly not the case” as “the Red Army commanders and commissars who were shot made up a minority” of the entire Russian military leadership corps.

The damage inflicted on the top ranks was still extensive. Three out of five marshals and 20 Soviet army commanders, along with dozens of corps and divisional commanders among others, were liquidated between 1937 and 1941. The loss of high-level officers inevitably undermined and weakened the Red Army’s command apparatus, and it came at a time when the clouds of war were ominously gathering in Europe.

Marshal Zhukov wrote in his memoirs of “unfounded arrests in the armed forces” which were “in contravention of socialist legality. Prominent military leaders were arrested which, naturally, affected the development of our armed forces and their combat preparedness”.

Altogether, more than 34,000 Soviet officers were dismissed from the military as the purges ran their course, but a third of these (11,500) were eventually reinstated; perhaps most notably Konstantin Rokossovsky, who became one of the most important Soviet commanders of World War II. English author Geoffrey Roberts, writing in his biography of Zhukov, realized that “the vast majority of the armed forces” had “survived the purges”, which is necessary to stress.

Yet in the weeks before and after the German invasion, when the initiative to make crucial and independent decisions was needed, much paralysis reigned in the Soviet high command; which had been disproportionately affected by the purges.

Mawdsley, who specializes in Russian affairs, wrote of the Red Army leaders that were victimized, “These men possessed the fullest professional, educational and operational experience the Red Army had accumulated… Despite professional and personal rivalries among themselves, these leaders had formed a fairly cohesive command structure. The paradox is that this is why Stalin mistrusted them”.

An eminent Soviet diplomat, Andrei Gromyko, who was the USSR’s Foreign Affairs Minister from 1957 to 1985, was first introduced to Stalin in 1939 and saw him many times thereafter. Gromyko became acquainted too with Soviet Army dignitaries like Zhukov. In Gromyko’s book ‘Memories: From Stalin to Gorbachev’, he wrote that Zhukov “spoke bitterly of the enormous damage Stalin had inflicted on the country by his massacre of the top echelons of the army command”.

Gromyko recalled Zhukov saying of the Soviet military men that were purged, “Of course, I regard them as innocent victims. Tukhachevsky was an especially damaging loss for the army and the state”. Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, known overseas as “the Red Napoleon”, was a central figure in the Russian Army’s modernization during the 1920s and 1930s. Zhukov first met Tukhachevsky in 1921 and he later described him as, “A clever, knowledgeable professional, he was splendidly conversant with both tactical and strategic problems… Tukhachevsky was an ace of military thinking, a star of the first magnitude among the great soldiers of the Red Army”.

Zhukov stated that he himself came under suspicion as the purges were unfolding, due to his connections to some of the accused. He vigorously defended his position and avoided censure. Moreover, Zhukov informed Gromyko, “Before the war, the political decision to arm fully was taken very late, and that was the main problem”.

While Zhukov’s criticism on the latter point is also valid, Stalin had engineered a massive increase in the Soviet arms budget from the early 1930s onward, and for this he should be commended. Part of Bolshevik ideology is a belief in the virtue of motorized machines and warfare, without which the Red Army could not have defeated the Wehrmacht and its panzer divisions. Five months before the German attack Stalin told his senior commanders, “the winning side will be the one with the greater number and the more powerful engines”.

Between 1932 and 1937, spending on the Soviet military increased by 340% in overall terms, undoubtedly as a result of Stalin’s direct influence. Through 1937 to 1940 expenditure doubled again on the Soviet defense budget. From 1939, the USSR was constructing over 10,000 warplanes per year, along with almost 3,000 tanks, more than 17,000 artillery pieces and 114,000 machine guns. Payment and conditions for Soviet officers had meanwhile improved greatly, so it was far from being all doom and gloom.

The above figures on Soviet armed capacity were unknown to the Germans; that is, until after they had attacked the USSR, when it soon became obvious the Red Army was much more formidable than Nazi intelligence had estimated. As Mawdsley revealed, German agencies calculated that the Russians had 10,000 tanks in June 1941, whereas in reality they possessed 23,100 tanks. The Germans thought there were 6,000 Soviet aircraft in mid-1941, but in the whole of the USSR there were 20,000 planes, with 9,100 of these positioned near the Nazi-Soviet border.

Under Stalin’s leadership the Russians achieved a remarkable relocation of industry eastwards, in the months following the German assault. This policy was critical to ensuring the Soviet Union could continue producing weaponry en masse, and largely secure from the Nazi onslaught.

Irish professor and geographer John Sweeney wrote, “Over 1,500 industrial enterprises were transplanted, between July and November 1941 alone, to what were considered relatively safe refuges in the interior. The Urals (which received 667 of these enterprises), Kazakhstan and Central Asia (308), West Siberia (244), the Volga Region (226) and East Siberia (78), benefited permanently from this massive injection of industrial investment, and it was in this heartland area that urban growth during the post-war recovery period was concentrated”.

Relating to manpower, the Red Army was likewise significantly bigger than Hitler and his generals believed. In June 1941 Soviet forces consisted of more than 300 divisions, amounting to 5.5 million personnel, 2.7 million of which were stationed in the western USSR. The Germans thought there were only 200 Russian divisions in existence, despite the fact the Soviet population was appreciably greater than Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe combined. In comparison the German invasion force comprised of 3 million men, supported by less than a million troops from its Axis allies such as Romania and Finland, led by the anti-Bolshevik military leaders Ion Antonescu and Gustaf Mannerheim respectively.

Seven weeks into the German invasion, General Franz Halder acknowledged in his diary, “The whole situation makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian colossus”. Not long after, even Hitler admitted in a speech in central Berlin, “We had no idea how gigantic the preparations of this enemy were”.

Zhukov and Timoshenko were acutely aware of the massing of German, Finnish and Romanian divisions adjacent to the USSR’s boundaries. The Soviet Army’s foreign intelligence agency (the GRU) confirmed on 15 June 1941, just a week before Operation Barbarossa commenced, that a huge transfer had taken place of German forces to the Nazi-Soviet frontier; with 120 to 122 Wehrmacht divisions reportedly deployed there.

Zhukov told Stalin repeatedly, and as late as mid-June 1941, to be prepared in the case of a German attack. Stalin in turn insisted a few days before Wehrmacht-led armies invaded, “Germany has a Treaty of Non-Aggression with us. Germany is involved up to its ears in the war in the West, and I believe that Hitler will not risk creating a second front for himself by attacking the Soviet Union”.

From November 1940 to June 1941, Stalin personally received a total of 80 intelligence reports warning about a German invasion, according to English historian Andrew Roberts. In mitigation to Stalin, a fair proportion of the intelligence accounts proved inaccurate regarding the invasion start date; others constituted misinformation planted by the Germans; but most reports were genuine and some uncannily close to the mark, like the material sent to the Kremlin by Richard Sorge, a now famous Soviet spy then operating in the German embassy in Tokyo.

Stalin was further warned about Nazi intentions by Soviet agents like the courageous Leopold Trepper in Paris, and also Victor Sukolov in Belgium. The most plausible and detailed reports of all indeed came from Soviet sources, and they peaked in intensity during the first three weeks of June 1941 – along with alarming information forthcoming that Hitler’s allies Finland and Romania were mobilizing for war against Russia. This could not be ignored.

Robert Service, in his lengthy book on Stalin, wrote that, “For weeks the Wehrmacht had been massing on the western banks of the River Bug, as dozens of divisions were transferred from elsewhere in Europe. The Luftwaffe had sent squadrons of reconnaissance aircraft over Soviet cities. All this had been reported to Stalin by his military intelligence agency. In May and June [1941], he had been continually pressed by Timoshenko and Zhukov to sanction the dispositions for an outbreak of fighting. Richard Sorge, the Soviet agent in the German embassy in Tokyo, had raised the alarm. Winston Churchill had sent telegrams warning Stalin. The USSR’s spies in Germany had mentioned the preparations being made. Even the Chinese Communist Party alerted Moscow about German intentions”.

By the second half of June 1941, Stalin was counting on it being too late in the year for the Germans to attack. Regardless, the French commander Napoleon, generations before fast-moving motorized vehicles emerged, had launched his invasion of Russia on 24 June 1812, two days later in June than the Germans.

In addition the spring rains arrived late in the western USSR in 1941, and they were much heavier than normal. Many of the river valleys, including the strategically important River Bug in eastern Poland, were still flooded at the late date of 1 June 1941. This meant that an attack on the Soviet Union could not have proceeded until after then.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) last week asked the CIA for information related to a Yahoo News report that the Agency in 2017 had planned to kidnap or kill Wikileaks cofounder Julian Assange outside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. Knowing the CIA, I’m sure the Agency’s Office of Congressional Affairs had a good laugh over the request, but we can talk about that a little later.

The journalists who wrote the Yahoo News report say they had more than 30 independent sources in the CIA and the Trump White House with whom they spoke and all of whom told the same story: Then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo was so incensed that Wikileaks had published what came to be known as the Vault 7 Cache that Assange had to die.

Assange has, of course, long been on the CIA’s radar. But publication of the Vault 7 documents, the greatest data loss in the CIA’s history, was too much. One Trump counterterrorism official said that Pompeo and other senior CIA officers “were seeing blood.” They discussed plans to kidnap Assange from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he had been holed up since 2012. Alternatively, they talked about killing him (with the British Intelligence Service MI-6 doing the actual shooting.)

Yet another idea was, if Assange could somehow make his way to a Russian diplomatic plane, a CIA/MI6 partnership would shoot the tires of the plane before it could lift off. Assange could then be snatched off the plane, even if it constituted a violation of international law and a major diplomatic incident.

These were not just idle musings. There was real planning involved. Because the CIA is a big, lumbering bureaucracy, there’s a process that it must go through, even for a plot as cockamamie as this one.

When a person comes up with an idea like, “Let’s kill Assange,” it goes to a specific office that deals with proposed covert operations.

Functionaries in that office put the idea on paper in the proper format and send it to the CIA’s Office of the General Counsel to get their input. Once the General Counsel signs off on the idea, it goes to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC.)

Technically, OLC’s job is to determine whether a CIA idea is legal or not. But you’ll recall that it was OLC attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee who figuratively stood on their heads in 2002 to find that the CIA’s torture program was legal, despite the fact that the torture techniques the CIA was advocating had been specifically outlawed by statute decades earlier. According to the Yahoo News report, OLC apparently found that the plot to kidnap or kill Assange was indeed “legal.”

Once OLC had determined that there was no legal impediment to killing Assange, the memo was sent to the National Security Council’s legal team for their comment and approval.

It is my experience that the NSC legal staff is a rubber stamp for OLC. If the CIA wants it and OLC says it’s legal, there’s no reason for NSC lawyers to stand in the way.

The last step in the system is for the National Security Advisor to sign the plan and to send it to the President for his signature on what is called a “Presidential Finding.” The signed Finding is then sent back to the CIA, where it is kept in a locked safe, with other signed copies going to the NSC and to the Justice Department. The CIA is then free to implement its plan.

But that’s not what happened. No Finding was ever signed. Although the Yahoo News article doesn’t specifically say so, it seems that the plan died on the desk of then-National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster.

McMaster was a professional soldier before taking the job as National Security Advisor. He was not a confidant of Donald Trump, nor was he particularly close to Mike Pompeo. It seems that McMaster read the plan, thought it was insane (or risked too much blowback), and killed it. It never made its way to Trump.

There’s another element to this story that is deeply worrying to me. The plan to kidnap or kill Assange never made its way to the Congressional oversight committees—the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence—either. Why? Because there’s a loophole in the system. If the CIA deems something to be a “counterintelligence operation,” it doesn’t have to inform the committees. The idea is that counterintelligence is so incredibly sensitive—it normally deals with moles inside the intelligence community or hostile powers spying on the U.S.—that the Agency can’t risk somebody on Capitol Hill leaking the information.

That’s nonsense, of course. The CIA knew that oversight committee members would have gone crazy at the prospect of the CIA kidnapping or killing an Australian national who had never been convicted of a crime in the U.S. The CIA didn’t dare inform the committees.

So here we are, four years after the operation was effectively canceled, and Adam Schiff wants details. I can guess what the CIA’s response will be. They’ll say that the plan was just an idea, that they went through the proper administrative channels, that teams of attorneys deemed it to be legal, that the committees weren’t informed because the operation was of a counterintelligence nature, and that, in the end, nothing happened anyway. Schiff will likely accept that and the story will fade away. (It’s already begun fading away because almost no mainstream media outlets bothered to report on it in the first place.) That’ll be the end of it.

It’s not the end of it for Julian Assange, however. Last week a British appeals court heard arguments about whether he should be extradited to the United States, where he would almost certainly face solitary confinement in a maximum-security penitentiary.

Julian’s supporters were heartened that the appellate judges had read the Yahoo News article, mentioned it unprompted, and demanded that the Justice Department explain itself. In the meantime, the would-be kidnappers and murderers and their bosses at the CIA will go home to their families as if nothing happened. It’s the American way.

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John Kiriakou was a CIA analyst and case officer from 1990 to 2004. Kiriakou was a former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a former counter-terrorism consultant. While employed with the CIA, he was involved in critical counter-terrorism missions following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but refused to be trained in so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” nor did he ever authorize or engage in such crimes. John can be reached at: [email protected].

Featured image is from btlonline.com

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Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal covid-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight. Paul D Thacker reports

In autumn 2020 Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive, Albert Bourla, released an open letter to the billions of people around the world who were investing their hopes in a safe and effective covid-19 vaccine to end the pandemic. “As I’ve said before, we are operating at the speed of science,” Bourla wrote, explaining to the public when they could expect a Pfizer vaccine to be authorised in the United States.1

But, for researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety. A regional director who was employed at the research organisation Ventavia Research Group has told The BMJ that the company falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial. Staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the volume of problems they were finding. After repeatedly notifying Ventavia of these problems, the regional director, Brook Jackson, emailed a complaint to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ventavia fired her later the same day. Jackson has provided The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails.

Poor laboratory management

On its website Ventavia calls itself the largest privately owned clinical research company in Texas and lists many awards it has won for its contract work.2 But Jackson has told The BMJ that, during the two weeks she was employed at Ventavia in September 2020, she repeatedly informed her superiors of poor laboratory management, patient safety concerns, and data integrity issues. Jackson was a trained clinical trial auditor who previously held a director of operations position and came to Ventavia with more than 15 years’ experience in clinical research coordination and management. Exasperated that Ventavia was not dealing with the problems, Jackson documented several matters late one night, taking photos on her mobile phone. One photo, provided to The BMJ, showed needles discarded in a plastic biohazard bag instead of a sharps container box. Another showed vaccine packaging materials with trial participants’ identification numbers written on them left out in the open, potentially unblinding participants. Ventavia executives later questioned Jackson for taking the photos.

To read complete BMJ article click here 

 

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COP 26: Can a Singing, Dancing Rebellion Save the World?

November 4th, 2021 by Medea Benjamin

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COP Twenty-six! That is how many times the UN has assembled world leaders to try to tackle the climate crisis. But the United States is producing more oil and natural gas than ever; the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere and global temperatures are both still rising; and we are already experiencing the extreme weather and climate chaos that scientists have warned us about for forty years, and which will only get worse and worse without serious climate action.

And yet, the planet has so far only warmed 1.2° Celsius (2.2° F) since pre-industrial times. We already have the technology we need to convert our energy systems to clean, renewable energy, and doing so would create millions of good jobs for people all over the world. So, in practical terms, the steps we must take are clear, achievable and urgent.

The greatest obstacle to action that we face is our dysfunctional, neoliberal political and economic system and its control by plutocratic and corporate interests, who are determined to keep profiting from fossil fuels even at the cost of destroying the Earth’s uniquely livable climate. The climate crisis has exposed this system’s structural inability to act in the real interests of humanity, even when our very future hangs in the balance.

So what is the answer? Can COP26 in Glasgow be different? What could make the difference between more slick political PR and decisive action? Counting on the same politicians and fossil fuel interests (yes, they are there, too) to do something different this time seems suicidal, but what is the alternative?

Since Obama’s Pied Piper leadership in Copenhagen and Paris produced a system in which individual countries set their own targets and decided how to meet them, most countries have made little progress toward the targets they set in Paris in 2015.

Now they have come to Glasgow with predetermined and inadequate pledges that, even if fulfilled, would still lead to a much hotter world by 2100. A succession of UN and civil society reports in the lead-up to COP26 have been sounding the alarm with what UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called a “thundering wake-up call” and a “code red for humanity.” In Guterres’ opening speech at COP26 on November 1st, he said that “we are digging our own graves” by failing to solve this crisis.

Yet governments are still focusing on long-term goals like reaching “Net Zero” by 2050, 2060 or even 2070, so far in the future that they can keep postponing the radical steps needed to limit warming to 1.5° Celsius. Even if they somehow stopped pumping greenhouse gases into the air, the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere by 2050 would keep heating up the planet for generations. The more we load up the atmosphere with GHGs, the longer their effect will last and the hotter the Earth will keep growing.

The United States has set a shorter-term target of reducing its emissions by 50% from their peak 2005 level by 2030. But its present policies would only lead to a 17%-25% reduction by then.

The Clean Energy Performance Program (CEPP), which was part of the Build Back Better Act, could make up a lot of that gap by paying electric utilities to increase reliance on renewables by 4% year over year and penalizing utilities that don’t. But on the eve of COP 26, Biden dropped the CEPP from the bill under pressure from Senators Manchin and Sinema and their fossil fuel puppet-masters.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military, the largest institutional emitter of GHGs on Earth, was exempted from any constraints whatsoever under the Paris Agreement. Peace activists in Glasgow are demanding that COP26 must fix this huge black hole in global climate policy by including the U.S. war machine’s GHG emissions, and those of other militaries, in national emissions reporting and reductions.

At the same time, every penny that governments around the world have spent to address the climate crisis amounts to a small fraction of what the United States alone has spent on its nation-destroying war machine during the same period.

China now officially emits more CO2 than the United States. But a large part of China’s emissions are driven by the rest of the world’s consumption of Chinese products, and its largest customer is the United States. An MIT study in 2014 estimated that exports account for 22% of China’s carbon emissions. On a per capita consumption basis, Americans still account for three times the GHG emissions of our Chinese neighbors and double the emissions of Europeans.

Wealthy countries have also fallen short on the commitment they made in Copenhagen in 2009 to help poorer countries tackle climate change by providing financial aid that would grow to $100 billion per year by 2020. They have provided increasing amounts, reaching $79 billion in 2019, but the failure to deliver the full amount that was promised has eroded trust between rich and poor countries. A committee headed by Canada and Germany at COP26 is charged with resolving the shortfall and restoring trust.

When the world’s political leaders are failing so badly that they are destroying the natural world and the livable climate that sustains human civilization, it is urgent for people everywhere to get much more active, vocal and creative.

The appropriate public response to governments that are ready to squander the lives of millions of people, whether by war or by ecological mass suicide, is rebellion and revolution – and non-violent forms of revolution have generally proven more effective and beneficial than violent ones.

People are rising up against this corrupt neoliberal political and economic system in countries all over the world, as its savage impacts affect their lives in different ways. But the climate crisis is a universal danger to all of humanity that requires a universal, global response.

One inspiring civil society group on the streets in Glasgow during COP 26 is Extinction Rebellion, which proclaims,

“We accuse world leaders of failure, and with a daring vision of hope, we demand the impossible…We will sing and dance and lock arms against despair and remind the world there is so much worth rebelling for.”

Extinction Rebellion and other climate groups at COP26 are calling for Net Zero by 2025, not 2050, as the only way to meet the 1.5° goal agreed to in Paris.

Greenpeace is calling for an immediate global moratorium on new fossil fuel projects and a quick phase-out of coal-burning power plants. Even the new coalition government in Germany, which includes the Green Party and has more ambitious goals than other large wealthy countries, has only moved up the final deadline on Germany’s coal phaseout from 2038 to 2030.

The Indigenous Environmental Network is bringing indigenous people from the Global South to Glasgow to tell their stories at the conference. They are calling on the Northern industrialized countries to declare a climate emergency, to keep fossil fuels in the ground and end subsidies of fossil fuels globally.

Friends of the Earth (FOE) has published a new report titled Nature-Based Solutions: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing as a focus for its work at COP26. It exposes a new trend in corporate greenwashing involving industrial-scale tree plantations in poor countries, which corporations plan to claim as “offsets” for continued fossil fuel production.

The U.K. government that is hosting the conference in Glasgow has endorsed these schemes as part of the program at COP26. FOE is highlighting the effect of these massive land-grabs on local and indigenous communities and calls them “a dangerous deception and distraction from the real solutions to the climate crisis.” If this is what governments mean by “Net Zero,” it would just be one more step in the financialization of the Earth and all its resources, not a real solution.

Because it is hard for activists from around the world to get to Glasgow for COP26 during a pandemic, activist groups are simultaneously organizing around the world to put pressure on governments in their own countries. Hundreds of climate activists and indigenous people have been arrested in protests at the White House in Washington, and five young Sunrise Movement activists began a hunger strike there on October 19th.

U.S. climate groups also support the “Green New Deal” bill, H.Res. 332, that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has introduced in Congress, which specifically calls for policies to keep global warming below 1.5° Celsius, and currently has 103 cosponsors. The bill sets ambitious targets for 2030, but only calls for Net Zero by 2050.

The environmental and climate groups converging on Glasgow agree that we need a real global program of energy conversion now, as a practical matter, not as the aspirational goal of an endlessly ineffective, hopelessly corrupt political process.

At COP25 in Madrid in 2019, Extinction Rebellion dumped a pile of horse manure outside the conference hall with the message, “The horse-shit stops here.” Of course that didn’t stop it, but it made the point that empty talk must rapidly be eclipsed by real action. Greta Thunberg has hit the nail on the head, slamming world leaders for covering up their failures with “blah, blah, blah,” instead of taking real action.

Like Greta’s School Strike for the Climate, the climate movement in the streets of Glasgow is informed by the recognition that the science is clear and the solutions to the climate crisis are readily available. It is only political will that is lacking. This must be supplied by ordinary people, from all walks of life, through creative, dramatic action and mass mobilization, to demand the political and economic transformation we so desperately need.

The usually mild-mannered UN Secretary General Guterres made it clear that “street heat” will be key to saving humanity. “The climate action army – led by young people – is unstoppable,” he told world leaders in Glasgow. “They are larger. They are louder. And, I assure you, they are not going away.”

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

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

Featured image: Greta Thunberg leads protests in Italy ahead of COP26. Credit: Radio Habana Cuba

China and the New Maritime Cartography

November 4th, 2021 by Germán Gorraiz López

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Maritime transport currently represents 95% of everything transported in the world, two-thirds corresponding to oil and mineral traffic and container ships being a fifth of the total. The mega containers would have become essential elements to maintain the feverish export capacity of China, the Asian tigers or the European Union since they combine the capacity to transport about 800 million tons and is much less polluting than air transport and by road, although it would be threatened by the stratospheric rise in the cost of freight due to the current collapse of the post-pandemic freight traffic.

China and the obstacle course of current maritime cartography

From the economic point of view, the Arctic region takes on a special relevance since due to the progressive thawing, an old navigable route is recovered that opens the possibility of crossing the Northwest Passage all year round. In addition, it offers shipping companies a considerable reduction in navigation times that will have as collateral effects the progressive decrease in maritime traffic on the traditional maritime routes of the 20th century, which has become a complicated obstacle course due to traffic saturation and political instability of the surrounding countries and which would have as main landmarks the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Aden, the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca.

The passage of the Suez Canal is considered one of the most important points for world trade since it transports 2.6 million barrels of crude oil per day (which represents almost 3% of the daily world demand for oil) and is also a relevant route for liquefied natural gas (LNG), since about 13% of the world production of this gas traveled through it in 2010 and its hypothetical closure would cause the interruption of the supply of around 2.6 million barrels per day. Likewise, it would be an essential route for the US Navy, since until now Egypt granted the US Navy expeditious passage through the Suéz Canal for the approximately 40 warships that cross said channel on a monthly basis. it ensured a crucial shortcut for direct access to the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Afghanistan, turned into an unstable area due to the possibility of jihadist attacks.

For its part, the Gulf of Aden is a strategic place that connects the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal, with a transit of more than 18,000 ships according to official statistics cited by the Bulgarian economic daily, Capital. However, and although warships belonging to more than ten countries patrol the waters of the Gulf of Aden, the countries that border it suffer from political stability, which is why there are numerous cases of piracy and even terrorist attacks, of which it would be a paradigm the attack on the warship USS Cole, thus having become an unsafe route.

Furthermore, a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, through which one third of the world’s energy traffic passes, could exacerbate the global economic recession and profoundly weaken the entire international political system. Thus, according to estimates by the IEA (International Energy Agency), 13.4 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude would pass through the narrow channel in oil tankers, (which would represent 30% of the crude supply that is traded worldwide) and if the passage through said strait collapses, we would witness a psychosis of shortages and a spectacular increase in the price of crude oil to 2008 levels (around $ 150), which would be reflected in a wild increase in freight prices. transport and agricultural fertilizers.

Continuing the route to the Asian countries, the Strait of Malacca (between Singapore and Malaysia) is a narrow corridor 800 kilometers long and a minimum width of 2.8 kilometers that connects the Indian Ocean with the China Sea and is considered one of the main areas of international maritime traffic between Asia and Europe. Thus, this strait supports three times more traffic than other maritime corridors since Southeast Asia concentrates most of the world’s merchandise and both China and Japan use it to supply oil and since the passage of the Strait of Malacca would have become “ de facto ”in a sea lane saturated and affected by pirate attacks, China would have started the work of the channel of the Isthmus of Kra to bypass them.

Likewise, China would be building an extensive port network, which would include ports, bases and observation stations in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Burma and of which it would be a paradigm, the strategic port in Pakistan, Gwadar, (the “gorge” of the Persian Gulf), 72 kilometers from the border with Iran and about 400 kilometers from the most important oil transportation corridor and very close to the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The port was built and financed by China and is operated by the state-owned China Overseas Port Holding Company (COPHC), since the region surrounding the port of Gwadar contains two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves and 30 percent passes through there. of the world’s oil and 80 percent of that received by China and is on the shortest route to Asia (Silk Road).

Arctic route

According to the president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems Leoníd Ivashov in statements to KM.RU. “The Northern Sea Route is freed of ice, making it more navigable and reducing cargo traffic in the eastern hemisphere by thousands of kilometers, making the Arctic an important geopolitical region.” Thus, according to an analysis by the columnist of the Odnako portal, Alexánder Gorbenko, “the northern sea route (linking the Atlantic and the Pacific along the coasts of Russia) is considered an alternative to the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal. , which could make it one of the most important commercial corridors in the world in the near future ”. The Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage are sea lanes along the edges of the Arctic Ocean (more precisely along the northern coasts of Canada and Russia) and combine the ability to provide a means for transportation of natural resources (oil and gas) extracted in the Arctic as well as a notable reduction in the duration of the journey of goods shipments from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America (this new route would save 7,400 miles of the 11,500 that currently have to be used to link Hamburg and Yokohama).

According to buricapress (BPP), during the first decade of the 21st century, interest in maritime transport between Europe and Asia through the Arctic Ocean would have increased, due to the massive thaws that have opened the route of the “Ocean of Ice” and in In the summer of 2009, two German transport ships used the North Sea Route without the aid of icebreakers. On the Russian side, on August 14, 2010, the first high-tonnage tanker left Russian ports taking the North Sea Route towards Asia and reaching Pevek on the Chukotka Peninsula and likewise, in the fall of 2010 the first shipment of Iron was shipped from Kirkenes, Norway to China via the North Sea Route and China sent a merchant ship to Europe for the first time through the Northeast Passage and access to the Arctic would have been secured after the signing with Iceland of a TLC while Canada is also preparing for a significant increase in the use of the Northwest Arctic route.

Post-Panamax and Short Sea Shipping (TMCD)

The Panama Canal is an artificial canal inaugurated on August 15, 1914 and which meant a milestone in maritime transport by joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and avoiding circumventing Cape Horn, with an estimated traffic through its system of locks of more of 14,000 ships and a cargo of 300 million tons per year (5% of world trade), according to data from the Panama Canal Authority. However, the traffic figures in recent years suffered from constant deterioration as the Suez Canal would have taken away part of its natural market segment, so the inauguration of the new expanded Panama Canal will serve as a catalyst to recover the market. lost. Thus, after seven years of technical and financial setbacks, the consortium of companies led by Sacyr (GUPC) has concluded the expansion of the Third Set of Locks of the Panama Canal, a pharaonic work that will represent a milestone in civil engineering as well as a an authentic revolution in maritime navigation of the XXI century by allowing the transit of freighters of more than 400 meters in length and 50 meters in width (the so-called post-Panamax) capable of transporting up to 12,500 containers in a single trip, taking about 18 hours to link the Atlantic and the Pacific, which will translate into an increase in cargo transported to 600 million tons per year (10% of world trade) as well as an important source of income for Panama estimated at $ 19 million per day.

In addition, in the next decade we will see the implementation of new Motorways of the Sea in Short Distance Maritime Transport (TMCD) that would be alternatives for the transport of passengers and commercial cargo that uses inland and coastal waterways with the unequivocal objective of reducing costs. and pollution and of what would be a paradigm of the port of Bilbao, leader in Medium and Short Distance Transport on the Atlantic coast. This, together with the foreseeable boom of the Arctic Route and the new Panama Canal, will end up causing a true tsunami in the current global maritime architecture, as new maritime corridors emerge that will offer shipping companies a considerable reduction in shipping times. This navigation will ultimately result in a progressive decrease in maritime traffic due to the unstable and saturated maritime routes of the 20th century, but which will have to overcome the current collapse of post-pandemic freight traffic to offer competitive freight rates.

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German Gorraiz Lopez is a political and financial analyst.

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Summary: The VAERS underreporting factor (URF) is required information to be known for any risk-benefit of assessment of a vaccine. The fact that this number was never calculated by the FDA or CDC means that all the safety recommendations to date have been by guessing. This has resulted in the needless loss of life of well over 150,000 Americans.

VAERS is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. It is the official system relied upon by the FDA and CDC for adverse event tracking.

For example, if you report an adverse event in V-Safe, the app they told you about when you got vaccinated, you are told to file a VAERS report. It is essentially the mother of all adverse event reporting systems for vaccine events in the US. There is nothing more comprehensive than VAERS.

The most important thing to know about VAERS is that it is always underreported. This is widely known.

To properly interpret any safety data, you must know the underreporting factor (URF).

For example, the famous Lazarus report estimated the VAERS URF to be over 100:

“Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. Low reporting rates preclude or slow the identification of “problem” drugs and vaccines that endanger public health.”

The Baker paper, Advanced Clinical Decision Support for Vaccine Adverse Event Detection and Reporting, showed that “the odds of a VAERS report submission during the implementation period were 30.2 (95% confidence interval, 9.52–95.5).”

In other words, the VAERS URF was at least 30 (since the system wasn’t perfect, 30 is a lower bound of the URF in that study), but they estimated that it was likely between 9.5 and 95.

The URF is normally calculated for very serious events since these are required to be reported for all vaccines by healthcare workers. That URF can then be applied to less serious events to create a conservative estimate of the true incidence rate (since less serious events would have a higher URF).

The method for calculating the URF is well known.

Sadly, the CDC has erroneously assumed that Vaccine Safety Datalink represents a fully reported comparator.
This is clearly false as can be seen from slide 13 in ACIP Chair Grace Lee’s presentation delivered on August 30, 2021:

Image

You can clearly see that VSD estimates are below the VAERS estimates.

Therefore, calculating the URF from anaphylaxis data from a prospective targeted study, such as the Blumenthal Mass General Brigham study that was published in JAMA provides a more accurate estimate. There was a second Blumenthal paper published again in JAMA (this time an Editorial rather than a Research Letter) showing an anaphylaxis rate that was 48X lower, but that is just to mislead people into taking the vaccine.

As a Professor of Biology I know wrote:

“You are correct in your analysis. The 2.4/10000 rate is based on all cases of anaphylaxis reported but the 5/1,000,000 is based only on inpatient hospital or emergency department visits.  You can undergo anaphylaxis without being admitted into the hospital going to the emergency room.  I also believe that the 5/1,000,000 applied the Brighton Collaboration criteria much too narrowly.  The second paper is just propaganda to get people vaccinated.”

When we do the math, we find that the URF is 41, well in line with the mean and range described in the Baker paper. It means that over 150,000 people have been killed by the vaccine so far (and we show 8 different ways in that paper, only one of which uses VAERS).

The troubling thing is this: nobody at the CDC, FDA, or on any of the outside committees will admit this. When they are asked, “what is the URF for serious events in VAERS for the COVID vaccine” they are unable to respond. Not even Steven A. Anderson of the FDA can answer that. He said he was the top guy for vaccine safety at the FDA. I heard him say that on a zoom call.

He won’t talk. He doesn’t respond to emails, he doesn’t respond to voicemails. His staff doesn’t respond either.

Janet Woodcock won’t tell me the URF.

The friendly people at [email protected] won’t tell me the URF.

Lorrie McNeill of the FDA won’t tell me the URF.

Tom Shimabukuro won’t tell me the URF.

John Su won’t tell me the URF. He pretends in his presentations to ACIP and VRBPAC committees that the URF=1 because he never points out that VAERS is underreported or what the reporting factor is. We have all that on the record.

No member of any of the outside committees of the FDA or CDC would respond to my multiple requests.

I have tried to find someone knowledgeable to interview to ask that question, but no prominent pro-vaccine person would consent to an interview. Eric Topol doesn’t respond. Monica Gandhi doesn’t respond. UCSF Dean of Medicine Bob Wachter won’t talk to me on camera. They are all afraid of being exposed.

None of the fact checkers I asked would help me out.

Heck,  I couldn’t even get Health Nerd to consent to be interviewed by me.

I thought it was just me.

To test that, I asked a former NY Times reporter (now working for another newspaper) to ask the question of the FDA and he was stonewalled as well. They refused to answer him. Silence as soon as he asked the question. But his paper won’t let him write a story about it.

Let’s be clear: you cannot do any sort of risk-benefit assessment without knowing the VAERS URF. It is impossible.

The fact that as of October 25, 2021 that nobody knows the URF for VAERS is a sign of mass incompetence and corruption at the FDA, CDC, and their external committees.

There is no other alternative.

This of course is why nobody at the FDA, CDC, or on the external committees wants to talk to me. Because I ask questions that they don’t want to answer. This is why censorship is required to silence people like me.

This is the biggest cover-up in history. CDC, FDA, mainstream media, nearly the entire medical community, and all the major social media companies are pitching in to silence people like me who ask questions we aren’t supposed to ask.

It’s pretty sad that nobody in the mainstream media is asking those questions, isn’t it?

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British files seen by Declassified reveal shocking details of torture from a virtually unknown episode in UK military history, when in 1970 special forces invaded and annexed the most important oil supply route on the Persian Gulf.

Fifty years ago, US troops began building a military base on the Chagos Islands, a British territory in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Its inhabitants, who numbered several thousand, were forcibly removed to make way for a naval station.

They received almost nothing in compensation for the loss of their homeland, but Britain did well out of the deal. The Pentagon gave the Royal Navy a discount on its first nuclear-armed submarine fleet.

This bargain helped Whitehall keep up the pretence of being a great power, bolstering the UK’s permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council even as the British empire crumbled.

But nuclear weapons would not be enough to stay ahead in this new world order. While evicting the Chagossians, UK officials busily conducted another colonial carve-up – this time to ensure continued control of global oil supply routes.

Known as Operation Intradon, it saw a proudly autonomous Arab tribe have their land handed over to a pro-Western dictator, detainees tortured by British troops and a UK special forces soldier dying in a night-time parachute jump.

Yet the episode has been largely forgotten outside of Musandam – a mountainous peninsula overlooking the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow sea lane between Iran and Arabia through which a third of the world’s oil supplies are shipped each day.

Despite living at a crossroads of the global economy as important as the Suez or Panama canals, Musandam’s main tribe, the Shihuh, long resented outside interference and effectively regarded themselves as independent.

Bombarded by the Royal Navy in 1930 “to compel the surrender” of a local Sheikh, any foreign authority over the peninsula had lapsed by November 1970, and Whitehall feared it may become the base for a “potential insurrection”.

The then Conservative foreign secretary Alec Douglas-Home believed some 70 communist guerrillas from elsewhere in the Gulf were hiding in Musandam and using its relative isolation to hatch plots against British interests in the region.

Files found at the UK National Archives show the chief of the defence staff fretted that these dissidents could unleash “an anti-British campaign of terror”.

They were believed to be part of the National Democratic Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf (NDFLOAG), a left-wing Arab nationalist movement run by Omanis with cells across the region. Their goal was to expel foreign powers from the Gulf.

To prevent this guerrilla group from gaining another foothold, prime minister Edward Heath approved Operation Intradon: a complex plan to take full control of Musandam by force. It involved the deployment of a Special Air Service (SAS) squadron by parachute, by helicopter and by sea – with help from the Special Boat Service and Royal Air Force.

Effectively, Britain would invade Musandam, capture or kill any resisters and annex the area for Oman, with which it shared no land border. If asked by journalists, Whitehall spin doctors planned to portray this as a humanitarian mission to improve “the welfare of its inhabitants whose needs were neglected in the past.”

Prior to the operation, neither Britain nor its newly-installed client ruler of Oman, Sultan Qaboos, had any significant foothold in Musandam. British officials acknowledged as much, noting that the peninsula was a “totally unadministered region” which had seen “years of neglect”.

A senior Foreign Office diplomat, Sir Stewart Crawford, admitted:

“At present there was no administrative control in this area and the Sultan’s only representative was the Wali [guardian] at Khasab [a port in northern Musandam].” He added: “The population of the peninsula resented any sort of authority and were xenophobic.”

The then commander of British forces in the Gulf, Major-General Gibbs, remarked that he “had already tried putting one man into the area who had been extremely lucky to get out alive, saved by the Sheikh of Bukha.”

The Sheikh of Bukha was leader of Musandam’s Shihuh tribe, who had been “virtually ungoverned for years”, according to Douglas-Home. Military planners noted that the tribe flew their own flag and spoke “an Arabic dialect which is almost a language of their own.”

There were no police in Musandam and British forces in the Gulf commented how the Shihuh tribe were “notoriously anti-authority and have not in recent memory been subjected to any.” In another telegram, British officials described the Shihuh as “notoriously independent”.

Bypassing the UN

Timing was crucial for the invasion to work. Intradon was planned to start as late as possible in 1970, to minimise “unfavourable reaction” at the UN General Assembly which dispersed in mid-December.

Delaying until after this date would thwart opportunities for “radical Arab states” – such as Egypt, Iraq or South Yemen – to “provoke maximum fuss” and persuade the UN Security Council to send observers to Musandam.

In 1967, the UN General Assembly had passed a resolution censuring the UK for “installing and strengthening unrepresentative regimes” in Oman “without regard for the basic rights of the people.”

Operation Intradon – the de facto annexation of Musandam – appeared to fly in the face of this UN resolution, and Whitehall decided against inviting any British journalists to observe the mission, noting: “We should not encourage them.”

Barry Davies, an SAS soldier who took part in Intradon, later wrote in his memoirs that the operation was needed to “stop a major political shift in the area” and “protect the Straits of Hormuz, through which half of the world’s oil passes.” (This proportion has reduced slightly since 1970, but remains substantial).

When the operation went ahead on 17 December, the SAS landed in the wrong place.

“There were no more than half a dozen villages along this hostile coastline, but we picked the wrong one”, Davies recalled, adding that the SAS failed to find any foreign communist cells wherever they went in Musandam.

Instead what they found were proud local leaders who refused to lower their tribal flag until allegedly threatened by the invaders with having one of their largest towns, Bukha, burned to the ground.

In fact, the only danger encountered by British troops came from their own elaborate insertion techniques. SAS Lance-Corporal Paul Reddy tried to skydive into Musandam from 11,000 feet. His parachute failed to open properly, and he died instantly on 22 December 1970.

Among the Shihuh tribesmen, there was one civilian casualty in the opening phase of the operation: Sultan Saif Al-Qaytaf Al-Shehhi. A local source told Declassified that British soldiers entered this man’s home and shot him four times in the neck, leg and back. He sustained such serious injuries for refusing to surrender his traditional knife, the source added.

Gruesome as this was, far worse was in store for the Shihu tribe.

Al Sey village in Musandam where tribesman Sultan Saif Al-Qaytaf Al-Shehhi was allegedly shot by British soldiers during Operation Intradon (Photo: Supplied/Declassified UK) 

‘Very grim conditions’

As part of the invasion plan, foreign secretary Douglas-Home had specified that “a small team of interrogators would be needed”.

To be known as No 1 Holding Unit, this interrogation team was initially stationed in Sharjah, next to Dubai in what is now the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The interrogators were led by a “Major H Sloan”. His first name is not given in the declassified telegrams, but records show the British army intelligence corps had a Major Henry Maclaren Sloan in their ranks at that time who appears to fit the description.

The team’s orders stated that prisoners were to be “medically examined and certified fit for interrogation”. They would be checked again upon discharge and records of both examinations were to be preserved.

By 19 December 1970, with Intradon already underway for several days, no detainees had been captured for the team to interrogate. They were considering returning to the UK when Sultan Qaboos’ British military chief, Colonel Hugh Oldham, suddenly requested the interrogation team move to Oman’s capital, Muscat.

New intelligence on “subversive activity” in Oman had been “unearthed which could give useful leads to the team.” The intelligence came from Nizwa, a city in the centre of the country where NDFLOAG members had recently been rounded up.

It was against this backdrop that in January 1971 the new British interrogation team in Muscat received its first four detainees, whose identities and political affinities remain unconfirmed.

The quad were interrogated for up to 59 hours in sessions which spanned 7 days. They were hooded for 30 hours on average, 15 hours of which they were “subjected to sound” from loud, incessant generators.

The hooding and sound techniques “took place only immediately prior to or during breaks in the questioning phase”. When not being questioned, the men were detained in isolation in the “very grim conditions” of the notorious cells at Bait-al-Falaj, a military headquarters near Muscat.

British army records of interrogations in Oman (Photo: UK National Archives)

The interrogations of the quad appeared to then stop until May-June 1971, when a further 31 people were interrogated over a five-week period. The identity of these detainees is again unclear from the available archival record, other than that they had “already spent up to 30 days in confinement” under the Sultan.

A researcher from Musandam provided Declassified with the names of ten members of the Shihuh tribe he believes to be among those tortured by the British in 1971, including the man who sustained gunshot wounds during the invasion.

We are publishing their names for the first time in English:

  • Ali Mohammed Alyooh Al-Shehhi
  • Sulieman Mohammed Alyooh Al-Shehhi
  • Murshid Mohammed Al-Shehhi
  • Ali Mohammed Al-Shehhi
  • Rashid Ali Mohammed Al-Mahboubi Al-Shehhi
  • Ahmed Mohammed Ali Al-Mahboubi Al-Shehhi
  • Saeed Al-Aqeedah Al-Shehhi
  • Ali Mohammed Sulieman Al-Shehhi
  • Sultan Saif Al-Qaytaf Al-Shehhi
  • Mohammed Zaid Al-Shehhi

The surviving paperwork shows that out of this group of 31 detainees, 27 were interrogated by the British unit for an average of eight and half hours. The remaining four were selected for harsher treatment, with their interrogations ranging between 32 hours and three and a half days.

Although some British troops had been voluntarily subjected to similar conditions on military survival courses, the maximum time their instructors could pretend to interrogate them for was just eight hours.

In Oman, it was relentless. The detainee who was interrogated for 32 hours only had his session stopped because he was assessed “as being so mentally retarded there was no point in questioning him further.” Three others, who were subjected to sessions of 49, 53 and 84 hours each, somehow “resisted the process”.

A debriefing document explains that “hoods, wall standing and noise…were used on each occasion to ensure complete isolation…and to impose a degree of discipline which helped to create a proper working environment.”

Declassified understands the ten men from Musandam believed they were interrogated in Sharjah or Abu Dhabi, whereas the files indicate it took place in Muscat. The fact the men were hooded and held in “complete isolation” would have made it deliberately difficult for them to know where they actually were.

‘Methods of torture‘

These marathon interrogation sessions in Oman might never have come to light had similar techniques not been used in Northern Ireland two months later.

In August 1971, the British army launched Operation Demetrius. Hundreds of people were arrested and imprisoned without trial on the suspicion that they supported the IRA, a militant group fighting to end British control of Northern Ireland.

Among those interned, 14 were selected for “deep interrogation”. They were taken to a secret location and subjected to what became known as the five techniques.

The men were hooded and forced to stand against a wall for hours in painful stress positions – as had been done in Oman weeks earlier. Anyone who failed to remain in the stress position would be forced back into the posture. White noise was played to overwhelm their senses, as they were deprived of food, water and sleep to weaken their resistance.

The combination of these five interrogation methods was carefully designed to leave no marks, but it was so traumatic that the hair of one detainee, 42-year-old school caretaker Sean McKenna, turned from black to white. He died prematurely four years later from a heart attack.

When the interrogations came to light later in 1971, MPs were so outraged that Britain’s Conservative government had to commission an inquiry chaired by England’s top judge, Lord Parker.

He found that the interrogation tactics were illegal under domestic law. Privately, ministers had gone further. Merlyn Rees, a former Northern Ireland Secretary, described the five techniques as “methods of torture”.

But Northern Ireland and Oman were not the only places where such methods had been used. Since the end of World War Two, British soldiers had violently interrogated anti-colonial activists in more than half a dozen territories, from Kenya in 1956 to Yemen in 1967.

The British army’s intelligence corps, which taught soldiers the interrogation techniques, was prepared to mention this “historical narrative” to Parker’s inquiry – but its commandant drew the line at one location: “Oman is such a special case that it should NOT be covered.”

In a handwritten note, a British official commented that “total interrogation times in Northern Ireland compare favourably [to Oman] – only four cases out of 14 exceeded 20 hours.”

The longest use of the interrogation techniques on any detainee in Northern Ireland was around 56 hours, compared to a maximum of 84 hours in Oman.

“Oman is such a special case that it should NOT be covered.”

Senior UK officials were well aware that British troops had subjected detainees in Oman to harsher torture sessions than the Irish prisoners just two months before Operation Demetrius, but hoped to hide it from the Parker inquiry.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) decided that “no steps should be taken to refer to events in Oman in evidence to the [Parker] Committee” – and the military was only prepared to divulge the extent of what had happened in Muscat “if the point arises specifically”.

Parker’s eventual report did not explicitly mention Oman, instead noting in passing that “some or all” of the five techniques were used in “the Persian Gulf” from 1970-71.

When opposition MP Alex Lyon asked for more background on where and when such interrogations had occurred, ministerial responses omitted Oman, arguably misleading parliament.

The cover up went further. Audio tapes recording the interrogations in Oman were kept by the UK military’s Joint Services Interrogation Wing until at least 1977, when the MOD asked the Foreign Office if there was any objection to the evidence being destroyed.

Back in Musandam

While some Shihuh tribesmen were taken away for interrogation, those remaining in Musandam tried (unsuccessfully) to hold their ground in negotiations with the British invaders.

In June 1971, while the torture was underway, fifty Shihuh told a British army desert intelligence officer that the tribe was “unanimous in their opposition to any Sultanate control.”

The officer concluded the tribe still needed “to be won over, not forced into submission.” Yet military force was never far away from Musandam, with elite SAS troopers continuing to patrol well into 1971.

When some Shihuh staged a skirmish that November, opening fire on an Oman gendarmerie Land Rover, 30 British reinforcements were flown in within an hour and a half. The gun fight lasted for several days, with Britain using mortars to quell the Shihuh.

MOD files indicate that two tribesmen were injured, whereas a local source told Declassified three men were actually killed, naming them as: Ahmed Abdullah Al Assamee Al-Shehhi, Ahmed Saeed Sultan Al Assamee Al-Shehhi and Ali Ahmed Shames Al-Shehhi.

Ultimately, however, most of the fighting against Sultan Qaboos and his British backers in the period would not take place in the Musandam peninsula but in Dhufar, another mountainous region at the opposite end of Oman with its own separatist tendency.

British troops and mercenaries would continue to fight Dhufari guerrillas for many years to come. But the UK ambassador to Muscat would explain in 1980 that Musandam, “with its command of the oil-important Straits of Hormuz, is what the Dhufar War was all about.”

Musandam is today virtually off limits to outsiders, unless they have the right security clearance. In 2019, Prince William visited the peninsula and British military exercises took place – amid fears it would be a flash point if Iran tried to block the Strait of Hormuz.

Prince William in Musandam followed by an ex-GCHQ strategy director (Photo: ONA)

The strategic location means British spy agency GCHQ is rumoured to have built a surveillance station somewhere in Musandam, to intercept communications from across the Gulf. Sultan Qaboos let a company run by an ex-CIA officer build much of the peninsula’s infrastructure.

Locals living in Musandam complain that Omani authorities continue to encroach on their tribal lands and demolish their homes. But the penalties for speaking out are extremely harsh.

When six of the Shihuh shared messages about their situation on WhatsApp and contacted Amnesty International, they were promptly arrested and in 2018 sentenced to life imprisonment.

Although the neighbouring UAE is sometimes suspected of stirring up separatist sentiments in Musandam, it cooperated with Oman in the detention of what became known as the Shihuh 6.

The men were only pardoned following a lobbying campaign by British MPs, during which Oman’s ambassador to London claimed unconvincingly: “There is no discrimination against members of the Shihuh tribe.”

The permanent annexation of Musandam into Oman is not the only legacy of Operation Intradon. After Arab Spring protests in 2011, fresh reports of torture emerged that were strikingly familiar.

The Gulf Center for Human Rights accused Omani security forces of using “hooding, subjection to loud music played 24 hours a day, sleep deprivation, and exposure to extremes of temperature” during detainee interrogations.

But, while such “methods of torture” are still in fashion among Omani authorities, they have seen renewed scrutiny in Northern Ireland in recent years. Mary McKenna, whose father Sean died prematurely as a result of his interrogation, has now taken the issue to the UK Supreme Court.

The Chagossians, meanwhile, have obtained a degree of compensation from the Foreign Office for their displacement while the International Court of Justice ruled in 2019 that the islands do not belong to Britain. The UK government has ignored the verdict, but the UN and global public opinion is now firmly on the side of the Chagos Islanders.

The Shihuh, however, continue to languish in obscurity. And a new law passed by Boris Johnson’s government this year will make it harder for them to ever obtain justice. The Overseas Operations Act introduced a time limit on compensation claims against the MOD, requiring them to be lodged within six years of an incident. This effectively gives the British military immunity for historic abuses abroad like Operation Intradon.

The MOD did not respond to a request for comment.

