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In a week, the Supreme Court will decide if it will consider diminishing long-standing protections for the freedom of the press. Here is the backstory.

In 1964, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed a jury verdict by an Alabama state court and in doing so changed the law of defamation in such a manner as to enhance substantially and materially the freedom of the press.

The case was Times v. Sullivan, in which the police commissioner of Montgomery, Alabama, sued The New York Times for publishing a full-page advertisement that, he argued, though it did not mention him by name, had defamed him.

The libel law in Alabama and all states at the time permitted an aggrieved plaintiff to recover damages from a publisher for a defamatory inaccuracy in a publication by showing simple negligence.

In the advertisement about which Commissioner L.B. Sullivan complained, there were some inaccuracies, and so the Alabama Supreme Court upheld his half million-dollar verdict. The Times appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In reversing, the Supreme Court ruled that when a public official is the plaintiff in a defamation case, the First Amendment is implicated since the press is the eyes and ears of the public, and the public has the right to know what the public official is doing.

This was a radical and judge-made change in defamation law. The court held that, to safe-guard transparency about government and to protect free speech about public officials, a higher bar than simple negligence was needed. The court fashioned a bar called “actual malice.”

Actual malice requires that the plaintiff who is a public official prove by clear and convincing evidence that the offending piece was published with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard for whether it was true or false. This bar is so high that it has rarely been met in any trial court, state or federal, since the Times v. Sullivan case.

Many of my colleagues in the constitutional law community, particularly those on the right, have criticized this decision because it was crafted out of thin air by nine justices, rather than debated and legislated by Congress or state legislatures.

As a conservative law student in the mid-1970s, I was a harsh critic of judges creating laws. To me at the time, the Times v. Sullivan case was analogous to the court putting its thumb on the scales of justice on the side of a liberal press.

Today, as a libertarian legal scholar and commentator, and a former judge, I rejoice in this decision as perhaps the greatest defense of a free press in American history.

The Times case implicates two profound value judgments. The first is protection of a free press and the second is the role of the judiciary when liberty clashes with power.

The Times case and its extensive progeny recognize the Madisonian proposition that the whole purpose of the First Amendment is to encourage open, wide, robust, even caustic and unbridled speech about the policies and the personnel of the government. Its companion purpose is to keep the government entirely out of the business of speech.

In respect of these values, the Times case has worked to the fullest. It has removed the fear of criticism of public officials by the public and the press. It lets everyone, from the average Joe to the largest media companies in the world, think as they wish, say what they think and publish what they say.

Without this protection, the public discourse on everything from abortion to immigration, from taxes to foreign policy, from President Joe Biden’s mental acuity to former President Donald Trump’s character traits would be dumbed down and only whispered because of fear of litigation.

And the case cuts both ways. If, for example, one were to express a caustic opinion about Biden or Trump or any public official, they each have a huge megaphone, so to speak, with which to rebut their critics. In the give and take between critics and targets, the public watches, listens and learns if the target is a person worthy of its political support. Americans have benefitted immeasurably from this process.

The other value underlying the Times case is the Jeffersonian view that our rights are natural because they come from our humanity, which is a gift from God. The ratifiers of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights agreed. So, what to do when a legislative body or a jury tramples these rights — say, by punishing speech?

This is where an independent judiciary comes in. The whole purpose of an independent judiciary, to paraphrase Harvard’s professor Laurence Tribe, is to be anti-democratic — to preserve the rights and property of the minority (it could be a minority of one) from invasion by the majoritarian government. Stated differently, since our freedoms are natural, freedom is the default position.

That means wherever there is a clash between liberty and power, because liberty is the natural starting point and power is artificially imposed by force, the benefit of the doubt — the judge-made rules of procedure — should favor liberty.

Regrettably, this bias for liberty over power only exists with respect to the First Amendment. Yet, whenever the government wants to take life, liberty or property from any person, or permit others to do so, that person should enjoy the benefit of the pro-personal liberty bias of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

Later this month, the Supreme Court will announce whether it will revisit Times v. Sullivan in an effort to undo it. If it does undo it, it will crush the freedom of the press as surely as any petty tyrant has done who can’t stand the heat. It will dumb down our public discourse in favor of those in power. We will have a press afraid to be free.

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Beirut’s determined and daring Judge Tarek Bitar has once again scheduled  key figures to testify in the investigation of the August 2020 explosion at Beirut port, which killed 219, wounded 6,500 and rendered 300,000 homeless when it devastated nearby neighbourhoods. Former prime minister Hassan Diab has been summoned for today’s session, ex-ministers Nouhad Mashnouk and Ghazi Zeiter for tomorrow’s interviews. When first called, Diab fled to the US but has recently returned. The latter are sitting members of parliament and have previously claimed immunity and can be expected to do so again as parliament is in session. However, since the judge issued his summons before parliament returned, their immunity might not protect them.

Bitar has also summoned ex-ministers Ali Hassan Khalil and Youssef Fenianos and has issued warrants for their arrest. They and the other two former ministers have lodged legal complaints against Bitar with the aim of removing him from the probe which was suspended twice while Lebanon’s high court and court of cassation considered and rejected their suits.

When Bitar’s predecessor Fadi Sawan was following the same line and procedure he was accused of bias because his home was damaged in the blast and was compelled to stand down in February. However, the real reason for his removal was that he crossed a “red line” by investigating and charging leading politicians with neglecting 2,700 tonnes of volatile ammonium nitrate stored unsafely in a crumbling warehouse in Beirut port, although there had been repeated warnings since the material was off-loaded from an unseaworthy vessel in 2014. Sawan’s ouster was seen as a major set-back for the inquiry.

Since Bitar was appointed to replace Sawan, the probe has been suspended twice by challenges brought by the four ex-ministers, who argue he is incompetent and biased. Incumbent Prime Minister Najib Mikati has warned that a third suspension could put an end to the probe, which is precisely what they and their political allies want to accomplish.

A Christian from north Lebanon who heads Beirut’s criminal court, Bitar, 47, is known to be honest and apolitical. Having initially refused the appointment because it meant he would be wearing two hats, he accepted the job after Sawan was removed. While Bitar faces opposition from the Amal and Hizbollah movements and the Marada Party, he has the firm support of civil society activists representing the “Lebanese Opposition Front” formed after protests erupted on the streets of Lebanon’s cities, towns and villages in October 2019. Front spokesman, Dr Ziad Abdel Samad told Arab News,

“They want to dismiss Judge Bitar using all arbitrary means and threats because he has come so close to the truth after they managed to dismiss the former judge. [They are] hiding behind their immunities, although they know they are involved in the crime.”

While Judge Bitar has not revealed the evidence he has accumulated about the involvement of the men he has summoned for questioning, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has compiled a detailed report which was released on August 3 this year, ahead of the first anniversary of the port blast. This report is damning.

HRW crisis and conflict director Lama Fakih stated at the launch of the 127-page document,

“The evidence overwhelmingly shows that the..explosion in Beirut’s port was caused by the actions and omissions of senior Lebanese officials, who failed to accurately communicate the dangers posed by the ammonium nitrate, knowingly stored the material in unsafe conditions and failed to protect the public.”

To place the blame squarely where it belongs, HRW systematically laid out evidence it has gathered from unpublished documents and interviews with individuals.

Despite repeated warnings, the ministry of public works and transport under Fenianos and Zeiter failed to investigate the dangers, communicate to the judiciary the dangers posed by the material and to closely supervise repairs which might have triggered the August 4 blast at the warehouse where the deteriorating ammonium nitrate was stored along with fireworks and paint.

Customs officials answerable to the ministry of finance, headed by Khalil, sent six letters to the judiciary requesting the sale or removal of the material. Court records revealed that this approach was incorrect since customs “did not need judicial authorisation to sell, re-export or destroy the material”.

Military intelligence which is responsible for munitions, drugs and violence at the port took no action to secure the material or develop an emergency plan in case of an explosion. The interior ministry, under Mashnouk, claimed it knew about the material but did nothing because “it was not in their jurisdiction”.

State security claimed it was aware of the material but delayed until July 20th, 2020, two weeks before the blast, to report the precarious situation to President Michel Aoun, who said dealing with it was not his job, and Prime Minister Hassan Diab, who took no action.

The ex-ministers under investigation belong to the Amal movement headed by parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, the Future Party under former prime minister Saad Hariri and Marada chaired by Suleiman Frangie. Amal’s close ally Hizbollah has led the campaign against Bitar although none of the movement’s leading politicians are embroiled in the probe. Diab is an ex-academic without powerful political backing. The two other prime ministers who were in office while the ammonium nitrate was stored in the port, Hariri and Tamman Salam, have not been called.

HRW has called on the UN Human Rights Council to initiate an independent investigation and urge countries which mandate sanctions for human rights violations and corruption to ensure that officials implicated in the blast are held accountable. However, as Lebanon’s politicians have traditionally enjoyed immunity from prosecution, they can be expected to resist with all their means and might.

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***

Did someone forget to tell Benny Gantz that Donald Trump is no longer the United States president? 

It certainly looked that way last Friday as Israel’s defence minister – who has been presented as a force for moderation in an Israeli government led by the settler right – declared six leading Palestinian human rights groups to be “terrorist organisations”.

The move effectively outlaws the most prominent organisations in the Palestinian human rights community.

Despite the eternal bonds so often lauded by Israeli and US officials, President Joe Biden’s administration appeared to be caught off-guard by the announcement, despite claims from Israel that Washington had been forewarned.

Israeli officials were reported on Sunday to be preparing to fly to the US to share intelligence justifying the new “terror list”.

The targeted groups – most funded by European states – include those assisting farmers and promoting women’s rights and democratic values, as well as others documenting Israeli violations of the rights of prisoners and children, and exposing war crimes.

Israel offered no evidence that any of the Palestinian lawyers, field researchers, community organisers, and press officers that staff these organisations are carrying weapons or making bombs.

Shawan Jabareen, director of al-Haq, one of the organisations listed, noted the obvious paradox:

“Gantz says we are a terror organisation, when he himself is a war criminal”.

Al-Haq has been at the forefront of efforts by the Palestinian human rights community to supply evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague that Israeli military commanders and politicians have been responsible for war crimes against Palestinians.

Gantz, for example, was head of the Israeli military back in 2014 when it laid waste to parts of Gaza, killing at least 1,450 civilians, including some 550 children. He later boasted that he had sent Gaza “back to the Stone Age”.

Murky narrative

So how exactly does Israel think most of the Palestinian human rights community qualifies as “terrorists”?

The indications so far are that Israel plans to construct a murky narrative for western capitals based on supposedly secret evidence tying the organisations financially to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

It has spoken vaguely of the human rights groups being “controlled by senior [PFLP] leaders” and acting as a “central source” of money for the PFLP by redirecting “large sums of money from European countries and international organisations”.

There is a twofold advantage for Israel in presenting its claim this way.

The first is that almost certainly the intelligence – given its classified nature – will be all but impossible for the organisations to refute. The US and Europeans will largely have to take Israel’s word for it.

We have been here many times before. Israel makes extravagant claims about links to terror groups no one is in a position to check. If an investigation does eventually take place, by the time the truth emerges everyone has moved on and the false impression is rarely corrected.

This is what happened when Israel bombed a tower block in Gaza back in May that had been serving as a base for many media organisations. Israel claimed it also housed Palestinian militants, though it never produced any evidence to support such an improbable claim.

It was also Israel’s approach after soldiers shot dead Ahmad Erekat in his car in June 2020 at a West Bank checkpoint as he was doing errands for his sister’s wedding. Israel said it was a terrorist car-ramming. A reconstruction by experts, however, indicated that Erekat’s brakes had malfunctioned.

The case of Mohammed el-Halabi is even more pertinent. A charity worker in Gaza, he has spent five years in an Israeli prison without trial, accused of diverting huge sums of international aid money to Hamas. Israel’s claims against Halabi have proved so obviously unsupportable that even the western media has started to doubt them.

Distinction blurred

Secondly, Israel will hope that the central thrust of its allegations will be treated uncritically: that any connection by anyone in these groups to the PFLP can be cited as definitive proof of the organisation’s ties to terrorism. It is doubtless true that some staff in these human rights groups have an ideological affiliation with the PFLP – and for good reason.

Most Palestinian political leaders have either been co-opted by Israel, as with Fatah, which is invested in a “sacred” security cooperation with Israel’s occupation forces, or they have prioritised a struggle that, through its Islamist character, fails to represent large sections of the Palestinian population, as with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The only significant political alternative is provided by the PFLP. Its vision is of a secular, single democratic state offering all inhabitants of the region, Jews and Palestinians, equal rights. That platform is growing politically more powerful, for Palestinians and solidarity activists, as Israel makes it even clearer that it has no interest in ever allowing partition of the land and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

But, as with most national liberation movements, there have been historic divisions within the PFLP about how best to achieve its goal of decolonisation and a single democratic state.

As in Fatah and Hamas, some believe liberation will require armed resistance, which is allowed under international law against a belligerent occupier like Israel, while others are committed to political struggle.

Israel, of course, is keen to blur these distinctions and avoid any examination of the PFLP’s central political aspiration: a state based on equal rights rather than absolute rule by one ethnic group exported by Israel into the Palestinian territories through military occupation.

Instead, Israel has issued a blanket proscription on the PFLP, hounding all its prominent members. That has included Khalida Jarrar, a PFLP legislator, who was recently released by Israel after two years’ imprisonment. Jarrar worked on Palestine’s application to the ICC. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Israel “never claimed that she had any personal involvement in armed activities”.

Apartheid state

There should be no doubt that these six Palestinian human rights organisations have prioritised organised, communal resistance to Israel’s occupation rather than armed struggle.

Some, like the Union of Agricultural Work Committees and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, are there to internally strengthen Palestinian society. They hope to make Palestinian communities better able to withstand Israel’s relentless efforts to drive Palestinians off their land to be replaced by illegal Jewish settlements – a process Israel ominously calls “Judaisation”.

These agricultural and work committees encourage a long-standing Palestinian principle known in Arabic as sumud, or steadfastness. But given Israel’s desire to ethnically cleanse Palestinians and destroy any hope of a future Palestinian state, steadfastness is easily equated in the Israeli imagination with terrorism.

The other groups on the list, such as al-Haq, Addameer, and Defence for Children International, have been highly effective at documenting Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians, from killing civilians and abusing Palestinian children and prisoners to forcible transfer policies and settlement building.

The data collected by Palestinian groups is shared with international and Israeli human rights organisations such as HRW and B’Tselem, both of which recently issued reports declaring Israel an apartheid state.

Israel has been targeting these groups too.

Omar Shakir, the regional director of HRW, was expelled by Israel two years ago. Last year, Israel refused to renew work visas for United Nations human rights officials after they published an investigation into the collusion of international firms with illegal West Bank settlements.

And B’Tselem, Israel’s foremost occupation watchdog, and Breaking the Silence, a group of whistleblowing former Israeli soldiers, are denied the right to speak in Israeli schools and are regularly vilified by Israeli politicians and the media. This assault by Israel on the entire human rights community – at home and abroad – is obviously explained.

These organisations have been gradually making an unassailable case: both for Israeli leaders to be prosecuted at the ICC for war crimes, and for boycotts and sanctions to be imposed on Israel of the kind that was used against apartheid South Africa.

That work is polarising Jewish communities abroad, traditionally a reliable support base for Israel. And it is making an overpowering case for Israel to be shunned, exposing the yawning gulf between the expectations of western publics and the inaction of their leaders.

For Israel, all this is truly terrifying – and therefore those responsible for it must be deemed terrorists.

Ending EU funding

Gantz’s suggestion that Israel has new information tying these Palestinian human rights groups to terror is belied by the fact that Israel has been abusing them for many years.

Staff have been arrested and jailed or denied the right to travel abroad. Jerusalem residency permits for their workers have been revoked. And the army has raided their offices, seizing computers and documents. Those abuses have intensified as these organisations have found more purchase at international forums for their research into Israeli war crimes and apartheid practices.

Israel will now be able to exploit its new “terror list” to justify intensifying the crackdown. It will be even easier to find pretexts for harassing and jailing staff.

But there are other advantages for Israel. It will make it even harder for international and Israeli partners to collaborate with Palestinian groups on work exposing the crimes of Israeli occupation.

And undoubtedly Israel and its advocates abroad will use the terror designation to further vilify these groups and discredit their findings.

But perhaps the biggest prize for Israel will be using this new “terror list” to try to bully European states and the European Union into ending their funding for the Palestinian human rights community.

Labelling Palestinian human rights activists as “terrorists” will serve the same goal as labelling western activists seeking to end Israel’s oppression of Palestinians as “antisemites”, or labelling Jews acting in solidarity with Palestinians as “self-hating” and “traitors”.

Israel will bundle all this supposed “hate” into its existing narrative that it is facing a campaign from all sides to “demonise” the only Jewish state in the world.

The reality is that Israeli leaders are conflating their own terror at being held to account for their crimes with an imagined “terrorism” being waged by lawyers and researchers trying to show the reality of occupation.

Will anyone fall for it? The record suggests western governments just might.

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Jonathan Cook is the the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at: www.jonathan-cook.net

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TruePublica

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***

The Brazilian Senate’s Parliamentary Investigation Commission (CPI) approved the final report on Tuesday, promoted by Senator Renan Calheiros, which accuses the head of state, Jair Bolsonaro, of various crimes, including crimes against humanity.

After almost six months of debates, the final report was approved with seven votes in favor and four against. The president and other officials of the Executive are accused of their actions and omissions during the Covid-19 pandemic that has left thousands of deaths in the country.

“The CPI ends its work after six months with the report approved by the collegiate and now it is a new stage, we must send it to the competent bodies so that we can do justice,” said the president of the ICC, Omar Aziz.

The document exceeds a thousand pages and indicates that Bolsonaro is responsible for punishable actions of violation of preventive health measures, irregular use of public resources; incitement to crime; falsification of private documents; crime of trespass; quackery; crime against humanity; and crime of responsibility.

After confirming the approval of the report, Senator Calheiros emphasized that Justice must collect all the penalties detailed in the document.

“We have seen gruesome crimes and inhuman atrocities, contempt for pain and ridicule with life,” he added.

“The atrocities committed by this Government will not be forgotten (…) The chaos of Jair Bolsonaro will go down in history as the lowest rung of human and civilizing poverty; it brings together the most rudimentary, infamous and dark side of humanity,” he said. Calheiros.

The parliamentarians who supported the report against Bolsonaro are: Omar Aziz, Eduardo Braga, Humberto Costa, Otto Alencar Randolfe Rodrigues, Renan Calheiros and Tasso Jereissati.

While senators Eduardo Girão, Marcos Rogério, Jorginho Mello and Luis Carlos Heinze, voted against.

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How One Ballsy Senator Stole a President’s Gummy Candy

By Barbara Nimri Aziz, October 27, 2021

Where’s Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote power? Celebrated as the first U.S. woman vice president, Harris would also head the U.S. Senate, Congress’s more powerful wing. Endowed with casting a critical senate vote, Harris was thereby placed to push through the democratic agenda promised with the Party’s victory last November.

What the CIA Is Hiding in the JFK Assassination

By Jacob G. Hornberger, October 27, 2021

To understand what they are still hiding and why they are still hiding it, it’s necessary to go back to the 1990s during the era of the Assassination Records Review Board — and even further back than that to November 22, 1963 — the day that Kennedy was assassinated.

Major Australian Supermarket Chains Adopt “No Jab, No Job” Policy Impacting Hundreds of Thousands of Workers

By Cassie B., October 27, 2021

The Woolworths mandate will be imposed on all staff members across its 1,200 retail outlets and Big W discount department stores; workers at its warehouses, distribution centers and offices will also be required to get the jab. Most Woolworths stores serve around 20,000 in-store customers every week.

Coercive Mind Control and Brainwashing Tactics

By Dr. Margaret Singer, October 27, 2021

Today Mind control or brainwashing in academia is commonly referred to as coercive persuasion, coercive psychological systems or coercive influence. The short description below comes from Dr. Margaret Singer professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley the acknowledged leading authority in the world on mind control and cults.

Video. Testimony of South Carolina Nurse: The Covid-19 Hospital Protocols He Was Following Were “Killing His Patients”

By Bestnewshere.com, October 27, 2021

A pulmonary nurse of 31 years testified before the South Carolina State Legislature on “therapeutic options” for the alleged COVID-19. During his testimony, he explained that he began to realize the protocols he was following were killing his patients not helping them.

Sudan Coup Prompted by Failures in Washington’s Foreign Policy

By Abayomi Azikiwe, October 27, 2021

A military coup was carried out in the Republic of Sudan on October 25 as the contradictions within the Sovereignty Council (SC) burst asunder. This coalition of political and military interests was formed in the aftermath of tumultuous political events between December 2018 and June 2019.

To the People of Cuba: Is Washington Preparing a “Soft Coup”? The Co-optation of Cuban Intellectuals

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 27, 2021

The Covid-19 lockdown has weakened the country’s institutions, it has created social divisions, it has impoverished Cuba’s population.  It has also created conditions for a US inspired “color revolution”. Yet at the same time the legitimacy of the Covid-19 narrative, which emanates from Washington and Wall Street, has been  accepted and endorsed by the Cuban people and their government.

Aggravation of Relations Between Russia and the West: Will it Lead to War?

By South Front, October 27, 2021

On October 24, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer gave an interview to Deutschlandfunk radio in which she threatened Russia with the use of nuclear weapons if the country did not bow to NATO’s guidelines.

Is Forced Isolation of the Unvaccinated Really the Left’s Answer to the Pandemic?

By Jonathan Cook, October 27, 2021

Let’s analyse the analogy Chomsky offers: Are people who do not take the vaccine really behaving as if they think there should be no traffic laws and we should all be able to drive as we please?

Alex Berenson Tells Joe Rogan: ‘Over 70% of COVID-19 Deaths in England Were Fully Vaccinated in September’

By KanekoaTheGreat, October 27, 2021

In a podcast episode released last Tuesday, New York Times best-selling author, Alex Berenson, who was permanently suspended from Twitter, appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience” to discuss the latest reports on the COVID vaccines out of the UK.

Is the Chinese Communist Party a Threat? Is China Responsible for the Covid Crisis?

By Emanuel Pastreich, October 27, 2021

It has become common practice in the alternative media, especially those parts of the alternative media which provide detailed, and often quite accurate data about the manner in which COVID-19 “vaccines” are employed to kill off the population and to offer insights into the enormous frauds engineered by corporate elites using the names of the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

Mayhem & Madness: Authoritarian Monsters Wreak Havoc on Our Freedoms

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, October 27, 2021

Through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny, the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, disease, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

Workers in the United States are reaching a boiling point with their bosses due to the impact of the pandemic and the failure of the government to provide adequate assistance to the majority proletarian population.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began during the early months of 2020, over 20 million people lost their jobs as factories, schools, public sector institutions and service-oriented businesses closed across the country.

Reports indicate that in excess of 200,000 small and medium-sized enterprises were forced to end operations permanently. People out of work with youth at home had to seek online education programs for students which in many cases were not feasible as a result of the lack of available internet connectivity and teachers.

Ruling class propaganda for several months has attacked the pandemic relief measures provided to working people. Employers accused the government of paying people not to work and as a result many firms were closing because they could not find workers.

Yet no consideration was given in these arguments to the social impact of hundreds of thousands of deaths from the coronavirus along with the millions sickened and suffering long term medical consequences. Healthcare insurance for workers in the U.S. are largely determined by employment and possible retirement benefits. In addition, with the astronomical costs of childcare coupled with the dislocation in K-12 educational systems, millions of working families have been incapable of resuming the same activities engaged in prior to March 2020.

Therefore, it is not surprising that organized labor is demanding a far greater return on their work. They want recognition of the economic and social crises gripping the U.S. while numerous multinational corporations have increased their profit margins since the advent of the pandemic. Extended and enhanced unemployment payments have been discontinued by the federal government. Although there were rumors and news reports of a possible fourth stimulus check, it appears that another round of assistance to working and poor households will not be forthcoming.

Bloomberg, an important journal reporting on the interests and concerns of Wall Street, has keenly observed the shifting mood among the working class. The news outlet covers trends within business as well as labor serving as a barometer for the ruling class in their assessments related to policy development and advocacy.

In an article published on October 27, Bloomberg stresses that:

“American workers—the ones involuntarily benched during the pandemic and the ones who labored through it at great risk so others could stay fed or entertained or alive—are now doing their best to be impossible to ignore. Private-sector union members are authorizing strikes at a rate rarely seen in modern America, with more than 100,000 workers recently threatening or mounting work stoppages in health care, higher education, telecommunications, transportation, television, mining, manufacturing, music, metals, oil, carpentry, whiskey, and cereal. The internet dubbed October #Striketober.”

More than 10,000 John Deere workers went out on strike October 21 representing the largest industrial action in the agricultural machinery sector in over three decades. Kellogg’s corporation was struck by thousands of workers who have remained off the job for several weeks. Nabisco workers recently ended a three-week walkout.

There was a last-minute tentative deal on October 23 which averted a strike among 60,000 film and television workers. These threatened and actual strike activities reflect a heightened level of class consciousness among the working class. A Gallup poll conducted in September indicated that U.S. support for unionization reached its highest level since 1965, as 68% of workers stated they approved of labor unions.

In regard to unorganized workers, they too have been expressing dissatisfaction with the terms of their employment. This same Bloomberg report notes: “Nonunion workers are voting with their feet as well, fueling a labor market reckoning that’s become known as the Great Resignation. On Oct. 12 the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that an unprecedented 2.9% of the entire workforce, some 4.3 million people, quit their jobs in the month of August, even as the government was confirming it would nuke extra jobless benefits in hopes of forcing people to work.”

Strikes Could Have Long Term Implications for the Health and Welfare of the Working Class

As the world system becomes more integrated and interdependent, disruptions to production and supply chains in one geo-political region has a profound effect on the entire globe. During the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., there were acute shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) since a considerable amount of the manufacturing of these commodities was done in the People’s Republic of China.

Although the former administration of President Donald Trump routinely condemned China and imposed tariffs on imports, the U.S. government, corporate retail outlets and private medical systems were forced to purchase PPE and other products from Beijing. Various consumer goods including household items and food began to fly off the shelfs after March 2020 creating scarcity for millions.

The lack of income partially due to the bureaucratic delays in processing jobless benefits for tens of millions of workers beginning in the first quarter of 2020 resulted in significant food deficits. Thousands showed up at distribution centers across the U.S. to obtain donated food in desperate attempts to avoid severe malnutrition and hunger. Significant percentages of households reported not having enough food to meet their daily and weekly needs.

A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) indicates that the burgeoning problem of food deficits eased after the CARES Act was implemented under Trump in 2020 and the American Rescue Plan (ARP) enacted in the first few months of the administration of current President Joe Biden during 2021. However, since the discontinuation of most of the benefits for working adults, only the child tax credit payments to families have served to provide relief to struggling households.

A CBPP post on its website under a research category called “COVID Hardship Watch” entitled: “Tracking the COVID-19 Economy’s Effects on Food, Housing, and Employment Hardships” says:

“Black and Latino adults were more than twice as likely as white adults to report that their household did not get enough to eat. 17 percent for Black adults and 16 percent for Latino adults, compared to 6 percent of white adults. Adults who identify as American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, or as multiracial, taken together, were more than three times as likely than white adults to report that their household did not get enough to eat, at 19 percent.”

Finally, the emerging problems of the inability to pay mortgages and rents threatened to make millions more working people homeless. After many of the state moratoriums on evictions expired in late summer 2020, Trump allowed the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to impose a halt to ejecting people from their homes because it poses an extreme threat to public health, which could only prolong the pandemic.

Associations representing property owners filed suit in federal court claiming that the moratorium on evictions went beyond the authority of the CDC. In late August, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the landlords and in their ruling said that Congress would have to pass legislation to make the CDC orders lawful. Subsequently, the House of Representatives and the Senate have failed to act, placing the burden on local housing advocacy organizations to apply political pressure on municipalities and district courts to prevent evictions. Under the ARP, $46 billion in rental assistance has been allocated. However, local governments and agencies do not have the necessary infrastructure in place to distribute the funds to working families who are delinquent in rent and utility payments. This, therefore, makes the case for the declaration of moratoriums on evictions by local and state governments along with the courts, until the COVID Emergency Relief Assistance funds (CERA) are exhausted.

The same CBPP research report emphasizes:

“The number of adult renters reporting to the Census Bureau that their household was not caught up on rent has fallen from a peak of 15 million people — 1 in 5 adult renters — in January 2021 but has remained above 10 million people — about 1 in 7 adult renters — since the end of March. These households, particularly those who have lost employment during the pandemic, may be accumulating debt from multiple months of back rent and late fees. Renters of color and families with children have consistently reported higher rates of rent hardship throughout 2020 and 2021.”

Consequently, the wave of strikes and mass resignations provides a ray of hope for the working class and oppressed peoples in the U.S. Under the present conditions of economic and social hardships, workers are rejecting the stagnation in wages, speed ups, forced overtime, the absence of adequate job benefits and the lack of employment security.

A political response is now needed to bring together the active workers, jobless and temporary employees to form organizations based upon their own economic interests. These mass groupings would be in a position to demand permanent guarantees related to jobs, incomes, housing, utility services, healthcare, education, public transportation and the other necessities of modern society.

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

All images in this article are from the author

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***

It’s time to ready yourself for ghoulishly bad behaviour.  Shred your bill of rights or whatever charter of liberties you have handy. Flatulent, dangerous and fatuous, the US prosecution of Julian Assange took to the UK High Court on October 27, opening its effort to overturn the January ruling by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser.  In a judgment poor on press liberties and publishing but sound on the issue of mental health and wellbeing, Baraitser held that Assange’s extradition to the US to face espionage and computer intrusion charges would exacerbate his suicide risk and be oppressive.

Despite her finding, the judge still left the door open for her own bit of oppression by refusing Assange bail as the US appeal process got underway.  To date, he remains in the high security Belmarsh prison facility.

James Lewis QC of the Crown Prosecution Service opened proceedings by directing several salvos at Baraitser’s decision.  Reliance was placed on five grounds: that the district judge did not correctly apply UK extradition law; that Baraitser should have sought assurances from the US authorities after deciding to deny the request; that she ought to have disqualified the expert psychiatric evidence of defence witness Michael Kopelman; that she erred in assessing the evidence of suicide risk; and that the UK government was issued a number of assurances going to the problems identified in the court decision.

According to Lewis, the judge had adopted the wrong test in considering the decline of Assange’s mental health and “should have weighed crucial factors in the psychiatric evidence significantly differently.”  She should not have speculated about “future uncertain events”.  Do not concern yourself with the “risk of a medical condition getting worse in the future if certain events do or do not occur”.

The proffering of “binding” assurances that the US government would not subject Assange to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) or condemn Assange to the ADX Florence supermax facility in Colorado was also meant to convince the court.  Those undertakings had, Lewis argued, the effect of negating the force of the medical testimony submitted on Assange’s behalf and should therefore be discounted.  “Once the conditions of SAMs and ADX are removed, once there is assurance of appropriate medical care, once it is clear he will be repatriated to Australia to serve any sentence, then we can safely say the district judge would not have decided the relevant question in the way that she did.”

In court, Lewis assumed the role of performing witchdoctor.  “Assurances can be issued at any time in these proceedings according to the jurisprudence in this court.”  The fact that these had not been given prior to Baraitser’s judgment was because “it was highly unlikely [Assange] would ever be put in SAMs so opportunity never arose”.

Diplomatic assurances of this sort are often counterfeit, usually written in water and evaporated by time.  As was curtly put by Assange’s defence team, these were “meaningless”.  Amnesty International legal adviser Simon Crowther’s assessment of their value and veracity is disturbingly accurate.  “They’re based on diplomatic relations between states, they’re not legally binding under international law.”  The enumerated list in a Human Rights Watch report from 2014 makes for grim reading on precisely that point.  There would be nothing holding the US government to any given pledge, despite the breezy claim by the prosecution that Britain had never complained about assurances given by the US authorities in extradition cases.

For all that, the US, argued Lewis, would still reserve the right to impose SAMs if needed.  Paradise was also possible: one of the justices considered that, even if the sword were to fall on Assange, his head would somehow escape its full force.  Conviction did not entail a stiff sentence, if, indeed, he would suffer sentence at all.  Lewis, wooing, keen to impress, fed the presumption.  The defence, he said pointedly, had exaggerated the risks of a petrifying life sentence.  Consider the 45-month sentence handed to the “drone” whistleblower Daniel Hale or the 63-month sentence imposed on NSA whistleblower Reality Winner.

Assange could be dealt with swiftly in US court proceedings (unlikely, given prosecutions using the Espionage Act are larded by security protocols and procedures).  The defence would then use the shield of the First Amendment.  Assange, protected, would walk free of shackles.  For a person so insistent on discrediting the lower judge’s decision for having been too speculative about Assange’s treatment (the “crystal ball approach”), this was rich indeed.  Prosecutions using the Espionage Act to target the unauthorised disclosure of information tend to succeed, trumping free speech protections.

What, then, might await Assange in lieu of SAMs or the supermax?  Communications Management Units (CMUs) at Federal Correctional Institution, Terre Haute in Indiana, or the US Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, were suggested.  Both were created by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to segregate and isolate prison inmates from the rest of the BOP population.  They have been disproportionately used for Muslim prisoners convicted on terrorism charges and “prohibited activities related to communication”.

Undeterred by this history, Lewis drew upon a declaration from Assistant US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia Gordon Kromberg on the nasty merits of these secretive centres.  “CMU inmates are afforded the same opportunities to communicate with individuals outside of prison as regular inmates.” However, Kromberg qualifies this.  “Their communications may be more extensively monitored … or the BOP may impose certain limitations, as noted in the Bureau Program Statement, to prevent them from engaging in additional criminal conduct.”  Were Assange to find himself in a CMU, he could be potentially subjected to even more onerous restrictions that the policy afforded under SAMs.