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Phil Miller is Declassified UK’s chief reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @pmillerinfo

Featured image: Sultan Qaboos ruled Oman from 1970 to 2020 (Photo: Oman News Agency)

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Tehran’s announcement that it is prepared to reenter this month the Vienna talks on rescuing the 2015 agreement for limiting Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief has reassured none of the other participants. These are Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, the remaining signatories of the deal, and the US, which withdrew in May 2018. Iran stuck to the terms of the deal for a year after the US breached it. Since the Trump administration not only restored but also added sanctions, in 2019 Iran began to exceed limits on enrichment and stockpiling and eventually reined in UN inspectors who had ensured compliance on Tehran’s part.

Unfortunately, commentators have warned that a return to compliance by the US, the instigator of the crisis over the pact, and Iran could be a long way off, if reaching a new deal remains a possibility.

It is expected that Tehran will adopt a hard-line in fresh negotiations as the new government under ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi continues to demand reassurances that the US, under incumbent President Joe Biden, or his successor, will not pull out again as it did under Donald Trump, and insist that all sanctions imposed on Iran since US withdrawal will be lifted.

Although Biden has assured Britain, France and Germany that the US will not again pull out of the deal unless Iran reneges, he cannot provide legal guarantees that a future administration will remain in the nuclear deal and not reimpose sanctions.

While Biden pledged during the 2020 election campaign to return to the nuclear deal, he has not honoured this verbal commitment. He should have done this early in his presidency along with decreeing the US return to the Paris climate accord and other agreements from which Trump withdrew. But Biden hesitated and listened to the bad advice of appointees who believed the US could bully Iran into major concessions on its involvement in the affairs of the region and weapons development. Such concessions were not granted while Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who was in charge when the deal was signed, was in office and will not be conceded by Raisi. He might not have become Iran’s president if Biden had quickly rejoined the nuclear deal, thereby boosting the Iranian moderate camp ahead of the June presidential election.

If Biden had kept his word and re-entered the deal within days or a week or two of taking office, Rouhani might well have been succeeded by a moderate who would have retained his determination to rescue the deal. Instead, Biden followed Trump’s lead by making demands unacceptable to Tehran and piling sanctions on Iran despite the failure of Trump’s policy of exerting “maximum pressure” on Iran by imposing 1,500 sanctions.

Tehran did not capitulate to Trump’s pressure strategy because, since the fall of the US-allied shah in 1979, Iran has resisted and survived US-imposed and US-driven international sanctions. They have crippled Iran’s economy, reduced oil exports, blocked access to international banking and punished its population by denying food, medical supplies and other essential supplies. This policy, upheld by Biden, has turned Iran’s 80 million people against the US and has, according to polls, accorded Raisi a modicum of popularity which Rouhani did not enjoy at the end of this term.

In other words, the Trump-Biden policy of “maximum pressure” has backfired. As far as Tehran is concerned, Biden enjoys no more trust than Trump. Biden’s team, which has been involved in six rounds of negotiations in Vienna, has lost credibility with pundits in Washington, the remaining signatories and Tehran. To make matters worse Secretary of State Antony Blinken has added former US ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, to the team with the intention of keeping Israel up to date on the talks and protecting the Israeli interest — which is to scupper the deal.

Meanwhile, Iran has moved ahead despite US policies and actions.

In retaliation for the US abandonment of the nuclear deal, Iran has exceeded limits on enrichment by exceeding 3.7 per cent purity to 4.5, 20 and 60 and has created stockpiles of such material beyond those permitted by the deal. Iran has deployed advanced centrifuges for enrichment which are far more efficient than those specified in the deal. Iran has cut back on cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency by curbing the access and activities of its inspectors. Some commentators argue that Iran is a “few weeks” or “several months” away from producing enough 90 per cent enriched uranium for manufacturing a bomb or bombs. A former Israeli head of Mossad intelligence dismissed these predictions while Tehran says it has no intention of building nuclear bombs.  If the US continues to exert “maximum pressure” plus under Biden, Tehran could change its mind even though possessing nuclear weapons does not mean they can be used.

Tehran has pivoted to the East by concluding a major investment and oil deal with China and focusing on rebuilding its domestic economy with the goal of making it independent. Iran has deepened its regional involvements in the Yemen war, the Syrian civil/proxy conflict, Iraq and Lebanon. Iran has also developed ballistic missiles and drones capable of striking US military positions in the region.

On the diplomatic plane, Tehran has conducted several rounds of reconciliation talks with Riyadh, a major US ally, with the aim of ending the rivalry between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. If successful, rapprochement could stabilise the region.

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Featured image is from OneWorld

US Blacklists Israeli Cyber-Predator, NSO Group

November 4th, 2021 by Richard Silverstein

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The US Commerce Department announced that it was blacklisting the Israeli malware maker, NSO Group, after digital rights NGOs exposed the widespread use of its spyware to target journalists, lawyers and human rights activists in 50 countries.  The designation found that the Israeli company had acted “contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the US.”  The US agency said:

“Today’s action is a part of the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to put human rights at the center of US foreign policy, including by working to stem the proliferation of digital tools used for repression…This effort is aimed at improving citizens’ digital security, combatting cyber threats, and mitigating unlawful surveillance and follows a recent interim final rule released by the commerce department establishing controls on the export, re-export, or in-country transfer of certain items that can be used for malicious cyber activities.”

Israel has cornered much of the world market for such malevolent cyber-tools.  Other Israeli companies in this market are Candiru, which was also blacklisted, Circles, Cellebrite, AnyVision, and Psy-Group.  Israel’s role in pioneering this invasive, destructive technology is not accidental.  It springs from the country’s hostile relations with many of its Arab neighbors; including with Palestinians, both citizens and those living under Occupation.  The security state mentality arising from this all enveloping sense of isolation and hostility, turned Israel’s military and intelligence to creating a vast surveillance state.  Technology was developed specifically tailored to the need to monitor and, if need be, target those perceived to be enemies.

Once Israel developed this technology domestically, it naturally determined to maximize its value through export. The country is one of the top ten weapons exporters in the world.  Over the past decade it has added this mass surveillance technology to its menu of products.  Scores of nations, especially those pursuing their own surveillance schemes to preserve their leaders’ domination and control, have flocked to the Israeli companies for solutions.

Only in the past decade have privacy and human rights NGOs begun to recognize the dangers posed by NSO’s flagship product, Pegasus.  Their activism came to fruition a few months ago when a coalition of such groups including Amnesty International, Citizen Lab and Forensic Architecture released their groundbreaking study, the Pegasus Papers.  It exposed the list of 50,000 individuals whose cell phone numbers were listed as prospective victims of NSO hacks.  That, combined with Senate hearings in which Sen. Ron Wyden suggested, despite NSO’s fervent denials, that Pegasus might have targeted US officials.  This indeed turned out to be true when the phone target list included Rob Malley, the US envoy to Iran nuclear deal negotiations.

The next step which Democratic lawmakers are urging would be to extend the blacklist designation to American investors, and thus deprive NSO of much needed capital for its expected public stock offering.

This development should considerably strengthen Whatsapp’s lawsuit against NSO, filed after a company client used one of its exploits to spy on 1,400 victims who used the texting app. One of them might have been Jeff Bezos, who was sent a phishing text message via Whatsapp by Saudi intelligence, which led to the exposure of private sexual images.  That, in turn, led to his divorce and subsequent marriage to the woman with whom he was having an affair.

The Israeli government has been doing damage control on NSO’s behalf since shortly after the Pegasus Papers were published.  Benny Gantz announced with fanfare an official inquiry into the matter.  Prime Minister Bennett met at the Climate conference with Emmanuel Macron, whose phone was hacked by Moroccan state security.  Israeli officials are attempting to mollify the French by promising that in future the company will not permit Pegasus to target French phones.  But this belies the fact that any French official traveling outside France could be targeted, just as Malley was.  Nor is there any guarantee that the notoriously mendacious company will honor its commitment.  NSO earns such fealty from Israeli officials because it advances state interests along with its own in its surveillance work.  So the state owes NSO, just as NSO owes the state in routinely approving its export licenses.

NSO released this statement defending itself, which left me queasy.  Not so much for the words themselves which are quite cleverly crafted; but for the discrepancy between them and the real truth:

“We look forward to presenting the full information regarding how we have the world’s most rigorous compliance and human rights programs that are based on the American values we deeply share, which already resulted in multiple terminations of contacts with government agencies that misused our products.”

How does the world’s most rigorous compliance and human rights program permit NSO to sell its wares to dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, which in turn uses them to concoct the murder plans against Jamal Khashoggi?  How does it sell the surveillance tech to Mexico’s intelligence services, which finds its way to those who murdered a Mexican journalist?  Is murder one of those “deeply shared American values?”  Is earning tens of millions in fees from kleptocracies like UAE, which in turn use Pegasus to lock up a human rights activist for ten years, an American value?  Are beatings of Muslim dissidents by Bengladeshi death squads who exploit Pegasus to target their prey, as American as apple pie?

Thankfully, the Biden administration hasn’t been snowed by this fake rhetoric.  It has seen NSO for what it is: a criminal enterprise based on cyber-predation.

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Richard Silverstein has published Tikun Olam since 2003, It exposes the secrets of the Israeli national security state. He lives in Seattle, but his heart is in the east. He publishes regularly at Middle East Eye and Jacobin Magazine. His work has also appeared in Al Jazeera English, The Nation, Truthout and other outlets.

Featured image is a screenshot from the US Department of Commerce via Tikun Olam

Glasgow Climate Summit Is an Elite Farce

November 4th, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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The Glasgow summit on climate change has been a media extravaganza. The ruling elites from all continents cooped up in their national capitals due to the raging pandemic, finally got a break to throw away their masks and take to their private jets to fly off to “Global Britain” to display their leadership qualities. 

There are some noble exceptions of course — such as Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, etc. which are predominantly low-lying atolls, rising just metres above the waves, who are the world’s moral conscience on climate change. But obscene grandstanding was the leitmotif of the two-day event in Glasgow. They came as if to party, exult in backslapping and enjoy themselves while taking care to impress their domestic audiences that their personalised politics would translate as gains for their countries.    

Of course, the two star performers were the UK prime minister Boris Johnson and the US president Joe Biden. For Johnson, the impressive attendance of almost 100 world leaders served to proclaim that Britain is back in the first league of nations, having successfully survived the Brexit. 

For the US president Joe Biden, it has been a more complicated story. He had the twin mission of reasserting America’s ability to lead the world as well as to draw synergy out of the summit for himself politically at a juncture when the coalition that propelled Democrats to power and himself to the presidency in 2020 seems to have collapsed and there are growing doubts within the party about his ability to push his domestic agenda across the finish line. read more

The Glasgow summit witnessed a lack of consensus among world leaders on how to move forward globally on climate change. They presented competing ideas but on core issues there was no consensus — such as the rich countries redeeming their pledge to help poor countries pivot away from fossil fuels. 

In Copenhagen, at COP15 in 2009, countries came together and said they would provide $100bn per year and would reach that target by 2020. They abysmally failed to meet the target. Arguably, in many ways the success of the Glasgow summit will depend on the issue of financial support. 

The only tangible outcomes at Glasgow are the two agreements to reduce methane gas emissions and protect the world’s forests. These are low-hanging fruits but are nonetheless two most effective strategies to keep the goal of limiting warming to 1.5˚C within reach while yielding co-benefits including improving public health and agricultural productivity. 

Over 100 countries representing over 40% of global methane emissions and over two thirds of global GDP are on board The Global Methane Pledge launched on Tuesday in Glasgow, which is a collective effort to reduce global methane emissions at least 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030, which could eliminate over 0.2˚C warming by 2050.

However, there were notable absentees from those signing on, including some major methane polluters like China, Russia, Australia and India. 

Again, more than 100 countries pledged on Tuesday to end deforestation by 2030, agreeing to a sweeping accord aimed at protecting some 85 percent of the world’s forests. There is no gainsaying the fact that the accord is crucial to absorbing carbon dioxide and slowing the rise in global temperatures. 

Again, India happens to be among the countries that dissociated from the accord on curbing deforestation. 

But Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his statement made some sensational announcements. The five pledges Modi made are that India will:

  • increase non-fossil energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030; 
  • meet 50% of energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030; 
  • reduce the total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes from now to 2030; 
  • reduce by 2030 the carbon intensity of the economy by 45% (from the previous target of 35%); and, 
  • achieve the net-zero target by 2070. 

Taken together, this will pose a gigantic transformation of India’s climate commitment through the next 8-year period but will involve huge mobilisation of resources. The noted expert on climate change Sunita Narain aptly used a metaphor to estimate that Modi has assumed an impossible challenge of “not just walking the talk but running it”. 

An International Energy Agency report in February titled India Energy Outlook 2021 estimates that the country will need to spend an additional $1.4 trillion to adopt clean energy technologies and be on a sustainable trajectory over the next twenty years. The investment is around 70% higher than what the government had envisaged. The report noted that the transformation would require massive advances in innovation, strong partnerships and vast amounts of capital. read more

Only few countries have dared to put their carbon reduction path in such terms in the near term, as Modi has done. Certainly, no country from the industrialised world has done it! Are we shooting ourselves on the foot by wanting to be one up on China? Who are we trying to impress? There are no easy answers.

Besides, as Narain noted, Modi’s announcement quintessentially means that India is capping future growth in the coal industry. “The big issue will be to ensure that growth is equitable, and the poor are not denied their right to development in this energy future. As we set out ourselves the goal to grow without pollution, we must work on increasingly clean, but affordable, energy for the poor,” Narain wrote. read more

Finally, the target of net-zero by 2070. What is intriguing is that as recently as on October 28, India had rejected calls to announce a net zero carbon emissions target and maintained that it was more important for the world to lay out a pathway to reduce such emissions.

The environment secretary R.P. Gupta told reporters in Delhi, “It is how much carbon you are going to put in the atmosphere before reaching net zero that is more important.”

But by November 1, India did an extraordinary volte-face by announcing at Glasgow that 2070 is the target for India to reach net zero carbon emissions. The zest to make dramatic announcements before an elite world audience probably got the better of our judgment.

The Russian presidential envoy on climate issues Ruslan Edelgeriyev characterised the Glasgow summit as a “race of ambitions”. He told Tass that the ambitious goals of some countries are “not underpinned by (clear) roadmaps and scientific data” and are based on “unjustified hopes for the emergence of new technologies.” 

Russia recently assumed 2060 as its net zero target, basing its decision on “scientific evidence and calculations.” But Edelgeriyev said that reaching the net zero target even before 2060 is possible, provided a “favourable domestic and international environment” is available. He cited the Western sanctions against Russian state-owned corporations. Besides, there are obstacles such as the opposition to declare nuclear power as a low carbon source of energy.

Russia hosts about 20% of the total area of global forests, and thus it fully supports the Glasgow declaration on forests and land use. But Russia would have liked also to consider forestation as valid “green projects” to offset CO2 emissions.

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Featured image: Protestors at venue of Glasgow summit on climate change (Source: Indian Punchline)

G20, Supply Chain Problems and the World Capitalist Crisis

By Abayomi Azikiwe, November 04, 2021

An economic downturn during the first quarter of 2020 resulted in the loss of millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of businesses. Governments were forced to shut down public and private institutions leaving billions of people idle severely curtailing or eliminating household incomes.

Latest Data on UK’s COVID-19 Vaccination Injuries and Deaths

By John Goss, November 03, 2021

A total of 1,738 deaths now reported by the MHRA along with over 1.2 million injuries suffered by over 378,000 people (an average of 3.3 injuries per person) following the experimental Covid-19 injections.

Food, Dependency and Dispossession. “Corporate Consolidation of the Entire Global Agri-food Chain”

By Colin Todhunter, November 03, 2021

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

“New Normal” Winter Is Coming: Social Purge on “The Unvaccinated”

By CJ Hopkins, November 03, 2021

That’s right, it’s nearly time once again for the global-capitalist ruling classes to whip the New Normal masses into a state of mindless mass hysteria over an imaginary apocalyptic virus. the same imaginary apocalyptic virus that they have whipped the New Normal masses into a state of mass hysteria over throughout the Winter for the last two years.

Predators with Badges: The Sex Traffickers on America’s Police Forces

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, November 03, 2021

Here’s a news flash for you: there are sexual predators on America’s police forces. Indeed, when it comes to sex trafficking—the buying and selling of young girls, boys and women for sex—police have become both predators and pimps. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, “Hundreds of police officers across the country have turned from protectors to predators, using the power of their badge to extort sex.”

Will Kids be Forced to Get a COVID Vaccine?

By Karol Markowicz, November 03, 2021

The vaccine was neither approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), nor recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for pediatric use when the administration made its purchase. Meanwhile, states are already making policy around vaccinating children.

Update: Army Flight Surgeon Who Urged Pentagon to Ground Vaccinated Pilots Testifies to Senate Panel

By Jamie White, November 03, 2021

An Army flight surgeon who recommended in September the Pentagon ground all pilots who took the COVID-19 shot testified before a Senate panel on Tuesday. During her testimony to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Lieutenant Colonel Theresa Long described how she had to ground three pilots for COVID vaccine injuries.

Doctors and COVID-19 Vaccine Injured Testify in Washington D.C. to Crimes Against Humanity – CDC, FDA, NIH, Fauci Are No Shows

By Brian Shilhavy, November 03, 2021

In 2020 Senator Johnson held meetings in Washington D.C. exposing the criminal activities of Big Pharma and federal health agencies in suppressing early treatment options for COVID-19 that thousands of doctors were using with a near 100% success rate.

Injuries and Fatalities of Covid Jabs: OSHA Changes Rule to Cover Up Vaccine Injuries

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, November 03, 2021

As reported by Kim Iversen, around the world people are gathering for massive protests against COVID shot mandates. In mid-September 2021, Italy became the first European country to announce the implementation of mandatory COVID-19 health passes (so-called “Green Pass”) for all workers, both public and private.

12-Year-Old Girl Fighting for Her Life in ICU after Heart Problems Caused by the Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine

By İsmail Duman, November 03, 2021

A 12-year-old girl is fighting for her life in ICU after suffering heart complications caused by the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. The 12-year-old Grade 6 pupil, who is a student at Wat Don Sai School, received her shot on October 19th. Several days later, she complained to her mother about chest pain and shortness of breath.

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G20, Supply Chain Problems and the World Capitalist Crisis

November 4th, 2021 by Abayomi Azikiwe

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Rome, Italy was the scene of the annual summit of the Group of 20, popularly known as the G20, an inter-governmental organization that brings together the most industrialized countries within several geo-political regions.

The group is made up of 19 states and the European Union (EU) representing a large majority of the world’s gross domestic product, the total sum of goods and services produced within a society.

These countries which comprise the G20 are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK, and the U.S.

This year’s meeting held over the weekend of October 30-31 comes at a time of profound uncertainty prompted by a global public health crisis not seen since the period during the ending of World War I and its aftermath. The influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 killed millions of people across the planet while today, the rapidly transmissible COVID-19 virus has left even more sickened and dead than over a century ago.

An economic downturn during the first quarter of 2020 resulted in the loss of millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of businesses. Governments were forced to shut down public and private institutions leaving billions of people idle severely curtailing or eliminating household incomes.

G20 Summit participants included heads-of-state and global financial officials (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

In the midst of economic contractions, the difficulties of supply chain management have become a major impediment to any semblance of a financial recovery worldwide. If production has been disrupted, there will inevitably be problems related to the flow of goods and services between business centers and their market locations. Other issues including the storage and eventual transport of raw materials and consumer products to their destinations have been disrupted leaving huge gaps in supply chains.

These problems have been compounded by what the capitalists describe as labor shortages, where workers in the millions are leaving jobs for various reasons related to the social impact of the pandemic. Moreover, a rash of industrial actions by labor unions in the United States is in response to low-wages, safety concerns and speed-ups, is exacerbating the problem.

In Rome at the G20, U.S. President Joe Biden acknowledged the crisis yet provided no concrete measures to reverse the process. The Biden program of reforms to the tune of $ 500 billion for infrastructure and $3.5 trillion for social spending is stalled in the Congress.

Many of the other world leaders from the EU, Britain, Africa and Asia viewed Biden’s remarks during the G20 summit with much skepticism. Even journalists questioned the administration’s ability to get significant legislation through the House of Representative and the Senate which would provide the necessary funding for the rebuilding of urban, suburban and rural areas.

Even less certain of passage is the $3.5 trillion package that would address the lack of childcare, adequate wages and the large-scale investment in government programs aimed at assisting working families through poverty alleviation. Without the social spending it is not possible to ameliorate the problems which have been aggravated by the pandemic.

Biden in his closing statement to the G20 pledged to hold a White House summit in the near future to address the supply chain bottlenecks. The French Press Agency (AFP) noted in an article that:

“Among concrete steps planned by the United States, the White House said, would be to provide new financial aid to Mexico and Central American countries to resolve logistical back-ups, as well as to Southeast Asian nations to help them streamline customs procedures.

The statement said Biden would issue an executive order aimed at streamlining the supply chain affecting important military material. A yet-to-be scheduled international summit next year will bring together private companies, labor organizations and governmental agencies to explore further remedies, the White House said. ‘Coordination is key,’ said Biden. ‘We need to work together.’” (See this)

Overall, the G20 concluded with no commitment to net neutrality by 2050. There was a promise to halt the funding of new coal plants internationally and to pursue efforts aimed at limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. These same issues were discussed further at the COP26 Summit held in Glasgow, Scotland immediately after the conclusion of the G20 in Rome.

Attacks on China at the G20

Biden made it a talking point that he was disappointed that People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping did not attend the G20 Summit in person. However, President Xi did address the gathering in a video streamed message to the heads-of-state, delegates and journalists covering the event.

Xi made several proposals to the G20 largely focusing on the need for the effective worldwide distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Countries within the underdeveloped regions have been left behind in the rush to vaccinate populations against the virus.

The Chinese leader criticized the U.S. for attempts to promote India and Taiwan as alternatives to the manufacturing and trade capacities of Beijing. Xi stressed that the sidelining of China economically would not happen.

A report published by Global Times on the address by Xi to the G20 emphasized:

“To address the complex and far-reaching impact of COVID-19 unleashed on the world economy, Xi said major economies should adopt responsible macroeconomic policies, prevent measures taken for themselves from entailing rising inflation, exchange rate fluctuations or mounting debts, avoid negative spillover on developing countries, and ensure the sound operation of the international economic and financial system. Xi said that forming exclusive blocs or even drawing ideological lines will only cause division and create more obstacles and do harm to scientific and technological innovation.”

This escalating tension between the U.S. and China is impacting the supply chain shortages which has resulted in production delays and shutdowns. Capitalist corporations such as Apple are concerned that the lack of a long-term strategy on the part of the U.S. government could damage their ability to market products domestically and internationally.

The semiconductor industry in the U.S. is highly dependent upon China and the impetus by governmental officials to boost domestic production will not be an easy task. There are plans underway for the building of a Semiconductor Manufacturing Company facility from Taiwan in the state of Arizona. Such approaches will only aggravate the confrontation between Washington and Beijing.

In the heavy industrial manufacturing sectors, the problems related to supply chain bottlenecks are gaining widespread attention. Leading executives are coming to grips with the inability to acquire parts due to political considerations related to trade tariffs which were imposed under the previous administration of President Donald Trump. Biden has not lifted these tariffs and instead is intensifying this trade war against China.

According to the business media network CNBC:

“The auto industry is a good example, where the chip shortage continues to wreak havoc for carmakers. The car industry is all about efficiency and gaining scale, and in a future scenario in which companies have to start divvying up semiconductor buying based on a government mandate, ‘you start chipping away at these economies of scale,’ said Mark Fields, former Ford CEO and current interim CEO at Hertz, on the recent CNBC TEC Town Hall. ‘It’s not a good economic choice.’”

Even in the food production sectors, various factors such as the lack of equipment and workers are fueling the inflationary trend which is worrying to consumers. Oil prices have gone up significantly alongside the rapid increase in the price of both new and used automobiles.

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

Featured image: China delivers sinopharm vaccines (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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.

***

 

Latest UK Adverse Reactions and Fatalities to 20th October 2021 per the MHRA following the experimental Covid-19 injections (released by the MHRA on 29th October 2021).

A total of 1,738 deaths now reported by the MHRA along with over 1.2 million injuries suffered by over 378,000 people (an average of 3.3 injuries per person) following the experimental Covid-19 injections

Note: The number of injuries /deaths reported are dependent on many factors including numbers of injections administered, how many of these have been second and possibly third doses along with the age groups of those who have received these doses and indeed the work of the MHRA in ensuring all cases by all manufacturers get investigated and reported in a timely and consistent manner.

Link to data: click here.

Latest UK Adverse Reactions and Fatalities to 20th October 2021 per the MHRA following the experimental Covid-19 injections

A total of 1,738 deaths now reported by the MHRA along with over 1.2 million injuries suffered by over 378,000 people (an average of 3.3 injuries per person) following the experimental Covid-19 injections

Link to data: click here.

Latest UK Adverse Reactions and Fatalities to 20th October 2021 per the MHRA following the experimental Covid-19 injections

A total of 1,738 deaths now reported by the MHRA along with over 1.2 million injuries suffered by over 378,000 people (an average of 3.3 injuries per person) following the experimental Covid-19 injections

Link to data: click here.

In the last 7 days:

There were 2,581 extra individual reports of adverse reactions following the Covid-19 injections in the last week accounting for 7,513 extra injuries and deaths with 23 extra deaths being reported by the MHRA since last week’s report. Pfizer accounted for 12 of these extra deaths with 10 more being reported from AstraZeneca and 1 more death from Moderna.

Link to data: click here.

Pfizer Report – All Deaths and Injuries (MHRA-UK)

Please share this MHRA Report with parents of young children. It shows the Injuries and fatalities reported and disclosed by the MHRA today (data to 20th October as released by the MHRA on 29th October 2021) following the Pfizer experimental Covid-19 Injections.

Let them know that it is estimated that only 1-10% of injuries and fatalities ever get reported supporting evidence to this 1-10% statement can be found on this post here.

All Reports

MHRA Reported Adverse Reactions and Deaths

-Reports for all UK manufacturers of Covid-19 injections covering the latest disclosed Injuries and Fatalities to 20th October 2021

Table above shows the total number of doses of Covid-19 injections administered in the week to 20th October per the MHRA

As with last week no further first doses of either AstraZeneca or Moderna were administered in the last week (data to 20th October 2021 as released by the MHRA on 29th October 2021).

Link to data: click here.

Pfizer Only

Table above shows UK latest adverse reactions and fatalities reported to and disclosed by the MHRA to 20th October (released by the MHRA on 29th October 2021) for just the Pfizer injections

Link to data: click here.

AstraZeneca Only

Table above shows UK latest adverse reactions and fatalities reported to and disclosed by the MHRA to 20th October (released by the MHRA on 29th October 2021) for just the AstraZeneca injections

Link to data: click here.

Moderna Only

Table above shows UK latest adverse reactions and fatalities reported to and disclosed by the MHRA to 20th October (released by the MHRA on 29th October 2021) for just the Moderna injections

Moderna injections account for fewer than 3% of all UK injections administered but 4.5% of all adverse reports

Link to data: click here.

All Injection Manufacturers – UK

Table Above shows UK latest adverse reactions and fatalities reported to and disclosed by the MHRA to 20th October (released by the MHRA on 29th October 2021) for all Covid-19 injections

Link to data: click here.

Latest UK Covid-19 injections administered in the UK to 20th October 2021 – per the UK govt

Link to data: click here.

Deaths in England and Wales continue to rise.

In the 15 week period since the start of July 14,697 more people have died in England and Wales (post injection roll out) compared to the equivalent weeks in 2020 (pre injection roll out), almost an 11% increase.

The week to 15th October 2021 saw 643 more deaths compared to the equivalent week in 2020; 1,021 more deaths compared to this same week in 2019.

Compared to 2019 there have been 14,001 extra deaths in this 14 week period in 2021 almost a 10% rise.

Link here.

Table shows that 5,324 extra people have died (post injection roll out) with Covid in the 15 week period to 15th October 2021 compared to the equivalent, pre-injection period, in 2020 with an increase in Covid deaths in all settings.

The overwhelming majority of these Covid related deaths have been in a hospital where most Covid deaths are now occurring, this is in stark contrast what we saw at the start of the “pandemic” where most deaths with Covid were in Care Homes.

Definition of Covid deaths in this govt data set is where Covid was mentioned on a death certificate

Link here.

Table shows the breakdown of the 14,697 extra people who have died in the 15 week period to 15th October 2021 compared to the equivalent period in 2020.

It shows that of these extra deaths 9,373 (64%) were not, per the govt, related to Covid-19.

Are these deaths the result of Covid-19 injection damage not being reported to or by the MHRA?

The extra Covid-19 deaths could also to be due to the Covid-19 injections suppressing the immune system, particularly over the first two weeks post injection, which has seen many people succumb to numerous types of infections.

Definition of Covid deaths in this govt data set is where Covid was mentioned on a death certificate

Link here.

110 extra deaths in 0-19 year olds in England and Wales in just a period of 15 weeks to 15th October 2021 compared to the equivalent period in 2020.

9 of these extra deaths in 0-19 year olds compared to 2020 were in the last week alone (week to 15th Oct).

Are these Covid-19 injection related deaths in children?

Why are younger children also dying who are not yet receiving the injections? Is this transmission from mothers through breast milk after they themselves are injected or the lack of appropriate care as the health system is diverted towards Covid related issues?

Link here.

Table shows the breakdown of all deaths in the 15 week period to 15th October 2021 compared to the equivalent period in 2020.

Definition of Covid deaths in this govt data set is where Covid was mentioned on a death certificate

Link here.

Table shows a variance of where deaths in the 15 week period to 15th October 2021 have taken place compared to the equivalent period in 2020. Deaths are overwhelmingly now taking place in hospital but deaths in Care Homes (non Covid related) are also significantly up on 2020.

Definition of Covid deaths in this govt data set is where Covid was mentioned on a death certificate

Link here.

Latest US VAERS Covid-19 Injection Deaths to 22nd October 2021, read here

Sample of the latest US VAERS Covid-19 Injection injuries to 22nd October 2021, read here

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We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in the report ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agri-food corporations.

Of course, the billionaire interests behind this try to portray what they are doing as some kind of humanitarian endeavour – saving the planet with ‘climate-friendly solutions’, helping farmers or feeding the world. In the cold light of day, however, what they are really doing is repackaging and greenwashing the dispossessive strategies of imperialism as ‘feeding the world’.

In 10 sections (listed below), the following sets out some key current trends affecting food and agriculture and moves on to look at the ongoing farmers’ struggle in India, not least because the protests there and that country’s agrarian crisis encapsulate what is at stake.

  • Toxic Agriculture and The Gates Foundation
  • Failed Green Revolutions 1.0 and 2.0
  • Financialisation vs Agroecology
  • Subverting Development
  • Neoliberal Death Knell?
  • Viral Inequality
  • Colonial Deindustrialisation
  • Agristacking the System
  • Neoliberal Playbook
  • Farmers’ Protest and Global Struggle Against Tyranny

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1) Toxic Agriculture and the Gates Foundation

As of December 2018, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had $46.8 billion in assets. It is the largest charitable foundation in the world, distributing more aid for global health than any government.

The Gates Foundation is a major funder of the CGIAR system (formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) – a global partnership whose stated aim is to strive for a food-secure future.

In 2016, the Gates Foundation was accused of dangerously and unaccountably distorting the direction of international development. The charges were laid out in a report by Global Justice Now: ‘Gated Development – Is the Gates Foundation always a force for good?

The report’s author, Mark Curtis, outlined the foundation’s promotion of industrial agriculture across Africa, which would undermine existing sustainable, small-scale farming that is providing the vast majority of food across the continent.

Curtis described how the foundation works with US agri-commodity trader Cargill in an $8 million project to “develop the soya value chain” in southern Africa. Cargill is the biggest global player in the production of and trade in soya with heavy investments in South America where GM soya monocrops (and associated agrochemicals) have displaced rural populations and caused health problems and environmental damage.

The Gates-funded project will likely enable Cargill to capture a hitherto untapped African soya market and eventually introduce genetically modified (GM) soya onto the continent. The Gates foundation is also supporting projects involving other chemical and seed corporations, including DuPont, Syngenta and Bayer. It is promoting a model of industrial agriculture, the increasing use of agrochemicals and GM patented seeds and the privatisation of extension services.

What the Gates Foundation is doing is part of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) initiative, which is based on the premise that hunger and malnutrition in Africa are mainly the result of a lack of technology and functioning markets. AGRA has been intervening directly in the formulation of African governments’ agricultural policies on issues like seeds and land, opening up African markets to US agribusiness.

More than 80% of Africa’s seed supply comes from millions of small-scale farmers recycling and exchanging seed from year to year. But AGRA is supporting the introduction of commercial (chemical-dependent) seed systems, which risk enabling a few large companies to control seed research and development, production and distribution.

Since the 1990s, there has been a steady process of national seed law reviews, sponsored by USAID and the G8 along with Gates and others, opening the door to multinational corporations’ involvement in seed production, including the acquisition of every sizeable seed enterprise on the African continent.

Health and pesticides

The Gates Foundation is also very active in the area of health, which is ironic given its promotion of industrial agriculture and its reliance on health-damaging agrochemicals.

The foundation is a prominent funder of the World Health Organization and UNICEF. Gates has been the largest or second largest contributor to the WHO’s budget in recent years. Perhaps this sheds some light onto why so many international reports omit the effects of pesticides on health.

The UN expert on toxics, Baskut Tuncak, said in a November 2017 article:

“Our children are growing up exposed to a toxic cocktail of weedkillers, insecticides, and fungicides. It’s on their food and in their water, and it’s even doused over their parks and playgrounds.”

In February 2020, Tuncak rejected the idea that the risks posed by highly hazardous pesticides could be managed safely. He told Unearthed (GreenPeace UK’s journalism website) that there is nothing sustainable about the widespread use of highly hazardous pesticides for agriculture. Whether they poison workers, extinguish biodiversity, persist in the environment or accumulate in a mother’s breast milk, Tuncak argued that these are unsustainable, cannot be used safely and should have been phased out of use long ago.

In his 2017 article, he stated:

“The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child… makes it clear that states have an explicit obligation to protect children from exposure to toxic chemicals, from contaminated food and polluted water, and to ensure that every child can realise their right to the highest attainable standard of health. These and many other rights of the child are abused by the current pesticide regime. These chemicals are everywhere and they are invisible.”

Tuncak added that paediatricians have referred to childhood exposure to pesticides as creating a “silent pandemic” of disease and disability. He noted that exposure in pregnancy and childhood is linked to birth defects, diabetes and cancer and stated that children are particularly vulnerable to these toxic chemicals: increasing evidence shows that even at ‘low’ doses of childhood exposure, irreversible health impacts can result.

He concluded that the overwhelming reliance of regulators on industry-funded studies, the exclusion of independent science from assessments and the confidentiality of studies relied upon by authorities must change.

A joint investigation by Unearthed and the NGO Public Eye has found the world’s five biggest pesticide manufacturers are making more than a third of their income from leading products, chemicals that pose serious hazards to human health and the environment.

An analysis of a huge database of 2018’s top-selling ‘crop protection products’ revealed the world’s leading agrochemical companies made more than 35% of their sales from pesticides classed as highly hazardous to people, animals or ecosystems. The investigation identified billions of dollars of income for agrochemical giants BASF, Bayer, Corteva, FMC and Syngenta from chemicals found by regulatory authorities to pose health hazards like cancer or reproductive failure.

This investigation is based on an analysis of a huge dataset of pesticide sales from the agribusiness intelligence company Phillips McDougall. The data covers around 40% of the $57.6bn global market for agricultural pesticides in 2018. It focuses on 43 countries, which between them represent more than 90% of the global pesticide market by value.

While Bill Gates promotes a chemical-intensive model of agriculture that dovetails with the needs and value chains of agri-food conglomerates, there are spiralling rates of disease, especially in the UK and the US.

The world’s most widely used herbicide, glyphosate-based formulas (Roundup being the most well-known – manufactured by Monsanto – now Bayer) affects the gut microbiome and is responsible for a global metabolic health crisis provoked by an obesity epidemic. Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has written extensively on this. It also causes epigenetic changes in humans and animals – diseases skip a generation then appear.

However, the mainstream narrative is to blame individuals for their ailments and conditions which are said to result from ‘lifestyle choices’. But Monsanto’s German owner Bayer has confirmed that more than 40,000 people have filed suits against Monsanto alleging that exposure to Roundup herbicide caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto covered up the risks.

Each year, as Mason has emphasised, there are steady increases in the numbers of new cancers and increases in deaths from the same cancers, with no treatments making any difference to the numbers; at the same time, these treatments maximise the bottom line of the drug companies while the impacts of agrochemicals remain conspicuously absent from the mainstream disease narrative.

As part of its hegemonic strategy, the Gates Foundation says it wants to ensure global food security and optimise health and nutrition. But it seems happy to ignore the deleterious health impacts of agrochemicals as it continues to promote the interests of the firms that produce them.

Piracy and dispossession

Why does Gates not support agroecological approaches? Various high-level UN reports have advocated agroecology for ensuring equitable global food security. This would leave smallholder agriculture both intact and independent from Western agro-capital, something which runs counter to the underlying aims of the corporations which Gates supports. Their model depends on dispossession and creating market dependency for their inputs.

A model that has been imposed on nations for many decades and which relies on the dynamics of a system based on agro-export mono-cropping to earn foreign exchange revenue linked to sovereign dollar-denominated debt repayment and World Bank/IMF ‘structural adjustment’ directives. The outcomes have included a displacement of a food-producing peasantry, the consolidation of Western agri-food oligopolies and the transformation of many countries from food self-sufficiency into food deficit areas.

Gates is consolidating Western agro-capital in Africa in the name of ‘food security’. It is very convenient for him to ignore the fact that at the time of decolonisation in the 1960s Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter with exports averaging 1.3 million tons a year between 1966-70. The continent now imports 25% of its food, with almost every country being a net food importer. More generally, developing countries produced a billion-dollar yearly surplus in the 1970s but by 2004 were importing US$ 11 billion a year.

The Gates Foundation promotes a corporate-industrial farming system and the strengthening of a global neoliberal, fossil-fuel-dependent food regime that by its very nature fuels and thrives on unjust trade policies, population displacement and land dispossession (something which Gates once called for but euphemistically termed “land mobility”), commodity monocropping, soil and environmental degradation, illness, nutrient-deficient diets, a narrowing of the range of food crops, water shortages, pollution and the eradication of biodiversity.

At the same time, Gates is helping corporate interests to appropriate and commodify knowledge. Since 2003, CGIAR and its 15 centres have received more than $720 million from the Gates Foundation. In a June 2016 article, Vandana Shiva notes that the centres are accelerating the transfer of research and seeds to corporations, facilitating intellectual property piracy and seed monopolies created through IP laws and seed regulations.

Gates is also funding Diversity Seek, a global initiative to take patents on the seed collections through genomic mapping. Seven million crop accessions are in public seed banks. This could allow five corporations to own this diversity.

Shiva says:

“DivSeek is a global project launched in 2015 to map the genetic data of the peasant diversity of seeds held in gene banks. It robs the peasants of their seeds and knowledge, it robs the seed of its integrity and diversity, its evolutionary history, its link to the soil and reduces it to ‘code’. It is an extractive project to ‘mine’ the data in the seed to ‘censor’ out the commons.”

She notes that the peasants who evolved this diversity have no place in DivSeek – their knowledge is being mined and not recognised, honoured or conserved: an enclosure of the genetic commons.

The Gates Foundation talks about health but facilitates the roll-out of a highly subsidised and toxic form of agriculture whose agrochemicals cause immense damage. It talks of alleviating poverty and malnutrition and tackling food insecurity, yet it bolsters an inherently unjust global food regime which is responsible for perpetuating food insecurity, population displacement, land dispossession, privatisation of the commons and neoliberal policies that remove support from the vulnerable and marginalised.

Bill Gates’s ‘philanthropy’ is part of a neoliberal agenda that attempts to manufacture consent and buy-off or co-opt policy makers, thereby preventing and marginalising more radical agrarian change that would challenge prevailing power structures and act as impediments to this agenda.

Gates and his corporate cronies’ activities are part of the hegemonic and dispossessive strategies of imperialism. This involves displacing a food-producing  peasantry and subjugating those who remain in agriculture to the needs of global distribution and supply chains dominated by the Western agri-food conglomerates.

And now, under the notion of ‘climate emergency’, Gates et al are promoting the latest technologies – gene editing, data-driven farming, cloud-based services, lab created ‘food’, monopolistic e-commerce retail and trading platforms, etc. – under the guise of one-world precision agriculture.

2) Failed Green Revolutions 1.0 and 2.0

Since the Green Revolution, US agribusiness and financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have sought to hook farmers and nation states on corporate seeds and proprietary inputs as well as loans to construct the type of agro-infrastructure that chemical-intensive farming requires.

Monsanto-Bayer and other agribusiness concerns have since the 1990s been attempting to further consolidate their grip on global agriculture and farmers’ corporate dependency with the rollout of GM seeds.

In her report, ‘Reclaim the Seed’, Vandana Shiva says:

“In the 1980s, the chemical corporations started to look at genetic engineering and patenting of seed as new sources of super profits. They took farmers varieties from the public gene banks, tinkered with the seed through conventional breeding or genetic engineering, and took patents.”

Shiva talks about the Green Revolution and seed colonialism and the pirating of farmers seeds and knowledge. She says that 768,576 accessions of seeds were taken from farmers in Mexico alone:

“… taking the farmers seeds that embodies their creativity and knowledge of breeding. The ‘civilising mission’ of Seed Colonisation is the declaration that farmers are ‘primitive’ and the varieties they have bred are ‘primitive’, ‘inferior’, ‘low yielding’ and have to be ‘substituted’ and ‘replaced’ with superior seeds from a superior race of breeders, so called ‘modern varieties’ and ‘improved varieties’ bred for chemicals.”

It is interesting to note that prior to the Green Revolution many of the older crops carried dramatically higher counts of nutrients per calorie. The amount of cereal each person must  consume to fulfil daily dietary requirements has therefore gone up. For instance, the iron content of millet is four times that of rice. Oats carry four times more zinc than wheat. As a result, between 1961 and 2011, the protein, zinc and iron contents of the world’s directly consumed cereals declined by 4%, 5% and 19%, respectively.

The high-input chemical-intensive Green Revolution model helped the drive towards greater monocropping and has resulted in less diverse diets and less nutritious foods. Its long-term impact has led to soil degradation and mineral imbalances, which in turn have adversely affected human health.

Adding weight to this argument, the authors of this paper from the International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development state:

“Cropping systems promoted by the green revolution have… resulted in reduced food-crop diversity and decreased availability of micronutrients. Micronutrient malnutrition is causing increased rates of chronic diseases (cancer, heart diseases, stroke, diabetes and osteoporosis) in many developing nations; more than three billion people are directly affected by the micronutrient deficiencies. Unbalanced use of mineral fertilizers and a decrease in the use of organic manure are the main causes of the nutrient deficiency in the regions where the cropping intensity is high.”

The authors imply that the link between micronutrient deficiency in soil and human nutrition is increasingly regarded as important:

“Moreover, agricultural intensification requires an increased nutrient flow towards and greater uptake of nutrients by crops. Until now, micronutrient deficiency has mostly been addressed as a soil and, to a smaller extent, plant problem. Currently, it is being addressed as a human nutrition problem as well. Increasingly, soils and food systems are affected by micronutrients disorders, leading to reduced crop production and malnutrition and diseases in humans and plants.”

Although India, for example, might now be self-sufficient in various staples, many of these foodstuffs are high calorie-low nutrient, have led to the displacement of more nutritionally diverse cropping systems and have effectively mined the soil of nutrients. The importance of renowned agronomist William Albrecht, who died in 1974, should not be overlooked here and his work on healthy soils and healthy people.

In this respect, India-based botanist Stuart Newton states that the answers to Indian agricultural productivity is not that of embracing the international, monopolistic, corporate-conglomerate promotion of chemically-dependent GM crops: India has to restore and nurture its depleted, abused soils and not harm them any further, with dubious chemical overload, which is endangering human and animal health.

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research reports that soil is become deficient in nutrients and fertility. The country is losing 5,334 million tonnes of soil every year due to soil erosion because of the indiscreet and excessive use of fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides.

Aside from these deleterious impacts and the health consequences of chemical-dependent crops (see Dr Rosemary Mason’s reports on the academia.edu website), New Histories of the Green Revolution (Glenn Stone, 2019) debunks the claim that the Green Revolution boosted productivity, The Violence of the Green Revolution (Vandana Shiva, 1989) details (among other things) the negative impacts on rural communities in Punjab and Bhaskar Save’s open letter to Indian officials in 2006 discusses the ecological devastation.

And for good measure, in a 2019 paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences the authors note that native wheat varieties in India have higher nutrition content than the Green Revolution varieties. This is important to note given that Professor Glenn Stone argues that all the Green Revolution actually ‘succeeded’ in doing was put more wheat in the Indian diet (displacing other foodstuffs). Stone argues that food productivity per capita showed no increased or even actually decreased.

Sold on the promise that hybrid seeds and associated chemical inputs would enhance food security on the basis of higher productivity, agriculture was transformed. But in places like Punjab, Shiva notes that to gain access to seeds and chemicals farmers had to take out loans and debt became (and remains) a constant worry. Many became impoverished and social relations within rural communities were radically altered: previously, farmers would save and exchange seeds but now they became dependent on unscrupulous money lenders, banks and seed manufacturers and suppliers. In her book, Shiva describes the social marginalisation and violence that resulted from the Green Revolution and its impacts.

It is also worthwhile discussing Bhaskar Save. He argued that the actual reason for pushing the Green Revolution was the much narrower goal of increasing the marketable surplus of a few relatively less perishable cereals to fuel the urban-industrial expansion favoured by the government and a few industries at the expense of a more diverse and nutrient-sufficient agriculture, which rural folk – who make up the bulk of India’s population – had long benefited from.

Before, Indian farmers had been largely self-sufficient and even produced surpluses, though generally smaller quantities of many more items. These, particularly perishables, were tougher to supply urban markets. And so, the nation’s farmers were steered to grow chemically cultivated monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than their traditional polycultures that needed no purchased inputs.

Tall, indigenous varieties of grain provided more biomass, shaded the soil from the sun and protected against its erosion under heavy monsoon rains, but these very replaced with dwarf varieties, which led to more vigorous growth of weeds and were able to compete successfully with the new stunted crops for sunlight.

As a result, the farmer had to spend more labour and money in weeding, or spraying herbicides. Furthermore, straw growth with the dwarf grain crops fell and much less organic matter was locally available to recycle the fertility of the soil, leading to an artificial need for externally procured inputs. Inevitably, the farmers resorted to use more chemicals and soil degradation and erosion set in.

The exotic varieties, grown with chemical fertilisers, were more susceptible to ‘pests and diseases’, leading to yet more chemicals being poured. But the attacked insect species developed resistance and reproduced prolifically. Their predators – spiders, frogs, etc. – that fed on these insects and controlled their populations were exterminated. So were many beneficial species like earthworms and bees.

Save noted that India, next to South America, receives the highest rainfall in the world. Where thick vegetation covers the ground, the soil is alive and porous and at least half of the rain is soaked and stored in the soil and sub-soil strata.

A good amount then percolates deeper to recharge aquifers or groundwater tables. The living soil and its underlying aquifers thus serve as gigantic, ready-made reservoirs. Half a century ago, most parts of India had enough fresh water all year round, long after the rains had stopped and gone. But clear the forests, and the capacity of the earth to soak the rain, drops drastically. Streams and wells run dry.

While the recharge of groundwater has greatly reduced, its extraction has been mounting. India is presently mining over 20 times more groundwater each day than it did in 1950. But most of India’s people – living on hand-drawn or hand-pumped water in villages and practising only rain-fed farming – continue to use the same amount of ground water per person, as they did generations ago.

More than 80% of India’s water consumption is for irrigation, with the largest share hogged by chemically cultivated cash crops. For example, one acre of chemically grown sugarcane requires as much water as would suffice 25 acres of jowar, bajra or maize. The sugar factories too consume huge quantities.

From cultivation to processing, each kilo of refined sugar needs two to three tonnes of water. Save argued this could be used to grow, by the traditional, organic way, about 150 to 200 kg of nutritious jowar or bajra (native millets).

Save wrote:

“This country has more than 150 agricultural universities. But every year, each churns out several hundred ‘educated’ unemployables, trained only in misguiding farmers and spreading ecological degradation. In all the six years a student spends for an MSc in agriculture, the only goal is short-term – and narrowly perceived – ‘productivity’. For this, the farmer is urged to do and buy a hundred things. But not a thought is spared to what a farmer must never do so that the land remains unharmed for future generations and other creatures. It is time our people and government wake up to the realisation that this industry-driven way of farming – promoted by our institutions – is inherently criminal and suicidal!“

It is increasingly clear that the Green Revolution has been a failure in terms of its devastating environmental impacts, the undermining of highly productive traditional low-input agriculture and its sound ecological footing, the displacement of rural populations and the adverse impacts on communities, nutrition, health and regional food security.

Even where yields may have increased, we need to ask: what has been the cost of any increased yield of commodities in terms of local food security, overall nutrition per acre, water tables, soil structure and new pests and disease pressures?

These are just a brief selection of peer reviewed and ‘grey’ literature which detail the adverse impacts of the Green Revolution.

Genetic engineering

As for GM crops, often described as Green Revolution 2.0, these too have failed to deliver on the promises made and, like the 1.0 version, have often had devastating consequences.

Regardless, the industry and its well-funded lobbyists and bought career scientists continue to spin the line that GM crops are a marvellous success and that the world needs even more of them to avoid a global food shortage. GM crops are required to feed the world is a well-worn industry slogan trotted out at every available opportunity. Just like the claim of GM crops being a tremendous success, this too is based on a myth.

There is no global shortage of food. Even under any plausible future population scenario, there will be no shortage as evidenced by scientist Dr Jonathan Latham in his paper “The Myth of a Food Crisis“.

However, new gene drive and gene editing techniques have now been developed and the industry is seeking the unregulated commercial release of products that are based on these methods.

It does not want plants, animals and micro-organisms created with gene editing to be subject to safety checks, monitoring or consumer labelling. This is concerning given the real dangers that these techniques pose.

It really is a case of old GMO wine in new bottles.

And this is not lost on a coalition of 162 civil society, farmers and business organisations which has called on Vice-President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans to ensure that new genetic engineering techniques continue to be regulated in accordance with existing EU GMO (genetically modified oragisms) standards.

The coalition argues that these new techniques can cause a range of unwanted genetic modifications that can result in the production of novel toxins or allergens or in the transfer of antibiotic resistance genes. Its open letter adds that even intended modifications can result in traits which could raise food safety, environmental or animal welfare concerns.

The European Court of Justice ruled in 2018 that organisms obtained with new genetic modification techniques must be regulated under the EU’s existing GMO laws. However, there has been intense lobbying from the agriculture biotech industry to weaken the legislation, aided financially by the Gates Foundation.