Attention then turned to demolishing the expert evidence of neuropsychiatrist Kopelman, who had convinced Baraitser that Assange was at a “very high” risk of attempting suicide if he was extradited to the US.  According to Lewis, the failure by Kopelman to note the existence of Assange’s partner Stella Moris and their children in the initial report, was “actively misleading” despite the correction being made in the final court report.  The omission had the effect of discolouring the suicide risk and was “not an honest statement of truth”.  According to the prosecution, the Kopelman testimony should have been ditched, leaving the US witness assessments as the only credible alternatives.

Baraitser, for her part, had found the omission a “very human response” given the risk posed to Moris and Assange, notably in the wake of the espionage operation against the publisher mounted by the Spanish security firm UC Global, at the behest of US intelligence.

From the outset, the prosecution’s overall thrust on evidence of Assange’s mental wellbeing was one of scornful scepticism.  Showing a pitiful comprehension of how the potentially suicidal might operate, Lewis suggested that Assange had drunk coffee in the company of other prisoners, been “alert”, making “good eye contact”.  The mentally ill would be incapable of hosting a TV chat show on Russia Today, negotiate the processes of seeking asylum or aid Edward Snowden escape from Hong Kong.

Edward Fitzgerald QC, taking the stand to defend the merits of Baraitser’s ruling, called it “carefully reasoned and considered”.  The court, he argued, should “respect the findings of facts from the judge of first instance who lived through the hearing.”  His counterpart was seeking “reasons for reasons” when Baraitser had given “cogent reasons why she prefers Kopelman.”  The judge had been best placed to make her own assessment and found that he had given “impartial evidence to the court.”  The notion that Kopelman was “a lone wolf is absolute nonsense.”  There was also backing for his evidence from autism expert Quinton Deeley, and even some from the US government’s own expert witness, Seena Fazel.

As for the submission by Lewis that Assange showed cool, level-headed judgment in his behaviour, Fitzgerald was indignant.  “This is not Cato or Cleopatra committing suicide rather than face their enemies,” he told the court. “This came out of a man who is suffering from a mental disorder.”  The impulse to commit suicide was not governed by rational decision-making or volition but mental illness.

During the latter part of the day’s proceedings, Fitzgerald had a moment of reflection that has become something of a trademark.  “I sometimes wonder whether my learned friend is reading the same judgment we are.”  He is, but doing so through his own version of crystal ball jurisprudence.

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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]

Featured image: Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison in 2019 (Source: WSWS)

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***

Where’s Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote power? Celebrated as the first U.S. woman vice president, Harris would also head the U.S. Senate, Congress’s more powerful wing. Endowed with casting a critical senate vote, Harris was thereby placed to push through the democratic agenda promised with the Party’s victory last November.

It wouldn’t matter if all 50 senate Republicans were opposed to a Democrat-sponsored bill. She would ensure its passage. Humane, racially equitable, climate-transformative, gender-balancing, socially-aware, justice-promoting, anti-war Democratic policies:–all would pass into law. Voting rights legislation would sail through too. 

What have we instead? Joe Manchin of Virginia, a once-little-known Democratic senator essentially holding the Democratic Party hostage. He is also rejecting the will – not to forget the needs — of 80% of Americans who purportedly approve of the most progressive, far-reaching program drawn up by legislators in two generations.

Manchin is as pig-headed, as resolute, as overconfident as any Republican. And he’s usurped Harris’s role as the clinching vote. (His party can’t handle him or his cohort Kyrsten Sinema.)

The Congressional Progressive Caucus’s 100 house members so adroitly managed to ensure Speaker Pelosi linked the two massive infrastructure bills. After a promise that truly progressive legislation  would be on the table, look how far the Democratic agenda has fallen. By early October, it seems fewer than 50 CPC members would hold the line on what’s called the “Reconciliation” package (whose slippery title I’ll return to.)

Manchin’s loyalty to the fossil fuel industry is to be expected. What elected representative isn’t swayed by their state’s economic priorities? E.g. Senator Sanders’ favoring military spending that assures Vermont’s share of Pentagon largesse. (Moreover, so-called climate friendly corporations are reportedly funding Manchin too.)

It’s not economic self-interest behind this recalcitrant senator’s obduracy. He and Senator Sinema have identified a flaw in the party itself. Call it decorum, congeniality, political correctness. Democrats can’t stand up to a bully. (I witness it working among my courteous and timid county Democrats who tremble when their candidate’s yard sign is defaced.) Then there’s the widespread naiveté that makes many Democratic activists believe theirs is the party embraced by all immigrants and jobless, the party that owns every single Black and Hispanic vote.

Sinema and Manchin, by daring to defy the Democratic leadership, have leapt onto the national stage. As they persist with their obduracy — they seem to be prevailing — they have somehow achieved a kind of heroic status.

In his latest blog Michael Moore has articulated a sentiment I’ve dared express only in private:—a wish that the American ‘left’ (the decent, the smart, the progressive) were possessed by a rage and determination parallel to what propelled others (the dumb, the villainous) into illegal and violent action. He identifies this yearning (hedged by abundant caveats) as “insurrection envy”.

After (after, not before) Trump’s election millions of disgusted Americans bearing pink pussy ears and arty slogans marched through cities and towns across the land. The result of that massive show of goodness? Inconsequential. (Don’t claim the 2020 Democratic victory as an outcome of that action.)

Today, when so much is at stake, with pandemic restraints lifted, Moore asks where’s a parallel show of rage over the downfall of this once-in-half-a-century-plan to restore democracy, avoid climate catastrophe, raise all children out of poverty, care for our elders, moderate medical costs, establish tax equitably, lower community college costs? (If our vocal transgenders were in charge, we’d have surely seen more progress.)

Today we’re informed that taxing provisions to pay for this “soft” bill may be excluded. Why was the wealth tax proposal not inserted into the “hard infrastructure” package rather than into the bill prioritizing health and education, and climate control?

As noted by others, the evasive and constantly changing title of this diminishing bill may be partially responsible for its fate. In desperation, one of its designers, Senator Sanders now speciously  labels it ”the damn bill”, as in “pass the damn bill”, and “what’s in the damn bill?” Not a smart choice by Sanders’ aides.

The “reconciliation” label is equally unhelpful. “Build Back Better” hardly improves on that. Neither does “soft infrastructure”.

Maybe these shifting monikers explain why media choose the simpler “$3.5 trillion” tag. A frightening figure, too unimaginable to be attainable.

So why not talk about the bill as just $350 billion, annually, for the coming decade? Juxtapose that with the $768 billion annual U.S. defense budget, with its $24 billion increase just passed by both houses of Congress, every billion of it with hardly a whisper of dissent.

Last Sunday one NPR reporter referred to the bill as Biden’s “domestic spending agenda”, another as the “social safety net and climate plan”. For a few weeks it was just “the climate bill”, probably following heavy lobbying by climate-priority media. Others view it as a taxing proposal. One has to peruse written reports for details, seeking assurance that educational and medical components are really there. Till today one finds scant reference to how this bill impacts 50 % of the population, namely American women. Whereas the “hard infrastructure” bill funding roads and bridges will be awarded the construction industry that largely employs men, the advantages for women carried by the “reconciliation” package are not emphasized. Few of its proponents link pre-K funding, elder care programs, expanded health services to massive job opportunities for women, as well as relief for women bearing the burden of child and elder care.

CPC leader Pramila Jayapal along with other members of the progressive caucus had proposed a smart and painless compromise. If cuts must be made, they offered, identify some programs to receive funding not for a decade but five years. If they prove worthwhile during that time, they can be refinanced for a second five years. Totally reasonable, unarguably doable. Yet it seems to have gone nowhere.

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Barbara Nimri Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon. 

Barbara Nimry Aziz is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

“Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”

By Barbara Nimri Aziz

A century ago Yogmaya and Durga Devi, two women champions of justice, emerged from a remote corner of rural Nepal to offer solutions to their nation’s social and political ills. Then they were forgotten.

Years after their demise, in 1980 veteran anthropologist Barbara Nimri Aziz first uncovered their suppressed histories in her comprehensive and accessible biographies. Revelations from her decade of research led to the resurrection of these women and their entry into contemporary Nepali consciousness.

This book captures the daring political campaigns of these rebel women; at the same time it asks us to acknowledge their impact on contemporary feminist thinking. Like many revolutionaries who were vilified in their lifetimes, we learn about the true nature of these leaders’ intelligence, sacrifices, and vision during an era of social and economic oppression in this part of Asia.

After Nepal moved from absolute monarchy to a fledgling democracy and history re-evaluated these pioneers, Dr. Aziz explores their legacies in this book.

Psychologically provocative and astonishingly moving, “Yogmaya and Durga Devi” is a seminal contribution to women’s history.

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

Wherever Victoria Nuland goes, she brings trouble.

Nuland is the third most powerful person in the State Department.

In February 2014, she famously handed out cookies to demonstrators in the Maidan Square in Kyiv.

The demonstrators were mounting a coup against Ukraine’s democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovich, which set off a deadly seven-year war that has resulted in 14,000 deaths.

In mid-October 2021, Nuland visited Beirut, Lebanon.

A few days before, protests had broken out over the government’s handling of an explosion in the Port of Beirut in August 2020 that caused 218 deaths, 7,000 injuries and $15 billion in U.S. property damage.

The protests were suppressed, and six demonstrators were killed and 32 wounded.

In a meeting with Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdullah Bou Habib, Nuland pledged an additional $67 million to the Lebanese army (bringing total military aid to $187 million for 2021).

Nuland also spoke in Beirut with members of the ultra-right-wing political party called the Lebanese Forces (LF) of which Samir Geagea is the leader.

A Christian Maronite, Gaegea is a notorious war criminal, responsible for the death of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990).

Gaegea served eleven years in solitary confinement from 1994-2005 after being convicted for ordering four political assassinations, including of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rashid Karami in 1987.

Today, Gaegea appears ready to kick off another civil war in his bid for power. Iranian TV suggested that he is an Israeli Mossad agent who was behind the massacre at the port explosion protests and has “sought to impose himself as the sole representative of the Christians and return to the sectarian stronghold by committing a deliberate and organized massacre like the one committed during the Lebanese civil war.”

Deep Roots of Lebanon’s Crisis

Lebanon has been in bad shape for a long time. The quality of life of its people has been eroded by government corruption, the decline of social services, and by an influx of Syrian refugees.

Last summer, the Lebanese Lira sank at one point to 24,000 to the dollar. A year earlier, the government defaulted on its debts.

Saree Makdisi compared Lebanon’s central bank in The Nation Magazine to a “shell company running a collapsing Ponzi scheme out of an abandoned warehouse in an insalubrious part of town. A hundred and 30 billion dollars’ worth of deposits had vanished into thin air.”

Depositors could access only 200 of their dollars a month, and then only in liras and at an official exchange rate nowhere near the rate at which liras actually change hands for dollars in the real world.

The plight of the Lebanese is so bad right now that war-ravaged Syria is supplying them with electricity along with sanction-stricken Iran.

The United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia have helped sow divisions in the country by spreading anger at Hezbollah—the resistance group—and the Shia political Amal movement.

For many of Lebanon’s people, however, Hezbollah and the Amal represent their only salvation and hope; they provide them with free education and economic help.

Even many of the Christians speak well of them—as they know that Hezbollah and Amal parties are the ones who will help the needy and poor.

Port Explosion and protests

Lebanon’s divisions threatened to boil over following the August 2020 port explosion, which was set off when a cargo of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate (equivalent to around 1.1 kilotons of TNT) had been stored in a warehouse without proper safety.

Initially, blame for the explosion—considered the largest non-nuclear one in recent history—was placed on those responsible for managing the port and on the Lebanese government.

Then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alleged that Hezbollah had been running a missile factory at the port, and maintained secret arms depots in civilian areas in Beirut.

When Secretary-General of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah invited reporters to tour a warehouse in the Beirut suburb of Jnah, they did not find any missile factory though various Lebanese news sites reported images and videos taken from that particular warehouse showing there was ammonium nitrate stored—but by the Lebanese government and not Hezbollah.

The current judge on the case, Tarek Bitar, and several Lebanese MP’s have placed blame with the last sitting prime-minister, Hassan Diab, who was informed about a dangerous situation four days before the accident by the port authorities.

However, governments before him, like that led by Premier Saad Hariri (son of the murdered Rafic Harriri) knew all too well about the deadly cargo in the port of Beirut and even received complaints and letters, but never did anything about it.

The protests that surrounded Nuland’s visit were led by Hezbollah and the Amal Party and were directed against Judge Bitar.

Hezbollah spokesmen claimed that Christian snipers from the Lebanese Forces (LF) faction were the ones to fire at the crowd to drag Lebanon into strife—a claim denied by the LF.

Press TV in Iran claimed that an employee of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was one of the “snipers” who allegedly killed the protestors in a black-flag incident—though this has not been substantiated.

Pouring Gasoline on the Fire?

Nuland’s recent visit brings fear among the Lebanese that the U.S. is about to pour fire on an already volatile situation.

Besides her exploits in Ukraine of 2014, Nuland has been a key figure advocating for regime change in Russia (an article she published in Foreign Affairs last year was called “Pinning Down Putin,”) and served as a principal foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney during the Iraq War.

Additionally, she was U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from 2005-2008 when it was pushing for expansion along Russia’s border and leading the fight in Afghanistan.

Nuland being sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to NATO in July 2005 by her boss Dick Cheney. [Source: georgewbush-whitehoiuse.archives.gov]

The Lebanese have experienced hardship for many years and do not want another civil war.

Like in Syria, the countries’ sectarian divisions have been provoked largely by the West and Israel—the Zionist state and not Jewish people—which has long sought to elevate the Maronite Christians and weaken and divide Lebanon.

The campaign to demonize Hezbollah is part of a hybrid war between Israel and Iran that is one major source of the country’s current predicament.

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Sonja is a freelance journalist from the Netherlands who has written about Syria, the Middle East, and Russia among other topics. Sonja can be reached at: [email protected].

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***

No matter how many times it has been said that relations between Russia and Western countries can no longer get worse, the news agenda proves us the opposite time and again. On October 24, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer gave an interview to Deutschlandfunk radio in which she threatened Russia with the use of nuclear weapons if the country did not bow to NATO’s guidelines. Even though Germany itself does not possess nuclear weapons, it was implied that an attack could be launched by an American arsenal from European territory.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu commented on his German colleague’s dreams of a new war, saying in particular that “we must remember how the pulling of forces to Russia’s borders ends”. Quite a fair comment on the country that started the two world wars. Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin also spoke about the aggressive military plans of Western partners and pointed to the futility of the attempts to seize Russian territory.

Prior to that, Russia decided to suspend the work of its permanent mission to NATO as of November 1 in response to the decision to withdraw accreditation of eight mission members. The NATO Information Office at the Belgian Embassy and the Military Liaison Mission in Moscow were also closed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke about this issue, saying that “relations between Russia and NATO cannot be called catastrophic, because they simply do not exist”. The closure of diplomatic missions is in itself an alarming signal in terms of military security, but it is only the tip of the iceberg.

As we can see, Russian politicians have become more active in expressing their views on the prospects of military conflicts with the West, which means that this issue is already being thoroughly considered by Russian elites, and they take the risks of military conflicts near their borders seriously. Continuing this theme, it is necessary to mention a recent article by former Russian President and current Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev on Ukraine. In that article he considered current Ukraine government as completely unprepared for negotiations and scrutinize no prospect for peaceful cooperation either with Ukrainian political elites or their Euro-Atlantic handlers.

We may also recall the words of U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin about guarantees of military assistance to Kiev in case of aggression from Russia and the British project of military-material assistance in the form of supplies of Brimstone missiles and joint construction of warships. These political gestures demonstrate that the Anglo-Saxon elites are just as ready for an escalation of the conflict with Russia, and they have chosen the territory of Ukraine as the point of force application.

The situation in the Eastern Europe does seem appropriate for an escalation of the military situation in the eastern part. The coronavirus pandemic, due to low vaccination rates, is again breaking records in morbidity and mortality, and a lockdown is being one more time imposed in Russia, which means additional damage to business and the well-being of citizens. In Europe, the situation can’t be regarded better in comparison with Russia, because of the emerging energy crisis and gas supply disruptions, with the risk of a cold winter. The EU economies also bear a heavy burden in the form of the costs of building a green economy, and not everyone is coping with it.

The pressure on Russia from the West through Ukraine is an extremely convenient position, because on its southern borders, i.e. in the Caucasus and Central Asia, it already has to be distracted by destabilization processes generated by Turkey as part of its policy of expansion in Eurasia. Furhermore, the case of the fall of the old regime in Afghanistan and the coming to power of the Taliban government, which is also not the problem of one particular country, but it seems to be a powerful signal for all inhabitants of Central Asia suffering from low living standards, ignorance and insolvent and corrupt local elites. By a very strange coincidence, hotbeds of tension are being created around Russia’s borders. Or was the creation of these hotbeds planned as part of someone else’s strategy?

Speaking of Central Asians, there is another major Russian domestic policy related to them. The country is home to a huge number of legal and illegal migrants from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, who almost entirely occupy certain sectors of unskilled labor, like housing and utilities. And they also commit a significant portion of criminal offenses in large cities, stealing and raping on a regular basis. According to statistics, during the first lockdown in Moscow in 2020, when most migrants from Central Asia were returned home, the number of crimes committed in Moscow dropped by 75 percent. Despite such an obvious threat to its citizens, the government recently amnestied 300,000 migrants previously deported for crimes, unable otherwise to make up for the shortage of cheap labor. Of course, should the domestic situation deteriorate, whether due to military conflict, economic crisis or other reasons, migrants will become another destabilizing factor, dramatically worsening the crime situation.

The coming winter will be a serious test for peace cooperation initiatives due to the objective circumstances described above, and the onset of the spring period in northern latitudes is often associated with an increase in military activity. The previous large-scale act of Ukrainian aggression in the Donbass took place in April of this year; in the time remaining until next spring, NATO instructors will have time to train the Ukrainian army in addition to American and British military supplies. The likelihood of a new conflict is quite high, and its primary goal is precisely the diversion and weakening of Russia.

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***

It has become common practice in the alternative media, especially those parts of the alternative media which provide detailed, and often quite accurate data about the manner in which COVID-19 “vaccines” are employed to kill off the population and to offer insights into the enormous frauds engineered by corporate elites using the names of the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

But in many of these blog reports the blame of the actions pertaining to Covid-19 are casually attributed to the Chinese Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China.

In some cases, the conclusion of these reports is that the United States is under assault from communists in China and that the Democrats in the United States who abet its acts of treason are “Leftists.”

Concerns about actions of the Chinese Communist Party CCP in the United States, and globally, are not without evidence.

There are examples of powerful business interests, and the super-rich, in China making use of the authority of the Chinese Communist Party to advance their interests. Yet, the simplistic and reductive manner in which the crimes committed by corporate elites and billionaires in the United States are fobbed off on the CCP, and attention is diverted away from “the true sources of evil” at home, suggests that we are looking at a carefully organized disinformation campaign, most likely one that is funded by the financial elites at Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, et al.

The point of attacking the CCP is to throw us off of the scent, to keep us from identifying the enemy within. Familiar brands like Microsoft, Coca Cola, Facebook, Oracle, Walmart and Amazon are the primary source of the rampant criminal policies at home that are turning the nation into a concentration camp.

Those corporations are the playthings of the superrich—who make their deals, sometimes with the Chinese elites as well, behind closed doors.

To put it simply, this psychological operation of blaming the Chinese Communist Party is meant to delay understanding among citizens of the bitter reality of fascism at home until the last possible moment and to obscure the growth of a radical class society.

The hyping of the “China threat” is a distraction set up by the super-rich. The point is to get you foaming at the mouth over foreigners from an alien civilization and thus unable to comprehend the conspiracy of the rich to destroy the lives of ordinary people.

The vast majority of information about the political actions of corporate interests, under the cloak of government, in the United States, China, Russia, Israel, Turkey, Germany, Japan and other major powers, is classified and completely inaccessible to ordinary citizens. We must first understand just how little we know.

Focusing exclusively on the CCP, however, makes sure that no one asks any serious questions about who the important foreign powers besides China are in DC. Moreover, citizens assume that Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft are “American” companies even as those criminal organizations plot to take the United States apart.

Most bloggers who discuss geopolitics limit themselves to sensationalist stories created for public consumption and they cannot even mention the possibility that Chinese and American elites created a bogus cold war so as block meaningful dialogue between ordinary citizens and increase their profits.

That oversight is not an accident. Those self-appointed experts refuse to address the question of class.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a massive institution that is a part of the government of the People’s Republic of China and it represents, in theory, the people.

The CCP previously was strictly regulated. Over the last 20 years, however, it has been deregulated and large sections of the organization are run today like the Lion’s Club. Large sections of the CCP form a network of the powerful who pursue profits for friends and family, and not functioning as a government agency.

This is no secret to the Chinese and there are demands at home for reform, and serious efforts.

There are also factions within the CCP who wish to revive the traditions of the party from the 1940s and 1950s, to stand with the workers, not with multinational banks. Their numbers are growing.

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are worse than the CCP in that they make national policy behind closed doors, but their role is not defined by the Constitution and they are not an accountable part of the government.

There are specific goals behind the push by the corporate media, and the conservative blogs, that set the CCP up as the bad man so as to distract from the institutional decay in the United States.

1) To deviously attribute the loss of freedom and the intentional destruction of the US economy to “communism” and “leftism” rather than to the corporate fascism that is the offspring of American finance.

Intentionally mislabeling “corporate fascism” as “communism” and attributing the criminal plans of American CEOs to a devious CCP that belongs to an alien civilization is a psychological operation orchestrated at the highest levels that reinvents the “Yellow Peril” mythologies that dominated the United States in the 19th century as a tool of political control.

2) The projection of rampant criminality onto China, and away from Washington D.C., through the creation of a drama dominated by an alien and mysterious CCP serves to obscure just how close to home is evil in the United States.

The criminality born of familiar brand names in the United States such as Amazon, Facebook, Bank of America, Coca Cola, Walmart and Microsoft is obscured, and Americans are even encouraged to embrace these dangerous foreign entities as “American” corporations in response to a perceived Chinese threat.

But these multinational corporations have no more right to give testimony in Congress and lobby than does the CCP. They provide profits to the superrich, men who know no country, and to stockholders around the globe.

3) The demonization of the CCP is supported by the military industrial complex because this invented existential threat is central to the establishment of a war economy in the United States that assumes that there will be a war with China.

As the United States economy collapses into anomy as a result of the radical deregulation of finance, a war-time economy is increasing perceived as the salvation. Making sure that war economy is run through the Pentagon assures multinational corporations that get a thick slice of the pie.

Moreover, the decay of the judiciary, the legislative and the executive in the United States has created an environment in which the military has an increasingly important role because it is the only part of government that is still partially functional.

4) It is critical for the “new cold war” that no discourse between ordinary Chinese and Americans is possible, no alliances between concerned citizens in both countries are established, no conversations between intellectuals in the two countries can be pursued.

If citizens spoke with citizens, they might figure out how multinational corporations are playing Chinese and American workers off against each other as they proceed to destroy the economies of both countries.

5) The attack on the CCP and on the “leftists” in the Democratic Party found in the conservative alternative media serves to brand the term like “communism,” “socialism” and “leftism” as negatives in the public imagination that are falsely associated with the social and economic consequences of the policies of “corporate fascism”.

The manner in which the Communist Party USA led the battle for civil rights, and the left fought for many of the benefits that workers enjoy today is intentionally obscured in these anti-leftist campaigns that tie “socialism” to a threatening Chinese culture.

6) Perhaps the most devious game of all is forcing Americans to choose an anti-leftist, anti-Chinese (and by extension anti-Asian) ideology if they want to find a voice that criticizes the COVID-19 regime.

The “leftists” who appear in the media are pro-vaccine and the only opposition to vaccines we see are the followers of Donald Trump. This political configuration makes it possible for the liberals and progressives to dismiss the obvious dangers of vaccines without fear of backlash.

7) Blaming everything on a devious CCP is a sneaky way of avoiding any serious analysis of who owns what in the United States and what the true implications of the concentration of wealth has been for ordinary people.

If citizens knew how these billionaires made their big fortunes, not through innovation and imagination, but by stealing cash from the Federal Reserve that belongs to the citizens of the nation—and creating inflation that punishes citizens, they would be calling for those billionaires to be put in jail.

Blaming things on a vague CCP that is beyond the understanding of citizens helps people to avoid any discussion about who owns what, and how they took it over.

There are examples of corruption and influence peddling involving the Chinese Communist Party. That part of the story is true. But the ultimate goal of the demonization of the CCP is clearly not to reduce foreign influence in Washington D.C. (which is skyrocketing these days) but rather to find a convenient and wrong way of explaining the deep moral corruption in American society.

Washington D.C. (which is skyrocketing these days) but rather to find a convenient and wrong way of explaining the deep moral corruption in American society.

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This article was originally published on usprovgov.asia.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

I Shall Fear No Evil

Why we need a truly independent candidate for president

Author: Emanuel Pastreich

Paperback ISBN: 9781649994509

Pages: 162

Click here to order.

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***

When you read the Russian State controlled media, TASS, you begin to see the truth accidentally (yet on purpose) creep / leak out. The Russian fake media Tass reports… See this.     

“The system of QR codes for vaccination against coronavirus, introduced in a number of regions of Russia to improve the epidemiological situation, should stay in place until the level of herd immunity in the country reaches at least 80%, Alexander Gintsburg, head of the Gamaleya Center (developer of Sputnik V vaccine), told TASS.

“Until at least 80% are vaccinated, we should keep this tight distance between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated by means of QR codes. This approach has already shown its effectiveness in many countries, where they have kept restrictions for the unvaccinated to visit certain places, use the infrastructure,” he said.

“Until at least 80% are vaccinated, we should keep this tight distance between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated by means of QR codes. This approach has already shown its effectiveness in many countries, where they have kept restrictions for the unvaccinated to visit certain places, use the infrastructure,” he said.

So it is revealed now that they will use QR codes to regulate the unvaccinated in Russia yet the QR code is being rolled out in every country (to use infrastructure).

Because every government regardless of politics is untrustworthy and will always ‘creep’ towards authoritarian control, we see that in Russia they will use the QR code to regulate human access and freedom of movement until vaccinated.

It is now openly revealed that the Russian government which pretends to be free is still authoritarian and we in the so called ‘free west’ can expect the same policies.

“…..the authorities ensure strict control over the availability of QR codes. But if it is not done properly and there is no strict divide between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated…….”

The availability of QR codes means access and the freedom /restriction of movement.

How do you divide the vaccinated / compliant from the noncompliant / unvaccinated?

Australia

Australia is building possible quarantine / concentration camps such as ‘Wellcamp’, the camp that comes with its own airport and defence facility! Does this sound normal? YES! Australia’s ‘Wellcamp’ comes with its own defence precinct. See this.

This article gave some statistics. Queensland had 6 deaths yet it had conducted 2,042,714 tests. The statistic does not mention if those deaths include other infections or causes of deaths (or age).

See this.

It does mention people can be taken to ‘Wellcamp” and not have any interaction with the public whatsoever.

The nazi’s tattooed a version of the QR code onto their concentration camp residents.

Source: Alamy

The following map shows the nazi locations of their ‘Wellcamps”,

This article expresses how you can have a QR code which can be used to monitor how much you consume from a public water fountain.

When you press “pour,” the screen tells you what percentage of your daily goal you’ve met, and reminds you that you’re “making an impact.”

This is certainly ‘Orwellian’. Because today it can count how many times you refill your water bottle and tomorrow it can restrict how many times you refill your water bottle.

In the link below you can use the public water fountain to obtain free water or be a really good person and donate money via a QR code to underprivileged communities in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Tanzania or Uganda.

Also note the first of these charity-free water fountains was released at  NORTHWOOD MILITARY BASE in North West London.

See this.

Yet at the end of the article promoting ‘free water’ it clearly states “The scheme has been designed to make it very simple for consumers to contribute, with the QR code allowing payment via Paypal, Apple Pay, Credit or Debit card.”

The sign shows how to use ‘double speak’ it promotes ‘Free Water when you Buy A Bottle.’ If you are an idiot you will agree with this.

So let’s do some maths. It’s possible to get your own personal QRcode when you get vaccinated and the QR code can be used to obtain free water but also to stop you obtaining free water because you buy the bottle. 1 + 1 + 1 = our future.

Below is a picture of a sign that was made at the Colorado School of Mines. It was worth going through the effort to make the sign promoting a QR code bottle filler but not to fix the free water fountain.

Here is a public water fountain where you can see the introduction of modern technology and the QR code for access.

The way you can access this water source is to scan your phone, in the future it will be your embedded microchip and personal QR code.

Your unborn children will be allocated their QR code at their birth. Your birthed children will be allocated their QR codes sometime in the near future. Keep checking your renewed ID’s, drivers license and passports for a QR code. It’s coming! Globally. Especially as it is being unleashed in Australia today.

See this.

“Minister for Digital and Customer Service, Victor Dominello….There is no excuse not to check-in everywhere you can – businesses and customers all have a part to play to keep NSW safe,”

“In the same way customers routinely check into cafes, restaurants and bars, we need them to adopt the same approach when visiting a supermarket, retail store and workplace. Inspectors have been asked to monitor the situation alongside the NSW Police.”

Its coming for you and your family members.

Mandatory QR codes for access and freedom!?! Just trust Ronald Mcdonald.

At McDonalds a QR code campaign is being introduced. See this.

“I took a scan of the QR code on my cup to find out where McDonalds wants to lead customers.”

I made the effort to read the article and commentary. I noticed every comment was entered twice word for word. The lazy programmer only used a photo once per double comment to pretend they were public comments.

We are entering a dark period in our so-called free societies. Our societies are Orwellian and totalitarian. We were given apparent free choice and with fake Coronavirus and modern technology being used against us it is going to be a dark period with the imaginary Coronavirus ending our freedoms on a global scale.

Yet that isn’t the scary information.

Are we entering a deliberate depopulation period? Also known as genocide? Remember Rwanda.

We will all require a Health passport soon!

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Open Letter to Mid Devon Advertiser

Dear Editor,

As a doctor first, and surgeon second, who was educated at St Mary’s W2 and qualifying in 1964, I need to respond to the article in last week’s MDA entitled ‘Trialling blood tests which could detect cancer earlier’. There is obvious irony.

Months ago it was noted that as a result mostly of HMG’s policy in reaction to Covid_19 there were at least 300,000 humans in the UK waiting to be seen with symptoms of potential cancer. A good many would have had cancer within them. For most cancers, time is of the essence. Delay in diagnosis means advance of those cancers in a majority, and when and if they came to the specialists, treatment would need to be more complex, suffering greater and eventual death more likely.

Before the plandemic, there was already an obvious deterioration in UK medical services. Patients were more often ‘going private’ eg. finding those £14,000 to get a total hip replacement to relieve pain and disability. More often patients had to ‘consult’ their GP over the telephone – when they could eventually get through. Since the HMG mandated quarantining of the healthy, all has got worse for those patients. They are for instance being asked to send photos of skin conditions, including rashes caused by inoculation of experimental ‘vaccines’. The necessary third phase trials have instead been taking place in vast populations and without proper surveillance as to adverse reactions. (I could expand on this in a further letter.)

The meeting of doctor and patient face to face is a vital part in our sacred calling as doctors. I use ‘sacred’ in a non-religious sense here, but it is also at the heart of the religions too.

Take two cancers which are becoming more frequent. Breast cancer is most often detected by the woman. Some fearing doctors and hospitals, especially now through thought of the contagion, will hide their cancers and be worse for it. Most will see their GP and palpable lumps confirmed. In most, malignant potential will be obvious. We trust they will be seen quickly by specialists and the best course of treatment decided.

Prostate cancer will rely first on the history – the symptoms of disturbed urination etc. As always the history comes first as was drummed into us in the last century. Taken carefully by doctor from patient, this gives the diagnosis before any following examination in about 70% of all those presenting. A rectal examination will determine, using the gloved forefinger, whether that prostate gland is smooth and soft, or craggy. That examination will lead to further investigation by specialists if necessary and after the PSA blood test in the general practice, though there are traps in that.

Why am I ‘bothering’ to write this letter at age 81? I have had the great privilege, and the vast satisfaction, of healing many thousands of patients with wonderful teams at my side. I cannot stand seeing as I live, the truthful and fine traditions of the British medical services withered weekly.

A renaissance is vital for those present and future patients (not ‘clients’ or ‘customers’). This has to come from the profession WITH the public. Consider. The fine conception of OUR NHS on which a large majority will need to depend on more and more, was brought to life when GB was bankrupt from fighting for freedom. With the billions of ‘funny money’ being spewed out now via Westminster, GB is bankrupt now. In March this year the Office of National Statistics recorded that government borrowing was then 106% of UK Gross Domestic Product!

Many do not know that and some do not care. All the opposite of ‘balancing the books’ and that ‘austerity’ post 2008. Some will know that to bail out the irresponsible banks, we gave £540 billion from our Exchequer, a sum equivalent then to 5 years worth of spending on OUR NHS!

Yours faithfully,

David Halpin MB BS FRCS

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***

A pulmonary nurse of 31 years testified before the South Carolina State Legislature on “therapeutic options” for the alleged COVID-19. During his testimony, he explained that he began to realize the protocols he was following were killing his patients not helping them.

Albert Spence gave moving testimony recently concerning his assistance in the killing of patients that had been labeled as having COVID by just “doing what I was told.”

• Ireland: Doctor’s Daughter Got The COVID Shot & Look At What Happened That’s Being Ignored (Video)
• Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb: “Nobody Knows” The Origins Of The 6-Foot Social Distancing Rule – That May Not Be True (Video)
• Doctor Pulls Back Curtain On Genetic BioWeapons Industry (Video)
• Whoa! You’re Not Going To Believe What This Hidden Camera Caught From HHS Medical Professionals Concerning The COVID Shot (Video)

Sound familiar? It should and Spence made reference to Auschwitz in his testimony.

Take a listen.

Spence said that in all his years of nursing, what he was told to do what went against most of how he had been trained, but it was the medical system that wanted him to treat them that way. However, once he began to see his patients dying, and that the CDC fraudulently changed the PCR tests dramatically, just like we reported that they would do to cover for the shots, it frightened him and he had to speak out.

According to Spence’s testimony:

I lost sleep over it. I was having chest pain over it. It woke me up in the middle of the night – hit me hard. I could not sleep.

Because my first week or two there (COVID ward), I didn’t lead them to the gate, but I’m the guy that euthanized people.

They call it “comfort care.” But when you get to the point where you can’t take (oxygen mask) off, you get so upset. You haven’t seen your family except through maybe an iPad, in weeks.

And you’re never going to come off the high flow, and the doctor says: “You’ve done your best. But this is going to be it for you.”

And so the patients get all teary eyed and upset, and they call in the palliative team, and they all hold their hands and cry.

But they said: “We can keep you comfortable.”

Here comes Albert (referring to himself). He’s got the morphine and ativan, and I load them up and take off the high flow, and they gas themselves to death.

And I’m the guy who was pushing the buttons, like in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

I’m glad he does realize now and repented. Many more doctors and nurses need to do the same and we need to eliminate the CDC, the FDA and corrupt criminal politicians, along with Big Pharma and begin proceedings in a new Nuremberg trial and not stop with convicting a mere handful, but the entire lot of them.

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***

On Sunday, October 24th, representatives from more than six independent activist groups led by the Bolivarian Circle of Miami joined forces at the foot of the statue of Latin American hero, Simon Bolivar, in the Miami Torch of Friendship Park, to demand Venezuelan Ambassador Alex Saab’s immediate release from U.S. prison and repatriation to Venezuela. 

The Venezuelan diplomat was kidnapped twice by Washington. First, Alex Saab was kidnapped under orders of the Trump administration on June 12, 2020, while his plane refueled in Cape Verde, then again, under the Biden administration, on Saturday, October 16^th from Cape Verde to Miami. Ambassador Saab was abducted from Cape Verde without the knowledge of his legal team or family the day before the island’s presidential election. It was rightfully feared by Washington that the sure-to-be-elected opposition government would resist their criminal dictates and immediately free Ambassador Saab – and thus no longer be a stooge for the U.S. diplomatic hostage-taking and its infliction of physical and psychological torture.

While in custody, three of diplomat Saab’s molar teeth were broken and he was repeatedly beaten and subject to electroshock amongst degrading “searches”, long periods in stress positions, the withholding of food and water for three days, and coercion through deplorable holding cell conditions. Additionally, Diplomat Saab was denied medication for treating cancer and his other critical needs.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro explained on state TV that interrogators in Cape Verde used electric shocks to torture Ambassador Saab and extract a false confession that in the end never came.

“They wanted to force him into becoming a monster, a false accuser against Venezuela, against me, and against the Bolivarian revolution — something he never allowed.”

Nonetheless, Ambassador Saab released a statement that he “is of sound mind and not suicidal”. He is rightfully concerned that the authorities will fake his murder. Diplomat Saab also pledged his fidelity to President Maduro and the Venezuelan people.

Ambassador Saab also urged everyone to “be strong and always stay united” for justice for the people of Venezuela and all those oppressed worldwide by illegal U.S. unilateral economic sanctions – which amounts to nothing less than gangster imperialism.

According to U.S. authorities, Ambassador Saab is being held in a federal prison in Miami near its courthouse. This could not be confirmed by his legal team or his supporters and remains a point of concern at this time – as Ambassador Saab was only permitted to view his Miami court arraignment on Monday, October 18th by video.

Alex Saab’s next court appearance is scheduled for Monday, November 1, and support groups are busy organizing events. Washington’s actions against Diplomat Saab contradict both international and humanitarian laws.

First, in Cape Verde Diplomat Saab was illegally arrested since it was carried out in advance of Interpol’s “red-notice”. Additionally, on March 15th, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) court ruled that the continued detention and push for extradition of Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Saab by the Cape Verde government was illegal.

Second, charges of money laundering were dropped by the Swiss upon review by a Genevan investigation for inadequate evidence.

Third, the United States has no legal standing. It erroneously claims that Ambassador Saab was bribing Venezuelan Govt officials. If this is the case, then clearly this matter belongs in Venezuelan court, not in Miami using up federal and state tax dollars. Seriously, the U.S. is beset with the highest drug abuse numbers in the world. Why are we wasting millions on alleged “money laundering” charges that were at worst used to supply food and medicine to Venezuelans?

Without question and by admission, unilateral coercive economic sanctions are done routinely to “make the economy scream” and “enable regime change” in the targeted country.  However, in the longstanding cases of both Cuba and Iran this strategy hasn’t worked. In the case of Venezuela, it is hoped by Washington that the starvation and illness of its people will somehow facilitate the giveaway of its oil reserve, the largest in the world, to Exxon Mobil.

Let’s stop subsidizing corporate plunder. The U.S. has already committed theft and piracy against Venezuela and Iran with the unlawful seizing of Citgo and its transiting oil tankers. Also, why aren’t the alleged and unnamed U.S. Miami banks that are involved in Ambassador Saab’s case put on trial? The Manhattan district attorney has no problem fining foreign banks for “sanction” violations.

U.S Magistrate Judge John J. O’Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida is presiding over the case of Ambassador Saab:

Clyde Atkins U.S. Courthouse
301 North Miami Avenue, 5th floor
Miami, Florida 33128 (305) 523-5920

Alexander Kramer, of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Kurt K. Lunkenheimer, of the Southern District of Florida, are prosecuting the case.

Kurt K. Lunkenheimer
Assistant U.S. Attorney
Court ID No. A5501535
99 N.E. 4th Street
Miami, Florida 33132-2111
TEL (305) 961-9008
[email protected]

Alexander Kramer, Trial Attorney
Criminal Division, Fraud Section
U.S. Department of Justice
Court ID No. A5502240
1400 New York Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20005
TEL (202) 768-1919
[email protected]

The aforementioned judge and prosecutors are responsible for the illegality of these charges and for Ambassador Saab’s continued health & safety.

Fourth, with diplomatic status, Alex Saab cannot be arrested or imprisoned under international law. Outrageously, Washington claims Alex Saab isn’t a diplomat because “the State Department hasn’t approved him”. They also claim Nicolas Maduro, who won over 67% of the popular vote for his second term, “isn’t the president of Venezuela.” Instead, they anointed Juan Guaido as interim president. Guaido, a traitor to the Venezuelan people and a U.S. sock puppet, wasn’t even a candidate in the 2018 election. Yet, with Washington’s lawlessness, what would be a farce in any other context remains a threat – as Guaidó, left to his own devices, is merely a self-appointed president and a self-appointed leader of a self-appointed assembly.

Fifth, charges levied against Ambassador Saab involve his circumventing U.S. unilateral coercive economic sanctions waged against the Venezuelan people – which are illegal under both international and humanitarian law. This charge makes Ambassador Saab a hero for his repeated delivery of food and medicine to the impoverished. And as such, all people of conscience in and on behalf of 39 countries illegally oppressed by U.S. unilateral economic sanctions stand with Simon Bolivar and Alex Saab against Yankee imperialism today and always.

Alexa Weber, leader for the Bolivarian circle of Miami, provided interviews to independent press, and the following speakers were informative and energizing, leading the diverse group in chants to support President Maduro’s leadership, freedom for Diplomat Alex Saab, and Hands-off Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua:

• Cassia Laham from Power People’s Opposition to War, Imperialism & Racism and UNAC
• Kahlil Sankara from Troika Collective
• Didier Ortiz from Bolivarian Circle of Miami & Troika Collective
• Will Blake from Committee to Stop FBI Repression
• Pete Seidman from Hands off Cuba & Venezuela

Please follow the above-referenced groups for evolving information on Ambassador Saab’s next court appearance scheduled for Nov 1^st.  Washington be warned, Alex Saab is already considered a humanitarian in the international community and with U.S. activists. If he’s incapacitated or murdered in custody, Ambassador Saab will be elevated to martyr status and his image will be used worldwide in perpetuity to rally millions against illegal U.S. unilateral coercive economic sanctions that kill the impoverished.

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Lauren Smith is an independent journalist and member of the Green Party and Sanctions Kill.com. Her work has been published by Alliance for Global Justice, Black Agenda Report, Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Global Research, CA, Monthly Review, and Telesur amongst others. She holds a BA in Politics, Economics, and Society from SUNY at Old Westbury and an MPA in International Development Administration from New York University. Her historical fiction novel based on Nicaragua’s 1979 revolution is due out in 2022.

All images in this article are from the author

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***

While the world, for very good reasons, is relying on medical research in order to save the lives of millions, the “powers that be” are hardly listening to what climate science is saying about the existential threat to billions posed by global heating.

Since 1751 the world has emitted over 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO₂. The atmospheric level of CO₂ was 413.2 parts per million (ppm) in 2020, growing at peak rates of 2.5-3.0 ppm/year, representing the greatest acceleration since the dinosaur mass extinction of 66 million years ago.

“The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO₂ was 3-5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3°C warmer and sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now”, Prof. Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization said in a news release.

The rise of atmospheric greenhouse gases to levels >>400 ppm has the potential to rapidly transform the atmosphere into conditions similar to those of the Miocene and even the Eocene — a catastrophe for life on Earth.

Figure 1. Comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO₂ has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Credit: NASA, data: Luthi, D., et al. 2008; Etheridge, D.M., et al. 2010; Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.)

Figure 2. Percent rises of CO2, CH4 and NO2 since 1750 (after Sam Carana)

According to the IPCC

“the effects of +1.5°C of warming (relative to mean pre-industrial temperature), plus the projection that half a degree Celsius, 2°C versus 1.5°C, will make quite a considerable difference in the livability of planet Earth […] the trajectory of warming based on historical trends will see increases certainly above 3°C and possibly much more if emissions aren’t cut […] the whole world must become carbon neutral by 2050.”

Figure 3. Global mean temperature deviation from 1880-1900: all 19 years since 2002 rank among the 20 warmest. (Image by Munichre.com based on NOAA data)

Average global temperatures may be misleading. According to NASA, “The impacts of climate change haven’t been spread evenly around our planet [..] The strongest warming is happening in the Arctic during its cool seasons, and in Earth’s mid-latitude regions during the warm season”. The reduced albedo of the melting polar ice sheets are driving global warming at a rate faster than elevated temperatures in the tropics.

While the focus of international policies is on the essential reduction in emissions, it is the cumulative effect of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which drives global warming. The 2020 CO₂ level being 413.30 ppm, exceeding pre-industrial levels by more than 133 ppm. Unless civilization finds a way to down-draw CO₂ from the atmosphere, amplifying feedbacks from land and oceans will continue to heat the Earth, due to:

1. The polar albedo (reflection) decline due to large-scale lateral and vertical melting of ice;
2. Reduced CO₂ intake by the warming oceans. Currently the oceans absorb between 35-42 percent of all CO₂ emitted to the atmosphere and around 90 percent of the excess heat;
3. Warming, desiccation, deforestation and fires over land areas;
4. Release of methane from melting of permafrost and from polar sediments;
5. An increase in evaporation, particularly in arid zones, raising atmospheric vapor levels which enhances the greenhouse gas effect.

These feedbacks result in an accelerated climate change, as projected by Wally Broecker and others, and potentially in mass extinction. A climate chain-reaction is believed to have pertained about 55 million years ago during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM). According to Peter Ward and others, early examples of mass extinctions triggered by biological processes were related to ocean anoxia and acidification leading to methane (CH₄) and hydrogen sulfate (H₂S) release by “purple” and “green” algae and sulphur bacteria. In a similar sense anthropogenic global warming constitutes a geological/biological process for which the originating organism (sapiens) has not to date discovered an effective method of control.

Sequestration of CO₂ is essential due to the amplifying feedbacks of global warming, which are pushing temperatures up in a chain reaction-like process.

Whereas the aim of the Glasgow COP26 Conference is to reach agreement for limiting mean global temperature to <1.5°C, the short-term mitigating effect of aerosols on global temperatures, namely ~0.5 – 1.0°C, means global temperatures are already nearing ~2.0°C.

Hopes that the Glasgow climate meeting would help save the world from a climate catastrophe would depend on:

1. Binding agreements for the most abrupt reduction of carbon emissions rates to pre-peak rates of about 1 ppm/year or lower, requiring a world-wide transformation of agricultural, industrial and transport systems;
2. Attempts at sequestration/drawdown of greenhouse gases aimed at reducing the current atmospheric CO₂ levels to near-350 ppm or lower (Hansen et al. 2013). Whereas the engineering efforts and costs of such attempts cannot be overestimated, such could in principle be achieved by diversion from the astronomical budgets invested in defense industries, eventually aimed at future wars and further catastrophe.

The concept of a “carbon budget”, allowing the world to constrain emission to a particular amount of greenhouse gases in order to limit warming, does not take into account the amplifying feedbacks to warming from land and oceans, nor possible reversals due to the flow of cold water from melting ice sheets into the oceans.

The critical criterion definitive of global warming, namely the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, rising by nearly ~50% since pre-industrial time, is only rarely mentioned. Nor are other quantitative measures of climate change, such as the level of methane and nitrous oxide, which have risen by about 3-fold being highlighted. While opinions by journalists, politicians, economists and social scientists proliferate, less attention is given to what is indicated by climate science. This reluctance renders the global response to the looming climate calamity increasingly irrelevant.

It is the ethical duty of scientists to advice governments and the public of dangerous developments, but it incurs a heavy price to pay for communicating worrying news Cassandra-like, including social and professional isolation. Don’t envy scientists aware of the ultimate consequences of global warming. Many have either self-censored or their work suppressed or dismissed within institutions and the media, including in governments and academia.

The reluctance of too many to undertake effective defense of the Earth’s climate, since nearly 40 years ago, can only culminate in devastation of the planet’s life support systems—one of the greatest catastrophes the planet has undergone since the dinosaur extinction about 66 million years ago.

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This article was originally published on Arctic News.

Dr Andrew Glikson is an Earth and Paleo-climate scientist, Canberra, Australia. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: People hold signs during the March for Science in Melbourne, Australia on April 22, 2017. (Photo: Takver/flickr/ccc)

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***

Interactions between the Russian and Chinese navies have special significance after the US, UK and Australia indirectly announced their aim to put pressure on both countries and turn the Asia-Pacific region into an Anglo lake. Facing an unprovoked threat, Moscow and Beijing are demonstrating their cooperation to jointly protect their interests against foreign provocateurs.

Russian and Chinese naval ships for the first time in history passed through the Tsugaru Strait between Honshu and Hokkaido in northern Japan, which connects the Sea of Japan with the Pacific Ocean. The two navies carried out joint training and tactical exercises. During the voyage, the ships covered more than 1,700 nautical miles.

For many years, the US Navy and its allies have conducted unilateral or multilateral patrols in international waters. In recent years, the Chinese Navy has also coordinated with partners, such as the Vietnamese Navy to conduct a number of joint patrols in the Gulf of Tonkin where the two countries share a common maritime border that has been demarcated in an agreement since 1999. The Vietnamese Navy also coordinates with the Cambodian and Thai Navies to conduct joint patrols in some areas in the Gulf of Thailand.

From the Russian and Chinese perspective, the recent joint naval exercise is a message that both countries want to send to AUKUS and their peripheral allies. The joint exercises took place in the context of the US and its NATO allies increasing anti-Russian activities, such as military exercises close to the Russian border. This has caused diplomatic issues, with Moscow suspending the work of its official mission to NATO in Brussels.

In the East, the US, along with its fellow Anglo allies Britain and Australia, signed the AUKUS treaty, forming an alliance to contain China in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans. AUKUS is also alongside the QUAD formation that comprises of the US, Japan, India, and Australia. Due to the emergence of AUKUS and QUAD, Beijing and Moscow are finding that their partnership must have a stronger military element if they want to be able to push back Washington-instigated aggression. This too of course is especially important for Russia as it mostly faces pressure from its Western borders, and will certainly not want a new pressure front on its East.

Talking about a close military alliance between Moscow and Beijing at this point may be premature though. Although the US and its allies have not yet made a definite military move against both countries, the unusual increase in naval activities in the Western Pacific has forced both countries to take action. The fact that the Russian-Chinese joint patrol took place right after the “Sea Cup” competition, which had the participation of Vietnam, Russia, China, Azerbaijan, Iran, Myanmar, and Kazakhstan and was within the framework of the “Army Games 2021”, signals that they want to warn their adversaries that they are fully prepared to take action to defend their sovereignty.

The joint Russian-Chinese maneuvers are also a signal to Washington that its policy of attempting to manipulate Russia against China or enticing China against Russia, like Richard Nixon did during the Vietnam War years, is impossible. However, it is not excluded that if the US and the West continue to increase their hostile activities against Russia and China, causing more tension, Moscow and Beijing could increase the level of their political and military links to “eliminate threats” emanating from common adversaries.

The AUKUS bloc was created to put pressure on China in the Asia-Pacific region, but it can easily extend to include Russia’s East. In such a situation, it is important to demonstrate that Moscow and Beijing are willing to cooperate and jointly protect their interests. The joint patrol by the Russian and Chinese fleets in the Pacific Ocean is one form of that.

By also sailing through the Tsugaru Strait, Russia and China are also sending a warning to Japan that they will utilize every advantage available if AUKUS or QUAD escalate tensions. Tokyo only claims three-nautical miles in the Tsugaru Strait instead of a 12-nautical mile maritime boundary as permitted by international law. This situation emerged during the Cold War so that US nuclear-armed vessels could pass through the strait, cutting travel time between the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Japan without violating Japan’s “Non-Nuclear Principles.” Japan does not permit nuclear weapons on its territory, including its maritime space.

However, this arrangement also means that all navies from across the world can pass through the Strait, therefore coming within touching distance of Honshu and Hokkaido islands. Whilst Japan is a willing participant of the anti-China QUAD formation and will surely assist AUKUS in their activities, they have left themselves vulnerable just for the sake of accommodating US nuclear vessels.

With the Pacific region heating up as the Anglo alliance continues to pressure Russia and China, both countries are now making bold steps to demonstrate that they are more than willing to defend their sovereignty, so-much-so that they will conduct joint exercises together in not only a show of force, but to also expose the vulnerability of Japan.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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***

How things have changed since Donald Trump came and went as US president. Until then, I was able to identify myself as firmly on the progressive left. Now – with the Covid pandemic only reinforcing the post-Trump trauma – I find myself in some weird no-man’s land, trapped and squeezed between two ballooning ideological tribes that sound too much alike on too many questions.

That was driven home by a new interview with Noam Chomsky – someone whose influence on me is such that it has shaped the evolution of my intellectual journey over the past two decades. Like many on the left, I am in Chomsky’s eternal debt for helping to liberate me from decades of mind manipulation that is the fate of anyone who passes through our schools and universities, watches the billionaire-owned media (or in my case, once worked in it) or pursues a professional career.

But still, there is only so far a debt even of this magnitude justifies indulging assumptions of the kind expressed in the Chomsky interview.

In it, the famous linguist and political thinker argues that those who are not vaccinated against Covid should be socially shunned, required to isolate and – in the final assault on a social solidarity he cites as the justification for his argument – even potentially put in danger of destitution. They have only themselves to blame for their plight, he concludes.

Yes, Chomsky really did say that – though doubtless many on the left will rush to parse his words to suggest there was a “nuance” in the interview I missed. And worse, judging by the comments, lots of people on the left – and right – seem to agree with him. There certainly doesn’t seem to be much nuance in their views.

You can watch the relevant section of the interview, and an earlier one, here:

Noam Chomsky doubles down on his previous call for the state to segregate The Unvaccinated from society:

"How can we get food to them? Well, that's actually their problem."

via @PrimoRadical https://t.co/WIjVOs1h7I pic.twitter.com/ZudDW6weoj

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) October 25, 2021

Waning immunity 

Let’s analyse the analogy Chomsky offers: Are people who do not take the vaccine really behaving as if they think there should be no traffic laws and we should all be able to drive as we please?

Strangely, Chomsky appears to be including in this “lawless” group of unvaccinated people those who have actually had Covid and who, the medical research suggests, now have better natural immunity to the disease than the immunity induced by medical assistance. (Note that new research suggests that those taking the Janssen vaccine have only 3% immunity after five months, while Pfizer’s is about 50%.)

It is hard to ascribe this lacuna in Chomsky’s argument to some kind of oversight. Given that he is normally such a careful and precise thinker, we must assume that Chomsky wants all unvaccinated people – whatever their immunity status – to be forced into isolation, even if that puts them at risk of destitution.

In Chomsky’s telling, it seems, the only basis on which to determine who is “safe” to the rest of society is those who have been vaccinated. That is also what Big Pharma and the billionaire-owned media insist on too. But they have a better excuse: after all, they profit from our exclusive reliance on vaccines.

Tyranny of the majority 

Back to Chomsky’s analogy. The problem with it is that it obscures far more than it illuminates.

His point is that, if people were allowed to make up their own rules of the road, to act on their own selfish impulses and ideas of advantage, there would be carnage. Which is why we have those traffic laws.

Let’s set aside a debate about whether carnage would actually be the outcome, and just assume it would. How does that help us understand the phenomenon of people being hesitant or resistant to getting vaccinated and clarify how we should treat them?

In democratic societies, the social contract is based on a compromise – between individual freedoms, on one side, and the wider needs of the social group for security, on the other. There is often a tension between those two things. In healthy societies, a resolution is reached after weighing those conflicting needs and deciding, ideally through a general consensus, which should take priority in each case under consideration.

In western societies we have, for good or bad, traditionally given a great deal of autonomy to the individual. So much so that in a trend that created our current neoliberal form of capitalism, corporations have been accorded the protected status of individuals – as Chomsky has helpfully explained – allowing them to get away with corporate murder. They poison our water and air, kill off the insects that support life, destroy trees that are the lungs of the planet, and so on.

What most people expect of the social contract is that it offers a balance between the tendency towards authoritarianism of the state and a tyrannical majority, on one side, and the rights of the minority, on the other. 

There is an essentially selfish basis to this for each of us: today I am in the majority, but tomorrow I may find myself in the minority. The only people who generally favour tyrannical majorities are those who lack the ability to imagine the day when they may no longer belong in the majority.

Balance sheet 

So how does all this apply to Covid and the vaccines?

The issue with mandating people to take the current vaccines – or, as Chomsky does, insisting that only the vaccinated be allowed to engage in the most basic acts of life, like going to buy food – is that it ignores the principle of proportionality. It sweeps aside the idea of compromise at the heart of the social compact.

Proportionality is important in democracies – both as a principle for the social group and as a practical measure by which individuals judge how best to act. We use it as a yardstick all the time.

If someone shouts at me in the street and I punch them in the face in response, most people would agree that my act was disproportionate. If the police arrest me for writing a rude tweet to a celebrity, most people (though possibly fewer than a year or two ago) would think that is also disproportionate.

In each case, we are making a judgment about what constitutes socially acceptable behaviour, and where the dividing lines lie between classifying things as normal, inappropriate and downright unlawful. In reaching that conclusion we must also weigh what harm is being done to the individual and to the group by treating something that was once acceptable as unacceptable, or something that was formerly frowned upon as now illegal.

There is a balance sheet in every one these judgments, even if we rarely run through the pros and cons consciously.

Thought experiment 

So how should we balance the right to bodily autonomy of the individual in refusing the vaccine and the desire of society to protect itself from the Covid pandemic?

As with all other cases, there is no abstract principle that can be adduced – plucked from the ethers – to reach a decision. In difficult cases, the balance sheet has to be examined particularly carefully and appeals to emotion or hysteria avoided.

How this bears out in the case of Covid can be better underscored if we do a small thought experiment. Imagine for a brief moment that we are not facing Covid, but instead a global pandemic of Ebola.

Imagine that Ebola is as transmissible as Covid and has become as endemic in our communities. Ebola has an average death rate of about 50 per cent – one in two people who catch it are likely to die from it.

In those circumstances, how would we weigh forcing vaccine mandates on the general population? How would we treat those who resisted vaccination? And would we be okay with forcing them into isolation, even if that put them in danger of destitution?

No profiteers 

I suspect most people would feel far more comfortable in this scenario forcing people to be vaccinated and requiring parents to vaccinate their children. But maybe more to the point, the need to force people to vaccinate – outside of a few Jehovah’s Witnesses – would surely barely arise. The problem wouldn’t be vaccination hesitancy; it would be the stampede by members of the public to be the first vaccinated.

Faced with an Ebola pandemic, nobody sane would have doubts about whether the virus was dangerous, let alone whether it existed. The dangers would be so great and so obvious, there would be no room for doubt.

And for that reason, we wouldn’t be complacently letting a few pharmaceutical companies exploit the pandemic for profit. Our whole economies would be put on a war footing to find better vaccines and a wider array of treatments. Shunning profiteers from the pandemic would surely take precedence over shunning those unfortunates who were not vaccinated.

In other words, the situation would be entirely different from the one we have now with Covid.

Breaking point 

My imaginary scenario, of course, doesn’t settle the matter of what we do about Covid. But it does highlight that in the case of our real Covid pandemic – unlike my imaginary Ebola pandemic – there are issues to be weighed about the right of the individual to autonomy and the right of society to security. In the case of Covid, the answers aren’t anywhere near as clearcut as Chomsky is claiming. We aren’t facing Ebola, or anything even vaguely like it.

Let’s revisit the traffic analogy.

Even with traffic laws being universally observed, we still have substantial numbers of drivers and pedestrians killed and badly injured each year on our roads. Rightly or wrongly, few people call for the banning of cars on those grounds. We have weighed our freedom and convenience against road deaths, and decided that the freedom of the open road is more important to us.

In a post-vaccine world especially, we are not facing the road carnage caused by an Ebola virus. The danger to those who are vulnerable – at least in the hyper-selfish “developed” world – has been gradually diminishing from a mix of vaccines, boosters and better treatments. The dangers in much of the west, even for the vulnerable, are gradually starting to look closer to those from flu.

The biggest problem at this stage appears to be that we have Covid and flu, which may push our already strained and underfunded health services closer to breaking point this winter. Our health services are struggling to adapt to the new reality primarily because of long-standing political failures to prioritise public health care over private profit.

Who is a hazard? 

That some people are still dying of Covid is on one side of the ledger, just as it is when considering deaths from flu or deaths from cars. But for decades almost no one demanded vaccine mandates for flu, or the enforced isolation of people who refused to take a flu shot. And – again for good or bad – few people demand that people with cars should be fined or socially isolated.

And if they did, most of us would rightly think that there was a debate to be had first, a careful weighing of society’s priorities, rather than instant denunciation and isolation of those not vaccinated against flu or those who continued to own cars.

In the case of Covid, there are additional factors to be weighed – on the other side of the balance sheet – before agreeing that an individual’s autonomy must be violated by forcibly vaccinating them or imposing draconian punishments on them for refusing:

• The vast majority of those who need or wish to be protected from the virus, or the threat posed by the unvaccinated, can be through vaccination.
• It is not only the unvaccinated who pose a hazard to vulnerable fellow citizens. So do the vaccinated, because vaccine protection wanes rapidly, meaning the current vaccines will have a limited effect on transmission unless we forcibly vaccinate everyone every few months.
• The vaccines are a new technology whose short-term effects, if disappointing in terms of immunity, appear to be relatively safe. But the longer term effects cannot yet be fully gauged, and we should be cautious in ignoring or discounting any individual’s concerns about being required to take these new vaccines – or making their children take them.
• People may be risking their own health by refusing the vaccine, but – for good historical reasons – we should be extremely wary of establishing a precedent that they may be forced to do something against their will because others deem it in their best interests.

You may agree that all, some or none of these factors are relevant. But neither you nor I get to decide on our own. They need to be given a proper airing and to be weighed. The problem is we live in profit-driven societies, engineered to uphold the power of elites, that are incapable of airing such matters fairly or allowing us to weigh them dispassionately. Which is precisely the reason for the social breakdown that so concerns Chomsky – and me.

Divisive rhetoric 

There is a final way in which Chomsky’s traffic analogy may be helpful, if not in the way he intended.

For decades our media have preferred to focus on the problems caused by drunk drivers, or speeding motorists, or even car pollution. But these issues, however significant they are in our daily lives, are overshadowed by the far more terrifying reality that our car and oil-dependent economies are taking a suicidal toll on our species by destroying the climate.

Fixating on one can be a way to avoid thinking about the other.

Something similar seems to be happening with Covid. We fixate on vaccines and “anti-vaxxers”, on mandates and passports – on blaming each other – rather than the reality that our societies and our social contracts were long ago hollowed out by corporate interests that captured the state.

If there is hesitancy over the vaccines it is because a portion of society is not afraid enough of the virus either to overcome their fear of a pharmaceutical industry that long ago put profits ahead of people or to set aside their doubts about the capture of our regulatory authorities by those same corporations.

Calling for the unvaccinated to be forcibly isolated makes for an easy and emotionally satisfying soundbite. If Tucker Carlson or Trump said it, most of the left would immediately understand it as unhelpful, divisive rhetoric. It doesn’t stop being that just because Chomsky is the one saying it.

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This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/ 

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

In a podcast episode released last Tuesday, New York Times best-selling author, Alex Berenson, who was permanently suspended from Twitter, appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience” to discuss the latest reports on the COVID vaccines out of the UK.

Berenson showed Rogan a report entitled “COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance Report Week 38” from Public Health England (PHE), which is equivalent to the Center for Disease Control in the United States. He pointed to the fact that the British Government’s own data shows the majority of COVID cases and deaths occurred in the fully vaccinated during the month of September, or more specifically, between the weeks of 34 and 37 2021. Berenson said:

“I have to keep saying this to people because they almost don’t believe it. In the UK, more than 70% of the people who die now from COVID are fully vaccinated.”

According to Table 4 from the PHE Report, during the month of September, there were a total of 3,158 COVID deaths in England. PHE defines deaths as occurring “within 28 days of a positive specimen (COVID-19 test) or COVID-19 reported on death certificate”. And, they define fully vaccinated as “14-days or more after the second dose of a 2-dose vaccine”. In total, 2,284 of the 3,158 total COVID deaths in England for the month of September were fully vaccinated. In other words, 72.32% of COVID-19 deaths in England during September were fully vaccinated.

Berenson continued,

“I’m going to keep saying it because nobody believes it, but the numbers are there in the government documents. They are not a secret. It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s not somebody saying I heard this from my cousin. It’s in British government documents.”

“What I want everyone to see,” he said. “Is that the vast majority of people in Britain who died in September were fully vaccinated. Those are the numbers.”

Berenson also discussed England’s “case rates by vaccination status” featured in Table 2 of the same PHE Report. Berenson said:

“This is UK Government data and what it says is that the idea that it is a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ is a total lie. You are more likely to become sick if you are vaccinated than if you are not if you are older than 40.”

According to Table 2, during September, there were a total of 256,686 cases recorded for people above the age of 40. In total, 205,197 of the 256,686 cases in England during September were fully vaccinated. More specifically, 79.94% of the COVID-19 cases in England above the age of 40 during September were fully vaccinated. Furthermore, for those 40 and older, the average rate of COVID-19 per 100,000 was higher in the fully vaccinated at 724 per 100,000 compared to the unvaccinated at 520 per 100,000. This means in England during the month of September, if you were 40 or older, you were more likely to catch COVID-19 if you were vaccinated, rather than if you were unvaccinated.

The rate of cases per 100,000 classified by age group and vaccination status can be better visualized with Figure 2 from the same PHE Report. Note, the 40 and older age groups, where the fully vaccinated (blue) have a higher chance of catching COVID-19 than the unvaccinated (pink). Now, on the other hand, for those 39 and below, according to this data, the unvaccinated have a higher chance of contracting COVID-19, but considering the 10,000-fold difference in mortality rates between the old and the young, high COVID-19 rates in people under the age of 40 is exponentially less of a risk of hospitalization and death compared to high COVID-19 rates among the elderly. For example, according to the UK Government, between March 2020 and January 2021, 436 of 80,820 total COVID-19 deaths were 39 and below, representing half of one percent of the countries deaths, while the median age of death was 82 and the mean age of death was 80.

Alex Berenson came on the “Joe Rogan Experience” as it is now established fact across the medical community that these vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission. They are by definition “leaky vaccines”. In other words, they are vaccines that lower the chance of severe illness but still allow for infection and transmission of the virus. The real revelations here are the extent of cases and deaths occurring in the fully vaccinated in England during the month of September. How is it possible that public health officials and media pundits in the United States continue to call it a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” when 72.32% of COVID deaths in England occurred in the fully vaccinated last month? Why is no one in the mainstream media acknowledging the United Kingdom’s publicly available data showing for the 40 and older age groups, 79.94% of COVID-19 cases in England during September were fully vaccinated?

There is simply no way that England has completely contradictory data to the United States with the same virus and vaccines. Similar patterns to Public Health England’s data can be found in other countries around the world. For example, data from Israel, Iceland, and Singapore also show the majority of COVID cases in the fully vaccinated. In summary, U.S. public health and political officials with the help of corporate media outlets are lying, manipulating, and deceiving the American public. Meanwhile, an independent journalist like Alex Berenson will continue to seek out publicly available data from foreign nations to hold U.S. officials accountable.

In contrast, the fact-checkers at Reuters, the Associated Press, and the New York Times will debunk these statements by saying that the majority of people over the age of 40 are fully vaccinated in England, therefore it is to be expected that the majority of COVID-19 deaths would be fully vaccinated. Which does not change the fact that 72.32% of COVID deaths in England last month were fully vaccinated. Nor, does it debunk the fact that, if you are above the age of 40, you are more likely to catch COVID-19 if you are vaccinated rather than if you are unvaccinated according to this report from Public Health England.

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***

Now that Kiev is in possession of such potentially game-changing offensive weapons that have already been proven to have emboldened its aggression in the ongoing civil war over its eastern region’s future political status, there’s nothing that Ankara can do to restrain its partner.

I wrote earlier this summer that “Turkey’s Military Engagement With The Lublin Triangle Aims To Balance Russia”, which prognosticated the strategic impact of that country’s drone sales to Ukraine, Poland, and perhaps soon also Lithuania as well. Humbly speaking, my work accurately assessed the strategic dynamics in hindsight after one of Kiev’s Turkish drones just struck Donbass, prompting Russian presidential spokesman Peskov to once again warn about their destabilizing impact on regional conflicts such as that one.