The coalition states that various scientific publications show that new GM techniques allow developers to make significant genetic changes, which can be very different from those that happen in nature. These new GMOs pose similar or greater risks than older-style GMOs.

In addition to these concerns, a paper from Chinese scientists, ‘Herbicide Resistance: Another Hot Agronomic Trait for Plant Genome Editing’, says that, in spite of claims from GMO promoters that gene editing will be climate-friendly and reduce pesticide use, what we can expect is just more of the same – GM herbicide-tolerant crops and increased herbicide use.

The industry wants its new techniques to be unregulated, thereby making gene edited GMOs faster to develop, more profitable and hidden from consumers when purchasing items in stores. At the same time, the costly herbicide treadmill will be reinforced for farmers.

By dodging regulation as well as avoiding economic, social, environmental and health impact assessments, it is clear that the industry is first and foremost motivated by value capture and profit and contempt for democratic accountability.

This is patently clear if we look at the rollout of Bt cotton in India (the only officially approved GM crop in that country) which served the bottom line of Monsanto but brought dependency, distress and no durable agronomic benefits for many of India’s small and marginal farmers. Prof A P Gutierrez argues that Bt cotton has effectively placed these farmers in a corporate noose.

Monsanto sucked hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from these cotton farmers, while industry-funded scientists are always keen to push the mantra that rolling out Bt cotton in India uplifted their conditions.

Those who promote this narrative remain wilfully ignorant of the challenges (documented in the 2019 book by Andrew Flachs – Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India) these farmers face in terms of financial distress, increasing pest resistance, dependency on unregulated seed markets, the eradication of environmental learning,  the loss of control over their productive means and the biotech-chemical treadmill they are trapped on (this last point is precisely what the industry intended).

The performance of GM crops to date has been questionable, but the pro-GMO lobby has wasted no time in wrenching the issues of hunger and poverty from their political contexts to use notions of ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as lynchpins of its promotional strategy. There exists a ‘haughty imperialism’ within the pro-GMO scientific lobby that aggressively pushes for a GMO ‘solution’ which is a distraction from the root causes of poverty, hunger and malnutrition and genuine solutions based on food justice and food sovereignty.

The performance of GM crops has been a hotly contested issue and, as highlighted in a 2018 piece by PC Kevasan and MS Swaminathan in the journal Current Science, there is already sufficient evidence to question their efficacy, especially that of herbicide-tolerant crops (which by 2007 already accounted for approximately 80% of biotech-derived crops grown globally) and the devastating impacts on the environment, human health and food security, not least in places like Latin America.

In their paper, Kesavan and Swaminathan argue that GM technology is supplementary and must be need based. In more than 99% of cases, they say that time-honoured conventional breeding is sufficient. In this respect, conventional options and innovations that outperform GM must not be overlooked or side-lined in a rush by powerful interests like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to facilitate the introduction of GM crops into global agriculture; crops which are highly financially lucrative for the corporations behind them.

In Europe, robust regulatory mechanisms are in place for GMOs because it is recognised that GM food/crops are not substantially equivalent to their non-GM counterparts. Numerous studies have highlighted the flawed premise of ‘substantial equivalence’. Furthermore, from the outset of the GMO project, the side-lining of serious concerns about the technology has occurred and, despite industry claims to the contrary, there is no scientific consensus on the health impacts of GM crops as noted by Hilbeck et al (Environmental Sciences Europe, 2015). Adopting a precautionary principle where GM is concerned is therefore a valid approach.

As Hilbeck et al note, both the Cartagena Protocol and Codex share a precautionary approach to GM crops and foods, in that they agree that GM differs from conventional breeding and that safety assessments should be required before GMOs are used in food or released into the environment. There is sufficient reason to hold back on commercialising GM crops and to subject each GMO to independent, transparent environmental, social, economic and health impact evaluations.

Critics’ concerns cannot therefore be brushed aside by claims from industry lobbyists that ‘the science’ is decided and the ‘facts’ about GM are indisputable. Such claims are merely political posturing and part of a strategy to tip the policy agenda in favour of GM.

Regardless, global food insecurity and malnutrition are not the result of a lack of productivity. As long as food injustice remains an inbuilt feature of the global food regime, the rhetoric of GM being necessary for feeding the world will be seen for what it is: bombast.

Take India, for instance. Although it fares poorly in world hunger assessments, the country has achieved self-sufficiency in food grains and has ensured there is enough food (in terms of calories) available to feed its entire population. It is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables, fruit and cotton.

According to the FAO, food security is achieved when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

But food security for many Indians remains a distant dream. Large sections of India’s population do not have enough food available to remain healthy nor do they have sufficiently diverse diets that provide adequate levels of micronutrients. The Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey 2016-18 is the first-ever nationally representative nutrition survey of children and adolescents in India. It found that 35% of children under five were stunted, 22% of school-age children were stunted while 24% of adolescents were thin for their age.

People are not hungry in India because its farmers do not produce enough food. Hunger and malnutrition result from various factors, including inadequate food distribution, (gender) inequality and poverty; in fact, the country continues to export food while millions remain hungry. It’s a case of ‘scarcity’ amid abundance.

Where farmers’ livelihoods are concerned, the pro-GMO lobby says GM will boost productivity and help secure cultivators a better income. Again, this is misleading: it ignores crucial political and economic contexts. Even with bumper harvests, Indian farmers still find themselves in financial distress.

India’s farmers are not experiencing financial hardship due to low productivity. They are reeling from the effects of neoliberal policies, years of neglect and a deliberate strategy to displace smallholder agriculture at the behest of the World Bank and predatory global agri-food corporations. Little wonder then that the calorie and essential nutrient intake of the rural poor has drastically fallen. No amount of GMOs will put any of this right.

Nevertheless, the pro-GMO lobby, both outside of India and within, has twisted the situation for its own ends to mount intensive PR campaigns to sway public opinion and policy makers.

Many of the traditional agroecological practices employed by smallholders are now recognised as sophisticated and appropriate for high-productive, sustainable agriculture.

Agroecological principles represent a more integrated low-input systems approach to food and agriculture that prioritises local food security, local calorific production, cropping patterns and diverse nutrition production per acre, water table stability, climate resilience, good soil structure and the ability to cope with evolving pests and disease pressures. Ideally, such a system would be underpinned by a concept of food sovereignty, based on optimal self-sufficiency, the right to culturally appropriate food and local ownership and stewardship of common resources, such as land, water, soil and seeds.

Traditional production systems rely on the knowledge and expertise of farmers in contrast to imported ‘solutions’. Yet, if we take cotton cultivation in India as an example, farmers continue to be nudged away from traditional methods of farming and are being pushed towards (illegal) GM herbicide-tolerant cotton seeds. Researchers Glenn Stone and Andrew Flachs note the results of this shift from traditional practices to date does not appear to have benefited farmers. This is not about giving farmers ‘choice’ where GM seeds and associated chemicals are concerned. It is more about GM seed companies and weedicide manufactures seeking to leverage a highly lucrative market.

The potential for herbicide market growth in India is enormous. The objective involves opening India to GM seeds with herbicide tolerance traits, the biotechnology industry’s biggest money maker by far (86 per cent of the world’s GM crop acres in 2015 contain plants resistant to glyphosate or glufosinate and there is a new generation of crops resistant to 2,4-D coming through).

The aim is to break farmers’ traditional pathways and move them onto corporate biotech/chemical treadmills for the benefit of industry.

It is revealing that, according to a report on the ruralindiaonline.org website, in a region of southern Odisha, farmers have been pushed towards a reliance on (illegal) expensive GM herbicide tolerant cotton seeds and have replaced their traditional food crops. Farmers used to sow mixed plots of heirloom seeds, which had been saved from family harvests the previous year and would yield a basket of food crops. They are now dependent on seed vendors, chemical inputs and a volatile international market to make a living and are no longer food secure.

Calls for agroecology and highlighting the benefits of traditional, small-scale agriculture are not based on a romantic yearning for the past or ‘the peasantry’. Available evidence suggests that smallholder farming using low-input methods is more productive in overall output than large-scale industrial farms and can be more profitable and resilient to climate change. It is for good reason that numerous high-level reports call for investment in this type of agriculture.

Despite the pressures, including the fact that globally industrial agriculture grabs 80% of subsidies and 90% of research funds, smallholder agriculture plays a major role in feeding the world.

That’s a massive amount of subsidies and funds to support a system that is only made profitable as a result of these financial injections and because agri-food oligopolies externalize the massive health, social and environmental costs of their operations.

But policy makers tend to accept that profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be owners and custodians of natural assets (the ‘commons’). These corporations, their lobbyists and their political representatives have succeeded in cementing a ‘thick legitimacy’ among policy makers for their vision of agriculture.

Value capture

Common ownership and management of these assets embodies the notion of people working together for the public good. However, these resources have been appropriated by national states or private entities. For instance, Cargill captured the edible oils processing sector in India and in the process put many thousands of village-based workers out of work; Monsanto conspired to design a system of intellectual property rights that allowed it to patent seeds as if it had manufactured and invented them; and India’s indigenous peoples have been forcibly ejected from their ancient lands due to state collusion with mining companies.

Those who capture essential common resources seek to commodify them – whether trees for timber, land for real estate or agricultural seeds – create artificial scarcity and force everyone else to pay for access. The process involves eradicating self-sufficiency.

From World Bank ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ directives to the World Trade Organization ‘agreement on agriculture’ and trade related intellectual property agreements, international bodies have enshrined the interests of corporations that seek to monopolise seeds, land, water, biodiversity and other natural assets that belong to us all. These corporations, the promoters of GMO agriculture, are not offering a ‘solution’ for farmers’ impoverishment or hunger; GM seeds are little more than a value capture mechanism.

To evaluate the pro-GMO lobby’s rhetoric that GM is needed to ‘feed the world’, we first need to understand the dynamics of a globalised food system that fuels hunger and malnutrition against a backdrop of (subsidised) food overproduction. We must acknowledge the destructive, predatory dynamics of capitalism and the need for agri-food giants to maintain profits by seeking out new (foreign) markets and displacing existing systems of production with ones that serve their bottom line.  And we need to reject a deceptive ‘haughty imperialism’ within the pro-GMO scientific lobby which aggressively pushes for a GMO ‘solution’.

Technocratic meddling has already destroyed or undermined agrarian ecosystems that draw on centuries of traditional knowledge and are increasingly recognised as valid approaches to secure food security, as outlined for instance in Food Security and Traditional Knowledge in India in the Journal of South Asian Studies.

Marika Vicziany and Jagjit Plahe, the authors of that paper, note that for thousands of years Indian farmers have experimented with different plant and animal specimens acquired through migration, trading networks, gift exchanges or accidental diffusion. They note the vital importance of traditional knowledge for food security in India and the evolution of such knowledge by learning and doing, trial and error. Farmers possess acute observation, good memory for detail and transmission through teaching and storytelling.

The very farmers whose seeds and knowledge have been appropriated by corporations to be bred for proprietary chemical-dependent hybrids and now to be genetically engineered.

Large corporations with their seeds and synthetic chemical inputs have eradicated traditional systems of seed exchange. They have effectively hijacked seeds, pirated germ plasm that farmers developed over millennia and have ‘rented’ the seeds back to farmers. Genetic diversity among food crops has been drastically reduced. The eradication of seed diversity went much further than merely prioritising corporate seeds: the Green Revolution deliberately side-lined traditional seeds kept by farmers that were actually higher yielding and climate appropriate.

However, under the guise of ‘climate emergency’, we are now seeing a push for the Global South to embrace the Gates’ vision for a one-world agriculture (’Ag One’) dominated by global agribusiness and the tech giants. But it is the so-called developed nations and the rich elites that have plundered the environment and degraded the natural world.

The onus is on the richer nations and their powerful agri-food corporations to put their own house in order and to stop rainforest destruction for ranches and monocrop commodities, to stop pesticide run-offs into the oceans, to curtail a meat industry that has grown out of all proportion so it serves as a ready-made market for the overproduction and surplus of animal feed crops like corn, to stop the rollout of GMO glyphosate-dependent agriculture and to put a stop to a global system of food based on long supply chains that relies on fossil fuels at every stage.

To say that one model of agriculture must now be accepted by all countries is a continuation of a colonialist mindset that has already wrecked indigenous food systems which worked with their own seeds and practices that were in in harmony with natural ecologies.

3) Financialisation vs Agroecology

The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of rich and powerful land speculators and agribusiness corporations. Smallholder farmers are being criminalised and even made to disappear when it comes to the struggle for land. They are constantly exposed to systematic expulsion.

The September 2020 report on the grain.org website ‘Barbarians at the barn: private equity sinks its teeth into agriculture’ shows that private equity funds – pools of money that use pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowment funds and investments from governments, banks, insurance companies and high net worth individuals – are being injected into the agriculture sector throughout the world. This money is used to lease or buy up farms on the cheap and aggregate them into large-scale, US-style grain and soybean concerns.

Source: GRAIN

In addition to various Western governments, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which manages the foundation’s endowment, is also investing in private equity, taking positions in farm and food businesses around the world.

This forms part of the trend whereby the world of finance – banks, funds, insurance companies and the like – is gaining control over the real economy, including forests, watersheds and rural people’s territories.

Apart from uprooting communities and grabbing resources to entrench an industrial, export-oriented model of agriculture, this process of ‘financialisation’ is shifting power to remote board rooms occupied by people with no connection to farming and who are merely in it to make money. These funds tend to invest for a 10-15 year period, resulting in handsome returns for investors but can leave a trail of long-term environmental and social devastation and undermine local and regional food security.

This financialisation of agriculture perpetuates a model of farming that serves the interests of the agrochemical and seed giants, including one of the world’s biggest companies, Cargill, which is involved in almost every aspect of global agribusiness.

Still run as a privately held company, the 155-year-old enterprise trades in purchasing and distributing various agricultural commodities, raises livestock and produces animal feed as well as food ingredients for application in processed foods and industrial use. Cargill also has a large financial services arm, which manages financial risks in the commodity markets for the company. This includes Black River Asset Management, a hedge fund with about $10 billion of assets and liabilities.

An article on the Unearthed website has accused Cargill and its 14 billionaire owners of profiting from the use of child labour, rain forest destruction, the devastation of ancestral lands, the spread of pesticide use and pollution, contaminated food, antibiotic resistance and general health and environmental degradation.

As if this type of devastation is not concerning enough, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is now teaming up with CropLife, a global trade association representing the interests of companies that produce and promote pesticides, including highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs).

In a November 2020 press release issued by PAN (Pesticide Action Network) Asia Pacific, some 350 organisations in 63 countries delivered a letter to FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu urging him to stop announced plans to deepen collaboration with CropLife International by entering into a formal partnership.

HHPs are responsible for a wide range of devastating health harms to farmers, agricultural workers and rural families around the world and these chemicals have decimated pollinator populations and are wreaking havoc on biodiversity and fragile ecosystems.

Marcia Ishii, senior scientist at PAN North America, explained the serious implications of the proposed collaboration:

“Unfortunately, since Mr. Qu’s arrival at FAO, the institution appears to be opening up to deeper collaboration with pesticide companies, which are likely to exploit such a relationship for bluewashing, influencing policy development and enhancing access to global markets.”

She went on to state that it is no surprise that FAO’s recently appointed Deputy Director General, Beth Bechdol, comes to FAO with a history of close financial ties to Corteva (formerly Dow/DuPont).

The FAO has in recent years shown a commitment to agroecology but, in calling for an independent FAO, Susan Haffmans from PAN Germany, argues:

“The FAO should not jeopardize its successes in agroecology nor its integrity by cooperating with precisely that branch of industry which is responsible for the production of highly hazardous pesticides and whose products contribute to poisoning people and their environment worldwide.”

The July 2019 UN FAO High Level Panel of Experts concludes that agroecology provides greatly improved food security and nutritional, gender, environmental and yield benefits compared to industrial agriculture.

Agroecology

Agroecological principles represent a shift away from the reductionist yield-output chemical-intensive industrial paradigm, which results in among other things enormous pressures on human health, soil and water resources.

Agroecology is based on traditional knowledge and modern agricultural research, utilising elements of contemporary ecology, soil biology and the biological control of pests. This system combines sound ecological management by using on-farm renewable resources and privileging endogenous solutions to manage pests and disease without the use of agrochemicals and corporate seeds.

Academic Raj Patel outlines some of the basic practices of agroecology by saying that nitrogen-fixing beans are grown instead of using inorganic fertilizer, flowers are used to attract beneficial insects to manage pests and weeds are crowded out with more intensive planting. The result is a sophisticated polyculture: many crops are produced simultaneously, instead of just one.

However, this model is a direct challenge to the interests of CropLife members. With the emphasis on localisation and on-farm inputs, agroecology does not require dependency on proprietary chemicals, pirated patented seeds and knowledge nor long-line global supply chains.

Localised, democratic food systems based on agroecological principles and short supply chains are required. An approach that leads to local and regional food self-sufficiency rather than dependency on faraway corporations and their expensive environment-damaging inputs. If the last 18 months have shown anything due to the closing down of much of the global economy, it is that long supply chains and global markets are vulnerable to shocks. Indeed, hundreds of millions are now facing food shortages as a result.

In addition to the aforementioned 2019 UN FAO High Level Panel of Experts, in 2014 the then UN special rapporteur Olivier De Schutter’s report concluded that by applying agroecological principles to democratically controlled agricultural systems we can help to put an end to food crises and poverty challenges. The 2009 IAASTD peer-reviewed report, produced by 400 scientists and supported by 60 countries, recommended agroecology to maintain and increase the productivity of global agriculture.

But Western corporations and foundations are jumping on the ‘sustainability’ bandwagon by undermining traditional agriculture and genuine sustainable agri-food systems and packaging this corporate takeover of food as some kind of humanitarian endeavour.

The Gates Foundation through its ‘Ag One’ initiative is pushing for one type of agriculture for the whole world. A top-down approach regardless of what farmers or the public need or want. The strategy includes digital farming, in which farmers are monitored and mined for their agricultural data, which is then repackaged and sold back to them. A system based on corporate consolidation and centralisation.

But is this inevitable? Not according to the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, which has released a report in collaboration with the ETC Group: ‘A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045‘.

It calls for civil society and social movements – grassroots organisations, international NGOs, farmers’ and fishers’ groups, cooperatives and unions – to collaborate more closely to transform financial flows, governance structures and food systems from the ground up.

The report’s lead author, Pat Mooney, says that agribusiness has a very simple message: the cascading environmental crisis can be resolved by powerful new genomic and information technologies that can only be developed if governments unleash the entrepreneurial genius, deep pockets and risk-taking spirit of the most powerful corporations.

Mooney notes that we have had similar messages based on emerging technology for decades but the technologies either did not show up or fell flat and the only thing that grew were the corporations.

Although Mooney argues that new genuinely successful alternatives like agroecology are frequently suppressed by the industries they imperil, he states that civil society has a remarkable track record in fighting back, not least in developing healthy and equitable agroecological production systems, building short (community-based) supply chains and restructuring and democratising governance systems.

And he has a point. A few years ago, the Oakland Institute released a report on 33 case studies which highlighted the success of agroecological agriculture across Africa in the face of climate change, hunger and poverty. The studies provide facts and figures on how agricultural transformation can yield immense economic, social, and food security benefits while ensuring climate justice and restoring soils and the environment.

The research highlights the multiple benefits of agroecology, including affordable and sustainable ways to boost agricultural yields while increasing farmers’ incomes, food security and crop resilience.

The report described how agroecology uses a wide variety of techniques and practices, including plant diversification, intercropping, the application of mulch, manure or compost for soil fertility, the natural management of pests and diseases, agroforestry and the construction of water management structures.

There are many other examples of successful agroecology and of farmers abandoning Green Revolution thought and practices to embrace it.

In an interview that appeared on the Farming Matters website, Million Belay sheds light on how agroecological agriculture is the best model of agriculture for Africa. Belay explains that one of the greatest agroecological initiatives started in 1995 in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia, and continues today. It began with four villages and after good results, it was scaled up to 83 villages and finally to the whole Tigray Region. It was recommended to the Ministry of Agriculture to be scaled up at the national level. The project has now expanded to six regions of Ethiopia.

The fact that it was supported with research by the Ethiopian University at Mekele has proved to be critical in convincing decision makers that these practices work and are better for both the farmers and the land.

Bellay describes an agroecological practice that spread widely across East Africa – ‘push-pull’. This method manages pests through selective intercropping with important fodder species and wild grass relatives, in which pests are simultaneously repelled – or pushed – from the system by one or more plants and are attracted to – or pulled – toward ‘decoy’ plants, thereby protecting the crop from infestation.

Push-pull has proved to be very effective at biologically controlling pest populations in fields, reducing significantly the need for pesticides, increasing production, especially for maize, increasing income to farmers, increasing fodder for animals and, due to that, increasing milk production, and improving soil fertility.

By 2015, the number of farmers using this practice had increased to 95,000. One of the bedrocks of success is the incorporation of cutting edge science through the collaboration of the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) and the Rothamsted Research Station (UK) who have worked in East Africa for more than 15 years on an effective ecologically-based pest management solution for stem borers and striga.

But agroecology should not just be regarded as something for the Global South. Food First Executive Director Eric Holtz-Gimenez argues that it offers concrete, practical solutions to many of the world’s problems that move beyond (but which are linked to) agriculture. In doing so, it challenges – and offers alternatives to – prevailing moribund doctrinaire economics and the outright exploitation of neoliberalism.

The scaling up of agroecology can tackle hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation and climate change. By creating securely paid labour-intensive agricultural work in the richer countries, it can also address the interrelated links between labour offshoring and the displacement of rural populations elsewhere who end up in sweat shops to carry out the outsourced jobs: the two-pronged process of neoliberal globalisation that has devastated the economies of the US and UK and which is displacing existing indigenous food production systems and undermining the rural infrastructure in places like India to produce a reserve army of cheap labour.

Various official reports have argued that to feed the hungry and secure food security in low income regions we need to support small farms and diverse, sustainable agroecological methods of farming and strengthen local food economies.

Olivier De Schutter says:

“To feed nine billion people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available. Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live, especially in unfavourable environments.”

De Schutter indicates that small-scale farmers can double food production within 10 years in critical regions by using ecological methods. Based on an extensive review of scientific literature, the study he was involved in calls for a fundamental shift towards agroecology as a way to boost food production and improve the situation of the poorest. The report calls on states to implement a fundamental shift towards agroecology.

The success stories of agroecology indicate what can be achieved when development is placed firmly in the hands of farmers themselves. The expansion of agroecological practices can generate a rapid, fair and inclusive development that can be sustained for future generations. This model entails policies and activities that come from the bottom-up and which the state can then invest in and facilitate.

A decentralised system of food production with access to local markets supported by proper roads, storage and other infrastructure must take priority ahead of exploitative international markets dominated and designed to serve the needs of global capital.

Countries and regions must ultimately move away from a narrowly defined notion of food security and embrace the concept of food sovereignty. ‘Food security’ as defined by the Gates Foundation and agribusiness conglomerates has merely been used to justify the rollout of large-scale, industrialised corporate farming based on specialised production, land concentration and trade liberalisation. This has led to the widespread dispossession of small producers and global ecological degradation.

Across the world, we have seen a change in farming practices towards mechanised industrial-scale chemical-intensive monocropping and the undermining or eradication of rural economies, traditions and cultures. We see the ‘structural adjustment’ of regional agriculture, spiralling input costs for farmers who have become dependent on proprietary seeds and technologies and the destruction of food self-sufficiency.

Food sovereignty encompasses the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food and the right of people to define their own food and agriculture systems. ‘Culturally appropriate’ is a nod to the foods people have traditionally produced and eaten as well as the associated socially embedded practices which underpin community and a sense of communality. But it goes beyond that. Our connection with the ‘the local’ is also very much physiological.

People have a deep microbiological connection to local soils, processing and fermentation processes which affect the gut microbiome – the up to six pounds of bacteria, viruses and microbes akin to human soil. And as with actual soil, the microbiome can become degraded according to what we ingest (or fail to ingest). Many nerve endings from major organs are located in the gut and the microbiome effectively nourishes them. There is ongoing research taking place into how the microbiome is disrupted by the modern globalised food production/processing system and the chemical bombardment it is subjected to.

Capitalism colonises (and degrades) all aspects of life but is colonising the very essence of our being – even on a physiological level. With their agrochemicals and food additives, powerful companies are attacking this ‘soil’ and with it the human body. As soon as we stopped eating locally-grown, traditionally-processed food cultivated in healthy soils and began eating food subjected to chemical-laden cultivation and processing activities, we began to change ourselves. Along with cultural traditions surrounding food production and the seasons, we also lost our deep-rooted microbiological connection with our localities. It was replaced with corporate chemicals and seeds and global food chains dominated by the likes of Monsanto (now Bayer), Nestle and Cargill.

Aside from affecting the functioning of major organs, neurotransmitters in the gut affect our moods and thinking. Alterations in the composition of the gut microbiome have been implicated in a wide range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, including autism, chronic pain, depression and Parkinson’s Disease.

Science writer and neurobiologist Mo Costandi has discussed gut bacteria and their balance and importance in brain development. Gut microbes controls the maturation and function of microglia, the immune cells that eliminate unwanted synapses in the brain; age-related changes to gut microbe composition might regulate myelination and synaptic pruning in adolescence and could, therefore, contribute to cognitive development. Upset those changes and there are going to be serious implications for children and adolescents.

In addition, Rosemary Mason notes that increasing levels of obesity are associated with low bacterial richness in the gut. Indeed, it has been noted that tribes not exposed to the modern food system have richer microbiomes. Mason lays the blame squarely at the door of agrochemicals, not least the use of the world’s most widely used herbicide, glyphosate, a strong chelator of essential minerals, such as cobalt, zinc, manganese, calcium, molybdenum and sulphate. Mason argues that it also kills off beneficial gut bacteria and allows toxic bacteria.

Another advantage of agroecology is that it is not reliant on oil or natural gas. Virtually all of the processes in the modern food system are now dependent on finite fossil fuels, from the manufacture of fertilisers and pesticides to all stages of food production, including planting, irrigation, harvesting, processing, distribution, shipping and packaging. The industrial food supply system is one of the biggest consumers of fossil fuels.

A food system so heavily reliant on fossil fuels is fragile to say the least, especially given the geopolitical machinations that affect the supply and price of oil. Consider the UK, for instance, which has to import 40% of its food; and much of the rest depends on oil to produce it, which also has to be imported.

As Norman J Church said back in 2005:

“Vast amounts of oil and gas are used as raw materials and energy in the manufacture of fertilisers and pesticides, and as cheap and readily available energy at all stages of food production: from planting, irrigation, feeding and harvesting, through to processing, distribution and packaging. In addition, fossil fuels are essential in the construction and the repair of equipment and infrastructure needed to facilitate this industry, including farm machinery, processing facilities, storage, ships, trucks and roads. The industrial food supply system is one of the biggest consumers of fossil fuels and one of the greatest producers of greenhouse gases.”

If policy makers were to prioritise agroecology to the extent Green Revolution practices and technology have been pushed, many of the problems surrounding poverty, unemployment and urban migration could be solved.

However, the biggest challenge for upscaling agroecology lies in the push by big business for commercial agriculture and attempts to marginalize agroecology. Unfortunately, global agribusiness concerns have secured the status of ‘thick legitimacy’ based on an intricate web of processes successfully spun in the scientific, policy and political arenas. This perceived legitimacy derives from the lobbying, financial clout and political power of agribusiness conglomerates which set out to capture or shape government departments, public institutions, the agricultural research paradigm, international trade and the cultural narrative concerning food and agriculture.

Critics of this system are immediately attacked for being anti-science, for forwarding unrealistic (agroecological) alternatives, for endangering the lives of billions who would supposedly starve to death and for being driven by ideology and emotion. Strategically placed industry mouthpieces like Jon Entine, Owen Paterson and Henry Miller perpetuate such messages in the media and influential industry-backed bodies like the Science Media Centre feed journalists with agribusiness spin.

Corporate capture and plunder

The worrying thing is that many governments are working hand-in-glove with the industry to promote its technology over the heads of the public. A network of scientific bodies and regulatory agencies that supposedly serve the public interest have been subverted by the presence of key figures with industry links, while the powerful industry lobby hold sway over bureaucrats and politicians.

The World Bank is pushing a corporate-led industrial model of agriculture via its ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ strategy and corporations are given free rein to write policies. Monsanto played a key part in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies and the global food processing industry had a leading role in shaping the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. From Codex to the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed at restructuring India, the powerful agribusiness lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers to ensure its model of agriculture prevails.

The ultimate coup d’état by the transnational agribusiness conglomerates is that government officials, scientists and journalists take as given that profit-driven Fortune 500 corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. These corporations have convinced so many that they have the ultimate legitimacy to own and control what is essentially humanity’s common wealth.

There is the premise that water, food, soil, land and agriculture should be handed over to powerful transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

Corporations which promote industrial agriculture have embedded themselves deeply within the policy-making machinery on both national and international levels. But how long can the ‘legitimacy’ of a system persist given that it merely produces bad food, creates food deficit regions globally, destroys health, impoverishes small farms, leads to less diverse diets and less nutritious food, is less productive than small farms, creates water scarcity, destroys soil and fuels/benefits from dependency and debt?

The more that agroecology is seen to work, the more policy makers see the failings of the current system and the more they become open to holistic approaches to agriculture – as practitioners and supporters of agroecology create their own thick legitimacy – the more willing officials might be to give space to a model that has great potential to help deal with some of the world’s most pressing problems.

“They bought everywhere … orchards and vineyards. They offered a low price, around US$500-US$600 per hectare,” says a land agent in the Moldovan village of Văleni about NCH Capital. “People, if left alone, old, without help, without support, they have no choice but to sell — and many sold.” (Screenshot from “NCH: The agribusiness success story”, Vimeo / Source: GRAIN)

Of course, global agribusiness nor the system of capitalism it helps to uphold and benefits from are not going to disappear overnight and politicians (even governments) who oppose or challenge private capital tend to be replaced or subverted.

Powerful agribusiness corporations can only operate as they do because of a framework designed to allow them to capture governments and regulatory bodies, to use the WTO and bilateral trade deals to lever global influence and to profit on the back of US militarism or destabilisations.

Take Ukraine, for instance. In 2014, small farmers operated 16% of agricultural land in that country but provided 55% of agricultural output, including: 97% of potatoes, 97% of honey, 88% of vegetables, 83% of fruits and berries and 80% of milk. It is clear that Ukraine’s small farms were delivering impressive outputs.

Following the toppling of Ukraine’s government in early 2014, the way was paved for foreign investors and Western agribusiness to take a firm hold over the agri-food sector. Reforms mandated by the EU-backed loan to Ukraine in 2014 included agricultural deregulation intended to benefit foreign agribusiness. Natural resource and land policy shifts were being designed to facilitate the foreign corporate takeover of enormous tracts of land.

Frederic Mousseau, policy director at the Oakland Institute, stated at the time that the World Bank and IMF were intent on opening up foreign markets to Western corporations and that the high stakes around the control of Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector, the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat, constitute an overlooked critical factor. He added that in recent years, foreign corporations had acquired more than 1.6 million hectares of Ukrainian land.

Western agribusiness had been coveting Ukraine’s agriculture sector for quite some time, long before the coup. That country contains one third of all arable land in Europe. An article by Oriental Review in 2015 noted that since the mid-90s the Ukrainian-Americans at the helm of the US-Ukraine Business Council had been instrumental in encouraging the foreign control of Ukrainian agriculture.

In November 2013, the Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation drafted a legal amendment that would benefit global agribusiness producers by allowing the widespread use of GM seeds. When GM crops were legally introduced into the Ukrainian market in 2013, they were planted in up to 70% of all soybean fields, 10-20% of cornfields and over 10% of all sunflower fields, according to various estimates (or 3% of the country’s total farmland).

In June 2020, the IMF approved an 18-month $5 billion loan programme with Ukraine. According to the Brettons Wood Project website, the government committed to lifting the 19-year moratorium on the sale of state-owned agricultural lands after sustained pressure from international finance. The World Bank incorporated further measures relating to the sale of public agricultural land as conditions in a $350 million Development Policy Loan (COVID ‘relief package’) to Ukraine approved in late June. This included a required ‘prior action’ to “enable the sale of agricultural land and the use of land as collateral.”

In response, Frederic Mousseau recently stated:

“The goal is clearly to favour the interests of private investors and Western agribusinesses… It is wrong and immoral for Western financial institutions to force a country in a dire economic situation… to sell its land.”

The IMF and World Bank’s ongoing commitment to global agribusiness and a corrupt and rigged model of ‘globalisation’ is a recipe for continued plunder. Whether it involves Bayer, Corteva, Cargill or the type of corporate power grab of African agriculture that Bill Gates is helping to spearhead, private capital will continue to ensure this happens while hiding behind platitudes about ‘free trade’ and ‘development’ which are anything but.

If myths about the necessity for perpetuating the stranglehold of capitalism go unchallenged and real alternatives are not supported by mass movements across continents, agroecology will remain on the periphery.

4) Subverting development

If there is one country that encapsulates the battle for the future of food and agriculture, it is India.

Agriculture in India is at a crossroads. Indeed, given that over 60% of the country’s 1.3-billion-plus population still make a living from agriculture (directly or indirectly), what is at stake is the future of the country. Unscrupulous interests are intent on destroying India’s indigenous agri-food sector and recasting it in their own image and farmers are rising up in protest.

To appreciate what is happening to agriculture and farmers in India, we must first understand how the development paradigm has been subverted. Development used to be about breaking with colonial exploitation and radically redefining power structures. Today, neoliberal ideology masquerades as economic theory and the subsequent deregulation of international capital ensures giant transnational conglomerates are able to ride roughshod over national sovereignty.

The deregulation of international capital flows (financial liberalisation) has effectively turned the planet into a free-for-all bonanza for the world’s richest capitalists. Under the post-World-War Two Bretton Woods monetary regime, nations put restrictions on the flow of capital. Domestic firms and banks could not freely borrow from banks elsewhere or from international capital markets, without seeking permission, and they could not simply take their money in and out of other countries.

Domestic financial markets were segmented from international ones elsewhere. Governments could to a large extent run their own macroeconomic policy without being restrained by monetary or fiscal policies devised by others. They could also have their own tax and industrial policies without having to seek market confidence or worry about capital flight.

However, the dismantling of Bretton Woods and the deregulation of global capital movement has led to the greater incidence of financial crises (including sovereign debt) and has deepened the level of dependency of nation states on capital markets.

The dominant narrative calls this ‘globalisation’, a euphemism for a predatory neoliberal capitalism based on endless profit growth, crises of overproduction, overaccumulation and market saturation and a need to constantly seek out and exploit new, untapped (foreign) markets to maintain profitability.

In India, we can see the implications very clearly. Instead of pursuing a path of democratic development, India has chosen (or been coerced) to submit to the regime of foreign finance, awaiting signals on how much it can spend, giving up any pretence of economic sovereignty and leaving the space open for private capital to move in on and capture markets.

India’s agri-food sector has indeed been flung open, making it ripe for takeover. The country has borrowed more money from the World Bank than any other country in that institution’s history. Back in the 1990s, the World Bank directed India to implement market reforms that would result in the displacement of 400 million people from the countryside. Moreover, the World Bank’s ‘Enabling the Business of Agriculture’ directives entail opening up markets to Western agribusiness and their fertilisers, pesticides, weedicides and patented seeds and compel farmers to work to supply transnational corporate global supply chains.

The aim is to let powerful corporations take control under the guise of ‘market reforms’. The very transnational corporations that receive massive taxpayer subsidies, manipulate markets, write trade agreements and institute a regime of intellectual property rights, thereby indicating that the ‘free’ market only exists in the warped delusions of those who churn out clichés about ‘price discovery’ and the sanctity of ‘the market’.

Indian agriculture is to be wholly commercialised with large-scale, mechanised (monocrop) enterprises replacing small farms that help sustain hundreds of millions of rural livelihoods while feeding the masses.

India’s agrarian base is being uprooted, the very foundation of the country, its cultural traditions, communities and rural economy. Indian agriculture has witnessed gross underinvestment over the years, whereby it is now wrongly depicted as a basket case and underperforming and ripe for a sell off to those very interests who had a stake in its underinvestment.

Today, we hear much talk of ‘foreign direct investment’ and making India ‘business friendly’, but behind the benign-sounding jargon lies the hard-nosed approach of modern-day capitalism that is no less brutal for Indian farmers than early industrial capitalism was for English peasants.

Early capitalists and their cheerleaders complained how peasants were too independent and comfortable to be properly exploited. Indeed, many prominent figures advocated for their impoverishment, so they would leave their land and work for low pay in factories.

In effect, England’s peasants were booted off their land by depriving a largely self-reliant population of its productive means. Although self-reliance persisted among the working class (self-education, recycling products, a culture of thrift, etc), this too was eventually eradicated via advertising and an education system that ensured conformity and dependence on the goods manufactured by capitalism.

Subsidiary of Global Capitalism

The intention is for India’s displaced cultivators to be retrained to work as cheap labour in the West’s offshored plants, even though nowhere near the numbers of jobs necessary are being created and that under capitalism’s ‘Great Reset’ human labour is to be largely replaced by artificial intelligence-driven technology. The future impacts of AI aside, the aim is for India to become a fully incorporated subsidiary of global capitalism, with its agri-food sector restructured for the needs of global supply chains and a reserve army of urban labour that will effectively serve to further weaken workers’ position in relation to capital in the West.

As independent cultivators are bankrupted, the aim is that land will eventually be amalgamated to facilitate large-scale industrial cultivation. Those who remain in farming will be absorbed into corporate supply chains and squeezed as they work on contracts dictated by large agribusiness and chain retailers.

A 2016 UN report said that by 2030 Delhi’s population will be 37 million.

One of the report’s principal authors, Felix Creutzig, said:

“The emerging mega-cities will rely increasingly on industrial-scale agricultural and supermarket chains, crowding out local food chains.”

The drive is to entrench industrial agriculture and commercialise the countryside.

The outcome will be a mainly urbanised country reliant on an industrial agriculture and all it entails, including denutrified food, increasingly monolithic diets, the massive use of agrochemicals and food contaminated by hormones, steroids, antibiotics and a range of chemical additives. A country with spiralling rates of ill health, degraded soil, a collapse in the insect population, contaminated and depleted water supplies and a cartel of seed, chemical and food processing companies with ever-greater control over the global food production and supply chain.

But we do not need a crystal ball to look into the future. Much of the above is already taking place, not least the destruction of rural communities, the impoverishment of the countryside and continuing urbanisation, which is itself causing problems for India’s crowded cities and eating up valuable agricultural land.

Transnational corporate-backed front groups are hard at work behind the scenes to secure this future. According to a September 2019 report in the New York Times, ‘A Shadowy Industry Group Shapes Food Policy Around the World’, the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) has been quietly infiltrating government health and nutrition bodies. The article lays bare ILSI’s influence on the shaping of high-level food policy globally, not least in India.

ILSI helps to shape narratives and policies that sanction the roll out of processed foods containing high levels of fat, sugar and salt. In India, ILSI’s expanding influence coincides with mounting rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Little more than a front group for its 400 corporate members that provide its $17 million budget, ILSI’s members include Coca-Cola, DuPont, PepsiCo, General Mills and Danone. The report says ILSI has received more than $2 million from chemical companies, among them Monsanto. In 2016, a UN committee issued a ruling that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup, was “probably not carcinogenic,” contradicting an earlier report by the WHO’s cancer agency. The committee was led by two ILSI officials.

From India to China, whether it has involved warning labels on unhealthy packaged food or shaping anti-obesity education campaigns that stress physical activity and divert attention from the food system itself, prominent figures with close ties to the corridors of power have been co-opted to influence policy in order to boost the interests of agri-food corporations.

Whether through IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programmes, as occurred in Africa, trade agreements like NAFTA and its impact on Mexico, the co-option of policy bodies at national and international levels or deregulated global trade rules, the outcome has been similar across the world: poor and less diverse diets and illnesses, resulting from the displacement of traditional, indigenous agriculture and food production by a corporatised model centred on unregulated global markets and transnational conglomerates.

5) Neoliberal death knell?

Recent legislation based on three important farm bills are aimed at imposing the shock therapy of neoliberalism on India’s agri-food sector for the benefit of large commodity traders and other (international) corporations: many if not most smallholder farmers could go to the wall in a landscape of ‘get big or get out’.

This legislation comprises the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020.

This could represent a final death knell for indigenous agriculture in India. The legislation will mean that mandis – state-run market locations for farmers to sell their agricultural produce via auction to traders – can be bypassed, allowing farmers to sell to private players elsewhere (physically and online), thereby undermining the regulatory role of the public sector. In trade areas open to the private sector, no fees will be levied (fees levied in mandis go to the states and, in principle, are used to enhance infrastructure to help farmers).

This could incentivise the corporate sector operating outside of the mandis to (initially at least) offer better prices to farmers; however, as the mandi system is run down completely, these corporations will monopolise trade, capture the sector and dictate prices to farmers.

Another outcome could see the largely unregulated storage of produce and speculation, opening the farming sector to a free-for-all profiteering payday for the big players and jeopardising food security. The government will no longer regulate and make key produce available to consumers at fair prices. This policy ground is being ceded to influential market players.

The legislation will enable transnational agri-food corporations like Cargill and Walmart and India’s billionaire capitalists Gautam Adani (agribusiness conglomerate) and Mukesh Ambini (Reliance retail chain) to decide on what is to be cultivated at what price, how much of it is to be cultivated within India and how it is to be produced and processed.  Industrial agriculture will be the norm with all the devastating health, social and environmental costs that the model brings with it.

The recent agriculture legislation represents the final pieces of a 30-year-old plan which will benefit a handful of billionaires in the US and in India. It means the livelihoods of hundreds of millions (the majority of the population) who still rely on agriculture for a living are to be sacrificed at the behest of these elite interests.

Consider that much of the UK’s wealth came from sucking $45 trillion from India alone according to renowned economist Utsa Patnaik. Britain grew rich by underdeveloping India. Today, what are little more than modern-day East India-type corporations are currently in the process of helping themselves to the country’s most valuable asset – agriculture.

According to the World Bank’s lending report, based on data compiled up to 2015, India was easily the largest recipient of its loans in the history of the institution. On the back of India’s foreign exchange crisis in the 1990s, the IMF and World Bank wanted India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture.

In return for up to more than $120 billion in loans at the time, India was directed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies, run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops to earn foreign exchange.

The plan involved shifting at least 400 million from the countryside into cities.

The details of this plan appear in a January 2021 article by the Mumbai-based Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE), ‘Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago, in Washington DC’. The piece says that the current agricultural ‘reforms’ are part of a broader process of imperialism’s increasing capture of the Indian economy:

“Indian business giants such as Reliance and Adani are major recipients of foreign investment, as we have seen in sectors such as telecom, retail, and energy. At the same time, multinational corporations and other financial investors in the sectors of agriculture, logistics and retail are also setting up their own operations in India. Multinational trading corporations dominate global trade in agricultural commodities… The opening of India’s agriculture and food economy to foreign investors and global agribusinesses is a longstanding project of the imperialist countries.”

The article provides details of a 1991 World Bank memorandum which set out the programme for India.

“At the time, India was still in its foreign exchange crisis of 1990-91 and had just submitted itself to an IMF-monitored ‘structural adjustment’ programme. Thus, India’s July 1991 budget marked the fateful start of India’s neoliberal era.”

The Modi government is attempting to dramatically accelerate the implementation of the above programme, which to date has been too slow for the overlords in Washington: the dismantling of the public procurement and distribution of food is to be facilitated courtesy of the three agriculture-related acts passed by parliament.

What is happening predates the current administration, but it is as if Modi was especially groomed to push through the final components of this agenda.

Describing itself as a major global communications, stakeholder engagement and business strategy company, APCO Worldwide is a lobby agency with firm links to the Wall Street/corporate US establishment and facilitates its global agenda. Some years ago, Modi turned to APCO to help transform his image and turn him into electable pro-corporate PM material. It also helped him get the message out that what he achieved in Gujarat as chief minister was a miracle of economic neoliberalism, although the actual reality is quite different.

Some years ago, following the 2008 financial crisis, APCO stated that India’s resilience in weathering the global downturn has made governments, policy makers, economists, corporate houses and fund managers believe that the country can play a significant role in the recovery of global capitalism.

Decoded, this means global capital moving into regions and nations and displacing indigenous players. Where agriculture is concerned, this hides behind emotive and seemingly altruistic rhetoric about ‘helping farmers’ and the need to ‘feed a burgeoning population’ (regardless of the fact this is exactly what India’s farmers have been doing).

Modi has been on board with this aim and has proudly stated that India is now one of the most ‘business friendly’ countries in the world. What he really means is that India is in compliance with World Bank directives on ‘ease of doing business’ and ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ by facilitating further privatisation of public enterprises, environment-destroying policies and forcing working people to take part in a race to the bottom based on ‘free’ market fundamentalism.

APCO has described India as a trillion-dollar market. It talks about positioning international funds and facilitating corporations’ ability to exploit markets, sell products and secure profit. None of this is a recipe for national sovereignty, let alone food security.

Renowned agronomist MS Swaminathan has stated:

“Independent foreign policy is only possible with food security. Therefore, food has more than just eating implications. It protects national sovereignty, national rights and national prestige.”

The drive is to drastically dilute the role of the public sector in agriculture, reducing it to a facilitator of private capital. The norm will be industrial (GM) commodity-crop farming suited to the needs of the likes of Cargill, Archer Daniels Midlands, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge and India’s retail and agribusiness giants as well as the global agritech, seed and agrochemical corporations and Silicon Valley, which is leading the drive for ‘data-driven agriculture’.

Of course, those fund managers and corporate houses mentioned by APCO are no doubt also well positioned to take advantage, not least via the purchase of land and land speculation. For example, the Karnataka Land Reform Act will make it easier for business to purchase agricultural land, resulting in increased landlessness and urban migration.

As a result of the ongoing programme, more than 300,000 farmers in India have taken their lives since 1997 and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming as a result of debt, a shift to cash crops and economic liberalisation. There has been an ongoing strategy to make farming non-viable for many of India’s farmers.

The number of cultivators in India declined from 166 million to 146 million between 2004 and 2011. Some 6,700 left farming each day. Between 2015 and 2022, the number of cultivators is likely to decrease to around 127 million.

We have seen the running down of the sector for decades, spiralling input costs, withdrawal of government assistance and the impacts of cheap, subsidised imports which depress farmers’ incomes. India’s spurt of high GDP growth during the last decade was partly fuelled on the back of cheap food and the subsequent impoverishment of farmers: the gap between farmers’ income and the rest of the population has widened enormously.

While underperforming corporations receive massive handouts and have loans written off, the lack of a secure income, exposure to international market prices and cheap imports contribute to farmers’ misery of not being able to cover the costs of production.

With more than 800 million people, rural India is arguably the most interesting and complex place on the planet, but is plagued by farmer suicides, child malnourishment, growing unemployment, increased informalisation, indebtedness and an overall collapse of agriculture.

Given that India is still an agrarian-based society, renowned journalist P Sainath says what is taking place can be described as a crisis of civilisation proportions and can be explained in just five words: hijack of agriculture by corporations. He notes the process by which it is being done in five words too: predatory commercialisation of the countryside. And another five words to describe the outcome: biggest displacement in our history.

Take the cultivation of pulses, for instance, which highlights the plight of farmers. According to a report in the Indian Express (September 2017), pulses production increased by 40% during the previous 12 months (a year of record production). At the same time, however, imports also rose resulting in black gram selling at 4,000 rupees per quintal (much less than during the previous 12 months). This effectively pushed down prices thereby reducing farmers already meagre incomes.

We have already witnessed a running down of the indigenous edible oils sector thanks to Indonesian palm oil imports (which benefits Cargill) on the back of World Bank pressure to reduce tariffs (India was virtually self-sufficient in edible oils in the 1990s but now faces increasing import costs).

The pressure from the richer nations for the Indian government to further reduce support given to farmers and open up to imports and export-oriented ‘free market’ trade is based on nothing but hypocrisy.

On the ‘Down to Earth’ website in late 2017, it was stated some 3.2 million people were engaged in agriculture in the US in 2015. The US goverment provided them each with a subsidy of $7,860 on average. Japan provides a subsidy of $14,136 and New Zealand $2,623 to its farmers. In 2015, a British farmer earned $2,800 and $37,000 was added through subsidies. The Indian government provides on average a subsidy of $873 to farmers. However, between 2012 and 2014, India reduced the subsidy on agriculture and food security by $3 billion.

According to policy analyst Devinder Sharma, subsidies provided to US wheat and rice farmers are more than the market worth of these two crops. He also notes that, per day, each cow in Europe receives subsidy worth more than an Indian farmer’s daily income.

The Indian farmer simply cannot compete with this. The World Bank, World Trade Organisation and the IMF have effectively served to undermine the indigenous farm sector in India.

And now, due to the new farm laws, by reducing public sector buffer stocks and facilitating corporate-dictated contract farming and full-scale neoliberal marketisation for the sale and procurement of produce, India will be sacrificing its farmers and its own food security for the benefit of a handful of billionaires.

Of course, many millions have already been displaced from the Indian countryside and have had to seek work in the cities. And if the coronavirus-related lockdown has indicated anything, it is that many of these ‘migrant workers’ have failed to gain a secure foothold and were compelled to return ‘home’ to their villages. Their lives are defined by low pay and insecurity even after 30 years of neoliberal ‘reforms’.

Betrayal of farmers and democratic principles

In late November 2018, a charter was released by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (an umbrella group of around 250 farmers’ organisations) to coincide with the massive, well-publicised farmers’ march that was then taking place in Delhi.

The charter stated:

“Farmers are not just a residue from our past; farmers, agriculture and village India are integral to the future of India and the world; as bearers of historic knowledge, skills and culture; as agents of food safety, security and sovereignty; and as guardians of biodiversity and ecological sustainability.”

The farmers stated that they were alarmed at the economic, ecological, social and existential crisis of Indian agriculture as well as the persistent state neglect of the sector and discrimination against farming communities.

They were also concerned about the deepening penetration of large, predatory and profit hungry corporations, farmers’ suicide across the country and the unbearable burden of indebtedness and the widening disparities between farmers and other sectors.

The charter called on the Indian parliament to immediately hold a special session to pass and enact two bills that were of, by and for the farmers of India.

If passed by parliament, among other things, the Farmers’ Freedom from Indebtedness Bill 2018 would have provided for the complete loan waiver for all farmers and agricultural workers.

The second bill, The Farmers’ Right to Guaranteed Remunerative Minimum Support Prices for Agricultural Commodities Bill 2018, would have seen the government take measures to bring down the input cost of farming through specific regulation of the prices of seeds, agriculture machinery and equipment, diesel, fertilisers and insecticides, while making purchase of farm produce below the minimum support price (MSP) both illegal and punishable.