Turkey’s “drone diplomacy” has become the primary pillar of its larger “military diplomacy”, which refers to the use of military means to advance political and strategic ends. In the case of Turkish-Ukrainian military cooperation, this aims to asymmetrically “balance” Russia’s military superiority in the Black Sea region. It can also be interpreted as tacit Turkish backing of NATO’s regional goals despite Ankara’s problems with many of that bloc’s Western members in recent years.

President Erdogan is practicing a very careful “balancing” act between East and West, which explains the unexpected diplomatic de-escalation between Turkey and the West a few days ago following 10 Western ambassadors’ joint statement last week demanding the release of a jailed businessman who they regard as a “political prisoner”. Turkey would prefer not to become too dependent on East or West, to which end it still tacitly coordinates with NATO in the Lublin Triangle while simultaneously enhancing ties with Russia and China.

The problem is that the proverbial genie is already out of the bottle when it comes to that country’s “drone diplomacy” with Ukraine. Now that Kiev is in possession of such potentially game-changing offensive weapons that have already been proven to have emboldened its aggression in the ongoing civil war over its eastern region’s future political status, there’s nothing that Ankara can do to restrain its partner. To the contrary, it’s now compelled to continue providing more equipment, spare parts, and maintenance.

This counterproductively serves to make Turkey an unofficial military participant in the Ukrainian Civil War. Although its role is much less than other NATO countries, it’s disproportionately significant because of the impact that its “drone diplomacy” has already had in reviving Kiev’s destabilizing aggression. If left unchecked, which is extremely likely for reasons of “military diplomatic” inertia, then this development could contribute to further complicating Russian-Turkish relations.

President Erdogan might therefore have gone a little bit too far in his attempts to “balance” Russia in the Lublin Triangle, which represents the northern reaches of the increasingly tense Black Sea region. Selling drones to NATO-member Poland and potentially to that country’s Lithuanian neighbor are one thing since neither are involved in any hot conflicts at the moment while providing them to Ukraine is another matter entirely because of its ongoing civil war that’s regarded (whether rightly or wrongly) as a NATO-Russia proxy war.

For comparison’s sake despite being an imperfect example, it would be as if Russia outfitted Syria with similar offensive weaponry then let it loose to bomb Turkish-backed “rebels”. Selling unarmed drones to Ukraine or Syria on the condition that they not be deployed until Turkey or Russia approves and then subsequently provides their armaments could be a creative use of “military diplomacy”, but exporting these wares already armed, ready to go, and under the full control of the recipient can lead to an uncontrollable situation.

Just as Russia unofficially seems to regard Turkey as an undeclared military participant in the conflict, so too would Turkey regard Russia as the same in the above example, especially if Turkish-allied “rebels” were struck by Syria’s Russian drones in that admittedly imperfect example. One can only imagine the Turkish reaction in such a scenario, yet Russia is remaining cool for now considering the immensely sensitive nature of its relations with Turkey. Be that as it may, as was already written, the genie is out of the bottle and won’t be put back in.

The new regional reality in Eastern Ukraine is that Turkey provided potentially game-changing weapons to Kiev which have already been proven to have emboldened it to carry out more acts of destabilizing aggression. Turkey might not have thought everything fully through, or perhaps it did and decided to up the stakes in its regional competition with Russia with the expectation that it can succeed in asymmetrically restoring a sense of military “balance” with it in the broader Black Sea region.

The first possibility would be the best-case scenario since it would at least enable Turkey to retain a degree of “plausible deniability” over its potentially hostile intentions towards Russian interests. The second, meanwhile, would worsen bilateral relations, especially if any of Turkey’s representatives – especially President Erdogan – publicly lent credence to these motives. Hopefully that won’t happen and this potentially major challenge to Russian-Turkish relations can be responsibly managed as effectively as possible given the new circumstances.

*

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

Featured image is from OneWorld

Nature of the COVID Era Public Health Disaster in the USA: From All-cause Mortality and Socio-geo-economic and Climatic Data

By Dr. Denis G. Rancourt, Dr. Marine Baudin, and Dr. Jérémie Mercier, October 26, 2021

We investigate why the USA, unlike Canada and Western European countries, has a sustained exceedingly large mortality in the “COVID-era” occurring from March 2020 to present (October 2021). All-cause mortality by time is the most reliable data for detecting true catastrophic events causing death, and for gauging the population-level impact of any surge in deaths from any cause.

The Covid-19 Timeline. No Evidence of a “Pandemic”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 26, 2021

September 19, 2019: The ID-2020 Alliance. Establishing a Vaccine Digital Passport. GAVI held their Summit in New York, entitled “Rising to the Good ID Challenge”. The  focus was on the establishment under the auspices of GAVI (Alliance for Vaccine Identity) of a vaccine with an embedded digital passport. The stated objective was the creation of a global digital data base.

Video: The Vaccine is More Dangerous than COVID-19: Dr. Peter McCullough

By Dr. Peter McCullough and Michael Welch, October 26, 2021

They produce a lethal spike protein in insensitive organs like the brain or the heart or elsewhere. The spike protein damages blood vessels, damages organs, causes blood clots. So it’s well within the mechanism of action that the vaccine could be fatal. Someone could have a fatal blood clot.

Fully Vaccinated Are Suffering Far Higher Rates of Infection than the Unvaccinated, and It Is Getting Worse

By Brian Shilhavy, October 26, 2021

10 months into the COVID-19 mass vaccination campaigns in the UK, statistics provided by the UK’s Health Security Agency now clearly show that those who have been fully vaccinated are suffering far worse health and are susceptible to infections at greater rates than the unvaccinated.

Governor de Santis Says that If People Are Forced by Their Employer to be Vaccinated, and Then Become Ill, the Employer Will be Liable for Damages

By Dr. Meryl Nass, October 26, 2021

Well, a lot of negative information is now known, but it isn’t being provided on the “Fact Sheets”. And people are not being given the right to refuse. Furthermore, as the Governor points out, employees are not being issued religious and medical waivers, as required by federal law.

Tiffany Dover. Two Dead Students. A Nurse Quits. Is Tennessee Eventually Waking Up?

By John Goss, October 26, 2021

Suddenly there has been an re-awakening in the case of “Pfizer-vaccinated” nurse, Tiffany Dover, who was recorded as having died following the injection. Her place of employment, CHI Memorial Hospital, Tennessee, deny that she is dead and told me in a short email: “We have made several statements. Tiffany is alive and continues her work as a nurse manager.”

Canadian Public Health Report Reflects Increased Heart Condition Side Effects for 12-17 Year Old Males as Vaccination Rates Increase

By Sundance, October 26, 2021

Many academic institutions and athletic organizations are requiring vaccinations as a condition of participation.  This puts increased pressure on teens and young adults to take the vaccine despite any concerns of side effects. Many parents are also willing and eager to face the risks.

Pressure to Dissolve the UN Security Council: Putin Warns of League of Nations Revival. What Are the Implications?

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, October 26, 2021

As walls separating east and west along Manichean Cold War lines of “democratic/free” vs “authoritarian/enslaved” are quickly being erected before our eyes, it is worth pondering not only the deeper implication of the Russian president’s message but also those healthier pathways out of the coming storm before it is too late.

Billions of Euros to “Innovate” the Nuclear NATO

By Manlio Dinucci, October 26, 2021

NATO has ended up in the attic,” wrote the political commentators of several newspapers a month ago, after France had withdrawn its ambassador from Washington on September 16.

What Next after Sudan Changes Guards at the Crossroad?

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, October 26, 2021

As reported October 25 by the reputable state media, Al Arabiya, Sudanese army and a cross-section of its population have returned, expressing dissatisfaction about the government. What is really at stake all these years is closely linked to the level of development and the living standard of the majority among the estimated 45 million population.

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

Sudan was subject to another military coup, two years after its previous one.

October 26th dawned with General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de-facto leader of the country, dissolving the military-civilian Sovereign Council.

It was previously established to guide the country to democracy following the overthrow of long-ruling autocrat Omar al-Bashir two years ago, that was also carried out by the military.

In the entire history of Sudan, the military has always played a significant role and intervened in politics, essentially defining it.

On October 25th, General Burhan announced a state of emergency, saying the armed forces needed to protect safety and security.

He then vowed to hold elections in July 2023 and hand over power to the elected civilian government, until then a military junta would be in charge.

The Sudan information ministry, which is still loyal to ousted Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, said that the transitional constitution gives only the prime minister the right to declare a state of emergency and that the military’s actions are a crime.

Some citizens opposed to the coup barricaded streets and clashed with troops, but a significant part of the population supported the military.

The main opposition coalition, Forces of Freedom and Change said that it was calling for peaceful actions in the streets to overthrow the military takeover, including demonstrations, the blocking of streets and civil disobedience.

That didn’t work, as at least 7 people have been killed and 140 have been injured, so far.

The information ministry urged resistance saying tens of thousands of people are opposed to the takeover and many have even been subjected to live fire near the military headquarters in Khartoum.

Meanwhile, social polls demonstrated that the majority of the population was dissatisfied with the work of the overthrown government.

The government under Prime Minister Hamdok was mostly guided by the recommendations of the IMF, and as a result brought the country’s economy almost to collapse.

With much of the population starving.

In addition, the United States said that it was withholding $700 million in economic aid until further notice.

The United States supports the ousted government, as do the the United Nations, Arab League and African Union all of which expressed concern.

Great Britain condemned the coup, while Egypt said all sides needed to exercise restraint.

Sudan is in a strategic area, and can be considered as the “gateway” to the Central African Republic and neighboring regions.

It is of great interest for world and regional leaders.

Sudan has always been famous as one of the key transport hubs in the northeast of Africa.

This includes various kinds of illicit smuggling as well.

It is also no surprise that the military could quickly mobilize and take power in their hands, as it is quite capable, as well as being well-equipped according to regional standards.

Both Russian and Belarusian military instructors have made sure that the soldiers and officers are primed for most scenarios.

However it is difficult to say that foreigners, whether Russians, Turks or Americans, take any active part in the ongoing events.

The Sudanese army elite simply does not need it.

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***

“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.” — They Live

We are living in an age of mayhem, madness and monsters.

Monsters with human faces walk among us. Many of them work for the U.S. government.

What we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.

Through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny, the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, disease, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

We have let the government’s evil-doing and abuses go on for too long.

We have bought into the illusion and refused to grasp the truth.

We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.

We’re living in two worlds: the world we see (or are made to see) and the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing; pandemic lockdowns (both mental and physical), real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation; and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.

The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers, disease, etc.).

They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being.

They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.

Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates.

Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: the moneyed elite who rule us view us as expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded.

In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.

In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.

Not only do you have to be rich—or beholden to the rich—to get elected these days, but getting elected is also a surefire way to get rich. As CBS News reports, “Once in office, members of Congress enjoy access to connections and information they can use to increase their wealth, in ways that are unparalleled in the private sector. And once politicians leave office, their connections allow them to profit even further.”

In denouncing this blatant corruption of America’s political system, former president Jimmy Carter blasted the process of getting elected—to the White House, governor’s mansion, Congress or state legislatures—as “unlimited political bribery… a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over.”

Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.

Sound familiar?

Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests.

We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism.

Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was established to be. It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps.

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary.

But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime?

The answer is the same in every age: fear.

Fear makes people stupid.

Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. And, as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbors and so on.

The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is working on the American populace.

Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist, we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.

As the Bearded Man warns in John Carpenter’s film They Live: “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”

In this regard, we’re not so different from the oppressed citizens in They Live, which was released more than 30 years ago, and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age or Carpenter’s other dystopian films.

Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.

Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.

In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.

In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.

In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.

In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”

And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.

It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.

When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.

Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”

When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.

This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.

A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.

In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”

From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different.

Despite the truth staring us in the face, we have allowed ourselves to become fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.

We live in a perpetual state of denial, insulated from the painful reality of the American police state by wall-to-wall entertainment news and screen devices.

Most everyone keeps their heads down these days while staring zombie-like into an electronic screen, even when they’re crossing the street. Families sit in restaurants with their heads down, separated by their screen devices and unaware of what’s going on around them. Young people especially seem dominated by the devices they hold in their hands, oblivious to the fact that they can simply push a button, turn the thing off and walk away.

Indeed, there is no larger group activity than that connected with those who watch screens—that is, television, lap tops, personal computers, cell phones and so on. In fact, a Nielsen study reports that American screen viewing is at an all-time high. For example, the average American watches approximately 151 hours of television per month.

The question, of course, is what effect does such screen consumption have on one’s mind?

Psychologically it is similar to drug addiction. Researchers found that “almost immediately after turning on the TV, subjects reported feeling more relaxed, and because this occurs so quickly and the tension returns so rapidly after the TV is turned off, people are conditioned to associate TV viewing with a lack of tension.” Research also shows that regardless of the programming, viewers’ brain waves slow down, thus transforming them into a more passive, nonresistant state.

Historically, television has been used by those in authority to quiet discontent and pacify disruptive people. “Faced with severe overcrowding and limited budgets for rehabilitation and counseling, more and more prison officials are using TV to keep inmates quiet,” according to Newsweek.

Given that the majority of what Americans watch on television is provided through channels controlled by six mega corporations, what we watch is now controlled by a corporate elite and, if that elite needs to foster a particular viewpoint or pacify its viewers, it can do so on a large scale.

If we’re watching, we’re not doing.

The powers-that-be understand this. As television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned in a 1958 speech:

We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.

When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”

We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Injustice is growing. Inequality is growing. Human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.

Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.

So where does that leave us?

The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight.

Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.

When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hyno-transmitter in They Live, he delivers a wake-up call for freedom. As Nada memorably declares, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”

In other words: we need to get active.

Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.

The real battle between freedom and tyranny is taking place right in front of our eyes, if we would only open them.

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 real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.

All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight.

Wake up, America.

If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.

*

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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).

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

A military coup was carried out in the Republic of Sudan on October 25 as the contradictions within the Sovereignty Council (SC) burst asunder.

This coalition of political and military interests was formed in the aftermath of tumultuous political events between December 2018 and June 2019.

The Chair of the SC, Maj. Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan engineered the removal and detentions of the interim Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok along with several other leading cabinet ministers within the transitional regime. Events leading up to the military coup can be traced back to the announced arrest of 40 people including military officers and civilians on September 21 ostensibly for plotting a seizure of state power.

A very limited and sketchy amount of information was published about the personalities and motivations of those arrested in September in what was described by Prime Minister Hamdok as a preemptive act. Differences among the political and military leadership of the SC had become well known over the last several months. The attempted coup in September was blamed on the supporters of former President Omar Hassan al-Bashir who remains in detention in Sudan pending the outcome of criminal charges levelled against him. Also, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Netherlands has warrants out for the arrest of al-Bashir yet he has not been extradited by the administrations which have governed since April 2019.

An agreement between the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) which led the demonstrations against the former administration of ousted President Omar Hassan al-Bashir beginning in December 2018, and the Transitional Military Council headed by al-Burhan and the commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (aka, Hemeti), created the political atmosphere for the formation of an interim administration. Hamdok, an economist who has held several administrative and diplomatic posts, was selected to be the political face of the SC.

During the early morning hours of October 25, reports emerged from Khartoum that a military coup was underway. Hamdok had been moved to an undisclosed location while the media remained silent on the rapidly unfolding events.

Later Gen. al-Burhan made a videotaped statement to the people of Sudan and the international community acknowledging the removal of Hamdok and other officials of the interim government. He claimed that the actions of the military were designed to carry out the ideals and objectives of the “December 2018 Revolution.”

Such an assertion is counter-intuitive since it was the military under the direction of the generals that seized power from President al-Bashir in April 2019. These actions were taken by the military in order to stave off a genuine popular revolution in Sudan.

Soon enough the military revealed its brutal and undemocratic character by carrying out a massacre of protesters on June 3, 2019. The attack on demonstrators occupying areas around the Ministry of Defense in the capital of Khartoum resulted in more than 100 deaths. Hundreds of others were wounded and injured while assaults on women and youth continued for several hours.

The October agreement which jump-started the SC set a timetable of 39 months for the transferal of power to a civilian government after multi-party elections. This deal resulted in placing Gen. al-Burhan as chairperson for the first 21 months. Later the civilian members of the SC were slated to take over the leadership of this alliance. The events since October 25 have

aborted this accord, known as the Draft Constitutional Declaration, while at the same time placing the negotiations for the end to rebel insurgencies in Darfur, Blue Nile, North and South Kordofan in jeopardy. A Juba Agreement was signed in South Sudan in October 2020 between the transitional administration and various rebel groups aimed at bringing the armed elements into a political process.

After it became clear that a coup had occurred on October 25, the Associated Press reported that:

“As plumes of smoke rose, protesters could be heard chanting, ‘The people are stronger, stronger!’ and ‘Retreat is not an option!’ Social media video showed crowds crossing bridges over the Nile to the center of the capital. The U.S. Embassy warned that troops were blocking parts of the city and urged the military ‘to immediately cease violence.’ Pro-democracy activist Dura Gambo said paramilitary forces chased protesters through some Khartoum neighborhoods. Records from a Khartoum hospital obtained by The Associated Press showed some people admitted with gunshot wounds.” See this.

One day after the coup it was reported that at least seven people had been killed and 140 injured in demonstrations across the country. Mass demonstrations began almost spontaneously after the announcement of a coup. Internationally, the African Union, the United Nations as well as the U.S. has issued statements opposing the military takeover.

Another Failure in U.S. Africa Policy

For decades now the political affairs of the Republic of Sudan have been a preoccupation of the U.S. State Department, Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Prior to the partition of the country in 2011, Sudan was the largest geographic nation-state in Africa. The country of 50 million was becoming an emerging oil-producing state maintaining ties with both the West and the developing countries.

During the 2000s, Sudan had good relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the People’s Republic of China through trade agreements and other forms of bilateral and multilateral relationships. However, international pressure from the U.S. under the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, sought to balkanize and destabilize the country. The U.S. engineered the creation of the Republic of South Sudan along with Britain, the former colonial power, and the State of Israel. Today, both North and South Sudan are in economic and political turmoil. The governments in Khartoum and Juba in the South are beholden to the whims and caprices of imperialism and its allies.

Since the overthrow of al-Bashir, the monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have pledged monetary assistance. The U.S. then pressured Hamdok into accords that are at extreme variance with the priorities and needs of the Sudanese people.

Hamdok and al-Burhan knelt to U.S. pressure and revoked without any legitimate authority, the Israel Boycott Act of 1958 which prohibits recognition and trade with Tel Aviv. In addition, the interim government accepted a proposal from the administration of President Donald Trump to pay hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars to survivors of victims of terrorist acts carried out in 1998 in Kenya and Tanzania and in 2000 in the Port of Aden off the coast of Yemen. There was no concrete evidence presented to the international community which could link the government of al-Bashir, which was toppled, to these bombings. Yet the people of Sudan will be forced to pay restitution for crimes ostensibly committed during a previous deposed administration.

This reckless disregard of the political and economic sovereignty of Sudan could only serve to weaken its national institutions and foment social chaos among the working class, youth, women’s organizations and professional associations. The coup has been condemned by numerous opposition groupings including the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) which has called for mass resistance against the putsch.

Biden Administration Maintains Same Imperialist Policy

The current administration of President Joe Biden has paid limited attention to foreign policy. His orientation has been quite similar to that of his predecessors Obama and Trump. Biden has continued and enhanced the hostility towards China, Iran, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Cuba, Venezuela, among other states. The potential for an international conflict over the strategic control of geo-political regions could very well erupt in the coming months. The failure of the Biden administration to intervene constructively in the Horn of Africa is fostering greater discord and instability.

With the seizure of power by the Sudanese military, this scenario lays focus on the need for a political revolution in the country along with several others. Despite the promises of monumental economic and security assistance from Washington and Tel Aviv, the Sudanese people continue to be mired in a cycle of declining wages, rising prices and political uncertainty.

It will be up to the workers, youth, women, professional associations and genuine political parties to build a coalition of popular forces that can secure victory over the military apparatus and construct a domestic and foreign policy independent of Washington and Wall Street. The intervention of the military in governmental affairs is once again becoming widespread on the African continent. In Chad, Mali and Guinea, similar developments have taken place. The African Union must address this crisis in order to prevent a further deterioration of the security situation on the continent.

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

Featured image: In this frame taken from video, the head of the military, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, announced in a televised address, that he was dissolving the country’s ruling Sovereign Council, as well as the government led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, in Khartoum, Sudan, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021. Burhan said the military will run the country until elections in 2023. His announcement came hours after his forces arrested the acting prime minister and other senior government officials.  (Sudan TV via AP)

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Three major Australian supermarket chains are adopting a COVID-19 vaccine mandate that will see 300,000 workers across the country get vaccinated or lose their job.

According to the Australian financial journal The Financial Review, the movement is being led by Woolworths, with rivals Aldi and Coles joining the fray.

The Woolworths mandate will be imposed on all staff members across its 1,200 retail outlets and Big W discount department stores; workers at its warehouses, distribution centers and offices will also be required to get the jab. Most Woolworths stores serve around 20,000 in-store customers every week.

The deadline for full vaccination in some areas of the country is January 31, while others will have until March 31 to get both shots. The company has said it will consider practical and individual issues staff members might have in complying with the mandate, with a final policy expected to be announced in November that will include provisions for legitimate religious and medical exemptions.

Coles, meanwhile, will require vaccination in most Australian states; their workforce totals 120,000 people across 837 supermarkets. Those in the affected areas must have received at least one dose by November 5 and a second one by December 17.

Meanwhile, German-owned discount grocery chain Aldi will be introducing similar rules that are expected to be announced following a consultation period that may last several weeks. The chief executive of the company, which has 12,000 staff working across its 570 stores there, said: “Our view is that requiring all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in the future is the best measure to ensure the health and safety of our teams and our customers.”

Other grocery chains, however, are taking a different approach. For example, Wesfarmers, owner of Target, Kmart and the Bunnings hardware chain in Australia, have said that only new employees will have to be vaccinated. Existing employees will not be subjected to a mandate given the high take-up rate among them that managing director Rob Scott attributes to informational sessions and vaccine leave arrangements.

Australia’s extreme measures don’t seem to be reducing cases

Australia has resorted to extreme measures to curb the virus, including an extended lockdown affecting most of the country and closing its borders, yet cases have continued to rise there and the government eventually chose to loosen some of its restrictive measures due to the toll they were taking on the economy. Melbourne, the country’s second-biggest city, has had lockdown measures in some form in place for 245 days, making it the home of the world’s longest enduring lockdown.

Meanwhile, Western Australia recently announced COVID-19 vaccine mandates for most workers, including not only supermarket staff but also teachers and other groups. The mandate will be rolled out across three groups that together make up 75 percent of the Western Australia workforce.

The first group includes meat processing workers, fire and emergency services workers, community workers, healthcare and elderly care staff, police officers, port and freight workers and mining workers, who must be fully jabbed by December 31.

Supermarket staff falls under the second category, whose deadline will be January 31. This group also includes restaurant and pub workers, childcare workers, construction workers and those working in public transport. Teachers and other school staff must be fully vaccinated by the time the school term begins. A third group includes government employees, parliament members and other retail workers, who must be fully vaccinated to go to work in the event of a lockdown, The Guardian reports.

Some Australians are already calling for boycotts of Woolworths, with thousands of people on Twitter registering their opposition to the company forcing its workers to take an experimental vaccine to maintain their employment, many of whom have been posting their weekly or yearly grocery expenditures to show the company how much money they will be losing.

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***

With President Biden succumbing to the CIA’s demand to continue keeping the CIA’s records relating to the Kennedy assassination secret, the question naturally arises: What is the CIA still hiding? (See my blog post of yesterday entitled “Surprise! Biden Continues the CIA’s JFK Assassination Cover-Up.”)

To understand what they are still hiding and why they are still hiding it, it’s necessary to go back to the 1990s during the era of the Assassination Records Review Board — and even further back than that to November 22, 1963 — the day that Kennedy was assassinated. 

People often say that if the CIA and the Pentagon had orchestrated the assassination of President Kennedy, someone would have talked by now. 

That’s just not true. When it comes to murder, people don’t talk. They know that if they do talk, they run the risk of themselves being murdered, maybe their families too. People who participate in murder schemes know that they had better keep their mouths shut or else.

One example is Mafia figure Jimmy Hoffa. We still don’t know who killed Hoffa. That’s because no one talked. Another example is Johnny Roselli, the liaison in the CIA-Mafia partnership to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. We still don’t know who murdered Roselli. No one has ever talked.

People who talk also run the risk of being prosecuted because there is no statute of limitations for murder. A good recent example is real-estate heir Robert Durst. He was recently convicted of murdering a person twenty-one years ago.

So, it was always a safe bet that the CIA and the Pentagon would be able to keep their regime-change operation in Dallas sealed in secrecy.

However, not so with respect to the fraudulent autopsy that the Pentagon carried out on President Kennedy’s body on the evening of the assassination. When the ARRB released people who had participated in the autopsy during the 1990s, they talked.

As I detailed in my books The Kennedy Autopsy and The Kennedy Autopsy 2 and in my online presentation in our Zoom conference last spring, a fraudulent autopsy was an essential part of the cover-up in the assassination.

The problem that the plotters had, however, is that in order to carry out this part of the cover-up, they had to enlist the assistance of many people within the vast national-security establishment who played no role in the assassination. Since all those people were innocent and mostly unwitting participants to the cover-up, they didn’t have the same incentive to stay quiet as the people who knowingly participated in the assassination itself.

The military did its best to keep everyone quiet by telling the autopsy participants that what they were doing was classified. Everyone in the military knows what that means — people are expected to take classified secrets to the grave with them. Participants to the autopsy were required to sign written secrecy oaths. They were also threatened with court martial or criminal prosecution if they ever revealed what they had done or seen.

As I pointed out in The Kennedy Autopsy, the scheme for a fraudulent autopsy was actually set into motion at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Immediately after Kennedy was declared dead, the Dallas County Medical Examiner, Dr. Earl Rose, announced his intent to conduct an autopsy on the president’s body, as Texas law required. That was when a team of armed Secret Service agents, brandishing guns, told Rose in no uncertain terms that they would not permit him to do the autopsy. Forcing their way out of Parkland Hospital, they took the body to Dallas’s Love Field, where new President Lyndon Johnson was waiting for it. Johnson then took the body back with him to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where he delivered it into the hands of the military.

Although the mainstream media always treated all this as normal, given the dominant role that the national-security establishment was playing in Cold War America, it was actually quite bizarre and aberrant. The military never had any jurisdiction or legal authority to conduct the autopsy. At that time, killing a president was not a federal crime. The United States was not at war with any nation state. Kennedy was not killed on the field of battle. His killing was a straight murder case under Texas state law. Any criminal prosecution for the assassination would take place in Dallas. A genuinely honest autopsy would be a critically important part of that criminal prosecution, especially since a sharp team of criminal-defense lawyers would inevitably be defending the accused.

The military was mostly, but not entirely, able to keep its fraudulent autopsy secret for some 30 years, until the ARRB began releasing people who had participated in the autopsy from their vows of secrecy. As the ARRB began forcing the military to release its records relating to the autopsy, the dam of secrecy surrounding the autopsy broke wide open. That’s when the fraud became apparent. That’s why the JFK Records Act was such a nightmare for the Pentagon and the CIA. If it hadn’t been for that law, there is no doubt that the military’s fraudulent autopsy would still be shrouded in secrecy today. 

What the Pentagon and the CIA learned from the era of the ARRB is that the community of assassination researchers is composed of some very smart people. By analyzing the evidence that the ARRB was succeeding in getting released, assassination researchers were able to put together the pieces of the puzzle that established a fraudulent autopsy, along with lots of other pieces of circumstantial evidence establishing that what occurred on November 22, 1963, was a highly sophisticated national-security state regime-change operation.

The leading figure in this endeavor was Douglas Horne, who served on the ARRB staff. Anyone who reads Horne’s five-volume book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board will inevitably conclude that the autopsy that the military conducted on the Kennedy’s body a few hours after the assassination was fraudulent to the core. 

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy being conducted on President Kennedy’s body, especially given that the scheme for a fraudulent autopsy was launched at the moment Kennedy was declared dead.

It stands to reason that if a government agency is being forced to reveal records relating to a regime-change operation, that agency is going to keep the most incriminating evidence secret for as long as possible. We still don’t know what the CIA is still hiding, but we can safely assume that there is a good reason why the CIA does not want to let those super-smart assassination researchers get a hold of it. 

That’s why the national-security establishment will fight tooth and nail for permanent secrecy on their remaining JFK assassination-related records. Oh, the Pentagon and the CIA will most likely authorize Biden and the National Archives to release some innocuous records for appearance’s sake. But make no mistake about it: They will make certain that Biden, the National Archives, and all future presidents comply with their demand for permanent secrecy on what they need to hide on a permanent basis.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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***

The Turkish Parliament has voted to extend a military mandate that allows Ankara to carry out military operations in Iraq and Syria until 30 October, 2023.

According to Turkish media, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the opposition Good Party (IYI) backed the motion proposed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week.

Meanwhile, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) voted against it.

According to Ankara, this mandate will allow them to confront the presence of paramilitary groups in Iraq and Syria, as Erdogan has claimed that the presence of armed groups backed by Iran in the besieged nations will create a “terrorist corridor.”

The motion also emphasizes that the establishment of peace in Syria must be followed through the Astana peace process.

In recent weeks, Turkey has been heavily criticized for its destructive role in northern Syria, as their military and political interventions have catastrophically backfired on both Iraq and Syria.

According to experts, without Turkey’s involvement, Damascus would have been able to put an end to western-backed protests and initiate promised reforms, bringing the country one step closer to peace back in 2019.

Political analysts also believe that without Turkey’s intervention, Syria would have emerged from the war with a limited number of victims, little damage, few internally displaced and fewer refugees.

The news also comes following reports by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) saying Turkey has deployed reinforcements for its allied armed groups in Hasaka governorate in northwestern Syria.

Local sources in the Hasaka countryside told SANA that military reinforcements belonging to the Turkish occupation included vehicles, armored personnel carriers, weapons, and logistical supplies, which were sent to armed groups in Ras al-Ayn area and were synchronized with an intense use of Turkish drones in the region.

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***

All indications are that the regional states are preparing to accord recognition to the Taliban government. The meeting of regional states and Taliban officials in the so-called Moscow Format last Wednesday signalled that the Taliban government is a compelling reality and constructive engagement is needed. read more

A week is a long time in politics. The foreign-minister level conference in Tehran tomorrow with the participation of Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries is sure to deliberate on formal diplomatic ties with the Taliban government. Unsurprisingly, the Taliban has not been invited to the event. 

All eyes will be on the Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Wang left Beijing on Monday and headed for Doha en route to Tehran where he held talks with the top Taliban government leaders Acting Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. 

This is the highest level political contact so far since the announcement of the Afghan interim government in early September. The symbolism is profound that Wang is heading for the Tehran conference after consulting the Taliban leadership. 

Significantly, Chinese President Xi Jinping also had a call with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan today. The Xinhua report underscored Xi’s call for building an even closer China-Pakistan community “with a shared future in the new era”. 

In a veiled reference to the US’ strategic competition with Beijing, Xi referred to the “profound changes unseen in a century, with more sources of turbulence and risks around the world”. Xi exhorted that in such conditions, China and Pakistan should “stand together even more firmly and push forward the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership.” 

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China

Xi touched on the CPEC and the need to strengthen counter-terrorism and security cooperation. The Pakistani readout disclosed that the two leaders also discussed the regional and international situation, including Afghanistan. 

It said the sides “called on the international community to provide immediate humanitarian and economic assistance to the Afghan people to alleviate their suffering, prevent instability and flight of people, as well as continued engagement for the rebuilding of the country.” 

Xi’s conversation with Imran Khan most certainly took on board Wang’s structured discussions in Doha with Mullah Baradar on Monday. 

The Chinese foreign ministry readout on the Doha meeting highlighted Wang’s remark that “Afghanistan, now standing at a critical stage of transforming from chaos to governance, is currently facing a historic opportunity to truly master its own destiny, achieve inclusiveness and reconciliation, and advance national reconstruction.” 

Wang acknowledged the imperative need for “more understanding and support” from the international community for the Taliban government to meet “quadrupole challenges” — humanitarian crisis, economic chaos, terrorist threats and governance difficulties. 

Wang listed China’s expectations from the Taliban government and called on “all parties to engage with the Afghan Taliban in a rational and pragmatic manner to help Afghanistan embark on a path of sound development.” 

Importantly, he reiterated Beijing’s expectation that  Taliban “will make a clean break” with the ETIM and other terrorist organizations, and “take effective measures to resolutely crack down on them.” 

The Chinese readout highlighted Baradar’s assertion that “the overall situation in Afghanistan is under control and improving, with the governments at all levels being gradually established and government decrees being carried out effectively.” 

It singled out Baradar’s firm commitment that Taliban “will learn from historical experience” — Taliban government “will continue to take inclusive measures to expand the representation of the regime”; will recruit induct “more outstanding personnel of all ethnic groups”; will “strengthen the efforts to protect the rights and interests of women and children, and will not deprive them of the rights to education and work.” 

Interestingly, Baradar added that

“For now, women in medical institutions, airports and other places have resumed their work, and girls in primary and secondary schools in many provinces have returned to school, but they still face difficulties such as lack of facilities and funds.” 

The crux of the matter is that Wang heard from the Taliban government leadership at the highest level that

“Pursuing a friendly policy toward China is the firm choice by the Afghan Taliban, and Afghan hopes to strengthen cooperation with China in various fields. The Afghan Taliban, which attaches great importance to China’s security concerns, will resolutely honor its promise and never allow anyone or any force to use the Afghan territory to harm China.” 

Conceivably, conditions exist more or less for Beijing to move toward to accord recognition to the Taliban government should it decide so. 

For an optimal Afghan strategy it is useful that in the soonest possible way formal government-to-government ties with Kabul are restored so that alongside humanitarian assistance, Beijing can also beef up security cooperation and set the ball rolling for Afghan reconstruction within the ambit of the Belt and Road Initiative. 

To be sure, the bottomline is that China (and the Central Asian states and Iran) is convinced of the urgency of strengthening the hands of the Taliban government if the fight to vanquish the ISIS and other terrorist groups is to be effective. 

The shootout in Herat in northwestern Afghanistan near Iran’s border on October 24 between the Taliban and the ISIS militants testify to the criticality of the emergent security situation. 

Will Russia go along with China to recognise the Taliban government? The short answer is ‘Not yet’. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has expressed inability to travel to Tehran on Wednesday. 

However, Russian presidential envoy on Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov acknowledged yesterday, “Beyond a doubt, this (Moscow Format discussions) creates a good basis for the start of the process of recognising the new authorities.” He disclosed that the reopening of the Russian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif is in the cards. 

Russia may empathise with the regional consensus on recognition but the archaic legislation in its statute books prohibits any form of formal dealings with the Taliban. President Putin anticipates that the day is not far off when the legislation can be done away with. 

Moscow and Beijing would have a coordinated approach that the recognition of the Taliban government should not smack of “bloc mindset”. Meanwhile, Russia is saddled with its pet project, ‘Troika Plus”, which notionally keeps the door open to cooperate with the US, which the Taliban views positively. 

That said, Moscow also would have en eye on the European Union’s active plan to reopen the mission in Kabul by next month.  

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***

Joe Biden’s administration seems determined to surpass its predecessors in taking actions that are certain to antagonize Russia. In just the past two weeks, the United States and its NATO allies have gone out of their way to provoke Moscow on four separate occasions. Such irresponsible behavior exacerbates already dangerous tensions with a nuclear-armed great power.

Washington set a belligerent tone with its choice of a special envoy to the Kremlin in what was supposed to be an effort to repair badly frayed bilateral relations. Instead of selecting someone who was at least tolerable to Russian leaders, the administration sent Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland. Not only is Nuland an outspoken Russophobe in general, but she is especially notorious for her role in helping demonstrators overthrow Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014, when she served as an assistant secretary of state in Barack Obama’s administration. The Russian government imposed a travel ban and other sanctions on her – measures that were lifted just before her latest diplomatic mission as part of a deal in which Washington removed similar restrictions on a high-level foreign ministry official. Choosing Nuland as the envoy for negotiations with Vladimir Putin’s government was either incredibly tone deaf or a deliberate display of contempt.

Other recent U.S. actions strongly suggest that it was the latter. Just days after Nuland finished her largely fruitless negotiations, the United States flew 2 B1-B bombers over the Black Sea. The area is considered especially sensitive to the Russian military because the country’s principal naval base is located on that body of water. US and NATO warships and planes have noticeably expanded their presence in the Black Sea in recent years, but sending nuclear-capable bombers was especially provocative. Predictably, the Russians scrambled fighter planes to intercept and “escort” the American aircraft. It was a classic case of Washington creating a gratuitous provocation.

Even more provocative were comments that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made during his visit to Ukraine in mid-October. In remarks at Ukraine’s defense ministry, Austin emphasized that NATO membership for Kiev was very much on the table and that “no third country has a veto over NATO’s membership decisions. Ukraine . . . has a right to decide its own future foreign policy and we expect that they will be able to do that without any outside interference.” Days earlier, the Pentagon leaked a story to the ever-hawkish Washington Times about Austin’s forthcoming trip that made US support for Ukraine’s NATO membership bid even more explicit.

To be sure, it was not a new message; Washington has maintained that position for years, insisting that Ukraine and Georgia have a “right” to join NATO, if they meet the alliance’s standards for membership. However, coming now from the secretary of defense despite Moscow’s repeated warnings that adding either Ukraine or Georgia to NATO would be among the actions that cross a “red line” as far as Russia’s security is concerned, was particularly unhelpful timing. It also is a supremely arrogant stance, based on the assumption that Moscow should not complain even as the most powerful military alliance in history establishes an ever-greater, menacing presence on Russia’s border. Russian officials immediately responded to Austin’s comments, warning that adding Ukraine to NATO would be “extremely dangerous” and would be met with unspecified retaliatory measures.

Other incidents occurring at the same time as Austin’s European trip have left the NATO-Russia relationship in tatters. Earlier this month, NATO expelled 8 Russian diplomats from its liaison office at NATO headquarters in Brussels for alleged spying activities. The Kremlin responded a few days later by suspending all of its own remaining activities in the Brussels facility and ordering NATO’s office in Moscow closed as of November 1. “Following certain measures taken by NATO, the basic conditions for common work no longer exist,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov tersely told reporters.

Amazingly, US officials reportedly seem both surprised and chagrined about the rapidly deteriorating relationship with Russia. They are especially concerned because it complicates Washington’s professed desire to focus on China as the principal security threat to the United States. Predictably, though, the national security establishment and its echo chamber in the news media place all the blame on the Kremlin for the soaring tensions.

If the Biden administration does not change course soon, relations with Moscow could become even worse than they were during the Cold War – and that development would place world peace in great danger. Ever since Bill Clinton’s administration decided to expand NATO into Central and Eastern Europe, the United States and its European allies have taken one step after another to antagonize Russia, and the depressing results are readily apparent. Unfortunately, instead of reversing Washington’s arrogant, provocative policies, Joe Biden’s administration is doubling down on that dangerous strategy. The outcome could be extremely tragic for all concerned.

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Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 12 books and more than 950 articles on international issues.

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***

If we take him at his word, then General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan was one of three Sudanese military figures to tell Omar al-Bashir that it was time to bring to a close his three decades in power.

“I went to see him and informed him,” Burhan told the BBC shortly after he was named head of Sudan’s transitional military council in April 2019. “I told him the leadership of the armed forces had decided the situation was getting out of hand and therefore he should step down.”

According to Burhan, Bashir simply said “OK”, then went on to express a desire that citizens were protected.

It must have been a difficult conversation for Sudan’s top general. A veteran soldier, Burhan had long been one of Bashir’s reliable lieutenants – both literally and politically.

Not long after the conversation, on 12 April 2019, he became chief of the military council that deposed Bashir, just one day after the president’s immediate successor – and former defence minister – General Awad Ibn Ouf stepped down.

As news broke this morning of another military coup in Sudan, Burhan, who has served as the chairman of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereign Council (TSC) since 12 April 2019 and is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, took centre stage, declaring a state of emergency and dissolving the government.

Friends in Egypt, friends in the Gulf

Born in 1960 into a Sufi family in a village north of Khartoum, Burhan studied in a Sudanese army college, then later in Jordan and at the Egyptian military academy in Cairo, where fellow alumni included future Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He is married and has three children.

Burhan and Sisi are longstanding friends, though the Sudanese general has lifelong affiliations with the kinds of Islamist movements that Sisi has outlawed. Still, as Patrick Smith, editor of Africa Confidential, told MEE, the two military leaders are united by “the greater good of stopping democracy”.

His first international trip after becoming Sudan’s de facto head of state was to Egypt in May 2019. From there he went on to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia.

Earlier in his working life, Burhan served briefly as Sudan’s defence attache in Beijing, but his military career under Bashir was defined by prominent roles played in South Sudan, Darfur and Yemen where, as head of the armed forces, he helped supply the Saudi-led coalition with Sudanese mercenaries.

Burhan has described Riyadh as an “eternal ally” and has longstanding relationships with military commanders there and in the UAE.

‘Blood on his hands’

“He was absolutely instrumental to the devastation caused in Darfur,” Smith says of Burhan, who fought in the region and was a military intelligence colonel coordinating army and militia attacks against civilians in West Darfur state from 2003 to 2005.

The Sudanese soldier has denied committing atrocities, but leaders in Darfur are in no doubt as to the role he played. Sheikh Matar Younis of Darfur’s Justice and Equality Movement described Burhan as “a bloody murderer of the people of Sudan in Darfur since before 2014”.

Residents and displaced people in Central and West Darfur said he had “blood on his hands”, and that he was involved in “planning and carrying out genocide, burning of villages and displacement of unarmed residents”.

Burhan’s response to such accusations has essentially been to say that he was following orders, and that what happened in Darfur – widely viewed as a genocide – was a war in which each side would quite naturally accuse its opponent of doing awful things.

Burhan’s time in Darfur is significant also because it brought him into contact with the warlord Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, widely known as Hemeti. Hemeti became leader of the Janjaweed, the Arab militias that brought death and despair to Darfur, and which have since morphed into the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), with Hemeti still at the helm.

Sources of power and money

As head of the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces respectively, Burhan and Hemeti are both allies and rivals. Hemeti serves as vice president of the transitional military council, but his family and the RSF benefit enormously from their control of gold mines in Darfur, as well as from the patronage of the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Sudan’s military has, in theory, a bigger budget, and is in control of a significant military industrial complex.

These various sources of power and wealth have come under threat from Sudan’s civilian-led government and it is thought that this is partly why Burhan and Hemeti have moved when they have. Burhan was due to step down as the military’s chair of the sovereign council this year, to be replaced by a civilian appointee.

Both he and Hemeti are said to be mindful of being held accountable for past actions in Darfur, and Burhan had been lobbying to dissolve the civilian-led council of ministers, according to Africa Confidential.

This is Burhan and Hemeti’s coup, Smith said, but the relationship between the two men is difficult “because, among other things, Hemeti projects himself as a leader abroad”, and is closer to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. Burhan is considered to be Egypt’s man.

Hemeti is a more charismatic, more cartoonish figure than the quietly spoken, methodical Burhan, and the RSF leader is more closely associated with the atrocities surrounding the transition to democracy – most notably, the massacre of more than 128 people in Khartoum in June 2019 – than the armed forces general.

Once considered the archetypal apolitical soldier, Burhan is now in the middle of a very political situation. The streets of Sudan are full of people calling for democracy. Burhan’s allies in Egypt and the Gulf will be watching to see how he moves from here.

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First posted by Global Research on September 15, 2021

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Nicholas Wansbutter, a criminal defense lawyer and host of Don’t Talk TV, talks about vaccine passports in Canada. According to him, vaccine passports are extremely problematic for two reasons: 1) issue of consent and 2) human rights implications.

Watch the video below.

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«La Nato è finita in soffitta», scrivevano un mese fa i commentatori politici di svariate testate giornalistiche, dopo che la Francia aveva ritirato l’ambasciatore da Washington il 16 settembre. Era la protesta di Parigi per essere stata esclusa dal partenariato strategico-militare tra Stati uniti, Gran Bretagna e Australia, annunciato il giorno prima, e aver perso un lucroso contratto per la vendita di sottomarini all’Australia, che saranno sostituiti da sottomarini nucleari forniti da Usa e Gran Bretagna.

Una settimana dopo la clamorosa rottura diplomatica, però, il generale francese Lavigne veniva messo a capo del Comando Alleato della Trasformazione, con quartier generale a Norfolk negli Usa, e i presidenti dei due paesi, Biden e Macron, pubblicavano una Dichiarazione congiunta (qui la versione dell’Eliseo, qui quella della Casa Bianca, ndr).

Biden riaffermava «l’importanza strategica dell’impegno francese ed europeo nell’Indo-Pacifico» (la regione che nella geopolitica di Washington si estende dalla costa occidentale degli Usa a quella dell’India).

Il perché veniva esplicitato dal Comitato militare dei capi della Difesa dei 30 paesi della Nato, riunito ad Atene: «Mentre le azioni aggressive di Mosca minacciano la nostra sicurezza, l’ascesa della Cina sta spostando l’equilibrio di potere, con conseguenze per la nostra sicurezza, la nostra prosperità e il nostro stile di vita».

Di fronte a tali «minacce», concludeva, «abbiamo bisogno che l’Europa e il Nord America siano forti, legati insieme». Come debbano essere legati, lo ribadisce Biden nella dichiarazione congiunta con Macron: «Gli Stati uniti riconoscono l’importanza di una Difesa europea più forte e più capace, che sia complementare alla Nato».

Quindi un’Europa militarmente più forte, ma come complemento della Nato: alleanza asimmetrica, a cui appartengono 21 dei 27 paesi dell’Unione europea, nella quale la carica di Comandante Supremo Alleato in Europa spetta sempre a un generale degli Stati uniti, i quali detengono tutti gli altri comandi chiave in Europa (come il JFC-Naples con quartier generale a Lago Patria).

Su questo sfondo si è tenuta, il 21-22 ottobre al quartier generale della Nato a Bruxelles, la riunione dei 30 ministri della Difesa (per l’Italia Lorenzo Guerini, Pd).

Essa ha creato un «Fondo per l’Innovazione» con un primo stanziamento di 1 miliardo di euro, a carico di 17 paesi europei tra cui l’Italia, ma non degli Stati uniti, per lo sviluppo delle più avanzate tecnologie ad uso bellico.

Ha varato la «Strategia per l’intelligenza artificiale», un ancora più costoso programma perché la Nato mantenga il vantaggio in questo campo che «sta cambiando l’ambiente globale della difesa», ossia il modo di fare la guerra.

Ha deciso «il miglioramento della prontezza e dell’efficacia del nostro deterrente nucleare», ossia lo schieramento in Europa di nuove armi nucleari, naturalmente con la motivazione di difendersi dalla «crescente minaccia missilistica della Russia».

Alla vigilia della riunione Nato, il ministro russo della Difesa, Sergei Shoigu, ha avvertito che «gli Stati uniti, con il pieno sostegno degli Alleati Nato, hanno intensificato il lavoro per modernizzare le armi nucleari tattiche e i loro siti di stoccaggio in Europa» e la Russia considera particolarmente preoccupante il fatto che «piloti di paesi Nato non-nucleari siano impegnati in esercitazioni per l’uso di armi nucleari tattiche». Un messaggio diretto in particolare all’Italia, dove gli Usa si preparano a sostituire le bombe nucleari B61 con le nuove B61-12 e i piloti italiani vengono addestrati al loro uso ora anche con gli F-35. «Consideriamo ciò una diretta violazione del Trattato di non-proliferazione delle armi nucleari», conclude Shoigu.

Il messaggio è diretto all’Italia e agli altri membri europei della Nato che, pur avendo ratificato il Trattato di non-proliferazione quali paesi non-nucleari, ospitano armi nucleari Usa e si addestrano al loro uso.

Il significato implicito del messaggio è chiaro: la Russia considera questi paesi fonte di minaccia e sta prendendo delle contromisure. Il messaggio è stato come al solito ignorato dal nostro governo e parlamento e, ovviamente, dai media che hanno messo la Nato in soffitta.

Manlio Dinucci

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***

Suddenly there has been an re-awakening in the case of “Pfizer-vaccinated” nurse, Tiffany Dover, who was recorded as having died following the injection. Her place of employment, CHI Memorial Hospital, Tennessee, deny that she is dead and told me in a short email: “We have made several statements. Tiffany is alive and continues her work as a nurse manager.”

A Reddit thread is hot in pursuit of the truth – one way or another. This follows a recent article which questions why CHI Memorial “deleted all of its tweets about Tiffany Dover, who has since completely disappeared, from its official Twitter account.”

The recent deaths of two Soddy Daisy High School students might have aroused interest in a story now ten months old.

Even more revealing is the testimony of Maria Wright RN who resigned as a nurse at CHI Memorial Hospital in September. She makes serious revelations about mask-wearing – having to wear the same mask for a week. But it was really the vaccinations that caused her the most concern.

I NEVER thought I would see the day that working for a CATHOLIC hospital where I can pray with my patients that I would have to defend my judgement and religious beliefs of not wanting a forced aborted baby tissue based medical treatment. Therefore, I will not. I simply say NO and no means no.

Her letter is well worth reading in its entirety, because it shows that here is a caring nurse, who knows that what is being done is wrong. I have no idea what inducements have made CHI Memorial continue administering its Pfizer-shots when the whole world has seen what damage they can do. Her faith is more important than her job. Her knowledge of true health is wisdom itself.

Nothing is going to bring Tiffany Dover back it seems. She is gone. But more nurses and doctors can take the courageous step of following their conscience rather than following the money. I let Maria Wright sum up what is happening in healthcare in the United States and elsewhere.

Lastly, there will be a day coming soon when more staff walk away, get terminated, or those left behind after the mass exodus become weary, when there will be no more nurses or staff to hire. If this company thinks it is so bad now because there is a “bed shortage” when we all know its a staffing shortage, there are darker days ahead. During all this pandemic if CHI Memorial and Dignity Health would have just taken care of those loyal to them then you would not be facing have to pay travel nurses up to $110 an hour to fill my shoes. My last date of employment, caring for patients and families, precepting residents, and contributing to all the awards this hospital receives will be October 4, 2021.

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***

10 months into the COVID-19 mass vaccination campaigns in the UK, statistics provided by the UK’s Health Security Agency now clearly show that those who have been fully vaccinated are suffering far worse health and are susceptible to infections at greater rates than the unvaccinated.

Natural immunity is quite obviously more effective than “vaccine immunity,” which wanes very quickly, and apparently in the process destroys one’s natural immunity as well, providing the perfect repeat-business model craved by the pharmaceutical companies, who will now pitch regular booster shots, along with all their side effects including twice as many people dying than people who have died after all vaccines for the past 30 years.

And of course the COVID-19 shots do not stop transmission (they never even claimed to do this), so the vaccinated will keep on infecting each other.

This is great news for Big Pharma, and devastating news for the public who were fooled into taking these experimental gene-therapy shots.

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Fully Vaccinated are suffering far higher rates of infection than the Unvaccinated, and it is getting worse by the day; there is no justification for Vaccine Passports

IT’S OFFICIAL: Most of the UK’s vaccinated population are suffering far higher rates of infection than the unvaccinated, and it is getting worse by the day.

by Martin Zandstra

The Expose

The UK’s Health Security Agency publishes detailed Covid statistics, which, for the last 7 weeks, have been tabulated by age-group and vaccination status. This now allows important questions to be answered.

The Agency says most vaccinated suffer substantially higher rates of infection, and their latest chart provides a snap-shot:

All of the UK’s 30-and-over vaccinated now endure far higher rates of infection than their unvaccinated counterparts. But as a snap-shot, this tells us nothing of how this arose, or how it may yet develop. Here we re-present the agency’s data in a time-series, to promote better understanding of the trends and implications.

The UK has vaccinated its population mostly in age order, from oldest to youngest, and very recently began vaccinating its under-18-year-old cohort. Being the UK’s most freshly vaccinated, they exhibit a very high degree of resistance to Covid infection:

This very recently vaccinated cohort benefits from a 90% improvement in their infection rates, meaning their case incidence is 10 times better than that of their unvaccinated counterparts. This is impressive, and leads us to ask how long this high degree of protection might last?

The answer, unfortunately, seems to be not very long:

The previous UK age-group to be vaccinated was the 18–29-year-old cohort, of which half was fully vaccinated by some 9 weeks ago. While still doing better than the unvaccinated of their age, they have nevertheless lost the greater part of their relative resistance to infection. If they continue their trajectory, week 12 will see that benefit completely gone.

The earlier vaccinated age-group was the 30–39 cohort. Half was fully vaccinated around week 27, and by week 39 (again some 12 weeks later) had lost their enhanced infection resistance. For at least for these two cohorts, it would seem their vaccine induced resistance reduced to zero in under 3 months.

Unfortunately, it does not stop there; Following the data shows the vaccinated descend well into negative territory, which may prompt us to ask how all earlier vaccinated cohorts are now doing?

In terms of vulnerability to infection, the answer is not so well:

The entire 40-79 vaccinated cohort is deeply negative, now below minus 50%, meaning they suffer more than double the infection rate of their unvaccinated counterparts, and there is no obvious end in sight; Given the consistent and strongly negative continuing trend for all adult cohorts, it is impossible to guess where or when these trajectories might bottom out.

But does the trend result from increased vulnerability amongst the vaccinated, or is improved resistance developing amongst the unvaccinated? The answer appears to be both:

Unvaccinated adults are enjoying significantly lowered infection rates, but the vaccinated are very clearly headed in the opposite direction:

This begs the question: Why should the vaccinated suffer mounting infection rates, while case-rates of the unvaccinated both declined and are lower? Surely, we should expect the vaccinated to do better – certainly no worse?

Yet, for all but one adult cohort, the exact opposite is true, and even for them, it seems likely for not much longer:

It has been suggested infection amongst the unvaccinated has induced robust natural immunity leading towards their herd-immunity. That may well be a factor, but, as we have seen, the vaccinated have similarly been infected, and at least for the 40-79 cohort, at much higher rates. Why should this not benefit the vaccinated as well?

Are we to understand infection after vaccination may not produce similar broad immunity?

Vaccination is intended to alter subsequent immune response to infection, which is, of course, the whole point; It is conceivable this altered response may mute the development of broad long-lasting immunity that otherwise typically results from natural infection. That might then leave the vaccinated more open to re-infection, and might help explain these results. But this remains speculation, we simply do not know today.

What we do know from the UK data, is that anyone vaccinated more than few months ago is at greatly higher risk of Covid infection, and is therefore greatly more likely to be infected than their unvaccinated counterparts.

Much has been said and written to show the vaccinated are equally capable of transmitting Covid. But because their symptoms are often muted, they are also more likely to be out and about; add this to escalating infection rates, and there can be little doubt the vaccinated now constitute by far the greatest Covid transmission risk.

In light of this, vaccine passports are clearly senseless; They are nothing more than an invitation to infection, for which no justification can now possibly remain.

Read the full article at The Expose.

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Although both sides are acting like they’ve moved on after last week’s events, their strategists know better than to naively think that everything will go back to how it was before those 10 ambassadors issued their joint statement.

Most observers were surprised by Monday’s diplomatic de-escalation between Turkey and the West.

President Erdogan announced over the weekend that 10 Western ambassadors would be declared persona non grata after they released a joint statement last week demanding that their host country’s authorities release a jailed businessman who they regard as a “political prisoner”.

The West presumably predicted how the Turkish President would react to such a provocation so it was widely believed that they intended to catalyze a self-sustaining cycle of diplomatic escalations as part of the US-led Hybrid War on Turkey.

Nevertheless, those 10 countries’ embassies unexpectedly took a step back by releasing statements reaffirming their official policy that they don’t interfere in the internal affairs of their host state. In response, President Erdogan said that the issue was resolved, at least for now unless they decide to diplomatically meddle once again.

This development suggests that the West might have bit off more than it can chew last week, perhaps by underestimating President Erdogan’s resolve to respond to their provocations. They might have thought that he wouldn’t risk an all-out crisis with them by threatening to declare their ambassadors persona non grata.

If that’s the case, then it would mean that the West wasn’t prepared to initiate the self-sustaining cycle of diplomatic escalations that was previously speculated. It would also imply that their intelligence agencies don’t have as solid of a grasp of the Turkish leader’s psyche as some might have thought. Another related explanation could be that the European participants hadn’t fully predicted the costs of complying with the US’ presumed demands that they follow its lead. In particular, they might have realized in horror that Turkey could potentially refuse to stop Afghan and other migrants to the bloc, which could destabilize the EU at this sensitive time.

Another explanation is that President Erdogan also realized the mutually detrimental costs of entering into the earlier mentioned self-sustaining cycle of diplomatic escalations and pragmatically offered some of those countries (most likely the EU ones) a “face-saving” way out. That doesn’t mean that he’s “weak”, but just that he would understand better than everyone else how disadvantageous it would be to worsen relations at this particular point in time. In this scenario, he would have delegated his diplomats to explain why he reacted as he did but that he’s still extending an olive branch to them if they take the first step to de-escalate.

After all, Turkey aspires to practice a very complex “balancing” act in the midst of the ongoing global systemic transition whereby it leverages its geostrategic position to comprehensively diversify its foreign partnerships with the intent of preemptively avoiding disproportionate dependence on any one of them. In practice, this means that the self-sustaining cycle of diplomatic escalations that those Western ambassadors set into motion would have unbalanced Turkey’s “balancing” act by abruptly removing its Western component and thus risking disproportionate Turkish dependence on its Eastern half with Russia and China.

From the Western perspective, some of their diplomats might have feared this outcome not because they have Turkey’s best long-term strategic interests in mind, but simply because it could have quickly resulted in them losing most of their leverage over that West Asian country and thus by default leading to the expansion of Russian and Chinese influence there in the coming future like some might have feared. For reasons of simple pragmatism, these comparatively more sober-minded diplomats might have compellingly made the case before their decision makers to step back from provoking Turkey for the time being in order to avert that scenario.

The accuracy of this explanation can only be speculated upon since such diplomatic processes are naturally opaque to those observers relying solely on open sources, but should there be some credibility to it, then this would suggest that those countries’ strategists aren’t in agreement over the most effective way to handle the so-called “Turkish Question”. That provocative term refers to the best way for the West to tackle Turkey’s increasingly independent foreign policy that poses a latent threat to their interests. There seems to be a divide between “hawks” who want to punish Turkey and “doves” who want to continue trying to woo it.

The failure to bridge this divide resulted in the West’s volte face following President Erdogan’s decision to have his Foreign Ministry declare those 10 countries’ ambassadors persona non grata. The hawks provoked this escalation but the doves pragmatically moved in to manage the fallout for the time being. Even so, the general trend is that the West is becoming increasingly hostile towards Turkey. As proven by the latest diplomatic incident, the hawks have the power to provoke a full-blown crisis in bilateral relations, though they’re still being somewhat restrained by the doves.

Trust between Turkey and the West is at an all-time low after what just happened. Although both sides are acting like they’ve moved on after last week’s events, their strategists know better than to naively think that everything will go back to how it was before those 10 ambassadors issued their joint statement. Turkey and the West can thus be described as “frenemies” in the sense that they’re heated rivals yet also understand the need to pragmatically prevent their tensions from spiraling out of control, at least for now. Considering the hawks’ rising influence, though, more such provocations can be expected before Turkey’s summer 2023 elections.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

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***

The new social media network announced by former US President Donald Trump could become a refuge for all those who have been silenced. This could pay off for Donald Trump if he has plans to participate in the 2024 election as well, but a major problem he faces is how to bypass the monopoly held by the likes of Twitter and Facebook, among others. The announcement to launch a new social media network called “Truth” is, according to the former president, a way to “stand up to the tyranny of the tech giants.”

Trump said during the launch announcement that we live in a world where the Taliban have a huge presence on television, while, as he says, the most favorite American president has been silenced. He added that a response to the monopoly will soon follow.

There is a real need for such a platform as a large number of social media users have been deleted and prevented from functioning on mainstream platforms. Trump himself has been censored on Twitter and Facebook. At the beginning of his presidential campaign in 2015, Trump had about three million followers on Twitter, but by the time he was removed from the platform, he had 90 million.

It can be expected that Truth can attract a large number of conservative users from Facebook and Twitter, adding not just an economic incentive for creating a social media network, but a political one too. As announced, his platform should start operating from February 2022, meaning that by the time of the next US election, he would have had two years to rebuild his audience so he can circumvent censorship from rival social media outlets and mainstream media.

However, it can be expected that a new platform would have major problems if wanting to challenge major social media networks because of the sheer vastness of resources that Twitter, Facebook and Google have at their disposal. Facebook, which has three billion users, has thousands of servers to maintain the incredible amount of traffic it has at any given moment. It is not known how many users Truth is expecting, nor the resources that will be available, but it certainly will not be at the level of Facebook.

Amazon, one of the world’s largest hosting providers, suspended Parler, another social media network that came to prominence after Trump was censored in mid-2020. If Trump wants to truly be free from potential censorship, then he must build all the necessary infrastructure, something which will surely be a costly endeavour.

It is recalled that Parler, a network used by American conservatives, was removed from Apple and Google stores due to alleged “protection of user safety.” Parler sued Amazon for the severe blow it suffered from the interruption of web hosting services after Apple and Google stopped distributing its app.

Whether Trump’s platform can overcome all these obstacles, it also raises the question on whether it could attract people of different political orientations. It is unlikely that liberals and leftists would sign up to the platform and will likely remain on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.

It is recalled that there are recent witness testimonies from a hearing in the American Congress that claimed Facebook was censor heavy and too liberal. There are likely a large number of dissatisfied users on Facebook and Twitter who might be interested in switching to another platform. Not only are conservatives being silenced on mainstream social media platforms, but even users who criticize Israel. On Facebook, even writing Hezbollah in a post could see the user warned or banned.

In that sense, Trump’s idea is good, but the question is whether he will be able to replace mainstream social media platforms. The idea will certainly not appeal to Trump’s opponents, especially given their heightened control in being able to censor people who do not have similar views and ideologies.

None-the-less, it is unlikely that Truth will be able to topple Facebook or Twitter in the short to medium term, but it will certainly act as a platform to give a voice to many who have been silenced. With Trump likely to get millions of followers once his platform is online, it will be impossible for the former president to again be silenced. At the same time, inevitably mainstream media will be unable to keep their eyes off Trump’s posts on Truth and they will surely write headlines about it. Such a platform could serve Trump favorably if he seeks to be re-elected in 2024.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Twitter user Brad Pilon has noted some concerning statistics from Canadian Public Health [DATA HERE] regarding adverse events for 12 to 17-year-old males as the vaccination rates increase. Myocarditis has almost doubled from 1 in 10,000 (August) to 1 in 5,000 in two months:

• Oct 17th 1 in 5,208
• Oct 10th 1 in 5,491
• Oct 3rd 1 in 5,543
• Sep 26th 1 in 5,938
• Sep 18th 1 in 6,414
• Sep 11th 1 in 6,640
• Sep 4th 1 in 6,752
• Aug 28th 1 in 6,973
• Aug 21st 1 in 7,880
• Aug 14th 1 in 8,361
• Aug 7th 1 in 10,060
• [DATA LINK]

Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle (myocardium). The inflammation can reduce your heart’s ability to pump and cause rapid or abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias).  Unfortunately, this trend follows a presentation that was made during an FDA hearing in September (video below):

Many academic institutions and athletic organizations are requiring vaccinations as a condition of participation.  This puts increased pressure on teens and young adults to take the vaccine despite any concerns of side effects. Many parents are also willing and eager to face the risks.  The following noted exchange is an almost unfathomable cognitive disconnect in taking risks, and shared only to highlight how far some vaccine advocates are willing to go:

I struggle to understand this level of thinking…

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When Stephanie and Patrick de Garay enrolled their 12-year-old child Maddie and her two brothers in Pfizer’s Covid-19 clinical trial, they believed they were doing the right thing. 

That decision has turned into a nightmare.  Maddie, a previously healthy, energetic, full of life child, was within 24 hours of her second dose reduced to crippling, scream-inducing pain that landed her in the emergency room where she described feeling like someone was “ripping [her] heart out through [her] neck.”

Over the next several months the nightmare continued, during which Maddie was hospitalized several times and suffered numerous systemic injuries, requires a tube through her nose that carries her food and medicine, and a wheelchair for assistance.

Ms. de Garay documented every detail of Maddie’s injury and reported it to the principal investigator for the Pfizer trial at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital where the vaccine clinical trial was occurring and where Maddie was treated and admitted.  They first tried to treat Maddie as “a mental patient,” telling the family it was psychological and in Maddie’s imagination.  Then they claimed it was unrelated to the vaccine (copy of recording with hospital below), and when that argument failed, Pfizer listed this traumatic adverse event as “functional abdominal pain” when reporting to the FDA.

Ms. de Garay reported what occurred to the CDC and FDA through VAERS in June 2021 but nobody from these agencies sought additional information or followed-up with the de Garays.  Ms. de Garay also reached out to Dr. Nath, a Chief in the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, responded by stating he was “Sorry to hear of your daughter’s illness” and that “We have certainly heard of a lot of cases of neurological complications form [sic] the vaccine and will be glad to share our experience with them.”  (Copy of this email is below.)  Unfortunately, other than a call arranged by Maddie’s neurologist, there was no follow-up or response from NIH or any other federal health agency.  Even after Ms. de Garay did a press event on June 28, 2021 with Senator Ron Johnson, neither Pfizer nor any health agency reached out in any manner to address Maddie’s injury or obtain any additional information.

This story is extremely troubling.  Pfizer’s clinical trial for children aged 12-15 included only 1,131 children who were vaccinated and at least one of those children suffered a devastating, life-altering injury which, despite incontrovertible proof and the cries of both the victim and her parents, has not been appropriately acknowledged by Pfizer or the FDA.  Putting aside that one serious injury in a small trial should alone raise blaring alarm bells, one must ask: what other serious adverse events have been hidden and ignored by regulators?

For a virus that rarely harms children, the need to assure safety of the Covid-19 vaccine is high.  A study with only 1,131 children is underpowered.  It will not pick up anything but the most common adverse events.  If what Maddie suffered will occur in 1/1,000 children, that would result in 75,000 children in this country suffering this serious injury.  If it happens 1/10,000 children, that is 7,500 suffering this serious injury.  It could be that the cure is worse than the disease.  But that will only be known if there is a properly powered (a.k.a., sized) clinical trial with children.

International scientists have declared that “inadequately powered studies should themselves be considered a breach of ethical standards.”  Without a clinical trial of sufficient size that reviews all potential adverse events, such as that experienced by Maddie, for a sufficient duration, this potentially catastrophic result will not be identified prior to authorization or licensure.

And as Dr. Woodcock and Dr. Marks have said, “because young children are still growing and developing, it’s critical that thorough and robust clinical trials of adequate size are completed to evaluate the safety and the immune response to a COVID-19 vaccine in this population.  Children are not small adults – and issues that may be addressed in pediatric vaccine trials can include whether there is a need for different doses or different strength formulations of vaccines already used for adults.”

The de Garay family are truly brave to come forward with their story and are doing so in the hope of preventing other children from being injured like their Maddie.  My firm has sent a letter to the FDA regarding Maddie, a copy of which is below.  The de Garay family also released its communication with the NIH and recorded conversations with the trial’s principal investigator – links to both are below.

Will the FDA require Pfizer to actually conduct a properly powered study?  Unlikely.  To do so would be for its leadership, and especially Dr. Janet Woodcock and Dr. Marks, to self-inflict a wound.  It reflects the danger of placing safety in hands of government officials that have been promoting a product, because to admit a safety issue now requires them to effectively cut off their own hands.

The real lesson is not that pharmaceutical companies, or the FDA should act better or do a better job.  That just won’t always be the case.   The real lesson is that civil and individual rights should never be contingent upon a medical procedure.  Never.  Preserving those rights to choose whether to get a medical product, without any government coercion, is the final and ultimate safeguard.  Removing that right results in dangerous authoritarianism because just as the FDA will not admit to Maddie’s serious injury after having promoted this vaccine, politicians that mandate the vaccine will not want to later admit a mistake by repealing the mandate. 