The charter also called for a special discussion on the universalisation of the public distribution system, the withdrawal of pesticides that have been banned elsewhere and the non-approval of genetically engineered seeds without a comprehensive need and impact assessment.

Other demands included no foreign direct investment in agriculture and food processing, the protection of farmers from corporate plunder in the name of contract farming, investment in farmers’ collectives to create farmer producer organisations and peasant cooperatives and the promotion of agroecology based on suitable cropping patterns and local seed diversity revival.

Now, in 2021, rather than responding to these requirements, we see the Indian government’s promotion and facilitation of – by way of recent legislation – the corporatisation of agriculture and the dismantling of the public distribution system (and the MSP) as well as the laying of groundwork for contract farming.

Trade unions protest in Delhi’s Shaheedi Park. Several trade unions and workers’ organisations have joined the ongoing farmers’ protest against three recently enacted farm laws. SHAHID TANTRAY FOR THE CARAVAN

Although the two aforementioned bills from 2018 have now lapsed, farmers are demanding that the new pro-corporate (anti-farmer) farm laws are replaced with a legal framework that guarantees the MSP to farmers.

Indeed, the RUPE notes that MSPs via government procurement of essential crops and commodities should be extended to the likes of maize, cotton, oilseed and pulses. At the moment, only farmers in certain states who produce rice and wheat are the main beneficiaries of government procurement at MSP.

Since per capita protein consumption in India is abysmally low and has fallen further during the liberalisation era, the provision of pulses in the public distribution system (PDS) is long overdue and desperately needed. The RUPE argues that the ‘excess’ stocks of food grain with the Food Corporation of India are merely the result of the failure or refusal of the government to distribute grain to the people.

(For those not familiar with the PDS: central government via the Food Corporation of India FCI is responsible for buying food grains from farmers at MSP at state-run market yards or mandis. It then allocates the grains to each state. State governments then deliver to the ration shops.)

If public procurement of a wider range of crops at the MSP were to occur – and MSP were guaranteed for rice and wheat across all states – it would help address hunger and malnutrition as well as farmer distress.

Instead of rolling back the role of the public sector and surrendering the system to foreign corporations, there is a need to further expand official procurement and public distribution. This would occur by extending procurement to additional states and expanding the range of commodities under the PDS.

Of course, some will raise a red flag here and say this would cost too much. But as the RUPE notes, it would cost around 20% of the current handouts (‘incentives’) received by corporations and their super-rich owners which do not benefit the bulk of the wider population in any way. It is also worth considering that the loans provided to just five large corporations in India were in 2016 equal to the entire farm debt.

But this is not where the government’s priorities lie.

It is clear that the existence of the MSP, the Food Corporation of India, the public distribution system and publicly held buffer stocks constitute an obstacle to the profit-driven requirements of global agribusiness interests who have sat with government agencies and set out their wish-lists.

The RUPE notes that India accounts for 15% of world consumption of cereals. India’s buffer stocks are equivalent to 15-25% of global stocks and 40% of world trade in rice and wheat. Any large reduction in these stocks will almost certainly affect world prices: farmers would be hit by depressed prices; later, once India became dependent on imports, prices could rise on the international market and Indian consumers would be hit.

At the same time, the richer countries are applying enormous pressure on India to scrap its meagre agricultural subsidies; yet their own subsidies are vast multiples of India’s. The end result could be India becoming dependent on imports and the restructure of its own agriculture to crops destined for export.

The RUPE concludes:

“Vast buffer stocks would still exist; but instead of India holding these stocks, they would be held by multinational trading firms, and India would bid for them with borrowed funds.”

Instead of holding physical buffer stocks, India would hold foreign exchange reserves.

Successive administrations have made the country dependent on volatile flows of foreign capital and India’s foreign exchange reserves have been built up by borrowing and foreign investments. The fear of capital flight is ever present. Policies are often governed by the drive to attract and retain these inflows and maintain market confidence by ceding to the demands of international capital.

This throttling of democracy and the ‘financialisation’ of agriculture would seriously undermine the nation’s food security and leave almost 1.4 billion people at the mercy of international speculators and foreign investment.

If unrepealed, the recent legislation represents the ultimate betrayal of India’s farmers and democracy as well as the final surrender of food security and food sovereignty to unaccountable corporations. This legislation could eventually lead to the country relying on outside forces  to feed its population – and a possible return to hand-to-mouth imports, especially in an increasingly volatile world prone to conflict, public health scares, unregulated land and commodity speculation and price shocks.

6) Viral inequality

According to a report by Oxfam, ‘The Inequality Virus’, the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $3.9tn (trillion) between 18 March and 31 December 2020. Their total wealth now stands at $11.95tn. The world’s 10 richest billionaires have collectively seen their wealth increase by $540bn over this period. In September 2020, Jeff Bezos could have paid all 876,000 Amazon employees a $105,000 bonus and still be as wealthy as he was before COVID.

At the same time, hundreds of millions of people will lose (have lost) their jobs and face destitution and hunger. It is estimated that the total number of people living in poverty around the world could have increased by between 200 million and 500 million in 2020. The number of people living in poverty might not return even to its pre-crisis level for over a decade.

Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man and head of Reliance Industries, which specialises in petrol, retail and telecommunications, doubled his wealth between March and October 2020. He now has $78.3bn. The average increase in Ambani’s wealth in just over four days represented more than the combined annual wages of all of Reliance Industries’ 195,000 employees.

The Oxfam report states that lockdown in India resulted in the country’s billionaires increasing their wealth by around 35%. At the same time, 84% of households suffered varying degrees of income loss. Some 170,000 people lost their jobs every hour in April 2020 alone.

The authors also noted that income increases for India’s top 100 billionaires since March 2020 was enough to give each of the 138 million poorest people a cheque for 94,045 rupees.

The report went on to state:

“… it would take an unskilled worker 10,000 years to make what Ambani made in an hour during the pandemic… and three years to make what Ambani made in a second.”

During lockdown and after, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in the cities (who had no option but to escape to the city to avoid the manufactured, deepening agrarian crisis) were left without jobs, money, food or shelter.

It is clear that COVID has been used as cover for consolidating the power of the unimaginably rich. But plans for boosting their power and wealth will not stop there.

Big Tech Moving in

An article on the grain.org website, ‘Digital control: how big tech moves into food and farming (and what it means)’, describes how Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and others are closing in on the global agri-food sector while the likes of Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva and Cargill are cementing their stranglehold.

The tech giants entry into the sector will increasingly lead to a mutually beneficial integration between the companies that supply products to farmers (pesticides, seeds, fertilisers, tractors, etc) and those that control the flow of data and have access to digital (cloud) infrastructure and food consumers. This system is based on corporate concentration (monopolisation).

In India, global corporations are also colonising the retail space through e-commerce. Walmart entered into India in 2016 by a US$3.3 billion take-over of the online retail start-up Jet.com which, in 2018, was followed by a US$16 billion take-over of India’s largest online retail platform Flipkart. Today, Walmart and Amazon now control almost two thirds of India’s digital retail sector.

Amazon and Walmart are using predatory pricing, deep discounts and other unfair business practices to lure customers towards their online platforms. According to GRAIN, when the two companies generated sales of over US$3 billion in just six days during a Diwali festival sales blitz, India’s small retailers called out in desperation for a boycott of online shopping.

In 2020, Facebook and the US-based private equity concern KKR committed over US$7 billion to Reliance Jio, the digital store of one of India’s biggest retail chains. Customers will soon be able to shop at Reliance Jio through Facebook’s chat application, WhatsApp.

The plan for retail is clear: the eradication of millions of small traders and retailers and neighbourhood mom and pop shops. It is similar in agriculture.

The aim is to buy up rural land, amalgamate it and rollout a system of chemically-drenched farmerless farms owned or controlled by financial speculators, the high-tech giants and traditional agribusiness concerns. The end-game is a system of contract farming that serves the interests of big tech, big agribusiness and big retail. Smallholder peasant agriculture is regarded as an impediment.

This model will be based on driverless tractors, drones, genetically engineered/lab-produced food and all data pertaining to land, water, weather, seeds and soils patented and often pirated from peasant farmers.

Farmers possess centuries of accumulated knowledge that once gone will never be got back. Corporatisation of the sector has already destroyed or undermined functioning agrarian ecosystems that draw on centuries of traditional knowledge and are increasingly recognised as valid approaches to secure food security.

And what of the hundreds of millions to be displaced in order to fill the pockets of the billionaire owners of these corporations? Driven to cities to face a future of joblessness: mere ‘collateral damage’ resulting from a short-sighted system of dispossessive predatory capitalism that destroys the link between humans, ecology and nature to boost the bottom line of the immensely rich.

India’s agri-food sector has been on the radar of global corporations for decades. With deep market penetration and near saturation having been achieved by agribusiness in the US and elsewhere, India represents an opportunity for expansion and maintaining business viability and all-important profit growth. And by teaming up with the high-tech players in Silicon Valley, multi-billion dollar data management markets are being created. From data and knowledge to land, weather and seeds, capitalism is compelled to eventually commodify (patent and own) all aspects of life and nature.

As independent cultivators are bankrupted, the aim is that land will eventually be amalgamated to facilitate large-scale industrial cultivation. Indeed, a piece on the RUPE site, ‘The Kisans Are Right: Their Land Is At Stake‘, describes how the Indian government is ascertaining which land is owned by whom with the ultimate aim of making it easier to eventually sell it off (to foreign investors and agribusiness).

The recent farm bills – if not repealed – will impose the neoliberal shock therapy of dispossession and dependency, finally clearing the way to restructure the agri-food sector. The massive inequalities and injustices that have resulted from the COVID-related lockdowns could be a mere taste of what is to come.

7) Colonial deindustrialisation

In June 2018, the Joint Action Committee against Foreign Retail and E-commerce (JACAFRE) issued a statement on Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart. It argued that it undermines India’s economic and digital sovereignty and the livelihood of millions.

The deal would lead to Walmart and Amazon dominating India’s e-retail sector. These two US companies would also own India’s key consumer and other economic data, making them the country’s digital overlords, joining the ranks of Google and Facebook.

JACAFRE was formed to resist the entry of foreign corporations like Walmart and Amazon into India’s e-commerce market. Its members represent more than 100 national groups, including major trade, workers and farmers’ organisations.

On 8 January 2021, JACAFRE published an open letter saying that the three new farm laws, passed by parliament in September 2020, centre on enabling and facilitating the unregulated corporatisation of agriculture value chains. This will effectively make farmers and small traders of agricultural produce become subservient to the interests of a few agri-food and e-commerce giants or will eradicate them completely.

The government is facilitating the dominance of giant corporations, not least through digital or e-commerce platforms, to control the entire value chain. The letter states that if the new farm laws are closely examined, it will be evident that unregulated digitalisation is an important aspect of them.

And this is not lost on Parminder Jeet Singh from IT for Change (a member of JACAFRE). Referring to Walmart’s takeover of online retailer Flipkart, Singh notes that there was strong resistance to Walmart entering India with its physical stores; however, online and offline worlds are now merged.

That is because, today, e-commerce companies not only control data about consumption but also control data on production, logistics, who needs what, when they need it, who should produce it, who should move it and when it should be moved.

Through the control of data (knowledge), e-commerce platforms can shape the entire physical economy. What is concerning is that Amazon and Walmart have sufficient global clout to ensure they become a duopoly, more or less controlling much of India’s economy.

Singh says that whereas you can regulate an Indian company, this cannot be done with foreign players who have global data, global power and will be near-impossible to regulate.

While China succeeded in digital industrialisation by building up its own firms, Singh observes that the EU is now a digital colony of the US. The danger is clear for India. He states that India has its own skills and digital forms, so why is the government letting in US companies to dominate and buy India’s digital platforms?

And ‘platform’ is a key word here. We are seeing the eradication of the marketplace. Platforms will control everything from production to logistics to even primary activities like agriculture and farming. Data gives power to platforms to dictate what needs to be manufactured and in what quantities.

The digital platform is the brain of the whole system. The farmer will be told how much production is expected, how much rain is anticipated, what type of soil quality there is, what type of (GM) seeds and are inputs are required and when the produce needs to be ready.

Those traders, manufacturers and primary producers who survive will become slaves to platforms and lose their independence. Moreover, e-commerce platforms will become permanently embedded once artificial intelligence begins to plan and determine all of the above.

Of course, things have been moving in this direction for a long time, especially since India began capitulating to the tenets of neoliberalism in the early 1990s and all that entails, not least an increasing dependence on borrowing and foreign capital inflows and subservience to destructive World Bank-IMF economic directives.

But what we are currently witnessing with the three farm bills and the growing role of (foreign) e-commerce will bring about the ultimate knock-out blow to the peasantry and many small independent enterprises. This has been the objective of powerful players who have regarded India as the potential jewel in the crown of their corporate empires for a long time.

The process resembles the structural adjustment programmes that were imposed on African countries some decades ago. Economics Professor Michel Chossudovsky notes in his 1997 book ‘The Globalization of Poverty’ that economies are:

“opened up through the concurrent displacement of a pre-existing productive system. Small and medium-sized enterprises are pushed into bankruptcy or obliged to produce for a global distributor, state enterprises are privatised or closed down, independent agricultural producers are impoverished.” (p.16)

The game plan is clear and JACAFRE says the government should urgently consult all stakeholders – traders, farmers and other small and medium size players – towards a holistic new economic model where all economic actors are assured their due and appropriately valued role. Small and medium size economic actors cannot be allowed to be reduced to being helpless agents of a few digitally enabled mega-corporations.

JACAFRE concludes:

“We appeal to the government that it should urgently address the issues raised by those farmers asking for the three laws to be repealed. Specifically, from a traders’ point of view, the role of small and medium traders all along the agri-produce value chain has to be strengthened and protected against its unmitigated corporatisation.”

It is clear that the ongoing farmers’ protest in India is not just about farming. It represents a struggle for the heart and soul of the country.

Farmers, farmers’ unions and their representatives demand that the laws be repealed and state that they will not accept a compromise. Farmers’ leaders welcomed the Supreme Court of India stay order on the implementation of the farm laws in January 2021 which remains in effect.

However, based on more than 10 rounds of talks between farmers representatives and the government, it seems that the ruling administration will not back down.

In November 2020, a nationwide general strike took place in support of the farmers and in that month around 300,000 farmers marched from the states of Punjab and Haryana to Delhi for what leaders called a “decisive battle” with the central government.

But as the farmers reached the capital, most were stopped by barricades, dug up roads, water cannons, baton charges and barbed wire erected by police. The farmers set up camps along five major roads, building makeshift tents with a view to staying for months if their demands were not met.

Today, thousands of farmers remain camped at various points on the border. They have been there for nine months throughout the cold, the rain and the searing heat. In late March 2021, it was estimated that there were around 40,000 protestors camped at Singhu and Tikri at the Delhi border.

On 26 January 2021, India’s Republic Day, tens of thousands of farmers held a farmer’s parade with a large convoy of tractors and drove into Delhi.

In September 2021, tens of thousands of farmers attended a rally in the city of Muzaffarnagar in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Hundreds of thousands more turned out for other rallies in the state.

These huge gatherings come ahead of important polls in 2022 in UP, India’s most populous state with 200 million people and governed by Prime Minister Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In the 2017 assembly polls, the BJP won 325 out of a total of 403 seats.

Speaking at the rally in Muzaffarnagar, farmers’ leader Rakesh Tikait stated:

“We take a pledge that we’ll not leave the protest site there (around Delhi) even if our graveyard is made there. We will lay down our lives if needed but will not leave the protest site until we emerge victorious.”

Tikait also attacked the Modi-led government for:

“… selling the country to corporates… We have to stop the country from getting sold. Farmers should be saved; the country should be saved.”

Police brutality, the smearing of protesters by certain prominent media commentators and politicians, the illegal detention of protesters and clampdowns on free speech (journalists arrested, social media accounts closed, shutting down internet services) have been symptomatic of officialdom’s approach to the farmers’ struggle which itself has been defined by resilience, resoluteness and restraint.

But it is not as though the farmers’ struggle arose overnight. Indian agriculture has been deliberately starved of government support for decades and has resulted in a well-documented agrarian – even civilisation – crisis. What we are currently seeing is the result of injustices and neglect coming to a head as foreign agro-capital tries to impose its neoliberal ‘final solution’ on Indian agriculture.

It is essential to protect and strengthen local markets and indigenous, independent small-scale enterprises, whether farmers, hawkers, food processers or mom and pop corner stores. This will ensure that India has more control over its food supply, the ability to determine its own policies and economic independence: in other words, the protection of food and national sovereignty and a greater ability to pursue genuine democratic development.

Washington and its ideologue economists call this ‘liberalising’ the economy: how is an inability to determine your own economic policies and surrendering food security to outside forces in any way liberating?

It is interesting to note that the BBC reported that, in its annual report on global political rights and liberties, the US-based non-profit Freedom House has downgraded India from a free democracy to a “partially free democracy”. It also reported that Sweden-based V-Dem Institute says India is now an “electoral autocracy”. India did not fare any better in a report by The Economist Intelligent Unit’s Democracy Index.

The BBC’s neglect of Britain’s own slide towards COVID-related authoritarianism aside, the report on India was not without substance. It focused on the increase in anti-Muslim feeling, diminishing of freedom of expression, the role of the media and the restrictions on civil society since PM Narendra Modi took power.

The undermining of liberties in all these areas is cause for concern in its own right. But this trend towards divisiveness and authoritarianism serves another purpose: it helps smooth the path for the corporate takeover of the country.

Whether it involves a ‘divide and rule’ strategy along religious lines to divert attention, the suppression of free speech or pushing unpopular farm bills through parliament without proper debate while using the police and the media to undermine the farmers’ protest, a major undemocratic heist is under way that will fundamentally adversely impact people’s livelihoods and the cultural and social fabric of India.

On one side, there are the interests of a handful of multi-billionaires who own the corporations and platforms that seek to control India. On the other, there are the interests of hundreds of millions of cultivators, vendors and various small-scale enterprises who are regarded by these rich individuals as mere collateral damage to be displaced in their quest for ever greater profit.

Indian farmers are currently on the frontline against global capitalism and the colonial-style deindustrialisation of the economy. This is where ultimately the struggle for democracy and the future of India is taking place.

8) AgriStacking the system

In April, the Indian government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Microsoft, allowing its local partner CropData to leverage a master database of farmers. The MoU seems to be part of the AgriStack policy initiative, which involves the roll out of ‘disruptive’ technologies and digital databases in the agricultural sector.

Based on press reports and government statements, Microsoft would help farmers with post- harvest management solutions by building a collaborative platform and capturing agriculture datasets such as crop yields, weather data, market demand and prices. In turn, this would create a farmer interface for ‘smart’ agriculture, including post-harvest management and distribution.

CropData will be granted access to a government database of 50 million farmers and their land records. As the database is developed, it will include farmers’ personal details, profile of land held (cadastral maps, farm size, land titles, local climatic and geographical conditions), production details (crops grown, production history, input history, quality of output, machinery in possession) and financial details (input costs, average return, credit history).

The stated aim is to use digital technology to improve financing, inputs, cultivation and supply and distribution.

It seems that the blueprint for AgriStack is in an advanced stage despite the lack of consultation with or involvement of farmers themselves. Technology could certainly improve the sector but handing control over to powerful private concerns will merely facilitate what they require in terms of market capture and farmer dependency.

Such ‘data-driven agriculture’ is integral to the recent farm legislation which includes a proposal to create a digital profile of cultivators, their farm holdings, climatic conditions in an area, what is grown and average output.

Many concerns have been raised about this, ranging from farmer displacement, the further exploitation of farmers through microfinance and the misuse of farmer’s data and increased algorithmic decision-making without accountability.

The displacement of farmers is not lost on the RUPE which, in a three-part series of articles, explains how neoliberal capitalism has removed peasant farmers from their land to facilitate an active land market for corporate interests. The Indian government is trying to establish a system of ‘conclusive titling’ of all land in the country, so that ownership can be identified and land can then be bought or taken away.

Taking Mexico as an example, the RUPE says:

“Unlike Mexico, India never underwent significant land reform. Nevertheless, its current programme of ‘conclusive titling’ of land bears clear resemblances to Mexico’s post-1992 drive to hand over property rights… The Indian rulers are closely following the script followed by Mexico, written in Washington.”

The plan is that, as farmers lose access to land or can be identified as legal owners, predatory institutional investors and large agribusinesses will buy up and amalgamate holdings, facilitating the further roll out of high-input, corporate-dependent industrial agriculture.

By harvesting (pirating) information – under the benign-sounding policy of data-driven agriculture – private corporations will be better placed to exploit farmers’ situations for their own ends: they will know more about their incomes and businesses than individual farmers themselves.

Some 55 civil society groups and organisations have written to the government expressing these and various other concerns, not least the perceived policy vacuum with respect to the data privacy of farmers and the exclusion of farmers themselves in current policy initiatives.

In an open letter, they state:

“At a time when ‘data has become the new oil’ and the industry is looking at it as the next source of profits, there is a need to ensure the interest of farmers. It will not be surprising that corporations will approach this as one more profit-making possibility, as a market for so-called ‘solutions’ which lead to sale of unsustainable agri-inputs combined with greater loans and indebtedness of farmers for this through fintech, as well as the increased threat of dispossession by private corporations.”

They add that any proposal which seeks to tackle the issues that plague Indian agriculture must address the fundamental causes of these issues. The current model relies on ‘tech-solutionism’ which emphasises using technology to solve structural issues.

There is also the issue of reduced transparency on the part of the government through algorithm-based decision-making.

The 55 signatories request the government holds consultations with all stakeholders, especially farmers’ organisations, on the direction of its digital push as well as the basis of partnerships, and put out a policy document in this regard after giving due consideration to feedback from farmers and farmer organisations. As agriculture is a state subject, the central government should consult the state governments also.

They state that all initiatives that the government has begun with private entities to integrate and/or share multiple databases with private/personal information about individual farmers or their farms be put on hold till an inclusive policy framework is put in place and a data protection law is passed.

It is also advocated that the development of AgriStack, both as a policy framework and its execution, should take the concerns and experiences of farmers as the prime starting point.

The letter states that if the new farm laws are closely examined, it will be evident that unregulated digitalisation is an important aspect of them.

There is the strong possibility that monopolistic corporate owned e-commerce ‘platforms’ will eventually control much of India’s economy given the current policy trajectory. From retail and logistics to cultivation, data certainly will be the ‘new oil’, giving power to platforms to dictate what needs to be manufactured and in what quantities.

Handing over all information about the sector to Microsoft and others places power in their hands – the power to shape the sector in their own image.

Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta and traditional agribusiness will work with Microsoft, Google and the big-tech giants to facilitate AI-driven farmerless farms and e-commerce retail dominated by the likes of Amazon and Walmart. A cartel of data owners, proprietary input suppliers and retail concerns at the commanding heights of the economy, peddling toxic industrial food and the devastating health impacts associated with it.

And elected representatives? Their role will be highly limited to technocratic overseers of these platforms and the artificial intelligence tools that plan and determine all of the above.

The links between humans and the land reduced to an AI-driven technocratic dystopia in compliance with the tenets of neoliberal capitalism. AgriStack will help facilitate this end game.

9) Neoliberal playbook

While the brands lining the shelves of giant retail outlets seem vast, a handful of food companies own these brands which, in turn, rely on a relatively narrow range of produce for ingredients. At the same time, this illusion of choice often comes at the expense of food security in poorer countries that were compelled to restructure their agriculture to facilitate agro-exports courtesy of the World Bank, IMF, the WTO and global agribusiness interests.

In Mexico, transnational food retail and processing companies have taken over food distribution channels, replacing local foods with cheap processed items, often with the direct support of the government. Free trade and investment agreements have been critical to this process and the consequences for public health have been catastrophic.

Mexico’s National Institute for Public Health released the results of a national survey of food security and nutrition in 2012. Between 1988 and 2012, the proportion of overweight women between the ages of 20 and 49 increased from 25 to 35 per cent and the number of obese women in this age group increased from 9 to 37 per cent. Some 29 per cent of Mexican children between the ages of 5 and 11 were found to be overweight, as were 35 per cent of the youngsters between 11 and 19, while one in ten school age children experienced anaemia.

Former Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, concludes that trade policies had favoured a greater reliance on heavily processed and refined foods with a long shelf life rather than on the consumption of fresh and more perishable foods, particularly fruit and vegetables. He added that the overweight and obesity emergency that Mexico faces could have been avoided.

In 2015, the non-profit organisation GRAIN reported that the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to the direct investment in food processing and a change in Mexico’s retail structure (towards supermarkets and convenience stores) as well as the emergence of global agribusiness and transnational food companies in the country.

NAFTA eliminated rules preventing foreign investors from owning more than 49 per cent of a company. It also prohibited minimum amounts of domestic content in production and increased rights for foreign investors to retain profits and returns from initial investments. By 1999, US companies had invested 5.3 billion dollars in Mexico’s food processing industry, a 25-fold increase in just 12 years.

US food corporations began to colonise the dominant food distribution networks of small-scale vendors, known as tiendas (corner shops). This helped spread nutritionally poor food as they allowed these corporations to sell and promote their foods to poorer populations in small towns and communities. By 2012, retail chains had displaced tiendas as Mexico’s main source of food sales.

In Mexico, the loss of food sovereignty induced catastrophic changes to the nation’s diet and many small-scale farmers lost their livelihoods, which was accelerated by the dumping of surplus commodities (produced at below the cost of production due to subsidies) from the US. NAFTA rapidly drove millions of Mexican farmers, ranchers and small business people into bankruptcy, leading to the flight of millions of immigrant workers.

What happened in Mexico should serve as a warning as Indian farmers continue their protest against the three recent farm bills that are designed to fully corporatise the agri-food sector through contract farming, the massive roll-back of public sector support systems, a reliance on imports (boosted by a future US trade deal) and the acceleration of large-scale (online) retail.

If you want to know the eventual fate of India’s local markets and small retailers, look no further than what US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in 2019. He stated that Amazon had “destroyed the retail industry across the United States.”

Amazon’s move into India encapsulates the unfair fight for space between local and global markets. There is a relative handful of multi-billionaires who own the corporations and platforms. And there are the interests of tens of millions of vendors and various small-scale enterprises who are regarded by these rich individuals as mere collateral damage to be displaced in their quest for ever greater profit.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s executive chairman, will plunder India and eradicate millions of small traders and retailers and neighbourhood mom and pop shops.

This is a man with few scruples.

After returning from a brief flight to space in July 2021, in a rocket built by his private space company, Bezos said during a news conference:

“I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this.”

In response, US congresswoman Nydia Velazquez wrote on Twitter:

“While Jeff Bezos is all over the news for paying to go to space, let’s not forget the reality he has created here on Earth.”

She added the hashtag #WealthTaxNow in reference to Amazon’s tax dodging, revealed in numerous reports, not least the May 2021 study ‘The Amazon Method: How to take advantage of the international state system to avoid paying tax’ by researchers at the University of London.

Little wonder that when Bezos visited India in January 2020, he was hardly welcomed with open arms.

Bezos praised India on Twitter by posting:

“Dynamism. Energy. Democracy. #IndianCentury.”

The ruling party’s top man in the BJP foreign affairs department hit back with:

“Please tell this to your employees in Washington DC. Otherwise, your charm offensive is likely to be waste of time and money.”

A fitting response, albeit perplexing given the current administration’s proposed sanctioning of the foreign takeover of the economy.

Bezos landed in India on the back of the country’s antitrust regulator initiating a formal investigation of Amazon and with small store owners demonstrating in the streets. The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) announced that members of its affiliate bodies across the country would stage sit-ins and public rallies in 300 cities in protest.

In a letter to PM Modi, prior to the visit of Bezos, the secretary of the CAIT, General Praveen Khandelwal, claimed that Amazon, like Walmart-owned Flipkart, was an “economic terrorist” due to its predatory pricing that “compelled the closure of thousands of small traders.”

In 2020, Delhi Vyapar Mahasangh (DVM) filed a complaint against Amazon and Flipkart alleging that they favoured certain sellers over others on their platforms by offering them discounted fees and preferential listing. The DVM lobbies to promote the interests of small traders. It also raised concerns about Amazon and Flipkart entering into tie-ups with mobile phone manufacturers to sell phones exclusively on their platforms.

It was argued by DVM that this was anti-competitive behaviour as smaller traders could not purchase and sell these devices. Concerns were also raised over the flash sales and deep discounts offered by e-commerce companies, which could not be matched by small traders.

The CAIT estimates that in 2019 upwards of 50,000 mobile phone retailers were forced out of business by large e-commerce firms.

Amazon’s internal documents, as revealed by Reuters, indicated that Amazon had an indirect ownership stake in a handful of sellers who made up most of the sales on its Indian platform. This is an issue because in India Amazon and Flipkart are legally allowed to function only as neutral platforms that facilitate transactions between third-party sellers and buyers for a fee.

The upshot is that India’s Supreme Court recently ruled that Amazon must face investigation by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for alleged anti-competitive business practices. The CCI said it would probe the deep discounts, preferential listings and exclusionary tactics that Amazon and Flipkart are alleged to have used to destroy competition.

However, there are powerful forces that have been sitting on their hands as these companies have been running amok.

In August 2021, the CAIT attacked the NITI Aayog (the influential policy commission think tank of the Government of India) for interfering in e-commerce rules proposed by the Consumer Affairs Ministry.

The CAIT said that the think tank clearly seems to be under the pressure and influence of the foreign e-commerce giants.

The president of CAIT, BC Bhartia, stated that it is deeply shocking to see such a callous and indifferent attitude of the NITI Aayog, which has remained a silent spectator for so many years when:

“… the foreign e-commerce giants have circumvented every rule of the FDI policy and blatantly violated and destroyed the retail and e-commerce landscape of the country but have suddenly decided to open their mouth at a time when the proposed e-commerce rules will potentially end the malpractices of the e-commerce companies.”

But this is to be expected given the policy trajectory of the government.

During their ongoing protests against the three farm laws, farmers have been teargassed, smeared and beaten. Journalist Satya Sagar notes that government advisors fear that seeming to appear weak with the agitating farmers would not sit well with foreign agri-food investors and could stop the flow of big money into the sector – and the economy as a whole.

Policies are being governed by the drive to attract and retain foreign investment and maintain ‘market confidence’ by ceding to the demands of international capital. ‘Foreign direct investment’ has thus become the holy grail of the Modi-led administration.

Little wonder the government needs to be seen as acting ‘tough’ on protesting farmers because now, more than ever, attracting and retaining foreign reserves will be required to purchase food on the international market once India surrenders responsibility for its food policy to private players by eliminating its buffer stocks.

The plan to radically restructure agri-food in the country is being sold to the public under the guise of ‘modernising’ the sector. And this is to be carried out by self-proclaimed ‘wealth creators’ like Zuckerberg, Bezos and Ambani who are highly experienced at creating wealth – for themselves.

It is clear who these ‘wealth creators’ create wealth for. On the People’s Review site, Tanmoy Ibrahim writes a piece on India’s billionaire class, with a strong focus on Ambani and Adani. By outlining the nature of crony capitalism in India, it is clear that Modi’s ‘wealth creators’ are given carte blanche to plunder the public purse, people and the environment, while real wealth creators – not least the farmers – are fighting for their existence.

The current struggle should not be regarded as a battle between the government and farmers. If what happened in Mexico is anything to go by, the outcome will adversely affect the entire nation in terms of the further deterioration of public health and the loss of livelihoods.

Consider that rates of obesity in India have already tripled in the last two decades and the nation is fast becoming the diabetes and heart disease capital of the world. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), between 2005 and 2015 the number of obese people doubled, even though one in five children in the 5-9 year age group were found to be stunted.

This will be just part of the cost of handing over the sector to billionaire (comprador) capitalists Mukesh Ambani and Gautum Adani and Jeff Bezos (world’s richest person), Mark Zukerberg (world’s fourth richest person), the Cargill business family (14 billionaires) and the Walmart business family (richest in the US).

These individuals are poised to siphon off the wealth of India’s agri-food sector while denying the livelihoods of many millions of small-scale farmers and local mom and pop retailers while undermining the health of the nation.

10)  Farmers’ Protest and Global Struggle Against Tyranny

Hundreds of thousands of farmers attended a rally in the city of Muzaffarnagar in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on 5 September 2021. A similar number turned out for other rallies in the state.

Rakesh Tikait, a prominent farmers’ leader, said this would breathe fresh life into the Indian farmers’ protest movement.

He added:

“We will intensify our protest by going to every single city and town of Uttar Pradesh to convey the message that Modi’s government is anti-farmer.”

Tikait is a leader of the protest movement and a spokesperson of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Indian Farmers’ Union).

Since November 2020, tens of thousands of farmers have been encamped on the outskirts of Delhi in protest against the three new farm laws that will effectively hand over the agrifood sector to corporates and place India at the mercy of international commodity and financial markets for its food security.

Aside from the rallies in Uttar Pradesh, thousands more farmers recently gathered in Karnal in the state of Haryana to continue to pressurise the Modi-led government to repeal the laws. This particular protest was also in response to police violence during another demonstration, also in Karnal (200 km north of Delhi), during late August when farmers had been blocking a highway. The police Lathi-charged them and at least 10 people were injured and one person died from a heart attack a day later.

A video that appeared on social media showed Ayush Sinha, a top government official, encouraging officers to “smash the heads of farmers” if they broke through the barricades placed on the highway.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar criticised the choice of words but said that “strictness had to be maintained to ensure law and order”.

But that is not quite true. “Strictness” – outright brutality – must be imposed to placate the scavengers abroad who are circling overhead with India’s agri-food sector firmly in their sights. As much as the authorities try to distance themselves from such language – ‘smashing heads’ is precisely what India’s rulers and the billionaire owners of foreign agri-food corporations require.

The government has to demonstrate to global agro-capital that it is being tough on farmers in order to maintain ‘market confidence’ and attract foreign direct investment into the sector (aka the takeover of the sector).

The Indian government’s willingness to cede control of its agri-food sector would appear to represent a victory for US foreign policy.

Economist Prof Michael Hudson stated in 2014:

“It’s by agriculture and control of the food supply that American diplomacy has been able to control most of the Third World. The World Bank’s geopolitical lending strategy has been to turn countries into food deficit areas by convincing them to grow cash crops – plantation export crops – not to feed themselves with their own food crops.”

The control of global agriculture has been a tentacle of US capitalism’s geopolitical strategy. The Green Revolution was exported courtesy of oil-rich interests and poorer nations adopted agro-capital’s chemical- and oil-dependent model of agriculture that required loans for inputs and related infrastructure development. It entailed trapping nations into a globalised system of debt bondage, rigged trade relations and a system vulnerable to oil price shocks.

A December 2020 photograph published by the Press Trust of India defines the Indian government’s approach to protesting farmers. It shows a security official in paramilitary garb raising a lathi. An elder from the Sikh farming community was about to feel its full force.

But ‘smashing the heads of farmers’ is symbolic of how near-totalitarian ‘liberal democracies’ the world over now regard many within their own populations.

Post-Covid dystopia

During its numerous prolonged lockdowns, in parts of Australia the right to protest and gather in public as well as the right of free speech was suspended. It resembled (and possibly still does) a giant penal colony as officials pursue a nonsensical ‘zero-COVID’ policy. Across Europe and in the US and Israel, unnecessary and discriminatory ‘COVID passports’ are being rolled out to restrict freedom of movement and access to services.

Again, governments must demonstrate resolve to their billionaire masters in Big Finance, the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, the World Economic Forum and the entire gamut of forces in the military-financial industrial complex behind the ‘Great Reset’, ‘4th Industrial Revolution, ‘New Normal’ or whichever other benign-sounding term its political and media lackeys use to disguise the restructuring of capitalism and the brutal impacts on ordinary people.

This too, like the restructuring of Indian agriculture – which will affect India’s entire 1.3-billion-plus population – is also part of a US foreign policy agenda that serves the interests of the Anglo-US elite.

COVID has ensured that trillions of dollars have been handed over to elite interests, while lockdowns and restrictions have been imposed on ordinary people and small businesses. The winners have been the likes of Amazon, Big Pharma and the tech giants. The losers have been small enterprises and the bulk of the population, deprived of their right to work and the entire panoply of civil rights their ancestors struggled and often died for.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Research on Globalization says:

“The Global Money financial institutions are the ‘creditors’ of the real economy which is in crisis. The closure of the global economy has triggered a process of global indebtedness. Unprecedented in World history, a multi-trillion bonanza of dollar denominated debts is hitting simultaneously the national economies of 193 countries.”

In August 2020, a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) stated:

“The COVID-19 crisis has severely disrupted economies and labour markets in all world regions, with estimated losses of working hours equivalent to nearly 400 million full-time jobs in the second quarter of 2020, most of which are in emerging and developing countries.”

Among the most vulnerable are the 1.6 billion informal economy workers, representing half of the global workforce, who are working in sectors experiencing major job losses or have seen their incomes seriously affected by lockdowns. Most of the workers affected (1.25 billion) are in retail, accommodation and food services and manufacturing. And most of these are self-employed and in low-income jobs in the informal sector.

India was especially affected in this respect when the government imposed a lockdown. The policy ended up pushing 230 million into poverty and wrecked the lives and livelihoods of many. A May 2021 report prepared by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University has highlighted how employment and income had not recovered to pre-pandemic levels even by late 2020.

The report ‘State of Working India 2021 – One year of Covid-19’ highlights how almost half of formal salaried workers moved into the informal sector and that 230 million people fell below the national minimum wage poverty line.

Even before COVID, India was experiencing its longest economic slowdown since 1991 with weak employment generation, uneven development and a largely informal economy. A recent article by the RUPE highlights the structural weaknesses of the economy and the often desperate plight of ordinary people.

To survive Modi’s lockdown, the poorest 25% of households borrowed 3.8 times their median income, as against 1.4 times for the top 25%. The study noted the implications for debt traps.

Six months later, it was also noted that food intake was still at lockdown levels for 20% of vulnerable households.

Meanwhile, the rich were well taken care of. According to Left Voice:

“The Modi government has handled the pandemic by prioritising the profits of big business and protecting the fortunes of billionaires over protecting the lives and livelihoods of workers.”

Chossudovsky says that governments are now under the control of global creditors and that the post-Covid era will see massive austerity measures, including the cancellation of workers’ benefits and social safety nets. An unpayable multi-trillion dollar public debt is unfolding: the creditors of the state are Big Money, which calls the shots in a process that will lead to the privatisation of the state.

Between April and July 2020, the total wealth held by billionaires around the world grew from $8 trillion to more than $10 trillion. Chossudovsky says a new generation of billionaire innovators looks set to play a critical role in repairing the damage by using the growing repertoire of emerging technologies. He adds that tomorrow’s innovators will digitise, refresh and revolutionise the economy: but, as he notes, let us be under no illusions these corrupt billionaires are impoverishers.

With this in mind, a piece on the US Right To Know website exposes the Gates-led agenda for the future of food based on the programming of biology to produce synthetic and genetically engineered substances. The thinking reflects the programming of computers in the information economy. Of course, Gates and his ilk have patented, or are patenting, the processes and products involved.

For example, Ginkgo Bioworks, a Gates-backed start-up that makes ‘custom organisms’, recently went public in a $17.5 billion deal. It uses ‘cell programming’ technology to genetically engineer flavours and scents into commercial strains of engineered yeast and bacteria to create ‘natural’ ingredients, including vitamins, amino acids, enzymes and flavours for ultra-processed foods.

Ginkgo plans to create up to 20,000 engineered ‘cell programs’ (it now has five) for food products and many other uses. It plans to charge customers to use its ‘biological platform’. Its customers are not consumers or farmers but the world’s largest chemical, food and pharmaceutical companies.

Gates pushes fake food by way of his greenwash agenda. If he really is interested in avoiding ‘climate catastrophe’, helping farmers or producing enough food, instead of cementing the power and the control of corporations over our food, he should be facilitating community-based/led agroecological approaches.

But he will not because there is no scope for patents, external proprietary inputs, commodification and dependency on global corporations which Gates sees as the answer to all of humanity’s problems in his quest to bypass democratic processes and roll out his agenda.

India should take heed because this is the future of ‘food’. If the farmers fail to get the farm bills repealed, India will again become dependent on food imports or on foreign food manufacturers and even lab-made ‘food’. Fake or toxic food will displace traditional diets and cultivation methods will be driven by drones, genetically engineered seeds and farms without farmers, devastating the livelihoods (and health) of hundreds of millions.

World Bank Group President David Malpass has stated that poorer countries will be ‘helped’ to get back on their feet after the various lockdowns that have been implemented. This ‘help’ will be on condition that neoliberal reforms and the undermining of public services are implemented and become further embedded.

In April 2020, the Wall Street Journal ran the headline ‘IMF, World Bank Face Deluge of Aid Requests From Developing World‘. Scores of countries are asking for bailouts and loans from financial institutions with $1.2 trillion to lend. An ideal recipe for fuelling dependency.

In return for debt relief or ‘support’, global conglomerates along with the likes of Bill Gates will be able to further dictate national policies and hollow out the remnants of nation state sovereignty.

The billionaire class who are pushing this agenda think they can own nature and all humans and can control both, whether through geoengineering the atmosphere, for example, genetically modifying soil microbes or doing a better job than nature by producing bio-synthesised fake food in a lab.

They think they can bring history to a close and reinvent the wheel by reshaping what it means to be human. And they hope they can achieve this sooner rather than later. It is a cold dystopian vision that wants to eradicate thousands of years of culture, tradition and practices virtually overnight.

And many of those cultures, traditions and practices relate to food and how we produce it and our deep-rooted connections to nature. Consider that many of the ancient rituals and celebrations of our forebears were built around stories and myths that helped them come to terms with some of the most fundamental issues of existence, from death to rebirth and fertility. These culturally embedded beliefs and practices served to sanctify their practical relationship with nature and its role in sustaining human life.

As agriculture became key to human survival, the planting and harvesting of crops and other seasonal activities associated with food production were central to these customs. Freyfaxi marks the beginning of the harvest in Norse paganism, for example, while Lammas or Lughnasadh is the celebration of the first harvest/grain harvest in paganism.

Humans celebrated nature and the life it gave birth to. Ancient beliefs and rituals were imbued with hope and renewal and people had a necessary and immediate relationship with the sun, seeds, animals, wind, fire, soil and rain and the changing seasons that nourished and brought life. Our cultural and social relationships with agrarian production and associated deities had a sound practical base.

Prof Robert W Nicholls explains that the cults of Woden and Thor were superimposed on far older and better-rooted beliefs related to the sun and the earth, the crops and the animals and the rotation of the seasons between the light and warmth of summer and the cold and dark of winter.

We need look no further than India to appreciate the important relationship between culture, agriculture and ecology, not least the vital importance of the monsoon and seasonal planting and harvesting. Rural-based beliefs and rituals steeped in nature persist, even among urban Indians. These are bound to traditional knowledge systems where livelihoods, the seasons, food, cooking, food processing and preparation, seed exchange, healthcare and the passing on of knowledge are all inter-related and form the essence of cultural diversity within India itself.

Although the industrial age resulted in a diminution of the connection between food and the natural environment as people moved to cities, traditional ‘food cultures’ – the practices, attitudes and beliefs surrounding the production, distribution and consumption of food – still thrive and highlight our ongoing connection to agriculture and nature.

If we go back to the 1950s, it is interesting to note Union Carbide’s corporate narrative based on a series of images that depicted the company as a ‘hand of god’ coming out of the sky to ‘solve’ some of the issues facing humanity. One of the most famous images is of the hand pouring the firm’s agrochemicals on Indian soils as if traditional farming practices were somehow ‘backward’.

Despite well-publicised claims to the contrary, this chemical-driven approach did not lead to higher food production and has had long-term devastating ecological, social and economic consequences.

In the book Food and Cultural Studies’ (Bob Ashley et al), we see how, some years ago, a Coca Cola TV ad campaign sold its product to an audience which associated modernity with a sugary drink and depicted ancient Aboriginal beliefs as harmful, ignorant and outdated. Coke and not rain became the giver of life to the parched. This type of ideology forms part of a wider strategy to discredit traditional cultures and portray them as being deficient and in need of assistance from ‘god-like’ corporations.

Today, there is talk of farmerless farms being manned by driverless machines and monitored by drones with lab-based food becoming the norm. We may speculate what this could mean: commodity crops from patented GM seeds doused with chemicals and cultivated for industrial ‘biomatter’ to be processed by biotech companies and constituted into something resembling food.

In places like India, on the back of the new farm laws, will the land of already (prior to COVID) heavily indebted farmers eventually be handed over to the tech giants, the financial institutions and global agribusiness to churn out their high-tech, data-driven GM industrial sludge?

Is this part of the ‘own nothing, be happy’ brave new world being promoted by the World Economic Forum? A world in which a handful of rulers display their contempt for humanity and their arrogance, believing they are above nature and humanity.

This elite comprises between 6,000 and 7,000 individuals (around 0.0001% of the global population) according to David Rothkopf – former director of Kissinger Associates (set up by Henry Kissinger), a senior administrator in the Bill Clinton administration and a member of the Council for Foreign Relations –  in his 2008 book ‘SuperClass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making’.

This class comprises the megacorporation-interlocked, policy-building elites of the world: people at the absolute peak of the global power pyramid. They set agendas at the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, G-8, G-20, NATO, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization and are largely from the highest levels of finance capital and transnational corporations.

With the link completely severed between food production, nature and culturally embedded beliefs that give meaning and expression to life, we will be left with the individual human who exists on lab-based food, who is reliant on income from the state and who is stripped of satisfying productive endeavour and genuine self-fulfilment.

The current farmers’ protest in India must be regarded as part of a wider struggle against a global tyranny and a global elite and its dystopic vision for humankind.

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal.

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Winter is coming … and you know what that means.

That’s right, it’s nearly time once again for the global-capitalist ruling classes to whip the New Normal masses into a state of mindless mass hysteria over an imaginary apocalyptic virus. the same imaginary apocalyptic virus that they have whipped the New Normal masses into a state of mass hysteria over throughout the Winter for the last two years.

They’ve got their work cut out for them this time. Seriously, how much more mass hysterical could the New Normals possibly get at this point?

The vast majority of the Western world has been transformed into a pseudo-medical dystopia in which you have to show your “health-purity papers” to enter a café and get a cup of coffee. People who refuse to get experimentally “vaccinated” against a virus that causes mild-to-moderate symptoms (or, often, no symptoms whatsoever) in about 95% of the infected, and the overall infection fatality rate of which is approximately 0.1% to 0.5%, are being systematically segregated, stripped of their jobs, denied medical treatment, demonized as “a danger to society,” censored, fined, and otherwise persecuted.

If you think I’m overstating the case, look at the front page of this Australian newspaper …

Yes, the Great New Normal Purge is on. “The Unvaccinated” and other infidels and heretics are being hunted by fanatical, hate-drunk mobs, dragged before the New Normal Inquisition, and made examples of all over the world.

Here in New Normal Germany, popular footballer Joshua Kimmich is being publicly drawn and quartered for refusing to submit to being “vaccinated” and profess his faith in the New Normal World Order. In the USA, “the Unvaccinated” stand accused of murdering Colin Powell, an 84-year-old, cancer-ridden war criminal. Australia is planning to imprison people and fine them $90,000 for the “crime” of not wearing a medical-looking mask, or attempted worship at a synagogue, or whatever. In Florida (of all places), fanatical school staff tied a medical-looking mask to the face of a non-verbal Downs-syndrome girl with nylon cord, day after day, for over six weeks, until her father discovered what they were doing. I could go on, but I don’t think I have to. The Internet is brimming with examples of mass-hysterical and sadistic behavior.

And that’s not to mention the mass hysteria rampant among the New Normals themselves … for example, the parents who are lining up to get their children needlessly “vaccinated” and then rushed into the emergency room with “totally manageable myocarditis.”

Image

Still, as mass hysterical as things are, count on GloboCap to go balls out on the mass hysteria for the next five months. The coming Winter is crunch time, folks. They need to cement the New Normal in place, so they can dial down the “apocalyptic pandemic.” If they’re forced to extend it another year … well, not even the most brainwashed New Normals would buy that.

Or … all right, sure, the most brainwashed would, but they represent a small minority. Most New Normals are not fanatical totalitarians. They’re just people looking out for themselves, people who will go along with almost anything to avoid being ostracized and punished. But, believe it or not, there is a limit to the level of absurdity they’re prepared to accept, and the level and duration of relentless stress and cognitive dissonance they are prepared to accept.

Most of them have reached that limit. They have done their part, followed orders, worn the masks, got the “vaccinations,” and are happy to present their “obedience papers” to anyone who demands to see them. Now, they want to go back to “normal.” But they can’t, because … well, because of us.

See, GloboCap can’t let them return to “normal” (i.e., the new totalitarian version of “normal”) until everyone (i.e., everyone who matters) has submitted to being “vaccinated” and is walking around with a scanable certificate of ideological conformity in their smartphones. They would probably even waive the “vaccination” requirement if we would just bend the knee and pledge our allegiance to the WEF, or BlackRock, or Vanguard, or whoever, and carry around a QR code confirming that we believe in “Science,” the “Covidian Creed,” and whatever other ecumenical corporatist dogma.

Seriously, the point of this entire exercise (or at least this phase of this entire exercise) is to radically, irrevocably, transform society into a monolithic corporate campus where everyone has to scan their IDs at every turn of an endless maze of perpetually monitored, eco-friendly, gender-fluid, ideologically uniform, non-smoking, totally meat-free “safe spaces” owned and operated by GloboCap, or one of its agents, subsidiaries, and assigns.

The global-capitalist ruling classes are determined to transform the planet into this fascistic Woke Utopia and enforce unwavering conformity to its valueless values, no matter the cost, and we, “the Unvaccinated,” are standing in their way.

They can’t just round us up and shoot us — this is global capitalism, not Nazism or Stalinism. They need to break us, to break our spirits, to coerce, gaslight, harass, and persecute us until we surrender our autonomy willingly. And they need to do this during the next five months.

Preparations therefor are now in progress.

In the UK, despite a drop in “cases,” and the fact (which the “authorities” have been forced to acknowledge) that the “Vaccinated” can spread the virus just like “the Unvaccinated,” the government is preparing to go to “Plan B” and roll out the social-segregation system that most of Europe has already adopted. In Germany, the “Epidemic Emergency of National Importance” (i.e., the legal pretense for enforcement of the “Corona restrictions”) is due to expire in mid-November (unless they can seriously jack up the “cases,” which seems unlikely at this point), so the authorities are working to revise the “Infektionsschutzgesetz” (the “Infection Protection Act”) to justify maintaining the restrictions indefinitely, despite the absence of an “epidemic,” or an “emergency.”

And so on. I think you get the picture. This Winter is probably going to get a little nutty … or, OK, more than a little nutty. In terms of manufactured mass hysteria, it is probably going to make Russiagate, the War on Populism, the Global War on Terror, the Red Scare, and every other manufactured mass-hysteria campaign you can possibly think of look like an amateur production of Wagner’s Götterdammerung.