Click here to read the Letter to Federal Health Authorities Regarding Maddie.

Click here to read Stephanie de Garay’s Email Exchange with NIH.

Click here to listen to Patrick and Stephanie de Garay’s Phone Call with Pfizer trial Principal Investigator on May 17, 2021.

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He’s one of only about 4,000 perfusionists in America.

Perfusionists use specialized equipment to maintain a patient’s heart and lung functions during open-heart or related surgeries. They operate a cardiopulmonary bypass machine, which keeps the patient alive while their heart is being operated on.

Josh works in two hospitals: Shasta Regional Medical Center, where they are accepting all religious exemptions for the COVID vaccine with no questions asked, and Catholic Dignity Health Mercy Medical Center, a Catholic hospital, where they fired health care workers for refusing to take the COVID jab. According to Josh Watkins, Mercy Medical Center has been very selective in the approval of religious exemptions. Watkins told us some members who used the exact same wording in their application for religious exemptions were denied, while others were accepted.

Mercy Medical Center workers in Redding, CA, threatened their workers that they needed to be fully vaccinated by September 30, 2021, or they would lose their jobs. They warned employees to comply on their website.

Health care workers who only months ago were considered heroes are now being fired in mass numbers across the United States for refusing to comply with a COVID vaccination mandate being used by corporations and businesses with more than 100 employees to fire workers. The mandate is neither based on law or executive order; it is simply a mandate that is being used to steal the livelihood and careers of non-federal workers.

Workers at Mercy Medical Center who are against being forced to accept the COVID jab have been protesting for weeks. Last week, hundreds of health care workers in Redding, CA, took their fight to the Shasta County Board of Supervisors, demanding they step in and fight back against what they consider an unconstitutional mandate. Unfortunately, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors responded to the large crowd of frustrated health care workers by simply not showing up for their scheduled meeting. Only district 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones showed up for the meeting. He opened the doors to the facility and allowed the public inside.

Once inside, hundreds of health care workers testified before Supervisor Jones. As testimonies were winding down, 11 -year-old Emma Watkins, who had accompanied her dad to several anti-vaccine mandates for health care workers rallies, told her dad that she wanted to get up and speak. Josh was nervous for her but decided that if she was brave enough to get up and speak in front of everyone, he would stand next to her and show his support. What happened next took everyone by surprise.

We spoke with Josh last week. He explained to us that Mercy Medical Center was trying to cancel the contracts of workers who refused to be vaccinated. When I asked Josh about his plans to support his family since he’ll only be able to work part-time at Shasta Regional Medical Center, he explained that he’s working on getting his contractor’s license so he can start building homes to supplement his income.

Before the tyranny of COVID lockdowns, Josh considered himself to be non-political. However, he told us he believes the tyrannical COVID mandates have actually brought people together and unified them to fight back and stand up for the common goal of freedom. “The irony is, the lockdowns, that were supposed to keep people away from each other, have had the opposite effect,” Josh said. “What they’ve done is they’ve brought people of all different political beliefs together.”

Josh applied to the Catholic hospital for a religious exemption but was denied. After his appearance in front of the Shasta Board of Supervisors that went viral, he received an email telling him to re-apply for religious exemption. He applied again, and again, he was denied—additionally, he was told not to enter the hospital again unless he’s a patient. A confused Josh Watkins told us, “They claim to be a Catholic hospital ‘serving God’, and that’s how they respond to religious exemptions?”

Josh told us, “Usually a medical exemption is a notification and not a request” and “they don’t have a legal right to judge sincerely held beliefs of their employees—as far as I understand the law, that’s 100% illegal.” A local health care worker who administers the COVID jab to health care workers told Josh that health care workers against getting the vaccination but are more afraid of losing their jobs “are coming in sobbing because they know it violates their soul.”

Watkins said he will continue to work part-time for the smaller Shasta Regional Medical Center where “They are accepting all religious exemptions with no questions.” He explained how the smaller community hospital is taking advantage of their overreaching neighbor, “They [Shasta Regional Medical Center] have been able to capitalize on Mercy’s decision to fire people over their mandate.”

Red White and Blueprint, a fantastic group supporting patriots in California, followed Josh and residents of Redding, CA, whose jobs were being threatened by Mercy Medical Center.

A part of the journey of Josh and his daughter Emma was filmed by Red White & Blueprint. Watch the incredible video that is Part 6 of a series of 8 videos showing how grassroots activists are fighting back against a tyrannical government. The video documents the efforts of everyday Americans to successfully get enough petition signatures to start the recall process of the supervisors who refused to listen to their concerns.

Josh shared the importance of family support, as health care workers fight back against mandated vaccines. “We are not the minority; we are the majority by far,” he said.

How many lives will be risked or even lost over the firing of tens of thousands or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of qualified health care professionals thanks to tyrannical vaccine mandates?

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video 

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President Biden’s “townhall” meeting this past week was a disaster. From his bizarre poses to the incoherent answers, it seemed to confirm America’s worst fears about a president we are told was elected by the most voters ever. Though he didn’t bother campaigning, we are to believe he somehow motivated the most voters in history to pull the lever in his favor. Or mail in a ballot in his favor. Or something.

After the townhall, the Wall Street Journal was early among mainstream media publications to observe that the emperor has no clothes. In an editorial titled “The Confusing Mr. Biden,” the paper wrote, “Even with a friendly audience and softball questions, Mr. Biden’s performance revealed why so many Americans are losing confidence in his Presidency.”

The Journal focused on one of the most shocking and disturbing revelations from the carefully crafted event: asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper if the United States would come to the defense of Taiwan should it come under attack by the Chinese mainland, he replied, “Yes, we have a commitment to do that.”

Anderson threw him another softball in hopes he might correct this dangerous misstatement, but Biden was not nimble enough to see his gaffe. He doubled down.

It was left to the “Chemical Ali” of this Administration, White House Spokesman Jen Psaki, to “clarify” that when the President signaled a major shift in US policy – a shift that could well lead to nuclear war with China – he was just kidding. Or something.

Said Psaki the next day:

“Well, there has been no shift. The President was not announcing any change in our policy nor has he made a decision to change our policy. There is no change in our policy.”

In other words: “Pay no attention to the man who pretends to be the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States.”

But this is not George W. Bush, who was elected in 2000 with zero experience in foreign policy. This is not Trump, who campaigned on a policy of peace then hired John Bolton to carry out that policy.

No, Biden has twice been Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Foreign policy has always been considered his one area of competence. Surely the Biden of even the Obama Administration would have understood the potentially catastrophic implications of his statement.

Strategic ambiguity has been US policy toward Taiwan/China for decades, but the new Biden China policy could be re-named “strategic incoherence.”

The policy of “strategic ambiguity” is foolish enough – who cares who rules Taiwan? – but advancing the idea that the United States is willing to launch a nuclear war with China over who governs Taiwan is a whole other level of America-last foolishness.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Miley was heralded as a hero for betraying his Commander in Chief Trump by seeking to restrict Trump’s access to the US nuclear arsenal. Milley claimed that Trump was so unsound of mind that he could not be trusted with the nuclear football.

Yet when actual unsoundness is there for everyone to see, Milley and the other “woke” generals are silent as the grave. These are dangerous times.

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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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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Our communities and our world in this time of pandemic, climate challenges, and injustice call upon us to build and design anew programs and infrastructure reaching beyond earlier models in offering outcomes even better than we could once have imagined.

The role of higher education has been part of this calling to majorly improve and even rethink fundamental purposes and approaches. A legitimate criticism of universities in recent decades and even generations has been their complacency of operating within their analyses and provision of explanations as to the social and environmental problems that extend beyond the educational setting that in many ways consume our lives.

What accounts for ethnic discrimination? How do we explain gender-based oppression? What has brought about economic disparity to such severe degrees? Why are the youth in our world as prone as anyone to incur the highest levels of unemployment? And certainly solutions are analyzed as well in terms of their outcomes and philosophical or theoretical bases, the costs relative to their benefits, and their comparative efficacy.

However, where universities have generally failed societies and student communities is in regard to their lack of participation in those solutions carried forward by the beneficiaries, the civil associations, and the concerned citizens and businesses within those localities.

Certainly, trends are moving in the direction of the vital role that universities play for societies’ betterment and uplifting of the public. At the same time, there remains a tug-of-war within university life between the activist-theoretician (bent of ameliorating the resultant difficulties people endure by way of social operating structures), and the objectivist (so committed to the “scientific method” that worldly conditions are left uninterrupted to ascertain a truth in their nature).

The pandemic and unabated poverty imposed upon most of humanity is behind this renewed effort to build back better than ever before. In Morocco in the city of Fes, we have the example University Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah (USMBA) and its Faculty of Islamic Theology. Dean Abdelmalek Aouich and the faculty’s leadership, fully supported by the USMBA President Radouane Mrabet, saw the opportunity to create an organic fruit tree nursery utilizing local seeds to benefit farming families of the Fes-Meknes region as a welcomed contribution, commensurate with their view of the role of higher education institutions. They are, after all, responding to a rural community-determined priority since farmers nationally are transitioning from barley and corn to fruit trees.

USMBA is contributing land to serve as the nursery for farmers of the region because rural families need to harvest every year and cannot forego their essential crop in order to plant the tree nurseries, which they also vitally need. The students gain opportunities to integrate and learn from their community surroundings while being exposed to the reality that everyone has an essential part to play in achieving increasing prosperity for the country.

This university-local community initiative fits squarely within the participatory action research framework, whereby data and knowledge is generated from the people and is used to advance change responsive to locally-defined needs. The experience enhances understanding and fulfills academic outcomes, including published articles that advocate the goals of the people, in harnessing critical professional skills with students and locals as they engage in empowerment workshops, in strategizing for project design, and in forging diverse and helpful partnerships.

Pomegranate tree saplings at USMBA in Fes (High Atlas Foundation, 2021)

The 90,000 trees planted for the people of Fes-Meknes at the USMBA nursery include fig, olive, carob, pomegranate, and almond. These trees live for generations, so the most incredible consequences of the dedication of the USMBA community are ones that we could not know no matter how committed the monitoring team.

Universities across Morocco and nations of the world do have admirable examples of their commitment to sustainable community development. The calling, or the frontier of change, is to make these initiatives integral to the research design in order for them to affect, in both the short and long terms, a positive world change. Student and faculty evaluations and the rankings of universities, in themselves, should be based upon the extent of their energy, dedication, and impact in this regard.

If the students of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah are any indicator of students in the world, then all we must really do is to create the expectation and to provide the guidance. In this way, they will carry forward with utmost vigor and with all the heartfelt commitment and analytical focus that one would hope to see.

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Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is President of the High Atlas Foundation in Morocco where this article was originally published. 

Featured image: Olive tree saplings at USMB in Fes (High Atlas Foundation, 2021)

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This blog by Carey Gillam is updated regularly with news and tips about the lawsuits involving Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer products.

October 25, 2021

Stephens trial drags on, toxicologist testifies about studies of herbicide and cancer risk

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In a massive blow to U.S. efforts to address the climate crisis, the Biden administration is poised to approve a right-of-way through the Ashley National Forest that would take the climate-damaging Uinta Basin Railway one step closer to being built.

The railway would enable crude oil production in the basin to quadruple to 350,000 barrels a day. Over a year, that much oil would produce planet-warming pollution conservatively estimated at 53 million tons of carbon dioxide — equivalent to the emissions from six of Utah’s dirtiest coal plants.

At an October 22 meeting of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, board members discussed a recent meeting in Utah with U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore. They reported that Chief Moore felt the railway “was a viable project” and that the Forest Service would be issuing a draft record of decision approving the right-of-way for the railway in early November.

The Forest Service’s support for the railway, which is intended to quadruple the production of crude oil and other fossil fuels, is entirely contrary to the Biden administration’s Executive Order 14008 on climate change. Approval of the project is slated to come during or just after the meeting of President Biden and global leaders at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.

“The Forest Service’s support for this climate-killing project undermines President Biden days before the administration heads to Glasgow to demonstrate U.S. leadership on the climate emergency,” said Deeda Seed, senior public lands campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This administration has no room for rogue agency actions. The administration needs to block this railway before it creates a massive surge in dirty oil production.”

The Forest Service has not responded to a letter and meeting request from 30 environmental and conservation groups to discuss the environmental harm that will be inflicted by the proposed railway.

In addition to climate damage, the railway will harm public lands and wildlife habitat. According to a federal environmental analysis, the 88-mile-long railway would dig up more than 400 Utah streams and strip bare or pave over 10,000 acres of wildlife habitat, including crucial areas that pronghorn and mule deer need to survive.

In Emma Park, a remote sagebrush valley known to birdwatchers, bulldozers and train traffic would drive imperiled greater sage grouse out of their mating and nesting grounds.

“The Forest Service chief will meet with proponents of this environmentally destructive project and express support for it, but he won’t talk to Utahns, climate activists and members of the conservation community,” Seed said. “By backing this destructive boondoggle, Moore is choosing to undercut the administration’s climate work to curry favor with fossil fuel interests.”

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Featured image: Drilling at night in Uinta Basin (licensed under CC BY 2.0)

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As reported October 25 by the reputable state media, Al Arabiya, Sudanese army and a cross-section of its population have returned, expressing dissatisfaction about the government. What is really at stake all these years is closely linked to the level of development and the living standard of the majority among the estimated 45 million population.

According to the El Sharq TV channel, two of Sudan’s three mobile operators have actually stopped providing services, so during the day people experienced communication problems. According to several media sources, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok together with other officials have been arrested, taken to an unknown location. The leaders of many political parties called for preventing a coup in the country.

UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, the African Union and other regional and international organizations have routinely condemned the undemocratic forced change in Sudan. In a statement posted on Twitter, the Secretary-General said that “there must be full respect for the constitutional charter to protect the hard-won political transition.” “The UN will continue to stand with the people of Sudan,” Guterres assured. 

Head of the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission Sudan (UNITAMS), also released a statement, declaring that the arrests of the Prime Minister, government officials and other politicians are “unacceptable.”  

“I call on the security forces to immediately release those who have been unlawfully detained or placed under house arrest”, Volker Perthes said. “It is the responsibility of these forces to ensure the security and wellbeing of people in their custody.”  

The UNITAMS chief, who acts as a Special Representative of the Secretary-General, urged everyone involved to exercise the utmost restraint. “All parties must immediately return to dialogue and engage in good faith to restore the constitutional order,” Perthes concluded.

Some unrests began sweeping the country following Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok’s meeting with head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. The ministers of communication, information, finance and industries were among those in custody. Sudanese people took to the streets following calls by the main opposition movement, the Forces of Freedom and Change. The crisis between the Sudanese military and civilian forces has been going on for several weeks.

In about-turn development, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, a general chairing the Sovereign Council of Sudan, announced in a televised address that general elections would be held in July 2023. The general declared a state of emergency in Sudan, dissolved both the country’s government and the Sovereign Council and suspended a number of articles of the Constitutional Declaration, which was signed by Sudan’s military and civilian forces in 2019 for a three-year transition period.

Besides the search for peaceful political pathways, Sudanese authorities need to address the deep-seated economic deficiencies and tackle common problems (basic infrastructure) facing people in micro levels of the society. This also relates many African countries. Sudan, located in the northeast Africa, shares borders with Egypt, Libya, Chad, Ethiopia and South Sudan. It is blessed with huge oil reserves and marine resources. The Blue and White Nile rivers meet in the capital city Khartoum to form the bid Nile, which flows northwards through Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea.

While Sudan is encircled by these seven countries mentioned above, it also has to northeast a huge sea, which could be harnessed for the further development of the economy. Revenues could be used to engage in economic diversification projects, thus creating employment for the youth. It is third-largest country in Africa, and the third-largest in the Arab world by area before the secession of South Sudan in 2011.

Over the years, damming the water resources for economy has not taken off the ground. The main purpose of the dam will be the generation of electricity. Its dimensions make it the largest contemporary hydropower project for the region in Africa.

In terms of political developments in Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir came to power in June 1989. During several years of his administration, Sudan’s economy was largely shattered due to political tyranny, deep-seated corruption and poor policies. Al-Bashir held power for more than 30 years, refused to step down, resulting in the convergence of opposition groups to form a united coalition. The government retaliated by arresting more than 800 opposition figures and thousands of protesters, according to the Human Rights Watch.

Many people died because Al-Bashir ordered security forces to disperse the sit-in peaceful demonstrators using tear gas and live ammunition in what is known as the Khartoum massacre, resulting in Sudan’s suspension from the African Union. Eventually, Omar al-Bashir was gone. Sudan opened a new political chapter with Prime Minister, Abdalla Hamdok, a 62-year-old economist who worked previously for the UN Economic Commission for Africa.

Significantly, it is highly expected that his working experience at the UN Economic Commission for Africa must necessarily reflect on performance, and resultantly have a positive impact on the level of sustainable development that connects the daily lives of the population.

With the new administration, Sudan still faces formidable economic problems, and its growth still a little (snail step) rise from a very low level of per capita output. In practical terms, it is desperate for foreign support and one surest way was to get to a donors conference held in Berlin, Germany. The donors’ conference was to provide a lifeline to the ongoing transition, alongside Sudan’s own efforts. It is worth to say that increased international political and financial assistance remain paramount, it was a progressive step for Sudan.

The goal was to also raise enough funds to kick-start social protection programs by the World Bank and the Sudanese Government that could help Sudanese families in need. The partners supported the International Monetary Fund to open up Sudan’s road towards debt relief. Some 50 countries and international organizations pledged more than $1.8 billion, while the World Bank Group offered a grant of $400 million.

“This conference opened a new chapter in the cooperation between Sudan and the international community to rebuild the country,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said at that time during video conference co-organized by Germany with Sudan, the European Union and the United Nations.

Berlin promised to make investments in in areas such as water, food security and education. Germany has urged the Sudanese government to invest in human rights. Germany said that it would contribute €150 million ($168 million) in aid to the sub-Saharan nation of Sudan.

Undoubtedly, Abdalla Hamdok described that conference as “unprecedented” and said it laid a “solid foundation for us moving forward” at least in the subsequent years. Sudan’s new transitional government has sought to repair the country’s international standing, but it still faces daunting economic challenges, and its growth was still a rise from a very low level of per capita output. It continues to experience troubled relationship with many of its neighbors, and especially over oil reserves with South Sudan.

Currently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is working hand in hand with Khartoum government to implement sound macroeconomic policies. Agricultural production remains Sudan’s most-important sector, employing 80 percent of the workforce but most farms remain rain-fed and susceptible to drought. Instability, adverse weather and weak world-agricultural prices ensures that much of the population will remain at or below the poverty line for years.

Right from Sahel to the Maghreb and to northeast Africa are witnessing instability. In the Horn of Africa (Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia) thousands dying daily. Peter Fabricius, Research Consultant from the South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies (ISS), noted quite recently in his article headlined – African Coups Are Making A Come Back – that from 18 August 2020, four coups have occurred. Two happened in Mali (August 2020 and May 2021), one in Chad (May 2021) and one in Guinea last month.

He further pointed out “what might help prevent that would be better responses from African Union, regional bodies, and international partners to coups and other forms of unconstitutional change of government.”

Perhaps the root causes of coups run too deep within a country for any external actor to influence much. But to the extent that they can, the African Union and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) should use their power preventively, focusing more on sanctioning ‘unconstitutional preservation of power’ and other undemocratic behavior to try to pre-empt coups, suggested Fabricius.

But late October 2021 political-military and cross-section of the civilian unrest are inter-connected, both politics and economy. Sudan is rich with natural resources, as it has oil reserves. Despite that, Sudan still faced formidable economic problems. Worse is production practices including agriculture are rudimentary. There has not been efforts, at least, to modernize agriculture to the growing population.

There is still a huge increase in unemployment, and perhaps it is absolutely necessary to make attempts at minimizing social contradictions and economic disparities, unquestionably and of course, these two – politics and economy questions are inseparable. These are some of the issues the government has to address seriously, in order to maintain sustainable peace and long-term stability in Sudan and set that as an admirable example in Africa.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a frequent and passionate contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

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Faced with increasing pressure to dissolve the five member UN Security Council, President Putin warned on October 21:

“If we remove the veto right of the permanent members, the UN would die the very same day – it would turn into the League of Nations. It would simply become a discussion platform”.

As walls separating east and west along Manichean Cold War lines of “democratic/free” vs “authoritarian/enslaved” are quickly being erected before our eyes, it is worth pondering not only the deeper implication of the Russian president’s message but also those healthier pathways out of the coming storm before it is too late.

League of Nations and the Imperial Hoax of WWI

Created in 1919 by forces centered in London and the racist Anglo-American establishment of the USA, the League of Nations was sold to a beaten-down world as the last and greatest hope for peace.

The groups then centered around Round Table leader Lord Alfred Milner (1), had taken control of the British Government in a form of soft coup in 1916 in order to shape the terms of the post-war order.

It was a major gamble of course since there were no guarantees that those imperial plotters who kicked over the world chessboard in 1914 would necessarily come out victorious.

From 1902 onward, Lord Milner, King Edward VII and his coterie of imperial co-thinkers across the Anglo-American deep state had invested significantly into lighting the world on fire via color revolutions, a plethora of assassinations and of course a long-planned global war that turned the world inside out.

In opposition to standard theory narratives taught in sundry history departments, WWI was a war with one aim: Destroy the spread of a community of cooperating sovereign nation states which had been forming in the last decades of the 19^th century. Internationally, statesmen of 1870-1900 were applying Lincoln’s system of protectionism, national credit, industrial growth and win-win cooperation under the banner of “American System” champions Friedrich List and Henry C Carey. By 1890, such policies were championed by Sergei Witte of Russia, Otto von Bismarck of Germany, President Carnot of France, and many Lincoln republicans in the USA.

Despite the fact that Russia was a member of the British-led Entente Cordiale, both Germany and Russia who had historically tended to industrial cooperation along Witte-Bismarck strategic lines were the primary targets for destruction.

This was a fact better understood at the time, with The Daily Mail of December 14, 1909 even publishing an editorial reading: “the king [Edward VII] and his councillors have strained every nerve to establish Ententes with Russia and with Italy; and have formed an Entente with France, and as well with Japan. Why? To isolate Germany.”

It is without a doubt that many Anglo-American grand strategists expected a cooperative United States to be drawn into “the war that was to end all wars” much earlier on. With nationalist President McKinley’s 1901 murder, anglophile traitors quickly swept into power under Teddy Roosevelt who was seduced into King Edward VII’s plans for an Anglo-American special relationship as the basis for a new Anglo-Saxon world order.

Woodrow Wilson’s accession to the presidency from 1912-1920, and the establishment of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 only re-enforced the belief that America was sufficiently under the control of a supranational financier elite which had never quite forgiven the belligerent colony for winning independence in 1783.

When Germany found herself the last nation to be prepared for a war that had been set into motion by the architects of the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale (later joined by a bewildered Russia), America was expected to jump in immediately.

Military pacts well known to all geopoliticians of 1914 ensured Russian intervention on Serbia’s side if the latter got in a fight. Similarly, Germany had guaranteed its support for Austria in any fight it found itself enmeshed in.

When an anarchist terror cell from Serbia known as ‘the Black Hand’ was deployed to kill Archduke Ferdinand of Austria on June 28, 1914, a chain of events was put into motion that led a sleep walking world into the slaughterhouse.

Finally realizing what had happened, Kaiser Wilhelm wrote despairingly in August 1914:

“England, Russia, and France have agreed among themselves… to take the Austro-Serbian conflict for an excuse for waging a war of extermination against us… That is the real naked situation slowly and cleverly set going by Edward VII and… finally brought to a conclusion by George V… So the famous encirclement of Germany has finally become a fact, despite every effort of our politicians and diplomats to prevent it. The net has been suddenly thrown over our head, and England sneeringly reaps the most brilliant success of her persistently prosecuted purely anti-German world policy against which we have proved ourselves helpless, while she twists the noose of our political and economic destruction out of our fidelity to Austria, as we squirm isolated in the net. A great achievement, which arouses the admiration even of him who is to be destroyed as its result! Edward VII is stronger after his death than am I who am still alive!”

The fight inside the USA

When nationalist forces in the United States saw the fires start across the ocean, it wasn’t interventionist neoconservative Pax Americana instincts that dictated a leap into the mire (as those would only be cultivated by a cult of neo-Trotskyists many decades later).

The USA of 1914 was still very much influenced by the non-interventionist spirit of George Washington and John Quincy Adams.

It was George Washington who warned Americans never to allow themselves to be entangled into European oligarchical intrigue, while Adams re-affirmed this belief in the form of his Monroe Doctrine warning that America must never “go about searching for monsters to destroy”.

Although not attaining a victory on the federal level until the 1921 inauguration of President Warren Harding, these nationalists (sometimes dubbed “The American System Caucus”) fought valiantly to keep the USA neutral. In 1915, an inside job arranged by Anglo-American (mostly Anglo) forces drove the sinking of the Lusitania carrying 1700 people (and 173 tons of explosives) from the USA to Europe. Although it took two years of relentless propaganda, this event was decisive in fueling anti-German sentiment and winning over American support to the war. With America’s 1917 entry, the scales were sufficiently tipped in favor of the “allies” and the Austro-Hungarian empire was soon put down.

Photo: Library of Congress

Among other things, the Ottoman Empire- then allied to Germany was also dissolved with victor nations gobbling up her territories, while imperialists drooled over the potential carving up of the Russian empire after the destruction of the Romanov Dynasty in 1917. Lastly Sykes Picot carving up of the Middle East (also arranged years before the end of WWI) set into motion the divide-to-conquer strategy of Anglo-intrigue in Southwest Asia that has plagued the world until our present day.

The Birth of the League of Nations

Anyone going into the opening January 10, 1920 conference of the League of Nations that emerged out of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, would not have had most of this intrigue in mind.

The world was told that cause of the war was German imperial ambition and the nation state system itself that made expansionism possible. Discussing truth was not deemed appropriate amidst this frenzy of looting as everything that Germany possessed including vital agriculture, mines, rail, industry and colonies went up for grabs. Debts were thrust upon the beaten German state as North Silesia, Ruhr, and Alsace-Loraine were confiscated along with the means of paying their reparations (2).

The acolytes managing the League of Nations demanded that the world finally learn that if nation states were permitted to exist, then such wars would plague humanity forever. The solution was the dissolution of sovereign nation states. No longer would selfish nation states be free to decide for themselves when to war and when to declare peace. Articles 10 and 16 of the League’s Covenant (pre-cursor to the latter Article 5 collective security pact of NATO) would ensure this.

In Defense of Sovereignty

Fortunately, a return to sanity under the short-lived Presidency of Warren Harding (1921-23) brought the USA into a hostile relationship with the League and its Round Table affiliates within the CFR and Wall Street. Harding ensured a healthy belligerence to the League’s anti-national mandate and worked hard to initiate bilateral agreements with Austria, Germany, Hungary, Russia and China outside of the League’s authority.

During the 1920s, many other nations shared this deep mistrust of the new supranational organization and saw it clearly as the cover for a new British Empire. With this awareness, the League was never permitted to take on the teeth which one world government fanatics so deeply desired. From 1921-1932, the increasingly impotent body fell into disarray and saw its last serious battle against nationalism die in June 1933 when American President Franklin Roosevelt torpedoed the League’s London Conference on finance and trade.

This little known conference brought together 62 nations and was co-controlled by the Bank of England, the Bank of International Settlements (aka: the Central Bank of Central banks) and aimed at imposing a central bankers dictatorship onto the world. This was a process not that dissimilar from the COP26 Summit, and Great Reset Agenda in motion today.

While the success of the League’s London Conference might have made WWII unnecessary (3), the goal of a Malthusian/eugenics-driven “scientifically managed” priesthood as outlined by the likes of John Maynard Keynes would have been just as deadly.

A Return to our Present Age

Despite the sad fact that neither Harding, nor FDR were able to fully see through their ambitious goals, the possibility of reviving the spirit and intent of the United Nations charter under a paradigm of win-win cooperation would not be possible without their intervention into history.

FDR’s early death resulted in his enemies taking control of Washington and converting his dream into a Cold War nightmare. Bretton Woods institutions like the World Bank and IMF were turned into instruments for usurious re-colonialization instead of long-term productive credit generators under an international New Deal. Throughout the Cold War, the United Nations became increasingly an impotent servant of empire without any means of giving a voice to the majority of her 193 member nations.

The UN Security Council was among the few important institutions within the new organization that gave an equal voice to leading members on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Over the years, especially since 2011, this veto power has been vital in blocking unilateral acts of imperialism since any official military act of intervention required unanimity of all five members.

The United Nations is NOT the League of Nations

The League of Nations was formally dissolved just as the UN was coming online.

The timing of these two events has been used to induce credulous people to believe that the UN is simply a continuity of the League. That is a provably false assertion.

Where the League of Nations demanded an abolition of national sovereignty, the United Nations made the defense of national sovereignty and non-interventionism guiding principles of its founding charter.

Unlike the technocratic/management-fixated League of Nations Covenant, the UN Charter is guided explicitly by a mandate to enhance large scale economic development, win-win cooperation and the universal needs of all humanity (4). And unlike the League, the UN featured no collective security pact which would make initiating WWIII much easier for a supranational oligarchy. The burning desire for “collective security pacts” was the driving force of NATO’s creation (led as one might expect by the hand of Rhodes Scholars like Escott Reid).

Today, the UN is largely a toothless body whose 52 attempts to criticize Israel since 1973 have been blocked by the USA. But despite this, the security council’s existence has unarguably saved the lives of millions by blocking the countless attempts to destroy Syria and continues to serve as a game changing wedge against the will of unipolar Dr. Strangeloves with delusions of global supremacy.

Modern representatives of the Anglo-American elite that took control of the USA over the dead bodies of Harding, FDR and JFK have clamored for a new post-nation state security doctrine. This doctrine was officially known as Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and was launched by Soros-affiliated operatives like Lord Mark Malloch Brown, Strobe Talbott and Tony Blair in 1999. Malloch Brown integrated this doctrine into the United Nations while acting as Undersecretary General of the organization and has spent the last years giving speeches calling for the dissolution of the UN Security Council in order to remove “authoritarian nations” like Russia and China from any role in global war-making decisions.

So, when Putin or Xi call for defending the UN Charter, or warn against a new League of Nations, it would do us well to take their words with full seriousness and avoid staining human history with another world war.

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Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review. He can be reached at matthewehret.substack.com

Notes

(1) Other prominent Roundtable-connected figures of the Milner-led soft coup included Prime Minster David Lloyd George, Leo Amery, Minister of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, Lord Balfour. Milner set up a secret group known as the ‘X Committee’ which largely ran most aspects of the war from 1917-1919.

(2) After the 1918 Armistice dismantled Germany’s army and navy, the once powerful nation was now forced to pay the impossible sum of 132 billion gold marks to the victors and had to give up territories representing 10% of its population (Alsace-Loraine, Ruhr, and North Silesia) which made up 15% of its arable land, 12% of its livestock, 74% of its iron ore, 63% of its zinc production, and 26% of its coal. Germany also had to give up 8000 locomotives, 225 000 railcars and all of its colonies. It was a field day of modern pillage.

(3) As a transition to global technocratic feudalism might having arisen through more “peaceful” means

(4) The first four sections of article one read: “To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace; To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace; To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.” And just in case any imperially minded legalist wished to read the charter loosely, Article two quickly made it clear that “the Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.”

Featured image is from Wikimedia

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Did you know?

On June 20, 1898, as U.S. troops prepared to land in Cuba to “pacify” the island, Assistant Secretary of State Francis Loomis held forth on the larger implications of the U.S. intervention.  Writing to his boss, Secretary of State William Day, Loomis declared, “I think it our destiny to control more or less directly most all of the Latin American countries.”

One means to this end was economic domination.  “It is possible to attain commercial ascendancy in them in much the same way that England does in China,” wrote Loomis, “that is, by lending them money and administering their revenues.”  Another was political annexation.  “I am glad it is to fall to the lot of this administration to strengthen our country by adding to its domain the islands that we may need to sustain ourselves as one of the foremost nations of the earth and the soon-to-be leading one in every good sense of the term.”^[5]

U.S. military interventions in Latin America, 1895-1930s

As the 19^th century came to a close, the United States embarked on a new mission of empire-building.  It was new in the sense that it involved overseas rather than continental expansion, and that it allied with financial and commercial interests rather than land-hungry settlers.  U.S. leaders did not join the European “scramble” for African colonies, but they did vie for influence and territorial acquisitions in Asia and the Pacific, and they pursued outright dominance in the Central American-Caribbean region.

The War of 1898 against Spain provided the catalyst for an overseas empire, as the U.S. gained the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Cuba as the spoils of war (see The War of 1898).  Still, the U.S. was playing catch-up in the imperial competition for colonies, markets, and spheres of influence.  By 1900, European nations had colonized 90% of Africa, the whole of the Indian subcontinent, and much of Southeast Asia.

U.S. leaders pursued dominance in the Central American-Caribbean region through economic, diplomatic, and military pressure, including military interventions and occupations.  They claimed that their goals and policies were benevolent and necessary to preserve civilized order.  Most Latin Americans, however, regarded U.S. interventionism as “Yankee imperialism.”

The era is framed by two opposing doctrines, the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which set forth the rationales for U.S. military intervention in Latin America, and the Good Neighbor Policy of 1933, which countermanded the Roosevelt Corollary and upheld the principle of noninterventionism.

This essay tells the story of “Yankee imperialism” in the Central American-Caribbean region during the first third of the 20^th century.^[6]  It analyzes U.S. motives and rationales, surveys the policies and doctrines of successive U.S. administrations, and examines six case studies of U.S. occupations – in Cuba, Panama, Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua.  The final section explores what lessons might be drawn from this history.

II.  U.S. motives and rationales

U.S. motives for overseas expansion were similar to those of other imperial powers – military and geostrategic advantage, economic gain, political control, and international prestige – but U.S. leaders were disinclined toward permanent colonies and furthermore refused to admit to any imperial intentions.  The political ideology of the United States, after all, was and is directly contrary to the object of imperialism – control over other lands and peoples without their consent.  “Throughout its history,” writes the historian Jerald A. Combs, “the United States has been wary of the idea of imperialism.  Americans have prided themselves on the fact that their revolution was the first successful rebellion against European colonialism.”^[7]

U.S. leaders past and present have played down the contradiction as well as mischievously twisted American principles into conformity.  As an example of the latter, on July 12, 1900, as U.S. forces fought a war to suppress Filipino independence, President William McKinley told the American people that the United States was bravely engaged in the liberation of ten million Filipinos “from the yoke of imperialism.”  Again, in May 1901, he assured U.S. soldiers in San Francisco returning from the war that there was “no imperialism but that of the sovereign power of the American people.”^[8]  The principles of freedom and democracy, as such, were conflated with American control, as if flying the Stars and Stripes over a foreign country made it free.

1904 Cartoon by William Allen Rogers (Granger Collection)

According to the historian William I. Cohen, the American public’s “traditional anti-imperialism required that empire be disguised and rationalized.”  U.S. leaders disguised their empire-building in Asia in part by promising “eventual independence for the Philippines, after appropriate tutelage.”  They disguised it in Latin America by employing “the concept of ‘protectorate,’ clearly not a colony, [which] facilitated American hegemony in the Caribbean.”^[9]  During the first two decades of the 20^th century, the U.S. made protectorates of Cuba, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Haiti.

U.S. leaders also rationalized their budding empire on the basis of race.  Woodrow Wilson, a political science professor at Princeton University before he was elected president, explained in September 1900 that the principle of the “consent of the governed” need not apply to “the affairs of politically undeveloped races, which have not yet learned the rudiments of order and self-control.”  Thus, he concluded, the “‘consent’ of the Filipinos and the ‘consent’ of the American colonists to government, for example, are two radically different things.”^[10]  Wilson’s racially-tinged view of political rights was validated by the Supreme Court in Insular Cases (1901), which held that people living in subjugated territories had no guarantee of Constitutional rights.

Among the “undeveloped races,” in the view of many Anglo Americans, was the population of Latin America, a melting pot of European, Native American, and African peoples.  In 1821 Secretary of State John Quincy Adams wrote of Latin Americans that there was “no prospect that they would establish free or liberal institutions of government. . . . Arbitrary power, military and ecclesiastical, was stamped upon their habits, and upon all their institutions.”^[11]  Francis Loomis, who also served as ambassador to Venezuela from 1897 to 1901, warned his colleagues in the State Department, “one thing that I have learned . . . is to place no belief in the word of a man of Latin race if he may have anything to gain by lying.  This may be laid down as a rule.”^[12]  General Leonard Wood, who served as U.S. military governor of Cuba, described the Cuban people in 1900 as “a race that has steadily been going down for a hundred years.”  Hence, in his view, it would take many years of American instruction to realize “an enlightened community for self-government.”^[13]

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***

The north of Syria is in expectation of hostilities flaring up. All sides are waiting for the others to make a first step and open the way for an escalation throughout.

On October 25^th, all sides continued concentrating and regrouping their forces, positioning them in northern Syria, in preparation for the upcoming escalation.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that the Turkish military is ready to use heavy weapons against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the northwestern Syrian region of Greater Idlib if necessary.

Over the last few weeks, the Turkish military deployed large reinforcements and established two new positions in Greater Idlib. The region is under control by Turkish-backed militants, and they frequently violate a ceasefire agreed between Moscow and Ankara back in 2020.

Erdogan’s threats are clearly aimed to deter the SAA and its Russian and Iranian allies, from initiating a large-scale ground operation in the region.

The Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) renewed their airstrikes on Greater Idlib, targeting underground positions in the outskirts of the towns of Kansafra and al-Bara in the al-Zawiya Mount on October 23^rd. All of the towns are known strongholds of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the de-facto ruler of Greater Idlib.

On October 24^th, the VKS targeted the town of Jisr al-Shughur, an infamous stronghold of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Turkistan Islamic Party and HTS.

Meanwhile, Turkey is preparing its own ground operation in northeastern Syria. The SAA deployed reinforcements in Northeastern Syria in order to deter the operation, or at least to provide an adequate defensive posture. Ankara is fighting against the Kurdish groups in the region, and its actions harm the civilian population greatly.

Despite any local opposition, and a wave of civilian protests in Tel Rifaat against Turkish military actions, preparations are undergoing.

On October 21, a Turkish TAI Anka-S combat drone was spotted over the town of Kobane in Syria’s northeastern region. This took place a single day after a Turkish drone strike on the town resulted in 5 deaths, two of which were members of the Kurdish US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

On October 23, a new Turkish drone strike targeted a car that was moving in the outskirts of Kobane, on a highway linking the town with the government-held city of Aleppo. According to reports, three civilians were killed.

Turkey is likely attempting to provoke the SDF, which responded to similar drone strikes in August. Ankara is looking for any sort of justification that it can use to explain its incoming operation, and such “brief escalations” in violence are expected in the coming days.

If the Turkish Armed Forces and allied factions go over the top, it is highly likely that the SAA and SDF, alongside other Kurdish groups will unite against the common adversary, and the outcome of the fight may be surprising.

At the best of times, northeastern Syria has a tense calm between the SAA and the Kurdish groups, which are hesitant of entirely coming under Damascus’ control. A development in which Ankara begins yet another large-scale operation in the region could be the impetus that Bashar al-Assad’s government needs to consolidate power, if it is able to effectively counter Turkey’s push.

The week beginning on October 25^th, may just be the time when Middle East Pandora’s box is opened, once again.

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If You Take the COVID Vax, You Can Never Achieve Full Immunity Again – Government Stats Unveil the Horrifying Truth

By Ethan Huff, October 25, 2021

The British government has spilled the beans about that fact that once you get “vaccinated” for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19), you will never again be able to acquire full natural immunity.

In-N-Out Burger’s Explanation for Its Refusal to Enforce Vaccine Passports

By Adam Dick, October 25, 2021

When government mandates related to experimental coronavirus “vaccines” are thrust on businesses, it is heartening to see businesses refusing to comply. It is especially great to see a business back up its noncompliance with a well-stated, freedom-centered explanation.

The World According to Vladimir Putin

By Pepe Escobar, October 25, 2021

Vladimir Putin is a frequent keynote speaker. In Sochi this year, as I related in a previous column, the overarching theme was “global shake-up in the 21^st century: the individual, values and the state.”

The Fake “Delta Variant” and the Fourth Wave: Another Lockdown? Upcoming Financial Crash? Worldwide Economic and Social Sabotage?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 25, 2021

There is a sequence of outright lies and fabrications used to justify far-reaching policy decisions in the course of the last 18 months. The biggest lie, which is firmly acknowledged both by scientific opinion and the WHO is that the RT-PCR test used to “detect” the spread of the virus (as well as the variants) is not only flawed but TOTALLY INVALID.

White House to “Quickly” Vaccinate 28 Million Children Age 5-11 as Deaths and Injuries Continue to Increase Among 12 to 19-Year-Olds Who Received a COVID-19 Shot

By Brian Shilhavy, October 25, 2021

This week the Biden Administration laid out their plans to quickly vaccinate 28 million children between the ages of 5 and 11 with a COVID-19 vaccine, which sounded more like a Press Release from Pfizer, since the FDA has not even authorized the shots for that age group yet.

Video: US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Romania: “Should Deterrence Fail”, U.S. and NATO Positioned for War in Black Sea

By Rick Rozoff, October 25, 2021

Do the following statements confirm US-NATO’s intent to wage war on Russia “if deterrence fails”? Emphasis in quotations confirm this intent. Excerpts from the speech, for complete speech see video.

Governor de Santis Says that If People Are Forced by Their Employer to be Vaccinated, and Then Become Ill, the Employer Will be Liable for Damages

By Dr. Meryl Nass, October 26, 2021

While the PREP ACT provides a huge liability shield for everyone involved with vaccinations of EUA products, the EUA requires that people be informed about what is known about the product and have the right to refuse.

Washington Always Looking for Another War

By Bruce K. Gagnon, October 25, 2021

It didn’t take long for the US to up the ante with China and Russia. So soon after the crushing defeat from 20 years of death and destruction in Afghanistan we find Washington stirring the fire pit and looking for more trouble.

‘An Outrage Against Democracy’: JFK’s Nephews Urge Biden to Reveal Assassination Records

By Marc Caputo, October 25, 2021

The records were scheduled to be made public Tuesday, but the White House announced late Friday night that it would delay their publication until at least Dec. 15 — and perhaps longer if President Joe Biden determines it’s in the nation’s best interest to keep them confidential.

The COVID-19 Pandemic in a Time of Moral and Spiritual Blackout

By Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null, October 25, 2021

If there is a lesson the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us, it is that conventional medicine is largely a mockery of its original moral foundations. This is not to deny important advances in saving lives, especially in diagnostic methods, surgical technologies, critical care and emergency medicine.

Natural Immunity is More Durable than Vaccine Immunity. Citizens Petition

By Informed Consent Action Network, October 25, 2021

When the CDC chose to lift restrictions on the vaccinated, ICAN went to work.  Through its attorneys, it formally demanded that the CDC also (at the least) lift restrictions on the naturally immune.

Exposing the Covid Lie: The Day When Podcaster Joe Rogan Confronted CNN’s Chief Medical Propagandist

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, October 25, 2021

CNN is in damage control after its chief medical correspondent and notorious Covid-19 experimental vaccine pusher, Dr. Sanjay Gupta was humiliated on The Joe Rogan Experience when he was confronted for the obvious lie about Joe Rogan taking “horse dewormer” which was actually Ivermectin.

No Time To Think, “No Time to Die”: The Changing Geopolitics of International Blockbusters?

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, October 25, 2021

One effect of this narrative style is to put more emphasis on the story of Bond and less on the usual geopolitics and action we associate with Bond films. Now this is very interesting considering that if one was to ask oneself: which country would be the most likely target and villain of the latest Bond film as a cultural representative of the world’s imperialist and neo-colonial powers?

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***

“NATO has ended up in the attic,” wrote the political commentators of several newspapers a month ago, after France had withdrawn its ambassador from Washington on September 16. It was Paris’ protest at being excluded from the strategic-military partnership between the United States, Great Britain and Australia, announced the day before, and at losing a lucrative contract for the sale of submarines to Australia, which will be replaced by nuclear submarines supplied by the U.S. and Great Britain.

A week after the resounding diplomatic break, however, the French general Lavigne was put in charge of the Allied Transformation Command, with headquarters in Norfolk in the U.S., and the presidents of the two countries, Biden and Macron, published a Joint Declaration.

Biden reaffirmed “the strategic importance of the French and European engagement in the Indo-Pacific” (the region that in Washington’s geopolitics extends from the west coast of the US to that of India). The reason was explained by the Military Committee of the Chiefs of Defence of the 30 NATO countries, meeting in Athens: “While Moscow’s aggressive actions are a threat to our security, China’s rise is fundamentally shifting the balance of power, which has potential consequences for our security, our prosperity and our way of life.”

In the face of such “threats,” they concluded, “we need Europe and North America to stand strong, bound together”. Biden reiterated in his joint statement with Macron: “The United States recognizes the importance of a stronger, more capable European Defence Force that is complementary to NATO”. Therefore, a militarily stronger Europe, but as a complement to NATO: an asymmetrical alliance, to which 21 of the 27 countries of the European Union belong, in which the position of Supreme Allied Commander in Europe is always held by a general of the United States, which holds all the other key commands in Europe (such as the JFC-Naples with headquarters in Lago Patria).

On this background, the meeting of 30 Defense Ministers (for Italy Lorenzo Guerini, Democratic Party) was held on October 21-22 at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. It created an “Innovation Fund” with an initial allocation of 1 billion euros, to be paid by 17 European countries including Italy, but not by the United States, for the development of the most advanced technologies for war use. It launched the “Strategy for Artificial Intelligence”, an even more costly program for NATO to maintain its advantage in this field that “is changing the global defense environment”, i.e. the way war is waged. It decided on “improving the readiness and effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent,” i.e., deploying new nuclear weapons in Europe, of course with the motivation of defending against “the growing missile threat from Russia.”

On the eve of the NATO meeting, the Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, warned that “the United States of America has stepped up work with the full support of its NATO allies to modernize tactical nuclear weapons and their storage sites in Europe” and Russia considers particularly worrying “the engagement of pilots from the bloc’s non-nuclear member states in the drills to practice employing tactical nuclear weapons.”A message directed in particular to Italy, where the U.S. is preparing to replace B61 nuclear bombs with the new B61-12s and Italian pilots are being trained in their use with F-35s. “We regard this as a direct violation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” Russia’s defense chief stressed.

The message is directed to Italy and other European NATO members who, despite having ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear countries, host US nuclear weapons and train for their use. The implicit meaning of the message is clear: Russia considers these countries a source of threat and is taking countermeasures. The message has been ignored as usual by our government and parliament and, of course, by the media that have put NATO in the attic.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

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: NATO heads of state at the alliance’s summit in Brussels (Source: Liberation News)

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***

I think the Governor has voiced an idea that will destroy the mandates. And he is calling back the legislature to act on the issue.

While the PREP ACT provides a huge liability shield for everyone involved with vaccinations of EUA products, the EUA requires that people be informed about what is known about the product and have the right to refuse. 

Well, a lot of negative information is now known, but it isn’t being provided on the “Fact Sheets”

And people are not being given the right to refuse.

Furthermore, as the Governor points out, employees are not being issued religious and medical waivers, as required by federal law.

I think these failings will void the PREP ACT protections. Employers will become liabile for damages, especially since the federal government did not put into place laws/regulations/orders to back them up.

As soon as employers realize they are the ones left holding the bag, mandates are over.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Anthrax Vaccine.

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When government mandates related to experimental coronavirus “vaccines” are thrust on businesses, it is heartening to see businesses refusing to comply. It is especially great to see a business back up its noncompliance with a well-stated, freedom-centered explanation.

Check out below the explanation In-N-Out Burger provided this week for the company’s restaurant in San Francisco refusing to comply with the San Francisco government’s demand that the restaurant enforce the city’s vaccine passport mandate:

As a Company, In-N-Out Burger strongly believes in the highest form of customer service and to us that means serving all Customers who visit us and making all Customers feel welcome. We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government. It is unreasonable, invasive, and unsafe to force our restaurant Associates to segregate Customers into those who may be served and those who may not, whether based on the documentation they carry, or any other reason.

We fiercely disagree with any government dictate that forces a private company to discriminate against customers who choose to patronize their business. This is clear governmental overreach and is intrusive, improper, and offensive.

Hopefully, In-N-Out Burger’s example of bold freedom-centered action against vaccine mandates will inspire many more businesses to take similar action.

Over the past year and a half, governments at all levels in America have taken huge steps in the exercise of tyrannical powers in the name of countering coronavirus. Power gained is often only grudgingly given up. It will take many individuals and businesses boldly declaring “no more” and “never again” to ensure limitations on government power are respected.

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Featured image is from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

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***

The plenary session is the traditional highlight of the annual, must-follow Valdai Club discussions – one of Eurasia’s premier intellectual gatherings.

Vladimir Putin is a frequent keynote speaker. In Sochi this year, as I related in a previous column, the overarching theme was “global shake-up in the 21^st century: the individual, values and the state.”

Putin addressed it head on, in what can already be considered one of the most important geopolitical speeches in recent memory (a so-far incomplete transcript can be found here) – certainly his strongest moment in the limelight. That was followed by a comprehensive Q&A session (starting at 4:39:00).

Predictably, assorted Atlanticists, neocons and liberal interventionists will be apoplectic. That’s irrelevant. For impartial observers, especially across the Global South, what matters is to pay very close attention to how Putin shared his worldview – including some very candid moments.

Right at the start, he evoked the two Chinese characters that depict “crisis” (as in “danger”) and “opportunity,” melding them with a Russian saying: “Fight difficulties with your mind. Fight dangers with your experience.”

This elegant, oblique reference to the Russia-China strategic partnership led to a concise appraisal of the current chessboard:

The re-alignment of the balance of power presupposes a redistribution of shares in favor of rising and developing countries that until now felt left out. To put it bluntly, the Western domination of international affairs, which began several centuries ago and, for a short period, was almost absolute in the late 20^th century, is giving way to a much more diverse system.

That opened the way to another oblique characterization of hybrid warfare as the new modus operandi:

Previously, a war lost by one side meant victory for the other side, which took responsibility for what was happening. The defeat of the United States in the Vietnam War, for example, did not make Vietnam a “black hole.” On the contrary, a successfully developing state arose there, which, admittedly, relied on the support of a strong ally. Things are different now: No matter who takes the upper hand, the war does not stop, but just changes form. As a rule, the hypothetical winner is reluctant or unable to ensure peaceful post-war recovery, and only worsens the chaos and the vacuum posing a danger to the world.

A disciple of Berdyaev

In several instances, especially during the Q&A, Putin confirmed he’s a huge admirer of Nikolai Berdyaev. It’s impossible to understand Putin without understanding Berdyaev (1874-1948), who was a philosopher and theologian – essentially, a philosopher of Christianity.

In Berdyaev’s philosophy of history, the meaning of life is defined in terms of the spirit, compared with secular modernity’s emphasis on economics and materialism. No wonder Putin was never a Marxist.

For Berdyaev, history is a time-memory method through which man works toward his destiny. It’s the relationship between the divine and the human that shapes history. He places enormous importance on the spiritual power of human freedom.

Putin made several references to freedom, to family – in his case, of modest means – and to the importance of education; he heartily praised his apprenticeship at Leningrad State University. In parallel, he absolutely destroyed wokeism, transgenderism and cancel culture promoted “under the banner of progress.”

This is only one among a series of key passages:

We are surprised by the processes taking place in countries that used to see themselves as pioneers of progress. The social and cultural upheavals taking place in the United States and Western Europe are, of course, none of our business; we don’t interfere with them. Someone in the Western countries is convinced that the aggressive erasure of whole pages of their own history – the “reverse discrimination” of the majority in favor of minorities, or the demand to abandon the usual understanding of such basic things as mother, father, family or even the difference between the sexes – that these are, in their opinion, milestones of the movement toward social renewal.

So a great deal of his 40 minute-long speech, as well as his answers, codified some markers of what he previously defined as “healthy conservatism”:

Now that the world is experiencing a structural collapse, the importance of sensible conservatism as a basis for policy has increased many times over, precisely because the risks and dangers are multiplying and the reality around us is fragile.

Switching back to the geopolitical arena, Putin was adamant that “we are friends with China. But not against anyone.”

Geoeconomically, he once again took time to engage in a masterful, comprehensive – even passionate – explanation of how the natural gas market works, coupled with the European Commission’s self-defeating bet on the spot market, and why Nord Stream 2 is a game-changer.

Afghanistan

During the Q&A, scholar Zhou Bo from Tsinghua University addressed one of the key, current geopolitical challenges. Referring to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, he pointed out that, “if Afghanistan has a problem, the SCO has a problem. So how can the SCO, led by China and Russia, help Afghanistan?”

Putin stressed four points in his answer:

• The economy must be restored;
• The Taliban must eradicate drug trafficking;
• The main responsibility should be assumed “by those who had been there for 20 years” – echoing the joint statement after the meeting between the extended troika and the Taliban in Moscow on Wednesday; and
• Afghan state funds should be unblocked.

He also mentioned, indirectly, that the large Russian military base in Tajikistan is not a mere decorative prop.

Training bunker at Russia’s military base in Takikistan. Photo: Moscow Times

Putin went back to the subject of Afghanistan during the Q&A, once again stressing that NATO members should not “absolve themselves from responsibility.”

He reasoned that the Taliban “are trying to fight extreme radicals.” On the “need to start with the ethnic component,” he described Tajiks as accounting for 47% of the overall Afghan population – perhaps an over-estimation but the message was on the imperative of an inclusive government.

He also struck a balance: As much as “we are sharing with them [the Taliban] a view from the outside,” he made the point that Russia is “in contact with all political forces” in Afghanistan – in the sense that there are contacts with former government officials like Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah and also Northern Alliance members, now in the opposition, who are self-exiled in Tajikistan.

Those pesky Russians

Now compare all of the above with the current NATO circus in Brussels, complete with a new “master plan to deter the growing Russian threat.”

No one ever lost money underestimating NATO’s capacity to reach the depths of inconsequential stupidity. Moscow does not even bother to talk to these clowns anymore: as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has pointed out, “Russia will no longer pretend that some changes in relations with NATO are possible in the near future.”

Moscow from now on only talks to the masters – in Washington. After all, the direct line between the Chief of General Staff, General Gerasimov, and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, General Todd Wolters, remains active. Messenger boys such as Stoltenberg and the massive NATO bureaucracy in Brussels are deemed irrelevant.

This happens, in Lavrov’s assessment, right after “all our friends in Central Asia” have been “telling us that they are against … approaches either from the United States or from any other NATO member state” promoting the stationing of any imperial “counter-terrorist” apparatus in any of the “stans” of Central Asia.

And still the Pentagon continues to provoke Moscow. Wokeism-lobbyist-cum-Secretary of Defense Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin, who oversaw the American Great Escape from Afghanistan, is now pontificating that Ukraine should de facto join NATO.

That should be the last stake impaling the “brain-dead” (copyright Emmanuel Macron) zombie, as it meets its fate raving about simultaneous Russian attacks on the Baltic and Black Seas with nuclear weapons.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Vladimir Putin at Valdai. (Source: Daily Sabah)

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***

When the CDC chose to lift restrictions on the vaccinated, ICAN went to work.  Through its attorneys, it formally demanded that the CDC also (at the least) lift restrictions on the naturally immune.  It provided the CDC with over 60 studies reflecting that natural immunity is more durable and robust than vaccine immunity. 

The CDC’s response is shameful.  It fails to address any of these studies, collectively involving millions of people, and instead cites a single irrelevant study of a few hundred people that does not even involve comparing vaccine versus natural immunity!

As reflected in ICAN’s formal exchange with the CDC, the available data and studies reflect as follows regarding the current virus causing most COVID-19 in the United States:

And here is the full story.  In May, the CDC revised its recommendations for fully vaccinated people, lessening certain restrictions.  This same guidance, however, made no mention of those who have already recovered from COVID-19.

Immediately after the CDC revised its recommendations, ICAN, through its attorneys, demanded that the CDC immediately include those who have recovered from COVID-19 in the same category as those fully vaccinated.  ICAN’s demand was based on a robust body of science.

The CDC responded with a ridiculous form response thanking us for our “interest in” COVID-19.  Our attorneys therefore submitted the letter as a formal petition to the CDC on July 6, 2021, to which the CDC is required by law to thoroughly respond.

In September, after even more studies had come out evidencing the robust and durable nature of natural immunity (and the waning efficacy of the vaccines), and having not yet received a response from the CDC (as they were busy cooking up the Kentucky study), our attorneys supplemented the Citizen Petition with 56 additional studies supporting that natural immunity is, in fact, superior to vaccine immunity.

Months after ICAN first contacted the CDC regarding natural immunity and submitted the petition, the CDC responded that it, “find[s] no basis to further modify the current CDC recommendation in this area until the science warrants it.” The CDC’s conclusion relied on one single study of Kentucky residents and ignored each of the 60+ studies ICAN submitted it the CDC!

ICAN’s attorneys have now submitted a reply to the CDC.  In that reply, the attorneys explain that the Kentucky study, a retrospective study of only a few hundred people, is irrelevant as to whether it is appropriate for the CDC to lift restrictions on the naturally immune because the study did not compare naturally immune individuals with vaccinated individuals.  Instead, it compared the naturally immune to the naturally immune with subsequent vaccination.

Even if vaccinating the naturally immune may improve immunity (which robust studies of millions of people show is not true, as detailed in our reply), it does not change the fact that natural immunity, alone, is better than vaccine immunity.  Hence, if the CDC is going to lift restrictions on the vaccine immune, it is downright authoritarian to not do so for the naturally immune.

This letter exchange with the CDC represents the most comprehensive analysis of the current state of the science regarding natural versus vaccine immunity.  We trust that you will not only appreciate reading and learning from this letter exchange with the CDC, but you will also enjoy it. 

As for next steps, if the CDC does not, as it likes to put it, “follow the science” and lift restrictions on the naturally immune, we will be taking the CDC to court on this issue, that is federal court as well as the court of public opinion.  And we look forward to doing so.

Click here to read the documents below which include extensive scientific evidence as well as a statement by Dr. Peter McCullough

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Featured image: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. (Raed Mansour/Flickr)

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South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa joined Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi to mark the 35th anniversary of the death of Mozambique’s first president Samora Machel, both vowing to go after Islamist insurgents wreaking havoc in the north of the country.

On October 19, 1986, a Tupolev airplane carrying Machel crashed into mountains in South Africa near the border with Mozambique, killing 35 people. Machel’s crash remains a mystery, but speculation has lingered that it was linked to tensions between Mozambique and the then-apartheid regime in South Africa.

Samora Machel, the founding father of the Mozambican State, became one of the most charismatic leaders in Africa and the world, as result of his ceaseless struggle against every form of oppression, discrimination and exploration. His values have influenced many African leaders.

They both revisited the sight of the plane crash that killed Machel while flying home from a conference in Zambia. Ramaphosa paid tribute to Machel for his contribution to the fight against colonial and apartheid rule in southern Africa, urging the region to “continue with the struggle” for freedoms.

“It is for this reason that the peoples of southern Africa… have all decided, collectively, to act in solidarity to help the people of Mozambique to push out and to fight the insurgents who are spreading conflict, insecurity and violence. I have one message for those insurgents. We will come after you,” warned Ramaphosa.

Mozambique’s President, Filipe Nyusi, said that the legacy of Samora Machel – the country’s first head of state following independence from Portugal – is frequently threatened by insurgent attacks in the north of the country, but that the response from southern Africa has been promising.

Nyusi referred to the wave of violence in Cabo Delgado province of the past four years. Since July Mozambique government forces have had military support from Rwanda and from members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

Graça Machel, the wife of the Samora Machel and herself a prominent activist, said in her own address that Mozambique’s first president had been “assassinated” to silence an outstanding voice in the region. That tragedy remains a mystery, believes Graça Machel, and further recalled that her husband gave support to the struggles of the Zimbabwean and South African peoples to overthrow white supremacist rule.

Samora Machel Júnior says there doesn’t seem to be any urgency in explaining the disaster that killed his father. Relatives of the 35 victims of the disaster in Mbuzini have asked presidents Nyusi and Ramaphosa to reopen the inquiry.

While acknowledging the complexity of the case, Machel Júnior said that clarification could bring some peace to the family, even after 35 years. “We know this is not a simple process. We realize that it takes some time, but we need to bring some peace of mind to the family. We want to straighten this out and move on,” he said.

South Africans vividly remember the tremendous contribution of Samora Machel and the people of Mozambique in the struggle to ensure our freedom in the fight against the system of racial segregation known as apartheid. The 35th anniversary of Machel’s death was therefore part of a series of government initiatives that aim to redress and change the heritage landscape to authentically, convey South Africa’s liberation history since colonial times.

Mozambique first president died on 19 October 1986 when the Soviet-made Tupolev plane crashed at night in South African territory, in the mountainous area of Lebombo, near the Mozambican border. A flight engineer and nine passengers – out of a total 44 people on board – survived in the crash, which prompted accusations of sabotage against South Africa’s then government. However, a 1994 enquiry into the crash carried out by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) came to no clear conclusion with regard to the causes.

The first Mozambican president died on October 19, 1986, was returning from a regional conference with African leaders in Lusaka, Zambia, when a Tupolev plane crashed in South Africa’s mountainous Lebombo area, near the border with Mozambique.

Samora Machel and another 25 Mozambican members of his escort (26 persons), along with fellow party members, ministers, dignitaries, officials, two ambassadors, four members of the Soviet crew and two Cuban doctors died. As a result, a total of 34 people died in the crash of the TU 134. There survived nine Mozambicans and the Soviet board engineer, thus 10 persons. A total of 44 people were in the plane on this flight. One of the survivors died in January 1987 as a result of the crash: Eusébio Guido Martinho. This increased the number of deaths to 35.

The accident sparked allegations of sabotage against the then South African apartheid administration. An inquiry initiated by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1994 was inconclusive as to its causes. The accident sparked allegations of sabotage against the then South African ‘apartheid’ administration. An inquiry initiated by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1994 was inconclusive as to its causes.

Accident victims (archives document):

• Luís Maria de Alcântara Santos- Minister of Transport and Communications;
• José Carlos Lobo – Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs;
• Aquino de Bragança – Director of the Center for African Studies;
• Fernando Honwana – Special Assistant to His Excellency, the President of the Republic;
• Alberto Cangela de Mendonça – Head of the National Protocol;
• Muradali Mamadhusen– Private Secretary to His Excellency, the President of the Republic;
• João Tomás Navesse – Deputy Director of the Directorate of Legal and Consular Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs;
• Ivete Amós – Secretary of His Excellency, the President of the Republic;
• Osvaldo de Sousa – English interpreter of the President;
• Bernardino Chiche – French interpreter
• Gulamo Khan – Press Attaché at the Presidency of the Republic;
• Azarias Inguane – Photographer of Jornal Notícias;
• Fernando Nhanquila – Flight Engineer;
• Daniel Maquinasse – President’s private photographer
• Capitão Parente Manjate – member of staff of the Presidency;
• NacirCharamadame -member of staff of the Presidency;
• Adão Gore Nhoca – member of staff of the Presidency
• Eduardo Viegas- member of staff of the Presidency;
• Albino Falteira – member of staff of the Presidency;
• Alberto Chaúque – member of staff of the Presidency;
• José Quivanane – member of staff of the Presidency.
• Orlando Garrine – Flight attendant;
• Esmeralda Luísa – Flight attendant;
• Sofia Arone – Flight Attendant;
• Ilda Carão – Flight Attendant;

The following international collaborators also perished in Mbuzini:

• Henriques Bettencourt – Doctor of His Excellency, the President of the Republic;
• Ulisses La Rosa Mesa – Personal Doctor of His Excellency, the President of the Republic;
• Iuri Novdran – Aircraft Commander;
• Igor Kartmychev- Flight Engineer;
• Amatoli Choulipov – Flight Engineer;
• Cox. C. Sikumba – Ambassador of the Republic of Zambia
• Tokwalu Batale – Ambassador of the Republic of Zaire

The following members of the presidential delegation survived the tragic event:

Eusébio Guido Martinho (later deceased- on January 1987-  as a result of the crash); Captain Carlos Jambo; Captain Carlos Rendição; Fernando Manuel João; Almeida Pedro; Manuel Jairosse; Daniel Cuna; Jossefa Machango; Vasco Langa; Vladimir Novoselov – Flight Engineer.

With an approximate population of 30 million, Mozambique is endowed with rich and extensive natural resources but remains one of the poorest and most underdeveloped countries in the world. It is one of the 16 countries, with a collective responsibility to promote socio-economic and political and security cooperation, within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) created in 1980.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a frequent and passionate contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

Featured image is from the author

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***

There is no escape for Israel from growing Palestinian power. If nothing else, the upcoming Conference of the Alternative Palestinian Path in Madrid (Masar Badil in Arabic) will clearly and courageously embody that rising power on the world stage, at a time when Israel is increasingly fearful and unhinged by the surprising fact that Palestinians, even after decades of horrific colonial oppression, not only have yet to roll over and die as planned, but they are instead gathering more popular support worldwide than ever before.

Palestinians continue to resist their colonization at every turn. Right now, six Palestinian prisoners are on hunger strikes to demand freedom from arbitrary imprisonment without charge, “putting their lives on the line for liberation.”

In Ramallah, young people are affirming the path for liberation, stressing that the Palestinian struggle is an existential struggle, and must therefore never be linked to “solutions,” even if such solutions are interim.

Israel is afraid and the Palestinian people, in Israeli prison and everywhere, are not afraid, because they are not alone today, as the lyrics of the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” have it.

How is Israel responding? In tried and true fashion. Israel is expanding its oppression and lawfare manipulations, so as to isolate Palestinians from global support.

Only recently (October 19, 2021), the Israeli “Defense Minister” and war criminal Benny Gantz issued a military order declaring six Palestinian civil society organizations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to be “terrorist organizations.”

The groups are Addameer, al-Haq, Defense for Children Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees. According to Human Rights Watch: “The designation, made pursuant to a 2016 Israeli statute, effectively outlaws the activities of these civil society groups. It authorizes Israeli authorities to close their offices, seize their assets and arrest and jail their staff members, and it prohibits funding or even publicly expressing support for their activities.”

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network: “Putting their lives on the line for liberation.”

Palestinians and their supporters are fighting back. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, co-organizer of Masar Badil, is gearing up with the following call: Israel’s “terrorist” designations aim to suppress Palestinian organizing: Confront them with action and resistance!

The International Commission of Jursists (ICJ) is calling on Israel to reverse the designation of Palestinian rights organizations as terrorists, stating that the move is “a cynical assault on independent civil society and on the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression and association in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).”

Meanwhile, Israel is desperately entrenching the status quo “from the river to the sea” by planning to construct housing units in the West Bank — i.e., by continuing its colonial, judaizing activities there.

Disregarding “calls for restraint” from the Biden administration (“The Israeli decision will likely cause tensions, and it could push the U.S. to air its criticism in public.”), Israel is set to approve the construction of 4,400 new Jewish housing units in the West Bank, 3,109 of which will be in existing Jewish colonies and 1,300 in the heart of Palestinian villages.

On the Masar Badil conference website are eight “principles of struggle,” with the last one stating, “Every attempt to block or suppress the progress of the Palestinian people’s struggle, in whatever form, constitutes complicity with and support for the crimes of Zionist colonialism that are committed daily against the Palestinian people.”

For a long time now, Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, has been exposing European inaction and complicity, especially when EU governments issue statements regarding their “profound concern” over egregious Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people. He and Palestinian human rights defender Omar Barghouti both believe it is up to European civil society to bring an end to EU complicity in Israel’s crimes.

As I pack my bag to travel to Madrid to participate in Masar Badil, I am eager to find out how many European civil society organizations will heed the call of the conference to support a new stage of Palestinian struggle and mark the end of the Madrid-Oslo process.

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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: Wall mural at the Aida Refugee Camp (Source: Caoimhghin Ó Croidhean)

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***

CNN is in damage control after its chief medical correspondent and notorious Covid-19 experimental vaccine pusher, Dr. Sanjay Gupta was humiliated on The Joe Rogan Experience when he was confronted for the obvious lie about Joe Rogan taking “horse dewormer” which was actually Ivermectin. 