In other words, kiss reality (or whatever is left of reality at this point) goodbye. The clock is ticking, and GloboCap knows it. If they expect to pull this Great Reset off, they are going to need to terrorize the New-Normal masses into a state of protracted pants-shitting panic and uncontrollable mindless hatred of “the Unvaccinated,” and anyone challenging their rule. A repeat of the Winters of 2020 and 2021 is not going to cut it. It is going to take more than the now standard repertoire of fake and manipulated statistics, dire projections, photos of “death trucks,” non-overflowing overflowing hospitals, and all the other familiar features of the neo-Goebbelsian propaganda juggernaut we have been subjected to for over 18 months.

They are facing a growing working-class revolt. Millions of people in countries all over the world are protesting in the streets, organizing strikes, walk-outs, “sick-outs,” and mounting other forms of opposition. Despite the corporate media’s Orwellian attempts to blackout any coverage of it, or demonize us all as “far-right extremists,” the New Normals are very aware that this is happening. And the official narrative is finally falling apart. The actual facts are undeniable by anyone with an ounce of integrity, so much so that even major GloboCap propaganda outlets like The Guardian are being forced to grudgingly admit the truth.

No, GloboCap has no choice at this point but to let loose with every weapon in its arsenal — short of full-blown despotism, which it cannot deploy without destroying itself — and hope that we will finally break down, bend the knee, and beg for mercy.

I don’t know exactly what they’ve got in mind, but I am definitely not looking forward to it. I’m already pretty worn out as it is. From what I gather, so are a lot of you. If it helps at all, maybe look at it this way. We don’t have to take the battle to them. All we have to do is not surrender, withstand the coming siege, and make it to April.

Or, if the strikes, sick-outs, and “bad weather” continue, it might not even take that long.

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Sexual predation by police officers happens far more often than people in the business are willing to admit.”—Former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper

We are a nation on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Undeniably, the blowback from COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates continues to reverberate around the country, impacting the nation’s struggling workplaces, choking the economy and justifying all manner of authoritarian tyrannies being inflicted on the populace by state and federal governments.

Yet while it is easy to be distracted by political theater, distressed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and divided over authoritarian lockdowns and mandates, there are still darker forces afoot that cannot—should not—must not be ignored.

Here’s a news flash for you: there are sexual predators on America’s police forces.

Indeed, when it comes to sex trafficking—the buying and selling of young girls, boys and women for sex—police have become both predators and pimps. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, “Hundreds of police officers across the country have turned from protectors to predators, using the power of their badge to extort sex.”

Victims of sex trafficking report that police are among those “buying” young girls and women for sex. Incredibly, this COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in even greater numbers of children being preyed upon by sex traffickers.

Unfortunately, rather than being part of the solution, America’s police forces—riddled with corruption, brutality, sexual misconduct and drug abuse—have largely become part of the problem.

In New York, for instance, seven NYPD cops—three sergeants, two detectives and two officers—were accused of running brothels that sold 15-minute sexual encounters, raking in more than $2 million over the course of 13 months.

In California, a police sergeant—a 16-year veteran of the police force—was arrested for raping a 16-year-old girl who was being held captive and sold for sex in a home in an upscale neighborhood.

Click here to watch the video.

A week-long sting in Florida ended with 277 arrests of individuals accused of sex trafficking, including doctors, pharmacists and police officers.

Sex trafficking victims in Hawaii described “cops asking for sexual favors to more coercive situations like I’ll let you go if you do X, Y, or Z for me.”

One study found that “over 14 percent of sex workers said that they had been threatened with arrest unless they had sex with a police officer.” In many states, it’s actually legal for police to have sex with prostitutes during the course of sting operations.

While the problem of cops engaged in sex trafficking is part of the American police state’s seedy underbelly that doesn’t get addressed enough, equally alarming is the number of cops who commit sex crimes against those they encounter as part of their job duties, a largely underreported number given the “blue wall of silence” that shields police misconduct.

Former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper describes cases in which cops fondled prisoners, made false traffic stops of attractive women, traded sexual favors for freedom, had sex with teenagers and raped children.

Young girls are particularly vulnerable to these predators in blue.

Former police officer Phil Stinson estimates that half of the victims of police sex crimes are minors under the age of eighteen.

According to The Washington Post, a national study found that 40 percent of reported cases of police sexual misconduct involved teens. One young woman was assaulted during a “ride along” with an officer, who said in a taped confession: “The badge gets you the p—y and the p—y gets your badge, you know?

For example, a Pennsylvania police chief and his friend were arrested for allegedly raping a young girl hundreds of times—orally, vaginally, and anally several times a week—over the course of seven years, starting when she was 4 years old.

In 2017, two NYPD cops were accused of arresting a teenager, handcuffing her, and driving her in an unmarked van to a nearby parking lot, where they raped her and forced her to perform oral sex on them, then dropped her off on a nearby street corner.

The New York Times reports that “a sheriff’s deputy in San Antonio was charged with sexually assaulting the 4-year-old daughter of an undocumented Guatemalan woman and threatening to have her deported if she reported the abuse.”

One young girl, J.E., was kidnapped by a Border Patrol agent when she was 14 years old, taken to his apartment and raped. “In the apartment, there were two beds on top of the other, children’s bunk beds, and ropes there, too. They were shoelaces. For my wrists and my feet. My mind was blank,” recalls J.E. “I was trying to understand everything. I didn’t know what to do. My feet were tied up. I would look at him and he had a gun. And that frightened me. I asked him why, and he answered me that he was doing this to me because I was the prettiest one of the three.”

Two teenage girls accused a Customs and Border Protection officer of forcing them to strip, fondling them, then trying to get them to stop crying by offering chocolates, potato chips and a blanket. The government settled the case for $125,000. (Mind you, this is the same government that separated immigrant children from their parents and locked them up in detention centers, where they were easy prey for sexual predators. At one point, the government had received more than 4500 complaints about sexual abuse at those child detention facilities.)

The police state’s sexual assaults of children are sickening enough, but when you add sex crimes against grown women into the mix, the picture becomes even more sordid.

According to The Washington Post, “research on ‘police sexual misconduct’—a term used to describe actions from sexual harassment and extortion to forcible rape by officers—overwhelmingly concludes that it is a systemic problem.”

Investigative journalist Andrea Ritchie has tracked national patterns of sexual violence by police officers during traffic stops, in addition to heightened risk from minor offenses, drug arrests and police interactions with teenagers.

Victims of domestic abuse, women of color, transgender women, women who use drugs or alcohol, and women involved in the sex trade are particularly vulnerable to sexual assault by police.

One Oklahoma City police officer allegedly sexually assaulted at least seven women while on duty over the course of four months, including a 57-year-old grandmother who says she was forced to give the cop oral sex after he pulled her over.

Screenshot from The Nation

A Philadelphia state trooper, eventually convicted of assaulting six women and teenagers, once visited the hospital bedside of a pregnant woman who had attempted suicide, and groped her breasts and masturbated.

These aren’t isolated incidents.

According to research from Bowling Green State University, police officers in the U.S. were charged with more than 400 rapes over a 9-year period. During that same time period, 600 police officers were arrested for forcible fondling; 219 were charged with forcible sodomy; 186 were arrested for statutory rape; 58 for sexual assault with an object; and 98 with indecent exposure.

Sexual assault is believed to be the second-most reported form of misconduct against police officers after the use of excessive force, making up more than 9% of all complaints.

Even so, these crimes are believed to be largely underreported so much so that sex crimes may in fact be the number one form of misconduct among police officers.

So why are the numbers underreported?

“The women are terrified. Who are they going to call? It’s the police who are abusing them,” said Penny Harrington, the former police chief of Portland, Ore.

One Philadelphia cop threatened to arrest a teenager for carjacking unless she had sex with him. “He had all the power. I had no choice,” testified the girl. “Who was I? He had his badge.”

This is the danger of a police state that invests its henchmen with so much power that they don’t even need to use handcuffs or a gun to get what they want.

Making matters worse, most police departments do little to identify the offenders, and even less to stop them. “Unlike other types of police misconduct, the abuse of police power to coerce sex is little addressed in training, and rarely tracked by police disciplinary systems,” conclude Nancy Phillips and Craig R. McCoy writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer. “This official neglect makes it easier for predators to escape punishment and find new victims.”

Unfortunately, this is a problem that is hiding in plain sight, covered up by government agencies that are failing in their constitutional duties to serve and protect “we the people.”

That thin blue line of knee-jerk adulation and absolute loyalty to police above and beyond what the law requires is creating a menace to society that cannot be ignored.

As researcher Jonathan Blanks notes, “The system is rigged to protect police officers from outside accountability. The worst cops are going to get the most protection.

Hyped up on the power of the badge and their weaponry, protected from charges of wrongdoing by police unions and government agencies, and empowered by rapidly advancing tools—technological and otherwise—that make it all too easy to identify, track and take advantage of vulnerable members of society, predators on the nation’s police forces are growing in number.

“It can start with a police officer punching a woman’s license plate into a police computer – not to see whether a car is stolen, but to check out her picture,” warns investigative journalists Nancy Phillips and Craig R. McCoy. “If they are not caught, or left unpunished, the abusers tend to keep going, and get worse, experts say.”

So where does this leave us?

The courts, by allowing the government’s desire for unregulated, unaccountable, expansive power to trump justice and the rule of law, have turned away from this menace. Politicians, eager for the support of the powerful police unions, have turned away from this menace. Police unions, which have been at the forefront of the effort to shield sexual misconduct by cops, have exacerbated this menace.

Yet for the sake of the most vulnerable among us, we as a nation must stop turning away from this menace in our midst.

For starters, police should not be expected—or allowed—to police themselves.

Misconduct by local police has become a national problem. Therefore, the response to this national problem must start at the local level.

This is no longer a matter of a few bad apples. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the entire system has become corrupted and must be reformed.

Greater oversight is needed, yes, but also greater accountability and more significant consequences for assaults.

Andrea Ritchie’s piece in The Washington Post provides some practical suggestions for reform ranging from small steps to structural changes (greater surveillance of police movements, heightened scrutiny of police interactions and traffic stops, and more civilian oversight boards), but as she acknowledges, these efforts still don’t strike at the root of the problem: a criminal justice system that protects abusers and encourages abuse.

It’s difficult to say whether modern-day policing with its deep-seated corruption, immunity from accountability, and authoritarian approach to law enforcement attracts this kind of deviant behavior or cultivates it, but empowering police to view themselves as the best, or even the only, solution to the public’s problems, while failing to hold them accountable for misconduct, will only deepen the policing crisis that grows deadlier and more menacing by the day.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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

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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***

 

The United States government is playing a key role in organizing, promoting and amplifying upcoming nationwide protests in Cuba planned for November 15.

When directly challenged at a press conference as to whether the United States is directly involved in the planning of the overthrow of the Cuban government, State Department spokesperson Ned Price refused to deny it, instead twice giving long statements about how much the U.S. supports the protests’ demands — responses that skeptical readers might consider tantamount to a “yes”. “The United States remains deeply committed to the Cuban people[‘s]…struggle to freely choose their leadership and their future,” Price added later in a press release.

A week later, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Juan Gonzalez went even further, announcing that the U.S. government would sanction Cuba if it attempted to interfere with the protests. “We are totally committed to supporting, maintaining and strengthening the voice of the Cuban people who want a change,” he added.

Other American officials have been putting out a flurry of statements in support of the upcoming demonstrations.

“The U.S. shares the vision of the Cuban people: democracy, prosperity, and human rights. We support their right to peacefully assemble on November 15 and call on the Cuban government to allow free expression and listen to the people. Their voices cannot be silenced,” wrote Brian A. Nichols, Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

As MintPress reported last month, the protests were originally planned for November 20. However, the government’s refusal to grant legal permission for them, coupled with left-wing counter-demonstrations, spurred the movement to bring forward the event by five days.

Online anti-government spaces — such as the private Facebook group that sparked the July demonstrations that caught world media attention — are eagerly anticipating the movement as another opportunity to put pressure on, or even overthrow, the government of Miguel Diaz Canel.

However, sources MintPress spoke to inside Cuba suggested that it was the very spontaneity of the July protests that was the key to their success, and that tipping off Cuban authorities weeks in advance was a self-defeating idea, allowing government forces to neutralize many of the movement’s leaders long before anything starts.

Organized “spontaneity”

The protests in July were the largest and most significant on the island since the 1990s. However, although they garnered widespread media attention and the support of celebrities, politicians, and even the president of the United States, they quickly fizzled out. While presented as a spontaneous uprising against oppression, they were actually organized in a forum controlled by the Cuban American community in Florida. The U.S. government openly supported the protests in July. This time, however, it is backing them even before they have started.

What is being attempted appears to be a Cuban-style color revolution — a Western-supported attempt at citizen-led regime change. Perhaps the most prominent color revolution was the series of protests that toppled Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Protestors used non-violent tactics to flood the streets with people to overthrow the government. It later transpired that the group credited with organizing the event, OTPOR, was on the U.S. government payroll. Since then, the group has been used by the U.S. to train activists across the world in how to bring down governments of which Washington does not approve.

At first glance, the Biden administration’s position on Cuba seems to be a 180-degree change from that of Barack Obama, who moved towards normalizing relations with the Caribbean island. However, Obama was essentially forced into doing so by united opposition across Latin America, which threatened to expel the U.S. from regional bodies if it did not pursue that course. Ten years later, many of those independent-minded governments have been overthrown (often with Washington’s help). It is in this context that Biden’s continuation of the Trump-era sanctions makes more sense. The sanctions have continually been declared illegal by the United Nations, which, in 2014, estimated that they had caused an estimated $1.1 trillion worth of damage.

It remains an open question as to how successful the upcoming action against the Cuban government will be. But who is behind the protests is hardly in doubt.

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Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.orgThe GuardianSalonThe GrayzoneJacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

Will Kids be Forced to Get a COVID Vaccine?

November 3rd, 2021 by Karol Markowicz

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Highlight

The Biden administration is doing nothing to fix that broken trust. Instead of convincing Americans to take the COVID-19 vaccine, it has attempted to force them into it under the threat of taking away their livelihoods. American parents are right to worry that those same mandates will be applied to schooling. With scientists saying herd immunity is largely off the table where COVID is concerned, whether or not to vaccinate a child should remain the prerogative of the parents.

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With the news that the Biden administration has purchased 65 million pediatric vaccine doses from Pfizer comes a pressing question: will kids be forced to get the COVID vaccine?

The vaccine was neither approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), nor recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for pediatric use when the administration made its purchase. Meanwhile, states are already making policy around vaccinating children.

Earlier this month Governor Gavin Newsom announced that California would add the COVID vaccine to the list of vaccinations kids are required to receive to attend school. Over the weekend, New York governor Kathy Hochul was asked if she would make a similar requirement. She hedged, saying,

“I will hold judgment on that very question right now. I want to make sure everyone does the right thing. They have the tools they need, they have the vaccines, but if it turns out that we see an increase in cases and people aren’t compliant…I’m going to keep all options on the table.”

But the question of vaccinating young kids is very complicated. There’s no strong evidence that kids need the vaccine. A few days after Gov. Newsom announced the mandate, news broke that his 12-year-old daughter, who is already eligible for the vaccine, had not yet been vaccinated. It’s not quite as simple a decision as the governor would have it seem.

Several countries in Europe are offering just one shot to teens—an option not offered to American parents and not considered “full” vaccination when it comes to entering spaces with vaccine mandates, such as restaurants or museums in New York City and Los Angeles.

Europe has treated children very differently throughout the pandemic than America has. Schools were prioritized for opening, and many places did not require children under age 11 or 12 to wear masks. In America masking begins at 2.

To enter Iceland, for example, adults require a COVID test while children do not. They’re simply considered neither a risk nor at-risk.

It remains to be seen whether some European countries will vaccinate smaller children at all.

And while a lot of the conversation over the last few months has focused on whether people are pro- or anti-vaccine, children are in another category altogether. Studies keep showing that unvaccinated kids have a lower risk of death from COVID than even fully vaccinated adults of any age. I remain very much in the pro-vax category for adults, but have no plan to vaccinate my small children.

When the vaccines were released, my priority was getting them into the arms of my mother and in-laws. I’d search all day to score them appointments. After they got their jabs, my husband and I got ours. If COVID-19 was as deadly to children as it is to adults—or even remotely close—kids would have been prioritized for the shots. I believe the vaccine is safe. I do not think the vaccine is necessary for children.

Unfortunately, many health agencies have been politicized during the Biden presidency. A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health released in May found that just 52 percent of Americans have “a great deal of trust” in the CDC. That number is 37 percent for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the FDA.

It’s easy to understand why. The COVID-19 era has not been a particularly good time for these institutions.

Last year, the CDC adjusted its school-opening guidelines based on what the teachers’ unions wanted. The NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci argued that the stimulus bill needed to pass for schools to open. Schools were, of course, already open in much of the country, but mostly remained closed in Democratic areas under the influence of teachers’ unions. It wasn’t science—it was politics.

In July, David Zweig wrote a very smart piece on Wired.com exposing how the CDC had covered up the risk of myocarditis post-vaccination in teen boys. Zweig quoted CDC head Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who said “the benefits of vaccination far outweigh any harm.” True, the vaccine-related risk of myocarditis is extremely small (less than .01 percent, per Walensky). But the risk of COVID among the young is also very small.

And notably, as Zweig points out, the rate in teen boys post-vaccine is seven times higher than it is for girls. Walensky had combined the sexes and got a lower risk number. How can parents trust this politicized organization to tell the truth about vaccines for children when its leaders have lied before?

The Biden administration is doing nothing to fix that broken trust. Instead of convincing Americans to take the COVID-19 vaccine, it has attempted to force them into it under the threat of taking away their livelihoods. American parents are right to worry that those same mandates will be applied to schooling. With scientists saying herd immunity is largely off the table where COVID is concerned, whether or not to vaccinate a child should remain the prerogative of the parents.

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Our thanks to Newsweek for bring this article to our attention. To read the complete article on Newsweek, click here

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Karol Markowicz is journalist and a columnist for the New York Post.

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An Army flight surgeon who recommended in September the Pentagon ground all pilots who took the COVID-19 shot testified before a Senate panel on Tuesday.

During her testimony to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Lieutenant Colonel Theresa Long described how she had to ground three pilots for COVID vaccine injuries.

“I saw 5 patients in clinic, two of which presented with chest pain days to weeks after vaccination and were subsequently diagnosed with pericarditis and worked up to rule out myocarditis,” Long said.

“The third pilot had been vaccinated and felt like he was drunk, chronically fatigued within 24 hours after vaccination.”

“After I reported to my command my concerns that in one morning I had to ground 3 out of 3 pilots due to vaccine injuries, the next day my patients were cancelled, my charts were pulled from review, and I was told I would not be seeing acute patients anymore, just healthy pilots there for their flight physical,” Long said.

Watch a live feed of the Senate panel discussion:

Original story below.

An Army flight surgeon is recommending that the Pentagon grounds all pilots who took the COVID shot due to their risk of cardiac episodes during flight and other documented adverse reactions.

Lieutenant Colonel Theresa Long, a Brigade Surgeon for the 1st Aviation Brigade Ft. Rucker, explained in an affidavit drafted under the Military Whistleblower Protection Act how perfectly healthy pilots have been suffering a myriad of adverse side effects, including myocarditis.

“I personally observed the most physically fit female Soldier I have seen in over 20 years in the Army, go from Colligate level athlete training for Ranger School, to being physically debilitated with cardiac problems, newly diagnosed pituitary brain tumor, thyroid dysfunction within weeks of getting vaccinated,” Long testified in the affidavit.

“Several military physicians have shared with me their firsthand experience with a significant increase in the number of young Soldiers with migraines, menstrual irregularities, cancer, suspected myocarditis and reporting cardiac symptoms after vaccination. Numerous Soldiers and DOD civilians have told me of how they were sick, bed-ridden, debilitated, and unable to work for days to weeks after vaccination. I have also recently reviewed three flight crew members’ medical records, all of which presented with both significant and aggressive systemic health issues.”

Long then described how several service members at Fort Hood were injured and even killed shortly after taking the jab.

“Today I received word of one fatality and two ICU cases on Fort Hood; the deceased was an Army pilot who could have been flying at the time. All three pulmonary embolism events happened within 48 hours of their vaccination. I cannot attribute this result to anything other than the Covid 19 vaccines as the source of these events. Each person was in top physical condition before the inoculation and each suffered the event within 2 days post vaccination.”

“Correlation by itself does not equal causation, however, significant causal patterns do exist that raise correlation into a probable cause; and the burden to prove otherwise falls on the authorities such as the CDC, FDA, and pharmaceutical manufacturers. I find the illnesses, injuries and fatalities observed to be the proximate and causal effect of the Covid 19 vaccinations.”

Long then urged Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to ground all pilots who received the COVID injection.

“In accordance with the foregoing, I hereby recommend to the Secretary of Defense that all pilots, crew and flight personnel in the military service who required hospitalization from injection or received any Covid 19 vaccination be grounded similarly for further dispositive assessment,” she said.

“I must and will therefore ground all active flight personnel who received the vaccinations until such time as the causation of these serious systemic health risks can be more fully and adequately assessed,” Long added.

Active-duty soldiers have about three months to get both doses of the COVID-19 injection or face a possible discharge from the force, the Army announced last week.

Many service members are nevertheless refusing to take the injection, and some already quit the military over its draconian vaccine mandates.

View the full affidavit here.

Owen covers the shocking news about the purge in the military as they force COVID vaccinations on the enlisted heroes.

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The protest movement against Vaccine Passports is gaining impetus all over the World. This is the latest report from The Hill

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  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Video: Worldwide Protests Against COVID Vaccine Mandates

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U.S. Senator Ron Johnson has consistently been the only member of the federal government who has dared to expose the crimes being committed by Big Pharma through the government COVID response.

In 2020 Senator Johnson held meetings in Washington D.C. exposing the criminal activities of Big Pharma and federal health agencies in suppressing early treatment options for COVID-19 that thousands of doctors were using with a near 100% success rate.

Here in 2021 Senator Johnson has held meetings with testimony showing how dangerous the COVID-19 vaccines have been, giving a voice to those who have suffered injuries or lost loved ones who died after the shots.

Source: Health Impact News

Senator Johnson held another meeting in Washington D.C. today, one that has been planned for many weeks, regarding COVID-19 mandatory vaccines.

Some of the top scientists and doctors in the world attended, as well as several people suffering COVID-19 vaccine injuries.

He also invited:

  • CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky
  • Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin
  • Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh
  • Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg
  • FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock
  • HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra
  • NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci,
  • NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins
  • Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky
  • Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel
  • Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla
  • BioNTech CEO U?ur ?ahin

But none of these invitees showed up. They are, of course, Big Pharma controlled mouthpieces who only appear in public with the pharma-owned corporate media where they know ahead of time what the questions will be, and the script for how to answer them.

The corporate media also did not show up to cover this truly historic event in Washington D.C. The Roundtable discussion was recorded and is over 3.5 hours long, and you can watch the entire event at Senator Ron Johnson’s Rumble channel.

We have separated out several of the testimonies from this event into shorter segments that can be viewed on our Rumble and Bitchute channels.

Senator Johnson started off the session by stating that those who dare to tell the truth about the COVID-19 shots in public pay a high price for doing so.

Senator Ron Johnson: There is no need for COVID-19 vaccine mandates. If the vaccine worked and stopped transmission, those vaccinated would have no fear of the unvaccinated. If the COVID-19 vaccine does not stop transmission, then mandating them is pointless.

Brianne Dressen was an Astra Zeneca clinical trial participant from Utah, and is co-founder of react19.org, a patient advocacy organization dedicated to increasing awareness of adverse events

Brianne Dressen:

“I feel like I am being electrocuted 24/7.”

She thought she was alone and an isolated case, but then found out there were “thousands of us” being denied medical care and recognition as vaccine injured.

They decided to take action when they saw that children were being targeted with these deadly shots. They contacted every single political entity possible to talk about injuries and deaths from these shots.

“If you have an elected representative, they’ve heard from us.”

The media would not cover their stories, because they were told not to make the vaccines look bad.

Dr. Linda Wastila is a professor and Parke-Davis Chair in Geriatric Pharmacotherapy in the Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research and director of research for the Peter Lamy Center for Drug Therapy and Aging.

For more than two decades, she has conducted research focusing on prescription drug policy, quality, and outcomes.

She received her Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also completed a Master of Science in Public Health.

In 1993, she received her doctorate in health policy from Brandies University, where she served as a Pew Health Policy Fellow. From 1994–2001, she served as senior scientist at the Schneider Institute for Health Policy, and was a lecturer at the Harvard Medical School. (Source.)

In June Dr. Wastila and several of her colleagues submitted a petition to the FDA regarding the experimental COVID shots. They called themselves “CALM” – the “coalition advocating for adequately licensed medicines.”

They were against the FDA approving any of the EUA COVID-19 “vaccines” until certain safety questions were answered, especially in regards to children and pregnant women.

The FDA denied their petition.

So not only are these questions on safety not answered, the shots are now being mandated, with no data at all on long-term effects. “How could we possibly supply informed consent without this information?”

We are citizens who have done our civic duty, but when we suffer serious adverse effects, we’re left high and dry by the FDA, the CDC, the NIH and medical professionals.

We are scientists alarmed by the toxic environment in academia and scientific publishing.

We are military leaders concerned about vaccine safety in the armed services.

We are clinicians who want to treat patients harmed by the vaccines but whose practices are limited by our employers and professional boards.

And we are lawyers and patient advocates seeking help for our injured clients and their families.

We are the people you haven’t heard from.

And we have nothing, absolutely nothing to personally gain from being here. Indeed, we have everything to lose, including our jobs, our titles, our livelihoods.

But we don’t intend to go away until we see some real change.

Cody Flint is a commercial pilot from Cleveland, MS who accumulated 10,000 hours of flight time and was diagnosed with left and right perilymphatic fistula, Eustachian tube dysfunction, and elevated intracranial pressure following Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination.

He experienced side effects while flying, and “by the Grace of God” was able to get the plane back down on the ground before blacking out, something to this day he does not even remember doing.

He experienced swelling of the brain following the Pfizer shot. He went through multiple surgeries and lost nearly a year of his life with his family.

I don’t know if I will ever be able to fly a plane again.

His career is destroyed, and he had to use up all of his savings just to pay medical bills. He feels the government has abandoned him as they refuse to help, after assuring everyone the shots were “safe and effective.”

Lieutenant Colonel Theresa Long is a Brigade Surgeon for the 1st Aviation Brigade, Ft. Rucker, Alabama, US Army.

She is a board certified aerospace medicine specialist with a Masters in Public Health.

Senator Johnson has invited me here to make a statement to him regarding my opinion about the life-threatening side effects about the COVID-19 vaccine.

My opinion is formed from my medical education, training, and my first hand experience treating soldiers injured by the vaccine.

This statement is made as a protective communication under the Military Whistleblower Protection Act, Title 10, USC 10-34.

I believe the COVID vaccine is a greater threat to soliders’ health and military readiness than the virus itself.

Over 200,000 service members have rejected the vaccine, yet the military is pressing forward without regard to the damage to the morale and readiness to process these soldiers out.

We have never lost 200,000 soldiers on the battlefield in a few months. Taking soldiers out of uniform has the same impact on readiness as losing them on the battlefield.

We only lost 12 active duty soldiers to COVID, yet we’re going to risk the health of the entire fighting force on a vaccine we only had two months of safety data on?

Ernest Ramirez is a father from Austin, TX whose only son collapsed playing basketball and passed away from myocarditis following Pfizer vaccination.

“My government lied to me.”

Kyle Warner is a 29-year-old professional mountain bike racer and a two-time national champion from Boise, ID who was diagnosed with pericarditis following vaccination. His career is now over.

The drug companies need to be compensating us if they are going to be testing on us.

Doug Cameron is a farm operations manager from Idaho, who is permanently paralyzed following COVID-19 vaccination.

I told my wife I felt like I drank poison. My whole body felt different. I went to bed at 10:00 at night. I woke up at 2:00 in the morning paralyzed from the diaphragm down.

My life as I knew it was gone.

Suzanna Newell is a triathlete from Saint Paul, MN diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and reliant on a walker or cane to walk following COVID-19 vaccination.

I was previously a long distance biker and triathlete. I was valedictorian in my high school, and now I struggle to retrieve words.

It’s like I aged 40 years overnight.

Kellai Ann Rodriguez is a young mother from Tacoma, WA reliant on a walker and suffering seizures following COVID-19 vaccination.

I lost my ability to speak naturally. I have become unable to walk without a walker. I never know when or if the tremors will come or go.

I can no longer cook, clean, or even pick up and hold my baby for too long before my body begins to shake uncontrollably or thrown into excruciating amounts of pain.

Doctors in the ER have allegedly told her that her injuries are all in her head, and even tried to get her committed to a mental health ward by calling social services on her.

You can watch the entire presentation here.

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WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange isn’t mentally ill and his psychological problems are solely the result of the abuse he suffers in isolation, Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, has told RT’s Going Underground.

It would be a “tragedy” if Assange died in London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison due to his poor health, Melzer replied when asked about such an unsettling scenario by host Afshin Rattansi.

If he should die in prison he’s effectively been tortured to death. That’s the reality of it, and I’m not exaggerating.

The official said he had visited Assange behind bars in May 2019 together with a team of medical experts and “we all independently from each other came to this conclusion at that time that his life was in danger.” The publisher’s mental and physical condition has entered a “downward spiral” since then, he added.

The WikiLeaks co-founder has been held in Belmarsh since April 2019 over breach of bail. Before that, the 50-year-old spent seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the British capital, where he sought refuge after an arrest warrant was issued over sexual assault allegations that he had always denied. The investigation against him was eventually dropped due to a lack of evidence. Assange’s supporters insisted he was actually being persecuted over his legitimate journalistic activities.

He is wanted in the US on espionage charges over the release of classified documents, including ones on Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, by WikiLeaks. He could face up to 175 years behind bars if he’s extradited to America, despite the fact that the key witness in the case was revealed to have fabricated his claims.

In early 2021, a British judge turned down Washington’s extradition request, citing Assange’s poor health and a risk of suicide. The US’ appeal against the ruling was heard in the UK High Court earlier this week, with no immediate ruling being announced.

“Julian Assange is not mentally ill… He’s a very resilient, intelligent man. He doesn’t belong to a mental institution, right? So, if he has mental issues now it’s because of the abuse that he had suffered,” Melzer insisted.

“Grave medical harm has been caused to him in the last decade through constant isolation” and other abusive means, he said, adding that the WikiLeaks co-founder now suffers from “constant anxiety.”

The UN official slammed the UK prison authorities for the way they have treated the publisher. “You can’t get someone to recover from torture by continuing to torture him. And that’s exactly what they do. They isolate him; they keep him in this limbo,” he argued.

Melzer reiterated that there were no grounds to hold Assange at a maximum security prison, as he’s currently not serving any sentence and not facing actual criminal charges. “Even if we presume for the purpose of the argument that the extradition is legitimate and we have to somehow secure his presence, he can be in house arrest,” the rapporteur argued, adding that the WikiLeaks co-founder is being “isolated absolutely unnecessary and therefore unlawfully.”

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The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has amended its injury recording rule in a way that will hide the true extent of the damage that the COVID jab mandate will have on the American workforce

According to OSHA rules, employers must record and report work-related illnesses, injuries and fatalities. This recording requirement initially also applied to adverse reactions suffered by employees who had to get the COVID shot as a requirement for employment. This rule was changed in late May 2021

OSHA will not enforce the recording requirement if the injury or fatality involves the COVID jab, even if required for employment. The nonenforcement will remain through May 2022. With this change, OSHA is covering up vaccine injuries — and hindering workers from seeking workers’ compensation

Meanwhile, federal employees required to get the COVID jab will be eligible for compensation for injuries through the Federal Employee’s Compensation Act (FECA)

Having large numbers of injury reports can raise a company’s insurance costs. However, if OSHA is going to require all employers with 100 or more employees to implement vaccine mandates, then companies will be in the same boat and none will be at a particular disadvantage, so OSHA really needs to change its recordability guidance back

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As reported by Kim Iversen, around the world people are gathering for massive protests against COVID shot mandates. In mid-September 2021, Italy became the first European country to announce the implementation of mandatory COVID-19 health passes (so-called “Green Pass”) for all workers, both public and private.

The Italian mandate took effect October 15, 2021. Residents have been protesting in the streets for months on end and there’s no sign of them letting up. Demonstrations are also taking place in The Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Greece, Romania, Slovenia, Australia and France.

Even in Israel, mass protests are now taking place as it was announced Israeli’s will lose their health pass privileges unless they get a third booster shot six months after their second dose. New York City has also seen large protests in the wake of its vaccine requirement for restaurants and other public venues.

Leaders Turn a Blind Eye

Yet, despite massive protests, the push for vaccine mandates and vaccine passports that will create a two-tier society continue unabated. With few exceptions, world leaders are simply turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the fact that their residents want nothing to do with their new world order.

At the same time, government agencies charged with keeping us safe are doing the complete opposite. That includes the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which President Biden has placed in charge of enforcing his unconstitutional edict that private companies with 100 employees or more must make COVID “vaccination” a requirement for employment or face fines of as much as $700,000 per incidence.1

OSHA will issue the mandate for employers as an emergency temporary standard (ETS), but as of this writing, no official mandate has actually been issued.

According to an October 18, 2021, report by PJ Media,2 OSHA has sent a draft to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. Since it’s being issued as an ETS, there will be no public comment period.

Once the OMB review is finalized, the vaccination rule will be published. Only then will the mandate actually go into effect. That said, OSHA has already amended an already existing rule in a way that will hide the true extent of the damage that this mandate will have on the American workforce.

OSHA Rule Change Covers Up Vaccine Injuries

According to OSHA rules (29 CFR 19043), employers must record and report work-related illnesses, injuries and fatalities, whether the employer was at fault or not. As reported May 26, 2021, by employment law firm Ogletree Deakins,4 this recording requirement initially also applied to adverse reactions suffered by employees who had to get the COVID shot as a requirement for employment.

The original guidance stated that employers were required to record an employee’s adverse reaction to the COVID jab if the shot was a) work-related, 2) a new case under 29 C.F.R. 1904.6 and 3) met one or more OSHA general recording criteria set out in 29 C.F.R. 1904.7. OSHA specified that an adverse reaction to the jab would be considered “work-related” if the shot was required for employment.

Then, in late May 2021, OSHA suddenly revoked this guidance, saying it will not enforce the recording requirement if the injury or fatality involves the COVID jab, even if required for employment. The nonenforcement will remain in place through May 2022, at which time the agency will reevaluate its position.

Why would they remove the requirement to record and report vaccine injuries incurred as a result of a vaccine mandate? According to OSHA, the agency is “working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations,” “does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts.”5,6As reported by Ogletree Deakins:7

“There is no doubt that OSHA’s guidance created a disincentive for employers to mandate that their employees get vaccinated. With a mandatory vaccination policy, the guidance ensured that employees’ adverse reactions (with arguably little correlation to actual work-related injuries) could end up on a company’s OSHA recordkeeping logs — which could, in turn, negatively affect its insurance rates and, in some industries, its ability to bid for work.”

What Ogletree fails to address is that by not enforcing this recording requirement for COVID jab injuries, OSHA is intentionally covering up the ramifications these vaccine mandates might have on employees’ health. Meanwhile, employers are still required to record and report COVID-19 infections and COVID-19 deaths among their employees.

Federal Employees Get Special Treatment

In related news, federal employees must be fully “vaccinated” by November 22, 2021, or face the unemployment line. While coercion of this nature is abhorrent under any circumstance, federal employees at least get special treatment if they’re injured by the required jab. As reported by Stacey Lennox for PJ Media:8

“… October 1, 2021, the Federal Employee’s Compensation Act (FECA) issued a bulletin regarding coverage for vaccine injuries.9 FECA did not traditionally cover preventative measures and any resulting illness or injury. As of September 9, 2021, when President Biden announced the federal mandate, adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccination are covered.”

As indicated in FECA Bulletin No. 22-01, dated October 1, 2021:10

“… this executive order now makes COVID-19 vaccination a requirement of most Federal employment. As such, employees impacted by this mandate who receive required COVID-19 vaccinations on or after the date of the executive order may be afforded coverage under the FECA for any adverse reactions to the vaccine itself, and for any injuries sustained while obtaining the vaccination.”

“This bulletin is an interesting turn of events given previous OSHA guidance to private employers,” Lennox writes.11 Indeed, while OSHA is selectively choosing to hide the vaccine injuries of private employees, federal employees will have access to financial compensation for their vaccine injuries, over and above the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Act (CICP).12

Who Will Pay for Private Employees Injured by the Jabs?

On the whole, it’s clear that private employees will be at a distinct disadvantage in terms of compensation. If their employer requires them to get the jab to keep their job, and they get injured by it, the only recourse they have is to file a CICP claim, which is near-impossible to get. By not requiring companies to record vaccine injuries, it effectively shuts down the path for an employee to seek worker’s compensation if they’re injured by a mandated COVID jab.

“While OSHA recordability does not govern worker’s compensation, after managing both for several employers, I have never seen a compensable injury that is not OSHA recordable,”Lennox writes.13

As for CICP, in its 15-year history, it has paid out fewer than 1 in 10 claims.14,15,16 It also offers rather limited help, as you first have to exhaust your personal insurance before it kicks in to pay the difference.

Even if they can get it, CICP awards are likely to be a drop in the bucket for most people. The average award is $200,000, and compensation for fatalities are capped at $370,376.17 Meanwhile, you can easily rack up a $1 million hospital bill if you suffer a serious thrombotic event.18

Perhaps most egregious of all, it’s your responsibility to prove your injury was the “direct result of the countermeasure’s administration based on compelling, reliable, valid, medical and scientific evidence beyond mere temporal association.”

In other words, you basically have to prove what the vaccine developer itself has yet to ascertain, seeing how you are part of their still-ongoing study. You must also pay for your own legal help and any professional witnesses you may need to support your claim.

Union Workers Now Have Another Bargaining Chip

The fact that federal workers who are injured by the mandated COVID jabs will be covered by FICA now gives unionized employees a new bargaining chip though. As noted by Lennox:19

“Without the OSHA ETS, unions would have bargained about having a vaccine mandate as a term or condition of employment at all. Now, unions should still have an opportunity for effects bargaining to ensure their members are covered if they sustain a vaccine injury.”

Recordability Guidance Must Be Changed Back

As mentioned earlier, the OSHA requirement to record vaccine injuries was scrapped because it disincentivized employers to mandate the shot. Having large numbers of injury reports can raise a company’s insurance costs. However, if OSHA is now going to require all employers with 100 or more employees to implement vaccine mandates, then most companies will be in the same boat.

Since no employer will be at a particular disadvantage, OSHA really needs to change its recordability guidance back, Lennox says, adding:20

“Private sector employees deserve the same protection as federal employees in the face of mandatory vaccines. The mandates will put a severe risk between them and their ability to earn a living for some people.

If they [employers] cave, they should be liable just as every taxpayer is now liable for a vaccine injury to a federal employee. If employers don’t want the liability, they should fight the mandate.”

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Notes

1 Reuters September 13, 2021

2, 8, 11, 13, 19, 20 PJ Media October 18, 2021

3 OSHA 29 CFR 1904

4, 7 Ogletree.com May 26, 2021

5 OSHA FAQ Vaccine Related Questions

6 OSHA Protecting Workers, COVID-19

9 FECA Bulletin 2020-2024 (Archived)

10 FECA Bulletin No. 22-01 October 1, 2021

12 Congressional Research Service Legal Sidebar CICP March 22, 2021 (PDF)

14 Life Site News June 15, 2021

15 Insurance Journal August 14, 2020

16, 17 Insurance Journal December 29, 2020

18 The Defender June 2, 2021

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Important study on the impacts of the Covid-19 Crisis on Mental Health. Emphasis added by Global Research  

Highlights

“In this study, we estimated a substantial increase in the prevalence and burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is, to our knowledge, the first study to systematically identify and analyse population mental health survey data and quantify the resulting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the prevalence of these two disorders by location, age, and sex in 2020.

Increases in the prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders during 2020 were both associated with increasing SARS-CoV-2 infection rates and decreasing human mobility. These two COVID-19 impact indicators incorporated the combined effects of the spread of the virus, lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, decreased public transport, school and business closures, and decreased social interactions, among other factors. We estimated that countries hit hardest by the pandemic during 2020 had the greatest increases in prevalence of these disorders.”

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Summary

Background

Before 2020, mental disorders were leading causes of the global health-related burden, with depressive and anxiety disorders being leading contributors to this burden. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has created an environment where many determinants of poor mental health are exacerbated. The need for up-to-date information on the mental health impacts of COVID-19 in a way that informs health system responses is imperative. In this study, we aimed to quantify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the prevalence and burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders globally in 2020.

Methods

We conducted a systematic review of data reporting the prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic and published between Jan 1, 2020, and Jan 29, 2021. We searched PubMed, Google Scholar, preprint servers, grey literature sources, and consulted experts. Eligible studies reported prevalence of depressive or anxiety disorders that were representative of the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic and had a pre-pandemic baseline. We used the assembled data in a meta-regression to estimate change in the prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders between pre-pandemic and mid-pandemic (using periods as defined by each study) via COVID-19 impact indicators (human mobility, daily SARS-CoV-2 infection rate, and daily excess mortality rate). We then used this model to estimate the change from pre-pandemic prevalence (estimated using Disease Modelling Meta-Regression version 2.1 [known as DisMod-MR 2.1]) by age, sex, and location. We used final prevalence estimates and disability weights to estimate years lived with disability and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders.

Findings

We identified 5683 unique data sources, of which 48 met inclusion criteria (46 studies met criteria for major depressive disorder and 27 for anxiety disorders). Two COVID-19 impact indicators, specifically daily SARS-CoV-2 infection rates and reductions in human mobility, were associated with increased prevalence of major depressive disorder (regression coefficient [B] 0·9 [95% uncertainty interval 0·1 to 1·8; p=0·029] for human mobility, 18·1 [7·9 to 28·3; p=0·0005] for daily SARS-CoV-2 infection) and anxiety disorders (0·9 [0·1 to 1·7; p=0·022] and 13·8 [10·7 to 17·0; p<0·0001].
Females were affected more by the pandemic than males (B 0·1 [0·1 to 0·2; p=0·0001] for major depressive disorder, 0·1 [0·1 to 0·2; p=0·0001] for anxiety disorders) and younger age groups were more affected than older age groups (−0·007 [–0·009 to −0·006; p=0·0001] for major depressive disorder, −0·003 [–0·005 to −0·002; p=0·0001] for anxiety disorders). We estimated that the locations hit hardest by the pandemic in 2020, as measured with decreased human mobility and daily SARS-CoV-2 infection rate, had the greatest increases in prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders. We estimated an additional 53·2 million (44·8 to 62·9) cases of major depressive disorder globally (an increase of 27·6% [25·1 to 30·3]) due to the COVID-19 pandemic, such that the total prevalence was 3152·9 cases (2722·5 to 3654·5) per 100 000 population. We also estimated an additional 76·2 million (64·3 to 90·6) cases of anxiety disorders globally (an increase of 25·6% [23·2 to 28·0]), such that the total prevalence was 4802·4 cases (4108·2 to 5588·6) per 100 000 population. Altogether, major depressive disorder caused 49·4 million (33·6 to 68·7) DALYs and anxiety disorders caused 44·5 million (30·2 to 62·5) DALYs globally in 2020.

Interpretation

This pandemic has created an increased urgency to strengthen mental health systems in most countries. Mitigation strategies could incorporate ways to promote mental wellbeing and target determinants of poor mental health and interventions to treat those with a mental disorder. Taking no action to address the burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders should not be an option.

Funding

Queensland Health, National Health and Medical Research Council, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Introduction

Mental disorders are among the leading causes of the global health-related burden. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 showed that the two most disabling mental disorders were depressive and anxiety disorders, both ranked among the top 25 leading causes of burden worldwide in 2019.12 This burden was high across the entire lifespan, for both sexes, and across many locations.2 Perhaps more importantly, no reduction in the global prevalence or burden was detected for either disorder since 1990, despite compelling evidence of interventions that reduce their impact.3

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 against this backdrop has raised many questions around the resulting effects on mental health via its direct psychological effects and long-term economic and social consequences.4 COVID-19 continues to spread across most of the world’s populations1,2 with significant health consequences and mortality among those who become infected.5 In addition to the direct effects of COVID-19, the pandemic has created an environment in which many determinants of mental health are also affected. Social restrictions, lockdowns, school and business closures, loss of livelihood, decreases in economic activity, and shifting priorities of governments in their attempt to control COVID-19 outbreaks all have the potential to substantially affect the mental health of the population. The need for up-to-date information on the global prevalence and burden of mental disorders incorporating the mental health impacts of COVID-19 in a way that informs health system responses has never been more urgent.

GBD 2020 is in the process of estimating the burden of 370 diseases and injuries 88 risk factors across 204 countries and territories. GBD 2020 is quantifying the burden using disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), which represent the number of years of healthy life lost to either mortality or disability. Here, as part of GBD 2020, we present a method built on the mental disorder estimates presented in GBD 2019 by incorporating the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. We quantify the impact of COVID-19 on the prevalence and burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders by location, age, and sex in 2020.

Methods

Overview

First, we conducted a systematic literature review to assemble data from surveys measuring the effect of COVID-19 on the prevalence of depressive and anxiety disorders. Second, we used these data in a meta-analysis to (1) estimate the change in prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders before versus during the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) predict (through the use of selected indicators of COVID-19 impact) the resulting change in prevalence of each disorder across all GBD locations, and (3) translate changes in prevalence to corresponding changes in burden estimates as years lived with disability (YLDs) and DALYs. A conceptual overview of this process is shown in the appendix (p 17). This study complies with the Guidelines for Accurate and Transparent Health Estimates Reporting (GATHER) recommendations (appendix pp 26–27)

6 and all code used in the analyses can be found online.

Case definitions

To ensure comparability in measurement, we used case definitions for major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders used within the GBD framework. These definitions adhere to criteria presented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder fourth edition text revision (DSM-IV-TR)7 and the tenth International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10).8 Detailed case definitions are in the appendix (p 6).

Data sources

We conducted a systematic literature search to identify population surveys reporting on the prevalence of depressive or anxiety disorders, or both, during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines;9 our PRISMA checklist is in the appendix (pp 28–31), and the search protocol was registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO, CRD42021216590).

We searched for data sources published between Jan 1, 2020, and Jan 29, 2021. The search involved electronic searches of the peer-reviewed literature using PubMed, the grey literature (ie, the COVID-19: living map of the evidence by Eppi-centre, The DEPRESSD Project, Google Scholar, The Neurology and Neuropsychiatry of COVID-19 Blog, the WHO COVID 19 literature database, COVID-Minds, and the MedRxiv and PsyArXiv preprint servers), and expert consultation. Search strings for each search are in the appendix (p 5). No language restrictions were applied.

Eligible studies reported prevalence of depressive or anxiety disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic and had a pre-pandemic baseline. We used timelines for these periods as defined by each study. Prevalence surveys conducted during the pandemic could not be included without comparable pre-pandemic data (ie, using the same instrument, location, and age group) collected since 2013 to assess the change in prevalence. Longitudinal studies using samples representative of the general population were preferred, but cross-sectional studies were also included if comparable pre-pandemic prevalence data existed. Studies using random sampling were preferred; however, due to challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, there were few studies of this type. Studies using market research quota sampling were also included but were controlled for with a covariate in our analysis. Market research quota sampling is a non-probabilistic sampling strategy whereby participants are identified from a database to match the population of interest (a discussion of the use of these estimates is in the appendix [p 7]).10 Samples obtained via this method might produce results that differ from the general population.1112

Studies reporting probable cases of depressive or anxiety disorders using established screening measures were included due to the paucity of available survey data from during the COVID-19 pandemic using diagnostic instruments. In these instances, only prevalence estimates for cases that reached established thresholds for probable depressive or anxiety disorder were included. We assumed the predictive validity between probable versus diagnosed cases using these screening measures did not change during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with before the pandemic, and therefore the change in the prevalence of probable cases would be equivalent to the change in the prevalence of diagnosed cases (additional discussion of this assumption is in the appendix [pp 8–9]). We also included measures capturing symptoms of both depressive and anxiety disorders (eg, the K-6 Distress Scale), which were also controlled for with a covariate in analyses. For eligible studies, we extracted information on location, age, sex, prevalence, uncertainty, number of cases, sample size, recall period, disorder, diagnostic instrument, sampling strategy, and dates between which the survey was conducted. We extracted the most detailed data reported by age and sex.

We required indicators of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic that had an association with prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders, hereafter referred to as COVID-19 impact indicators. The risk factor of interest was the COVID-19 pandemic, with the COVID-19 impact indicators acting as proxies for the effect of COVID-19 in the population. A COVID-19 impact indicator had to capture an effect of COVID-19, be consistently measured across locations, and be consistently measured with sufficient granularity across time (preferably daily or weekly) over the course of the pandemic. Our process of selecting the COVID-19 impact indicators is detailed in the appendix (p 10). Ultimately, we considered three novel indicators of the COVID-19 pandemic: decreasing human mobility,13 estimated total (as opposed to reported) daily SARS-CoV-2 infection rate, and estimated daily excess mortality rate during the pandemic (including excess deaths occurring during the pandemic where COVID-19 was not reported as the underlying cause of death).513

The estimation of human mobility, daily SARS-CoV-2 infection rate, and daily excess mortality rate was done by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) COVID-19 Forecasting Team and is described in detail elsewhere.13 In summary, human mobility was represented by a composite human mobility index representing daily change from pre-pandemic mobility. Data from mobile phone users provided by Facebook, Google, Descartes Labs, Safegraph, and Baidu, and data on physical distancing mandates informed a Gaussian process regression to estimate a time series for human mobility. Daily SARS-CoV-2 infection and excess mortality rates were estimated via a deterministic susceptible, exposed, infectious, and recovered (known as SEIR) compartmental framework and was informed by daily confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections, COVID-19-related deaths, SARS-CoV-2 tests conducted, antibody seroprevalence, human mobility, physical distancing mandates, pneumonia seasonality, facemask use, and vaccine coverage.513

GBD conducts routine systematic reviews of the epidemiology of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders as part of the estimation of YLDs (and separately to the aforementioned systematic review of the change in prevalence due to COVID-19). The compiled epidemiological data for GBD 2020 includes studies done from 1980 to 2019 on the prevalence, incidence, remission, duration, and excess mortality of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders. These data were identified through routine electronic searches of PubMed, PsycINFO, Embase, grey literature sources (including a review of the Global Health Data Exchange library), and consultation with experts. GBD 2020 uses Disease Modelling Meta-Regression version 2.1 (known as DisMod-MR 2.1), a Bayesian disease modelling meta-regression tool, to analyse these data and generate internally consistent estimates of prevalence, incidence, remission, and mortality by sex, location, year, and age group for each disorder.

14 It also estimates prevalence for locations that are missing raw epidemiological data. GBD 2020 does this by estimating prevalence across a cascade down five levels of a geographical hierarchy: global, super-region, region, country or territory, and subnational locations. The prevalence from locations higher in the hierarchy act as priors for the prevalence for locations lower in the hierarchy. More detail on DisMod-MR 2.1 and the estimation of prevalence data for major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders has been published elsewhere.114 Because no epidemiological data from the year 2020 informed the DisMod-MR 2.1 model for major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders, the prevalence produced for 2020 by age and sex and for each of the 204 countries and territories represented the prevalence of each disorder without the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We made use of severity distributions and disability weights in GBD 2020 (appendix p 32). We apportioned the final disorder prevalence for the year 2020 into the categories of asymptomatic, mild, moderate, and severe with corresponding disability weights. Disability weights in GBD 2020 quantify health loss from a health state on a scale of 0 (no health loss) to 1 (equivalent to death). The process to estimate severity proportions and disability weights in GBD 2020 has been described elsewhere.2,15

Statistical analysis

We estimated the prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic by first developing a model to predict adjustments to pre-pandemic prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders based on COVID-19 impact indicators, and then modifying the pre-pandemic prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders estimated from DisMod-MR 2.1. We conducted meta-regressions, using meta-regression—Bayesian, regularised, trimmed16 (MR-BRT), on the difference between logit disorder prevalence before the COVID-19 pandemic and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The process to build a final meta-regression model is described in detail in the appendix (pp 6–7). Briefly, potential bias covariates that were identified were cross-sectional comparisons informed by random samples, longitudinal comparisons informed by market research and quota samples, cross-sectional comparisons informed by market research and quota samples, and estimates representing combined symptoms of depressive and anxiety disorders (appendix p 32). Because only three studies used diagnostic instruments to measure prevalence, we did not have sufficient data to explore the effect of a bias covariate on data from screening scales identifying probable cases of depressive or anxiety disorders (appendix pp 8–9). Each unique sample was given a random intercept and random effects were placed on the COVID-19 impact indicators. We ran models separately for major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders. We also included age, sex, and most bias covariates as effect modifiers to ensure that the prevalence change remained zero when the COVID-19 impact was zero. The exception was the bias covariate for cross-sectional comparisons informed by market research and quota samples, which had random sample pre-pandemic baselines and therefore had a prevalence difference even when the COVID-19 impact indicator was zero. Sex was quantified by the proportion of female participants in the sample, and age was quantified as the mean age of the sample (or midpoint of the age range of the study sample when mean age was not reported).

Due to the strong collinearity between the COVID-19 impact indicators (inspected via Pearson correlation coefficients) and the need for age, sex, and bias covariates to be treated as effect modifiers on the impact indicators, we developed prevalence adjustment models via a two-step process. In step one, we used indicator models to develop a so-called index for the impact of COVID-19. Human mobility, daily SARS-CoV-2 infection rate, and daily excess mortality rate were included simultaneously in a meta-regression on the change in logit prevalence to quantify their independent effect on prevalence change. We used the coefficients from these models to calculate a single COVID-19 impact indicator for each disorder. In step two, we developed a final model for each disorder via backward elimination to regress the COVID-19 impact indicator, age, sex, and the bias covariates on the change in logit prevalence. The least significant covariate was iteratively removed until no improvement was seen in the Akaike information criterion. We assessed the generalisability of the model using a leave-one-country-out cross-validation analysis (appendix p 11).

We used the final disorder-specific models to predict the change in logit prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders and adjust the DisMod-MR 2.1 prevalence estimates for the year 2020 via a Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation. We extracted 1000 samples from the probability distributions of the change in logit prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders, and their logit prevalences from DisMod-MR 2.1, by age, sex, and location for every day of the year 2020, based on daily estimates of the significant COVID-19 impact indicators. We adjusted the logit prevalence by the change and inverse-logit transformed the result to estimate the adjusted daily prevalence. We estimated the average daily prevalence for the year 2020 by age, sex, and location as the point prevalence for the year (an applied example is shown in the appendix [p 18]). Once estimated, we divided the prevalences of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders into sequela-specific prevalences using the GBD 2020 severity splits (appendix p 32). We report estimates with 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs), which represent the 25th and 975th ranked results across the 1000 samples and can be interpreted similarly to 95% CIs.

Consistent with GBD methods, we followed ICD rules for determining the underlying cause of death. DALYs for major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders were composed entirely of YLDs, which meant that, despite potential excess deaths, major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders were not considered underlying causes of death.2 We first estimated sequela-specific YLDs by multiplying sequela-specific prevalences by their respective disability weights. We then corrected the sequela-specific YLDs for comorbidities to adjust for the co-occurrence of causes of YLDs within GBD 2020; these methods have been described in detail elsewhere.1 For GBD 2020, burden is only estimated using the COVID-19-adjusted prevalence estimates. Therefore, we calculated baseline burden estimates by adjusting GBD 2020 burden estimates by the ratio between baseline prevalence and adjusted prevalence.

p values of less than 0.05 were considered to be significant. We did all analyses using DisMod MR-2.1, MR-BRT, and R (version 3.6.3).

Role of the funding source

The funders of the study had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or the writing of the report.

Results

Of the 5683 unique data sources obtained from the systematic review, 1674 remained following title and abstract screening. In total, 46 studies met inclusion criteria for major depressive disorder and 27 for anxiety disorders (48 in total, one of which reported data across two regions; appendix p 19). A supplemental search for pre-pandemic baseline measures provided an additional 11 studies for major depressive disorder and seven studies for anxiety disorders. Study characteristics of included studies are in the appendix (pp 33–34). Most studies were from western Europe (n=22) and high-income North America (n=14), and the remaining studies were from Australasia (n=5), high-income Asia Pacific (n=5), east Asia (n=2), and central Europe (n=1; appendix p 20).

Human mobility and daily SARS-CoV-2 infection rate were significantly associated with the change in major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder prevalence (table 1). After controlling for human mobility and daily SARS-CoV-2 infection rate, daily excess mortality rate was not associated with the change in prevalence for either major depressive disorder or anxiety disorders. This was likely due to high collinearity between the daily excess mortality rate and the other two COVID-19 impact variables (r = 0·8 with daily SARS-CoV-2 infection rate and r = 0·8 with human mobility), which was less of an issue shared between the daily SARS-CoV-2 infection rate and human mobility (r = 0·5).

Table 1. Meta-regression coefficients from the indicator model on the change in major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders logit prevalences over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020

All indicators included in the model simultaneously and therefore control for each other. UI=uncertainty interval.

* Square-root transformed before analysis to correct for positive skew appendix pp 6–7.

† Bayesian directional prior specified due to strong collinearity with other indicators.

Increases in the COVID-19 impact index (informed by the significant indicators of human mobility and daily SARS-CoV-2 infection rate) were associated with an increase in prevalence of major depressive disorder (0·4 [95% UI 0·1–0·6]) and anxiety disorders (0·4 [0·3–0·5]; table 2). For both disorders, females were affected more than males, and younger age groups were affected more than older age groups. Bias covariates for cross-sectional comparisons informed by random samples and longitudinal comparisons informed by market research and quota samples were not significant for either disorder (appendix p 67) and subsequently were dropped from the final models (table 2). Estimates representing combined depressive and anxiety disorder symptoms significantly overestimated the increase in prevalence for anxiety disorders 0·3 (0·1–0·4) but not for major depressive disorder (appendix p 67) and were not included in the major depressive disorder model. Cross-sectional market research and quota samples significantly overestimated the increase in prevalence for both major depressive disorder (0·9 [0·6–1·2]) and anxiety disorders (0·6 [0·2–1·0]; table 2). Results of our leave-one-country-out cross-validation analysis are in the appendix (p 11).

Table 2. Meta-regression coefficients on the change in major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders logit prevalences over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020

Longitudinal market research and quota sample was not significant, and so not included in the final model.

* Coefficients are estimated using the B of the COVID-19 impact index multiplied by the B of the COVID-19 impact indicators from the signal model and 95% UIs estimated via multiplying 1000 samples of the posterior distribution of these impact indicator covariates from the indicator model with 1000 samples of the posterior distribution of the indicator coefficient.

† Square-root transformed before analysis to correct for positive skew of the COVID-19 impact index coefficient appendix pp 6–7. UI=uncertainty interval.

Before adjustment for the COVID-19 pandemic, the estimated global prevalence of major depressive disorder in 2020 was 2470·5 cases (95% UI 2143·5–2870·7) per 100 000 population, equivalent to 193 million (167–224) people (appendix pp 35–50). After adjustment for the COVID-19 pandemic, the estimated prevalence of major depressive disorder was 3152·9 cases (2722·5–3654·5) per 100 000 population, equivalent to 246 million (212–285) people. We estimated an additional 53·2 million (44·8–62·9) cases of major depressive disorder globally in 2020 due to the effects of COVID-19 (682·4 [574·1–807·2] new cases per 100 000 population, an increase of 27·6% [25·1–30·3]; table 3). Females had a greater increase in prevalence of major depressive disorder than males did, with 35·5 million (30·0–41·8) additional cases among females (equivalent to 912·5 [772·1–1075·2] per 100 000 females; a 29·8% [27·3–32·5] increase) compared with 17·7 million (14·7–21·3) additional cases in males (equivalent to 453·6 [376·3–545·0] per 100 000 males; a 24·0% [21·5–26·7] increase; data by sex by super-region and region are available on the Global Health Data Exchange). Global patterns of prevalence before and after adjustment for (ie, during) the COVID-19 pandemic, by age and sex, are presented in figure 1, and estimates of the change in prevalence of major depressive disorder are shown in figure 2 and in the appendix (p 21).

Table 3. Prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders, by super-region, 2020

UI=uncertainty interval.

Figure 1. Global prevalence of major depressive disorder (A) and anxiety disorders (B) before and after adjustment for (ie, during) the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020, by age and sex

Figure 2. Change in the prevalence of major depressive disorder after adjustment for (ie, during) the COVID−19 pandemic, 2020

Before adjustment for the COVID-19 pandemic, the estimated global prevalence of anxiety disorders in 2020 was 3824·9 (95% UI 3283·3–4468·1) per 100 000 population, which is equivalent to 298 million (256–348) people (appendix pp 51–66). After adjustment for the COVID-19 pandemic, the global prevalence of anxiety disorders in 2020 was 4802·4 (4108·2–5588·6), equivalent to 374 million (320–436) people. We estimated an additional 76·2 million (64·3–90·6) cases of anxiety disorders in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic (977·5 [824·8–1161·6] new cases per 100 000 population; an increase of 25·6% (23·2–28·0) globally (table 3). Females had a greater increase in prevalence than males did, with 51·8 million (43·8–61·1) additional cases among females (equivalent to 1332·1 [1126·1–1573·2] per 100 000 females; a 27·9% [25·6–30·4] increase) compared with 24·4 million (20·3–29·5) additional cases among males (equivalent to 625·0 [518·3–755·3] per 100 000 males; a 21·7% [19·3–24·1] increase; data by sex by super-region and region will be available on the Global Health Data Exchange after full release of GBD 2020). Global patterns of prevalence before and after adjustment for (ie, during) the COVID-19 pandemic, by age and sex, are presented in figure 1, and estimates of the change in prevalence of anxiety disorders are shown in figure 3 and in the appendix (p 22).

Figure 3. Change in the prevalence of anxiety disorders after adjustment for (ie, during) the COVID−19 pandemic, 2020

Before adjustment for the COVID-19 pandemic, major depressive disorder was responsible for 38·7 million (95% UI 26·4–53·9) DALYs globally, equivalent to 497·0 DALYs (338·3–691·1) per 100 000 population. After adjustment for the COVID-19 pandemic, major depressive disorder was responsible for 49·4 million (33·6–68·7) DALYs, equivalent to 634·1 DALYs (431·3–881·0) per 100 000 population (appendix pp 35–50). We estimated that the COVID-19 pandemic led to an additional 10·7 million (7·21–14·9) DALYs for major depressive disorder globally, of which 7·07 million (4·80–9·80) were among females and 3·62 million (2·40–5·09) were among males. The global major depressive disorder additional DALY rate due to the COVID-19 pandemic was 137·1 DALYs (92·5–190·6) per 100 000 population, 182·0 (123·5–252·2) per 100 000 females, and 92·5 (61·5–130·3) per 100 000 males (DALY rates by sex by region will be available on the Global Health Data Exchange after full release of GBD 2020). The burden of DALYS due to major depressive disorder by age and sex is presented in figure 4.

Figure thumbnail gr4

Figure 4. Global burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders by age and sex, 2020

Before adjustment for the COVID-19 pandemic, anxiety disorders were responsible for 35·5 million (95% UI 23·9–50·1) DALYs globally, equivalent to 454·8 DALYs (307·0–642·5) per 100 000 population (appendix pp 51–66). After adjustment for the COVID-19 pandemic, anxiety disorders were responsible for 44·5 million (30·2–62·5) DALYs globally, equivalent to 570·9 (387·3–802·2) per 100 000 population. Anxiety disorders were responsible for an additional 9·05 million (6·18–12·8) DALYs due to the pandemic, of which 6·11 million (4·21–8·56) DALYs were among females and 2·94 million (1·97–4·19) among males. The global anxiety disorder additional DALY rate due to the COVID-19 pandemic was 116·1 (79·3–163·8) per 100 000 population, 157·2 (108·3–220·3) per 100 000 females, and 75·3 (50·3–107·1) per 100 000 males. The burden of DALYS due to anxiety disorders by age and sex is presented in figure 4.

Discussion

In this study, we estimated a substantial increase in the prevalence and burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is, to our knowledge, the first study to systematically identify and analyse population mental health survey data and quantify the resulting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the prevalence of these two disorders by location, age, and sex in 2020.

Increases in the prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders during 2020 were both associated with increasing SARS-CoV-2 infection rates and decreasing human mobility. These two COVID-19 impact indicators incorporated the combined effects of the spread of the virus, lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, decreased public transport, school and business closures, and decreased social interactions, among other factors. We estimated that countries hit hardest by the pandemic during 2020 had the greatest increases in prevalence of these disorders.

The two COVID-19 impact indicators used in our model should not be interpreted as risk factors for major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders. The risk factor of interest was the COVID-19 pandemic, with these two indicators acting as proxies for the effect of COVID-19 in the population. The COVID-19 pandemic is occurring against a complex backdrop of a range of social determinants of mental health, as well as well known inequalities within these determinants. The greater increase in disorder prevalence among females than among males, which resulted in an even greater sex difference in prevalence than before the pandemic, was anticipated because females are more likely to be affected by the social and economic consequences of the pandemic.171819 Additional carer and household responsibilities due to school closures or family members becoming unwell are more likely to fall on women.17 Women are more likely to be financially disadvantaged during the pandemic due to lower salaries, less savings, and less secure employment than their male counterparts.171819 They are also more likely to be victims of domestic violence, the prevalence of which increased during periods of lockdown and stay-at-home orders.2021 We also estimated greater change in the prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders among younger age groups than among older age groups. UNESCO declared COVID-19 to be the most severe disruption to global education in history, estimating 1·6 billion learners in over 190 countries to be fully or partially out of school in 2020.22 With school closures and wider social restrictions in place, young people have been unable to come together in physical spaces, affecting their ability to learn and for peer interaction. Furthermore, young people are more likely to become unemployed during and following economic crises than older people.23

Our study is not the first to show how population shocks (ie, unexpected or unpredictable events that disrupt the environmental, health, economic, or social circumstances within a population) can increase the prevalence of depressive and anxiety disorders. In their review of mental health outcomes after the economic crisis in 2009, Frasquilho and colleagues24 identified several studies showing an increase in common mental disorders in the general population. After the 2009 financial crisis in Greece, point prevalence of major depressive episodes increased from 3·3% (95% UI 3·1–3·5) in 2008 to 6·8% (6·4–7·2) in 2009 and 8·2% (8·1–8·3) in 2011.25 Survey respondents reporting serious economic hardship were most at risk of developing a major depressive episode.2526 Similarly, after the 2008 financial crisis in Hong Kong, past-year prevalence of major depressive episodes increased from 8·2% (95% UI 7·2–9·2) in 2007 to 12·5% (11·0–13·9) in 2009.27 The extent of the increase in prevalence differed across studies, which might be due to study or population characteristics or different combinations of health and socioeconomic determinants of poor mental health, or a combination of these factors. Another point of difference is the time period over which the impact of the shock is measured. This period might be a single point in time, weeks or months, or, as in our analysis, an average over the course of a longer period (eg, a year) during which there would have been fluctuating effects from the pandemic (ie, the shock).

Both major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders increase the risk of other diseases and suicide.2829 In their time-series analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on suicide rates across 21 high-income and middle-income countries, Pirkis and colleagues30 found no significant increases in suicide rates between April and July, 2020. This finding raises the question of whether or not the increased prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders we found was accompanied by a significant increase in suicide rates. We have insufficient data to draw any conclusions on this matter. Pirkis and colleagues30 relied on data in the first few months of the pandemic, which might have been too early in the pandemic to detect an association between a new diagnosis of major depressive disorder or anxiety disorders and suicide. Suicide trends might vary over extended periods, and as we progress through different phases of the pandemic the full scale of economic consequences and their effects will emerge, and their subsequent effects on suicide trends. For example, Tanaka and Okamota31 found that, although suicide rates in Japan decreased by 14% during the first 5 months of the pandemic (February to June, 2020), they then increased by 16% (between July and October, 2020), with a larger increase among females and younger populations than among males and older populations.

Even before the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders (and mental disorders overall) were among the leading causes of health burden globally, with the mental health system in most countries being under-resourced and disorganised, despite evidence that effective prevention and intervention tools exist.233233 Meeting the added demand for mental health services due to COVID-19 will be difficult. Strategies to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2, such as physical distancing and restricted travel, have made it more difficult to acquire medication, attend treatment facilities, and receive in-person care. In some settings, outpatient and inpatient services have been interrupted or resources redirected to treat those with COVID-19.4343536 In other settings, individuals have become less likely to seek care for their mental health issues than before the pandemic because of concerns about becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the process.4343536 The COVID-19 pandemic has created a greater urgency for governments and policy makers to strengthen their mental health systems, and now with the added priority of integrating a mental health response within their COVID-19 recovery plan. In the wake of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the prevalence and burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders, taking no action cannot be an option. Resources exist to guide the development of mitigation strategies for reducing the mental health burden imposed by COVID-19. These resources include strategies that make efficient use of already limited resources, consider the local context and vulnerable populations, and prioritise key principles such as inclusivity, stigma reduction, and human rights.4343536 Strategies should promote mental wellbeing and target determinants of poor mental health exacerbated by the pandemic and interventions to treat those who develop a mental disorder.4343536 They should consider public health messaging about the mental health impacts of COVID-19, how individuals can best manage their mental health, and well defined pathways to assessment and service access. A mixture of digital, telehealth, and face-to-face services have been suggested that can be tailored to individual need.4343536 There is already encouraging emerging evidence of the implementation of some of these strategies;4 however, the full effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are still unfolding in many countries, with most programmes implemented under a public health emergency, with little capacity to fully assess their performance.
Here, we estimated the change in disorder prevalence in 2020 using the best data at our disposal, but these data will continue to be updated throughout the different phases of the pandemic. This ongoing work will also explore ways to improve the following limitations in the analyses reported here. First, we were limited by the data available to consistently measure the effect of COVID-19 across all GBD locations using our choice of COVID-19 indicators. Human mobility and SARS-CoV-2 infection rates are unlikely to have captured the full impact of the pandemic on mental health across all countries. The precision in these two indicators can be improved, for example, in countries where infection rates are not consistently measured or reported. Reliance on mobile phone tracking technology to monitor human mobility will also not be accurate in locations where subgroups of the population (eg, people of low socioeconomic status) have little or no mobile phone use. Some subgroups might not be able to reduce their mobility because of their employment type and might be more prone to infection, and so reductions in human mobility might be exaggerated in these locations. As we progress through the pandemic and the full economic effects on some populations emerge, re-evaluation of available indicators will be important. For example, we made no distinction in prevalence between those with and without previous SARS-CoV-2 infection within the population. Emerging evidence suggests people with post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (sometimes known as long COVID) might develop depressive and anxiety disorder symptoms,3738 and so prevalence of long COVID might be a potential indicator in future work. Second, we found very few surveys that met our inclusion criteria from low-income and middle-income countries, meaning that findings from our regression analysis might be less generalisable to these locations. For example, we estimated large increases in prevalence within Latin America and the Caribbean, north Africa and the Middle East, and south Asia, despite not finding any surveys from these super-regions that met our inclusion criteria. Given the absence of high quality data for most countries, and the wide UIs around our estimates, we emphasise caution against extrapolating direct rankings between countries and territories. Our leave-one-country-out cross-validation analysis showed that although our estimates are generally within the bounds of uncertainty for re-predicting data for missing locations, the relative rankings of locations were affected by data availability. Precise rankings between countries and territories would require substantially more high quality data and improved data coverage globally. Third, most surveys in our dataset used symptom scales that only estimate probable cases of depressive and anxiety disorders. Where these scales were used, we assumed the predictive validity of symptom scales in diagnosis via established thresholds remained constant between before and during the pandemic. However, this assumption has the potential to bias our estimates. For example, high scores on anxiety disorder symptom scales might reflect a natural psychological and physiological reaction to a perceived threat (ie, the COVID-19 pandemic) rather than a probable anxiety disorder. At the time of publication, not enough data were available to assess this assumption. We identified only three diagnostic mental health surveys that had been done since the beginning of the pandemic. Increases in prevalence were observed in two of the three diagnostic surveys.3940 The study that did not report an increased prevalence was conducted in one specific city in Norway (Trondheim) using very small cross-sectional samples.41 The authors of this study also reported that the shift from face-to-face to telephone survey administration occurred at the onset of the pandemic, which might have affected interviewers’ ability to identify mental disorders, especially in the early stages of this shift when they were less experienced with telephone survey administration. The paucity of diagnostic surveys conducted during the pandemic also meant that we were unable to explore its effect on the severity distribution of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders. We estimated prevalent cases of each disorder but could not assess how existing cases changed in their severity. Existing cases might have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, while novel cases might have had milder disorder severity. For the burden analysis presented, we had to assume that the severity distribution of both existing and new cases remained unchanged from before the COVID-19 pandemic. Fourth, many studies needed to be excluded from our systematic review because of reliance on convenience sampling strategies (eg, snowball sampling), case definitions that did not adhere to internationally accepted definitions for mental disorders, and use of survey instruments for which no comparable pre-pandemic estimate was available. Given the paucity of studies using random sampling of the general population, we took advantage of studies using market research and quota sampling during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that cross-sectional (but not longitudinal) studies that used market research quota sampling significantly over-estimated the increase in disorder prevalence. Samples obtained via this method might be more prone to mental disorders than the random samples that informed their pre-pandemic baseline estimates. We also found instruments that captured symptoms of both depressive and anxiety disorders combined overestimated the increase in prevalence of anxiety disorders, but not major depressive disorder. This could be because they captured more new depressive disorder cases than anxiety disorder cases. We hope that the data standards set for this analysis will guide decisions in the field for future mental health surveys done as a response to COVID-19 or other population shocks. Fifth, prevalences of mental disorders other than major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders might have also been affected by COVID-19. For instance, emerging evidence suggests that other disorders such as eating disorders have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic but these data have yet to be appropriately assessed.42Most of the available scientific literature focuses on changes in symptoms of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder as a result of COVID-19 because these are historically more sensitive to population shocks. As new mental health surveys are undertaken, the effect of COVID-19 on other disorders will need to be quantified. The methodological framework we have developed can be adapted to other mental disorders. It can also be adapted to measure other population shocks on prevalence and disease burden.At the time of writing this Article, the COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing and its full impact on mental health outcomes is not known. We continue to observe shifts in SARS-CoV-2 infection rates and human mobility as lockdown and stay-at-home orders are re-implemented or eased and COVID-19 vaccination programmes are rolled out. Our work is ongoing and will continue to be updated over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. To inform this ongoing work, high quality surveys conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic are needed within regions that are not represented by available data. Researchers planning surveys during the pandemic should strive to align their sample representation and measures of mental health with existing pre-pandemic baseline estimates to ensure appropriate comparable data from before and during the pandemic. Where feasible, researchers should consider including diagnostic measures of mental disorders, alongside widely used screening questionnaires (eg, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 or General Anxiety Disorder-7). With the addition of more estimates derived via diagnostic instruments, we could explore the robustness of (or correct for) our assumption that the predictive validity of screening questionnaires for diagnosis of probable cases is unchanged by the pandemic, and explore any shifts in the severity distribution among individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder or anxiety disorders.
Unlike other population shocks, COVID-19 has become global, disrupting many aspects of life for most, if not all, of the world’s populations. Our analysis suggests that the impacts on the prevalence and burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders were substantial, particularly among females and younger populations. Ongoing and additional mental health surveys are necessary to quantify the duration and severity of this impact. Unfortunately, even before the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders were leading causes of disease burden, with the mental health-care system in most countries being under-resourced and disorganised in their service delivery. Therefore, tackling this increased mental health burden will present immediate challenges in most nations, but it is also an opportunity for countries to broadly reconsider their mental health service response. Recommended mitigation strategies should incorporate ways to promote mental wellbeing and target determinants of poor mental health exacerbated by the pandemic, as well as interventions to treat those who develop a mental disorder. Taking no action in the face of the estimated impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the prevalence and burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders should not be an option.

Contributors

Please see appendix (pp 80–81) for more detailed information about individual author contributions to the research, divided into the following categories: managing the estimation or publication process; writing the first draft of the manuscript; primary responsibility for applying analytical methods to produce estimates; primary responsibility for seeking, cataloguing, extracting, or cleaning data; designing or coding figures and tables; providing data or critical feedback on data sources; development of methods or computational machinery; providing critical feedback on methods or results; drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; extracting, cleaning, or cataloguing data; designing or coding figures and tables; and managing the overall research enterprise. Members of the core research team (D F Santomauro, A M Mantilla Herrera, J Shadid, P Zheng, C Ashbaugh, D Pigott, S I Hay, T Vos, C J L Murray, H A Whiteford, and A J Ferrari) for this topic area had full access to the underlying data used to generate estimates presented in this Article. All authors had access to and reviewed estimates as part of the research evaluation process, which includes additional stages of formal review.

COVID-19 Mental Disorders Collaborators

Damian F Santomauro, Ana M Mantilla Herrera, Jamileh Shadid, Peng Zheng, Charlie Ashbaugh, David M Pigott, Cristiana Abbafati, Christopher Adolph, Joanne O Amlag, Aleksandr Y Aravkin, Bree L Bang-Jensen, Gregory J Bertolacci, Sabina S Bloom, Rachel Castellano, Emma Castro, Suman Chakrabarti, Jhilik Chattopadhyay, Rebecca M Cogen, James K Collins, Xiaochen Dai, William James Dangel, Carolyn Dapper, Amanda Deen, Megan Erickson, Samuel B Ewald, Abraham D Flaxman, Joseph Jon Frostad, Nancy Fullman, John R Giles, Ababi Zergaw Giref, Gaorui Guo, Jiawei He, Monika Helak, Erin N Hulland, Bulat Idrisov, Akiaja Lindstrom, Emily Linebarger, Paulo A Lotufo, Rafael Lozano, Beatrice Magistro, Deborah Carvalho Malta, Johan C Månsson, Fatima Marinho, Ali H Mokdad, Lorenzo Monasta, Paulami Naik, Shuhei Nomura, James Kevin O’Halloran, Samuel M Ostroff, Maja Pasovic, Louise Penberthy, Robert C Reiner Jr, Grace Reinke, Antonio Luiz P Ribeiro, Aleksei Sholokhov, Reed J D Sorensen, Elena Varavikova, Anh Truc Vo, Rebecca Walcott, Stefanie Watson, Charles Shey Wiysonge, Bethany Zigler, Simon I Hay, Theo Vos, Christopher J L Murray, Harvey A Whiteford, Alize J Ferrari.

Affiliations

School of Public Health (D F Santomauro PhD, A M Mantilla Herrera PhD, J Shadid BSc, A Lindstrom MEpi, Prof H A Whiteford PhD, A J Ferrari PhD), The University of Queensland, Herston, QLD, Australia; Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research (D F Santomauro PhD, A M Mantilla Herrera PhD, J Shadid BSc, A Lindstrom MEpi, Prof H A Whiteford PhD, A J Ferrari PhD), Wacol, QLD, Australia; Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (D F Santomauro PhD, A M Mantilla Herrera PhD, J Shadid BSc, P Zheng PhD, C Ashbaugh MA, D M Pigott PhD, J O Amlag MPH, A Y Aravkin PhD, B L Bang-Jensen MA, G J Bertolacci BS, S S Bloom BA, R Castellano MA, E Castro MS, S Chakrabarti MA, J Chattopadhyay MS, R M Cogen BA, J K Collins BS, X Dai PhD, W J Dangel Med, C Dapper MA, A Deen MPH, Miss M Erickson MA, S B Ewald MS, A D Flaxman PhD, J J Frostad MPH, N Fullman MPH, J R Giles PhD, G Guo MPH, J He MSc, M Helak BA, E N Hulland MPH, E Linebarger BA, Prof R Lozano MD, J C Månsson MS, Prof A H Mokdad PhD, P Naik MSPH, J K O’Halloran MS, S M Ostroff PhD, M Pasovic MA, L Penberthy MS, G Reinke MA, R C Reiner Jr PhD, A Sholokhov MSc, R J D Sorensen MPH, A T Vo BSc, S Watson MS, B Zigler MPH, Prof S I Hay FMedSci, Prof T Vos PhD, Prof C J L Murray DPhil, Prof H A Whiteford PhD, A J Ferrari PhD), Department of Health Metrics Sciences, School of Medicine (D M Pigott PhD, A Y Aravkin PhD, X Dai PhD, A D Flaxman PhD, Prof R Lozano MD, Prof A H Mokdad PhD, R C Reiner Jr PhD, Prof S I Hay FMedSci, Prof T Vos PhD, Prof C J L Murray DPhil), Department of Political Science (Prof C Adolph PhD), Department of Applied Mathematics (A Y Aravkin PhD), Department of Global Health (S Chakrabarti MA, E N Hulland MPH, R J D Sorensen MPH), Henry M Jackson School of International Studies (S M Ostroff PhD), Evans School of Public Policy & Governance (R Walcott MPH), University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; Department of Juridical and Economic Studies (C Abbafati PhD), La Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; Department of Health Systems and Policy (A Z Giref PhD), Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; National Data Management Center (A Z Giref PhD), Ethiopian Public Health Institute, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Infectious Diseases Department (B Idrisov MD), Bashkir State Medical University, Ufa, Russia; Laboratory of Public Health Indicators Analysis and Health Digitalization (B Idrisov MD), Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow, Russia; Department of Medicine (Prof P A Lotufo DrPH), University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (B Magistro PhD), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Maternal and Child Nursing and Public Health (Prof D C Malta PhD), Public Health (F Marinho PhD), Department of Internal Medicine (Prof A P Ribeiro MD), Centre of Telehealth (Prof A P Ribeiro MD), Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Public Health (F Marinho PhD), Vital Strategies, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Clinical Epidemiology and Public Health Research Unit (L Monasta DSc), Burlo Garofolo Institute for Maternal and Child Health, Trieste, Italy; Department of Health Policy and Management (S Nomura PhD), Keio University, Tokyo, Japan; Department of Global Health Policy (S Nomura PhD), University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan; Central Research Institute of Cytology and Genetics (E Varavikova PhD), Federal Research Institute for Health Organization and Informatics of the Ministry of Health (FRIHOI), Moscow, Russia; Cochrane South Africa (Prof C S Wiysonge MD), South African Medical Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa; School of Public Health and Family Medicine (Prof C S Wiysonge MD), University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

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Notes

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Prominent Scientists Go Public: ‘Fauci Fooled America’

November 3rd, 2021 by Jeremy Loffredo

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In an op-ed, “Fauci Fooled America,” published Monday in Newsweek, two scientists accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of bungling the government’s response to COVID by getting “major epidemiology and public health questions wrong.”

Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, and Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Health Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine wrote: “Reality and scientific studies have now caught up with him.”

Kulldorff and Bhattacharya, both senior scholars at the Brownstone Institute and signers of the Great Barrington Declaration, had this message for Newsweek readers:

“The evidence is in. Governors, journalists, scientists, university presidents, hospital administrators and business leaders can continue to follow Dr. Anthony Fauci or open their eyes. After 700,000-plus COVID deaths and the devastating effects of lockdowns, it is time to return to basic principles of public health.”

The authors ticked off a list of “key issues” Fauci got wrong, including failure to recognize natural immunity, protecting the elderly, school closures, masks and contact tracing.

“By pushing vaccine mandates, Dr. Fauci ignores naturally acquired immunity among the COVID-recovered, of which there are more than 45 million in the United States,” the authors wrote. “Mounting evidence indicates that natural immunity is stronger and longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity.”

Kulldorff and Bhattacharya cited a study from Israel, which concluded the vaccinated were 27 times more likely to get symptomatic COVID than the unvaccinated who had recovered from a prior infection.

They pointed out that the scientific community has known about natural immunity from disease “at least since the Athenian Plague in 430 BC.”

On Fauci’s dictates to mandate the vaccine for healthcare workers, the two argued:

“Under Fauci’s mandates, hospitals are firing heroic nurses who recovered from COVID they contracted while caring for patients. With their superior immunity, they can safely care for the oldest and frailest patients with even lower transmission risk than the vaccinated.”

On school closures they wrote:

“Considering the devastating effects of school closures on children, Dr. Fauci’s advocacy for school closures may be the single biggest mistake of his career … While children do get infected, their risk for COVID death is minuscule, lower than their already low risk of dying from the flu.”

Kulldorff and Bhattacharya pointed to Sweden, noting that during the 2020 spring wave of COVID, the country kept daycare and schools open for all 1.8 million children ages 1 to 15, with no masks, testing or social distancing.

According to the authors, Sweden’s strategy resulted in “zero COVID deaths among children and a COVID risk to teachers lower than the average of other professions.”

The authors argued contact tracing “was a hopeless waste of valuable public health resources that did not stop the disease,” and that Fauci failed at protecting the vulnerable.

“After more than 700,000 reported COVID deaths in America, we now know that lockdowns failed to protect high-risk older people,” they said.

On collateral public health damage, they argued that a “fundamental public health principle is that health is multidimensional; the control of a single infectious disease is not synonymous with health.”

They wrote that Fauci:

“ … failed to properly consider and weigh the disastrous effects lockdowns would have on cancer detection and treatment, cardiovascular disease outcomes, diabetes care, childhood vaccination rates, mental health and opioid overdoses, to name a few. Americans will live with — and die from — this collateral damage for many years to come.”

In private conversations, Kulldorff and Bhattacharya said, most of their scientific colleagues agree with them on these points but few have spoken up out of fear of “financial censorship.”

“Many are afraid of losing positions or research grants, aware that Dr. Fauci sits on top of the largest pile of infectious disease research money in the world,” they wrote.

In his forthcoming book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. includes a comprehensive discussion of Fauci’s influence and power over the scientific community, revealing how Fauci uses the “financial clout at his disposal to wield extraordinary influence over hospitals, universities, journals and thousands of influential doctors and scientists — whose careers and institutions he has the power to ruin, advance or reward.” Kennedy’s book is due out Nov. 16.

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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.

Featured image is from CHD

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A 12-year-old girl is fighting for her life in ICU after suffering heart complications caused by the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. The 12-year-old Grade 6 pupil, who is a student at Wat Don Sai School, received her shot on October 19th. Several days later, she complained to her mother about chest pain and shortness of breath. Her symptoms gradually worsened and she was hospitalized at Ratchaburi Hospital. She was then transferred to the Children’s Hospital in Bangkok where she’s currently intubated on a ventilator.

The heartbroken mother posted a message on Facebook yesterday with a picture of her daughter receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at Chet Samian Hospital.

She said:

My 12-year-old daughter is now in the ICU. A ventilator is required after she was diagnosed with coronary thrombosis. This occurred less than a week after she was vaccinated.

She was always a strong child.”

The father of the pupil, Mr. Pipatpong Tanpanich, said that on October 19th, at 2 pm, she and her siblings had received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. She had pain in her arm for 3 days but recovered. 2 days later, she developed a dry cough and chest pain so she was taken to Ratchaburi Hospital where her condition was considered so severe, that she was rushed to the Children’s Hospital in Bangkok where she was diagnosed with coronary thrombosis.

Dr. Pajaree Areerob, an MD at Ratchaburi Hospital, told reporters that they’d never seen a case like this before.

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All images in this article are from The COVID World

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering a proposal by Oxitec, a UK-based corporation, to introduce billions of genetically engineered (GE) mosquitoes across 12 undisclosed counties in California.

Thousands of comments, including comments from Center for Food Safety (CFS), opposing this release were submitted in early October on the last day of EPA’s public comment period amid growing concerns raised by scientists, public health experts and environmental groups. If approved, the release would be the largest ever release of genetically engineered (GE) insects in the U.S., following an initial release earlier this year in Florida.

“EPA is not doing its job. Releasing billions of GE mosquitoes could affect our food chains and ecosystems. If the female mosquitoes are released, GE hybrid mosquitoes could spread diseases more efficiently,” said Jaydee Hanson, policy director at the Center for Food Safety and the International Center for Technology Assessment. “The GE mosquito is a Trojan horse for a pipeline of other GE insects to be used in agriculture.”

In the public comments, critics cited the lack of public notification and transparency around where the releases would occur along with environmental and public health risks, such as the introduction of more aggressive mosquito species and potential allergic reactions to bites from GE mosquitoes. The public documents in the proposal do not include an endangered species assessment, public health impact analysis, or data about the first experimental field trials in the Florida Keys. There is no data to support Oxitec’s claims that open releases of GE mosquitoes will reduce incidence of mosquito-borne diseases.

“We need sound science and transparency, not a rubberstamp on a secretive experiment that poses risks to California’s environment and our health,” said Dana Perls, Food and Technology program manager at Friends of the Earth, and a resident of California.”We must prioritize less risky, less costly, proven measures to address mosquito-borne disease, not a corporate boondoggle.”

In March 2021, a public panel of independent experts spoke about the regulatory gaps and scientific risks associated with GE mosquitoes prior to the release in Florida, concluding that GE mosquitoes could pose a significant threat to humans and the environment in the Florida Keys. Recently, a group of scholars from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign questioned proceeding with the release in Florida on scientific and ethical concerns.

Although mosquito control boards are focused on reducing mosquito-borne diseases, scientists have raised major concerns that GE mosquitoes could create hybrid wild mosquitoes which could worsen the spread of mosquito-borne diseases and which may be more resistant to insecticides than the original wild mosquitoes. A recent field study in Brazil by researchers from the Powell Lab at Yale University confirmed that the mosquito’s engineered genes had spread into wild populations.

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How Britain Betrayed Macron

November 3rd, 2021 by John Lichfield

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There are plenty of votes in France in bashing Muslims, bashing Brussels or bashing America. There are even some in bashing Germany. But there are none in bashing Britain.

Many votes in France turn on immigration, jobs, education or agriculture. There are few to be won or lost on sea fishing (which is 0.06% of the French economy).

Why then has President Emmanuel Macron gone out of his way to pick a quarrel with Britain over, at most, 180 fishing licences for French boats in English and Channel Islands waters? The simple answer to the question is: “He hasn’t.”

The British media — encouraged by the British government — has worked itself into a self-pleasing froth of Macronphobia in recent days. There are, of course, elements of French policy and behaviour which deserve criticism in this fundamentally silly dispute (silly to all but a handful of French fishers and their families). The same can also be said of some aspects of the British government’s behaviour — and its frequently misleading communication — on the Great Franco-British Fish War of 2021.

The French presidential elections on April 10 and 24 may be in the back of Macron’s mind as he fights, as he sees it, to prevent Britain from unravelling the Brexit agreement that it signed only 11 months ago. But it is fatuous to suggest — as parts of the UK media and the some members of the UK government do — that the whole row has been confected by Macron to appeal to French Anglophobes (who are a very tiny constituency) or the mighty French fishing vote (a few thousand people at most).

The licensing row directly affects, overall, fewer than 200 French boats and 1,000 people whose catches of fish and shellfish are worth €6m annually – 0.0000025% of French GDP. The economic implications for Britain are close to zero. They are scarcely bigger for the Channel Islands (many of whose fishermen are supportive of the French claims).

It is a small, very messy, very technical dispute which could be solved, with goodwill on all sides, in an afternoon; it may be resolved tomorrow when the British Brexit minister, Lord Frost, meets the French Europe minister, Clément Beaune, in Paris.

On Monday, Macron pulled back from the brink of an explosive trade war with Britain. He suspended until Friday his threat to block British fishing boats from selling their catches in French ports and, worse, imposing full-scale customs checks on all trucks crossing the English Channel. The political body language on both sides suggests that a deal is close — though it could yet slip through the net.

Why has such a small quarrel become so huge? The simple answer is that it is part of a pattern of deteriorating post-Brexit relations between Britain and France — quarrelsome neighbours at the best of times.

Johnson knows that sticking it to the French is always an excellent tactic in a time of crisis. Meanwhile, Macron has been determined, partly for electoral reasons but mostly from personal conviction, to ensure that Britain does not slide out of its Brexit commitments. His aim is not to “punish” Britain, but to ensure that Britain should not be allowed to leave the EU and keep the benefits of staying in.

This was the argument made in a clumsily written letter to the European Commission last week by Macron’s Prime Minister, Jean Castex. It was mistranslated and misconstrued — as “lets damage the UK all we can” — by both the British government and much of the British media.

There have been several nadirs in Anglo-French relations in my almost quarter century living in and writing about France: mad cow disease, foot and mouth, Jacques Chirac’s refusal to join Tony Blair in the second Iraq war. But the tone of this year’s Franco-British quarrels have been nastier than any of those which came before. Both leaders are partly to blame. They have encouraged, or allowed, the disputes to become too personal.

In the case of Macron, the animus, I believe, is not against Britain. It is against Boris Johnson. Macron detests populism but he has a moth-like attraction to populists, which usually goes astray. Macron once thought that he could charm and handle the British leader, just as he once thought that he could schmooze Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

Downing Street says that the two men are “pals”. Nonsense. Neither Johnson nor Macron has pals. The French president has come to think of Johnson, Elysée sources say, as an unreliable but crafty buffoon. In other words, he has allowed the British leader to get under his skin.

Macron is leader of one of the world’s richest and most powerful countries, but he has only just over four years’ experience as a politician — let alone as a statesman. And as Macron’s recent decision to call Australia’s Prime Minister a liar shows, sometimes that lack of political education shows. Macron may be right about Scott Morrison. Many Australian politicians and officials would agree with his criticism of the AUKUS deal. But the President came over as being petty and lacking emotional control.

Something similar happened earlier this year when Macron made slighting remarks to foreign journalists on the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine on the elderly. Macron was angry with AstraZeneca at the time for failing to meet its commitments to supply the EU-27 — while providing plenty of doses for the UK.

Macron does not do “palliness” but he does do pique. The standard British view — that he has sought cross-Channel quarrels from the beginning — could not be more wrong. His anger is driven by disappointment and a sense of betrayal. He had hoped that France, as a neighbour and important military partner, would play the key role in keeping Johnsonian Britain in the European orbit.

Instead the last ten months have been scarred by a succession of Anglo-French disputes, starting with big tail-backs of trucks in England in January after France imposed strict Covid controls on travel across the Channel. There was then the row over Astra-Zeneca supplies. Then Britain accused France in July of failing to stop illegal migrants from crossing the Channel in small boats. The French retorted that Britain had promised to pay for extra police on the Calais side of the water but never handed over the money.

Britain also imposed harsh controls on travellers from France in the summer — on the bizarre grounds that a new variant of Covid was raging in the French Indian Ocean island of Réunion. The Australian submarine row merely plunged their relationship to new depths. The French government accused Britain of being an “opportunistic fifth wheel”, while Johnson responded in French-baiting franglais: “Donnez-moi un break.”.

And so to the great fish row. France does have a case. The UK also has a case. Both have acted badly. The British and Jersey governments, by imposing strict proofs of past fishing on small boats, are trying to claw back some of what was lost in the fisheries part of the Brexit negotiations. France has turned too rapidly to disproportionate threats — such as cutting the power cable from Normandy to Jersey (a threat now withdrawn). The blocked licences are not of enormous economic interest but Macron is convinced that they fit a pattern of Johnsonian Britain trying to slide out of its Brexit commitments.

Was next April’s election also an issue? Perhaps at the margins. The President is doubtless anxious but his electoral position is the strongest for a sitting president in 20 years. His approval ratings are in the low 40s, high for a late term French president. The French economy is booming, growing 3% in the third quarter and likely to approach 7% in 2021 as a whole — the best among large and medium EU economies.

If Macron had electoral motives in the fisheries row, they were defensive, not proactive. He would certainly have been attacked by his rivals if French interests were seen to be steamrollered by Britain.

The big question is what happens next. Macron has come to believe that negotiation with Johnson is pointless without threats. If Britain does back down and issue more fishing licences this week, he will assume that this judgement is correct.

Things could still go wrong. The talks could collapse. Macron would then be obliged to give Johnson what Johnson (maybe) wants: a mega-row with France on which all of Britain’s post-Brexit ills can be blamed.

More likely the dispute will be resolved, or sent for arbitration. That could be the occasion for a new push to improve Franco-British relations across the board.

But even if the Fish War is ended, I suspect it won’t be the last post-Brexit, Franco-British row. Despite their surface chumminess at the COP26 conference on Glasgow, relations between Johnson and Macron have gone past the point of repair.

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They Defend the Climate While Preparing the End of the World

By Manlio Dinucci, November 03, 2021

At the beginning of October, Italy hosted the preparatory meeting of the UN Conference on Climate Change, currently taking place in Glasgow. Two weeks later Italy hosted another international event that, unlike the first widely advertised, was passed over in silence by the government: the NATO exercise of nuclear warfare Steadfast Noon in the skies over northern and central Italy.

Vaxx Passports: “When You Know Everything About Your Government, that’s Democracy. When the Government Knows Everything About You, that’s Tyranny.”

By Peter Koenig, November 02, 2021

The elected EU Parliament has recently come forward in various Press Conferences and in news articles for the public to understand that the EU is everything but a democracy.

The Misanthropic Bankers Behind COP26 and the Green New Deal

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, November 02, 2021

Of course, news reports flash daily showcasing the brave young movement of “eco-warriors” led by Sweden’s “forever 15 year old” [now 18] Greta Thunberg or America’s 17 year old Jamie Margolin who have become a force across Europe and America leading such movements as the Extinction Rebellion, This is Zero Hour, the Sunrise Movement and Children’s eco-crusade.

“Idiots in the Pentagon Are Pushing the U.S. into a Military Confrontation with China over Nothing,” Says Former Top Policy Adviser

By Jeremy Kuzmarov, November 02, 2021

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley claimed last week that China was close to a “sputnik moment” due to its successful test of a hypersonic missile. However, U.S. space-based early warning systems can detect hypersonic missiles, marking them as no threat at all.

CDC’s Committee Member Dr. Chen Should be Removed Immediately Due to Conflict of Interest

By Toby Rogers, November 02, 2021

Chen defines “misinformation” as anything that contradicts the Pharma narrative. Chen is adamant that nothing be allowed to pierce his protective Pharma information bubble.

19 States Sue Biden Administration Over Fed Contractor Vaccine Mandate

By Grace Dille, November 02, 2021

On October 28, the state of Florida sued the Biden administration over the mandate, which Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said “is unlawfully jeopardizing thousands of jobs.”

The FDA Is an Absolute Joke: Multiple FDA Committee Members Who Green-lighted Pfizer “Vaccines” for Children Have Financial Ties to Pfizer

By Ethan Huff, November 02, 2021

Right after voting unanimously to recommend the Pfizer-BioNTech “vaccine” for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) “vaccine” in children as young as five, this committee was outed for direct conflicts of interest that clearly impacted its decision.

Justice for Assange Is Justice for All

By John Pilger, November 02, 2021

Julian Assange is a truth-teller who has committed no crime but revealed government crimes and lies on a vast scale and so performed one of the great public services of my lifetime. Do we need to be reminded that justice for one is justice for all?

Canada’s War on Conscientious Doctors Revs Up

By Karen Selick, November 02, 2021

He was not alone in his decision to withdraw from this increasingly oppressive system. Dr. Mark Trozzi, a 25-year veteran of Ontario’s healthcare system, not only closed his practice but decided to devote his time to warning the public, via his website, about the dangers of the medical tyranny that is unfolding.

How Fauci Fooled America

By Dr Martin Kulldorff and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, November 02, 2021

By pushing vaccine mandates, Dr. Fauci ignores naturally acquired immunity among the COVID-recovered, of which there are more than 45 million in the United States. Mounting evidence indicates that natural immunity is stronger and longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity.

Malfeasance Behind the FDA Vax OK for Children

By F. William Engdahl, November 02, 2021

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted 17 to 0, with one abstention, to give a green light allowing Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech experimental mRNA to children between 5 and 12 years. The expert who abstained later explained he did so because of limited safety and efficacy data provided.

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Lies, Lies and Nuclear Submarines

November 3rd, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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It looked like something of an ambush, but a coterie of Australian journalists had their man where they wanted him.  Between sessions at the G20 Summit in Rome, and French President Emmanuel Macron found himself blunter than usual.  The sundering of the relationship between Australia and France over the new trilateral security relationship between Canberra, Washington and London, and, more importantly, the rescinding of the submarine contract with Australia, was playing on his mind.  Did he think, came the question, whether he had been lied to by the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, about the intended scrapping of the Franco-Australian submarine deal with the creation of AUKUS?  “I don’t think, I know,” came the definitive answer.

The response from Morrison was one of shameless dissembling.  Making sure that Australian audiences and the news waves would only pick up select gobbets, he told the press that the French president had attacked, or “sledged” Australia and its good burghers.  He expressed concern about “the statements that were made questioning Australia’s integrity and the slurs that have been placed on Australia”.  He was “not going to cop sledging at Australia.”

A full reading of Macron’s words in the brief encounter suggests nothing of the sort.  Australia and France were bound up in history and blood enriched ties going back to two world wars.  “Your country was shoulder to shoulder with us during the wars.  You had fighters with us when our freedom was at stake.  We have, we do have the same values.”  He respected “sovereign choices” but it was also vital to “respect allies and partners.”  It was the conduct of the Australian government he had issue with, something that Macron thought “detrimental to the reputation of your country and your Prime Minister.”

Morrison’s defence proved shoddy, confusing the issue of having difficulties with the contractual relationship with France to build twelve diesel electric submarines with the issue of announcing an intended divorce.  As with lovers who read off different relationship scripts, the Australian Prime Minister is convinced that Macron must have known when they met in June that something had soured.  He had “made it very clear that a conventional diesel-powered submarine was not going to meet Australia’s strategic requirements. We discussed that candidly.”  He did, however, say that alternatives were not discussed, they being “in confidence”.

The strategic environment, claimed Morrison with tediousness, had changed.  There were also issues specific to the contract with the French defence firm Naval, including “following through with commitments on Australian industry content.”  There were issues with delays; issues with cost.  “These were matters that we raised quite regularly and indeed I raised with President Macron at each opportunity when we either spoke over the phone or we had our bilateral meetings going on for a number of years.”

Morrison’s mendacity is also pronounced in how he justifies pursuing the nuclear submarine option with the United States.  Wishing to cuckold France, the Australian prime minister began to look around, with eyes firmly fastened on Washington’s formidable hardware.  But, using the reasoning of any adulterer who is found out, it wasn’t a true relationship at that point; Washington and Canberra were dealing with “the nuclear stewardship issues”.  “At the same time, we were working through in good faith with Naval to address the problems that we had in the contract.”  Such a marriage; such a commitment.

In the Scotty from Advertising appraisal of the world, dissatisfaction can be retooled and packaged as separation and nullification.  What Macron thought he heard or understood is less relevant than what Morrison thought he said.  He might even believe it.

The Biden administration has also done its fair share of dissimulative manoeuvring in this affair.  In his meeting with Macron at the Villa Bonaparte in Rome on October 29, President Joe Biden was fluffy and buttery.  France, he assured the French President, was “the reason, in part, why we became an independent country.”  Asked on whether the relationship between France and the US had been “repaired”, Biden was apologetic: “Well, the answer is: I think what happened [over the announcement of the submarines] – to use an English phrase, what we did was ‘clumsy’.  It was not done with a lot of grace.”

This gave Biden the cue to place Morrison before an oncoming truck.  “I was under the impression certain things had happened that hadn’t happened.”  To clarify, he was “under the impression that France had been informed long before that the [French-Australian submarine] deal was not going through.  I, honest to God, did not know you had not been.”

What, then, had Morrison told Biden he was doing about the French and ending the conventional submarine affair?  The Australian, equipped with a confidential document detailing a communications timeline on the new submarine nuclear announcement, suggests that Biden’s full grasp of the verity should also be questioned.  The 15-page document, approved by officials of Biden’s National Security Council, makes the point that France would only be informed of the new arrangements on September 16.

Time was also spent in the Eisenhower Executive Office building pondering how Australia might best calm an indignant France.  There was also concern expressed on how other powers might react.  Little consideration was given to the fact that any anger might be directed against the US, least of all from France.  Perhaps, suggests Greg Sheridan of the same newspaper with a degree of charity, Biden has reached a point in his life where he can’t remember what he can’t remember.

The Morrison government has also taken to the distasteful practice of selective leaking in bolstering its quicksand position, a tactic which further suggests a diminution of an already less than impressive political office. A prodding text from Macron to Morrison, sent two days prior to the AUKUS announcement and the cancellation of the contract, involved a query as to whether good or bad news could be expected about the French submarines.  The vulgar insinuation here is that Macron supposedly had an inkling that something was afoot from the Australian side, which hardly counts as fully informed awareness.  Naturally, Morrison’s response is not noted.  The Elysée further denies suggestions that Canberra made several warning efforts regarding the AUKUS announcement.

An Elysée official expressed bafflement at the tactic.  “Disclosing a text message exchange between heads of state or government is a pretty crude and unconventional tactic.”  It may be crude, and it may be unconventional, but this furnishes an apt summation of the Australian Prime Minister’s view of diplomacy.

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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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At the beginning of October, Italy hosted the preparatory meeting of the UN Conference on Climate Change, currently taking place in Glasgow. Two weeks later Italy hosted another international event that, unlike the first widely advertised, was passed over in silence by the government: the NATO exercise of nuclear warfare Steadfast Noon in the skies over northern and central Italy. For seven days, under US command, the air forces of 14 NATO countries participated, with dual-capacity nuclear and conventional fighter-bombers deployed at the bases of Aviano and Ghedi.

At Aviano the 31st U.S. Squadron with F-16C/D fighter-bombers and B61 nuclear bombs is permanently deployed. At Ghedi. the 6th Wing of the Italian Air Force with Tornado PA-200 fighter-bombers and B61 nuclear bombs. The Federation of American Scientists confirms in 2021 that “the Italian Air Force is assigned nuclear strike missions with U.S. bombs, maintained in Italy under the control of the U.S. Air Force, the use of which in war must be authorized by the President of the United States.”

The bases of Aviano and Ghedi have been restructured to accommodate the F-35A fighters armed with the new B61-12 nuclear bombs. Last October, the final test was carried out in Nevada with the release of inert B61-12 from two F-35A fighters. Soon the new nuclear bombs will arrive in Italy: in the base of Ghedi alone 30 Italian F-35A fighters can be deployed, ready to attack under US command with 60 B61-12 nuclear bombs.

A week after participating in the nuclear warfare exercise, Italy attended the UN Climate Change Conference, chaired by the UK in partnership with Italy. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that “there is one minute to midnight and we need to act now” against global warming that is destroying the planet. In this way, he instrumentally uses the symbolic Doomsday Clock, which in reality indicates how many minutes away we are from nuclear midnight.

A few months ago, in March, Boris Johnson himself announced the upgrading of British nuclear attack submarines: the Astute (price 2.2 billion dollars each), armed with U.S. Tomahawk IV nuclear cruise missiles with a range of 1,500 km, and the Vanguard, armed with 16 U.S. Trident D5 ballistic missiles with a range of 12,000 km, equipped with over 120 nuclear warheads. The latter will soon be replaced by the even more powerful Dreadnought class submarines.

The British nuclear attack submarines, which cross deep along the coasts of Russia, now also sail along those of China, starting from Australia to which the U.S. and Britain will provide nuclear submarines. Great Britain, which is hosting the conference to save the planet from global warming, is thus contributing to the arms race that is leading the world towards nuclear catastrophe.

Against this backdrop the promotional video of the Conference is misleading: the Dinosaur, symbol of an extinct species, from the podium of the United Nations warns humans to save their species from global warming. In fact, scientific studies confirm that dinosaurs became extinct not because of warming, but because of the cooling of the Earth after the impact of a huge meteorite that, raising clouds of dust, darkened the Sun.

Exactly what would happen after a nuclear war: in addition to catastrophic destruction and radioactive fallout on the entire planet, it would cause, in urban and forest areas, huge fires that would put in the atmosphere a blanket of sooty smoke, darkening the Sun. This would determine a climatic cooling of the duration of years: the nuclear winter. The majority of plant and animal species would become extinct, with devastating effects on agriculture. The cold and malnutrition would reduce the ability to survive of the few survivors, leading the human species to extinction.

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This article was originally published on Il Manifesto. Translated from Italian.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image: One of the F-15E Strike Eagles deployed to Aviano AB for Steadfast Noon 2021. (All images: Claudio Tramontin)

Difendono il clima mentre preparano la fine del mondo

November 2nd, 2021 by Manlio Dinucci

Agli inizi di ottobre l’Italia ha ospitato la riunione preparatoria della Conferenza Onu sul cambiamento climatico, attualmente in corso a Glasgow. Due settimane dopo l’Italia ha ospitato un altro evento internazionale che, a differenza del primo ampiamente reclamizzato, è stato passato sotto silenzio dal governo: l’esercitazione Nato di guerra nucleare Steadfast Noon nei cieli dell’Italia settentrionale e centrale. Vi hanno partecipato per sette giorni, sotto comando Usa, le forze aeree di 14 paesi Nato, con cacciabombardieri a duplice capacità nucleare e convenzionale dislocati nelle basi di Aviano e Ghedi. Ad Aviano è schierata in permanenza la 31a squadriglia Usa. con cacciabombardieri F-16C/D e bombe nucleari B61.

A Ghedi il 6° Stormo dell’Aeronautica italiana con cacciabombardieri Tornado PA-200 e bombe nucleari B61. La Federazione degli Scienziati Americani conferma nel 2021 che «all’Aeronautica italiana sono assegnate missioni di attacco nucleare con bombe Usa, mantenute in Italia sotto controllo della US Air Force, il cui uso in guerra deve essere autorizzato dal Presidente degli Stati uniti». Le basi di Aviano e Ghedi sono state ristrutturate per accogliere i caccia F-35A armati delle nuove bombe nucleari B61-12. Lo scorso ottobre è stato effettuato nel Nevada il test finale con lo sgancio di B61-12 inerti da due caccia F-35A. Tra non molto le nuove bombe nucleari arriveranno in Italia: nella sola base di Ghedi possono essere schierati 30 caccia italiani F-35A, pronti all’attacco sotto comando Usa con 60 bombe nucleari B61-12.

Una settimana dopo aver partecipato all’esercitazione di guerra nucleare, l’Italia ha partecipato alla Conferenza Onu sul cambiamento climatico, presieduta dal Regno Unito in partenariato con l’Italia. Il premier britannico Boris Johnson ha avvertito che «manca un minuto a mezzanotte e abbiamo bisogno di agire ora» contro il riscaldamento globale che sta distruggendo il pianeta. Usa in tal modo strumentalmente il simbolico Orologio dell’Apocalisse, che in realtà segna a quanti minuti siamo dalla mezzanotte nucleare. Lo stesso Boris Johnson pochi mesi fa, in marzo, ha annunciato il potenziamento dei sottomarini britannici da attacco nucleare: gli Astute (prezzo 2,2 miliardi di dollari ciascuno), armati di missili nucleari Usa da crociera Tomahawk IV con raggio di 1.500 km, e i Vanguard, armati di 16 missili balistici Usa Trident D5 con raggio di 12.000 km, dotati di oltre 120 testate nucleari.

Questi ultimi verranno presto sostituiti dagli ancora più potenti sottomarini della classe Deadnough. I sottomarini britannici da attacco nucleare, che incrociano in profondità lungo le coste della Russia, navigano ora anche lungo quelle della Cina, partendo dall’Australia a cui Usa e Gran Bretagna forniranno sottomarini nucleari. La Gran Bretagna, che ospita la Conferenza per salvare il pianeta dal riscaldamento globale, contribuisce in tal modo alla corsa agli armamenti che porta il mondo verso la catastrofe nucleare.

Su questo sfondo è fuorviante il video promozionale della Conferenza: il Dinosauro, simbolo di una specie estinta, che dal podio delle Nazioni Unite avverte gli umani di salvare la loro specie dal riscaldamento globale. In realtà, confermano studi scientifici, i dinosauri si estinsero non per il riscaldamento, ma per il raffreddamento della Terra dopo l’impatto di un enorme meteorite che, sollevando nubi di polveri, oscurò il Sole.

Esattamente ciò che avverrebbe in seguito a una guerra nucleare: oltre a catastrofiche distruzioni e alla ricaduta radioattiva sull’intero pianeta, essa provocherebbe, in aree urbane e forestali, enormi incendi che immetterebbero nell’atmosfera una coltre di fumo fuligginoso, oscurando il Sole. Ciò determinerebbe un raffreddamento climatico della durata anche di anni: l’inverno nucleare. Si estinguerebbe di conseguenza la maggior parte delle specie vegetali e animali, con effetti devastanti anche sull’agricoltura. Il freddo e la denutrizione ridurrebbero la capacità di sopravvivenza dei pochi superstiti, portando la specie umana all’estinzione.

Manlio Dinucci

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Das Krisenjahr 1930 war der Anfang vom Ende der Weimarer Republik, der ersten parlamentarischen Demokratie in Deutschland: Drei Millionen Arbeitslose, Notverordnungen und Hitlers Triumph. Es war der Beginn einer finsteren Zeit. In der Parabel „Maßnahmen gegen die Gewalt“ machte Brecht schon frühzeitig auf die Gefahr von Willkür und Gewalt im Nationalsozialismus aufmerksam. Parallelen zur weltpolitischen Situation der Gegenwart springen jedem wachen Bürger sofort ins Auge. Ein Nachdenken über Brechts Gleichnis zum Umgang mit staatlicher Gewalt aus dem Jahr 1930 kann deshalb hilfreich sein.

Staatliche Gewaltmaßnahmen zur Behebung der COVID-19- und Klima-Krise

Gewalt wird uns auch heute angetan – und ein Ende ist nicht in Sicht. Auf die COVID-19-Krise wird die Klima-Krise folgen. Und wir Bürger weichen vor der Gewalt der verordneten illegalen und brutalen Maßnahmen der Regierungen, die unser aller Gesundheit schützen soll, zurück und sagen nicht „Nein“.  Wir beginnen bereits, uns mit der heraufziehenden Tyrannei zu arrangieren.

Werden wir uns weiterhin der staatlichen Gewalt unterziehen, weil wir wie Herr Keuner in Brechts Gleichnis „kein Rückgrat zum Zerschlagen“ haben? Werden wir den Agenten einer fremden Macht deshalb jahrelang gehorchen und dienen, weil wir auf den richtigen Zeitpunkt warten, um „Nein“ zu sagen wie Herr Egge?

Anhand der Brecht‘schen Parabel sollte sich jeder erwachsene Bürger mit der Thematik auseinandersetzen und durch selbständiges Denken zur Erkenntnis sinnvollen und überlegten Handelns kommen.

Brechts Parabel aus dem Jahr 1930

Brecht beschreibt in seiner lehrhaften, auf einem Vergleich beruhenden Kurzgeschichte, wie die beiden Hauptfiguren, Herr Keuner und Herr Egge, auf ihre Weise auf staatliche Gewalt reagieren: Herr Keuner – der Denkende – rechtfertigt seine unterwürfige Reaktion gegenüber der Gewalt gegenüber seinen Schülern mit den Worten:  „Ich habe kein Rückgrat zum Zerschlagen. Gerade ich muss länger leben als die Gewalt.“ (1)

Anschließend belehrt Herr Keuner seine Schüler mittels einer brutalen Geschichte aus der Zeit der Illegalität: Eines Tages tritt ein Agent der neuen Herrscher der Stadt ungefragt in das Haus und in das Leben von Herr Egge. Diesem fremden Agenten gehorcht und dient Herr Egge, „der gelernt hatte, nein zu sagen“, sieben Jahre lang – spricht aber kein einziges Wort mit ihm. Erst nach dessen Tod atmet er auf und antwortet auf die vor sieben Jahren gestellte Frage des Agenten „Wirst du mir dienen?“ mit einem „Nein“.

Möglichweise ist es das kleinere Übel, sich dem Schicksal zu fügen, keinen offenen Widerstand zu leisten und auch seine Meinung nicht offen zu sagen, wenn man erkannt hat, dass man im Moment nicht die Macht hat, etwas gegen die Gewalt zu tun. Vielleicht ist es klüger, auf den richtigen Zeitpunkt zu warten, um „nein“ zu sagen.

Doch, lieber Leser, bilden Sie sich Ihre eigene Meinung. Ich zitiere:

„Als Herr Keuner, der Denkende, sich in einem Saale vor vielen gegen die Gewalt aussprach, merkte er, wie die Leute vor ihm zurückwichen und weggingen. Er blickte sich um und sah hinter sich stehen – die Gewalt. ‘Was sagtest du?‘ fragte ihn die Gewalt. ‚Ich sprach mich für die Gewalt aus‘, antwortete Herr Keuner. Als Herr Keuner weggegangen war, fragten ihn seine Schüler nach seinem Rückgrat. Herr Keuner antwortete: ‚Ich habe kein Rückgrat zum Zerschlagen. Gerade ich muss länger leben als die Gewalt.‘

Und Herr Keuner erzählte folgende Geschichte:

In der Wohnung des Herrn Egge, der gelernt hatte, nein zu sagen, kam eines Tages in der Zeit der Illegalität ein Agent, der zeigte einen Schein vor, welcher ausgestellt war im Namen derer, die die Stadt beherrschten, und auf dem stand, dass ihm gehören sollte jede Wohnung, in die er seinen Fuß setzt; ebenso sollte ihm auch jedes Essen gehören, das er verlange; ebenso sollte ihm auch jeder Mann dienen, den er sähe. Der Agent setzte sich in einen Stuhl, verlangte Essen, wusch sich, legte sich nieder und fragte mit dem Gesicht zur Wand vor dem Einschlafen: ‚Wirst du mir dienen?‘

Herr Egge deckte ihn mit einer Decke zu, vertrieb die Fliegen, bewachte seinen Schlaf, und wie an diesem Tage gehorchte er ihm sieben Jahre lang. Aber was immer er für ihn tat, eines zu tun hütete er sich wohl: das war, ein Wort zu sagen.

Als nun die sieben Jahre herum waren und der Agent dick geworden war vom vielen Essen, Schlafen und Befehlen, starb der Agent. Da wickelte ihn Herr Egge in die verdorbene Decke, schleifte ihn aus dem Haus, wusch das Lager, tünchte die Wände, atmete auf und antwortete: ‚Nein.‘“ (2)

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Rektor a.D., Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Noten

1. https://www.kripahle-online.de/unterricht/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Maßnahmen-gegen-die-Gewalt.pdf

2. a. O.

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The crisis year 1930 was the beginning of the end of the Weimar Republic, the first parliamentary democracy in Germany: three million unemployed, emergency decrees and Hitler’s triumph. It was the beginning of a dark period. In the parable “Measures against Violence”, Brecht drew attention early on to the danger of arbitrariness and violence under National Socialism. Parallels to the world political situation of the present immediately leap to the eye of every alert citizen. Reflecting on Brecht’s parable on dealing with state violence from 1930 can therefore be helpful.

State violence measures to remedy the COVID 19 and climate crisis 

Violence is still being done to us today – and there is no end in sight. The COVID-19 crisis will be followed by the climate crisis. And we citizens are backing away from the violence of the governments’ imposed illegal and brutal measures to protect all of our health, not saying “no”.  We are already beginning to come to terms with the tyranny that is coming.

Will we continue to submit to state violence because, like Mr Keuner in Brecht’s parable, we have “no backbone to break”? Will we obey and serve the agents of a foreign power for years because we are waiting for the right time to say “no” like Mr Egge?

On the basis of Brecht’s parable, every adult citizen should deal with the topic and come to the realisation of sensible and considered action through independent thinking.

Brecht’s parable from 1930 

In his instructive short story based on a comparison, Brecht describes how the two main characters, Mr Keuner and Mr Egge, react in their own way to state violence: Mr Keuner – the thinking man – justifies his submissive reaction to violence towards his students by saying, “I have no backbone to smash. I of all people must live longer than violence.” (1)

Mr Keuner then lectures his pupils by means of a brutal story from the time of illegality: one day an agent of the new rulers of the city enters Mr Egge’s house and life without being asked. This foreign agent obeys and serves Mr Egge, “who had learned to say no”, for seven years – but does not speak a single word to him. Only after his death does he breathe a sigh of relief and answer the agent’s question of seven years ago, “Will you serve me?” with a “No”.

Perhaps it is the lesser evil to resign oneself to fate, not to offer open resistance and also not to speak one’s mind openly when one has realised that at the moment one does not have the power to do anything about the violence. Perhaps it is wiser to wait for the right time to say “no”.

But, dear reader, form your own opinion. I quote:

“When Mr Keuner, the thinker, spoke out against violence in front of many in a hall, he noticed how people backed away from him and walked away. He looked around and saw standing behind him – violence. ‘What did you say?’ the violence asked him. ‘I spoke in favour of the violence,’ Mr Keuner replied. When Mr Keuner had walked away, his pupils asked him about his backbone. Mr Keuner replied, ‘I have no backbone to smash. I of all people must live longer than violence.’

And Mr Keuner told the following story:

In the flat of Mr Egge, who had learned to say no, an agent came one day in the time of illegality, who produced a note which was issued in the name of those who ruled the city, and on which it was written that every flat in which he set foot should belong to him; likewise also every meal he demanded should belong to him; likewise also every man he saw should serve him. The agent sat down in a chair, demanded food, washed himself, lay down, and, facing the wall before falling asleep, asked, ‘Will you serve me?’

Mr Egge covered him with a blanket, drove away the flies, guarded his sleep, and as on that day, he obeyed him for seven years. But whatever he did for him, there was one thing he was careful not to do: that was to say a word.

When the seven years were up and the agent had grown fat from eating, sleeping and giving orders, the agent died. Then Mr Egge wrapped him in the rotten blanket, dragged him out of the house, washed the camp, whitewashed the walls, breathed a sigh of relief and answered: ‘No.'” (2)

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes 

  1. https://www.kripahle-online.de/unterricht/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Maßnahmen-gegen-die-Gewalt.pdf
  2. op. cit. 

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Stand strong, not only with Palestinian civil society, but with all forms of legitimate resistance to Israel’s domination, control and oppression in Palestine from the river to the sea.

That’s the powerful message I am anticipating to hear tomorrow at Masar Badil, Conference of the Alternative Palestinian Path: Towards a new revolutionary commitment, here in Madrid (Oct 30, 2021).­

Madrid! No Palestinian can hear the name of this wonderful European city without thinking of the ill-fated Madrid Conference of 1991, which dragged on until August 1993 without any progress, when Israel and the PLO entered into negotiations in Oslo with Norwegian mediation, in the utmost secrecy. The Palestinian delegation at the Madrid negotiations, led by Haidar Abdel Shafi (Haydar Abd al-Shafi), found out about the talks from a radio announcement.

Fifty percent of Palestinians today were born after what came to be known as the Oslo Accords. This younger generation of Palestinians, especially those within the West Bank, like the younger generation of Israeli Jews, is only now awakening to the reality of the disinformation in which they grew up believing. I see Masar Badil as the first step in the re-education of this generation of Palestinians and Israelis alike.

It is sometimes argued that the failure of the “peace process,” a euphemism for the Oslo Accords that is anything but, is due to issues of identity and how “both sides construct the National narratives.” In this argument, the Palestinian National identity emerged only as a response to the threat of Zionism in the early 20th century and was confined at the time to the educated elite. Historian Walid Khalidi described its rise as follows: “If the Arab population of Palestine had not yet been sure of their identity before 1948, the experience of defeat, dispossession, and exile guaranteed that they knew what their identity was very soon afterwards. They were Palestinians.”

The so-called Arab revolt of 1936–1939 against the British was a Palestinian revolt. In the face of continued defeat and exile, Masar Badil understands that the only recourse for Palestinians, then as now, is continued revolt.

The first objective of the alternative path envisioned by the Conference states:

Asserting the Palestinian, Arab and international popular response to the path of Madrid and Oslo, the declaration of the failure of this catastrophic road, from the heart of Madrid, Spain, in October 2021, and renewing the rejection by the supporters of Palestine everywhere in the world of all agreements and treaties that undermine the rights of the Palestinian people, from the colonial “Balfour Declaration” to the last negotiations that the Palestinian Authority may have concluded with the Zionist state. We consider all of them null and void, illegitimate and unlawful. Accordingly, Palestinian, Arab and international popular participation is critical to achieve the democratic, popular content of the conference and its outcomes. Participation in preparing for the conference and ensuring its results are individual and collective responsibilities.

Much of what activist groups on social media, including some Jewish groups, have long been doing and continue to do, is to expose the Israeli Zionist National identity narrative for what it is: a settler-colonial, apartheid, Jewish supremacist identity that robs Palestinians, not only of their land, but also of their own national identity on that homeland.

At a time when Israel is orchestrating a smear campaign to discredit and de-legitimize Palestinian essential human rights work by equating it to terrorist acts, it is more important than ever not to allow Israel and its allied disinformation groups, as Shawan Jabarin put it in a recent opinion piece in the EU Observer “to shatter the trust and confidence at the basis of the European-Palestinian relationship, and entrench its domination on the ground by taking effective control and assuming oversight over European funding to the Palestinian civil society. In doing so, Israel and its allied disinformation groups not only ensure the actual shrinking of the Palestinian civil space, but also that of the European civil society, its values and its human rights legacy.”

One thing Masar Badil will be looking into is how to bypass the Palestinian dependence on financing by the EU and member states.

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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Rima Najjar in Madrid blogging on Masar Badil, Conference of the Alternative Palestinian Path: Towards a new revolutionary commitment

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Should One Stand Up for Western Values?

November 2nd, 2021 by Kim Petersen

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What are western values? One often hears a representative of a western country praising its western values. In a 2017 statement Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau adumbrated Canadian values as “openness, compassion, equality, and inclusion.”

Given the psychological torture that Julian Assange has been subjected to over the years at the hands of western nations like the Britain, the United States, Sweden, and the silent host of western states and their media, one wonders where the compassion is. At the heart of the case against Assange is an antipathy to openness, as evidenced by the vituperation directed at Assange for publishing the truth; WikiLeaks has a perfect record of publication. And by promoting the right to know, Assange sought to include the public.

Given the historical trajectory of the West, how might purportedly virtuous western values have arisen? Enlightened Europeans set sail for distant shores, claimed the inhabited lands as their own, derided the locals as savages, enslaved them, raped the women, chopped off body parts, spread disease, murdered multitudes, robbed the resources, destroyed the cultures, among a host of atrocities. Despotic monarchism, Nazism, fascism, and capitalism would be spawned by Europeans.

Are westerners more enlightened today?

The United Nations General Assembly 72nd session in December 2017, seems an apt barometer of current western values. The UNGA’s resolution 72/157, called for concrete action for the total elimination of racism globally.

The resolution was resumed as 75/237, still entitled as “A global call for concrete action for the elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and the comprehensive implementation of and follow-up to the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.” It was adopted by the General Assembly on 31 December 2020.

Of the total votes cast, 106 were in favor, 14 were against, and there were 44 abstentions.

The votes on Resolution 75/237 are very revealing of western values. Consider that among the 14 nay votes were a bevy of western countries:

  • Australia
  • Canada
  • Czech Republic
  • Democratic Republic of Congo
  • France
  • Germany
  • Guyana
  • Israel
  • Nauru
  • Marshall Islands
  • Netherlands
  • Slovenia
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

The US explained its nay vote as being based on the “unfair and unacceptable singling out of Israel.”

In his book, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, professor Noam Chomsky made crystal clear the Israeli racism toward Arabs: “Contempt for the Arab population is deeply rooted in Zionist thought.” Chomsky also alluded to western permissiveness toward Israeli racism: “Anti-Arab racism is … so widespread as to be unnoticeable; it is perhaps the only remaining form of racism to be regarded as legitimate.” [1]

The US is a country established through genocide and dispossession of the Indigenous peoples, and it set up an apartheid reservation system for those Indigenous peoples that survived. From this vantage point, it seems no wonder that Israel escaped criticism by the US since the US lacks a moral basis from which to castigate Israel. The same holds true for Canada, a country that still practices apartheid with its Indian Act and reserve system. Canada also steadfastly supports Israeli apartheid.

Several other western or western-aligned countries abstained, among them: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Monaco, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea (South), Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Ukraine. These countries refused to take a stand on the anti-racism resolution.

What about the other countries that supported the resolution? In particular, how did the countries subjected to disinformation, persistent criticism, sanctions, and provocative military maneuvers from countries crowing and preening about their western values vote? China, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North), Iran, Iraq, Russia, and Syria all voted in favor of the anti-racism resolution.

Which countries’ values best represent those embraced by people of conscience?

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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be emailed at: kimohp@gmail. Twitter: @kimpetersen.

Notes

1. Colleague B.J. Sabri and I explored in a 12-part series what Israeli racism is: “Defining Israeli Zionist Racism,” Dissident Voice, read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.

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The elected EU Parliament has recently come forward in various Press Conferences and in news articles for the public to understand that the EU is everything but a democracy. Parliament members presented their views, most of them representative for a majority of the EU Parliament, with regard to the Covid measures, i.e. a dictatorship that Europe is following – actually, the path to an outright tyranny, with vaxx passports, or Green Passes, or whatever these discriminatory certificates may be called. They are now depriving unvaccinated people from their right to work, from their right to earn a living, from their possibility to sustain their families.

Can you imagine a Human Rights abuse that knows hardly any precedents since the German Nazi-Government in the 1930s and 40s? It is noticed, but governments just roll over it, always with lies and deceptions, and falsehoods. The EU Parliament speaks out against the EU Commission’s path towards outright tyranny.

Th EU Parliament has been elected by the parliaments and / or people of their respective EU member countries, depending on country-by-country rules. But they have been elected. Whereas, the members of the EU Commission, including the President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has not been elected, as she is a political appointee. As such she must defend and represent a narrative, especially in matters of Covid and the pharma industry, that has nothing to do with the well-being of the People of Europe. To the contrary. It’s a repressive narrative.

She and her unelected Commission colleagues represent the interests of Big Pharma and other influential lobby groups. That is certainly not what the European people wanted, and is not what they would have voted for. And it is not what makes the EU sustainable. To the contrary. The EU risks falling apart.

In a series of recent Press conferences, members of the EU Parliament came forward to speak out. It is important that they have a voice.

And for us, People of Europe, it is important being reminded that the EU is NOT a democratic organism, all to the contrary. We must change that. Or if it is not possible, then there is only one way forward, exiting this undemocratic unit and become again what we were before the EU, i.e. some 20 years ago – a Europe of sovereign independent countries, with diplomatic and trade relations among our nations – but not obedient to a dictatorship, calling the shots on our monetary systems and on our freedom.

Watch for yourself – 5-min video Press Conference.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)

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

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

 

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The first signs of more significant escalation, involving all sides in northern Syria are being observed.

On November 1st, all eyes are on Turkey and whether it would kick off the month with a large-scale military operation against the Kurdish groups in northeastern Syria.

On the days leading up to it, the Turkish military and the militant factions it backs continued to carry out small attacks, similar to a constant harassment, on the US-backed Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

In the afternoon of October 30, a Turkish combat drone, reportedly a Bayraktar TB2, carried out an airstrike on a checkpoint of the SDF near the town of Ain Issa in the northern countryside of Raqqa.

After that, the Turkish military and its proxies shelled SDF positions in the outskirts of Ain Issa with artillery.

This is a very obvious attempt to force some sort of response by the SDF or other Kurdish groups that would justify the beginning of further military actions.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) maintains a strong presence around Ain Issa.

The Russian Military Police are also present in the town to monitor the 2019 Russian-Turkish de-escalation agreement on northeastern Syria.

On the next day, October 31st, Russian warplanes were spotted over different parts of Syria’s northeastern region.

Media released videos of a Su-35S fighter jet of the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) maneuvering over the town of al-Qamishli in the northern al-Hasakah countryside, along the Turkish border.

Videos showing a number of Russian Ka-52, Mi-8 and Mi-35 helicopters landing in al-Qamishli airport were also shared.

These are just some of a plethora of videos showing increased activity.

According to some reports, a Su-35S fighter jet intercepted a Turkish ANKA-S in the skies above al-Qamishli.

The drone attempted to approach the Syrian border and enter the airspace over the city where the Russian military airbase is located.

It is likely that Turkey has attempted to gather some intel, as VKS and SAA kicked off joint ground and aerial drills in the northeastern region, in a very apparent show of force.

According to SDF-affiliated media, during the joint drills SAA troops moved near the town of Tell Tamr along the frontlines with Turkish forces as VKS warplanes dropped flares and launched rockets.

Just in time to further exacerbate the chaos, Israel carried out a rare daytime missile attack on Damascus.

Syrian air-defense systems intercepted two out of eight missiles launched by Israeli fighter jets during the recent attack on the northwestern suburbs of the city.

Additionally, in the southern province of Daraa three separate militant attacks were reported within 24 hours on October 30th.

The reconciliation process was reportedly completed, but the situation seems volatile.

It is also notable that these attacks take place while the SAA and the VKS are planning to tackle a potential Turkish military attack, and also deal with the Ankara-backed militant factions in the north.

ISIS in the central region ramped up its activity, as if in concert with the rest of the chaos.

Nine pro-government fighters were killed in three separate ISIS attacks, while the VKS ramped up its airstrike activity on militant positions.

The Turkish military with its allied factions, as well as Israel, Daraa’s former rebels and even the ISIS terrorists, all of them, will benefit if chaos spreads further.

There is a strong impression that they are carrying out their actions in a single coordinated effort.

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The Misanthropic Bankers Behind COP26 and the Green New Deal

November 2nd, 2021 by Matthew Ehret-Kump

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A vast sweeping change towards a “green economy” is now being pushed by forces that may make an educated citizen rather uncomfortable.

Of course, news reports flash daily showcasing the brave young movement of “eco-warriors” led by Sweden’s “forever 15 year old” [now 18] Greta Thunberg or America’s 17 year old Jamie Margolin who have become a force across Europe and America leading such movements as the Extinction Rebellion, This is Zero Hour, the Sunrise Movement and Children’s eco-crusade. The young face of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez daily sells the idea that the only way for outdated capitalist forces that have plagued the world for decades to be replaced is by imposing a sweeping Green New Deal that priorities de-carbonization as a goal for humanity rather than continuing to allow the mindless forces of the markets to determine our destiny.

When EU President Ursula von der Leyen had stepped into her office, she lost no time attacking China’s Belt and Road Initiative (which is ironically representing a true 21st century New Deal) by saying “some are buying their influence by investing in dependence from ports and roads”… but “we go the European way”. What is the “European way”? Not the development plans of Charles De Gaulle or Konrad Adenauer who envisioned industrial growth and increasing population as positives, but rather a Green New Deal. Von der Leyen then announced that “I want Europe to become the first CO2 neutral continent in the world by 2050! I will put forward a Green New Deal for Europe in my first 100 days in office…”

Attacking the “mindless forces of the market” and vested power structures of capitalism are not bad things to do… but why must we de-carbonize?

Re-regulating the too-big-to-fail banks is long overdue, but why do so many assume that a “Green New Deal” won’t just empower those same forces that have run havoc upon the world for the past half century and just cause more death and starvation than has already been suffered under Globalization?

One might only think to even ask such questions by first confronting the uncomfortable fact that behind such young cardboard cut outs as Thunberg, Margolin, Cortez or the Green New Deal are figures whom one would not associate with humanitarianism by any measure.

Green Bonds and Oligarchs

When we begin to pull back the curtain we quickly run into figures like Prince Charles, who recently met with the heads of 18 Commonwealth countries to consolidate climate emergency legislation which was promptly passed in the UK and Canadian Parliaments. At the end of the meeting Charles said that we “have 18 months to save the world from climate change” and called for “increasing the amount of private sector finance flowing towards the supporting sustainable development throughout the commonwealth”.

Following the royal decree, the Bank of England and some of the dirtiest banks in the Rothschild-City of London web of finance have promoted “green financial instruments” led by Green Bonds to redirect pension plans and mutual funds towards green projects that no one in their right minds would ever invest in willfully. The Ecological, Social, Governance Index (ESGI) has now been set up across 51% of Germany’s banks including the derivatives-bomb waiting to blow named Deutschebank. Leading bankers supporting the ESGI like Mark Carney of the Bank of England have said that over 6.5 trillion Euros could be mobilized under this new index (which currently accounts for about $160 billion). The creation of these “green bonds” run hand-in-hand with the Bail-in mechanisms which have now been implemented across the trans-Atlantic nations in order to steal trillions of dollars of from pension funds, RRSPs and Mutual funds the next time a bail out is needed to prop up the “too big to fails” which currently sit atop a $1.2 trillion derivatives bubble waiting to blow.

On top of heading the Bank of England, former Goldman Sachs-man Carney has also endorsed the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures which was created in 2015 and was used as a guideline for the UK government’s July 2019 White Paper “Green Finance Strategy: Transforming Finance for a Greener Future”. The White Paper proposed to “consolidate the UK’s position as a global hub for green finance and positioning the UK at the head of green financial innovation and data and analytics… endorsed by institutions representing $118 trillion of assets globally”. The Carney-led Task Force also spawned the Green Finance Initiative in 2016 which is now a primary vehicle designed to divert international capital flows into green tech.

Carney’s former employer at Goldman Sachs has also created a “Green Index for ‘virtuous investing” including two new sustainability indices to promote heavy investment in to green infrastructure called CDP Environment EW and CDP Eurozone EW. The acronym CDP originates from the Climate Disclosure Project – a London-based think tank that generated Goldman Sachs’ program. Goldman Sachs’ Marine Abiad promoted the CDP index saying on July 10 “we are convinced that sustainable finance enables financial markets to play a virtuous role in the economy.”

Just in case you thought the Extinction Rebellion was somehow untouched by the hand of social engineers, a leading figure behind the movement named Alex Evans was a former consultant on the Prince’s International Sustainability Unit, and co-author of the US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World which became an environmental/foreign policy blueprint for the Obama Administration in 2008. Currently Evans also runs the Collective Psychology Project “where psychology meets politics”.

Other leading British intelligence figures managing the Extinction Rebellion movement included Farhana Yamin and Sam Gaell of Chatham House (the controlling institution behind the New York Council on Foreign Relations).

Could a ‘Benevolent’ Green Dictatorship be a Good Thing?

The devil’s advocate speaks: Can’t we presume that these central banks, oligarchs and hedge fund managers just care about the environment? So what if they are trying to modify humanity’s behaviour in order to save the environment? After all, humanity itself is a selfish, gluttonous pollution-making machine and isn’t better for everyone if those enlightened elite just transform the world economy so that we consume less, and think more about the future?

If this line of thinking approximates something you’ve felt inside yourself then you’ve been brainwashed.

Of course, the world has turned into a consumerist cult over the past few decades which has sacrificed long term thinking for short term gain and of course we need a re-organization of the system. Thunberg and the Green New Dealers aren’t wrong about that stuff. That’s all fine and dandy.

But if you think that going along with the types of reform that aspires to put dollar values on reducing carbon footprints or spreading low quality (and very expensive) windmills and solar panels across the globe with the expectation that somehow these sources of energy will not cause a vast collapse of industrial capacity of civilization (and an associated loss of capacity to sustain human life), then you are fooling yourself. One kilowatt of windmill energy is only the same as one kilowatt of nuclear power when applied to a mathematical equation but not in real life. When applied to capital-intensive work functions needed to melt industrial steel, run machine tools, power a vast agro-industrial complex, high speed rail system or construct things like Belt and Road Initiative, “green” energy sources do not come even close to cutting the iron.

The issue has always been population control

The oligarchs running the “grand green design” since the Club of Rome’s Sir Alexander King began the Limits to Growth study in 1970 knew that green “low energy flux density” sources of energy would constrict global population and that is exactly what they wanted. Sir King said so much in 1990 when he wrote

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill….All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”

Sir King was, after all just following the lead of UNESCO founder (and Eugenics president) Sir Julian Huxley who wrote in 1946

“Political unification in some sort of world government will be required… Even though… any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”

It was only a few years later that Huxley would co-found the World Wildlife Fund alongside Prince Philip Mountbatten and Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands. All three were present at Bernhardt’s founding meeting of the Bilderberg group to advance this grand conversion of society into a willful self-extermination in 1954 and while Huxley wasn’t present in 1970, the other two oligarchs co-founded the 1001 Nature Trust alongside 999 other wealthy misanthropes to fund the blossoming environmental movement. These forces were also behind the coup d’état in America which put the Trilateral Commission in power under Jimmy Carter and unleashed the “controlled disintegration of the US economy” from 1978-1982 (this will be the topic of another study). This grouping, led by Zbigniew Brzezinski not only played the radical Islam card against the Soviet Union, but also established a program of population reduction through the promotion of green energy sources long before it was popular.

The oligarchs that are currently trying to reform humanity today don’t care about the environment. Prince Philip and Bernhardt have been recorded to have killed more endangered species on safari than most people have killed mosquitos. They just don’t like people. Especially thinking people. Thinking people who question how and why arbitrary rules are applied to justify wars, poverty and oligarchism which destroys lives both now and in the future.

The Belt and Road Initiative and the tendency to grow the human population both quantitatively and qualitatively which such great projects entail is the target of the Green New Deal.

The legacy of scientific and technological progress that launched western civilization out of a dark age and into a renaissance in the 15th century is under attack because it is that lost ethic which the oligarchy KNOWS may yet be awoken and which would bring the west into harmony with the Russia-China program for growth and development under a philosophy of “win-win cooperation” both on Earth and also in space.

The effects of the ideas of the renaissance coincided with the greatest rate of discoveries of universal principles as mankind sought to come to know the mind of god by studying the book of nature with a heart of love and attitude of humility exemplified in the figure of Leonardo Da Vinci. The explosion of new technologies that arose not only revolutionized astronomy, medicine and engineering but gave birth to the modern industrial economy which coincided with the greatest rise of population in history. This exponential rise has been used by Malthusians for centuries as the proof that mankind is “just another cancerous growth” on the “purity of mother Gaia”.

So if you don’t agree with humans=cancer philosophy and want something a bit more optimistic in your life, then support a real New Deal today.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Matthew Ehret’s Insights.

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , 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 

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley claimed last week that China was close to a “sputnik moment” due to its successful test of a hypersonic missile.

However, U.S. space-based early warning systems can detect hypersonic missiles, marking them as no threat at all.

General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned on Wednesday, October 27th, that China’s development of a hypersonic missile system is “very concerning,” calling it “very close” to a “sputnik moment”that triggered the space race during the Cold War.

“What we saw was a very significant event of a test of a hypersonic weapon system. And it is very concerning,” Milley said during an interview with “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations” on Bloomberg Television. “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.” 

Sputnik was the first artificial satellite launched into low Earth orbit in 1957 by the Soviet Union, which sparked the space race between the U.S. and USSR.

Theodore Postol, professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a former top policy adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations, says that the Sputnik analogy advanced by General Milley is off base.

“The launching of Sputnik,” Postol said in an interview with CAM, “signaled at the time that the Soviet Union was able to compete with the U.S. in space and had been a surprise.” However, in the case of China and the testing of a hypersonic missile, U.S. intelligence agencies were “already aware about it and knew that China is very advanced in science and technology.”

The hypersonic missile, furthermore, “does not threaten the U.S. population in any way or provide China any military-technological edge.”

This is because the U.S. has “extraordinary space-based early warning infrared systems with the ability to detect hypersonic vehicles as they descend into the atmosphere and become heated to very high temperatures.”

Space-based Infrared System (SBIRS) | Missile Threat

Space-based Infrared System (SBIRS) [Source: missilethreat.csis.org]

General Milley’s statement, according to Postol, reflects how “idiots in the Pentagon” and political appointees are trying to “push us [the U.S.] into military confrontation with China over nothing.”[1]

“Pushing us into military confrontation over nothing”

Launched via rocket, the hypersonic missile can travel over 6,000 miles at five times the speed of sound (3,836 mph). It releases a hypersonic vehicle that runs parallel to the earth’s surface and can skip off it like a rock before reaching its destination after heating up to a very high temperature.

The space-based early warning system can see the hot spots of the hypersonic missile that’s moving when it dips into the atmosphere. The exhaust from the hypersonic vehicles rocket would also be recognizable.

According to Postol, a more real threat to U.S. national security are ballistic missiles—that Russia and China both possess—which are more accurate and versatile and launch balloons in space that radar cannot peer through and detect.

How China's Ballistic Missile And Nuclear Arsenal Is Ballooning According To The Pentagon

Arsenal of Chinese ballistic missile. [Source: thedrive.com]

The U.S. military also cannot defend against cruise missiles that the Russians and Chinese have in their arsenals.

Origin of China's Latest Cruise Missile Debated | Defense News: Aviation International News

Chinese cruise missile. [Source: ainonline.com]

Testing the hypersonic missile, according to Postol, may provide “a statement from China that they are a technological competitor to the U.S.,” but it will “have little or no meaning in terms of adding significant nuclear-strike capabilities.”

“Someone gave Milley false information”

Postol says that he “does not think that Milley is a liar, but believes that he was provided false information from someone within the U.S. military or intelligence agencies and didn’t know any better.”

According to Postol, “Milley is both an unsophisticated consumer of intelligence and someone who is easily manipulated.”

In October, “when a drone strike in Kabul killed ten civilians, Milley stated that the attack was just”—though later acknowledged it had been a mistake.

“A dysfunctional system” and culture that “hypes threats”

Trained as a nuclear engineer at MIT, Postol said that his experience as a scientific policy adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jim Watkins, from 1982 to 1984, “left him with a low regard for the accuracy of information provided by high-level government employees.”

This low regard has only intensified with time.

When Colin Powell gave his infamous speech at the UN in February 2003 about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq, Postol—then a Pentagon adviser—knew right away that every line in the speech was wrong and that Powell himself knew this.

Recipient of the Leo Szilard Prize in 1990 from the American Physical Society for “incisive technical analysis of national security issues that [have] been vital for informing the public policy debate” and Norbert Weiner Award from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility for “uncovering numerous and important false claims about missile defenses,” Postol earned the ire of the Bush I administration when he challenged the efficacy of the Patriot missile system—which had intercepted Scud missiles launched against Israel by Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein during the first Persian Gulf War.

Ted Postol holds a model of a Scud missile launcher at MIT. After the Gulf War, the Patriot missile system won praise for shooting down Iraqi Scuds - until Postol spoke up.

Ted Postol holds a model of a Scud missile launcher at MIT. After the Gulf War, the Patriot missile system won praise for shooting down Iraqi Scuds—until Postol spoke up. [Source: archive.boston.com]

Since that time, Postol has been highly critical of the tearing up of arms control agreements like the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia reducing cruise missiles, and U.S. government investment in ineffective weapons systems that waste taxpayer dollars.

In Postol’s view, the intelligence agencies have some good people working for them, but have developed into “rigid, dysfunctional bureaucracies with weak leaders who are often politicized.”

Those who gain promotion “have their own motivations” and “do not always provide the best information.” They are “part of a culture that hypes threats,” and “provides higher ups with a storyline that is useful to the larger agenda which is to get more money from Congress.”

By amplifying threats, the intelligence agencies want to “scare people” so they will “sanction huge military budgets” and big-ticket “defense projects that often add little to national security.”

Syrian chemical gas hoax

According to Postol, the intelligence agencies deliberately deceived the American public when they claimed that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out chemical weapon attacks against his own people—a claim that was adopted as a pretext for military strikes against Syria.

Postol reviewed key evidence about alleged attacks in August 2013 in the Ghouta district of Damascus and in April 2017 in the town of Khan Shaykhun in the Idlib Governate of Syria.

In the case of Ghouta, Postol said that the Obama White House presented a false intelligence report like in the Gulf of Tonkin incident that could have caused the nation to go to war.

According to Postol, the reason the White House was lying was simple: The rockets that delivered the Sarin gas could only travel two kilometers. The White House map in turn showed that they would have had to have been delivered from inside rebel-controlled areas.

In the case of the attack on Khan Shaykhun, Postol said that the Syrian air force bombed a building—a meeting place for extremist leaders—with a supply store in its basement that stored pesticides and other chemicals which released toxic materials when it was struck.

The crater in the building had to have been caused by artillery rockets, and the scene was later staged to make it look like it was the target of a sarin nerve gas attack by Assad.

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

Notes

1. Jeffrey St. Clair wrote in Counterpunch that “China’s successful hypersonic missile test insures that over the next decade trillions will be diverted from health care, climate change, education and infrastructure budgets into a bottomless Pentagon slush fund for developing, testing and deploying missiles that by definition (or at least according to the logic of MAD theory) can never be used.” 

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***

 

Dr. Wilbur H. Chen wants you to know that he’s very upset (see comment’s section)!

He’s upset the peasants have access to email!

He’s upset the peasants have access to common sense and reason!

He’s upset the peasants actually read scientific studies for themselves!

And he’s very upset that the peasants are speaking to him without his express written permission!

Apparently, he’s also clairvoyant (like Santa) because he knows what you are writing before you even send it to him, so he has set up an auto-reply on his email account to let you know he’s very important, he gets lots of emails and he does not like “misinformation.”

Chen defines “misinformation” as anything that contradicts the Pharma narrative. Chen is adamant that nothing be allowed to pierce his protective Pharma information bubble.

I’m reminded of the phrase, “Methinks thou doth protest too much.”

What Chen is actually mad about is that he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

A search of the government website Open Payments reveals Chen accepted $437,250.70 from Emergent BioSolutions and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in 2020.

Research funding

GSK is one of the four largest vaccine makers in the world. GSK makes the incredibly toxic Hep B vaccine (Engerix-B), the troubled HPV vaccine (Cervarix), a meningococcal vaccine that is loaded with aluminum (Bexsero) and various flu vaccines among others.

GSK is also working on a COVID-19 vaccine that is now in Phase 3 clinical trials.

All of GSK’s products must go before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), that Chen sits on, in order to be approved.

Emergent BioSolutions is a contract manufacturer that makes vaccines for others including the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine that has been linked to blood clots and a bleeding disorder.

Emergent BioSolutions has an abysmal safety record. Even though federal regulators are generally like Mr. Magoo when it comes to spotting safety problems, the issues at Emergent’s plant in Baltimore were so egregious that earlier this year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shut down the plant and ordered J&J to take it over and run it themselves.

The FDA also ordered 75 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines manufactured at that plant be destroyed because of contamination. All of the vaccines manufactured at the Emergent BioSolutions plant must first be approved by the ACIP where Chen is a member.

This is completely unacceptable. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 27,550 pediatricians employed in the U.S. There is absolutely no reason for the ACIP to utilize a person with such extensive financial conflicts of interest.

The CDC) must be above reproach in order to have any credibility with the general public. Sadly the CDC appears to do whatever it can get away with — a classic example of the fox guarding the henhouse.

The fact that these decisions involve the health of our children makes corruption all the more appalling.

Please contact the following four officials (as well your elected representatives) to let them know that you are troubled by Chen’s extensive financial conflicts of interest and please ask that he be removed from the ACIP before it meets on Tuesday, Nov. 2.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky
Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Roybal Building 21, Rm 12000
1600 Clifton Rd, Atlanta, GA 30333
phone: (404) 639-7000
[email protected]

Xavier Becerra
Secretary, Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue S.W., Washington, D.C. 20201
c/o Sean McCluskie
[email protected]

Captain Amanda Cohn
Chief medical officer
National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
1600 Clifton Rd, Atlanta, GA 30333 MS C-09
phone: (404) 639-6039
fax: (404) 315-4679
[email protected]
[email protected]

Grace Lee, M.D.
Chair, Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices
Center for Academic Medicine
Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Mail Code: 5660
453 Quarry Road, Stanford, CA 94304
phone: (650) 497-0618
phone: (650) 498-6227
fax: (650) 725-8040
[email protected]

It is beyond alarming that the ACIP has failed to properly monitor financial conflicts of interest amongst its members. All prior ACIP votes involving Chen should be reviewed by an independent outside review board to see if they must be thrown out because of this blatant corruption.

The CDC should also examine and release publicly all financial conflict of interest statements from all remaining ACIP members to determine if there are additional problems before Tuesday.

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Featured image is from CHD

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Alexey Arestovich, adviser to the head of the President’s Office and a spokesman for the Kiev delegation in the Tripartite Contact Group for Donbass, boldly announced that Ukraine may acquire their own missile system with the potential to strike Moscow. It is expected to have a development time of about 10 years.

It is recalled that Arestovich often makes audacious predictions, such as claiming that Russia would occupy Belarus and that “Poles, the inhabitants of the Baltic states, and with them other Europeans, will suddenly feel that the war (…) is right on their doorstep.” This of course never materialized, but does demonstrate that Arestovich is a populist that makes bombastic rhetoric far removed from reality.

None-the-less, Ukraine has always had potential to develop powerful missile systems. From the famous Soviet defense industry, Ukraine inherited the Yuzhnoy rocket design office in Dnepropetrovsk, the chemical company in Pavlograd, the Kiev-based AGAT design office, and other companies. By inheriting Soviet-era defense industries, the Ukrainian military industrial complex could theoretically develop a missile system of any class. In practice, this will prove much more difficult despite the overconfidence of Arestovich.

Ukraine first decided to develop its own operational tactical system in 1997 by piggybacking off the Borisfen project. The development of Borisfen was probably inspired by Russia’s development of the Iskander missile system. In this period, both countries cooperated and Ukrainian engineers took part in numerous Russian missile projects. By 2007, Ukraine started developments on the Sapsan missile system with a range of 280km. However, in 2013, the Ukrainian Defense Minister Pavlo Lebedyev abolished the development of Sapsan.

Later in the same year, Saudi Arabia was reportedly interested in developing a Grom-2 missile, which was to be developed on the basis of an unrealized Sapsan. In 2016, Ukrainian companies reportedly received foreign funding for this development. Work on the rocket system progressed, and models of the launcher and rockets, as well as the first samples of solid fuel engines, were created. In 2018, Ukraine conducted fire tests of the engine of a new combat ballistic missile. It was expected that testing of the new missile system would be conducted in 2020 or 2021, but thus far Ukraine and Saudi Arabia have not. The transition from the engine and model of the launcher to real combat operability obviously requires more force and resources than originally planned.

Despite this stop and start ambition to have powerful missiles, Arestovich appears confident that future Ukrainian missiles can penetrate Russian air defenses and threaten Moscow. The Grom-2 missile, with an official increased range of 500km, could reach Moscow as eastern Ukraine brings it within range.

The range for the Grom-2 missile could unofficially be over 600km. It may also have the advantages of the Russian Iskander missiles, such as the ability to control the missile along the entire flight path, anti-missile manoeuvring in the final part of the flight, and other perks. This could make it difficult for Russian air defense systems to deal with because Grom-2 was created on the model of low altitude intercontinental missiles.

It is recalled that Russia has in service the S-500 missile defense systems, something not yet available for export and would more than likely be able to deal with any missiles developed by Ukraine. Given Ukraine’s decades long failure to produce an ambitious missile, it leads to the question on whether the current project will be a repeat of all previous attempts, which is a reflection of the failures of the entire Ukrainian military industry as a whole since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine is desperate to kickstart its military industrial complex again, and is partially hinging its bets on Turkey to assist in this. Turkey and Ukraine pledged earlier this year to continue their military cooperation, with Turkish drones making their way to the Donbass battlefield. Ukraine will also assist Turkey in creating an engine to finally complete the Turkish-assembled Altay tank and Storm Howitzer that have been plagued with issues since their conceptions.

However, building a tank engine is far different to creating an ambitious missile that can penetrate Russian air defenses and strike Moscow. It is unlikely that Ukraine will be able to create such a missile, especially as it has a development period of 10 years, in which time Russian air defenses would be far more advanced.

It is likely that Arestovich recognizes this fact, but for him it is about spouting out anti-Russian rhetoric in a populist manner to appeal to reactionary elements in Ukraine. Kiev continues to struggle to deal with the economic situation and faces isolation as most of Europe is disinterested in inheriting new issues and differences with Russia. With this in mind, Arestovich attempts to distract Ukrainians from the difficult domestic situation by instigating Russophobia with threats that are unlikely to be realized.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Dear readers, give the extraordinary coercive Covid vaccination program a moment of thought.

What explains the emphasis, even the use of tyrannical methods in free societies, to force vaccination on populations when even Big Pharma and the corrupt medical establishment only claim a short-run and steeply declining protection from the vaccine? According to the medical establishment itself, double-vaxxed is no longer protection. Booster shots are needed every six months for the rest of your life.

This is especially puzzling when we consider the known facts that

(1) The mortality of Covid is very low. It kills mainly those with co-morbidities and those who are untreated or wrongly treated.

(2) The vaccine reduces our natural immunity.

(3) The vaccine causes a large number of adverse reactions including deaths and lifelong disabilities. The CDC and WHO admit that the adverse reactions reporting system vastly underreports deaths and adverse reactions from the vaccine. No vaccine or medicine ever before in history has been kept in use that produced even a tiny fraction of the reported deaths and injuries.

(4) The vaccine causes variants that are immune to the vaccine and to the weakened immune system of the vaccinated. New vaccines are needed to deal with the new variants, producing still more new variants.

(5) The medical establishment has blocked to the extent of its ability the treatment of Covid with two known, safe, effective, and inexpensive medicines–Ivermectin and HCQ. Doctors who have saved lives with these medicines have been fired for using them.

(6) Distinguished and renowned scientific and medical experts, including Nobel laureates, have been censored and deplatformed for warning about the dangerous vaccine and advocating effective treatment instead.

(7) The media speaks with one lying voice that vaccination is our only hope.

(8) Evidence from a number of countries (I have reported it) demonstrates that Covid cases and deaths rise with vaccination and that the majority of cases and deaths for most age groups are the vaccinated.

(9) The science is clear that the vaccinated spread the virus as easily, or more so, than the unvaccinated.

(10) Indeed, the evidence is clear that the unvaccinated relying on natural immunity are better protected than the vaccinated.

With these known, established scientific facts, what is the justification for mass vaccination? Why the emphasis on vaccinating children when it is known that the spike protein attacks ovaries and testes unless the plan is to reduce fertility? Why can ignorant talking heads on TV who can barely spell their own name feel secure attacking renowned scientists who are telling us the truth?

There are certainly many sound reasons to conclude that the “Covid pandemic” is an orchestrated plot.

What are the obvious elements of the plot?

(1) Profits forever for Big Pharma, the medical school recipients of Big Pharma grants, the profits of patents shared with NIH and NIH personnel, campaign contributions for Senators, Representatives and presidential candidates.

(2) The use of fear to remove civil liberty protections and extend control over people. These two elements are obvious.

The third element of the plot is almost as obvious but much harder for many people to believe–population reduction. Before scoffing, ask yourself:

(1) why vaccinate children, who are essentially unaffected by Covid, with a vaccine known to attack the reproductive system and to cause abortions.

(2) Why vaccinate anyone when there are known, safe, and inexpensive cures?

(3) Why attack these cures as dangerous and strive to prevent their use? How can the medical establishment claim safety and caution for blocking Ivermectin and HCQ when it has unleashed a dangerous experimental vaccine on the world’s population?

(4) Why suppress the warnings of renowned experts? If the vaccine was the only solution or even a solution, it could stand public discussion.

Consider that the World Economic Forum has had a half century to indoctrinate and brainwash business and other leaders.

Founded January 24, 1971, the annual meeting in Davos has become a prestigious event. Leaders compete for invitations as attendance is a sign of prestige. The World Economic Forum is financed by 1,000 multi-billion dollar global corporations whose leaders have been sold on the “Great Reset” comprised of population reduction and the termination of national sovereignty and human autonomy. The “Great Reset” is a prescription for tyranny.

The orchestrated push for universal vaccination is so extreme that countries formerly considered part of the “free world” are now totalitarian states–witness Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Italy. The effort to extend the tyranny into France and Germany is meeting with strong public resistance. In America the main resistance comes from nurses and other medical-related personnel who have witnessed the devastating impact of the vaccine on those injected.

Every person needs to consider the implication of silencing independent experts who know the truth while ignorant talking heads dictate the official narrative.

When truth is murdered, so is all freedom, all morality, all justice. Are you just going to sit there and let it happen?

The PCR “Covid Test” Was Used to Create the Appearance of a Pandemic

Nobel Prize Laureate Kary B. Mullis was the inventor of the polymerase chain reaction technique, which is analyzed in this article.

Dr. Kary B. Mullis, who passed away on August 7, 2019 at age 74, stated emphatically that no infection or illness can be accurately diagnosed with the PCR-RT.

“PCR is a Process. It does not tell you that you are sick.  … The measurement is not accurate”.

Mullis described the PCR-RT as a “technique” rather than “a test”.

7,200 physicians and medical scientists worldwide have signed the “Rome Declaration” to alert citizens about the deadly consequences of Covid-19 policy makers’ and medical authorities’ unprecedented behavior, read here.

57 Top Scientists and Doctors Release Shocking Study on COVID Vaccines and Demand Immediate Stop to All Vaccinations, read here.

A Letter to the Unvaccinated, read here.

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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.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Nineteen states have sued the Biden administration over the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for Federal government contractors, according to separate lawsuits filed late last week.

On October 28, the state of Florida sued the Biden administration over the mandate, which Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said “is unlawfully jeopardizing thousands of jobs.”

Then on October 29, the states of Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming filed a lawsuitthat called the mandate “unconstitutional, unlawful, and unwise.” The states of Georgia, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia also filed a similar lawsuit on Friday. The state of Texas also filed its own lawsuit on Friday.

“If the Federal government attempts to unconstitutionally exert its will and force Federal contractors to mandate vaccinations, the workforce and businesses could be decimated, further exacerbating the supply chain and workforce crises,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said in a statement on Friday. “The Federal government should not be mandating vaccinations, and that’s why we filed suit today – to halt this illegal, unconstitutional action.”

The White House’s Safer Federal Workforce Task Force guidance for Federal contractors states that “all covered contractor employees” must be fully vaccinated by December 8, unless the employee is legally entitled to an accommodation.

The task force’s guidance for contractors stems from President Biden’s executive order issued in September, which gave Federal employees until November 22 to be fully vaccinated – with limited exceptions – against COVID-19.

However, the task force released new guidance today, which gives Federal contractors more flexibility to enforce the vaccine mandate.

“A covered contractor should determine the appropriate means of enforcement with respect to its employee at a covered contractor workplace who refuses to be vaccinated and has not been provided, or does not have a pending request for, an accommodation,” the new guidance says.

The guidance also notes that “covered contractors are expected to comply with all requirements set forth in their contract,” and an agency contracting officer may terminate a contract if the contractor refuses to comply with “COVID-19 workplace safety protocols.”

The guidance makes clear that “these requirements are promulgated pursuant to Federal law and supersede any contrary state or local law or ordinance.”

Despite the states’ attempts to stop the mandate, a September Gallup poll found that roughly 60 percent of respondents support President Biden’s vaccine mandate for all Federal government employees.

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Several members of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) vaccine advisory committee have financial ties to Pfizer.

Right after voting unanimously to recommend the Pfizer-BioNTech “vaccine” for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) “vaccine” in children as young as five, this committee was outed for direct conflicts of interest that clearly impacted its decision.

California is already chomping at the bit to mandate the jabs for kindergartners, pending federal authorization. Many other states controlled by leftists will likely try to follow suit, assuming there is no major pushback.

“… the meeting roster shows that numerous members of the committee and temporary voting members have worked for Pfizer or have major connections to Pfizer,” reported National File about the compromised FDA committee.

“Members include a former vice president of Pfizer Vaccines, a recent Pfizer consultant, a recent Pfizer research grant recipient, a man who mentored a current top Pfizer vaccine executive, a man who runs a center that gives out Pfizer vaccines, the chair of a Pfizer data group, a guy who was proudly photographed taking a Pfizer vaccine, and numerous people who are already on the record supporting Coronavirus vaccines for children.”

There is also recent FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, whom we reported now sits on the board of directors at Pfizer.

The FDA is an absolute joke

The following list outlines which FDA vaccine advisory committee board members are compromised and how:

  • Acting Chair Arnold S. Monto was a paid consultant at Pfizer as recently as 2018.
  • Steve Pergam received the Pfizer “vaccine” and was featured getting and promoting it by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
  • Committee member Archana Chatterjee worked on a research project involving vaccines for infants that took place from 2018-2020 and was sponsored by Pfizer.
  • Myron Levine has mentored numerous U.S. post-doctoral fellows, and one of his proteges is Raphael Simon, Pfizer’s senior director of vaccine research and development.
  • James Hildreth, a temporary voting member, made a financial interest disclosure stating that he accepted $1.5 million while serving as president at Meharry Medical College, which administers Pfizer’s covid injections.
  • Geeta K. Swamy chairs the “Independent Data Monitoring Committee for the Pfizer Group B Streptococcus Vaccine Program,” which is sponsored by Pfizer. Swamy was also listed by Duke University as “a co-investigator for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trial.”
  • Gregg Sylvester used to work as vice president at Pfizer Vaccines where he launched numerous vaccines for the company, including one for children.

Several other “temporary voting members,” including Ofer Levy of Boston Children’s Hospital, Eric Rubin, Jay Portnoy and Melinda Wharton, are all outspoken in their support for injecting children with Pfizer’s covid jabs.

The FDA’s vaccine advisory committee has never really been trustworthy or legitimate. It has pretty much always functioned as a rubber stamp for Big Pharma, approving and pushing all of the latest drugs, both pill and injections, on Americans.

“FDA advisory committee members in the past have frequently been the target of heavy politicking by industry representatives of whatever drug they were considering for a recommendation at in-person meetings,” reported FDA News back in December.

“That process has been somewhat altered by the fact that during COVID-19, meetings are being held virtually. But it’s likely that behind-the-scenes pressuring still goes on. The industry defends the attempts to influence committee members as simply efforts to best present their case.”

It is now an undeniable fact that the FDA cannot be trusted. Since it is run by the pharmaceutical industry, this fake federal agency is always going to push whatever brings in the profits, which in this case include Pfizer’s “Operation Warp Speed” injections.

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Justice for Assange Is Justice for All

November 2nd, 2021 by John Pilger

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When I first saw Julian Assange in Belmarsh prison, in 2019, shortly after he had been dragged from his refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy, he said, “I think I am losing my mind.”

He was gaunt and emaciated, his eyes hollow and the thinness of his arms was emphasised by a yellow identifying cloth tied around his left arm, an evocative symbol of institutional control.

For all but the two hours of my visit, he was confined to a solitary cell in a wing known as “healthcare”, an Orwellian name. In the cell next to him a deeply disturbed man screamed through the night. Another occupant suffered from terminal cancer. Another was seriously disabled.

“One day we were allowed to play Monopoly,” he said, “as therapy. That was our healthcare!”

“This is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” I said.

“Yes, only more insane.”

Julian’s black sense of humour has often rescued him, but no more. The insidious torture he has suffered in Belmarsh has had devastating effects. Read the reports of Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, and the clinical opinions of Michael Kopelman, emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at King’s College London and Dr. Quentin Deeley, and reserve a contempt for America’s hired gun in court, James Lewis QC, who dismissed this as “malingering”.

I was especially moved by the expert words of Dr. Kate Humphrey, a clinical neuropsychologist at Imperial College, London. She told the Old Bailey last year that Julian’s intellect had gone from “in the superior, or more likely very superior, range” to “significantly below” this optimal level, to the point where he was struggling to absorb information and “perform in the low to average range”.

At yet another court hearing in this shameful Kafkaesque drama, I watched him struggle to remember his name when asked by the judge to state it.

For most of his first year in Belmarsh, he was locked up. Denied proper exercise, he strode the length of his small cell, back and forth, back and forth, for “my own half-marathon”, he told me. This reeked of despair. A razorblade was found in his cell. He wrote “farewell letters”. He phoned the Samaritans repeatedly.

At first he was denied his reading glasses, left behind in the brutality of his kidnapping from the embassy. When the glasses finally arrived at the prison, they were not delivered to him for days. His solicitor, Gareth Peirce, wrote letter after letter to the prison governor protesting the withholding of legal documents, access to the prison library, the use of a basic laptop with which to prepare his case. The prison would take weeks, even months, to answer. (The governor, Rob Davis, has been awarded an Order of the British Empire).

Books sent to him by a friend, the journalist Charles Glass, himself a survivor of hostage-taking in Beirut, were returned. Julian could not call his American lawyers. From the start, he has been constantly medicated. Once, when I asked him what they were giving him, he couldn’t say.

At last week’s High Court hearing to decide finally whether or not Julian would be extradited to America, he appeared only briefly by video link on the first day. He looked unwell and unsettled. The court was told he had been “excused” because of his “medication”. But Julian had asked to attend the hearing and was refused, said his partner Stella Moris. Attendance in a court sitting in judgement on you is surely a right.

This intensely proud man also demands the right to appear strong and coherent in public, as he did at the Old Bailey last year. Then, he consulted constantly with his lawyers through the slit in his glass cage. He took copious notes. He stood and protested with eloquent anger at lies and abuses of process.

The damage done to him in his decade of incarceration and uncertainty, including more than two years in Belmarsh (whose brutal regime is celebrated in the latest Bond film) is beyond doubt.

But so, too, is his courage beyond doubt, and a quality of resistance and resilience that is heroism. It is this that may see him through the present Kafkaesque nightmare – if he is spared an American hellhole.

I have known Julian since he first came to Britain in 2009. In our first interview, he described the moral imperative behind WikiLeaks: that our right to the transparency of governments and the powerful was a basic democratic right. I have watched him cling to this principle when at times it has made his life even more precarious.

Almost none of this remarkable side to the man’s character has been reported in the so-called “free press” whose own future, it is said, is in jeopardy if Julian is extradited.

Of course, but there has never been a ”free press”. There have been extraordinary journalists who have occupied positions in the “mainstream” – spaces that have now closed, forcing independent journalism on to the internet.

There, it has become a “fifth estate”, a samizdat of dedicated, often unpaid work by those who were honourable exceptions in a media now reduced to an assembly line of platitudes. Words like “democracy”, “reform”, “human rights” are stripped of their dictionary meaning and censorship is by omission or exclusion.

Last week’s fateful hearing at the High Court was “disappeared” in the “free press”. Most people would not know that a court in the heart of London had sat in judgement on their right to know: their right to question and dissent.

Many Americans, if they know anything about the Assange case, believe a fantasy that Julian is a Russian agent who caused Hillary Clinton to lose the presidential election in 2016 to Donald Trump. This is strikingly similar to the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which justified the invasion of Iraq and the deaths of a million or more people.

They are unlikely to know that the main prosecution witness underpinning one of the concocted charges against Julian has recently admitted he lied and fabricated his “evidence”.

Neither will they have heard or read about the revelation that the CIA, under its former director, the Hermann Goering lookalike Mike Pompeo, had planned to assassinate Julian.  And that was hardly new. Since I have known Julian, he has been under threat of harm and worse.

On his first night in the Ecuadorean embassy in 2012, dark figures swarmed over the front of the embassy and banged on the windows, trying to get in. In the US, public figures – including Hillary Clinton, fresh from her destruction of Libya – have long called for Julian’s assassination. The current President Biden damned him as a “hi-tech terrorist”.

The former prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, was so eager to please what she called “our best mates” in Washington that she demanded Julian’s passport be taken from him – until it was pointed out to her that this would be against the law. The current prime minister, Scott Morrison, a PR man, when asked about Assange, said, “He should face the music.”

It has been open season on the WikiLeaks’ founder for more than a decade. In 2011, The Guardian exploited Julian’s work as if it was its own, collected journalism prizes and Hollywood deals, then turned on its source.

Years of vituperative assaults on the man who refused to join their club followed. He was accused of failing to redact documents of the names of those considered at risk. In a Guardian book by David Leigh and Luke Harding, Assange is quoted as saying during a dinner in a London restaurant that he didn’t care if informants named in the leaks were harmed.

Neither Harding nor Leigh was at the dinner. John Goetz, an investigations reporter with Der Spiegel, actually was at the dinner and testified that Assange said nothing of the kind.

The great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg told the Old Bailey last year that Assange had personally redacted 15,000 files. The New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager, who worked with Assange on the Afghanistan and Iraq war leaks, described how Assange took “extraordinary precautions in redacting names of informants”.

In 2013,  I asked the film-maker Mark Davis about this. A respected broadcaster for SBS Australia, Davis was an eyewitness, accompanying Assange during the preparation of the leaked files for publication in The Guardian and The New York Times. He told me, “Assange was the only one who worked day and night extracting 10,000 names of people who could be targeted by the revelations in the logs.”

Lecturing a group of City University students, David Leigh mocked the very idea that “Julian Assange will end up in an orange jumpsuit”. His fears were an exaggeration, he sneered. Edward Snowden later revealed that Assange was on a “manhunt timeline”.

Luke Harding, who co-authored with Leigh the Guardian book that disclosed the password to a trove of diplomatic cables that Julian had entrusted to the paper, was outside the Ecuadorean embassy on the evening Julian sought asylum. Standing with a line of police, he gloated on his blog, “Scotland Yard may well have the last laugh.”

The campaign was relentless. Guardian columnists scraped the depths. “He really is the most massive turd,” wrote Suzanne Moore of a man she had never met.

The editor who presided over this, Alan Rusbridger, has lately joined the chorus that “defending Assange protects the free press”. Having published the initial WikiLeaks revelations, Rusbridger must wonder if the Guardian’s  subsequent excommunication of Assange will be enough to protect his own skin from the wrath of Washington.

The High Court judges are likely to announce their decision on the US appeal in the new year. What they decide will determine whether or not the British judiciary has trashed the last vestiges of its vaunted reputation; in the land of Magna Carta this disgraceful case ought to have been hurled out of court long ago.

The missing imperative is not the impact on a collusive “free press”. It is justice for a man persecuted and wilfully denied it.

Julian Assange is a truth-teller who has committed no crime but revealed government crimes and lies on a vast scale and so performed one of the great public services of my lifetime. Do we need to be reminded that justice for one is justice for all?

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John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist and filmmaker based in London. Pilger’s Web site is: www.johnpilger.com. In 2017, the British Library announced a John Pilger Archive of all his written and filmed work. The British Film Institute includes his 1979 film, “Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia,” among the 10 most important documentaries of the 20th century. 

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from Wired

Canada’s War on Conscientious Doctors Revs Up

November 2nd, 2021 by Karen Selick

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My family doctor closed his 47-year-old practice a few months ago. I had chosen him back in 2003 because he owned an anti-aging clinic, offering unorthodox services such as chelation therapy, intravenous vitamin drips, hair mineral analysis and acupuncture. These weren’t covered by Ontario’s (mandatory) Health Insurance Plan (OHIP), but my independent reading had convinced me that they were worth trying, so I willingly paid for them privately.

My doctor was intelligent and innovative, with a wide-ranging scientific curiosity and enthusiasm. Back in 2003, he was permitted to demonstrate this by offering eclectic treatment options tailored to individual patient needs.

However, as the years went by, I saw him getting beaten down by ever-increasing regimentation within the government healthcare system. He wrangled once or twice with government agencies, possibly OHIP or the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), and lost.

He eventually closed the anti-aging clinic, and stopped offering unconventional treatment suggestions. Over the last few years, his practice seemed to have become little more than a prescription assembly line. Watching in the waiting room, I’d see virtually every patient emerge from his office after about four minutes with a drug prescription in hand. Next!

A few times when I grumbled to him about some idiocy in the government healthcare system, he would say, “Welcome to my world.”  He had plainly lost his enthusiasm for practising this kind of medicine, so I was not surprised when he read the writing on the wall about coming vaccination mandates and threw in the towel. His prescience became apparent on April 30, when the CPSO announced its new policy forbidding doctors from making any statements that might be considered anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing or anti-lockdowns.

This independent, conscientious professional was never going to put up with being told that he had to force all his patients to take the same treatment, regardless of their personal circumstances, when the risk of harm from COVID-19 infection is minimal for most age groups, and the evidence of vaccine injuries continues to mount.

He was not alone in his decision to withdraw from this increasingly oppressive system. Dr. Mark Trozzi, a 25-year veteran of Ontario’s healthcare system, not only closed his practice but decided to devote his time to warning the public, via his website, about the dangers of the medical tyranny that is unfolding. And in Ontario’s Grey Bruce region, Dr. Rochagné Kilian resigned her Emergency Room (ER) position due to ethical concerns. She says 80% of ER patients within the prior three months were fully vaccinated, but this information is being withheld from the public.

Meanwhile, on September 27, the CPSO ratcheted up its persecution – and no, I didn’t mean “prosecution” – of independent-minded Ontario doctors by issuing a Notice of Hearing against Dr. Patrick Phillips of Englehart. It alleges that his communications on social media regarding vaccinations, treatments, and public health measures for COVID-19 have been “misleading, incorrect, or inflammatory”.

Dr. Phillips, on his part, considers vaccine mandates shocking, even criminal. He has been deluged with requests from people seeking vaccine exemptions, people who will lose their jobs and their means of supporting their families due to vaccine mandates imposed by their employers. He describes his situation and front-line experiences eloquently in this video.

The CPSO unilaterally imposed a 12-point order on Dr. Phillips, even before he had an opportunity to present his position (supported by masses of accumulating professional evidence) through a fair hearing process. Portions of the order would be almost comical if they were not so serious. For instance, item 12 commands that Dr. Phillips “shall consent” to the CPSO providing a copy of its order to the head honchos of hospitals or clinics.

Did it never occur to the CPSO that ordering someone to consent makes a mockery of the very concept of consent?

Another prohibition imposed unilaterally upon Dr. Phillips, is that he “shall not prescribe ivermectin”. Yet a plethora of studies and testimony from highly respected experts indicates that ivermectin – a Nobel prize-winning drug – is a safe, inexpensive, and highly effective remedy, both for preventing COVID infections and for treating people after infection. This British site, for instance, contains a resource page with the latest evidence and protocols on ivermectin from around the world. The expert witnesses lined up for the Adamson Barbecue legal challenge in Ontario (especially Dr. Byram Bridle of the University of Guelph and Dr. Harvey Risch the Yale School of Medicine) also testified in sworn affidavits about the merits of ivermectin.

Dr. Phillips is not the only doctor being threatened with de-licensure by his governing body, and Ontario is not the only province making such threats. BC, Alberta, and Quebec have been placing doctors into similar straitjackets.

Benjamin Franklin warned about this stifling of independent thought more than 200 years ago: “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking,” he said.

Those who value liberty must defend the rights of courageous freethinking doctors to speak their minds without penalty from their licensing bodies or government employers.

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Karen Selick [send her mail] is a retired lawyer who now works as a freelance writer, editor, and video maker.

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How Fauci Fooled America

November 2nd, 2021 by Dr Martin Kulldorff

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When the pandemic hit, America needed someone to turn to for advice. The media and public naturally looked to Dr. Anthony Fauci—the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an esteemed laboratory immunologist and one of President Donald Trump‘s chosen COVID advisers. Unfortunately, Dr. Fauci got major epidemiology and public health questions wrong. Reality and scientific studies have now caught up with him.

Here are the key issues:

Natural immunity. By pushing vaccine mandates, Dr. Fauci ignores naturally acquired immunity among the COVID-recovered, of which there are more than 45 million in the United States. Mounting evidence indicates that natural immunity is stronger and longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity. In a study from Israel, the vaccinated were 27 times more likely to get symptomatic COVID than the unvaccinated who had recovered from a prior infection.

We have known about natural immunity from disease at least since the Athenian Plague in 430 BC. Pilots, truckers and longshoremen know about it, and nurses know it better than anyone. Under Fauci’s mandates, hospitals are firing heroic nurses who recovered from COVID they contracted while caring for patients. With their superior immunity, they can safely care for the oldest and frailest patients with even lower transmission risk than the vaccinated.

Protecting the elderly. While anyone can get infected, there is more than a thousand-fold difference in mortality risk between the old and the young. After more than 700,000 reported COVID deaths in America, we now know that lockdowns failed to protect high-risk older people. When confronted with the idea of focused protection of the vulnerable, Dr. Fauci admitted he had no idea how to accomplish it, arguing that it would be impossible. That may be understandable for a lab scientist, but public health scientists have presented many concrete suggestions that would have helped, had Fauci and other officials not ignored them.

What can we do now to minimize COVID mortality? Current vaccination efforts should focus on reaching people over 60 who are neither COVID-recovered nor vaccinated, including hard-to-reach, less-affluent people in rural areas and inner cities. Instead, Dr. Fauci has pushed vaccine mandates for children, students and working-age adults who are already immune—all low-risk populations—causing tremendous disruption to labor markets and hampering the operation of many hospitals.

School closures. Schools are major transmission points for influenza, but not for COVID. While children do get infected, their risk for COVID death is minuscule, lower than their already low risk of dying from the flu. Throughout the 2020 spring wave, Sweden kept daycare and schools open for all its 1.8 million children ages 1 to 15, with no masks, testing or social distancing. The result? Zero COVID deaths among children and a COVID risk to teachers lower than the average of other professions. In fall 2020, most European countries followed suit, with similar results. Considering the devastating effects of school closures on children, Dr. Fauci’s advocacy for school closures may be the single biggest mistake of his career.

Masks. The gold standard of medical research is randomized trials, and there have now been two on COVID masks for adults. For children, there is no solid scientific evidence that masks work. A Danish study found no statistically significant difference between masking and not masking when it came to coronavirus infection. In a study in Bangladesh, the 95 percent confidence interval showed that masks reduced transmission between 0 percent and 18 percent. Hence, masks are either of zero or limited benefit. There are many more critical pandemic measures that Dr. Fauci could have emphasized, such as better ventilation in schools and hiring nursing home staff with natural immunity.

Contact tracing. For some infectious diseases, such as Ebola and syphilis, contact tracing is critically important. For a commonly circulating viral infection such as COVID, it was a hopeless waste of valuable public health resources that did not stop the disease.

Collateral public health damage. A fundamental public health principle is that health is multidimensional; the control of a single infectious disease is not synonymous with health. As an immunologist, Dr. Fauci failed to properly consider and weigh the disastrous effects lockdowns would have on cancer detection and treatment, cardiovascular disease outcomes, diabetes care, childhood vaccination rates, mental health and opioid overdoses, to name a few. Americans will live with—and die from—this collateral damage for many years to come.

In private conversations, most of our scientific colleagues agree with us on these points. While a few have spoken up, why are not more doing so? Well, some tried but failed. Others kept silent when they saw colleagues slandered and smeared in the media or censored by Big Tech. Some are government employees who are barred from contradicting official policy. Many are afraid of losing positions or research grants, aware that Dr. Fauci sits on top of the largest pile of infectious disease research money in the world. Most scientists are not experts on infectious disease outbreaks. Were we, say, oncologists, physicists or botanists, we would probably also have trusted Dr. Fauci.

The evidence is in. Governors, journalists, scientists, university presidents, hospital administrators and business leaders can continue to follow Dr. Anthony Fauci or open their eyes. After 700,000-plus COVID deaths and the devastating effects of lockdowns, it is time to return to basic principles of public health.

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Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist, biostatistician, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Jay Bhattacharya, MD, Ph.D., is a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine. Both are Senior Scholars at the newly formed Brownstone Institute.

Malfeasance Behind the FDA Vax OK for Children

November 2nd, 2021 by F. William Engdahl

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On October 27 the US Food and Drug Administration Advisory Panel on Vaccines recommended the agency allow Pfizer to amend its Emergency Use Authorization for its COVID vaccine to include children 5 through 11 years old. Two days later the FDA officially approved the rollout. Major media are treating this as a positive development to protect young children. On closer inspection it is anything but that. The FDA is today shockingly corrupt under the Acting Director and is little more than a rubber stamp for Big Pharma, and especially Pfizer, where the former FDA head sits on the board.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted 17 to 0, with one abstention, to give a green light allowing Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech experimental mRNA to children between 5 and 12 years. The expert who abstained later explained he did so because of limited safety and efficacy data provided. Previously the FDA had approved the vaccine for 12 and older. Adding to the stench of corruption around the latest vote, the Biden Administration a week earlier announced it had already purchased enough Pfizer vaccine to inoculate all 28 million 5- to 11-year-olds in the US. Did they know the fix was in?

‘…Just the Way it Goes’

The record of the FDA, the major drug oversight agency in the US Government, regarding safety and risks of the experimental gene-altered mRNA vaccines of Pfizer, is one of criminal malfeasance, defined as willful violation of a public trust or obligation that causes harm or death. Their latest ruling is even more egregious for blatant conflicts of interest and scientific fraud. Both Pfizer, who conducted the tests on the efficacy of their own vaccine on the 5-11 year age group, and the FDA experts, admitted that they had no idea if the vaccine was safe for such a young population.

Dr. Eric Rubin, professor of immunology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health voted to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, noting, “The data show that the vaccine works and is pretty safe … and yet we’re worried about a side effect that we can’t measure yet, but it’s probably real.” That is hardly confidence-building. He then stated, “we’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it. That’s just the way it goes.”

This cold-blooded nonchalance is even more astonishing in light of the fact that the incidence of serious side effects in the 5-11 age group who allegedly have tested positive for the corona virus is essentially zero. According to data of the US Government Centers for Disease Control, the Infection Fatality Rate for children from 0-17 years is 0.0002 per 100,000 and far lower for the 5-11 years. A research study by Johns Hopkins University found that risk of severe illness or death from covid19 in a study of 48,000 children is essentially zero if no other morbidity risk such as leukemia, diabetes or asthma is present. Moreover, risk of infecting other children is also very low.

In their submission to FDA for approval, Pfizer stated the vaccination was needed for the 5-11 age group to prevent covid disease transmission. Yet in their FDA hearing on questioning, Dr. William Gruber, senior vice president of Pfizer Vaccine Clinical Research and Development, said they did not even assess whether the vaccine prevents transmission. We might ask why is this at all needed then if the risk to children is zero and there is no evidence of children transmission?

Even more shocking is the statement by Pfizer about its tests. First there were no animal tests on rats or such first. They admitted that the tested human group was so small that they could not test for myocarditis or pericarditis. Yet those are among the most reported negative effects for all others that have had the Pfizer jab. In its FDA application Pfizer noted that the number of participants in the current clinical development program was “too small to detect any potential risks of myocarditis associated with vaccination,” and that “to evaluate long-term sequelae of post-vaccination myocarditis/pericarditis” in participants 5 to <12 years of age will not be studied until after the vaccine is authorized for children.”

Flawed Pfizer Tests

The tests Pfizer made were also fatally flawed. According to Dr. Josh Guetzkow, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Pfizer study was not double-blind. Further, Pfizer cherry-picked subjects to evidently better their results. Three thousand children age 5-11 received Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, but only 750 of those children were selectively included in the company’s safety analysis. And Pfizer dismissed cases with adverse vaccine effects in their FDA filing: “Few serious Adverse Events, none of which were related to vaccine, and no AEs leading to withdrawal were reported.” They give no explanation how that was determined. Just trust Pfizer.

And post-vaccination follow up was less than 2 months for one test cohort and only 2.4 weeks for a second. The Pfizer report to FDA read, “Supplemental safety expansion group data were analyzed from approximately 1500 vaccine recipients with a median follow-up time of 2.4 weeks after Dose 2. These supplemental data demonstrate an acceptable safety profile…” It can take months or longer for side effects to manifest. Vaccine experts recommend at least 18-24 month post-vaccine follow up, not 3 months or 2.4 weeks. This is not serious science.

As well, it seems the FDA and or Pfizer wrongly name the vaccine in the title as “BNT162B2 [COMIRNATY (COVID-19 VACCINE, MRNA)] .“Yet the actual FDA text calls it “Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine (BNT162b2).”

The separate company, BioNTech of Mainz, Germany, has a similar but “legally different” vaccine, trade-named Comirnaty, that is not available in the USA. The distinction is essential as it was the basis in August for the corrupt FDA to give Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine an extension of Emergency Use Authorization but to misleadingly declare its full approval for Comirnaty vaccine of BioNTech. This is deliberate fraud and allowed the Biden Administration to mandate vaccination of US government workers (curiously except for White House and Congress), military, and any company with more than 100 employees.

Conflicts of Interest?

The corruption of the FDA extends to the members of the Vaccine Advisory Committee. Many of the members of the current 18 person committee have direct ties to Pfizer or to the pro-Pfizer Gates Foundation.

Prof. Holly Janes of the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center in Seattle designed the flawed Pfizer tests. Her institute is funded by Gates Foundation money. FDA committee member Dr. Steven Pergam is also with the Gates-funded Fred Hutch center. Acting committee chair, Arnold S. Monto was a paid consultant to Pfizer. Committee member Archana Chatterjee worked on a Pfizer research project related to vaccines for infants between 2018-2020. Geeta K. Swamy is chair of the “Independent Data Monitoring Committee for the Pfizer Group B Streptococcus Vaccine Program,” a committee sponsored by Pfizer. Duke University states that “Dr. Swamy serves as a co-investigator for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trial.” FDA Committee member Gregg Sylvester was a vice president for Pfizer Vaccines. Ofer Levy, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School is on record vigorously supporting Pfizer covid vaccines for children 12 and older. And FDA committee member Paul Offit professor of pediatrics at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia called openly last June for covid vaccine permission for children.

When we compare the actions of corrupt FDA Acting Director Janet Woodcock during the August FDA extension of emergency use authorization for Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, she refused then to even allow the vaccine committee to meet to debate the issue. Several months before in June 2021 three members of the FDA Vaccine Committee resigned in protest over Woodcock’s refusal to heed the near unanimous vote of the advisory committee to approve an Alzheimer’s drug called Aduhelm against the wishes of nearly every member on the panel.

Clearly Woodcock has been busy in the meantime stacking the advisory committee with pro-Pfizer members. Not to be forgotten is the fact that after he left as head of the FDA under Trump, Scott Gottlieb immediately joined the board of directors of…Pfizer Inc. Woodcock served under him at FDA.

Woodcock has been at FDA since 1986, almost as long as Fauci at NIAID. Woodcock was Biden’s choice to head FDA, but a massive opposition from 28 groups including state attorneys general and citizen groups forced him to name her “acting,” which does not need Congressional scrutiny. Woodcock was directly responsible for the original FDA approval of deadly opioids over the objections of her own scientists and other advisors.

Already California has moved to make public school admission contingent on covid vaccination, anticipating Pfizer approval. This spread of the deadly Pfizer vaccine to children who have near zero risk of serious disease makes no public health sense. It is simply prima facie evidence of medical malfeasance at the highest levels of the US Government including FDA, with plausible criminal intent. The FDA decision will now be used to argue for similar inclusion of essentially no risk children for the vaccine jab.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. 

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

Featured image is from NEO


seeds_2.jpg

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

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This week and through November 12, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) takes place in Glasgow, Scotland. COP26 brings together heads of state and other prominent figures to talk about climate change. However, the conference won’t address the central environmental problem: capitalism. In this interview we talk to Max Ajl, author of A People’s Green New Deal (Pluto Press, 2021), which examines the capitalist roots of the environmental crisis, and addresses its impact on countries of the Global South such as Venezuela.

Venezuelanalysis: It’s important to bring up the Global South’s perspective on climate change in the context of COP26. In A People’s Green New Deal you argue that so called “green economies” (and in general the proposals that we know as the Green New Deal-GND) often replicate the existing logic of domination, particularly when it comes to the Global South. Briefly, can you explain your hypothesis?

Max Ajl: Mao put this simply: “Everything reactionary is the same; if you do not hit it, it will not fall.” We can add: you have to take aim to hit.

The great majority of progressive proposals take aim neither at capitalism nor imperialism. In fact, they are often blind to them. If we want to change the world-system, we need to have a sense of what it is. In the most general sense, drawing on Samir Amin, we can say that it is a system of polarized accumulation, producing great mountains of wealth, on the one hand, and far larger seas of poverty, on the other. That is a feature and not a bug of the system: the wealth accumulated at the core of the system is stolen from the periphery. To change that type of world-system, you need first of all to strike at the current mechanisms of value transfer from periphery to core. Those include uneven exchange of values – or the core receiving goods embodying more labor than those embodied in its exports – and the core receiving goods which concentrate more of the world’s resources than those it exports. Another element is: ongoing primitive accumulation, including the collapse of peripheral sovereignty, as in Yemen and elsewhere, which is part of safeguarding the petrodollar.

The 2010 Cochabamba People’s Agreement went further. It recalled the (unrealized) Bandung-era effort to achieve political and economic decolonization and liberation. But the Cochabamba Agreement added something new: we need to speak of ecological decolonization. In other words, the global ecology’s sinks for waste from CO2 emissions were not just used. They were enclosed by the wealthy states. Because that space cannot be restored in the short term, southern states/peoples are owed some kind of replacement: climate debt, to the tune of six percent of northern GNP per year.

These are structural features of the world system. Unless you identify them, target them, and strike at them, they won’t fall. They will continue. So, logically, the prevailing proposals for a GND, or for a “green economy,” will simply reproduce the polarized system if they do not take into account these logics, diagnoses, structures, and demands. They will tend to look away from the historical sources of wealth and not support reparations. The point is that we cannot subsist on a politics of GNDs based on slogans such as “just transition,” “sustainable development,” or even “a Green New Deal,” socialist or not, unless they specifically mention these demands and the mechanisms of uneven development.

This map shows that the countries of the Global South are the most affected by climate change. (University of Richmond)

This map shows that the countries of the Global South are the most affected by climate change. (University of Richmond)

V: With that in mind, what kind of reorganization on a global scale is needed so that the people of the Global South don’t end up paying the consequences of the climate crisis?

MA: There are five fundamental elements that are central to reconfiguring North-South relations (the specific internal texture of changes in the Global South’s production and its ecological self-defense strategies are different questions, clearly involving, as the Bolivian leadership has said, food sovereignty and sovereign industrialization among other measures).

One element is the demilitarization of the core states. In effect, southern social movements advanced this demand in the Cochabamba process when they pointed out that the US spends as much on its military as is demanded from the US in climate debt payments. They called for “a new model of civilization in the world without… war-mongering.” Demilitarization is also necessary to achieve a “just transition,” meaning, in concrete terms, stabilization if not improvement in life outcomes for people in the imperial core. Militarization amounts to a horrific use of social surplus and industrial capacity, geared at preserving world accumulation and guaranteeing imperialist value flows. It needs to go.

Second, there needs to be a real respect for sovereignty, and a political struggle to ensure that respect. People in the North need to actively resist their governments’ attempts to economically asphyxiate the South and to impose unilateral coercive sanctions. That means the abolition of the so-called “terror lists,” which are primarily used to criminalize groups in the Arab-Iranian region carrying out any defense of national sovereignty or defense of anti-colonial projects.

The basics of international law need to be respected, including honoring the territorial sovereignty of states like Venezuela and Syria. The latter is occupied by US troops, without any protest from the western left. The former suffers from paramilitary infiltration from Colombia, a US client state – again without much objection from the western left. Needless to say, removing external destabilization does not mean that these countries will suddenly produce autonomist socialist societies. Rather, the removal of external aggression creates a better atmosphere for internal social struggle aimed at more democratic freedoms, internal social(ist) redistribution, and ecological justice.

Third, there needs to be payment of climate debt. Northern environmental movements have purposefully suppressed this demand, inasmuch as they took distance from the Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez governments, all the while hypocritically expressing concern about extractivism (which is an input into the commodities and industrial processes that are key to northern accumulation).

The Cochabamba People’s Agreement and the Bolivian government specifically demanded six percent of northern GNP, around $1.2 trillion from the US, and around $3.2 trillion from the OECD on the whole. This includes an adaptation debt, to help “Poor countries and people who live daily with rising costs, damages and lost opportunities for development,” and an emissions debt, since “developed countries’ historical and current excessive emissions are limiting atmospheric space available to developing countries.”

Fourth, there should be a vast and immediate reduction in fossil-energy use and emissions in the Global North, as a consequence of their current and worsening overuse of atmospheric sinks for CO2.

Fifth, there should be settler-decolonization, including support for the national liberation struggles of peoples still fighting against settler-colonial domination in places like Palestine and current-day Canada and the US.

V: Some people argue for an anti-extractivist solution to the crisis. On paper, that might appear to be a great solution. However, people of course actually live in places like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nigeria, and the conditions of dependency are such that freezing production would be suicidal for them. What policies should be pursued in the extractivist economies of the periphery?

MA: One should acknowledge that anti-extractivist campaigns often reflect real and desperate social issues that people face. For example, people in Bolivia and in Venezuela must deal with horrible ecological harms of resource extraction in their countries. Nevertheless, these anti-extractivist campaigns in the North are often no more than weapons against Third World development.

There is no possible industrialization in any part of the world without resource extraction, especially of minerals. Are people demanding that we live in grass-covered knolls like hobbits? That extraction will produce political, social, and ecological costs, where it occurs is undeniable. The question is how to balance those costs with the majority’s need to escape poverty. There is obviously no simple answer. One answer is to go back to the demands for changes in the terms of trade, (“international action in favor of fair and stable prices for [Third World] exports,” in Ismail-Sabri Abdallah’s phrase).

My point here is both rhetorical and real: all things being equal, if countries could produce half as much lithium or anything else and receive the same proceeds, then resolving difficult developmental dilemmas would be easier. Instead, extractivist theory leads to the “displacement of the debate over politics and policy from North to South,” in the words of Sam Moyo, Paris Yeros, and Praveen Jha. It sidesteps any question of northerners’ responsibility for political transformation (a cynic would say that is why this discourse is so popular!). So one issue is serious international activism around the terms of trade, with the understanding that changes benefitting the Third World, which are entirely possible, could immediately enhance developmental possibilities.

In the words of the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment, “Faced with this conflagration, the obligation to act falls upon all, even if responsibility does not.” Countries cannot simply wait. Venezuela, for example, needs to return to its policies of two decades ago and aggressively support peasant activists’ efforts for agrarian reform. Venezuela is a tremendously rich country in terms of agricultural potential and that potential needs to be realized. The country must be able to feed itself, and furthermore needs to retain more value locally through sovereign industrialization, including a sovereign renewable energy system that could jump-start such a process.

It would be good to have better terms of trade with the West and China, but it would be better to retain value through in situ industrialization. I have little to say about the technicalities of protecting Venezuelan farmers from cheaper imported food and an overvalued currency. However, the current crisis, including the kidnapping of Alex Saab, is proof that the basis of a national economy, where possible, is food sovereignty with its capacity to keep inflation under control.

Chávez at COP15 in Copenhagen, Denmark, when he said “Let's not change the climate, let's change the system!” (Archive)

Chávez at COP15 in Copenhagen, Denmark, when he said “Let’s not change the climate, let’s change the system!” (Archive)

V: At the COP15 in Copenhagen, Hugo Chávez said: “Let’s not change the climate, let’s change the system!” More recently, Bolivian Vice President David Choquehuanca made a call for an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist approach to climate change. Can you talk to us about these calls from the Global South?

MA: The North is calling for reforms and crisis-management, and for an essentially Keynesian green shift in the industrial composition of the world system. At best, it seeks a transition to socialism in some undefined future moment, or points to unreal solutions like space mining. By contrast, Chávez and Choquehuanca stepped onto the world political stage, in 2009 and 2021 respectively, and called for ending capitalism. Choquehuanca clearly denounced “limitless accumulation.” He spoke of the threats of “green capitalism” when brought to bear on technologies in the fields of biology, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and space colonization. Likewise, Chávez spoke of “global imperial dictatorship,” and placed the responsibility for dealing with climate change primarily on the United States and its allies. They clearly named the global-scale problems their countries and the South confront and demanded a solution for them.

Can we deal with climate change in a way that achieves liberation and justice for all of the oppressed world – including oppressed, alienated, exploited, and colonized people in the core countries – without following these two leaders in identifying capitalism and imperialism as the systems destroying the planet? Is it any wonder that people find it more comfortable to discuss Venezuelan and Bolivian extractivism in the imperial core countries, rather than try to respond to the analysis they put forward and the politics which derive from it?

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Featured image: Max Ajl (Venezuelanalysis)

Italy Protest Movement against the “Vaccine Passport”

November 2nd, 2021 by Manlio Dinucci

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This is the demonstration that we organized in Pisa, Italy on October 30, against the “green pass” through which the government wants to force everyone to vaccinate.

Click the image below to access the video or click here.

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Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Resist the Unique Patient Identifier!

November 2nd, 2021 by Rep. Ron Paul

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If people who torture animals are psychopaths, then what are government officials who use taxpayer dollars to fund animal torture? Many are asking this question in the wake of revelations that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci – high priest of the COVID cult – funded medical “research” involving the torture of puppies. This led “Fire Fauci” to trend on Twitter, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to call for his resignation.

The puppy torture story was followed by disclosures that the federal government funded the testing of experimental AIDS vaccines on orphans. Many of the orphans used as human guinea pigs subsequently died, and nurses who assisted in these experiments reported that many children got sick immediately after receiving the vaccines.

Testing dangerous drugs on orphans and torturing puppies in the name of “science” is certainly shocking, but is it really surprising that government would fund these types of activities? What is the difference between using orphans and puppies for cruel experiments in the name of protecting public health and killing innocent children in drone attacks in the name of stopping terrorism?

Ironically, these revelations come when Congress is on the verge of allowing the federal bureaucracy to destroy what remains of our medical privacy. Both the Senate and House versions of the Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services Appropriations bill remove the prohibition on the development of a “unique patient identifier.”

The prohibition on funding for the unique patient identifier, which I sponsored, has been in place since 1998. The push to allow the government to force every American to obtain a unique patient identifier is being justified as a means to efficiently monitor Americans’ “contact and immunization” status.

When I began fighting the unique patient ID in the 1990s, my opponents denied that medical identifiers would make it impossible to ensure confidentiality of medical records. Now, they are saying we should support medical identifiers because they allow government officials, employers, schools, airlines, and even stores and restaurants to discover what, if any, vaccinations or other medical treatments we have or have not received. The result of the identifier will be a medical caste system, where those who refuse to follow the mandates or advice of the “experts” are denied opportunities to work, receive an education, or even go to church or enjoy a night out on the town.

A unique patient identifier will weaken health care by making individuals reluctant to share personal information—such as drug and alcohol use and past sexual history—with health care providers. It will also discourage sick individuals from seeking medical care for fear their physicians will discover they are unvaccinated, smoke, are overweight, or engage in other unapproved behaviors.

A unique medical ID could also be tied to government records of gun purchases. Someone with “too many” guns could be labeled a potential mental health risk and harassed by law enforcement. This is especially likely if the gun grabbers are successful in their push to enact “red flag” laws in every state.

Fortunately, there is a growing resistance to vaccines and other mandates. This resistance is unlikely to passively accept a federally-issued unique patient identifier. If those of us who know the truth take advantage of the opportunity presented by the resistance to COVID tyranny, we can not only stop the scheme to force every American to obtain a “unique patient identifier” but end all government control of our health care.

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