The humiliation of the CNN medical correspondent has went viral since the interview.  Newsweek reported the day after the show that “In a clip shared on social media, which had been viewed more than 800,000 times as of Thursday morning, The Joe Rogan Experience host grilled Gupta over CNN reports that criticized his taking the drug ivermectin after being diagnosed with the disease.”

The report also said that “Rogan announced in September he had contracted the virus on Instagram and told his followers he “threw the kitchen sink” at it the disease, with the drug among treatments he used.”

Here is the clip from ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’:

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CNN’s Don Lemon was trying to cover the lies of his network according to Fox News “CNN anchor Don Lemon was on the defensive Wednesday night after podcast giant Joe Rogan accused his network of “lying” about his COVID treatment” continued “Rogan confronted CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta over the network’s coverage of his bout with the virus, falsely claiming Rogan used “horse dewormer” instead of the common human form of ivermectin, something Gupta conceded his CNN colleagues should not have said.”

Rogan asked Gupta “Does it bother you that the network you work for out and out lied, just outright lied about me taking horse dewormer?” Gupta’s response “They shouldn’t have said that,” Then Rogan asked “Why did they do that?”. Gupta responded with “I don’t know.” Rogan quickly responded with “You didn’t ask? You’re the medical guy over there!”  Gupta pathetically admitted “I didn’t ask” Gupta said, “I should’ve asked before coming on this podcast.” 

The mainstream media (MSM) is in freefall collapse and that’s why Big Tech monopolies including Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube  jumped in to its aid and censored the alternative media.  We were humiliating the MSM, in fact the alternative media was destroying what credibility they had left.

Despite what Big Tech has done, the American people and others from around the world still don’t trust the MSM except for the diehard Democrats based in the U.S.  According to a Gallup poll article from earlier this month, “Americans’ trust in the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly has edged down four percentage points since last year to 36%, making this year’s reading the second lowest in Gallup’s trend.”  Not surprising, the Democrats have a lion’s share of trust when it comes to the MSM “Partisans’ trust in the media continues to be sharply polarized. Currently, 68% of Democrats, 11% of Republicans and 31% of independents say they trust the media a great deal or fair amount.” 

Joe Rogan did a sensational job in exposing MSM lies.  CNN is at a crossroads where its viewership is in freefall collapse.  I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that the MSM especially CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times are still in business but I understand that Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex and Washington’s political establishment pays their bills to stay on air.  However, the Alternative media is fighting back against Big Tech censorship by creating its own platforms such as Bitchute, Gab, Telegram, Odysee and many others which is very encouraging for those who seek the truth.

Rogan’s confrontation with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta is surely refreshing to see.  Humanity needs more exposure to the truth rather than the MSM’s lies that saturates television networks with propaganda especially in the West, so thumbs up to Joe Rogan who deserves nothing more than praise for standing up to a propagandist who represents one of the worst television networks in the world and that is CNN.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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In a recent opinion essay published on the pharmaceutical industry-friendly MedPage Today, Dr. Matthew Wynia, a medical ethics professor at the University of Colorado School of medicine, propagated an old trope by accusing doctors who advocate cheaper, effective drugs and natural supplements for treating Covid patients as a “cult” of “quacks.”  Such derogatory language is not uncommon among the adherents of radicalized Skepticism – an aberrant faction within conventional medicine that espouses a dogmatic faith in a puritanical scientific materialism. Although there are post-modern Victorians to be found within the sciences and humanities alike, medical Skepticism has gained momentum and finds common ground with schoolyard bullying in its defiance against science’s hallmark of objective examination and scrutiny.

Skeptics such as Wynia are fond of expressing their disdain towards medical theories or therapeutic modalities that lie outside their prejudiced and narrow grasp of how valid scientific inquiry progresses. However, during the pandemic, government health officials have likewise been disgracing those who would challenge their undemocratic rules to strip away individual freedoms under the ruse of preserving public safety. Wynia’s background further explains this intolerance; and to use Cornel West’s terms, it tells us something about the “spiritual blackout and moral decrepitude” of US’s culture of governance and the puppet masters behind the official pandemic narrative.

Prior to joining Colorado’s medical school, for thirteen years Wynia was a director at the American Medical Association (AMA), perhaps the most discredited medical institution in America with a long history of speaking on behalf of drug makers’ interests and profits.  For over seven decades, the AMA has served as a watchdog for Big Pharma in its opposition to complementary and alternative medical professions. Following an earlier mass exodus of doctors from the AMA, today only about 12 percent of American physicians continue to hold membership. Although the AMA’s credibility has been lost, it nevertheless retains its influence from enormous private funding. Despite its detractors, and the erosion of it’s social contract with the larger medical community, the AMA, along with the CDC and NIH, are determined to unify the profession into a monolithic organism that can dictate approved and disapproved medical theories and interventions. But it has been during the pandemic that this effort has become more aggressive, as dissident doctors and healthcare professionals who speak out against federal pandemic policies and their failures are being threatened with loss of licenses and jobs.

Wynia is only a recent example among many. Repeatedly, and in unison, we hear federal health agencies’ and the media’s incantation to “follow the science” as an assault against those who have lost faith in the epistles preached by Anthony Fauci at the NIAID and other federal health officials from their vexing pulpits. This begs the question concerning whose science we should follow. Moreover, do we even have the courage and integrity to honestly evaluate the evidence to answer such a question?

In an earlier article, we noted that modern medicine has failed to be revered as a hard science. Its long legacy of intrinsic biases and questionable motives, keeps conventional medicine far away from being counted in the same league as authentic and more transparent sciences such as mathematics, theoretical physics, chemistry, etc. For this reason, since the late 19^th century there have been sporadic debates as to whether medicine should properly be understood as an art or a science. Moreover, today, proprietary pursuits and conflicts of interest have further transformed medicine into a commercial enterprise rather than an honest quest for impartial discovery to uncover facts and truth. The ancient ethic of medicine as a healing art, which upheld high moral standards and was practiced out of physicians’ deep compassion and empathy to relieve human suffering, has today been buried by institutional bureaucrats, professional medical school administrators and pharmaceutical executives. So deep has been medical ethics’ burial, nobody can find its grave anymore.

If there is a lesson the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us, it is that conventional medicine is largely a mockery of its original moral foundations. This is not to deny important advances in saving lives, especially in diagnostic methods, surgical technologies, critical care and emergency medicine. Risk versus benefit ratios to drive health policies have become fabricated theatrical displays for the media to reenact to a passive public. For example, what are people to make of the wide discrepancies between the Pfizer and Moderna trial reports claiming 95 percent vaccine effectiveness for infection when real world evidence confirms the contrary? An Israeli Ministry of Health report – the most vaccinated population in the world – shows only a 39 percent prevention rate.  And this figure will dwindle further during the passing of months following inoculation because it is certain that Covid-19 vaccine immunity is very short-lasting. And a Harvard study published in the September issue of the European Journal of Epidemiology reveals that the highest rates of new Covid-19 cases are among the most fully vaccinated nations.

When Fauci tells CBS that unvaccinated persons account for 99.2 percent of presumed Covid deaths, and Biden’s newly appointed CDC czar Rochelle Walensky decides to re-define SARS-2 infection rates as “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” the actual data should warn that we have been drawn into a fantasy world of Alice in Wonderland hallucinations. Because the real data is now in; and, it provides an utterly contrary picture. In mid-August, Becker’s Hospital Review reported that 60 percent of Israelis hospitalized with Covid-19 were fully vaccinated. Another study reported by the Israeli National News found that natural immunity was six times greater than that offered by the vaccines; and a subsequent study published by Bloomberg increased that percentage to 13 times greater.

Therefore, we must conclude that somebody is flamboyantly wrong!  Either our government officials or the medical data are wildly incorrect. Now approximately ten months since the vaccine roll out, more accurate independent data piles up. And this data indicates that practically everything we have been told about the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccines to reach herd immunity is more hyped fiction than fact. It is permeated with untruths.

Favoring a vaccine regime and surveillance controls to track every American’s movements, our leading health officials’ blatant neglect of their pandemic policies’ serious health consequences is a clear sign of their moral decrepitude.  Ineffective lockdowns, masks, social isolation, unsound critical care interventions such as relying upon ventilators, and the sole approval of the costly and ineffective drug Remdesivir at the exclusion of cheaper medications that can treat SARS-2 infections for a mere $2.56 have brought about nightmares for tens of millions of adults and children.  These drugs could have been prescribed at the pandemic’s start and saved countless lives. As early as April 2020, Monash University’s Biomedicine Discovery Institute in Australia had already published a study that ivermectin destroyed SARS-2 infected cell cultures by 99.8 percent within 48 hours. But no one in authority paid any attention.

Aside from destroying what average people believe is normal life, the Fauci-Gates-WHO manifesto has likewise destroyed what is natural to our very humanity by erecting and fomenting a culture of fear and mental trauma across the globe. What is equally worrisome is that all indicators suggest this has been intentional rather than by medical shortsightedness, unexpected accident or sheer stupidity. And the architects of this manifesto are not stupid people; neither are the manifesto’s harshest critics stupid people, such as Drs. Peter McCullough, Michael Yeadon and Wolfgang Wodarg, and Robert Kennedy Jr. Yet when highly intelligent people reach the pinnacle of power, wealth and influence, and steadfastly control the narrative of law and order, they are more susceptible to being bombastically wrong about practically everything.

Dr. Michael Yeadon, a former Pfizer Vice President, has charged governments with engaging in “psychological terrorism” in order to turn everyone into a threat to everyone else in the streets. When Anthony Fauci lectures the American people that to criticize him is identical to chastising science itself, we are hearing the rhetoric of a mob boss. Fauci is the exemplar and poster child of medicine’s degeneration: an authoritarian regime of oppressors determined to force the citizenry into obedience.  The promulgated message is that unless you have an MD or PhD behind your name, you have no authority, knowledge or capacity to judge what is sound science from what is false; therefore, we must listen to those experts who have risen up the chain of medical command and are qualified to dictate what is in our best interests. And unless you have achieved that level of jurisdiction you are a pariah, a treacherous heretic, if you dare to question their words.

Sadly legions of medical professionals and a largely naïve public continue to believe that our federal health agencies take the public’s health and genuine well-being to heart. Consequently, the establishment is making every effort to compare those who refuse the Covid-19 vaccines with climate change denial, conspiracy theory, Trumpism and religious fanaticism. Of course, there is little truth to these analogies. Yes, there are those who espouse such ideologies and are also anti-vaccine. But they do not represent the majority of people who are pro-vaccine but oppose the Covid-19 vaccines or very sound reasons; and a large percentage of this group are highly educated and medical professionals. Consequently this premeditative and deceptive messaging has been intentionally designed to create an illusion that the unvaccinated are a threat to the health of the nation. Therefore, employers, schools, and businesses should obey the decrees from on high and exercise their authority to bar anyone who refuses vaccination.

What Biden and Fauci deny is that an ever-increasing minority of vaccine opponents have now been injured by the vaccines or have had family members, friends, classmates and co-workers severely damaged or die. The numbers will continue to grow exponentially during the passing months as the vaccines’ long-term adverse effects begin to manifest serious medical complications. How long will our health and political leaders manage to subordinate and conceal the hard facts with abstract computer modeling, algorithms and massaged number crunching? Medical professionals working in the nitty-gritty of healthcare’s trenches are readily coming out in droves to declare they have had enough. They describe a real life scenario that contradicts every meme the government dishes up to the media.

In an interview on the Progressive Radio Network, Deborah Conrad, a physician assistant relieved of her job at Rochester Regional Health’s United Memorial Medical Center in upstate New York, recounted the growing number of incidents of vaccine injured patients requiring medical attention. In a legal letter to her former employers’ President and Chief Medical Officer by the Manhattan law firm Siri & Glimstad, Ms Conrad:

“… personally treated five patients that presented new unprovoked deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolisms within 6 weeks of Covid-19 vaccination. She has also seen patients that, after receipt of the Covid-19 vaccination, presented with a new stroke, autoimmune hepatitis, sudden bilateral pneumonia or Covid-19 infection… new arrhythmias, new seizure disorders, new chorea movement disorder and more.”

During a four-week period alone Deborah submitted 50 vaccine adverse event reports, including 4 deaths, to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). Despite the rules put into place that vaccine-associated injuries and deaths must be reported to VAERS, healthcare workers are not being instructed by their superiors to do so. In Deborah’s case, she was reprimanded for her conscientious efforts. For her actions, she was accused of being an anti-vaccine proponent and fired.  This is only the report of a single healthcare worker at a medium-sized medical facility. Now imagine the cumulative extent of Covid-19 vaccine injuries and deaths across the nation’s nearly 14,000 hospitals and the personal experiences of a significant number of America’s 1 million active physicians and 3.8 million registered nurses.

This carnage is not accidental. It has deeper causal effects that reach beyond the debate over good versus bad science in the Covid wars. More accurately, it is a sign of the deterioration across the length of modernity’s moral integrity.

The decline of the nation’s spiritual fortitude has steadily declined during the past half century, with significant spikes of systemic institutional moral decay during the Clinton White House and fast-forward. However, it has been during the past several years that the nation’s political apparatus can be formally declared morally and spiritually bankrupt. The federal handling of the pandemic is only one symptom of the gangrene of corporate and capitalist cupidity infecting government and healthcare policies. The mendacity of the Fauci-Gates-WHO manifesto’s faux scientific hubris and self-righteousness, similar to the SARS-2 virus itself, is poisoning the population’s very circulation in order to curtail opposition. This is one of the defining characteristics of Cornel West’s “spiritual blackout” that can also be applied to the pandemic’s public discourse.

The second characteristic is the systemic indifference and callousness throughout the federal health system and pharmaceutical industry.  Where has there been any effort whatsoever by Pfizer, Moderna and J&J to publicly provide an explanation for this human-made pandemic of vaccine adverse events threatening the international community?  The same is true for the Biden White House and its clan of medical autocrats. Instead, there is deafening silence as injuries and deaths from the Covid vaccines alone far outpace severe cases for all vaccinations combined during the last four decades. Yet not even a word of defense. Instead the vaccines’ failures have opened doors for new opportunities and greater profits, with compromised and obliging agents sitting as the heads of the CDC, FDA and Fauci’s National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease ready to rubber stamp approvals for vaccine boosters and expand vaccination to younger age groups. Trials are already underway to administer Pfizer’s vaccine to 6 month-old infants. In the meantime, Fauci and the NIH will graciously reward grant-hungry researchers at medical institutes and universities with lavish funding to conduct more studies for peer-reviewed publications to keep the vaccine scam alive.  Those who buy into this naturalization of criminality within the dominant medical establishment, West might caution, are making “cowardice and avarice fashionable and compassion an option for losers.” Behind the backstage dressing room, the media has transformed Fauci into a propaganda-driven celebrity to keep the pandemic rolling, perhaps for years to come.

Cornel West’s third proof for our national spiritual blackout is the enabling of “public interest, common good, or even rule of law [to be] undercut by big money.” During the course of the pandemic alone, billionaire wealth has grown 54 percent to a value of nearly $4 trillion. The Cato Institute estimates that Pfizer will earn $33.5 billion this year from its Covid-19 vaccine alone. Fear tactics have succeeded in driving millions of Americans to expose their shoulders to the jab while clinging on a delusional hope that getting vaccination will return their lives to normal.  However, following West’s line of reasoning, these will only be “short-term gains and superficial successes.” A return to the night clubs, indoor concerts, sporting events and other entertainment, access to certain private and public spaces, entry to school or college and other carrots in the manifesto’s psy-ops are temporary covers for other nefarious strategies for full spectrum population surveillance. It also impersonates Big Pharma’s predatory capitalism and its commodification of medicine as Big Government takes every advantage of the deep superficiality that imbues the collective American psyche.

Fortunately, there is a growing pushback. We will not speculate whether it is a sign of the nation returning to its innate moral and spiritual senses, or simply the biological drive to survive when overwhelmed by the fear that the Covid-19 manifesto has seeded. Increasingly, Americans realize that getting vaccinated is a losing game of Russian Roulette. We are playing with a three-chamber loaded revolver, labeled Johnson and Johnson, Moderna and Pfizer respectively.

During this month alone there are promising signs of rebellion. The message is being heard that the Biden administration and our federal health officials, as well as many leaders in the developed world, have been feeding the public a false narrative built upon lies. In Chicago, a third of the city’s police force defied vaccine mandates. The 203,000 member strong International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation workers union, which represents the majority of America’s transportation employees, publicly stated their opposition to “unilateral” Covid vaccine mandates.  In New Mexico, 114 workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, including a few dozen of the nation’s top nuclear scientists have sued the private contractor, Triad National Security, which runs the lab for the US Department of Energy for violating their constitutional rights over vaccine mandates.  And the most recent promising news is that a lawsuit is being filed against the CDC, the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum for crimes against humanity under the Nuremberg Code criteria. Whether successful or not, the suit will nevertheless further brighten the moral darkness that pervades the halls of these institutions.

In the struggle ahead to expose the Covid-19 manifesto’s violent criminal assault on each of us individually, it is critical to remember history’s great visionaries and the sterling activists who stirred movements to beam light during times of widespread spiritual blackout.  Cornell West calls these exemplary figures “love warriors”. We need to find the courage to act and sacrifice out of deep compassion for the victims of the horrendous callousness exhibited by the pandemic’s engineers and their misguided and heartless schemes. West would encourage each of us to become a “love warrior.” But not as a cliché to wear on a shirt lapel nor placard to bring to a demonstration; rather the inspiration to burn selfless compassion deep into our conscience as a reminder of certain universal truths that trump all the lies disseminated by the powerful, and to challenge those who wish to exalt themselves as the rulers and masters over our lives.

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

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

They are frequent contributors to Global Research.

Featured image is from Vaccine Injury News

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

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This statement published on March 3, 2021 has been the object of a massive media campaign to discredit Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association. On the following day, March 4th, the WHO released a statement  accusing Kenya’s Catholic Doctors of “falsification”, not to mention the statements issued by the Catholic Church.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, October 25, 2021

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3rd March 2021

To our fellow Kenyans and people of goodwill

RE: Stopping Ravages and Loss of Human Life from COVID-19

We greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus the Christ.

The Kenya Catholic Doctors Association brings together doctors who have sworn to practice and audit the practice of medicine guided by Catholic faith and the Hippocratic oath, including the respect for human dignity and the sanctity of life. We also strive to expose falsehoods in medical practice and to establish the truth as best practice and ensure it takes center stage in establishing policies and laws. 

We appreciate the fact that COVID-19 has presented unprecedented new challenges in the management of health nationally/globally with tremendous negative impact on the economy and the livelihood of our people. It’s also becoming clear that there are partisan interests that are seen bent on keeping some important truths from coming to the fore at the expense of human life.

We know for a fact that there are drugs that have been re-purposed and used effectively to treat COVID-19. We also know that vaccination for this disease is totally unnecessary making the motivation suspect.

Find our full advisory below hoping that we can stop the ravages and any other preventable loss of human life.

Yours faithfully,

Dr. Stephen K. Karanja

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Read the document below or click here for full view.

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Mainstream media have incorrectly insinuated that ivermectin is purely a veterinary drug that could be dangerous to humans; CNN falsely stated that Joe Rogan took “horse dewormer”

Rogan recently interviewed CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, getting him to admit CNN lied

The FDA started the “horse dewormer” fallacy based on a Mississippi health department report that said 70% of poison control calls were related to veterinary ivermectin. It was actually 70% of ivermectin-related calls, six in all, four of which were about accidental use of ivermectin in livestock. Overall, these calls made up only 2% of all poison control calls

A total of 20 deaths have been linked to ivermectin since 1992. Compare that safety profile to Remdesivir, the primary drug used by hospitals across the U.S. against COVID-19. Since the spring of 2020, VigiAccess has received 7,491 adverse events in all attributed to the drug, including 560 deaths, 550 serious cardiac disorders and 475 acute kidney injuries

Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson has issued a legal opinion on the off-label use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. According to this legal opinion, health care providers in Nebraska can legally prescribe these medications for off-label use for the treatment of COVID, provided they have informed consent from the patient. The only causes for disciplinary action are failure to obtain informed consent, deception and/or prescribing excessively high doses

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In early September 2021, Oklahoma’s KFOR news ran a falsified story about emergency rooms being overrun with patients who had overdosed on horse ivermectin.¹ Other mainstream media followed suit — all incorrectly referring to ivermectin as a dangerous veterinary drug.

In the real world, ivermectin is a human drug that has been safely used by 3.7 billion people since the early 1990s.² In 2016, three scientists received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their discovery of ivermectin against parasitic infections in humans.³ It’s also on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines.⁴

There’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to disparage ivermectin as a “horse dewormer” that only a loony person would consider taking. Yet that’s what mainstream media have done, virtually without exception.

When comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan revealed⁵ he’d treated his bout of COVID-19 with ivermectin and other remedies — fully recovering within three days — NPR reported Rogan had taken “ivermectin, a deworming veterinary drug that is formulated for use in cows and horses,” adding that “the Food and Drug Administration is urging people to stop ingesting” the medication, saying animal doses of the drug can cause nausea, vomiting and in some cases severe hepatitis.⁶

Sanjay Gupta Admits CNN Lied

CNN, among many others, also reported on Rogan’s use of “horse dewormer.” In mid-October 2021, Rogan interviewed CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, grilling him on why CNN would outright lie about his use of ivermectin.

“It’s a lie on a news network,” Rogan said, “and it’s a lie that they’re conscious of. It’s not a mistake. They’re unfavorably framing it as a veterinary medicine …

Don’t you think a lie like that is dangerous … when they know they’re lying? They know I took medicine [for humans] … Dude, they lied. They said I was taking horse dewormer. It was prescribed to me by a doctor, along with a bunch of other medications.”

Gupta finally relents and agrees that ivermectin should not be called horse dewormer. When asked, “Does it bother you that the news network you work for out and out lied about me taking horse dewormer?” Gupta replied, “They shouldn’t have said that.”

When asked why they would lie about such an important medical issue, Gupta replied “I don’t know.” Gupta also admits he never asked why they did it, even though he’s their top medical correspondent.

FDA Attacks Ivermectin

While CNN and mainstream media are certainly at fault for spreading disinformation here, they got the idea from a supposedly reputable source — the FDA. In an August 21, 2021, tweet,⁷ the FDA linked to an agency article warning against the use of ivermectin, saying “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

This blatantly misleading post seeded the lie that then spread across mainstream media. In an article posted on RESCUE with Michael Capuzzo substack, two independent investigative health journalists, Mary Beth Pfeiffer and Linda Bonvie, detail how the FDA’s anti-ivermectin campaign began:⁸

“Within two days, 23.7 million people had seen that Pulitzer-worthy bit of Twitter talk. Hundreds of thousands more got the message on Facebook, LinkedIn, and from the Today Show’s 3 million-follower Instagram account.

‘That was great!’ declared FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock in an email to her media team. ‘Even I saw it!’ For the FDA, the ‘not-a-horse’ tweet was ‘a unique viral moment,’ a senior FDA official wrote to Woodcock, ‘in a time of incredible misinformation’ …

When CNN retweeted ‘not-a-horse,’ FDA was gleeful. ‘The numbers are racking up and I laughed out loud,’ wrote FDA Associate Commissioner Erica Jefferson in one email … There was one problem, however. The tweet was a direct outgrowth of wrong data — call it misinformation — put out the day before by the Mississippi health department.

The FDA did not vet the data, according to our review of emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and questions to FDA officials. Instead, it saw Mississippi, as one email said, as ‘an opportunity to remind the public of our own warnings for ivermectin.’”

The now infamous tweet was born out of a single sentence in a Mississippi poison control health alert, which stated that “At least 70% of the recent calls have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers.” The problem? That wasn’t accurate either.

As it turns out, the real percentage of recent calls to poison control related to veterinary ivermectin was 2%, not 70%. In an October 5, 2021, correction, the Mississippi health department clarified that it wasn’t 70% of all poison control calls that involved veterinary ivermectin, it was 70% of all ivermectin-related calls.⁹

In absolute numbers, there were six such calls, and four of those calls actually related to livestock accidentally receiving the drug. Investigation by Pfeiffer and Bonvie also revealed that between July 31 and August 22, 2021, 40%, 10 of 24 ivermectin-related calls to the Mississippi poison control center were mere requests for information, which is a common occurrence.

“Without question, people should not take drugs made for animals, given issues of dosing and medical oversight, to name just two. That much is clear,” Pfeiffer and Bonvie write.¹⁰

“But in hopping on the Mississippi bandwagon, the FDA … turned ivermectin, which doctors and health ministers in several countries say has saved many from covid-19, into a drug to be feared, human form or not.

This highly effective bait-and-switch began last March with a webpage, to which the FDA tweet linked, that conflates the two ivermectins. On one hand, the FDA tells of receiving ‘multiple reports of patients who have required medical attention’ after taking the animal product.

On the other, it describes the fate awaiting people who take large amounts of any ivermectin, ending a long list with ‘dizziness, ataxia, seizures, coma and even death.’

The medical literature,¹¹ nonetheless, shows ivermectin to be an extremely safe medicine … Last March, a safety review¹² of ivermectin by a renowned French toxicologist could not find a single accidental overdose death in the medical literature in more than 300 safety studies of the drug over decades.

The study was performed for MedinCell, a French pharmaceutical company … Since 1992, twenty deaths have been linked to inexpensive, off-patent ivermectin, according to a World Health Organization drug tracker called VigiAccess …

So how big was the surge that FDA described as ‘multiple’? Four, an agency spokesperson said just after the page went up. Three people were hospitalized, but it wasn’t clear if that was for COVID itself.

When pressed for details, FDA cited privacy issues, and said in an email, ‘Some of these cases were lost to follow up.’ This is how government gets away with some whoppers, and with the media’s help.”

Ivermectin Is Safe; Remdesivir, Not so Much

According to VigiAccess, the World Health Organization’s drug tracker, a total of 20 deaths have been linked to ivermectin since 1992.¹³ Compare that safety profile to remdesivir, the primary drug used by hospitals across the U.S. against COVID-19.

Since the spring of 2020, VigiAccess has received 7,491 adverse events in all attributed to remdesivir, including 560 deaths, 550 serious cardiac disorders and 475 acute kidney injuries.¹⁴

The question is why remdesivir is being used at all, with the World Health Organization recommending¹⁵ against it and a new Lancet study¹⁶ finding “no clinical benefit.” Could it be that Fauci is involved with the fraud? Pfeiffer and Bonvie write.^17,18

“The other question is why ivermectin is not. The FDA tweet arrived just as ivermectin prescriptions were soaring, up twenty-four-fold in August from before the pandemic.

These were legal prescriptions written by doctors who, presumably, had read the studies, learned from experience, and decided for themselves. Indeed, 20 percent of prescriptions are written off-label,¹⁹ namely for other than an approved use.

The effort to vilify ivermectin broadly has helped curb the legal supply of a safe drug. That’s what drove people to livestock medicine in the first place.”

State AG Calls Out Medical Establishment for Misinformation

In better news, in early October 2021, the Nebraska Department of Health asked Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson to issue a legal opinion on the off-label use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19.

October 15, 2021, Peterson issued a legal opinion^20,21 stating health care providers can legally prescribe these medications for off-label use for the treatment of COVID, provided they have informed consent from the patient.²² The only causes for disciplinary action are failure to obtain informed consent, deception and/or prescribing excessively high doses.

Peterson concluded that, based on the available evidence, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin “might work for some people.”

He highlighted studies demonstrating the safety and benefits of these drugs against COVID-19, as well as the shocking scientific fraud that led to worldwide shunning of hydroxychloroquine, and the cherry-picking and exclusion of data in studies that are critical of ivermectin. He also pointed out how illogical it is to discourage early treatment.

“Allowing physicians to consider these early treatments will free them to evaluate additional tools that could save lives, keep patients out of the hospital, and provide relief for our already strained healthcare system,” Peterson wrote.^23,24

Peterson also called out the FDA and Dr. Anthony Fauci on their hypocrisy, detailing how the FDA and National Institutes of Health seeded confusion by issuing contradictory guidance. The NIH has taken a neutral position to ivermectin, which Peterson “clearly signaled that physicians should use their discretion in deciding whether to treat COVID-19 patients with ivermectin.”

NIH officials, however, have ignored the agency’s official position. At the end of August 2021, Fauci “went on CNN and announced that ‘there is no clinical evidence’ that ivermectin works for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19,’ and that ‘there is no evidence whatsoever’ that it works,” Peterson writes, adding:

“Yet this definitive claim directly contradicts the NIH’s recognition that ‘several randomized trials … published in peer-reviewed journals’ have reported data indicating that ivermectin is effective as a COVID-19 treatment.”

AG Blames FDA for Seeding Confusion

Peterson goes on to review the FDA’s behavior with respect to ivermectin:

“The FDA has similarly charted a course of confusion. In March 2021, the FDA posted a webpage entitled ‘Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Great or Prevent COVID-19.’

Although the FDA’s concern was stories of some people using the animal form of ivermectin or excessive doses of the human form, the title broadly condemned any use of ivermectin in connection with COVID-19.

Yet there was no basis for its sweeping condemnation. Indeed, the FDA itself acknowledged on that very webpage (and continued to do so until the page changed on September 3, 2021) that the agency had not even ‘reviewed data to support use of ivermectin in COVID-19 patients to treat or prevent COVID-19.’

But without reviewing the available data, which had long since been available and accumulating, it is unclear what basis the FDA had for denouncing ivermectin as a treatment or prophylaxis for COVID-19.”

Peterson also highlights the fact that while the FDA claims ivermectin “is not an antiviral (a drug for treating viruses),” on another FDA webpage they list a study in Antiviral Research that “identified ivermectin as a medicine ‘previously shown to have broad-spectrum antiviral activity.”

“It is telling that the FDA deleted the line about ivermectin not being ‘anti-viral’ when it amended the first webpage on September 3, 2021,” Peterson writes.

He also points out that while the FDA now claims off-label use of drugs “can be very dangerous,” and that this is why they don’t recommend ivermectin for COVID, doctors routinely use drugs off-label, and ivermectin has a well-established safety record.

So, “it is inconsistent for the FDA to imply that ivermectin is dangerous when used to treat COVID-19 while the agency continues to approve remdesivir despite its spottier safety record,” Peterson writes.

AG Puts Professional Associations Under the Microscope

Peterson also questioned the stance of professional associations such as The American Medical Association, American Pharmacists Association and American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, which in September 2021 issuing a joint statement²⁵ opposing the use of ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID outside of clinical trials.

Their statement, Peterson points out, relied on the FDA’s and CDC’s “suspect positions,” and a statement by Merck, in which they opposed the use of the drug due to a “concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.”

“But Merck, of all sources, knows that ivermectin is exceedingly safe, so the absence of safety data in recent studies should not be concerning to the company,” Peterson writes, adding:

“Why would ivermectin’s original patent holder go out of its way to question this medicine by creating the impression that it might not be safe? There are at least two plausible reasons.

First, ivermectin is no longer under patent, so Merck does not profit from it anymore. That likely explains why Merck declined to ‘conduct clinical trials’ on ivermectin and COVID-19 when given the chance.

Second, Merck has a significant financial interest in the medical profession rejecting ivermectin as an early treatment for COVID-19. [T]he U.S. government has agreed to pay [Merck] about $1.2 billion for 1.7 million courses of its experimental COVID-19 treatment [molnupiravir], if it is proven to work in an ongoing large trial and authorized by U.S. regulators.

Thus, if low-cost ivermectin works better than, or even the same as molnupiravir, that could cost Merck billions of dollars.”

Another excellent article²⁶ detailing the FDA’s questionable actions, and Merck’s incentives to disparage their old drug, ivermectin, was published by the American Institute for Economic Research.

“While we can all be happy that Merck has developed a new therapeutic that can keep us safe from the ravages of Covid-19, we should realize that the FDA’s rules give companies an incentive to focus on newer drugs while ignoring older ones,” David Henderson, a senior fellow with AIERS, writes.²⁷

“Ivermectin may or may not be a miracle drug for Covid-19. The FDA doesn’t want us to learn the truth. The FDA spreads lies and alarms Americans while preventing drug companies from providing us with scientific explorations of existing, promising, generic drugs.”

Early Treatment Is Crucial

There’s no doubt that many have died unnecessarily due to our health authorities’ incomprehensible decision to discourage all prevention and early treatment of COVID-19. As noted by many doctors, early treatment is absolutely crucial for preventing hospitalization, death and long-term side effects of the infection.

There are several proven protocols to choose from at this point, including the following. Whichever treatment protocol you use, make sure you begin treatment as soon as possible, ideally at first onset of symptoms.

• The Zelenko protocol²⁸
• The MATH+ protocols²⁹
• Nebulized hydrogen peroxide, as detailed in Dr. David Brownstein’s case paper³⁰ and Dr. Thomas Levy’s free e-book, “Rapid Virus Recovery”

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Notes

¹ KFOR September 1, 2021

² Newswise December 4, 2020

³ Nobelprize.org October 5, 2015

⁴ WHO Essential Medicines August 2015

⁵ YouTube Joe Rogan September 7, 2021

⁶ NPR September 1, 2021

⁷ FDA Twitter August 21, 2021

^{8, 9, 10, 13, 17} Rescue.substack.com

^11, 12 Expert Review Report: Medical Safety of Ivermectin

¹⁴ Nebraska AG Opinion October 14, 2021, page 11

¹⁵ WHO November 20, 2020

¹⁶ The Lancet September 14, 2021

¹⁸ Pharmaceutical Fraud August 9, 2021

¹⁹ Congressional Research Service Off-Label Use of Prescription Drugs February 23, 2021

^20, 24 Nebraska AG Opinion October 14, 2021

²¹ The Defender October 18, 2021

^22, 23 KETV7 Omaha October 15, 2021

²⁵ AMA.org September 1, 2021

^26, 27 AIER October 18, 2021

²⁸ Zelenko protocol

²⁹ Covid19criticalcare.com

³⁰ Science, Public Health Policy and The Law July 2020; 1: 4-22 (PDF)

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense