First published by Global Research on December 14, 2021

People are waking up.

Art is being applied to protests. As very well demonstrated in Germany the Netherlands and Denmark – see video Lockstep” Protest Marches in Netherlands, Germany, Denmark (4 December 2020).

It is not without reference tongue-in-cheek to the 2010 Rockefeller Report which foresaw and planned as the first phase of their deliberate “Human Transformation” – the Lockstep scenario.

The transformation as we now know, is planned to be nothing less than a modification and digitization of the human genome, robotization of our brains – so as to gain total control over the population – those that are left of us, after the UN agenda 2021-2030 is fully implemented.

It also includes digitization and full control of human finances – the entre financial system – and our – people’s – by then meager incomes, will be digitalized in some bank deposits controlled by Mega Banks, with only limited access our own accounts and money. That’s the plan; it’s not reality – yet – and we will make sure that it never becomes reality.

According to their plan, the Great Reset, (WEF, “Covid-19 – The Great Reset” by Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, July 2020), Covid-19 is THE window of opportunity for the world to be reset with an ultra-capitalism that finally brings justice to humanity and the environment. No kidding, that’s what they pretend, and worse, believe that we, the People, will go for it, watching how their – the Cabal’s – takeover unfolds.

Among many human rights abuses and disasters, the Great Reset foresees, for example, that the use of our earned resources will be at their mercy, depending on our behavior. If we behave the way the Cabal desires; if we submit to the wishes of the Dark Deep State, call it also the Shadow Government – (picture, “Enemies of the People”) the Network of oligarchs that controls all 193 UN member states plus the UN itself – only then may we use our own income for purchases that are offered to us.

According to the various WEF papers, even that might be questioned, as there might be shortages – artificially generated shortages of mostly food and health-support items.

That’s the plan. But will we allow them to implement it? – See this, this and this.

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A distinct disclaimer is in order: What is described above is the Cabal’s plan. It’s a plan of darkness. It is a plan of the West. The Eastern alliances, Russia, China and the wider Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are, so far, outside of the realm of the Cabal. Although the Cabal, or the Shadow Government, would like to eventually rule over the entire world – and currently makes believe that their goal will be met.

But China and Russia and their SCO coalition – are on another trek.

They are planning a multi-polar world, with an economic model (for example the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative – BRI, also called the New Silk Road) that strives for a better distribution of resources, for more equilibrium of human societies, of civilization as we know it and a world in which trade is “fair”, meaning a “win-win” transaction, where all partners win equally. This eastern block of collaboration encompasses not only about 2.5 billion people, but also a third of the world’s GDP. “Absorbing” them into the Cabal’s evil pursuit is a challenge darkness may be unable to master.

Light will overcome darkness.

Why would someone or some organization, or quasi and make-believe organization (the legal status of the WEF is no more than that of a NGO registered in a lush suburb of Geneva, Switzerland) give away their sinister secrets to be implemented over the next ten years? – Perhaps to scare everybody who reads it and distributes it for more people to read (the multiplier effect) into anger and frustration, into the same darkness from where it was written and supposedly orchestrated.

It is difficult for people who read the Great Reset and its White Paper Implementation Agenda not to get upset, angry, and perhaps even revengeful. Therefore, this clever move of publishing this fear-inflicting paper – is intent to bring a number of anti-Reset intellectuals onto a low-low level of spiritual vibration, same level as those who wrote and imagined the Great Reset. Vibrating on low level is vibrating in darkness – supporting them, exactly the opposite of what we, the awakened opposition want.

Instead of manifesting our anger and frustration, we might want trying to just recognize the diabolical plan, but move forward without anger – with our own ideas, creating our own new, better and more just future, not one being imposed by the Cabal. Connecting spiritually with each other – as has happened already on numerous occasions – and applying civil disobedience all over the globe, simultaneously, similar to what the “lockstep” protesters did in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark – see above. We can do it. Stop this madness. Spiritually coordinated determination, applied simultaneously, worldwide.

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In the last 9 months, the world economy was destroyed to the core of its bones. Unemployment has become uncountable and rampant, possibly up to 2.9 billion people, according to the International Labor Office (ILO), reaching about half of the world’s work force. Poverty and misery are oozing from all corners in the Global South, were up to 70% of employment is informal. Misery is also rising in the ever-growing slums of cities in the Global North. Overall despair, hunger, the lack of social safety nets and suicide have already by now claimed way more deaths than covid did and ever will.

The system that has prepared itself before our eyes – is called GLOBALIZATION – and it is about to reach its final stages within the next few years. All is minutely planned to be implemented by the end of the decade of the twenties – by 2030. Its’s also called the UN Agenda 2021 – 2030. And this sinister agenda has much more in mind than a global corona plandemic.

Remember how the final dry run started – with Event 201, simulating the Virus SARS-CoV-2, later it was conveniently renamed by WHO as Covid-19.? – Almost like a Swiss clock on the midnight toll of December 31, 2019 the corona “outbreak” started the Decade of the 2020s. Wuhan, China, was the official beginning. The truth of that outbreak, how the virus got to China, is a “well-guarded secret”, with many options.

That’s just a demonstration for how well it all has been planned. Thousands of pages have been written about it in the course of this incredible year 2020. Some may be seen herehere and here.

It may be important to note – especially for all Eastern readers, that although the Great Reset and other planned world take-over gimmicks is meant for the entire world – i.e. towards a One World Government, and the critique expressed here is addressing these plans, but it is clear that Russia and China, and especially their strong alliance with the Shanghai Organization Cooperation (SCO) and other eastern alliances are excluded from the critique. If anything, these countries, especially China and Russia are seeking and working for a multi-polar world, a world that may bring us closer to an equilibrium, where trade among countries is based on shared benefits – not like the west likes to think: “The winner takes all”. This is an important distinction.

Again, we, the People, have the power to stop it, by radically DEGLOBALIZING.

How? – Remember how we lived 60 / 70 years ago? Most of the countries had some degree of self-sufficiency which they wanted to preserve. Trade was limited mostly to neighboring countries or countries that shared the same ideology – and it was mostly a friendly or “fair trade”, a trade where both partners were “winners” – trade was much more based on national comparative advantages, thus, complementing each other. This basic rule applied both in the Global North and the Global South.

Can we jump forward to 60 years ago?

Then came the Washington Consensus – a semi-clandestine meeting in Washington DC, in the second half of 1989, of the world’s financial giants, the instruments of the Cabal, or the Shadow Government, The Federal Reserve / Treasury, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The latter two, though created under the Charter of the UN are fully controlled by the United States.

There was no WTO 60-70 years ago.  WTO was created on 1 January 1995 as a western initiative.[an illegal agreement which was not fully ratified by national parliaments] Ever since it has been distorting world trade and punishing poor countries for being poor, by exploiting them for “credits” and “loans” from the infamous IFIs or International Financial Institutions, like the World Bank and IMF.

Back in the 1950’s and 1960s most of the nations preserved their political, monetary and fiscal sovereignty – with their  own currencies, local banking systems and a central bank that actually was still controlled by national authorities. This was true in most cases in the Global North – not in all. And it did not apply in the Global South, where, for example, in West and Central Africa, their monetary system and central banks were then and today are still controlled by the former (and new) colons, the French.

Can you imagine? – A West African country, say the Ivory Coast, cannot freely dispose of its reserves, because they are controlled by the Banque de France (the French Central Bank) – and this still today. An aberration hardly anybody talks about – but which, in our effort to right a dystopian world, has to be corrected. West African leaders, like Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso (1983 to 1987) – often referred to as the Che Guevara of Africa – was assassinated by orders of the French Government, then led by Mr. François Mitterrand, a so-called socialist President – yes, you read correctly – a “socialist” – because if President Sankara would succeed to free Burkina Faso from the fangs of the French Central Bank, all other West and Central African former (and renewed) colonies of France, risk to go the same way.

Deglobalizing – radically deglobalizing to the level where we were in the 1950s and 1960s, when we lived well and when we lived within the confines of what Mother Earth was generously offering mankind. In a new old world, we might still keep technological advances that serve societies, however without abusing the environment by a non-stop consumerism.

There is a relatively simple formula – “local production, for local consumption with local money and local public banks and a sovereign national central bank that works for the wellbeing of the national population.” – The challenge may be – how to break loose from the fangs of corporate globalism, into which we have let ourselves being seduced – with lies and greed – and more lies of better lives. We have accepted – and even elected – corrupt leaders who promised heaven on earth. And so, we let ourselves be driven step by step closer into the slavehood of transnational corporations.

Today Mother Earth is vastly over-exploited and most of our western societies are mired in greed and egocentricity. In short, no doubt, we are committing massive suicide – economically, politically, and especially psychologically — by 2050 / 60 – if not way before – we are nothing more than slaves, electromagnetically charged “gnomes” dancing to the orders and the tunes of a small global elite – the very same Cabal – the Dark Deep State – that is behind WEF’s Global Reset.

Of course, people – like Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), plus all the governments leaders and parliamentarian and scientists who dance to the orders of the Cabal and keep repeating the official narrative, they are promised to be royally rewarded, or else, if they try to resist – will be unroyally sanctioned… whatever that may encompass. Sort of a “carrot-and-stick” approach. Very usual for a dystopian civilization – what we are.

People start understanding what is happening, because they are connecting the dots. Knowledge is a must, but anger and disgust towards the perpetrators behind the curtains is nefarious. The more we focus on the Cabal’s horrifying agenda – the more we help them implement it. Their negativism is matched by ours of hate. As we focus on them, their diabolical agenda, we too are putting our minds into low-vibrations – because that’s what this is – “The Great Reset” – the One World Order – that’s the lowest vibration of darkness there is.

Those who are awakened, are already vibrating on a much higher level. Instead of concentrating on the evil agenda of the Cabal – and they know that we know that their agenda is evil – we may simply choose our own way forward – into a future that sustains – not destroys – Mother Earth, and humanity, a future that solidifies humanity in solidarity. We are 99.999% – they are 0.001%.

Deglobalize with local production for local markets and local consumption. In the 2008/ 2009 crisis, small communities in Greece and Spain – and probably more countries, popped up and started their own self-sustained economies, with local money. In the US this very moment there are many communities and groups of communities working with their own-created money – yes it still needs to be interchangeable with the going currency – but gradually they achieve more autonomy.

This may be the way to go, until a critical mass can force out the coopted governments and elect their own people’s governments – which will lead the way forward, – into a New, Old World, as much as possible self-sufficient – and trading with neighbors and like-minded other nations – to gradually achieve what we had 60 / 70 years ago – a world in respect of Mother Earth, a world where freedom of expression, open political debates, free media and where political and financial sovereignty was the pride of a nation.

Call it patriotism, call it self-made autonomy – or call it simply the power of self-determination. There was a fresh air of a sense of happiness in people’s souls – which has gradually and purposely been replaced by fear, anxiety frustration – by those emotions emanating from an ever-stronger take-over by Big Money, Big Consumption, Big-and-Bigger Profit Making – by a world for which “Maximizing Profits” has become the new Ave Maria. This world is sick – is dystopian – it is where we are now.

We have become weak, vulnerable to be manipulated – anxiety is our feeling of life. It’s no longer the joys of life that drives us; its fear – fear from an uncertain future. People in fear are susceptible for cancers, heart diseases – and all kinds of infectious illnesses – and people in fear are ripe for manipulation.

Remember – tyrants don’t create tyranny. Your obedience does.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals such as Global Research; New Eastern Outlook (NEO), Information Clearing House (ICH) and more. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020) He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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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On June 23, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the CDC met to discuss ongoing reports of myocarditis in young people, particularly young men, after the 2nd dose of mRNA vaccines.

In light of these recent reports, the committee was charged with weighing potential harms and benefits associated with 2nd doses of mRNA vaccines.

Despite the importance and gravity of the topic, and the high level at which this discussion was taking place, the presentation given to the committee for the purpose of weighing those harms and benefits was fundamentally flawed.

While misleading statements and data can be found throughout the slidedeck, we will focus on two slides which are most relevant to the decision that was facing ACIP on June 23rd.

The first of these two slides, below, claims to evaluate the “benefits and risks after dose 2”, presenting what appears to be “COVID-19-Associated Hospitalizations Prevented” by dose 2, against “Cases of Myocarditis” which would be expected to be caused by dose 2.

The second of these slides, below, presents “Predicted cases prevented vs myocarditis cases per million second dose vaccinations”.

The presentation contains much flawed analysis and misleading framings of data. But above all, despite the fact that these slides purport to weigh risks vs benefits of “dose 2” of mRNA vaccines, this analysis assumes that single doses of mRNA vaccines have 0% effectiveness at preventing COVID-19 associated hospitalization, despite the fact that original Phase 3 trials found high single-dose effectiveness even at preventing infection, and real-world data has confirmed high effectiveness of single doses at preventing hospitalizations, including against recent variants of SARS-CoV-2.

In particular, the counterfactual used for the analysis given for this presentation was not delaying 2nd doses in certain age groups or even forgoing them altogether, but suspending all vaccinations in this age group, including for children with conditions placing them at elevated risk of severe outcomes and death, for a period of 4 months all of which exhibit rates of deaths and hospitalization comparable to May.

ACIP cannot do it’s duty if it does not even address the question before it, which was, most immediately: “do the benefits vs harms of 2nd doses of mRNA vaccines favor giving 2nd doses in younger age groups at this time?

Answering this question requires understanding not the difference between vaccinating kids and not vaccinating them, but between giving 2nd doses and not giving 2nd doses. The titles of these slides notwithstanding, these slides do not present any data pertinent to that question.

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It is possible, however, to reconstruct what a more careful balancing of harms and benefits might look like. The first change we will make is simply to incorporate an analysis of the benefit of a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19 hospitalization. This was recently estimated at 83% against the alpha variant, and 92% against the more recent delta variant, by Public Health England. We will conservatively assume a single-dose effectiveness of 83% against hospitalization for this illustration, versus a two-dose effectiveness of 95%. With these assumptions, the first slide shown earlier appears quite different:

Fewer hospitalizations are avoided in this re-analysis, which only attributes to dose 2 those avoided hospitalizations which would not already have been avoided by dose 1.

After this change, the balance of benefits vs harms is much more delicate, with more cases of hospitalization expected from vaccine-induced myocarditis in 12–17 year olds (even lumping boys and girls together) than COVID-19 associated hospitalizations prevented.

We will consider one further change. The case rate shown on the right-hand side of this figure represents the rate at which CDC-confirmed cases of myocarditis have been recorded through voluntary reporting systems. It is natural to expect this to be an underestimate. Indeed, Israel reported rates of myocarditis betwen 1 in 3000 and 1 in 6000 in 16–24 year olds, with higher rates among 16–19 year olds than 20–24 year olds. this is roughly 5 times higher than the rate of CDC confirmed myocarditis cases detected through voluntary reporting. If we use Israel rates as a proxy for expected myocarditis rates, we obtain the following comparison (simply by inflating by a factor of 5 the CDC-confirmed rate in each age group up to 29).

In this re-analysis, we compare COVID-19-associated hospitalizations avoided by the 2nd dose, to rates of myocarditis which would be expected at rates seen in Israel.

In this analysis the harms vs benefits of the 2nd dose appear unfavorable for ages under 25. This is true even though:

  • This analysis segregates by age only, ignoring gender, previous COVID-19 infection or health risk factors;
  • It still uses May hospitalization rates as the baseline expectation for the next 4 months;
  • It does not account for the fact that according to the CDC’s own analysis, 45% of COVID-19 associated hospitalizations in adolescents reported to COVID-NET (which is the source for hospitalization data in this figure) have primary causes other than COVID-19.

The harms versus benefits are particularly bad for 12–17 year olds, as is illustrated if we modify the 2nd CDC slide from above under the assumption that a single dose of mRNA vaccine has 83% VE against severe outcomes, and use rates of myocarditis from Israel as the upper estimate on the number of myocarditis rates (the lower estimates remain unchanged here):

When we account for the marginal benefit of the 2nd dose beyond the 1st dose, rather than attributing all the benefits of vaccination to the 2nd dose, the balancing of harms and benefits appears much more unfavorable in teens.

Note that more than 95% of myocarditis cases detected by the CDC resulted in hospitalization; it seems very likely that 2nd doses of mRNA vaccines will cause more hospitalizations than they will prevent in 12–17 year old boys, and whether that is also true for women will depend heavily on the rate at which the CDC is undercounting myocarditis cases. In the meantime, note that this balance would look even more unfavorable for 2nd doses if it was restricted to healthy children without health factors placing them at elevated risk for severe disease.

In the meantime, the mortality rate of vaccine-associated myocarditis cases remains uncertain. Under questioning during the meeting, Matthew Oster reported that for myocarditis unrelated to COVID-19 or COVID-19 vaccines, mortality rates are estimated in the range of 4%–9% in the literature. Fortunately, it seems likely that the rate is not so high for vaccine or COVID-19 associated myocarditis. But the rate is likely not zero, and the CDC is already investigating one possible death associated with a 2nd dose of Pfizer vaccine in a 13 year old, over a time period where no deaths would be expected to be avoided from 2nd doses of mRNA vaccines in this age group.

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Wesley Pegden is Associate Professor, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

Brexit’s Collateral Damage

June 28th, 2021 by Chris Patten

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Five years after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, the costs of that decision are becoming clearer. Most perniciously, trust in Britain is declining fast as Prime Minister Boris Johnson denies the consequences of the post-Brexit agreement he reached regarding Northern Ireland.

I confess straightaway: I am not a football fan. Too often, matches fall well below the sport’s claim to be “the beautiful game.” Nonetheless, I am dutifully watching some of the current European Championship. Naturally, I always want England to win, though I hate how English fans boo other countries’ national anthems. And, being British, I would support Scotland, Wales, or – though they did not qualify this year – Northern Ireland if they were playing a country from outside the United Kingdom.

My point is that I never want my country to do badly. And even though I passionately opposed Brexit, I want Britain to fare as well as it possibly can outside the European Union. But staying silent in the face of evidence that it is not amounts to the crudest and most mendacious sort of nationalism.

The UK has already incurred steadily rising costs as a result not only of Brexit but of a hard Brexit that people did not necessarily vote for in the June 2016 referendum. Yet, that is what we got in order to appease Britain’s right-wing media and politicians and to pave the way for Boris Johnson to become prime minister.

I will not itemize here Britain’s Brexit-induced loss of trade with the EU in food, manufactured goods, and services, which cannot be blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic, nor the UK’s worsening labor shortage – not least in the agriculture and hospitality sectors. As the OECD has pointed out, Britain is emerging from the pandemic in worse shape than most of its competitors.

But I do want to highlight three damaging consequences of Brexit. First, its advocates claimed that leaving the EU would enable Britain to “take back control.” If that phrase meant anything, it suggested that Parliament would have more say in running our national affairs. In practice, it means nothing of the sort.

For example, the government recently agreed to a free-trade deal with Australia. Leave aside the fact that the pact’s likely economic benefits to the UK over a 15-year period are so small, even by the government’s estimates, that they amount to a rounding adjustment. Just as significant is that – despite the government’s promises during the passage of the Brexit legislation – Parliament cannot scrutinize, much less mitigate, the deal’s impact, which will be particularly harmful for small farmers in Wales and Scotland.

Second, the government was keen to reach an agreement with Australia to show that Britain can negotiate trade deals on its own, without the EU. Although Johnson had hoped to begin with India, and planned to visit the country to discuss a deal with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the visit became inadvisable as COVID-19 ravaged South Asia. Yet, in the hope that it might still go ahead, the British government delayed imposing a travel ban on people coming to the UK from India, despite barring visitors from Bangladesh and Pakistan. There was no plausible public-health rationale for this distinction. In fact, given its COVID-19 figures, arrivals from India arguably should have been prohibited first.

As many pointed out, the thousands of travelers who arrived in the UK from India during the period when other South Asian visitors were banned must have seeded and spread what is now called the Delta variant of the coronavirus. COVID-19 infections in the UK have increased significantly in the last few weeks, obliging the government to delay the further planned easing of lockdown restrictions in England and deterring other countries from opening their borders to people arriving from the UK. So, this new surge in the pandemic looks like part of the collateral damage caused by the government’s attempt to make the political case for Brexit and trade.

Third, trust in Britain and Johnson is declining fast as the government denies the consequences of the agreement it reached regarding Northern Ireland after the UK’s departure from the EU. In those negotiations, Britain wanted to minimize the inconvenience of accessing the EU’s single market while maximizing its ability to establish its own rules and standards.

The UK’s only land border with the EU is the one between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Avoiding a hard border on the island is a fundamental part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland. But Northern Ireland cannot remain outside the EU’s customs union and regulatory regime and at the same time maintain an open border with the Republic.

For this reason, Johnson negotiated and signed a protocol that meant Northern Ireland received, in a sense, the best of both worlds. It stayed in the EU’s customs union and partly in its single market while also remaining a part of the UK market. This was despite the government’s promises to Northern Ireland’s Unionists that there would not need to be any kind of border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland with customs and other checks.

Johnson now denies the promises he made and is threatening to tear up the protocol, blaming the EU for the problem he has caused. The EU certainly has scope for flexibility in managing the border, and I hope it will show some. But the UK government can show even more latitude, for example by accepting that Northern Ireland might follow EU standards for food and agricultural products. After all, the government says it does not want to see lower standards in Britain than in Europe.

But the most important thing for Johnson to do is to demonstrate trustworthiness in international negotiations. Sadly, a growing number of world leaders, as well as people in Britain and Northern Ireland, have come to doubt that he will keep his word when he has given it.

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Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former EU commissioner for external affairs, is Chancellor of the University of Oxford.

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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A federal judge appointed to coordinate proceedings for claims that Syngenta AG’s paraquat weed killers cause Parkinson’s disease said Wednesday she was setting a jury trial date for Nov. 15, 2022.

U.S. Judge Nancy Rosenstengel of the Southern District of Illinois issued the order in an initial hearing with lawyers from multiple firms who are representing people alleging their exposure to Syngenta’s popular herbicides caused them or family members to develop and suffer from the dreaded neurological disorder.

There are 157 cases pending in state and federal courts around the country, according to a June 22 court filing. The plaintiffs allege Syngenta was aware of the risks but failed to warn users.

Syngenta, which is owned by a Chinese chemical company, has denied the allegations.

Along with Syngenta, the defendants include Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP, and Chevron USA, Inc. All have denied any liability.

Several scientific studies have linked paraquat to Parkinson’s, including a large study of U.S. farmers jointly overseen by multiple U.S. government agencies.  Farmers use paraquat in the production of many crops, including corn, soy and cotton. The Agricultural Health Study (AHS) said it found that “exposure to agricultural pesticides may increase a person’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.” In 2011, AHS researchers reported that “participants who used paraquat or rotenone were twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease as people who didn’t use these chemicals.”

A more recent paper from AHS researchers stated that “Extensive literature suggests an association between general pesticide use and Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, with few exceptions, little is known about associations between specific pesticides and PD.”

Parkinson’s is an incurable progressive nervous system disorder that limits a person’s ability to control movement, causing tremors, loss of balance and eventually often leaving victims bedridden and/or bound to a wheelchair. The disease is not necessarily fatal but typically becomes severely debilitating.

Dutch neurologist Bastiaan Bloem, who recently authored a book about Parkinson’s, blames widespread exposure to herbicides such as paraquat, along with other toxic chemicals used in agriculture and manufacturing, for the spread of the disease.

The case number for the multidistrict litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois is 3:21-md-03004-NJR

Some cases already settled

Even as more than 100 cases move forward, several are in the process of settling.

A “notice of settlement” was filed on June 18 in California, stating that the parties in 16 cases pending in that state had reached agreement on settlement terms.

Among the law firms involved in that settlement notice is the Missouri-based firm headed by lawyer Steve Tillery.

Tillery was scheduled to bring one of his cases, Hoffman V. Syngenta, to trial last month, and has accumulated thousands of pages of internal company documents through discovery. He had  threatened to introduce evidence that he said included internal company records showing Syngenta has known for decades that its product causes Parkinson’s Disease.

Tillery has refused to confirm settlement terms.

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The World Says No to the Blockade of Cuba

June 28th, 2021 by Rosa Miriam Elizalde

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Cuba won another diplomatic victory in the General Assembly of the United Nations this Wednesday against the government of the United States. The majority of countries (184) voted in favor of the resolution which calls for the lifting of the blockade against Cuba. The resolution has been brought to the UN every year since 1992, except in 2020 when the government of Havana was unable to present it due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This victory is a reminder of the Cuban people’s long wait for an act of justice that can rectify the worrying situation, which is a mix of the abuse of authority, the disproportionate use of violence, and the very specific intention to “destroy, totally or in part, a national, ethnic or racial group, in its totality,” the UN’s definition of genocide in its 1948 Convention.

Only very few cases of mass killings have been considered genocides unequivocally by the international community. However, there is no other name for this horror which has lasted for more than 60 years and has forced several generations of Cubans to go about their daily lives under a heavy fog. This powerful elite carries out inhuman monstrosities against millions of people for the mere crime of existing. Is it not genocide to deny people, in the middle of a pandemic, medicine and food, access to internet services to the majority of people, to finance and trade between equals? If so, we must then, like Raphael Lemkin, invent a word for this nameless crime.

It is difficult to account for how many in Cuba have died because they did not have the medicine they needed or because it did not arrive on time. The report presented by the Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, on the damages of the blockade in 2020, has 60 pages without one adjective. The report is merely a list of what happened, excessive costs, items that did not arrive on time because they had some component from the US –from a plane to a respirator that was destined for an intensive care unit-, names of companies that have refused to supply the island with the technology, raw materials, reactive agents, diagnostic kits, medicine, devices, equipment and replacement parts needed by a public health system.

A friend told me that the images of George Floyd’s assassination had a strong impact in Cuba. Being suffocated on the ground by the police officer who refused to lift his knee off his neck, despite the cries of the victim saying that he couldn’t breathe. The video went viral across the world and was the catalyst for the largest anti-racist protest in the United States since the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

We understand the feeling of impotence of the people of the United States who feel rightly so that this is a systematic abuse of power. In the case of the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of George’s agony, it was key that the entire incident was recorded. The question that remains, after the conviction of the killer cop, is how many other people have been killed or have suffered in silence simply because there was no camera when the system didn’t let them breathe. We know that there is always a knee on someone’s neck, suffocating them. This is what happens with the blockade. This strange word that may seem to be abstract for many, but not for the person who finds themselves in the emergency room in Cuba, has a sick child or has spent six hours in line to buy food that before the 242 additional sanctions added by Donald Trump and before the damn pandemic, could be found with less difficulty.

Joe Biden’s representative at the UN reached new levels of cynicism when they said that the blockade is the responsibility of the Cuban government which uses it as a pretext to remain in power. This is like George Floyd’s killer saying his knee on somebody else’s neck was the victim’s excuse for suffocating.

As such, these are moments of joy in Cuba as we learn that once again that from the New York headquarters of the UN, the world said no to the US blockade. This coincided with more hopeful news: Cuban scientists were able to finalize the first two Latin American vaccines. One of them, Abdala, has a 92.28% rate of efficacy.

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This article was first published on La Jornada.

Rosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist and founder of the site Cubadebate. She is vice president of both the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) and the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP). She has written and co-written several books including Jineteros en la Habana and Our Chavez. She has received the Juan Gualberto Gómez National Prize for Journalism on multiple occasions for her outstanding work. She is currently a weekly columnist for La Jornada of Mexico City.

Featured image is from Peoples Dispatch

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***

Cuba’s new victory over Washington was not news in the US. No head of diplomacy or White House representatives issued any criteria regarding the fact that 184 of the 193 countries that make up the United Nations (UN) voted on Wednesday to end the blockade imposed on the island for almost 60 years.

Only two governments voted in favor of maintaining the blockade; The United States and Israel. Although President Joe Biden’s administration has repeated that it is “evaluating” that policy, yesterday there was no sign of the turnaround he promised during his election campaign. The world expected Washington to resume some advances of the Obama-era when Biden was vice president. Ironically when the same vote came up in the UN in 2016 the Obama – Biden Administration abstained from voting against it but now the reality is that Biden not only regressed at the UN he is keeping intact the deadly 242 sanctions against Cuba that was dished out during Trump.

Analysts say Miami continues to define the new administration’s political calculus regarding its relations with Cuba. “Dante’s first ring of hell is reserved for Florida’s Cuban-Americans who continue to encourage the blockade and hostilities toward the island. How can anyone ask for their families’ suffering?” U.S.-based Cuban attorney Jose Pertierra said during an interview for Cubavision Internacional.

Biden’s representative at the United Nations, Rodney Hunter, sought to justify the administration’s vote by claiming that its policy is “for the good of the Cuban people.” He told yet another string of lies, such as that “sanctions are a series of tools to promote democracy and respect for human rights in Cuba.”

Ignoring the massive backlash that erupted at the General Assembly session against the White House, Hunter added that

“the U.S. is a trading partner of the island, despite the blockade. We are in direct contact with members of its civil society and continue to encourage the Cuban people to determine their own futures.”

Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodriguez refuted Hunter’s every word with precise data.

“The blockade is an economic war with extraterritorial measures, a mechanism of political interference that seeks to generate political and social instability on the island. Just like COVID-19, the blockade suffocates and kills,” he affirmed.

For Cuban journalist Rosa Miriam Elizalde, this policy is for Cuba what it was like for George Floyd’s neck with the knee of that white policeman who suffocated him to death in May 2020.

“Cuba was shaken by the image of George Floyd suffocating on the ground while the policeman would not lift his knee from his neck, despite the victim’s cries that he could not breathe. We know that feeling of helplessness of many Americans before their government’s systematic abuse of power,” she wrote in La Jornada.

Cuba knows the knee is always there, invisible, on someone’s neck.

“It happens the same way with the blockade, that word that may seem like an abstraction, but it is not for those who are in an intensive care unit (UCI) in Cuba, have an ill child, or have spent six hours in a line to buy food,” Elizalde added.

Today, Biden is following the same path of Dwight Eisenhower in 1960, when he banned Cuba’s sugar exports to the US, which were 95 percent of the island’s sales abroad, to starve the Cuban people. Meanwhile, the U.S. press looks the other way and fills headlines about the latest scandal of some unfortunate celebrity, as happened yesterday, for example.

After the vote at the UN, the news that was among the top stories of the day and that received all the alerts was Britney Spears’ complaint that she is not allowed to live as she wishes. People in the US were up to speed on all the details of her day in court but had to dig deep to find even a morsel of news about the humiliation of US policy in the UN by 184 nations of the world standing with Cuba.

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Alejandra Garcia is a journalist living in Havana, Cuba.

Featured image is by Bill Hackwell/Dissident Voice

Don’t Allow Another US-NATO Libya in the Horn of Africa

June 28th, 2021 by Black Alliance for Peace

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***

Paternalistic U.S. government political posturing toward Africa has a history of turning into fatal consequences for the masses of African peoples. A decade ago, several of the same individuals who now hold positions in the Biden administration were accomplices in the U.S.-led NATO decimation of Libya, which was rationalized under the guise of protecting “pro-democracy” activists from massacre by the so-called dictator Colonel Muammar Gadaffi. Hiding behind a modern-day version of the “White Man’s Burden,” otherwise known as “Responsibility to Protect” or R2P, the United States and its NATO allies killed and maimed thousands of Libyans, with U.S. leaders like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking special satisfaction in the sadistic video recording of Gaddafi’s murder.

Given the catastrophic effects of the U.S.-NATO intervention in Libya, the Black Alliance for Peace’s U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) and BAP member organization Horn of Africa Pan-Africans for Liberation & Solidarity (HOA PALS), condemn, under no uncertain terms, any and all forms of intervention and meddling in the conflict in Ethiopia. As it did against Libya, U.S. imperialism is weaponizing disinformation and misinformation to exploit and distort the complexity, historical context and political realities in the Horn of Africa to create the pretext for more direct intervention.

“Should those responsible for undermining a resolution of the crisis in Tigray fail to reverse course, they should anticipate further actions from the United States and the international community. We call on other governments to join us in taking these actions.” —U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, May 23, 2021 press statement

The attack on the federal base by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that started the conflict is now being used as a de-facto instrument of U.S. policy in Ethiopia to justify “humanitarian intervention.” In this way, the primary contradiction in the Tigray region reflects broader dynamics in the Horn of Africa as a whole and can be boiled down to the common denominators of global capitalist hegemony and Western imperialism by way of its proxy actor, the TPLF. Western powers only curtail the right of self-determination for the Horn of Africa and Global South states.

We condemn all military violence, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, displacement, theft, discrimination, harassment and intimidation perpetrated on innocent Tigrayans, as well as any and all unnecessary violence perpetrated on other Ethiopians and Eritreans in the ongoing conflict as a result of their ethnic, religious, or national identity, refugee status or political affiliation. We unequivocally support and uplift mutual cooperation, solidarity, and peace among all parties and people in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the broader Horn of Africa region.

We support African-led, localized conflict resolution that is not tied to advancing imperialism, neo-colonialism or any other nefarious Western agendas. We believe in the inherent agency and ability of Africans on the continent to reach a resolution to the conflict peacefully and independently of Western aggression, destabilization, and extractive and exploitative economic interests.

The United States and its EU-NATO allies know no compassion or genuine concern for the Black lives in Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa or anywhere else Black people are in the world. Their true concerns are always selfish, racist and reflective of their objective geopolitical interests. In Ethiopia and Eritrea, their interests are:

  • To control or have undue influence over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a chokepoint critical to securing global energy;
  • to challenge the robust presence of China; and
  • to impose AFRICOM in the only country left in Africa that has evaded its control, Eritrea.

Africa is not underdeveloped and fraught with militarized instability because there is not enough involvement by Western Europe and its evil settler-colonial spawn, the USA. Anyone who believes that must also believe Africans are inferior savages. The fact is Africa is underdeveloped and destabilized precisely because of centuries of European colonialism and decades of U.S. and Western European neocolonialism. Any disposition held by Africans that lends legitimacy to intervention, sanctions, or the fake moral or altruistic dominion of Pan-European, white supremacist capitalist interests in Africa are based either on severe ignorance or treacherous opportunism.

U.S. foreign policy in Africa always involves enveloping any part of the continent that poses a threat to its geostrategic interests into its sphere of forever wars. In 2011, Black anti-imperialist forces were unable to effectively counter the plan by the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination to destroy the revolutionary Pan-Africanist nation of Libya. This was partially because the action had the political cover of the first Black president, which confused and disarmed left opposition and made them objective collaborators with U.S. reaction.

BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network and Horn of Africa Pan-Africans for Liberation & Solidarity refuse to allow this fatal mistake to be made again.

Hands off Ethiopia and Eritrea!

#ShutDownAFRICOM!

#USOutofAfrica!

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When you picture Yellowstone National Park and its neighbor, Grand Teton, the snowcapped peaks and Old Faithful Geyser almost certainly come to mind. Climate change threatens all of these iconic scenes, and its impact reaches far beyond the parks’ borders.

A new assessment of climate change in the two national parks and surrounding forests and ranchland warns of the potential for significant changes as the region continues to heat up.

Since 1950, average temperatures in the Greater Yellowstone Area have risen 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 C), and potentially more importantly, the region has lost a quarter of its annual snowfall. With the region projected to warm 5-6 F by 2061-2080, compared with the average from 1986-2005, and by as much as 10-11 F by the end of the century, the high country around Yellowstone is poised to lose its snow altogether.

The loss of snow there has repercussions for a vast range of ecosystems and wildlife, as well as cities and farms downstream that rely on rivers that start in these mountains.

Broad impact on wildlife and ecosystems

The Greater Yellowstone Area comprises 22 million acres in northwest Wyoming and portions of Montana and Idaho. In addition to geysers and hot springs, it’s home to the southernmost range of grizzly bear populations in North America and some of the longest intact wildlife migrations, including the seasonal traverses of elk, pronghorn, mule deer and bison.

The area also represents the one point where the three major river basins of the western U.S. converge. The rivers of the Snake-Columbia basin, Green-Colorado basin, and Missouri River Basin all begin as snow on the Continental Divide as it weaves across Yellowstone’s peaks and plateaus.

How climate change alters the Greater Yellowstone Area is, therefore, a question with implications far beyond the impact on Yellowstone’s declining cutthroat trout population and disruptions to the food supplies critical for the region’s recovering grizzly population. By altering the water supply, it also shapes the fate of major Western reservoirs and their dependent cities and farms hundreds of miles downstream.

Rising temperatures also increase the risk of large forest fires like those that scarred Yellowstone in 1988 and broke records across Colorado in 2020. And the effects on the national parks could harm the region’s nearly US$800 billion in annual tourism activity across the three states.

A group of scientists led by Cathy Whitlock from Montana State University, Steve Hostetler of the U.S. Geological Survey and myself at the University of Wyoming partnered with local organizations, including the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, to launch the climate assessment.

We wanted to create a common baseline for discussion among the region’s many voices, from the Indigenous nations who have lived in these landscapes for over 10,000 years to the federal agencies mandated to care for the region’s public lands. What information would ranchers and outfitters, skiers and energy producers need to know to begin planning for the future?

A group of elk in a grassland area.

Elk in the Greater Yellowstone Area could be affected by changes in the availability and quality of plants they eat along their migration routes. Changes to the elk population would in turn have an impact on grizzlies, wolves, and other parts of the food chain. Bryan Shuman/University of Wyoming

Shifting from snow to rain

Standing at the University of Wyoming-National Park Service Research Station and looking up at the snow on the Grand Teton, over 13,000 feet above sea level, I cannot help but think that the transition away from snow is the most striking outcome that the assessment anticipates – and the most dire.

Today the average winter snowline – the level where almost all winter precipitation falls as snow – is at an elevation of about 6,000 feet. By the end of the century, warming is forecast to raise it to at least 10,000 feet, the top of Jackson Hole’s famous ski areas.

The climate assessment uses projections of future climates based on a scenario that assumes countries substantially reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. When we looked at scenarios in which global emissions continue at a high rate instead, the differences by the end of century compared with today became stark. Not even the highest peaks would regularly receive snow.

In interviews with people across the region, nearly everyone agreed that the challenge ahead is directly connected to water. As a member of one of the regional tribes noted, “Water is a big concern for everybody.”

As temperature has risen over the past seven decades, snowfall has declined, and peak streamflow shifted earlier in the year across the Greater Yellowstone Area. 2021 Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment, CC BY-ND

Precipitation may increase slightly as the region warms, but less of it will fall as snow. More of it will fall in spring and autumn, while summers will become drier than they have been, our assessment found.

The timing of the spring runoff, when winter snow melts and feeds into streams and rivers, has already shifted ahead by about eight days since 1950. The shift means a longer, drier late summer when drought can turn the landscape brown – or black as the wildfire season becomes longer and hotter.

The outcomes will affect wildlife migrations dependent on the “green wave” of new leaves that rises up the mountain slopes each spring. Low streamflow and warm water in late summer will threaten the survival of coldwater fisheries, like the Yellowstone cutthroat trout, and Yellowstone’s unique species like the western glacier stonefly, which depends on the meltwater from mountain glaciers.

Temperatures are projected to rise in the Greater Yellowstone Area in the coming decades. The chart shows two potential scenarios, based on different projections of what global warming might look like in the future – RCP 8.5, if greenhouse gas emissions continue at a high rate; and RCP 4.5, if countries take substantial steps to slow climate change. The temperatures are compared with the 1900-2005 average. 2021 Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment

Preparing for a warming future

These outcomes will vary somewhat from location to location, but no area will be untouched.

We hope the climate assessment will help communities anticipate the complex impacts ahead and start planning for the future.

As the report indicates, that future will depend on choices made now and in the coming years. Federal and state policy choices will determine whether the world will see optimistic scenarios or scenarios where adaption becomes more difficult. The Yellowstone region, one of the coldest parts of the U.S., will face changes, but actions now can help avoid the worst. High-elevation mountain towns like Jackson, Wyoming, which today rarely experience 90 F, may face a couple of weeks of such heat by the end of the century – or they may face two months of it, depending in large part on those decisions.

The assessment underscores the need for discussion. What choices do we want to make?

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 is Professor of Paleoclimatology and Paleoecology, University of Wyoming.

Featured image: Snow melts near the Continental Divide in the Bridger Wilderness Area in Wyoming, part of the Greater Yellowstone Area. Bryan Shuman/University of Wyoming, CC BY-ND

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***

Once again, Western think tanks are disrupting international harmony and spreading fear and panic in order to serve the globalist agenda. In a recent report, RAND Corporation, one of the largest American think tanks, stated that NATO nations would be vulnerable to Russian nuclear power in an eventual armed conflict against Russia on European soil. The text approaches the topic with unfounded alarmism about the possibility of a nuclear conflict, which only tends to increase anti-Russian hysteria in the West.

In its latest report, entitled “Competing with Russia Militarily Implications of Conventional and Nuclear Conflicts,” RAND Corporation presents a terrible future for Europe and the entire West. The four authors of the report (Clint Reach, Edward Geist, Abby Doll and Joe Cheravitch) believe that NATO currently lacks sufficient power to prevent Russia from starting a nuclear escalation in Europe. The authors see tensions in the Baltic region as a possible starting point for a conflict with Russia and emphasize the weaknesses of the West as a problem to be corrected in order to ensure European security.

The authors’ main argument is to remember that Russian military doctrine guarantees the possibility of using nuclear weapons in the event of a response to a foreign attack or threat to the existence of the Russian State. This military orientation was taken in 2010 and later reaffirmed by President Putin in 2018 and consists of nothing more than the possibility of using nuclear weapons as a last possibility. However, Western analysts consider this authorization obscure and uncertain, without details on when the Russian government’s use of nuclear force would be “legitimate”. For the RAND Corporation, there is no clear definition of what would be a “threat to the existence of the Russian state”, which creates a nuclear instability.

Regardless of any legal aspect of when the Russian government would or would not be allowed to use nuclear weapons, the central point when we address this issue is the strategic value. In fact, no country in the world currently plans to use nuclear weapons. A nuclear war could mean the end of the entire planet. It is not by chance that the practice of war has become a set of complex actions, such as hybrid warfare, proxy confrontation, intelligence operations, among others. War as it was practiced in the past is currently unfeasible and all governments in the world know this and take this into account when formulating their strategies in foreign policy. The value of nuclear weapons is in their ability to guarantee security to the state that possesses them, not in their actual use. The nation that possesses nuclear weapons has a guarantee of security and territorial inviolability – not an instrument of attack.

However, perhaps the objective of the RAND Corporation is not exactly to point out scenarios and possibilities, but just to speculate the worst-case-scenario for the West and thus justify any measures by the Western governments to avoid this catastrophic future. The logic of American think tanks seems increasingly to be one of producing material with pre-appointed conclusions. The role of consultants is simply to write anything that justifies increased aggressiveness in foreign policy as a way of “improving Western defense.”

This conclusion is visible when we analyze what RAND proposes to solve the Western “vulnerability”. The report considers the possibility that Russia could use a “limited nuclear war” tactic – a concept that has not been in use since the end of the Cold War – against the West, which would allow the Russian government to carry out a low-potential attack on European soil. If NATO responded to this attack with a retaliation on Russian soil, then Moscow would certainly hit American territory. This scenario is due to the fact that NATO has few strategic bases, considering that only the US, France and the UK have nuclear weapons (in addition to foreign bases in Germany and Italy), which would make the western territory more vulnerable to Russian attacks, considering its large non-nuclear zones. Therefore, the solution would be to eliminate vulnerable areas, which seems to be a mere excuse to allocate as many nuclear weapons as possible in European countries. In the end, the whole hypothetical scenario created by the analysts justifies the resurgence of nuclear tensions.

It is difficult to imagine that any geopolitical analyst would really think this way, which reinforces the idea that such reports are just justifications for NATO to increase its aggressiveness and, in the specific case, for the US to guarantee its security in the first place by creating a nuclear zone on European soil in order to avoid possible attacks on American territory.

The report came at a totally inappropriate time, when the world was beginning to hope for a future with less tensions due to the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden two weeks ago. Both leaders promised efforts to renew the New Start agreement, but shortly thereafter, American strategists suggest a defense plan against the “Russian threat” that precisely implies a process of nuclearization in Europe.

However, while the report’s intent was to expose NATO’s vulnerabilities to further intensify anti-Russia mentality in Western governments and justify more aggressive measures, the proposals presented are not of interest to European states. The real aim is to protect American soil from a possible Russian attack, restricting the conflict to Europe – luckily for the Europeans, these war plans do not exist in Moscow.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

In February I wrote,

As a rule, basic decency would require that one clean up one’s own yard (except in Canada’s case, the yard was stolen from its Indigenous peoples) before criticizing someone else’s yard.

This was in response to a plurality of members of parliament in Canada condemning China for committing genocide in the country’s Xinjiang province. It was flabbergasting, given that Canada is a state erected on the territory through a dispossession of its Original Peoples by European colonial-settlers. The dispossession was — and is — genocidal.

Canada’s minister of Foreign Affairs, Marc Garneau, issued a statement:

The Government of Canada takes any allegations of genocide extremely seriously. We have the responsibility to work with others in the international community in ensuring that any such allegations are investigated by an independent international body of legal experts.

This investigation must be conducted by an international and independent body so that impartial experts can observe and report on the situation first-hand.

That action would come back to bite Garneau and the MPs.

Forensic Evidence of Genocide

To those who listen to First Peoples and study how settlers came to rule over the First Peoples, the news announced on 27 May of 215 individual graves of children from the Kamloops Indian Residential School, while jarring was not surprising. The school, which operated from 1890 to 1969, had its hidden past revealed by ground-penetrating radar used by Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation in BC.

“To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir said. In a press release she said:

We sought out a way to confirm that knowing out of deepest respect and love for those lost children and their families, understanding that Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc is the final resting place of these children.

Many thought the discovered bodies to be the tip of the ice berg. That was in late May.

Less than a month later, the Cowessess First Nation in southern Saskatchewan, using the same ground-penetrating radar, announced with certainty 600, but possibly 751, unmarked graves in its community cemetery.

The graves belong to children from the Marieval Indian Residential School said Chief Cadmus Delorme. The school operated from 1899 to 1997.

Both schools were run by the Catholic Church. The Pope has yet to apologize.

Chinese officials who have welcomed everyone to come to Xinjiang were quick to notice the forked tongue of Canadian officials. China spokesperson Hua Chunying recognizes what genocide looks like.

Meanwhile Xinjiang has seen a noticeable bump in visitors to the autonomous region.

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I emailed Kevin Annett who early on, as a United Church minister, spoke to atrocities in the logging town of Port Alberni on Vancouver Island. Annett, it must be stated, is a very controversial figure. But just because someone is off base or wrong on certain topics (and who is always correct?) does not mean that everything a person says should be dismissed. In a 2008 Tyee article he was ridiculed by a detractor: “Annett is busy with another one of his crusades against church and state, with new claims about a network of mass graves across Canada containing the remains of perhaps thousands of aboriginal children, murdered by priests and nuns.” The detractor, Terry Glavin, even went so far as to write that “the story of secret residential-school mass graves is an urban legend.” Ouch!

In Annett’s documentary Unrepentant, First Peoples spoke to abuse, trauma, torture, and deaths in residential schools. The number that specifically stood out was a woman holding a sign that read 50,000 killed. I asked Annett if he expected ground-penetrating radar to adduce the deaths at the residential school in Port Alberni?

Annett replied: “The general problem is that the serial killer is in charge and the truth works around the edges of the ‘mainstream’. GPR surveys have already been done at the Alberni death camp and the records are public info, also held in our ITCCS archives. They indicate sinkholes and massive soil dislocation.”

What about the churches — Catholic, Anglican, and United — how can they atone for the crime of genocide?

Annett: “The churches can only atone by being shut down and having their property and assets seized as criminal organizations – a requirement under international law; and having their officers arrested and jailed under standing warrants from our 2013 court action.”

Annett spoke to the role of the governments of Canada and its RCMP in the entrenchment of colonialism on First Nation land.

Annett: “But as long as they’re protected by ‘crown’ jurisdiction that won’t happen, hence the need for a new political arrangement – the Republic of Kanata (www.republicofkanata.ca).”

Idle No More, the Indigenous rights movement, stated:

We will not celebrate stolen Indigenous land and stolen Indigenous lives. #CancelCanadaDay. Instead we will gather to honour all of the lives lost to the Canadian State – Indigenous lives, Black Lives, Migrant lives, Women and Trans and 2Spirit lives – all of the relatives that we have lost.

Victoria (Camosack in Lekwungen language) city council voted unanimously to cancel Canada Day celebrations. Several jurisdictions in Canada have followed suit canceling celebrations slated for the first day in July.

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

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***

Seems That the World Has Let Americans Get Away With Murderous Genocide in So Many Countries

Let’s begin with acknowledging that officials of the United States of America, its military, its clandestine operating CIA, and personnel within its criminal media cartel have been committing crimes against humanity free of any worry or concern of prosecution.

Let us also acknowledge that though there is relatively free speech throughout most of the world, no one seems to ever be talking about the multitude of legally prosecutable monstrous crimes against humanity committed by Americans with impunity, many of which involve the death of millions of innocent men, women and children. There is a strange absence of much talk about them even as the horrific acts of genocide that they were.

The World Court of Public Opinion Is Not Yet In Session

Regarding US Crimes Against Humanity

Sure, there are quite a few anti-imperialist books in print that are critical of US genocides, but the great court of world pubic opinion has not been in session since 1945 when there was consensus among people throughout the world for demanding the ultimate legal punishment of the leaders of the fascist nations for the murderous horrors perpetrated during their invasions and bombings in the course of the Second World War.

Americans Are Vulnerable for Having Confessed or Bragged About Their Illegal, Unconstitutional and Genocidal Crimes

How is it that even government officials of nations presently under attack by the United States of America, and those of nations invaded and bombed by the US in the past, passively continue to allow Americans to get away with murder, the present murdering of thousands and the past mass murder of many millions, when massively murderous crimes against humanity have even been openly admitted to by high officials of the government of the United States of America by their openly characterizing them either as having been mistakes or by bragging about their having been successful. 

  • American officials claiming that their mega genocidal invasions, bombings and occupation wars in Vietnam and Iraq were honest mistakes are the two most devastating examples.We were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.” — former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara,[1] “It was a mistake, and I acknowledge that,” Presidential candidate Joe Biden referring to his vote in favor of the Iraq invasion war when he was chairman of the powerful US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.[2] But no talk of Americans paying for their ‘mistakes,’ of years long murder and maiming of millions and the destruction of their countries.
  • The CIA official in charge of the the US/UK covertly engineered bloody overthrow of Iranian democracy in 1953 has even written a book bragging out his crime,[3] which the CIA has publicly admitted to.[4]
  • American murderous invasions of Cuba, Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada and covertly arranged and financed devastating civil war in  Guatemala and El Salvador are openly acknowledged (without any sense of responsibility for the suffering).
  • The undercover arrangements for the brutal assassination of democratically elected popular first Congo President Patrice Lumumba were entertainingly reviewed in a televised segment of the US government’s Smithsonian Institute Channel in US mainstream media,[5] no contrition indicated.

No Uproar in Reaction to Americans Massive Murdering of Millions of Innocent Men, Women and Children in Their Own Beloved Countries Far Away From the Invading United States of America

Martin Luther King’s & Nelson Mandela’s Exceptional Outcries 

Oh, from time to time there have been accusing outcries from individuals: “The greatest  purveyor of violence in the world is my own government,” Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967 made headlines in newspapers throughout the world,[6] and South African President Nelson Mandela in 2003,“If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities it is the United States of America,”[7] Of course CIA controlled criminal mainstream media vilified King, didn’t report Mandela’s outcry, and has made sure that few people ever heard of King’s condemnation of his government again. However, neither King nor Mandela called for prosecution of the perpetrators and compensation for victims of the atrocities they decried. (King did say that Americans ‘must make what reparations they can for the damage they did and provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in the US if necessary, but said nothing about prosecution of Americans.)

In Western alternate media, the finest independent journalists, top intellectuals and historians stick to reporting and chronicling events of human horror as if they were imperial RealPolitik, as unchallengeable as the weather, rarely including the whole truth that they are obviously prosecutable as crimes against humanity, crimes against peace and genocide. Inversely, in the case of domestic homicide on a city street anywhere in the world, the public clamors to know whether or not what happened was a crime or not. Amazingly, in world coverage independent journalism this writer finds the word ‘crime’ is never or hardly ever employed. Journalists report mass murderous world events as terrible or mistaken foreign policy, rarely, if ever, citing a need for reparations, indemnity, or compensation for surviving victims.

Sadly, when an Iraq mom, managed to get her lawsuit against President Bush and members of his administration as far as a US Federal Court of Appeals,[8] it received only a very modest amount of coverage even in anti-imperialist independent alternate media.

There’s Freedom of Speech But No One Speaking Out

Why is there is no outcry around the world against the dozens of US invasions, bombings, occupation wars and deadly sanctions in and on smaller nations? The US bloodletting is probably rarely even much of a topic of pubic conversation anywhere except within the populations of the countries under US attack. Independent peoples historians assume that it is because of the enormous influence of monopolized CIA overseen giant worldwide media conglomerates.

For decades, powerful CIA controlled Western news and entertainment media, with it’s television’s worldwide satellite reach has mesmerized and totally bamboozled its planetary audience into ineptitude with its programing of indulgence, of very restricted and twisted selective news, deceitfully blacked out critical information, misinformation, and often outright lies ultimately portraying the many US regime change invasions, bombings, sanctions and occupation wars as benevolent and necessary to protecting American freedom and democracy. [9]

Way back in 1950, Albert Einstein explained “Under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.” [10]

Albert Einstein wrote that in 1950, even before the CIA operation Mongoose.[11]had completed its control over everyone of any appreciable importance in American media and sources of information and in much of Western Europe and on the other continents, see the lengthly article: Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A. 12/26/1977, The New Times[12][13] 

Powerful Western Media Has Anesthetized Majority Humanity But Why Are Even Nations Under US Attack Relatively Silent Re US Crimes Against Humanity?

Unfortunately, some nations currently under American military attack have pro US war lord governments installed by American occupying forces as in the case of Afghanistan and Somalia, and the populations of many nations formerly invaded, bombed and sanctioned by Americans, like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia want to put their enormous suffering behind them. Their governments seek to avoid confrontation with the USA, long become trading partners.

A majority of small countries in the world once attacked by Americans, British or French have governments either economically, politically and militarily controlled by the USA or by a Western colonial power, or if enjoying a degree of independence, fear criticizing the US would bring economic punishment and/or covertly arranged disturbances.

Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Syria, Yemen and North Korea For Years Under Mortal Attack From USA! China & Russia  Targeted with Nuclear Missiles – All Have Independent Governments

This is all to say that humanity can only hope for calls for international law to come down on the past and present murderous lawlessness of the  American empire from nations presently under attack which have independent governments free from US control, like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Syria, Yemen and North Korea. However, up to now, the these nations have not taken advantage of the US wars confessed to as mistakes, which it seems could easily be profiled into world public awareness of USA guilt of genocide, at least in Vietnam and more recently in Iraq.

Likewise would the repeated quoting publicly of Martin Luther King’s blistering condemnations of his government damage the credibility of Western media, which has for more than a half-century blacked-out Kings damnation of his government. These glaringly obvious ways to fight back against the insanely criminal USA that is attacking their nations and constantly threatening world war are not being taken advantage of though many nations suffer US sanctions and worse.

Solidarity and Truthful Counter-Propaganda from Independent Nations Under US Attack Woefully Insufficient 

The US was sued by Nicaragua in the World Court in 1984 for mining Nicaragua’s harbors and other hostile acts (Nicaragua v. United States). The Court ruled in Nicaragua’s favor and found the US in violation of customary international law. The court put the United States of America under obligation to make reparation to the Republic of Nicaragua for all injury caused to Nicaragua. The US ignored the ruling but apparently stopped the mining. The suit brought international attention to US being guilty of crimes against a tiny country and it considering itself above the law.

This conviction by the International Court of Justice should not have been allowed to be forgotten as well as the US mega genocides committed in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Iraq, and all the other regime change murderous invasions, bombings and deadly sanctions of Latin American, Middle East and African nations.

An Absence of Law

No leader anywhere ever seems to call for prosecution of US invasions under the Nuremberg Principles of International Law. Even the very leaders of nations under illegal US NATO attack fail to even speak of laws broken during yearly UN General Assembly Debates

There has long been an atmosphere of appeasement in the UN General Assembly’s yearly General Debate. Delegate after delegate from Africa, Asia and Oceana seem to adhere to some ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ not to embarrass the great and powerful United States of America when describing the appalling conditions prevailing throughout the 3rd World.

How strange, mysterious, unexplainable, illogical, baffling and painful for millions grieving over past genocidal military action and the millions facing death or worse today, that since the inception of the United Nations, no delegate to the UN General Assembly, with one exception (to the best of this historian’s knowledge), has called for justice under the law, for any of the the tens of millions of survivors of past mega profitable crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and forms of genocide. The single exception this author could find was Muammar Gaddafi’s comprehensive UN General Assembly address calling for investigation of all wars and restitution for victims of US NATO UN crimes against humanity.

That one exception occurred during the UN General Debate in 2009, when Gaddafi, Leader of the Revolution of the Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, spoke in the name of the African Union: “We are about to put the United Nations on trial; the old organization will be finished and a new one will emerge.”  Gaddafi called for investigations into past wars of permanent members of the Security Council, the US, UK and France, to be followed by trials of those guilty of causing these wars and millions of deaths and suffering “that has surpassed that brought by the Nazis.”

Speaking before the UN General Assembly in 2009, Gaddafi, had called the Security Council a “Terror Council” for the sixty-five wars it has failed to prevent, even approving or participating in most of them. How prophetic for what would come Gaddafi’s way so soon. (See Time to Expose Media Manufactured Uprising CIA Terrorists US-NATO Air Strikes On Wealthy Libya) [14]

By not using their veto power, the two giant independent nations, Russia and revolutionary China, gave the colonial powers the 2011 No-Fly Zone resolution which US and NATO military used to destroy all Libya’s army and militias which had been successfully fighting a CIA created terrorist rebel army that was executing black Libyans.[15]

China and Russia also voted for a resolution precipitously accusing Libya’s government leaders and armed groups of violently suppressing peaceful demonstrations.

However, the Prosecutor of International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda, stated that Mr. Gaddafi is just one of several individuals in Libya whose alleged criminal acts could fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC which continues to monitor criminal actions of armed groups in the country. These armed groups represent a major threat to long-term peace and stability in Libya.” There never was a single documenting video or photo of a peaceful anti-government demonstration, let alone, one being fired upon. To the contrary, there was a near million wildly demonstrating in favor of Gaddafi and Libya’s Green Book socialism while NATO planes bombed never reported in the New York Times or elsewhere in the US or Europe.[14]

The colonial powers had sufficient influence in both the Arab League and the African Union to have both organizations vote against Gaddafi, which in turn influenced China’s UN posture.

China, after indicating it was against military intervention, abstained instead of voting no on the UN Security Council resolution calling for war on the Libyan government with the fig lief of enforcing a no-fly zone to protect civilians – a war by white neocolonialist powers on their former African colony that had raised its Arab socialist living standard to be higher than nine European nations including Russia.

China lovers were instantly stumped into incomprehension, bewilderment, dismayed, the rug pulled out from underneath their feet. Their confidence lost that the fifth of Mankind with wisdom gained during five thousand years of practical living would protect the rest of us from the insanely barbaric, homicidal imperialism wrought by predatory capitalism that had once colonized the whole nonwhite world, including China. This confidence or hope was now destroyed with our witnessing China going along with a classic example of false flag violence fostering a civil war in the age old imperialist principle of divide and conquer.

Vladimir Putin was not president of Russia during the Libyan debacle, and this author later published Russians Calling Medvedev a “Traitor” for Not Vetoing UN NATO War on Libya in Larger Context – the article’s larger theme is the willingness of humanity to accept White world profitable investments in genocide until world economic power shifts from Europeans and their descendant nations overseas to the six sevenths of humanity they plunder. Article portrays the immediate before and after of the preposterous destruction of Libya.

The White folks nations led by the US have been throwing up a solid anti-Russian and anti-Chinese barrage of accusations, but the two great designated adversaries of the West remain polite and defensive.

China is accused of cultural genocide in Xinjiang, US President Biden labels Russian President Putin “a killer,” while even the West’s obvious backing of horrific ISIS goes unmentioned by the Russians and Chinese. (See: An American Senator Writes of ISIS “Hellish Filth We’ve Recruited, Armed and Trained for 8 Years!” “The Syrian War had ” much to do with clandestine actions of CIA, MI-6, Mossad, Turkish MIT, French DGSE, Saudi GID and others. “would never have occurred without American planning and execution.” (and criminal CBS NBC ABC CNN FOX PBS genocidal fake news) [16]

Chinese and Russian Diplomacy Quiet Re America’s Massive Genocide [17]in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan

About 2.4 million people have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, while about 1.2 million have been killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a result of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. About 250,000 Libyans have been killed in the war, violence and chaos that the U.S. and its allies unleashed in Libya in February 2011. It is estimated that about 1.5 million people have been killed in Syria since the Islamic terrorists, ISIS and others were introduced into Syria. Estimates of people killed in Somalia since 2006 must be somewhere between 500,000 and 850,000. Estimates for Yemen are about 175,000 people killed, a minimum of 120,000 and a maximum of 240,000.

After 16 years of war, about 6 million violent deaths, and the killing continues as we read this.

After 21 years of war, 6 countries utterly destroyed and many other destabilized, and this reality carefully omitted from what qualifies as the evening news on telecasts in America, Europe and most of the TV watching world audience.[18] Would that a compassionate supreme being looking down at planet Earth, would somehow see to this information being presented to Earthlings, that they might be motivated to put a end to such a inhuman catastrophe.

The world facing desperate situations of climate change, planetary degradation and nuclear war preparation desperately needs protection from inhumane deceiving war promoting Western media, and where shall it come if not from the bountiful and powerful two great designated adversaries of the Western powers, China, the world’s most populous nation and largest economy, and the Russian Federation encompassing 11% of the planet’s landmass.

Until now, seems that both Russia and China have confined themselves to presenting convincing domestic media and have spent only modest resources in reaching out internationally beyond cultural and scientific news coverage.

It bears mention that if China and Russia sought to seriously expand their international news coverage to include some occasional  overview of the mega massive loss of life in the millions brought about by the genocidal foreign policies of the United States of America and its allies since 1945, both could expect some somewhat similar charge of at least one genocidal policy each. China’s invasion of Vietnam in 1976, was described infamously by leader Deng Xiaoping as “to teach Vietnam a lesson” – a lesson that took the lives of 30,000 human beings. Over the span of years from 1991 through 2017, Russia first lost the Chechian war for independence, then reconquered Chechnya amid a terrific loss of life and deadly Islamic terror, and in 2008 fought a heavy handed war with Georgia over the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia.

However, it is China and the Russian Federation that represent humanity’s hope and profound desire for a peaceful world of cooperation and non-belligerence. At present a wild insistence is being broadcast for war preparation with its seemingly unlimited financing constantly demanded in the media of the US-led Western neo-colonial capitalist democracies. The list of genocidal regime change wars, invasions, bombings and sanctions perpetrated by the US led Western powers since 1945 is inclusive of nearly a majority of the formerly militarily colonized peoples of the world and the deadly violence continues in more than a half dozen nations. This is what needs media attention for protection of those who will otherwise continue to suffer death, maiming and immeasurable suffering.

Though for the Chinese, confrontation, both in the martial arts, as in Kung-fu, and in social behavior and personal demeanor is a face and balance losing stance, Chinese cities are targeted with US nuclear warheads, and since either by accident, mistake or intention, a millionfold catastrophe could occur, it would seem some outspoken attention, some awareness, some warning for all humanity is in order. NATO has threateningly declared China a global security challenge.[19]

Military and nuclear confrontation seems to be no problem for President Putin, however given the awesome challenge of climate change and planetary degradation being derailed by the mega enormous financial and human resources wasted on military spending, a facing off in a tough cold war posture does not seem a sufficient response to the continuing menace from the United States of America and her allies.

In this no win situation, may some Chinese philosophical wisdom be introduced in some fresh world media in time to prevent the third world war being so assiduously invested in, planned, prepared for and promoted, while the effects of climate change and Earth degradation slowly inundates humanity in a lethal future.

*

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Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer. He has lived and worked on all continents in 67 countries. His articles are published in China, Italy, UK, India, Sweden and the US. He now resides in NYC.

Notes

1. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, writing in his 1995 memoir, In Retrospect, on the management of the Vietnam War

2. Presidential candidate Joe Biden referring to Iraq invasion war. During a 2020 presidential debate, Biden delivered an apology for Iraq War vote] As Chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee, Senator Joe Biden’s enthusiastic support for war on Iraq was crucial.

3. ‘Countercoup: The Struggle fro the control of Iran’ is the memoir of CIA man Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of former US President Theodore Roosevelt.the book recounts his role in overthrowing democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh with triumphant zeal.

4. The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, in documents that also show how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement in his overthrow. The US national security archive at George Washington University published a series of declassified CIA documents. 8/19/2013, The Guardian

5. Devil Eisenhower ordered the assassination of President Patrice Lumumba,  YouTube 1/13/2017, BBCFOUR Smithsonian Channeltelecasted https://www.bing.com/videos/search

6. Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence

Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City https://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

7. AP in Johannesburg and agencies, 30 Jan 2003

8. https://www.arabamerica.com/former-us-attorney-general-ramsey-clark-joins-lawsuit-against-bush-cheney-et-al-for-illegal-war-in-iraq/

9. Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent revisited | The Listening Post 12/22/2018, You Tube

10. Albert Einstein, Essays in Humanism

11. Mockingbird was a secret operation by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence media. Begun in the 1950s, organization recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA’s views, and funded some student and cultural organizations, and magazines as fronts and also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns.

After 1953, Operation Mockingbird had major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. The usual methodology was placing reports developed from intelligence provided by the CIA to witting or unwitting reporters. Those reports would then be repeated or cited by the preceding reporters which in turn would then be cited throughout the media wire services. These networks were run by people with well-known pro-American big business and anti-communist views.

The CIA currently maintains a network of individuals around the world who attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda, and provide direct access to a large amount of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.”

The CIA and the Media – Carl Bernstein

www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years.

http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

Newly Declassified Govt Docs Reveal Operation Mockingbird is Alive …

thefreethoughtproject.com ” Be The Change

Oct 2, 2015 – For those unfamiliar, Operation Mockingbird was a CIA operation began as the Cold War ramped up in the 1950’s. In an attempt to gather …

12. Church Committee (the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) was a U.S. Senate select committee in 1975-6 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church amazingly criminal findings must have the publishers of the New York Times some obligation to report on covert criminal activity the Church Committee had brought to public attention.

Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe: Philip Agee, Louis …

https://www.amazon.com ›

The agency appears to be a serial violator of human rights around the world including inside America itself. The books shows everyone how to identify CIA …

Operation Mockingbird, CIA Media Control Program – YouTube

1976, Senator Church live with his investigating committee re Operation Mockingbird

13. Manufacturing Consent by Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky, 1988, Pantheon Books

14. A month before French and British planes would eventually destroy Libyan Armed Forces and militias, and hunt Gadaffi down there was a massive pro-Gadaffi Green Libya demonstration of a near million Libyans and Gadaffi address the multitude from hiding even while NATO planes bombed. It went unreported in Western media and videos of the event have recently been removed, blocked. For years they could be viewed at  HUGE PRO GADDAFI RALLY IN TRIPOLI – RAW FOOTAGE, 7/2/2011, http://www.blacklistednews.com/?news_id=14505 among other alternate media sites. All now blocked or no longer available.

15. There were armed attacks on police stations (even traffic police) and vicious attacks on Chinese and Korea construction workers already two days before, and during the anniversary of the Danish Cartoons or “day of rage,’ executions of 50 captured Libyan soldiers, one beheaded, some hung along with police officers. And who knows how many ordinary Libyan civilians harmed by tough guys brought in to Benghazi and other Cyrenaican towns. This was reported by Reuters and BBC, but not CNN. There are (now were) some horrifically gruesome cell phone videos on the Internet of grisly hangings, beheadings, bloody beatings of blacks and others loyal to their government. (Libya has a black population, mostly in South Libya, of half a million. Libya under Gaddafi has eliminated a good deal of race discrimination, so black Libyans are especially loyal to the government.) There Was No Libyan Peaceful Protest,
Just Murderous Gangs and Nic Robertson, By Jay Janson, 16 June, 2011, 
Countercurrents.org

16. Ask Hillary Who Buys ISIS et al Terrorists Helping US Oust Assad NewToyota Trucks/ Heavy Weapons Sec. Hillary oversaw regime change wars in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, S. Sudan, Syria, Yemen; should be asked to explain new Toyota trucks/heavy weapons coming to ISIS/other terrorists, who have been mass murdering US designated enemies in Assad’s Syria and Shiite wherever they are; why superpower US ‘fighting’ for 5 years can’t defeat ragtag force of 25,000; involved false flags attacks on US to prove innocence? ISIS IS US: The Shocking Truth: Behind the Army of Terror …

https://www.amazon.com/ISIS-US-Shocking-Behind-Terror/dp/1615771522In ISIS IS US, a panel of cutting-edge researchers tell what ISIS really is, and what has been going on behind the scenes in Iraq, Syria and Libya. The conclusion: Like Iran-Contra, the ISIS death squads were set up by the US to crush a nation.

17. Article 2 of the The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the United Nations General Assembly effective 1/12/1951, defines genocide as

… any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

18. How Many Millions Have Been Killed in America’s Post-9/11 Wars? Part 3: Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen

April 25, 2018 By Nicolas J S Davies Special to Consortium News

19. NATO declares China as global security challenge in World — by M K Bhadrakumar — 18/06/2021

War: How Conflict Shaped Us

June 28th, 2021 by Jim Miles

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***

I almost did not finish reading “War: How Conflict Shaped Us”.  It is not worth reading, but I worked through it anyway.  Which is unfortunate as Margaret MacMillan can be an excellent writer of history.  The two volumes of hers that I have read – “Paris 1919” and “The War That Ended Peace” – are well written histories, readily accessible and valuable for all levels of readers.  Unfortunately she errs right from the title on through to the lack of actually saying what shape we are in today as a result of all our wars.

Cultivation and language

The title suggests that war has shaped us, almost as if it is a natural force in a similar manner that economists argue the ‘free markets’ are a natural force.  Both are human constructs, and when reading through the book it becomes apparent that the title should have read “War – How We Cultivate It.”   Certainly it shapes us, but the preponderance of language used in its descriptions throughout the book indicate it is a culture: “improvement by training; intellectual development”, although I dare say to call war intellectual is a bit of a stretch, more a culture of rationalization.  When something is cultivated it is “preparation to grow”, which in our culture is the preparation and growth of war, militarism, and its associated institutions and behaviours.

MacMillan’s choice of language fully indicates how humanity cultivates war.  While discussing how war is supposedly shaping us, she uses the language of social cultivation, some words more severe than others.  On the soft side, support for war is managed, legitimated, motivated, sanctified; on the harder side war is instilled, inculcated (from its roots to be trod on by the heel), manipulated.

She discusses “public opinion” as if the public has an actual say in determining the advent of war, but public opinion is mostly determined by the media of the day – just read some histories of Randolph Hearst and Edward Bernays among others.  She also uses the term “public culture,” and in the same manner, public culture is formed mainly by the media:  manipulated, managed, legitimated and even sanctified by corporate control.

The descriptor “unscrupulous” is used to describe demagogues and some of the military, but the word scrupulous indicates a person is “conscientious even in small matters, not neglectful of details, thoroughness, unfailing”.   To be sure, demagogues and military personnel can be very scrupulous.  Just because they are being destructive does not mean they do not have the “scruples” of the militarized mindset inculcated or sanctified internally.

Pot pourri

Beyond the title and subsequent language faults, the arguments concerning a chosen topic are poorly laid out.  MacMillan uses lots of co-relations between war and its effects and influences but she does not establish any real causal relationships.  She uses a pot pourri (from the French “rotten pot”) of facts and stories (myths, legends, and personal anecdotes, only the latter having some validity as descriptors of war in a personal sense).

Her supporting information for her shaky thesis  bounces around in time and space and between fact and fiction.  The mixture can be entertaining, but is truly only good for fans of arcane war trivia.   In a sense there is a lot of history, but the reader cannot understand any one historical event or any historical flow from this melange of ideas.

And what is our current shape…?

The biggest failure of the book is to actually describe the shape of the world, or nation, or region, after all the wars that have “shaped us.”  There is no coherent description of the current U.S. militarized state, its culture of war and its “shape” imposed, inculcated, cultivated, on NATO, the EU, Russia, China,  Israel, terrorists, colour revolutions, civil wars, Syria, Iran and all the many other little wars used by the CIA/NSA/black ops in order to control U.S. hegemonic “exceptionalism” and “indispensability”.

No description is provided of the economic influences in the U.S. culture of war even though power, greed, and control, and the profits that derive from a militarized state have enormous impact on the lives of U.S.citizens and citizens of the world.  The control of oil and its transportation supports the U.S. global reserve currency, the petrodollar, and has huge influences around the world but particularly in the Middle East, with Israel as compatriot in arms.

Racism and colonial settlerism are not addressed as part of the inculcating, instilling, and a whole lot of sanctifying (by the church, the state, and the media rationalizing why white folks can enslave and murder ‘other’ folks.)   All empires, all military countries, all those seeking control, cannot do so without an ‘other’, without an enemy to motivate the masses into giving them more power and to ignore domestic problems.

How not to present a thesis

Unfortunately War:  How Conflict Shaped Us  does not properly shape a thesis, does not provide any convincing support (which it cannot do if the thesis is missing or shallow), and does not in any way answer the suggestion of the title of how we are shaped by it.  Margaret MacMillan has done much better, and I would not recommend this book for anyone other than to those looking for a grab bag of historical events scattered over time and space…and perhaps as a study in how not to write a well presented idea.

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***

In these times of increasing popular struggle in Latin America, comrades who should be more familiar with the reality of our countries cause many of us perplexity and hurt when they go against the grain of history.

Last week, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called on the government of Nicaragua to set free a group of oligarchs and political operators currently being investigated for very serious crimes of treason, terrorism, fraud and corruption. According to the Mexican president, the Sandinista government is acting unlawfully using illegitimate force and may also be denying the Nicaraguan people the chance of choosing freely and democratically in our elections next November 7.

He said all this while affirming that “Mexico’s foreign policy prohibits intervention in the affairs of other countries” but that in matters of human rights “we can indeed give our opinion in a very respectful manner”. Out of courtesy, we apologize for the comparison, but for an example of similar “respectfulness” on the part of Mexican public officials, we would have to go back to the sad days of Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda when “with all due respect” he told Comandante Fidel “eat the dish of goat and leave” at the Monterrey Summit luncheon for Heads of State, so as not to bother George W. Bush, the imperial Caesar of that time. AMLO is by no means a Vicente Fox, but his gesture this week towards Nicaragua is not dissimilar.

AMLO’s remarks are unfortunate on many levels, both ethical and political.

On an ethical level, because, according to his own words, which he no doubt did really think were respectful, the Mexican leader is echoing a campaign of military grade lies against Sandinista Nicaragua, a revolution very dear to Mexico, to which it is linked by ties of blood shed in combat, symbolized by the presence of the grandchildren of Sandino, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata one July 19th, in a plaza full of the true Sandinista people, whose leaders are Comandante Daniel and Compañera Rosario.

Among AMLO’s allies we have excellent friends, as well as among the members of his political movement, and we view with great sympathy and solidarity AMLO’s struggle to rescue the long-betrayed Great Mexican Revolution to which the people of Nicaragua owe so much.

Writing from the trenches of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution, which has been neither defeated nor betrayed, the first armed revolution on the mainland of Latin America, the first armed revolution in the world to lose power in elections and regain it via elections, a revolution that has been the necessary condition allowing democracy to exist at all in Nicaragua, we can assure Andrés Manuel López Obrador that should, God forbid, the coup project currently under way against his government succeed, in Nicaragua he will find complete solidarity and support, just as those persecuted by each and every one of the dictatorships imposed by the United States “in the name of democracy” in Latin America have done.

What we have in Nicaragua is not a government cornered into imprisoning opponents out of fear of losing an election. What prevails in Nicaragua is a rule of law investigating in strict accordance with the Constitution, current legislation and the country’s criminal law code, a network of citizens who for years have persistently conspired against democracy here, who in 2018 organized an attempted coup d’état financed by foreign powers, which failed, since when they have continued openly conspiring against democracy in Nicaragua without even minimal popular support. No democratic State can tolerate such a situation undermining the foundations of that same State, because it violates and damages the genuine democratic consensus among the vast majority of the population.

Over the last three years, these people promoting a coup in Nicaragua have not been able to organize even a kermesse and not because of any kind of “repressive regime” No. Quite simply they have no support, they have no people behind them. Even most people who are ideologically right wing in Nicaragua want nothing to do with these coup plotters. It is absurd to think the Nicaraguan people would meekly swallow a government they consider illegitimate. Neither Duque in Colombia nor Piñera in Chile with all the repressive frenzy they unleashed against their people were able to frighten their peoples back into their homes, despite the fact that both Colombia and Chile invest and receive astronomical sums for their repressive apparatus. Anyone who visits the various countries of Central America will instantly realize that the Nicaraguan police are definitely the least repressive of the isthmus.

Who are the individuals under investigation for whom the Western media dictatorship are shedding a flood of crocodile tears? Let’s see: The managers of the country’s two largest banks; members of the Chamorro family, which is the leading oligarch family in Nicaragua, with a long line of presidents, generals and treacherous ministers to their credit, and with a virtual monopoly of Nicaragua’s pro-yankee news media; a former Minister of Education who, when he took office during the neoliberal governments, the first thing he did was to burn all the manuals of the 1980s Literacy Crusade; the wife of the corrupt former President Arnoldo Alemán; a few USAID paid operators and various traitorous former Sandinistas, also paid either by USAID or the various NATO country embassies.

These people are being investigated because they were publicly calling for coercive measures to damage the Nicaraguan economy, for having conspired to commit terrorist acts, and for establishing a fraudulent structure of non-profit NGOs laundering multi-million dollar amounts of money sent from abroad, which was in fact a political intervention in the country aimed at provoking catastrophic instability.

Some of these individuals were imprisoned after the defeated coup attempt of 2018 and were subsequently pardoned through an Amnesty Law that establishes the “principle of non-repetition” according to which in case of re-offending they would again face trial for their original crimes. Over the last three years these people have benefited from amnesty and invitation to attempts at dialogue that have, in the end, led nowhere. Throughout this time they have repeated like robots the coup incantation of “insurrection against the regime” and persistently called for indiscriminate coercive measures  from foreign governments affecting not only the Nicaraguan government but the country’s entire population.

One can probably safely assume that many Mexicans would like to have a similar round up of the oligarchs and fascists in their own country. After all, it is highly salutary and beneficial for democracy and human rights. But we should clarify that they are only under investigation, nothing more. Several of them are in preventive detention, given that the law contemplates an extension of preventive detention for up to 90 days, because of the obvious flight risk they represent, as has happened in the past in many of our countries where such people have fled to the United States or Spain as, for example, our Bolivian sisters and brothers can attest.

It is worth noting also that 17 political parties are participating in Nicaragua’s elections next November 7th, eleven national parties and six regional parties. The following seven parties in opposition to the government are participating: Partido Alianza por la República (APRE), Partido Liberal Independiente (PLI), Partido Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense (ALN) Partido Camino Cristiano Nicaragüense (CCN), Partido Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Asla Takanka (YATAMA), Alianza Ciudadanos por la Libertad (CxL) and Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC). Maybe two or three of the people under investigation belong to one or the other of these legal political parties. None of those under investigation are “pre-candidates” in the correct technical sense of that term, because none of the legal opposition parties have selected them prior to seeking ratification of any candidacies by the country’s electoral authority.  They were called “pre-candidates” as yet one more gratuitous misrepresentation on the part of the giant Chamorro family media vampire squid, the main recipient of NED and USAID destabilization money in Nicaragua and in effect the only source used by the international acronym-soup media cartel AP, AFP, CNN, DW, EFE, BBC, DPA, REUTERS, etcetera.

The truth is that Nicaragua’s foreign owned coup network tried every possible means to coax and cajole the legally registered parties into letting the coup network leaders parachute in as presidential candidates in the elections. But that maneuver did not work, simply because most of the country’s political class of this country does, after all, live here in Nicaragua, and they are unwilling to give up their rights just because some oligarch flunky paid by a foreign embassy turns up offering a wad of cash. It is true that Nicaragua’s opportunistic right wing suffer from a total lack of endogenous ideas, but among most of them the “reality principle” prevails. They live in Nicaragua and if they want to be politically active they know that they have to do so within the system, not outside it.

Any coup attempt in Nicaragua is a dead end. In April 2018, after many years of secret preparation, they tried to launch a “color revolution” against the Sandinista government. They used a series of memes they had managed to implant in some sectors of society (the manipulation of a fire in the Indio Maíz Biosphere Reserve, criticism of the Police, the Sandinista Youth, and so on) and then they used the issue of the Social Security reform to give the impression of a “popular revolt” which overnight, very deliberately, turned very violent. The acronym soup of the imperial news media cartel did not report but rather deliberately omitted that Comandante Daniel called for a dialogue just a couple of days after the initial protests. And although it is true that to begin with the coup perpetrators managed to confuse many people, they themselves undertook the task of teaching Nicaragua’s people what their real “program” was, namely, to loot the country and destroy it.

We Sandinistas also mobilized large demonstrations of support for the government at the end of April, but the empire’s media did not report on that either. The coup attempt was not a popular revolt against the government, but an effort to provoke a civil war. If the Sandinista government had wanted to, it could have set Nicaragua ablaze. Instead, at the request of the reactionary bishops of the treacherous Episcopal Conference, the government ordered the police to stay in their barracks and confirmed the order given to the army from the very beginning not to intervene. In Nicaragua it is unthinkable that the army would get involved in repression. When the late former Liberal President Enrique Bolaños  tried to do so at the beginning of this century he failed miserably.

The coup perpetrators themselves finished off any chance of success with their attacks on the general population: they robbed, raped, kidnapped, tortured and also caused at least one out of every four businesses in the country to close down. They damaged the economy, leaving thousands of people in the street, especially from the most impoverished sectors, affecting the many women heads of households in particular. So, very soon they lost whatever ephemeral social support they had initially gained by means of their blitzkrieg of lies and fear, but since they continued to receive money from USAID and many Western embassies, it was necessary to wait a while before launching an operation to clear the roadblocks so as not to have more civilian casualties. That is what happened, culminating in the liberation of the population of Masaya on July 18th 2018.

The misnamed “soft coup” financed by the empire and defeated thanks to the prudent leadership of Comandante Daniel Ortega, turned out to be a massive political education class for Nicaragua’s people. The country’s people were able to understand what was in the national interest and what was not. For the vast majority of the people here in Nicaragua what happened in 2018 was that the stability and prosperity they had enjoyed up to that moment thanks to Sandinista policies was eroded. And a hegemonic majority came to understand that the guarantor of their future here in Nicaragua is the Sandinista National Liberation Front. No one in this country swallows the coup fantasies that even now imperialist propaganda continues to spread and broadcast. It is truly disconcerting that our brother Andrés Manuel López Obrador repeats them.

In these three years, the US owned coup promoters did all they could to destroy Nicaragua’s economy: They continue to call for coercive measures against the country. They made several attempts at business lock outs which only the large private businesses obeyed. They damaged the country’s image abroad trying to discourage investment and tourism. They have done all this uninterruptedly, still determined to repeat the coup attempt of 2018…. Their logic has always been one of wearing down Nicaragua’s institutions so as to topple the FSLN government.

This strategy is nothing new, let’s remember that the FSLN came to power in 2007 with a minority government, although the party was the strongest and best organized in the country. That was confirmed in 2008 during that year’s municipal elections and, thanks to the policies it promoted, the FSLN won a majority of municipalities demonstrating that it could defeat the right-wing forces in the country even when they all united. Since then, with a lot of work, a lot of commitment and great understanding of the Nicaraguan reality, as well as the international context, the Sandinista Front under the leadership of Daniel and Rosario has steadily increased its social base.

The figures are there for all to see, summarized extraordinarily well in a recent article by comrade Carlos Fonseca Terán. Ever since 2008, the slogan of the coup promoting right wing in every election has been “if we lost it’s because there was fraud”. In fact, their objective has always been to take power by creating a situation of ungovernability with foreign support. But a true revolution took place in Nicaragua and continues to take place, one of the most profound in Abya Yala. In the 1980s the foundations of a sovereign nation were laid (a national popular army and police, literacy, agrarian reform, mass popular movement, promotion of cooperatives, a new constitution and true democracy, autonomy of the Atlantic Coast…).

The pillars of that process were not destroyed by Washington’s misnamed “low intensity” war, nor by the subsequent 17 years of neoliberal governments between 1990 and 2016. Today, the country’s grass roots sectors that in the last forty years either received or occupied land, control 80% of small and medium sized businesses, produce most of the country’s GDP and control around 60% of its disposable income. This is a true revolution. For 40 years, the oligarchy focused mainly on financial speculation, and when, very late in the day, they started paying attention, by then they had already lost control of the country’s real economy. For this reason among many others in Nicaragua we say of the right-wing coup plotters, “They could not prevail, nor will they”.

Since President AMLO has “respectfully” expressed his views on democracy in Nicaragua, we take the liberty of also “respectfully” observing the following:

  • The maize tortillas we eat here in Nicaragua are produced in the country, they are not made from genetically manipulated maize.
  • Moreover, 90% of the basic basket of popular consumption consists of Nicaraguan agricultural products, grown by peasants and indigenous people working in cooperative, community solidarity-based production.
  • We are a poor country, but we feel quite sure that any poor person in Mexico would like to have access to the kinds of free public hospitals we have here in Nicaragua, or the preschools and schools, or the technical education programs, or to receive the subsidies for urban public transportation and basic services people in Nicaragua take for granted.
  • In Nicaragua our trainee teachers study in peace so we do not have to set about investigating their disappearance, since our authorities guarantee the effective rule of law throughout the national territory thanks to Nicaragua’s police force and  its army, two institutions that are above all else Nicaragua’s people in uniform working hand in hand with rural communities, with producers, with indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, with the urban population and with youth to promote and defend our culture of peace which the right wing coup promoters and their foreign owners want to destroy.
  • Likewise, and just as fundamental as Nicaragua’s citizen security policy, we have a rural education program, including university level education, covering the whole country, which is the envy of our Central American region, and probably of most Latin American countries. Our technical education system serves all our youth and is totally free. Under this “authoritarian” “regime” young people have a future. That is one of many reasons why so few Nicaraguans end up in Mexico on their way to the United States.
  • We are an impoverished country, but one that can still guarantee affordable electricity to practically 100% of its population, the vast majority of it generated from renewable sources.
  • We are a country – just like Mexico – where machismo still tends to prevail, but at the same time we are the country that has made the most progress in the world in closing the gender gap, being world leaders in the number of women ministers, the number of women in parliament, the number of women who control their economic situation, in the participation and empowerment of women at all levels.

What kind of democracy and human rights is our brother AMLO talking about? Before he offers us lessons in these areas, he might be well-advised to make a bit more progress in his own government program.

In truth, Nicaragua’s reality contrasts tremendously with AMLO’s questionable statements of last week. But there are also other aspects that are important to note besides those related to morality, ideology and factual reality, for example, we think “with all due respect” that our brother AMLO’s remarks make no sense in terms of geopolitics .

One need not know much geopolitics to understand that for Mexico, a country “so far from God and so close to the United States”, the victim of a colossal dispossession of its territory by the Yankee empire, it is of fundamental importance to be strong, united and at peace, and also to have a genuinely respectful, democratic, stabilizing influence in our mesoamerican region, because, put simply, a prosperous, safe, united, independent and peaceful Central America is vital for the United Mexican States to be able to confront the empire successfully.

We remind President AMLO that Nicaragua is the country with the largest territory in Central America, even though it has the lowest population density. Nicaragua is the key to a stable Central America, with social justice, with sustainable development, free of drug trafficking and organized crime, guarantor of economic flows between north and south, and also guarantor of an eventual flow of goods between east and west via the Great Interoceanic Canal, which is a strategic project for the nation and the region.

It makes no sense if AMLO is indeed seeking to ingratiate himself with the interventionist Biden Plan for Central America, which is nothing but an attempt to enforce the Monroe Doctrine in the region, one with the contradictory goals of at once destroying Nicaragua, but also stopping migratory flows to the north, a plan that supports local elites even the United States itself mistrusts. Certainly, Mexico is indeed promoting its own plan for Central America parallel to the Biden Plan, but AMLO’s remarks last week in practice reinforce a central element of U.S. regional policy, namely, relentless aggression against Nicaragua.

Apparently, Mexican authorities hope to solve Central America’s problems with US$30 billion. However, Nicaragua’s example demonstrates precisely that fundamental to stability in the region is the recovery of a practical culture of peace, of genuine moral and spiritual values for the common good and a true economic democratization of our countries. All of this renders completely meaningless and irrelevant all the false Yankee and European style manipulation of motifs like human rights and democracy as in the cases of Julian Assange or the “gilets jaunes” in France or of those promoting Catalonia’s independence or  countless other cases of Western hypocrisy. That ill starred kind of democracy here in Nicaragua brought us William Walker, Somoza, the Contra and the violent failed coup attempt of April 2018.

In short, we wish our brother President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador every possible success in his efforts to build a secure and democratic Mexico committed to solidarity, and we reiterate our own solidarity especially for the most fateful and arduous moments he may face, while we also urge him to rectify his opinion about our country. In any case, here in Nicaragua we have no intention of taking a single step backwards.

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Key Witness in Assange Case Admits to Lies in Indictment

June 28th, 2021 by Bjartmar Oddur Þeyr Alexandersson

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We bring to the attention of our readers a report by the Icelandic media Stundin. Translated from Icelandic.

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A major witness in the United States’ Department of Justice case against Julian Assange has admitted to fabricating key accusations in the indictment against the Wikileaks founder. The witness, who has a documented history with sociopathy and has received several convictions for sexual abuse of minors and wide-ranging financial fraud, made the admission in a newly published interview in Stundin where he also confessed to having continued his crime spree whilst working with the Department of Justice and FBI and receiving a promise of immunity from prosecution.

The man in question, Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, was recruited by US authorities to build a case against Assange after misleading them to believe he was previously a close associate of his. In fact he had volunteered on a limited basis to raise money for Wikileaks in 2010 but was found to have used that opportunity to embezzle more than $50,000 from the organization. Julian Assange was visiting Thordarson’s home country of Iceland around this time due to his work with Icelandic media and members of parliament in preparing the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a press freedom project that produced a parliamentary resolution supporting whistleblowers and investigative journalism.

The United States is currently seeking Assange’s extradition from the United Kingdom in order to try him for espionage relating to the release of leaked classified documents. If convicted, he could face up to 175 years in prison. The indictment has sparked fears for press freedoms in the United States and beyond and prompted strong statements in support of Assange from Amnesty International, Reporters without borders, the editorial staff of the Washington Post and many others.

US officials presented an updated version of an indictment against him to a Magistrate court in London last summer. The veracity of the information contained therein is now directly contradicted by the main witness, whose testimony it is based on.

No instruction from Assange

The court documents refer to Mr Thordarson simply as “Teenager” (a reference to his youthful appearance rather than true age, he is 28 years old) and Iceland as “NATO Country 1” but make no real effort to hide the identity of either. They purport to show that Assange instructed Thordarson to commit computer intrusions or hacking in Iceland.

The aim of this addition to the indictment was apparently to shore up and support the conspiracy charge against Assange in relation to his interactions with Chelsea Manning. Those occurred around the same time he resided in Iceland and the authors of the indictment felt they could strengthen their case by alleging he was involved in illegal activity there as well. This activity was said to include attempts to hack into the computers of members of parliament and record their conversations.

In fact, Thordarson now admits to Stundin that Assange never asked him to hack or access phone recordings of MPs. His new claim is that he had in fact received some files from a third party who claimed to have recorded MPs and had offered to share them with Assange without having any idea what they actually contained. He claims he never checked the contents of the files or even if they contained audio recordings as his third party source suggested. He further admits the claim, that Assange had instructed or asked him to access computers in order to find any such recordings, is false.

Nonetheless, the tactics employed by US officials appear to have been successful as can be gleaned from the ruling of Magistrate Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser on January 4th of this year. Although she ruled against extradition, she did so purely on humanitarian grounds relating to Assange’s health concerns, suicide risk and the conditions he would face in confinement in US prisons. With regards to the actual accusations made in the indictment Baraitser sided with the arguments of the American legal team, including citing the specific samples from Iceland which are now seriously called into question.

Other misleading elements can be found in the indictment, and later reflected in the Magistrate’s judgement, based on Thordarson’s now admitted lies. One is a reference to Icelandic bank documents. The Magistrate court judgement reads: “It is alleged that Mr. Assange and Teenager failed a joint attempt to decrypt a file stolen from a “NATO country 1” bank”.

Thordarson admits to Stundin that this actually refers to a well publicised event in which an encrypted file was leaked from an Icelandic bank and assumed to contain information about defaulted loans provided by the Icelandic Landsbanki. The bank went under in the fall of 2008, along with almost all other financial institutions in Iceland, and plunged the country into a severe economic crisis. The file was at this time, in summer of 2010, shared by many online who attempted to decrypt it for the public interest purpose of revealing what precipitated the financial crisis. Nothing supports the claim that this file was even “stolen” per se, as it was assumed to have been distributed by whistleblowers from inside the failed bank.

More deceptive language emerges in the aforementioned judgment where it states: “…he [Assange] used the unauthorized access given to him by a source, to access a government website of NATO country-1 used to track police vehicles.”

This depiction leaves out an important element, one that Thordarson clarifies in his interview with Stundin. The login information was in fact his own and not obtained through any nefarious means. In fact, he now admits he had been given this access as a matter of routine due to his work as a first responder while volunteering for a search and rescue team. He also says Assange never asked for any such access.

Revealing chat logs

Thordarson spoke with a journalist from Stundin for several hours as he prepared a thorough investigative report into his activities that include never before published chat logs and new documents.

The chat logs were gathered by Thordarson himself and give a comprehensive picture of his communications whilst he was volunteering for Wikileaks in 2010 and 11. It entails his talks with WikiLeaks staff as well as unauthorized communications with members of international hacking groups that he got into contact with via his role as a moderator on an open IRC WikiLeaks forum, which is a form of live online chat. There is no indication WikiLeaks staff had any knowledge of Thordarson’s contacts with aforementioned hacking groups, indeed the logs show his clear deception.

The communications there show a pattern where Thordarson is constantly inflating his position within WikiLeaks, describing himself as chief of staff, head of communications, No 2 in the organization or responsible for recruits. In these communications Thordarson frequently asks the hackers to either access material from Icelandic entities or attack Icelandic websites with so-called DDoS attacks. These are designed to disable sites and make them inaccessible but not cause permanent damage to content.

Stundin cannot find any evidence that Thordarson was ever instructed to make those requests by anyone inside WikiLeaks. Thordarson himself is not even claiming that, although he explains this as something Assange was aware of or that he had interpreted it so that this was expected of him. How this supposed non-verbal communication took place he cannot explain.

Furthermore, he never explained why WikiLeaks would be interested in attacking any interests in Iceland, especially at such a sensitive time while they were in the midst of publishing a huge trove of US diplomatic cables as part of an international media partnership. Assange is not known to have had any grievances with Icelandic authorities and was in fact working with members of parliament in updating Iceland’s freedom of press laws for the 21st century.

On the FBI radar

Thordarson’s rogue acts were not limited to communications of that nature as he also admits to Stundin that he set up avenues of communication with journalists and had media pay for lavish trips abroad where he mispresented himself as an official representative of WikiLeaks.

He also admits that he stole documents from WikiLeaks staff by copying their hard drives. Among those were documents from Renata Avila, a lawyer who worked for the organization and Mr. Assange.

Thordarson continued to step up his illicit activities in the summer of 2011 when he established communication with “Sabu”, the online moniker of Hector Xavier Monsegur, a hacker and a member of the rather infamous LulzSec hacker group. In that effort all indications are that Thordarson was acting alone without any authorization, let alone urging, from anyone inside WikiLeaks.

What Thordarson did not know at the time was that the FBI had arrested Sabu in the beginning of June  2011 and threatened him into becoming an informant and a collaborator for the FBI. Thus, when Thordarson continued his previous pattern of requesting attacks on Icelandic interests, the FBI knew and saw an opportunity to implicate Julian Assange.

Later that month a DDoS attack was performed against the websites of several government institutions.

That deed was done under the watchful eyes of the FBI who must have authorized the attack or even initiated it, as Sabu was at that point their man. What followed was an episode where it seems obvious that Icelandic authorities were fooled into cooperation under false pretenses.

Ögmundur Jónasson was minister of interior at time and as such the political head of police and prosecution and says of the US activities: “They were trying to use things here [in Iceland] and use people in our country to spin a web, a cobweb that would catch Julian Assange”.

Jónasson recalls that when the FBI first contacted Icelandic authorities on June 20th 2011 it was to warn Iceland of an imminent and grave threat of intrusion against government computers. A few days later FBI agents flew to Iceland and offered formally to assist in thwarting this grave danger. The offer was accepted and on July 4th a formal rogatory letter was sent to Iceland to seal the mutual assistance.. Jónasson speculates that already then the US was laying the groundwork for its ultimate purpose, not to assist Iceland but entrap Julian Assange:

“What I have been pondering ever since is if the spinning of the web had already started then with the acceptance of the letter rogatory establishing cooperation that they could use as a pretext for later visits,” says Jónasson.

Icelandic policemen were sent to the US to gather further evidence of this so-called imminent danger and Jónasson says he does not recall anything of substance coming out of that visit and no further attacks were made against Icelandic interests.

But the FBI would return.

Icelandic officials deceived by the US

Towards the end of August, Thordarson was being pursued by WikiLeaks staff who wished to locate the proceeds of online sales of WikiLeaks merchandise. It emerged Thordarson had instructed the funds be sent to his private bank account by forging an email in the name of Julian Assange.

Thordarson saw a way out and on August 23d he sent an email to the US Embassy in Iceland offering information in relation to a criminal investigation. He was replied to with a call and confirmed that he was offering to be an informant in the case against Julian Assange.

The prosecutors and FBI were quick in responding and within 48 hrs a private jet landed in Reykjavik with around eight agents who quickly set up meetings with Thordarson and with people from the Icelandic State Prosecutors office and the State Police Commissioner.

Mid day, Mr. Jónasson, then Minister of Interior got wind of this new visit and requested confirmation that this related to the same case as earlier in the summer. “I asked on what rogatory letter this visit was based and if this was exactly the same case”, Jónasson says in an interview with Stundin. “I then found out that this was of a totally different nature than previously discussed”. He says he put two and two together and said it was obvious that the intention was to lay a trap in Iceland for Assange and other staff members of WikiLeaks.

Such actions were according to Jónasson way outside the scope of the agreement and thus he ordered that all cooperation with the agents be stopped and that they would be informed they were acting in Iceland without any authority. Only days later he learned that the agents and prosecutors had not yet left the country so the Ministry of Foreign Affairs contacted the US embassy with the demand they halt police work in Iceland and leave the country.

They did, but left with the new informant and “star witness”, Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson who flew with them to Denmark.

Not a hacker but a sociopath

Thordarson has been nicknamed Siggi the hacker in Iceland. That is actually an antonym as several sources Stundin has talked to claim that Thordarson’s computer ability is menial. This is supported by several chat logs and documents where he is requesting assistance from others doing rather uncomplicated computer jobs. Once he even sought FBI expert help in uploading a video from his own phone.

The meeting in Denmark was the first of a few where the FBI enthusiastically embraced the idea of co-operation with Thordarson. He says they wanted to know everything about WikiLeaks, including physical security of staff. They took material he had gathered, including data he had stolen from WikiLeaks employees and even planned to send him to England with a wire. Thordarson claimed in interviews he had refused that particular request. It was probably because he was not welcomed anymore as he knew WikiLeaks people had found out, or were about to firmly establish, that he had embezzled funds from the organization.

After months of collaboration the FBI seem to have lost interest. At about the same time charges were piling up against Thordarson with the Icelandic authorities for massive fraud, forgeries and theft on the one hand and for sexual violations against underage boys he had tricked or forced into sexual acts on the other.

After long investigations Thordarson was sentenced in 2013 and 2014 and received relatively lenient sentences as the judge took into account that he changed his plea at court and pleaded guilty to all counts.

According to a psychiatric assessment presented to the court Thordarson was diagnosed as a sociopath, incapable of remorse but still criminally culpable for his actions. He was assessed to be able to understand the basic difference between right and wrong, He just did not seem to care.

Incarceration did not seem to have an intended effect of stopping Thordarson from continuing his life of crime. It actually took off and expanded in extent and scope in 2019 when the Trump-era DoJ decided to revisit him, giving him a formal status as witness in the prosecution against Julian Assange and granting him immunity in return from any prosecution.

The New York Times Problem

In the month following Assange’s arrest in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on April 11th 2019 a new rogatory letter arrived in the Ministry of Justice in Iceland. This time the request was to take a formal statement from Thordarson in Iceland in the presence of his lawyer. The Ministry had a new political head at the time, who had limited knowledge of the prior history of the case.

Although the Department of Justice had spent extreme resources attempting to build a case against Julian Assange during the Obama presidency, they had decided against indicting Assange. The main concern was what was called “The New York Times Problem”, namely that there was such a difficulty in distinguishing between WikiLeaks publications and NYT publications of the same material that going after one party would pose grave First Amendment concerns.

President Donald Trump’s appointed Attorney general William Barr did not share these concerns, and neither did his Trump-appointed deputy Kellen S. Dwyer. Barr, who faced severe criticism for politicizing the DoJ on behalf of the president, got the ball rolling on the Assange case once again. Their argument was that if they could prove he was a criminal rather than a journalist the charges would stick, and that was where Thordarson’s testimony would be key.

In May 2019 Thordarson was offered an immunity deal, signed by Dwyer, that granted him immunity from prosecution based on any information on wrong doing they had on him. The deal, seen in writing by Stundin, also guarantees that the DoJ would not share any such information to other prosecutorial or law enforcement agencies. That would include Icelandic ones, meaning that the Americans will not share information on crimes he might have committed threatening Icelandic security interests – and the Americans apparently had plenty of those but had over the years failed to share them with their Icelandic counterparts.

In any event, Assange has never been suspected of any wrongdoing in Iceland. Stundin has seen confirmation of this from the District Prosecutor in Iceland, the Reykjavik Metropolitan Police. Assange has no entry in the LÖKE database of any police activity linked to an individual collected by the Icelandic State Police Commissioner from 2009-2021.

Assange’s lawyer also inquired in the Icelandic Foreign Ministry if the points in his updated indictment where Iceland is referred to as NATO country 1 meant that his case had any relevance to Icelandic membership to NATO, the bilateral defense agreement between USA and Iceland or any national security interests. All such connections were dismissed in a reply from the defense attache at the Ministry.

Immunity and a new crimespree

According to information obtained by Stundin the immunity deal between DoJ and Thordarson was presented at the Headquarters of the Reykjavik police where the only role of the Icelandic policeman was to confirm the identity of Thordarson before leaving him alone with his lawyer in the back room where he met the US delegation.

It is as if the offer of immunity, later secured and sealed in a meeting in DC, had encouraged Thordarson to take bolder steps in crime. He started to fleece individuals and companies on a grander scale than ever; usually by either acquiring or forming legal entities he then used to borrow merchandise, rent luxury cars, even order large quantities of goods from wholesalers without any intention to pay for these goods and services.

Thordarson also forged the name of his own lawyer on notices to the Company House registry, falsely claiming to have raised the equity of two companies to over 800 thousand US dollars. The aim was to use these entities with solid financial positions on paper in a real estate venture.

The lawyer has reported the forgery to the police where other similar cases, along with multiple other reports of theft and trickery, are now piling up.

When confronted with evidence of all these crimes by a Stundin journalist he simply admitted to everything and explained it away as normal business practice. He has not yet been charged and is still practicing this “business”. Local newspaper DV reported last week that Thordarson had attempted to order merchandise on credit using a new company name, Icelandic Vermin Control. Despite using a fake name and a COVID face mask he was identified and the transaction was stopped. He was last seen speeding away in a white Tesla, according to DV.

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They are back at it again. The same people who endorsed and funded “gain of function” research that created Covid-19 are fanning flames of anxiety and fostering social strife as they hype the dangers of the delta variant. Without any proof that the mutation—which supposedly emerged in India—is deadlier than the original Coronavirus, they are doing their level best to induce panic in order to manufacture “vaccine” consent.

The only thing that is known about the Delta variant is that it is more transmissible, but even that is painting a half picture because the establishment are intentionally omitting something that the NIH admitted last year.

Medical professionals who are not tied at the hip with Bill and Melinda Gates admit that people who caught Covid-19 and recovered acquire antibodies, specifically T-cells and B-cells, that provide enduring immunity from this dreaded virus.

There is no proof as of yet that the variants are reinfecting people who recovered from Covid-19, the same cannot be said for people who got “vaccinated”.  Dr. Richard Urso, whom I had the honor of interviewing a couple of weeks ago, stated that these natural antibodies people attain post-infection have been known to last a lifetime in past SARS studies.

So why would politicians, media personalities and public health officials hide this truth from the public? For the same reason they went out of their way to conceal the growing body of evidence that early treatment and alternative regimens like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine are astoundingly effective. Normally, I would attribute this type of malicious news suppression to greed; after all, there are fortunes to be made off these unproven mRNA and adenovirus “vaccines” that are being pumped into the arms of billions of people around the world.

When I came down with Covid-19 back in February, I asked my doctor to prescribe Ivermectin. He complied with my request and my wife was able to go to a local clinic and pick up a medicine that I believed prevented me from following in my mother’s footsteps. I only paid $8.00 and this is precisely why “vaccine” cultists are waging an all out war against early treatments and prophylactics. If tens of millions of people who are lining up to take part in ongoing clinical trials—sadly subjecting themselves to risks like myocarditis, blood clots, Antibody-Dependent Enhancement and death—knew that there were other options, they might think twice before they turn themselves into lab rats for biotech corporation experiments.

After emotionally manipulating more than a 150 million Americans and billions of people around the world to get jabbed by using fear and PSYOPS operations like the one Dr. Stanley observed during his compliance studies, the political-media-corporate industry has run into a wall. All the “low hanging fruit” have already gotten “vaccinated”, they are now pivoting to coerce the rest of us to do the same. There is a reason why governments around the world are rushing to get 70% of their citizenry jabbed, the closer they get to that target, the easier it will be to demonize and ghettoize the rest who don’t obey and get “vaccinated”.

Reviving the ugly and racist legacy of Tuskegee Experiments, politicians like DC’s mayor Muriel Bowser are teaming up with criminals like Fauci to pressure African-Americans to get jabbed

Joe Biden sounding apoplectic and ringing the alarm about Covid-19 has nothing to do with protecting society, he is just carrying out the desires of the healthcare industry that contributed over $70,000,000 to his campaign. Fauci, who should be in prison for his four decades of criminal negligence while director of NIAID, is likewise channeling Chicken Little as he warns of impending death and doom unless everyone gets “vaccinated”. There is less truth in them then there is decency, and by that I mean zero. Even if 100% of Americans get jabbed tomorrow it would not end the pandemic because these biotech snake oils do not prevent contraction nor transmission of Covid-19.

The entire variant narrative is more suspect than O.J. Simpson. Last year, Oxford University teamed up with AstraZeneca to develop a “vaccine”; the three countries they deployed their product to were Brazil, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Know what those three countries have in common? See Brazil variant, South Africa variant and the UK variant. I’m sure it is just a coincidence that the very same nations that were being used as a test bed for these experimental “vaccines” happen to be the sources of the variants that are spreading throughout the world.

Before some naive says “correlation is not causation”, I direct you to Dr. Robert Malone—inventor of the mRNA technology that is being used in the “vaccines”—who is sounding the alarm about the jabs:

“My concern is I know there are risks but we don’t have access to the data. One of my concerns are that the government is not being transparent with us about what those risks are. I am of the opinion that people have the right to decide whether to accept vaccines or not, especially since these are experimental vaccines.”

Far from bending the Covid-19 infection curve, these “vaccines” are shattering the lives of people who have received the injections. According to a study published by the UK government, the death rate among people who are jabbed is up to six times greater than those who are unvaccinated. The same outcome is borne out by the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS); more people have been harmed and died from getting vaccinated in the past year than all the people who have been injured and died post-vaccination since its inception in 1990.

In 2009, Fauci pushed a vaccination campaign in response to the Swine flu. The “vaccines” were recalled after 47 people died. We’re nearing 4,700 deaths yet they keep pushing these unsafe “vaccines”

There is a wider agenda at play beyond just making money; the way the ruling class are hyperbolically manipulating people to get “vaccinated” lets me know that they are up to something depositing millions of dollars into their vaults. I really feel like we are at the calm before the storm; you better celebrate Fourth of July like never before because this might be the last year we mark our independence. They are talking up the delta variant in advance of a new onslaught of deaths that will make 2020’s first wavelook like a walk in the park. When these mass-casualties arrive, hospital beds start filling up and morgues start to overflow with bodies, Biden, Fauci and their ilk will blame the “unvaccinated”.

Governments and businesses are enticing people to get jabbed using million dollar lotteries, scholarships, free guns, beer, donuts and lap dances. If Covid-19 “vaccines” were really good for you, do you think they would resort to this level of bribery.

In reality, what we could be witnessing as early as this fall is the first wave of “vaccine” deaths. God forbid I am right about this prediction because that would mean my own family members are in the cross-hairs given that a lot of them were “vaccinated”. However, the past is prologue; all we have to do is look back to past with respect to mRNA “vaccines” to see what could be in the offing. Ferrets and cats that were injected with these experimental boosters died in droves once their synthetic antibodies expired and they were reinfected with SARS. Almost all of them developed a deadly condition called Antibody-Dependent Enhancement and were wiped out as a result.

Experts at the CDC and NIH know this horrific outcome could very well start impacting people who were “vaccinated”. That is why media narratives are being spun to gin up anxieties about the delta variant. If and when the day of reckoning comes, they will blame the “unvaccinated” and will downplay the fact that legions of people might be dying who were jabbed. A couple of months ago, the CDC revised the Covid-19 test guidance for people who got “vaccinated”, while they kept the PCR threshold for those who have not been jabbed at 40, they lowered the threshold to 28 or lower for those who have received the shots.

At a PCR of 40, the level was so high that it induced a lot of false-positives. By lowering the threshold to 28 for people who got “vaccinated”, the opposite might occur as people who get tested for Covid-19 post-jab could test negative even if they are actually infected.

Why would they have one threshold for the “vaccinated” and another for the “unvaccinated”? Because they are trying to muddy the pictures and conceal the number of people who are dying from Covid-19 after getting jabbed. An article at USA Todayis trafficking in this type of Enron accounting as they present a half-truth as news without explaining what I just detailed above.

The same way that Bill Gates used to sell shoddy Operating Systems that were susceptible to malware so Microsoft can turn around and hawk antivirus software, biotech corporations are peddling nostrums that offer limited benefits so they can keep you coming back for boosters on a regular basis. If you think all you had to do was get one or two jabs and you are safe, think again my friend! Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, criminal companies that keep paying hefty fees for medical fraud, are telling jab recipients that they will need booster shots. Caveat emptor!

Like CIA agents torturing Iraqis at Bagram Air Base, governments around the world are alternating between draconian measures like lockdowns and social isolations and giving us back the freedoms we once took for granted. They reopened businesses and are “allowing” us to forgo masks right before they lower the hammer. The delta variant is a slow motion false flag; if we do not push back severely and resist this global fascism that is gashing humanity, we might as well wave goodbye to our freedoms and be ready for full-boar tyranny to arrive at our doors.

“Myths which are believed in tend to become true.” ~ George Orwell

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Teodrose Fikremariam is the co-founder and editor of the Ghion Journal. Prior to launching the Ghion Journal, he was a political organizer who once wrote a speech idea in 2008 that was incorporated into Barack Obama’s South Carolina primary victory speech. He is originally from Ethiopia and a direct descendent, seven generations removed, of one of Ethiopia’s greatest Emperors Tewodros II.

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We bring to the attention of our readers this report by Israel National News which is based on the research of prominent Israeli scientists.

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Israeli researchers this week pointed to a link between the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine and a “rare autoimmune disease.”

The researchers, associated with the Department of Hematology at the Shamir Medical Center, found an increased incidence of acquired Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (aTTP) in Israel over a one-month period, and noted that the cases appeared in those who had received the Pfizer vaccine up to a month before.

Researcher Dorit Blickstein explained to Channel 13 that TTP is

“a disease which, in its classic form, is deadly – 90% of those sick would die. Today, with the help of new treatments, which […] must be administered as quickly as possible, most patients recover.”

She said the researchers investigated a possible connection to the vaccine after seeing an increased concentration of cases of aTTP in Israel. They had noticed 4 cases in a month, while there are typically 2-3 cases a year.

“In Israel, there are two or three cases a year in any hospital. In March, we started to receive too many cases, and so we asked why.

“We essentially finished the yearly amount in one month, and that’s not logical. So we started to ask what all the patients had in common. And it turned out that all of them had received the coronavirus vaccine that is accepted and exists in Israel within a timetable of 5 to 28 days.”

“This caused us to suspect there was an association, some sort of connection, between this super-rare disease and the vaccine.”

She noted that most patients with the disease are young and that, in their study as well, the ages ranged between 28 and 45. Half were men, half women.

“In any event, it arouses attention, because the accumulation, the concentration did not fit. It is not what we expect to see in a normal year.”

Blickstein added that “with the help of the serological tests,” the researchers knew that “the patients were not patients sick with coronavirus, but rather patients who received the vaccine.”

“This was a red flag for us.”

She said there must be a red flag for “healthy people who received the vaccine and start to develop phenomena like a tendency to internal bleeding or, Heaven forbid, headaches, dizziness, loss of words, chest pressure or stomach aches,” in which case they should “call for medical assistance immediately.”

“It could be that they are not regular vaccine phenomena, but an expression of a rare disease.”

Blickstein finally noted that the incidence is “not only in Israel. There is, at the moment, a report of an identical response to the same vaccine in Belgium and Italy.”

The US National Library of Medicine defines TTP as “a rare disorder that causes blood clots (thrombi) to form in small blood vessels throughout the body. These clots can cause serious medical problems if they block vessels and restrict blood flow to organs such as the brain, kidneys, and heart.”

“Complications resulting from these clots can include neurological problems (such as personality changes, headaches, confusion, and slurred speech), fever, abnormal kidney function, abdominal pain, and heart problems.”

A report released by the Health Ministry at the beginning of June concluded that hundreds of cases of heart muscle inflammation (myocarditis) were probably caused by the coronavirus vaccine administered as part of Israel’s mass vaccination campaign.

The vast majority of cases were reported among young men and teenage boys. Most of the cases were reported among males ages 16 to 30, with the highest proportion found among male teens aged 16-19. Ninety percent of all the myocarditis cases linked to the vaccine were reported in males.

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When only one narrative on a subject is allowed, and reasonable debate based on scientific evidence is disallowed, it is clear that someone is attempting to stifle free speech and democratic processes. The closely controlled narrative and censorship being implemented by mainstream media (television, radio and newspapers) and ‘big’ tech corporations, such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Youtube and Twitter, indicate that they are being used as propaganda outlets by the Global Elite to further their interests at the expense of the rest of the population. 

‘Big’ tech corporations also collect people’s private data in the service of corporate interests. 

How do users/consumers give these institutions and corporations the message that they are not willing to put up with this situation? By refusing to listen to, watch or use them (thereby filling our minds with unverified and deliberately manipulated information), and by withdrawing our dollars and participation, impacting advertising and data collection revenues. 

If they won’t let us tell the truth through them (even in debate), we need to withdraw our support. 

The following sites provide alternatives that support free speech, reasoned debate and privacy: 

Truthful news and information sites: https://wearehumanwearefree.org/resources/ 

Private browsers: https://www.torproject.org/ & https://duckduckgo.com/ 

Private email providers: https://reclaimthenet.org/private-email-providers/ 

Private messaging apps: https://reclaimthenet.org/private-messaging-apps/ 

Private and encrypted cloud storage providers: https://reclaimthenet.org/private-and-encrypted-cloud-storage-providers/ 

Free speech-friendly video sharing platforms: https://reclaimthenet.org/free-speech-friendly-video-sharing-platforms/ 

Private document-sharing: CryptPad https://itsfoss.com/cryptpad/ 

Further information: 

‘The Same Shady People Own Big Pharma and the Media’, see this. 

‘Facebook Insider Morgan Kahmann Joins Candace Owens to Discuss Decision to Come Forward to Veritas’, see this. 

Boycott Corporate & Government Media!

Don’t pay for misinformation and censorship!

Choose free and truthful media & social media!

Resist the Great Reset!

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Alien Minds and the Will to Believe

June 28th, 2021 by Edward Curtin

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Once upon a time in my youthful naiveté, I would mock those who said they believed in out-of-space aliens and flying saucers.  In my hubris, I even wrote an extensive academic paper saying that the popularity of science fiction and the myth of planetary escape provided by the UFO cults and the media served the function of distracting us from earthly problems connected to the changing social structure of western societies and the concomitant transformation of our symbol systems from the traditionally religious to the scientific and technologically based. 

I argued that there was something devious in this new narrative, like the story of astronauts playing golf on the moon.  Although I didn’t then say it, I imagined the next public relations stunt would be ping pong on Mars.  But I now know that ping pong is a Chinese dominated sport.

I must confess that I have never seen a space movie like 2001: A Space Odysseyor Star Wars or the television series Star Trek; and I have never read any science fiction like Childhood’s End.  I was always repulsed by such fantasies, since figuring out what was going on here on earth was hard enough to grasp.  They always seemed like a diversion to me.  Of course I have studied their story lines and know about them, and fiction is fiction, right?  The movies and television shows aren’t real, right?

Culture, I argued in my youthful academic days, is the higher learning we are all subjected to; and culture rests upon the crystallization of a symbolic order that was then changing.  I was writing about the late 1960s and early 1970s when the promotion of esoterica of all kinds was widespread and growing madly.  And as Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic, “Faith is the compulsive dynamic of culture, channeling obedience to, trust in, and dependence upon authority.”

I then sensed we were undergoing a massive symbolic transformation in which the controlling symbolic (from Greek: to throw together) order was being replaced by a diabolic (from Greek: to throw apart) order (that controlled in a different way) and new stories were emerging that would not order people’s lives but would disorder them as they were offered a pastiche of choices to scramble their brains so “they would never know” for sure. This was all happening at the time of the political assassinations of the 1960s, the war against Vietnam, the drug and sexual revolution, the crisis in traditional religion, the turn to the east especially among the young, women’s liberation, etc.

As a sociologist, I was following a tradition of theorizing that tries to describe social change and how culture organizes personality through its symbol systems, in this case the crisis happening between the mainstream faith in science and the counter-cultural reactions and the ways this alleged either/or was being manipulated.

Silly as it now sounds, I argued that as a result of the failure of rational, scientific, and technological culture to replace the traditional religious symbolic plausibility structure it destroyed, resulting in a deep existential void of meaning, an alternative myth about outer space and extraterrestrial life was promulgated to divert people’s attention from the creation of our Nazi-run military space program, nuclear weapons, and the military-industrial complex’s nihilistic intention to use them.  I was so naïve then.

My thesis was that through this symbolic transformation, power over all life and death passed from God to men, and a need arose to provide a story about the gods’ continuing existence.  Thus the UFO and outer space motifs whereby alien gods – through the technique of deus ex machina – might swoop down in flotillas of extraterrestrial spacecraft and swoop up the deserving ones to a beautiful beyond while the rest of the world was incinerated in a nuclear war, a staple story line of science fiction.  Of course they might also rape you; but they were the bad aliens who were at odds with the good.  ET and The X Files were still to come.

This myth of outer space was joined to a widespread rise in the promotion of occult phenomena – astrology, the Tarot, alchemy, crystal balls, satanism, witchcraft, spiritualism, etc. – that opened up all kinds of alternative, hypnotic visions of other lives past “death,” incredible new visions of inner “realities” and the cosmos, spiritual journeys to worlds unheard of, aided or not by the fuel of psychedelic drugs that were pushed by the CIA.  Thus the gods within were added to the alien gods without and new faiths were born – or rather, created.  These were mixed in a witches mélange with mainstream science or pseudo-science to create an anti-faith faith in forces that could save or destroy us, whether they be aliens, astronauts, or Indian gurus such as the creator of Transcendental Meditation (TM), Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose exotic teachings were married to pseudo-science and promoted as a way to reduce crime and violence and bring peace to earth.

This, I maintained in my youthful ignorance, was not a cultural accident.  Mass cultural confusion seemed to have a malign purpose that was setting us up for a reactionary backlash that would return us back to the future.  To a time when we could “never really know” but knew what we were meant to know.

That was in my old life as a scholar.  I was so much younger then but I’m older than that now.  For a few years, I have just been a regular beer-swigging normal dude walking unpaved roads and woodland hikes looking for the wild life.  I have dispensed with the books.  I have recently had a revelation like Saul on the road to Damascus but without the light or falling down. I heard no voices.  It happened inauspiciously.

A while back I learned of a nice, peaceful place to take a walk down by the river across an old covered bridge down a dirt road where lovely birds could be seen and heard.  I was surprised to learn of this place since I have lived here a long time and have sought out every wild country walk I could find.  But serendipity happens and epiphanies occur.

Three years ago when I first walked the bridge over troubled water, the place was deserted.  On the other side of the twisting Housatonic River I was surprised to see a large stone monument with an inscription signed by the governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker.  I knew Baker, a Republican, like the former governor Mitt Romney, was the type of “mild” Republican that the overwhelmingly Democratic voters generally didn’t complain about.  The monument commemorated a 1969 UFO event, attesting to it being “the first off-world/UFO case in U.S. history” when a nine-year-old boy named Thomas Reed and his family were said to have encountered a UFO and were taken out of their car by the aliens to a cavernous enclosure with strange lights. Beamed up and out in other words. Then deposited back in their car.

I had mocked such reports before but this one was endorsed by the mild-mannered and thoroughly establishment Charlie Baker, a former CEO of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, and I was shocked.  So I read about it and discovered it had been a big event in the area on the night of September 1, 1969 when about 40 others reported seeing a UFO.  It made me laugh at people’s gullibility since remnants of my intellectual skepticism still clung to my numbskull.  The more I learned about it, the less I believed it, despite Baker’s endorsement.

When I again returned to the spot a few years later, the monument was gone, and I learned a controversy had ensued, some people had complained, and the town had hauled the monument away.  Now there is a smaller round shaped plaque on a metal pole commemorating the event.

It seems the 1969 event caused mass confusion, which would seem appropriate for that time and place, as my youthful writings about culture at large explained.  This was two weeks following Woodstock, the height of the Vietnam War, twelve days after the release of the movie, Alice’s Restaurant, based on the 1967 experience of local resident Arlo Guthrie’s famous encounter and song about getting anything you want at Alice’s restaurant, a local establishment run by Alice Brock that attracted hippies and counterculturists from all over.  Clearly something was happening here, what it was wasn’t exactly clear, since you could get anything you wanted in those tumultuous times.  And anything and everything was everywhere in the culture.

But things are so different now.  We are all older and wiser.  We follow the science.  We just do what we’re told.  We read the papers about the new government report about UFOs or what they now call UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena).  There are some things we just don’t know but others that we think we do, just like the Defense Department and the intelligence agencies.  That’s what they say, isn’t it, and they wouldn’t lie?  We follow the science today. The CDC wouldn’t lie, right?  We just do what we’re told.

The creator of the television show, The X-Files, Chris Carter has a prominent Op Ed guest essay in the New York Times to explain why he so desperately wants to believe in aliens and how he actually does so without actually admitting it.  Along the way, Carter makes sure to slyly tell us he knows the truth about COVID-19:

We are living in times of uncertainty, where truth may be unknowable.  I don’t have to tell you this has bred a universe of rampant conspiracy theories. From the Covid conspiracy documentary “Plandemic” to the idea that we’re living in a black hole created by the CERN’s Large Hadron Collider when we discovered the Higgs boson.

He follows the science.  He thinks truth may be unknowable, a saying that you may have heard before. You know: “We’ll never know.” Except for certain truths. For he knows all about the pandemic and aliens.  And he tells us:

When we were dressing the original set for Agent Mulder’s office on “The X-Files,” I came up with the poster with a U.F.O. on it that reads “I Want to Believe.” And I think that’s where most people come down on the whole extraterrestrial business. Not quite there yet, but waiting for a sign.

I’m not waiting.  I’m there.  I received the sign.  I know.  I got there just a few days ago when again, in my new found clarity devoid of my old intellectual perspective, I walked that bridge over troubled waters and saw a large piece of metal lying in a watery ditch right where Thomas Reed described his abduction.  It was new and very shiny.  Talk about signs!  If that isn’t science, I don’t know what is.  Direct observation has brought me to the truth.  The aliens came back and lost a bumper.  Although you might say that’s just circumstantial evidence, I must disagree.  It’s not a symbol, I know that.  I saw it with my “eyes wide shut.”  I follow the science.  Life is not a movie, is it?

I once thought the UFO people were crazy and there was a concerted effort to confuse people.  But I was so much younger then.  I’m older than that now.

Carter ends his essay by saying, “I want to believe.”

I say: Lords, I believe.  Help my unbelief.

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

Edward Curtin is prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. 

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

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

To order his book click the cover page.

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

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

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

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***

Alle Jahre wieder wählen vertrauensselige Bürger Politiker mit wenig Berufs- und Lebenserfahrung in hohe Regierungsämter und sehen sie dann als respektable Autoritäten an. Die Politiker verbinden mit dieser Zuschreibung umgehend Herrschaftsansprüche, schaffen ein Verhältnis der Über- und Unterordnung und setzen gegenüber den Bürgern ihren Willen durch; präziser gesagt, den Willen oder die Anweisungen ihrer Auftraggeber, der globalen Machtelite. Damit werden sie zu Helfershelfer gnadenloser Ausbeuter der eigenen Bürger. Zu diesen Politikern schauen die meisten Erwachsenen auf wie Kinder. Und das hat Folgen: Die Autoritätsgläubigkeit führt unweigerlich zur Autoritätshörigkeit, die in der Regel den Reflex eines absoluten geistigen Gehorsams und eine Verstandeslähmung auslöst. Erwachsene Menschen können dann nicht mehr selbständig denken und vernünftig urteilen und übergeben die Entscheidungsgewalt Berufspolitikern. Doch diese sind – vielleicht mit einigen wenigen Ausnahmen – nicht wirklich daran interessiert und fähig, die Menschheitsprobleme zu lösen. Sie haben allein ihre Karriere und ihre gute Versorgung im Sinn.

Den Regierenden kann man weder heute noch in Zukunft vertrauen 

Der russische Schriftsteller Lew Nikolajewitsch Graf Tolstoi (1828 bis 1910) schrieb in seinen politischen Flugschriften zu Beginn des letzten Jahrhunderts, dass das kein Zufall sei:

„Man könne die Unterordnung eines ganzen Volkes unter wenige Leute noch rechtfertigen, wenn die Regierenden die besten Menschen wären; aber das ist nicht der Fall, war niemals der Fall und kann es nie sein. Es herrschen häufig die schlechtesten, unbedeutendsten, grausamsten, sittenlosesten und besonders die verlogensten Menschen. Und dass dem so ist, ist kein Zufall.“ (1)

Politische Schlüsselpositionen werden mit unfähigen Berufspolitikern besetzt 

Die vergangenen eineinhalb Jahre haben uns einen Anschauungsunterricht beschert, der Tolstois Beurteilung mehr als bestätigt. Leider haben wir uns fast schon daran gewöhnt, dass Politiker die Bürger nach Strich und Faden belügen und betrügen. Ob wir als Beispiele den weltweiten Corona-Skandal betrachten, den schwelenden Konflikt der US-NATO mit Russland oder die EU-weite familienfeindliche Hetze gegen Ungarn.

So haben die meisten Politiker uns Bürger über den von ihnen selbst herbeigeführten Corona-Skandal, der die Zivilgesellschaften in ihren Grundfesten erschütterte, auf das Übelste belogen und sich darüber hinaus in unverschämter Weise an der Krise finanziell bereichert. Mächtige Finanzinstitutionen korrumpierten sie mit Millionen-Beträgen, damit sie die eigenen Bürger in Massenquarantäne (Lockdown) zwingen; weitere Millionen flossen bei Insider-Geschäften. „Üppige Kasse“ machten dabei nicht nur die milliardenschweren Tech-Giganten und Big-Pharma, sondern auch überdurchschnittlich gut alimentierte Minister, Abgeordnete und deren angeheuerte „Experten“ und „Berater“.

Ein ähnliches Bild ergibt sich bei der Betrachtung des Konflikts zwischen der US-NATO und Russland. Man muss kein Historiker sein, um zu sehen, welche Rolle die US-NATO, der gesundheitlich sehr angeschlagene US-Präsident und viele europäische Regierungen seit dem Ukraine-Putsch im Jahr 2014 spielen. Die US-NATO unternimmt im Moment alles, um Russland zu provozieren und überschreitet dabei vorgegebene „rote Linien“. Es ist ein hochriskantes Spiel mit dem Feuer. Man kann deshalb nur hoffen (und beten), dass dieser Konflikt nicht in einen offenen Krieg ausartet.

Doch die westlichen Vasallen der USA sehen das Problem allein beim russischen Präsident Putin. Dabei geben die USA unumwunden zu, dass sie nach wie vor einen Regierungswechsel in Russland anstreben. Die psychologische Kriegsführung gegen Russland und seinen Präsidenten läuft bereits auf Hochtouren. Allein die Völker Europas wollen keinen Krieg.

Wenn schließlich eine Regierung seine Jugend vor irritierenden und schädlichen Einflüssen schützen und sich weiter auf überkommene Werte abstützen möchte, damit sich die heranwachsende Generation gesund und natürlich entwickeln kann, werden Regierung und Volk mit einer familienfeindlichen Hetze überzogen. Was Russland bereits erlebt hat, erfährt im Moment die Regierung und das Volk Ungarns.

Ganz vorne mit dabei die deutsche EU-Kommissions-Präsidentin. Nach einem beispiellosen Posten-Gerangel erhielt nach Meinung vieler politischer Beobachter eine Berufspolitikerin den Präsidenten-Job, die als ehemalige deutsche Verteidigungsministerin vollkommen versagte, obwohl sie doch unzählige millionenschwere Beraterverträge unterschrieb.

Die Zunft der Psychologen und Psychiater trägt zur Irritation der Bürger bei 

Was mich besonders betrübt, ist die Beobachtung, dass Vertreter meiner eigenen Zunft mit dazu beitragen, Politiker nur oberflächlich und falsch einzuschätzen und damit die Bürger zu desinformieren und zu irritieren. Als langjähriger Psychologe und Psychotherapeut bin ich der Auffassung, dass man die Persönlichkeit und das politische Wirken eines Politikers beziehungsweise einer Politikerin – zum Beispiel vom Format der deutschen Bundeskanzlerin – nicht in der Weise psychologisch einschätzen und bewerten kann, als handele es sich bei dieser Person nur um ein narzisstisches oder labiles oder einsames oder entscheidungsschwaches oder in die Jahre gekommenes Wesen.

Damit erfasst man die Persönlichkeit und das Handeln einer Politikdarstellerin oder eines Politikdarstellers in keiner Weise. Entscheidend sind doch familiäre Herkunft, bisherige Berufs- und Lebenserfahrung, politischer Werdegang, weltanschauliche Einstellung und vor allem bestehende oder vergangene politische Abhängigkeiten und mögliche Formen der politischen Außensteuerung durch fremde Dienste. Ansonsten bewegen wir uns auf Kindergarten-Niveau.

Keinem die Macht übergeben! 

Wenn wir also als freie Bürger an der Lösung der anstehenden Menschheitsfragen oder -probleme mitwirken wollen, dann dürfen wir diese verantwortungsvolle Aufgabe nicht an ungeeignete und unfähige Politiker delegieren, sondern müssen sie mutig in die eigene Hand nehmen. In diesem Sinne: Keinem die Macht übergeben!

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.

Fußnote

[1] Tolstoi, L. N. (1983). Rede gegen den Krieg. Politische Flugschriften. Frankfurt am Main, S. 74

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***

Every year, trusting citizens elect politicians with little professional and life experience to high government offices and then regard them as respectable authorities. Politicians immediately associate this attribution with claims to power, create a relationship of superiority and subordination and impose their will on the citizens; more precisely, the will or instructions of their clients, the global power elite. In doing so, they become accomplices of merciless exploiters of their own citizens.

Most adults look up to these politicians like children. And this has consequences: Belief in authority inevitably leads to obedience to authority, which usually triggers the reflex of absolute mental obedience and paralysis of the mind. Adults can then no longer think for themselves and judge rationally, and hand over decision-making power to professional politicians. But these – perhaps with a few exceptions – are not really interested in and capable of solving humanity’s problems. They only have their career and their good supply in mind.

Those in power cannot be trusted, neither today nor in the future.

The Russian writer Lev Nikolayevich Count Tolstoy (1828 to 1910) wrote in his political pamphlets at the beginning of the last century that this was no accident:

“One could still justify the subordination of a whole people to a few people if those who governed were the best people; but this is not the case, has never been the case and can never be the case. The worst, most insignificant, most cruel, most immoral and especially the most mendacious people often rule. And that this is so is no accident.” (1)

Key political positions are filled with incompetent professional politicians

The past year and a half has given us a visual lesson that more than confirms Tolstoy’s assessment. Unfortunately, we have almost become accustomed to politicians lying and cheating the citizens through their teeth. Whether we look at the global Corona scandal, the simmering US-NATO conflict with Russia or the EU-wide anti-family agitation against Hungary as examples.

Most politicians have lied to us citizens about the Corona scandal, which they themselves brought about and which shook civil societies to their foundations, and have also enriched themselves outrageously financially from the crisis. Powerful financial institutions corrupted them with millions to force their own citizens into mass quarantine (lockdown); further millions flowed in insider deals. It was not only the billionaire tech giants and big pharma that made “lavish money”, but also above-average ministers, MPs and their hired “experts” and “consultants”.

A similar picture emerges when looking at the conflict between the US-NATO and Russia. You don’t have to be a historian to see the role played by the US-NATO, the US President, who is in very poor health, and many European governments since the Ukraine coup in 2014. The US-NATO is doing everything possible at the moment to provoke Russia, crossing predefined “red lines”. It is a high-risk game with fire. One can therefore only hope (and pray) that this conflict does not degenerate into open war.

But the western vassals of the USA see the problem solely with Russian President Putin. At the same time, the USA openly admits that it is still striving for a change of government in Russia. The psychological warfare against Russia and its president is already in full swing. The peoples of Europe alone do not want war.

Finally, when a government wants to protect its youth from irritating and harmful influences and to continue to rely on outdated values so that the growing generation can develop healthily and naturally, the government and the people are subjected to anti-family agitation. What Russia has already experienced is currently being experienced by the government and people of Hungary.

Right at the forefront is the German EU Commission President. After an unprecedented jockeying for position, according to many political observers, a professional politician was given the presidential job who completely failed as a former German defence minister, even though she signed countless consultancy contracts worth millions.

The guild of psychologists and psychiatrists contributes to the irritation of the citizens

What particularly saddens me is the observation that representatives of my own guild contribute to the superficial and false assessment of politicians and thus disinform and irritate the citizens. As a psychologist and psychotherapist of many years’ standing, I am of the opinion that the personality and the political work of a politician – for example, of the calibre of the German Chancellor – cannot be psychologically assessed and evaluated in such a way as if this person were merely a narcissistic or unstable or lonely or decisionally weak or aged being.

This in no way captures the personality and actions of a political actor or actress. The decisive factors are family background, previous professional and life experience, political career, ideological attitude and, above all, existing or past political dependencies and possible forms of external political control by outside services. Otherwise, we are moving at kindergarten level.

Do not hand over power to anyone!

So if we as free citizens want to participate in the solution of the upcoming human issues or problems, then we must not delegate this responsible task to unsuitable and incompetent politicians, but must courageously take it into our own hands. In this sense: do not hand over power to anyone!

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Dr Rudolf Hänsel is a qualified psychologist and educationalist.

Notes

(1) Tolstoy, L. N. (1983). Speech against war. Political pamphlets. Frankfurt am Main, p. 74

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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Fauci and the Biden Admin Are Purposely Deceiving Us About the ‘Delta Variant’ Threat

By Jordan Schachtel, June 27, 2021

Prominent actors within the U.S. government have been lying to the American people about COVID-19 for 18 months and counting, and their latest behavior shows that the individuals in charge of U.S. Government Science have no intention of stopping the charade anytime soon.

CDC: 6,113 Dead Following COVID-19 Injections Including 576 Abortions – Population Control Agenda Hard to Deny

By Brian Shilhavy, June 27, 2021

Besides the 6,113 deaths reported, there are 5,172 permanent disabilities, 6,435 life threatening events, and 51,558 emergency room visits. To put this into some perspective, there have now been more deaths reported following COVID-19 injections that started in December of 2020, than there have been total deaths recorded following vaccinations in the previous 30 years, from January 1, 1991 through November 30, 2020, according to the CDC’s VAERS.

The WHO Confirms that the Covid-19 PCR Test is Flawed: Estimates of “Positive Cases” are Meaningless. The Lockdown Has No Scientific Basis

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 27, 2021

The Real Time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (rRT-PCR) test was adopted by the WHO on January 23, 2020 as a means to detecting the  SARS-COV-2 virus, following the recommendations of  a Virology research group (based at Charité University Hospital, Berlin), supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (For Further details see the Drosten Study)

American Medicine, American Malfeasance

By Dr. Gary Null and Richard Gale, June 26, 2021

An issue that is rarely discussed or given serious attention is the over-specialization in healthcare.  Modern medicine’s approach to identify and treat illnesses and tackle the reduction of infections has in many instances ceased to be multidisciplinary.

Video: The Fraudulent Corona Pandemic. Crimes against Humanity. Dr. Reiner Fuellmich

By Reiner Fuellmich, June 26, 2021

Watch this video till the end, a statement by the lead lawyer in the alliance of global lawyers going after the criminals involved in the international virus network that started the previous “Swine Flu” Pandemic and now, the current Covid-19 pandemic.

Nicaragua’s Benedict Arnolds: Political Opposition as Organized Crime

By Stephen Sefton, June 25, 2021

Ever since they lost badly in the 2011 elections to the Frente Sandinista, Nicaragua’s political opposition has divided into conventional political parties working in the country’s legislature and an extra-parliamentary opposition based in local NGOs.

Lab Analysis of Children’s COVID-19 Face Masks Reveal ‘Dangerous’ ‘Pathogenic Bacteria’

By Daniel Payne, June 25, 2021

The samples were sent by a group of Florida parents to the University of Florida’s Mass Spectrometry Research and Education Center. Amanda Donoho, one of the parents who coordinated the experiment via a local parents’ Facebook group, told Just the News she decided to test the masks after her son developed a “giant rash” on his face.

Hail to the Left – In Tribute to our Lost Heroes: Ramsey Clark and Leo Panitch

By Michael Welch, Prof. Sam Gindin, Sara Flounders, and Prof. Greg Albo, June 26, 2021

Some of these people, in fact, are so robust in spirit that through their mere presence they change the atmosphere of an entire room even before they’ve opened their mouths. It is difficult to imagine the room, or for that matter our lives when one of these individuals exit the stage for the final time.

Vandana Shiva: A New Wave of Colonization, Carbon Slavery

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, June 25, 2021

Tech billionaire Bill Gates, now the largest owner of farmland in the U.S., is at the root of the problem, pushing technology as the only mechanism to save the world, and in so doing denying real solutions. This path is not accidental but carefully orchestrated to amass wealth, power and control, while making all but the elite subservient.

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Prominent actors within the U.S. government have been lying to the American people about COVID-19 for 18 months and counting, and their latest behavior shows that the individuals in charge of U.S. Government Science have no intention of stopping the charade anytime soon. Over time, their lies have evolved to become so common and so reckless to the point that someone with even the most rudimentary understanding of viruses can instantly debunk the lies. The latest “Delta variant” paranoia peddling has put their incompetence, deliberate spreading of falsehoods, and perpetual gaslighting of their own citizens on display for the world to see.

The Biden Administration, through lifelong government bureaucrat Anthony Fauci, is making a hard push to fear monger about the supposed dangers posed by the “Delta variant” of the virus that causes COVID-19.

A video posted from the White House account made the rounds Thursday morning, stating:

“Here’s the deal: The Delta variant is more contagious, it’s deadlier, and it’s spreading quickly around the world – leaving young, unvaccinated people more vulnerable than ever. Please, get vaccinated if you haven’t already. Let’s head off this strain before it’s too late.”

Fauci has been on a media tear this week hyping up the threat of the Delta variant.

Sometimes it’s easy to reflexively dismiss these warnings of doom and gloom as total nonsense, especially when they are in fact total, bald-faced nonsense.

(Check out this video from Ivor Cummins breaking down how the Delta variant, previously referred to as the Indian variant, is nothing more than a “political scariant.”)

First of all, it goes against all understanding of 101 concepts for a virus to mutate to become both more contagious and more deadly. If a virus becomes more contagious, it spreads faster but does not kill off its host. If a virus becomes more deadly, it doesn’t spread as fast because it has taken out its host. In fact, the best evidence we have on the Delta variant shows that it is probably less deadly than previous mutations. And it’s always good to remember that we’re talking about a disease that sports an original recovery rate well over 99%.

Second, the idea that human intervention can “head off” a strain is an idea straight out of the “COVID Zero” (the idea that you can eliminate the virus from this earth) pseudoscience playbook. Fauci and the gang are by no means brilliant minds, but they are well aware that they cannot eliminate a virus from circulation. This makes it obvious that there are several ulterior motives in play, none of which have anything to do with our health.

Outside of academic models (we all know how well those held up in the past with lockdowns, masks, etc), there is no hard evidence anywhere in the world that this Delta variant is any more or less dangerous than any other mutation of the virus. In fact, the statistics on this variant shows no particular reason for alarm. Yet the government is — let me know if this sounds familiar — baselessly making stuff up about a virus based on absolutely zero real world data.

Since the beginning of COVID Mania, the government has never been on the side of science, evidence, and data. From the infamous Gates-funded panic models and fraudulent Chinese government “science” that encouraged the world to lock down indefinitely, to the absurd mannequin “studies” about the efficacy of masks, this latest Delta variant scaremongering has once again put their lies on display for the world to see. Given the almost two years of immunity building related to the virus, the threat posed by COVID-19 at this point in time is virtually nonexistent. There never was a legitimate reason for a single restriction on our liberties, and today, the “delta variant” argument to curb our rights and transform our society is more baseless than ever before.

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The CDC is now reporting that 6,113 people have died following COVID-19 injections, with their latest release of data today in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a U.S. Government funded database that tracks injuries and deaths caused by vaccines.

Source.

Besides the 6,113 deaths reported, there are 5,172 permanent disabilities, 6,435 life threatening events, and 51,558 emergency room visits.

To put this into some perspective, there have now been more deaths reported following COVID-19 injections that started in December of 2020, than there have been total deaths recorded following vaccinations in the previous 30 years, from January 1, 1991 through November 30, 2020, according to the CDC’s VAERS.

Source.

There have also now been 576 deaths of unborn children reported following COVID-19 shots, as the CDC continues to recommend that pregnant woman should get injected with these shots, that many dissenting medical doctors and scientists are now describing as “bioweapon” injections.

Source.

Can there be any doubt any longer that the stated goals of the eugenicist Global leaders, such as Bill Gates, to reduce the world’s population are now in full swing?

And these are just the reports that the CDC has decided to release to the public. There are allegedly whistleblowers within the CDC stating that the true number of deaths being reported following COVID-19 shots is over 50,000 now. (Source.)

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***

The FDA approved Vaxelis in late 2018, but only now is the shot being readied for widespread distribution — in Europe, where infants have been given six-in-one vaccines for years (including Vaxelis since 2016), the vaccines have been associated with reports of sudden infant death.

Since the mid-1980s, the number of childhood shots on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine schedule has more than quadrupled. When parents express reluctance about turning their little ones into perpetual pin cushions, drug makers and doctors have a ready answer — combination vaccines that “simplify” the schedule by decreasing the number of injections administered.

This month marks the U.S. launch of the Merck/Sanofi joint-venture vaccine, Vaxelis, a six-in-one (hexavalent) combination vaccine that contains diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP) components as well as components said to protect against polio, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) and hepatitis B.

Public health officials optimistically believe that bundling all of these components into one shot will help close noncompliance loopholes and increase the likelihood that children will complete “all recommended vaccinations.”

Though Vaxelis is the nation’s first hexavalent injection, it joins other four- or five-in-one vaccines already on the CDC schedule. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Vaxelis in late 2018 — as a three-dose series for 2-, 4- and 6-month-old infants — but it is only now, two-and-a-half years later, that the shot is being readied for widespread distribution.

Warning signs were ignored

There are numerous warning signs that potent all-in-one vaccines are too much for immature immune systems to handle. Concerning safety signals have emerged not just for hexavalent but also pentavalent (five-in-one) vaccines.

In Europe, where infants have been given hexavalent vaccines for some years (including Vaxelis since 2016), the formulations have produced many troubling reports of sudden infant death.

Absurdly, none of the clinical studies assessing Vaxelis safety and efficacy conducted fair comparisons against an inert placebo. Instead, in the two U.S. clinical trials for Vaxelis, not only did investigators compare infants receiving Vaxelis to babies who received Sanofi’s five-in-one Pentacel — but babies in both groups also received rotavirus and pneumococcal vaccines at the same time!

In this context, the CDC’s sales pitch to the public — and its claims that side effects are “usually mild” — cannot be considered credible.

Here are some of the other facts missing from the CDC’s communications:

  • In the two U.S. trials six infants died (slide #27) in the Vaxelis group (some after receiving just one dose); one infant also died in the “control” group that received five-in-one vaccines.
  • All six Vaxelis recipients died within six weeks of vaccination. This timing matches other published accounts of infant deaths “clustering” following hexavalent vaccination.
  • The reported causes of death for the infants who received Vaxelis included asphyxia, sepsis, fluid in the brain and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). These outcomes correspond to the types of adverse events reported following hexavalent vaccination in Europe.
  • Package inserts for other vaccines on the CDC schedule list similar causes of death, suggesting these fatal Vaxelis outcomes are plausibly associated with vaccination.
  • In the clinical trials, the rate of fever was notably higher in Vaxelis recipients even when compared to children receiving five-in-one vaccines (47% vs. 34%).

Juicing vaccine sales

In the no-liability context enjoyed by vaccine makers in the U.S., combination vaccines are already quite popular. In fact, market watchers and health economists praise the jumbo shots as being a catalyst for positive industry trends and a “key to commercial success.”

Thus, financial analysts expect Vaxelis to “garner significant patient share following its [U.S.] launch” — predicting that it will account for almost a third of U.S. DTaP vaccinations by 2028 — or $841 million in annual sales.

These predictions represent good news for Merck and Sanofi, two of the “big four” pharma giants that dominate the childhood vaccine market in the United States. Merck is already doing a booming vaccine business, recently reporting annual sales growth of 14.8% for its pneumococcal vaccine (Pneumovax 23) and 5.4% for its human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil-9.

However, Merck also faces proliferating Gardasil-related lawsuits — including legal actions alleging that the company knew about and ignored life-changing adverse events from the get-go, many of which (when not fatal) have involved autoimmunity and chronic pain. In fact, before the advent of emergency use COVID vaccines (responsible for an alarming escalation of vaccine-related adverse events), Gardasil had had “more side effects reported than all other vaccines combined.”

Sanofi, too, is embroiled in thousands of lawsuits worldwide — notably for its disastrous and sometimes fatal dengue vaccine. As with Merck, this has not dampened overall vaccine sales growth, which continues its strong upward trajectory, likely to be further strengthened by the U.S. Vaxelis rollout.

Although Sanofi has not been a front-runner in the COVID vaccine race, the company is currently running clinical trials for messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines for both COVID and seasonal influenza.

Aluminum secrecy and grandfathered ingredients

Merck’s proprietary, “super-powered” aluminum adjuvant — amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate (AAHS) — which is believed to play a significant role in Gardasil’s risk profile, is also present in Vaxelis.

After Merck developed AAHS, it began to “preferentially” feature AAHS in its vaccines even though, as Danish scientists outlined last year, the company appears to have disregarded procedures ordinarily required for approval of new adjuvants.

According to the Danes, at the time AAHS appeared, it represented a “new type of aluminium adjuvant with excipients that [had] not been used earlier in [European Medicines Agency] authorised vaccines.” It should have been — but apparently was not — tested against an inert placebo. For this and other reasons, the Danish scientists question the ethical underpinnings of the Gardasil clinical trials.

In noting that Merck also “seems to have prevented independent studies of AAHS,” the Danes repeated a critique aired by world-famous aluminum expert Christopher Exley in 2018. In an extensive discussion of different aluminum-based adjuvants and their immunological mechanisms of action, Exley and co-authors emphasized the importance of studying aluminum adjuvants one by one, as each is “chemically and biologically dissimilar with concomitantly potentially distinct roles in vaccine-related adverse events.”

Concerningly, the Vaxelis liquid suspension is adjuvanted onto not just AAHS, but also another aluminum adjuvant — aluminum phosphate). The package insert disingenuously shorthands the combination of adjuvants as “aluminum salts.”

How this double whammy of aluminum (319 micrograms per vaccine dose) interacts with the vaccine’s six antigens, or Vaxelis’s numerous other ingredients, or the heavy aluminum load in other childhood vaccines is largely unknown.

According to the Vaxelis package insert, the vaccine also includes: polysorbate 80 (an ingredient flagged for its propensity to induce hypersensitivity reactions); glutaraldehyde and formaldehyde (problematic chemicals deemed necessary to inactivate pertussis toxin); bovine serum albumin (often harvested from bovine fetuses when female cows are found to be pregnant at slaughter); three different antibiotics (neomycin, streptomycin and polymyxin B); ammonium thiocyanate (also a rust inhibitor, weedkiller and defoliant); and yeast protein (associated, notably in hepatitis B vaccines, with autoimmune reactions).

Regulatory loopholes allow manufacturers to “grandfather” ingredients into new vaccines if the components are already present in other licensed vaccines — regardless of how inadequate the original safety testing may have been.

Thus, Merck and Sanofi perceived no need to test Vaxelis for DNA-damaging or cancer-causing effects, and conducted no studies of the ingredients’ pharmokinetics (i.e., how the substances move “into, through, and out of the body”).

The main cautionary note sounded in the meager Vaxelis patient information sheet is to not give Vaxelis to children if they are “allergic to any of the ingredients.”

For thee and thee … but not for me?

The CDC seems to be particularly interested in ensuring that poor and non-white children get Vaxelis. The agency began laying the groundwork to offer Vaxelis through the Vaccines for Children (VFC) Program — the agency’s vaccine program for the poor — over two years ago, in March 2019.

In September of that year, the CDC followed up with an affirmative vote. Public health departments have been promoting Vaxelis to participating VFC providers since early June 2021.

At its September 2019 meeting, CDC outlined another topic deemed important for discussion in the near future — raising the issue of whether Vaxelis should be “preferentially recommended” for the American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN) pediatric population.

The tenuous rationale, according to the meeting notes, was because, “in the pre-vaccine era” (more than 35 years ago), “Hib disease occurred at a younger age among the AI/AN population compared to the general population.”

Wave of the future?

Judging from its website, the CDC perceives combination vaccines to be the wave of the future, and has signaled its strong endorsement of Vaxelis by incorporating the new vaccine into its 2021 vaccine schedule.

As if exposure to six antigens were not enough, FDA and CDC also say it is okay for healthcare providers to administer the six-in-one shot at the same time as other vaccines.

These agencies’ characterization of the Vaxelis safety profile as “acceptable” indicates they have either not done their due diligence, or are willing to accept a high level of collateral damage in exchange for the “convenience” of six-in-one shots.

However, as the “overwhelmed by guilt” parents of COVID-vaccine-injured teens are increasingly finding out, convenience is poor consolation for life-changing or life-threatening adverse outcomes.

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This incisive analysis by Dr. Nicole Delépine was first published in French. Published on Global Research on May 29, 2021

The text below is an AI translation of the text published by our French language website Mondialisation.ca.

Minor edits by Global Research.

What is worth noting is that for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the vaccine contributes to a resurgence of Covid-19.

***

This is a difficult question, because it is certain that as always, many side effects are not reported by doctors, families or patients. We will content ourselves with summarizing here the effects recognized by the official American (Vaers for the USA) and European (Eudravigilance of the European Medicines Agency) institutions.

For the EU (England excluded): Side effects including many deaths

More than 10,000 Europeans killed by Covid-19 vaccines according to official EU data1

The European database for suspected drug reaction reports is EudraVigilance, which also tracks reports of accidents and deaths as a result of experimental Covid-19 ‘vaccines’.

For all those who on Tweeter or FB doubt the results of this database, we publish here the EMA policy regarding medication accidents. Only bots, internet robots at the service of Big Pharma will still be able to say that this information is  fake  !

Here is what EudraVigilance says about their database2  :

“This website was launched by the European Medicines Agency in 2012 to provide public access to reports of suspected side effects (also known as suspected side effects). These reports are submitted electronically to EudraVigilance by national drug regulatory authorities and by pharmaceutical companies that hold marketing authorizations (licenses) for drugs.

EudraVigilance is a system designed to collect reports of suspicious side effects. These reports are used to assess the benefits and risks of drugs during their development and to monitor their safety after their authorization in the European Economic Area (EEA) ”.

As of May 8, 2021 on the side effects of the anti-covid vaccines in the EU

Their May 8, 2021 report shows 10,570 deaths and 405,259 complications  following one of the four experimental injections of Covid-19. Each category of incidents is noted with the number of sick people and the number of deaths.

Total reactions for the experimental vaccine to mRNA

PFIZER: Tozinameran (code BNT162b2, Comirnaty) from BioNTech / Pfizer

5,368 deaths and 170,528 incidents as of 05/08/2021

MODERNA

Total reactions for Moderna experimental mRNA-1273 mRNA vaccine (CX-024414) 2,865 deaths and 22,985 side effects as of 05/08/2021

ASTRAZENECA

Total reactions for the experimental vaccine AZD1222 / VAXZEVRIA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford / AstraZeneca: 2,102 deaths and 208,873 complications as of 05/08/2021

JANSSEN

Total reactions for the experimental COVID-19 JANSSEN vaccine (AD26. COV2. S) from Johnson & Johnson: 235 deaths and 2,873 complications as of 05/08/2021

WE CAN STUDY THE DATABASE BY PATHOLOGY LIKE IN THIS TABLE and see the rapid increase in the number of side effects and deaths with the MAY 22 update

Comparison of pseudo-covid vaccines and H1N1 vaccine

A TABLE PUBLISHED BY THE EMA IN APRIL 2021 gives an idea of ​​the number of injections by type of gene substance and the comparison with the H1N1 vaccine and we see that the number of incidents reported for these products, including trials treatments are not completed, is much higher than for the H1N1 vaccine

IN FRANCE

Figures are available on the ANSM, but not very quickly shall we say.

They are overwhelmed by the testimonies of vaccination centers which ask not to report vaccine incidents because overwhelmed by declarations. For example :

Covid-19 vaccines: around 4,000 reports of side effects in Limousin: an example

Posted on 24/05/2021 3 : “Sorting, processing, investigating, recording: a colossal job for the activity of the center. »© stephane Lefèvre, according to the article in Le Populaire :

“  Since the start of 2021, there has been an unprecedented influx for the Limoges regional pharmacovigilance center, which has been collecting all the reports of adverse drug reactions. Among them, one of the 34 French cases of atypical thrombosis linked to the injection of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

(…) More precisely  4,000 in four and a half months  (out of 283,000 people having received one or two doses of vaccine in Limousin):  a record for this structure which collects reports of adverse drug reactions and reports its observations to the ‘National Medicines Safety Agency, ANSM (*). More than half of the pending declarations ”.

“  In normal times , we receive  about 1,200 per year , of which barely ten notifications for“ classic ”vaccines,” compares Professor Laroche, head of the center.

Of the 4,000,  the  CRPV  was able to seize 1,200 in the database, and treated 400 others pending registration . He has more than half to manage. “But we sort the declarations received every day, by priority, so as not to miss serious side effects. Our overdue stock mainly concerns reports for ordinary undesirable effects.

So-called “serious” effects for 25% of declarations, a similar proportion at the national level.

(…) Among the notable undesirable effects, the CRPV of Limoges recorded  one of the 34 cases of thrombosis of atypical localization (cerebral, intestinal) identified in France , following the AstraZeneca vaccine, and resulting in 11 deaths. The Limousin case was not fatal  ”.

Besides this striking case,  tachycardia,  shingles,  arterial hypertension,  facial paralysis,  urticaria are some of the other consequences not listed in the product instructions. Any hospitalization is also included in the 25% of serious effects .

Our job is to determine whether it is the vaccine that is causing a health problem or if there are other possible explanations .”

When the case is more complicated, it goes from half a day to a day, the time to  document the case , to  contact the person again so that they can tell us their story , to seek medical information for a file. full clinic. Everything must be precise in order to justify a possible health decision ”.

A call for more targeted statements

If Ms. Laroche welcomes the massive participation, she calls for more targeted statements  on the “serious, very embarrassing or unrecognized” effects . This relevance is necessary to guarantee the reactivity of vaccine surveillance.

(*) There are 31 regional pharmacovigilance centers in France: it is this territorial network that supplies the ANSM , the French drug agency.

Declarations in detail

“Geographical distribution:  80% of the declarations received by the CRPV of Limoges come from Haute-Vienne, 15% from Corrèze and 5% from Creuse.

Breakdown by vaccine: 78% of the 1,600 declarations processed concern the Pfizer vaccine , 18% AstraZeneca and 4% Moderna and Janssen.

Breakdown by reporting profile:  74% of reports come from patients and 26% from healthcare professionals.

Breakdown by reporting method: 25% of reports  received by the CRPV go through the national portal set up by the Ministry of Health. The majority arrive by email or post with the sending of the follow-up and declaration of adverse events form edited by the CRPV Limousin and given to each vaccinated patient. A local initiative which strongly encouraged participation in the declaration ”.

Other regional centers report similar outbursts, such as the one in To ulouse.

And concerns about the future of young women’s fertility

Will need to be deepened quickly because miscarriages have increased in Great Britain during the period of acceleration of vaccination. Menstrual disturbances are also reported by many women.4

As for concerns about fertility, it will be important to come back to them.

TO USA5 ,according to official reports from the CDC and the federal official body VAERS file.

In the United States, 268.4 million doses of the Covid vaccine had been administered as of May 14. This includes 115 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, 144 million doses of Pfizer and 9 million doses of the Covid Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine.

The number of reported side effects from Covid vaccines has exceeded 200,000, according to data released on MAY 21 by  the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The data comes directly from reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting vaccine adverse reactions in U.S. reports submitted to VAERS requiring further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.

Between December 14 and May 14, 2021, the Vaers counted 227,805 reports of adverse reactions following anticovid vaccines, including 4,201 deaths and 18,528 serious incidents (Megan Redshaw on May 21, 20216 ).

The latest CDC data shows that there are 943 reports of adverse events after COVID vaccines  among 12 to 17 year olds.

Of the 4,201 deaths reported as of May 14, 23% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination, 16% occurred within 24 hours, and 38% in people who became ill within 48 hours of vaccination.

VAERS data shows:

20% of deaths were linked to heart problems,

54% of those who died were men, 44% were women, and other death reports did not include the gender of the deceased.

The mean age of death was 74.7 years and the youngest reported deaths include two 15-year-olds (VAERS ID 1187918 and 1242573) and one 16-year-old (VAERS ID 1225942).

Other deaths in children under the age of 16 have been reported and could not be confirmed or contained obvious errors.

As of May 14,  1,140 pregnant women had reported adverse reactions related to Covid vaccines, including 351 cases of miscarriage or premature birth.

Of the 2,275 reported cases of Bell’s facial palsy, 51% were reported after Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinations, 42% after vaccination with Moderna vaccine, and 192 cases, or 10%, of Bell’s palsy were reported. jointly with J&J.

There have been 195 reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome with 40% of cases attributed to Pfizer, 38% to Moderna and 26% to J&J.

There were 65,854 reports of anaphylaxis with 38% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine, 51% to Moderna and 11% to J&J.

There have been 3,758 reports of bleeding disorders and other related conditions. Of these, 1,468 reports were attributed to Pfizer, 1,093 reports to Moderna and 1,093 reports to J&J.

According to the article from Childrenshealthdefense.org  commenting on these results:

“COVID vaccines may not work for millions of people with underlying illnesses. Some experts question the CDC’s recommendation that immunocompromised people get vaccinated after new research 15% to 80% of people with underlying health conditions and those taking immunosuppressive drugs show few antibodies, if any, against COVID vaccines.

Yet current CDC guidelines indicate that people with weakened immune systems should be vaccinated against COVID even though “no data is available to establish the safety and effectiveness of the COVID vaccine in these groups” because people with weakened immune systems or those taking immunosuppressants for a medical condition have been largely excluded from clinical trials of vaccines  ”.

“  Dr Meryl Nass, a physician in internal medicine, said it is the responsibility of the CDC to determine the risks and benefits of each vaccine for different groups of people. For COVID vaccines, Nass said, the CDC has not released this information, or told the public which groups might be at a higher risk of experiencing an adverse reaction that far outweighs any potential benefit  .

Responsibility of the employer who would require the vaccine in the USA

Employers could be held responsible for “any adverse reaction” if they imposed anti-Covid vaccination.

“If you require your employees to be vaccinated as a condition of employment (i.e. for work-related reasons), any adverse reaction to the Covid-19 vaccine is work-related. The adverse reaction is recorded if it is a new case under 29 CFR 1904.6 and meets one or more of the general criteria for registration in 29 CFR 1904.7.

“Conversely, OSHA7  said it will exercise discretion in law enforcement and will not require that adverse reactions be recorded when an employer only “recommends” that employees receive the vaccine, while noting that for this discretion to apply, the vaccine must be truly voluntary ”.

To determine if a vaccine is “voluntary,” the website states that 

“An employee’s choice to accept or reject the vaccine cannot affect [his] performance rating or career advancement” and that an “employee who chooses not to receive the vaccine cannot be affected. repercussions of this choice ”.

Childrenhealthdefense commentary on musician Eric Clapton’s drama

Eric Clapton blames propaganda for serious adverse reactions to AstraZeneca. On May 17, The Defender reported that Eric Clapton, 76, suffered a serious adverse reaction after receiving AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine that left him worried he would never play again.

“Needless to say, the reactions were disastrous, my hands and feet were frozen, numb or burning, and pretty much useless for two weeks. I was afraid I would never play again, said Clapton. “But the propaganda said the vaccine was safe for everyone.”

Days after Clapton’s criticism of vaccine “propaganda”, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. vaccine makers are sponsoring advertising campaigns targeting about a third of Americans who are reluctant to get vaccinated against Covid.

Pfizer, Moderna, Regeneron and other pharmaceutical companies are sponsoring TV, radio and social media ads praising vaccines and Covid drugs in a bid to increase vaccinations. Unlike ads for drugs where brand names are featured, general “get the vaccine ” ads  do not have to follow legal guidelines, which include a list of potential side effects of the drug.8

74 days and counting, CDC ignores Defender’s investigations

According to the CDC website:

“CDC is following up on any death report to request additional information and learn more about what happened and to determine if the death is the result of the vaccine or if it is unrelated “.

“On March 8, The Defender contacted the CDC with a written list of questions about reported deaths and accidents related to COVID vaccines. After repeated attempts by phone and email to get our questions answered, a health communications specialist from the CDC Vaccine Working Group contacted us on March 29, three weeks after our initial investigation.

The person received our request for information from VAERS, but said they never received our list of questions, although employees we spoke to on several occasions said CDC press officers were working through the questions and confirmed that the rep had received them. We provided the list of questions again with a new deadline, but never received a response.

The Defender also followed up with the CDC’s media department, who told us that the COVID response unit would be notified that the health communications specialist never responded . No explanation was given as to why our requests were ignored. We were told to call back, which we have done on numerous occasions.

On May 19, a CDC employee said our questions had been reviewed and our investigation was pending in their system, but would not provide us with a copy of the response. It’s been 74 days since we sent our first email to inquire about VAERS data and reports.

Children’s Health Defense is asking anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction to any vaccine to file a report ”.

In conclusion: it is very difficult to have information, but known elements are already major: for example the fact that the number of deaths listed in three months after Covid vaccines has already reached that of the recorded in 21 years in the USA for all other vaccines.

Let us also remember that the bird flu vaccine in 1976 was withdrawn after 53 deaths and the H1N1 vaccine in 2009 after 57 deaths. Obviously the world of vigilance and security has changed scale.

In conclusion, very provisional

They are teachers, doctors, lawyers, artists, policemen, scientists, psychologists, essayists, journalists and others.

Faced with the current situation, they appeal to all of us.

A call for civil resistance and the awakening of conscience:

“Alone we go faster. Together we go further. African proverb “

AND PLEASE REMEMBER THAT THIS IS GENETIC SUBSTANCES (in no case conventional vaccines) in a therapeutic trial

Dr Nicole Delépine

Notes:

[1]  Massacre: More than 10,000 Europeans KILLED by COVID-19 Vaccines According to Official EU Data

[2]  Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards – DAP (europa.eu)

[3]  https://www.lepopulaire.fr/limoges-87000/actualites/vaccins-covid-19-environ-4-000-declarations-d-effets-secondaires-en-limousin_13956157/?

[4]  Covid-19: the vaccine would have a side effect on the rules (aufeminin.com) [ ↩]

[5]  Latest CDC Data Show Reports of Adverse Events After COVID Vaccines Surpass 200,000, Including 943 Among 12- to 17-Year-Olds • Children’s Health Defense (childrenshealthdefense.org)

[6]  https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/vaers-cdc-adverse-events-covid-vaccines-surpass-200000/

[7]  Occupational Safety and Health Administration – Wikipedia (wikipedia.org)
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is a United States federal government agency   whose mission is the prevention of injuries, illnesses and deaths in the context of  work . To do this, it issues  regulations  for  occupational health and safety . OSHA was established by the Occupational Safety and Health Act  (in)  1970, a major safety laws at work in the United States. OSHA has developed the 29 CFR Process Safety Management (PSM) Standard, “Process Safety Management of Very Hazardous Chemicals”.

[8]  The rush for vaccines, a huge organized manipulation? – New World (nouveau-monde.ca)

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First published by GR on August 3, 2020

The USA failed State continues to seek destruction of Nicaragua (among other nations such as Venezuela, Cuba, Syria and Iran, who refuse to obey US demands for neoliberal privatization that enrich the already rich.

Introduction

George Washington, who waged scorched Earth warfare Against the Iroquois Indigenous in the 1770s, 1780s, and 1790s, was described by the Iroquois Chiefs as the “Town Destroyer” as he had left dozens of their towns in ashes (one of which was my Finger Lakes hometown of Geneva, NY, then called Kanadesaga). His orders: “total destruction and devastation of their settlements”, “ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more”, “lay waste all the settlements … that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed”, “our future security will be in their inability to injure us and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them”.[1]  His orders were successfully carried out with joy, as his officers toasted to their mantra, “Civilization or death to all American savages”.[2]

The US has never stopped destroying, and its obscene military budget today is all about technology designed to destroy the people and nations of the Earth, and the Earth herself.

Nicaragua Today: US has launched a brazen, criminal and arrogant plan to overthrow Nicaragua’s government. A well orchestrated plan financed by the United States to launch a coup d’état in Nicaragua over the next two years was leaked in a document from the US embassy and presented July 31, 2020 by Nicaraguan journalist William Grigsby on his political analysis program “Sin Fronteras”, on Radio La Primerísima. The new coup plan is in response to the fact that the US realizes President Daniel Ortega will likely win the November 2021 elections. The 18-page document (RFTOP No: 72052420R00004) has the title RAIN (Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua).  The document describes contracting with a US company (Blackwater or its successor?) to take charge of carrying out the coup, whose purpose is to implement blatantly criminal plans to destroy public order and do other violent actions before, during and/or after the 2021 elections.  USAID (US Agency for International Development) will continue to fund these destabilizing activities, using local partners: public opinion analysts, media, businesspersons, NGOs, students, and social networks to orchestrate false news reports. USAID provided millions of dollars to fund the 2018 US-attempted coup operators against Nicaragua.

Image on the right: US Ambassador to Nicaragua, Kevin K. Sullivan, 57-years-old

If the opposition were to win the elections the new government must immediately submit to the policies and guidelines established by the United States, including persecution of Sandinistas, dissolving the National Police and the Army, among other institutions. The document seeks to aggravate the pandemic which is well under control, no thanks to the US-imposed sanctions. The opposition has already received more than $31 million from the United States between the end of 2017 and May 1, 2020. The document also details the participation of the US Embassy in Managua, under leadership of US Ambassador Kevin K. Sullivan, who will be in charge of executing a series of diplomatic actions such as the creation of a commission to delegitimize the ousted government while legitimizing the new government imposed by a coup d’état.

Remember the name Sullivan relating to US efforts in 2020-21 to overthrow the democratically elected sovereign government of Nicaragua.

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Brian Willson is a Viet Nam veteran and trained lawyer. He has visited a number of countries examining the effects of US policy. He wrote a psychohistorical memoir, Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson (PM Press, 2011), and in 2018 wrote Don’t Thank Me for my Service: My Viet Nam Awakening to the Long History of US Lies(Clarity Press). He is featured in a 2016 documentary, Paying the Price for Peace: The Story of S. Brian Willson, and others in the Peace Movement, (Bo Boudart Productions). His web essays: brianwillson.com. He can be reached: [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

[1] John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of George Washington. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1936), XV, 189-193; Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), 331.

[2] Ray Raphael, Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past (New York: The New Press, 2004), 229.

All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated

Meatball Subs, Not Nuclear Subs

June 26th, 2021 by Frida Berrigan

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.

***

Groton and New London, Connecticut, are home to about 65,000 people, three colleges, the Coast Guard Academy, 15 nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarines capable of destroying the world many times over, and General Dynamics’ Electric Boat, a multi-billion-dollar private corporation that offers stock options to its shareholders and mega-salaries to its top executives as it pockets taxpayer dollars and manufactures yet more of those stealthy, potentially world-ending machines. Whew!  That was a long sentence!

Naval Submarine Base New London stretches along the east side of the Thames River, straddling the towns of Groton and Ledyard. Occupying at least 680 acres, the base has more than 160 major facilities. The 15 subs based there are the largest contingent in the nation. They’re manufactured just down the river at Electric Boat/General Dynamics, which once built the Polaris and Trident nuclear submarines, employs more than 12,000 people in our region, and is planning to hire another 2,400 this year to meet a striking “demand” for the newest version of such subs.

Some readers might already be asking themselves: Are submarines still a thing? Do we really still put men (and women) far beneath the ocean’s surface in a giant metal tube, ready to launch a nuclear first strike at a moment’s notice? At a time when the greatest threats to human life may be viruses hidden in our own exhales, our infrastructure is crumbling, and so much else is going wrong, are we really spending billions of dollars on submarines?

Yes!

Back in 2010, the Department of Defense’s Nuclear Posture Review called for a “recapitalization of the nation’s sea-based deterrent,” as though we hadn’t been spending anything on submarines previously.  To meet that goal, the Obama administration, the Trump administration, and now the Biden administration all agreed that, on a planet already filled with devastating nuclear weapons, the U.S. must begin construction of a new class of 12 Columbia ballistic missile submarines.

The Navy’s 2021 budget submission estimates that the total procurement cost for that 12-ship class of subs will be $109.8 billion. However, even a number that big might prove nothing but rough back-of-the-napkin figuring. After all, according to the Navy’s 2022 request, the cost estimate for the first submarine of the 12 they plan to build, the lead ship in its new program, had already grown from $14.39 billion to $15.03 billion.  Now, that may not sound like a lot, but string out all those zeros behind it and you’ll realize that the difference is more than $640 million, just a little less than what Baltimore — a city of more than 600,000 people — will get in federal pandemic relief aid.

Swirling around those submarines are descriptions citing “strategy” and “capability.” But don’t be fooled: they’ll be potential world killers. Each of those 12 new subs will be armed with 16 Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, or SLBMs, which have a range of 4,500 miles and can carry 14 W-76-1 thermonuclear warheads. Each one of those warheads is six times more powerful than the atomic bomb that the U.S. military detonated over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Start multiplying 12 times 16 times 14 times 6 and there isn’t enough world to destroy with math like that. After all, the single Hiroshima bomb, “small” as it was, killed an estimated 140,000 people and turned the city into rubble and ash.

The best way to understand the Columbia class submarine, then, is as a $100 billion-plus initiative that aims to deliver 16,128 Hiroshimas.

Submarine Capital of the World

My family and I live in New London and evidence of the military is everywhere here. There’s a cannon planted amid the roses at the entrance to the motel right off the highway near our house. And another in front of the laundromat. Huge American flags flap at the car dealership that offers special financing to Navy personnel.

Signs declaring New London/Groton to be the “Submarine Capital of the World” festoon the highways into town. The huge naval submarine base and the General Dynamics/Electric Boat yards dominate the Groton side of the Thames River. There’s a massive garage for half-built submarines, painted a very seventies shade of green, that chews up most of the scenery on the Groton side of the river, alongside cranes and docks and industrial buildings in various hues of grey. It’s dismal. New London’s waterfront homes and private beaches look out on three generations of military-industrial-complex architecture. We wouldn’t want to live in Groton, but at least they feast their eyes on our quaint downtown and the parks that stretch along our side of the river.

On the New London side, General Dynamics/Electric Boat looks more like a corporate campus than a shipyard. It employs a lot of people, but there are still plenty of New Londoners who work at jobs that have nothing to do with the military or the business of building and designing submarines. Unfortunately, that seems to be changing, because General Dynamics is ramping up its engineering and manufacturing operations in order to build that new fleet of submarines.

Local developers smell money in the air, which means that our downtown is getting a makeover intended to attract the sort of young professionals who will design and oversee the production of those subs. A new development right near New London’s General Dynamics complex is now renting studio apartments for $1,300 a month, even though ours is the fifth poorest city in Connecticut.

Side Bonus? Killer Kitsch

An uproar of protest over our rampant version of local militarism rose to a sustained din in the 1970s and 1980s but has since dulled to a whisper, despite regular protest vigils and demonstrations carried out by a stalwart handful of people. It’s tough to understand since the danger is still so imminent. After all, the symbolic Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists now stands at 100 seconds to nuclear midnight, as close as it’s ever been in its 70 years of existence. Meanwhile, the United States will once again spend staggering sums on its military in fiscal year 2022.

The upside? Our local thrift stops are full of the strange kitsch that comes with military occupation. I drink my morning coffee out of a white mug that commemorates Electric Boat’s 1987 Christmas Blood Drive, emblazoned with a red drop of blood, the company’s logo, and the phrase “I give so that others may live.”

I’m a lifelong pacifist, the child of people who, as protesters, climbed over fences and cut through locks in order to enter U.S. weapons facilities like that naval base at Groton. I spent my childhood at the Pentagon, where, a few times a year, my parents and our friends made elaborate spectacles out of blood and ash and cardboard tombstones, leaving Pentagon workers to walk through the muck and mess, tracking it into the headquarters of the Department of Defense. And yet I’ll confess to you, in the privacy of TomDispatch, that I do have a genuine weakness for military kitsch.

My husband is a lifelong pacifist, too. His parents went to malls to hold “Stop War Toys” demonstrations and entered toy stores to put “this glorifies violence” stickers on G.I. Joe and Rambo dolls. He spent his summers outside Electric Boat in Groton. His family and their friends went to the commissionings and christenings of newly built subs, holding protest signs, blocking the entrances, and trying to leaflet the well-dressed guests coming to those strange ceremonies with oddly Christian baptismal overtones to them. And yet (or do I mean, and so?) he loves military kitsch, too. As a result, whenever we go to our local Goodwill, Salvation Army store, or neighborhood yard sales, we invariably keep a lookout for mugs and beer glasses from our corner of the military-industrial complex.

It’s the ultimate in-joke for us. Such killer kitsch helps us manage our deep discomfort with living in a militarized community.

One made-in-China coffee mug of relatively recent vintage that we own, for instance, has a picture on one side of a submarine and the phrase “Virginia Class: Confronting the Challenge, Driving Out Cost.” The other reads: “Designed for Affordability: General Dynamics, Electric Boat.”

That second mug always makes me snicker because the Virginia Class submarines were built by Electric Boat in New London/Groton in collaboration with Newport News Shipbuilding, part of Huntington Ingalls in Virginia.

Those boats cost a mere $3.45 billion each and that “two-yard strategy” — Connecticut and Virginia — was meant to keep both of those corporate entities from financial disaster. (“Afloat” is the word that comes to mind.) However, it made for an even more expensive product as partially assembled submarines had to be floated laboriously up and down the Eastern seaboard. According to Ronald O’Rourke of the Congressional Research Service, “A primary aim of the arrangement was to minimize the cost of building Virginia-class boats at a relatively low annual rate in two shipyards (rather than entirely in a single shipyard) while preserving key submarine-construction skills at both shipyards.” Not likely, as it turned out. Then again, what weapons-building project doesn’t have staggering cost overruns in twenty-first-century America?

Honestly, can you imagine the federal government contracting with Hershey and Nestle to collaborate on a gigantic new candy bar and then paying extra for it because their workers needed to pass the product back and forth between their factories, hundreds of miles apart? Such thoughts regularly occur to me as I drink my morning coffee out of that hilariously labelled “Designed for Affordability” mug. The anger that follows is like a second jolt of caffeine!

Happy Hour?

Speaking of rage, we drink our happy-hour beers out of glasses commemorating the USS Pittsburgh, SSN 720. That Los Angeles class submarine was commissioned in 1985 and was one of two that launched Tomahawk Cruise missiles at Iraq during 1991’s Gulf War.

The beer glasses make me think of the dingy strip of bars right outside the main gate of the Electric Boat shipyard in Groton. They’re all closed now, but in the 1970s heyday of submarine manufacturing, bars like El Bolero (shortened to The Elbow) and Elfie’s served the shipyard workers and submariners alike. The lunch crowd was thick, the bar full of small glasses of beer, and the workers would drop dollar bills in garbage cans as they filed out and back across the street to work. Those bars estimated then that they made more in their daily lunchtime dollar-bill rushes than other local bars and restaurants made in a week.

At some point, the higher-ups at Electric Boat grew embarrassed by the daily spectacle of drunken workers, beer bottles littering the curbs, regular fender-benders, and the fights that tend to accompany excessive drinking. Their solution? They stopped letting the workers leave for lunch.

As a younger person, I imagined that daytime drinking served to dull the cognitive dissonance of working people who put food on the table for their children by welding the machines that threatened all children anywhere on this planet. As I grow older, however, I wonder if such daytime drinking wasn’t just fun.

The Small No

Another way we manage our discomfort with our local version of the military-industrial complex and what it means for this country and this planet is to be a small but visible “No” amid the ubiquity of militarism in this town, amid all those chubby, cute submarines that adorn our public spaces.

We stand on a bleak street corner near the base for at least an hour once a week to protest the world we find ourselves in. It’s admittedly a small thing, but we do it without fail. Souped-up trucks and fast cars with custom paint jobs rev their engines as they pass, cutting that corner uncomfortably close, while tossing gravel in their wake. The vehicles are mostly driven by clean-cut young men, often in the uniform of the Groton-New London Naval Submarine base. They’re off for an hour of freedom at the newly completed, squeaky-clean Chipotle up the hill or the seedy Mynx Cabaret across the street. If we have staying power, we’ll see the Chipotle crew come tearing back down the hill at the end of that hour.

On one corner is a grimy little liquor store with a big parking lot, the kind of place that should make you question your drinking habits. (If I don’t have a problem, why am I parked here?) On the second corner is an empty lot with the vestiges of a once-thriving car-repair shop. The third has a truck rental company, the signpost of a transitory community. And sure enough, the license plates on the cars streaming into the base hail from Navy-centered communities like ours around the country.

Route 12 is a mini-highway where cars regularly hit 70 miles an hour as they roar up the hill. We’re desperately small and slow by comparison. My mother paces the sidewalk, I stand still, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, while our friend Cal Robertson sits. A Vietnam Veteran, he came back from that long-gone war physically unscathed but deeply disturbed by everything he witnessed and experienced.

Cal holds a sign emblazoned with this question: “What About the Children?” Some cars honk in response.  My guess: not so much in support of his message as in recognition of his regular presence over these long decades. My mother and I are interlopers, occasional sign holders counting down the minutes, but Cal — comfortable in a walker than converts to a chair — could do this all day.

My mother holds a simple sign that reads “No Nukes.” For the men in trucks headed out to lunch, I painted on mine: “Meatball Subs, not Nuclear Submarines.” It receives an occasional nod or grin. And in the meantime, in our very community, the place where I’m raising my kids, the military-industrial complex continues to invest in and build vessels meant only for the end of the world.

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Frida Berrigan is the author of It Runs In The Family: On Being Raised by Radicals and Growing into Rebellious Motherhood. She is a TomDispatch regular and writes the Little Insurrections column for WagingNonviolence.Org. She has three children and lives in New London, Connecticut, where she is a gardener and community organizer.

Featured image: Protest against nuclear weapons (Creative Commons)

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Earlier this month, NewYork-Presbyterian became the first hospital system in the state to require employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19. It’s a step that a growing number of hospitals across the country are taking, but one that 1199SEIU, the largest health care union in the country, is prepared to fight.

“Whether there is a legal challenge that we can make, or whether it’s just a pure organizational challenge that we can make, we are not going to just give in,” George Gresham, president of 1199SEIU, told WNYC/Gothamist. The union is headquartered in New York City but represents health care workers throughout the state and in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida and Washington, D.C.

Gresham emphasized that he got vaccinated and has encouraged all union members to do so, but that he believes medical workers “have the right to make their decision about their own health.” Gresham said union delegates met with Dr. Steve Corwin, president and CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian, to express their concerns last week.

Another health care union, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), has voiced opposition to mandatory vaccination, although it did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Likewise, when WNYC/Gothamist contacted NewYork-Presbyterian to respond to the unions’ stances, it pointed to a memo sent to staff on June 11th. The memo says all employees must take at least one COVID-19 shot by September 1st to keep their jobs. Those seeking a medical or religious exemption must apply for one by August 1st. About 70% of staff at NewYork-Presbyterian have been vaccinated so far.

“The stakes in this matter are high, and the evidence is clear that getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is the most important and responsible action we can take as NYP team members for the safety and well-being of our patients and visitors, our communities, and ourselves,” read the memo, signed by Dr. Corwin and Dr. Laura Forese, chief operating officer at NewYork-Presbyterian.

Other hospitals in the New York City area are considering similar policies. Northwell Health, the largest hospital system in the state, requires all new hires, volunteers and students working in its facilities to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and will soon order employees who are not inoculated to submit to regular testing for the coronavirus. About 75% of Northwell staff have taken shots so far.

Meanwhile, only 57% of employees at NYC Health + Hospitals are fully vaccinated, but the city’s public hospital system has no plans to make the shots a condition of employment. The COVID-19 vaccine rollout has stalled in the city and nationwide, even as the delta variant causes new outbreaks in highly inoculated populations overseas.

Health care employers considering these mandates may be encouraged by a recent ruling in Texas. Last week, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit in which employees of Houston Methodist Hospital challenged the health care provider’s vaccine requirement. Ultimately, 153 people resigned or were fired over their refusal to get the vaccine, according to The Washington Post. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has also issued guidance saying it’s legal for employers to necessitate staff to get vaccinated in order to enter the workplace.

Gresham of 1199 says that the union’s members are overwhelmingly against mandatory vaccination, even if they have taken shots themselves. But not all NewYork-Presbyterian employees share the position of the health care unions.

One nurse in the hospital system, who is an NYSNA member, said there “needs to be more education to encourage employees to get it, with an emphasis on its safety.”

But the nurse, who declined to be named because she is not authorized to speak to the press, said she was happy about the hospital’s requirement. “We are mandated to have so many other vaccines to protect our patients as well as our colleagues and ourselves,” she said.

NewYork-Presbyterian noted in its memo to employees that it already has vaccination requirements for the flu, measles, rubella and varicella. While considered safe, the COVID-19 vaccines are still classified under emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and are awaiting full approval.

Other health care institutions may also consider a similar caveat to public universities in New York, which will only require COVID-19 vaccines for students for the fall semester if one receives FDA approval by then.

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Featured image: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Washington Heights AJAY_SURESH VIA FLICKR

American Medicine, American Malfeasance

June 26th, 2021 by Dr. Gary Null

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An issue that is rarely discussed or given serious attention is the over-specialization in healthcare.  Modern medicine’s approach to identify and treat illnesses and tackle the reduction of infections has in many instances ceased to be multidisciplinary. Medicine has also become increasingly compartmentalized and confined to a rigid materialistic belief system that has now established its own set of standards, criteria and values that are often contrary to gold-standard scientific protocols. The consequence is that its narrow single-mindedness has insulated modern medicine from objective criticism and preserved its internal flaws, errors and fabrications, which have contributed to the unnecessary injury and death of countless patients

US healthcare spending reached $3.8 trillion in 2019.  Due to the Covid pandemic, expenditures for 2020 will be astronomically higher. One might expect that with the world’s most expensive healthcare system, the US would equally have the best evidence-based practices to keep its citizens healthy. By now we should be proficiently expert at preventing and reversing disease, while making minimal errors resulting in injury or death. However, the exact opposite is the case. Instead of minimizing disease-causing factors, American medicine causes more illness through misguided diagnostic testing, overuse of medical and surgical procedures, and over prescribing pharmaceutical drugs. The fundamental reason for this catastrophe is that today’s healthcare establishment, and corporate science in general, over relies on profit-generating motives.

Dr. Peter Gotzsche is arguably recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts in evaluating evidence-based medicine (EBM). As the co-founder of EBM’s preeminent flagship organization – the Cochrane Collaboration — to review and analyze peer-reviewed clinical research, he is intimately knowledgeable about the widespread corruption permeating the pharmaceutical industry and medical journals.  In his book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime, he writes,

“The reason why we take so many drugs is that drug companies do not sell drugs. They sell lies about drugs…. The patients do not realize that although their doctors know a lot about diseases, human physiology and psychology, they know very little about the drugs that have been concocted and dressed up by the drug industry.”

After we take a fair and objective look at American medicine during the past five decades, especially at the statistics of iatrogenic fatalities, or deaths caused by prescribed medications and medical error, our healthcare establishment is found to be anything but benign.  Despite its many noteworthy discoveries and merits, a substantial amount of recommended medical practice has failed patients. “If the medical system were a bank,” writes Dr. Stephen Persell at Northwestern University’s School of Medicine, “you wouldn’t deposit your money here, because there would be an error every one-in-two to one-in-three times you made a transaction.” Dr. Persell is referring to the rates of preventable medical errors causing patients serious injury and now the third leading cause of death.

There is excellent evidence to support the argument that iatrogenic deaths have passed cancer fatalities and are now challenging heart disease for the number one spot. A 2008 study found as many as half of adverse events reported by patients were not recorded in their hospital charts.  As of 2017, investigations continue to find that less than 10% of medical errors are reported. Reported adverse effects vary depending on the specialty and frequently go unnoticed or are improperly evaluated. An additional study found that almost two thirds of cardiologists had refused to report a serious error they had direct personal knowledge of to an authority.

As one example, heart disease is America’s leading cause of fatality, accounting for 665,000 deaths annually.  The CDC, which consistently undermines health threats if it means positioning itself in opposition to private commercial interests, estimates that 34 percent of cardiovascular fatalities are premature and preventable. In contrast, the American Heart Association claims 80 percent are preventable.  What are the heads of our federal health agencies doing to advocate on the side of prevention?  Little to nothing.

There is no realistic and science-based national policy in place to lessen cardiovascular, cancer and diabetic death rates. Since the most viable and effective means to prevent these diseases are natural and within every person’s means, it is not financially lucrative to divert federal funding away from pharmaceutical treatments and surgical procedures. The CDC and FDA are largely dependent upon monetary income received from the drug and medical device industries.

Earlier we reported about the systemic corruption and fraud that has plagued the CDC and FDA for decades. It would be far cheaper to completely empty, dismantle, fumigate and rebuild the agencies anew rather than continue exerting pressure for reforms, which have only perpetuated a killing spree by protecting life-threatening drugs, vaccines and unnecessary medical procedures. Dr. Gotzsche notes, the same is true for private drug companies.  Despite the numerous lawsuits drug companies have lost in federal courts, nothing has fundamentally changed in order to deter them from illegal activities to increase profits.  In fact, the cost of paying out settlements and settling lawsuits is factored into the expense of doing business.

A decade ago, we teamed up with three board-certified physicians to undertake the task to review the peer-reviewed literature in order to recalculate the statistics from many branches of medicine in order to arrive at a more realistic casualty rate due to medical error. We began with a basic question. Do the current standards of American medical practice and its supporting science prove that the recommended therapies and healthcare protocols – whether drugs, surgery, diagnostic methods, medical devices, etc – are actually effective? And if so, at what cost to the patients’ health and well-being?

Our results and final conclusions were startling and culminated in the release of a widely read and referenced book, Death by Medicine. We made every effort to avoid editorial commentary to our findings. We decided to only report the statistics and facts with our calculations. The fact that our data placed iatrogenic error as the number one cause of death in America was alone sufficient. What was novel in our analysis was that we included preventable deaths, such as certain infections and severe nutrient deficiency, which could have been easily corrected by clinicians and medical personnel if viable prevention programs had been part of our healthcare system. After publication the book was sent to hundreds of journalists, federal officials and non-profit medical organizations. It was completely ignored by the orthodoxy; however, it became increasingly popular among alternative and complementary medical physicians who were already fully aware of the structural dangers to public health within conventional medical care.

Revisiting American medicine’s legacy of iatrogenic deaths is now more crucial than ever because the same behaviors that have contributed to the nation’s leading cause of death are being repeated during the Covid-19 pandemic. The government and federal health officials are in reprehensible denial of inexpensive and highly effective drugs, such as Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, to treat early and middle stage SARS-2 infections. Cases of Covid infections and deaths have been grossly exaggerated.  And now we are realizing that the efficacy and safety profiles of the vaccines are orchestrated scams.  As a result, the entire institutional edifice to vaccinate the global population is destined to become the greatest scandal of the 21st century.

Unfortunately, nobody can acquire accurate statistics for Covid-19 vaccine associated injuries and deaths from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). Careful weekly monitoring of VAERS’ adverse event updates convince us that the entire system is criminally rigged.  CDC officials overseeing the database are undoubtedly fudging numbers after ratio of adverse events, including deaths, per number of doses administered are compared to the more robust and accurate EudraVigilance database in the European Union and the less reliable Yellow Card System in the UK.

As of June 17, VAERS was reporting 329,021 injuries and 5,888 deaths due to the Covid vaccines. The database’s most recent update is reporting an additional 26,541 injuries but 1,972 less deaths. How can this sudden disappearance of almost 2,000 deaths be accounted for? The mysterious loss of fatality entries occurred during the same week as a CDC working group of outside medical professionals was reviewing an association between the mRNA vaccines and the rising number of reported cases of cardiac inflammation or myocarditis. The group concluded that there is indeed “a likely association.”  The occasion of deleted deaths in VAERS is also on the heels of the Israeli Shamir Medical Center report that Pfizer’s vaccine is linked with occurrences of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, an autoimmune disorder associated with a rare form of blood clotting. However, despite weekly local news stories around the nation about youth as young as 19 years of age dying of vaccine complications shortly after receipt of an mRNA vaccine, the CDC is claiming that all 1,200 persons, between 16-24 years of age, recovered and no deaths were reported.  Does this account for the likely scrubbing of entries in VAERS?

But it is much worse. We only need to look at the European Union’s statistics for adverse Covid-19 vaccine events and compare that with VAERS and the CDC’s recent conclusion to realize there is a massive cover-up in our government’s efforts to sanitize the safety record of Covid vaccines.  As of this week the EudraVigilance system is reporting over 1.5 million injuries and 15,472 deaths. Within those figures, 28,583 injuries and 1,862 deaths are from cardiac complications such as myocarditis.

Second, the EU and US have administered approximately the same number of Covid vaccine doses, roughly 409 million and 379 million respectively. Therefore we should expect to find a similar dose-to-injury ratio. Again we discover the CDC gaming the nation’s reporting system to lessen the perception of lethal risks. Based upon the EU ratio we can conservatively estimate that a minimum of 14,300 Americans have been killed by the vaccines so far. If we go back a week before the CDC scrubbed entries in VAERS, it would be over 17,000 Covid vaccine deaths.  The actual number of Americans suffering adverse reactions would be 1.4 million.

In other words the EU is reporting 4 times more vaccine injuries and deaths than American health officials.  In both the US and EU, Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine accounts for the majority of these casualties. Unless the Covid-19 vaccines engineer a personal vendetta against people holding EU passports, these numbers don’t add up.

Before the arrival of the Covid vaccines, Merck’s anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx was widely regarded as the single largest pharmaceutical catastrophe in American medical history. The drug should never have been approved and licensed in the first place; and, Merck knew beforehand that the drug would be lethal and concealed that documentation from FDA regulators. Vioxx was on the market for five years before being withdrawn. At the time of the federal class action lawsuit against Merck, FDA epidemiologist Dr. David Graham estimated the drug had killed 60,000 patients due to heart attacks and strokes.  Since the majority of deaths were among elderly patients, a later report by the American Conservative predicted that upwards to half a million patients may have died from the drug over the course of a longer period. Yet during those years Merck was cashing in $2 billion annually from Vioxx sales, earning over double its eventual $4.8 billion fine after being found guilty.

To put this into a broader perspective, the Covid vaccines have only been distributed for six months and have now contributed to a realistic 17,000 deaths or upwards towards 30,000 this year alone. Since the vaccines’ immunity quickly wanes and it seems certain they provide little protection against new SARS-2 strains, health officials are already recommending regular booster shots.  Similar to a prescription medication, those who buy into the vaccine propaganda hype are in principle relying upon these vaccines for life or until such time the virus resides into just a seasonal nuisance.  Consequently iatrogenic vaccine injuries and deaths may likely continue at current rates during forthcoming years.  The Covid-19 vaccines are on track to outpace the conservative number of Vioxx deaths over three-fold and even modern medicine’s most deadly drugCerivastatin, manufactured by Bayer in the late 1990s and responsible for over 100,000 deaths during the four-year period it was on the market.  In short time, Covid vaccines will be the deadliest drug to have emerged from Big Pharma.

A study published in the Journal of Patient Safety estimated that 400,000 unnecessary and preventable deaths occur annually in American hospitals alone. At that rate, it is not surprising that the large majority of deaths ruled as SARS-2 infections happened in hospitals. If our federal health officials had been competent, and less compromised by the demands and influence of drug makers, most of these fatalities likely would never have occurred.

It has been estimated that US taxpayers have paid out $39 billion for Covid-19 vaccine development, funding and towards nationalized response measures. Most of this has been horribly wasted after we consider other options on hand to curve the pandemic but were categorically ignored. “In the case of vaccines in general,” the journal Health Affairs observed,

“the government often plays an outsized role, but in the era of Covid-19 the government’s role was even more central than usual. The government essentially removed the bulk of traditional industry risks related to vaccine development: a) scientific failures, b) failures to demonstrate safety and efficacy, c) manufacturing risks, and d) Market risks related to low demand.”

While this may shock and disturb a rational person, Health Affairs – a thoroughly orthodox medical publication – applauds the government’s negligent measures as “money well spent.”

For this reason it is crucial to understand the terrible decisions made during the Covid pandemic in the context of modern medicine’s past crimes and preventable failures. In the coming months Anthony Fauci’s reputation will become further tainted. We might predict he will resign as more evidence of incompetence emerges, and, in our opinion, perhaps criminal negligence in his handling of the pandemic and efforts to whitewash the US’s role in supporting gain of function research leading to the genetic engineering of the SARS-2 virus.  Fortunately, unlike past scandals when misguided medical decisions were responsible for thousands of unnecessary disabilities and deaths, numerous doctors and scientists worldwide are raising their voices to condemn the lethal policies of the CDC, NIAID, British Health Ministry and the World Health Organization.

So what can we reasonably surmise at this point?  At one time most Americans trusted science, medicine and our healthcare system without question or criticism.  However, today we observe systemic corruption and gross conflicts of interest across same federal health agencies that have also contributed to untold medical errors and deaths prior to SARS-2 arrival. They have weaponized pharmaceutical science and a supplicant braying media supports this perversion of medical facts. Now the drug-happy media is attacking the truth-tellers, the physicians, professors and accomplished journalists who are risking their careers and reputations to bring forth the fallacies in the pandemic narrative. This is one battle that the silent majority can find its voice and courage to step forth and support.

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Richard Gale and Gary Null PhD direct Progressive Radio Network. They are frequent contributors to Global Research.

“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today—my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.”

– Martin Luther King (1967) Beyond Vietnam speech. [1]

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Click to download the audio (MP3 format) 

While some people may live a life well into old age, it is still hard to comprehend their absence when they are gone.

But certain personalities find themselves in a separate category altogether.

Some of these folks in particular were on a quest, or devoted to an idea, to tireless determination to help people, all with uncompromising spirit and clarity.

Some of these people, in fact, are so robust in spirit that through their mere presence they change the atmosphere of an entire room even before they’ve opened their mouths. It is difficult to imagine the room, or for that matter our lives when one of these individuals exit the stage for the final time.

One pleasant reality, however, when such a soul penetrates our midst is that with a wealth of experiences that have fortified his vision, they would enjoy a pocket of immortality through the vast rich memories of his surviving colleagues and friends.

On this week’s special episode of the Global Research News Hour, we will pay tribute to two of these legends who have passed on over the past six months but will still inspire our activism and our knowledge for years to come.

Ramsey Clark died on April 9, 2021 at the ripe old age of 93. He was trained as a lawyer and ultimately became an activist. Formerly serving in the U.S. Department of Justice under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, he retained a commitment to serving people around the world, from Cuba to Palestine to Venezuela to Iraq to American prisons who had suffered as a result of U.S. aggression. In 1992, he founded the International Action Centre to help him stand in solidarity with the world’s population.

Leo Victor Panitch, on the other hand, was an academic with roots in Winnipeg. He died on December 19, 2020 from viral pneumonia associated with COVID-19. He was 75. Panitch was a political scientist who got his PhD in London, England under adviser Ralph Miliband. He was co-editor of The Socialist Register from 1985 to the present, and served in several distinguished positions. But he was also a mentor. He also walked among activists and infused in students a hunger to rethink everything they thought they knew about politics, political organizing and more.

On the show, we will be speaking to colleagues who knew him a long time who can spell out more clearly and fondly the mark he made in their many years of dedicated work.

Sara Flounders is an American political writer who has been active in progressive and anti-war organizing since the 1960s. She is a member of the Secretariat of Workers World Party, as well as a principal leader of the International Action Center. She also frequently writes for Workers World newspaper.

Greg Albo  teaches political economy at the Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto. He is on editorial boards for a number of political economy journals and has submitted to a number of them including Monthly Review, Studies in Political Economy, Canadian Dimension and Socialist Register. He has co-edited of socialist register for a decade now alongside Leo Panitch.

Sam Gindin is a Canadian intellectual and activist known for his expertise on the labour movement and the economics of the automobile industry. He co-wrote with Leo Panitch a number of books including The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (2012), The Socialist Challenge Today (2018), and Global Capitalism and American Empire(2004).

(Global Research News Hour Episode 322)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Other stations airing the show:

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.

CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am. 

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

  1. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence ~ MLK Speech 1967 (crmvet.org) P.2; www.crmvet.org/info/mlk_viet.pdf 
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Watch this video till the end, a statement by the lead lawyer in the alliance of global lawyers going after the criminals involved in the international virus network that started the previous “Swine Flu” Pandemic and now, the current Covid-19 pandemic.

The criminal scientists involved started the “Swine Flu” pandemic (H1N1) and got away with it some years back. They had a precedent to follow. All this criminal action is to reap multi-billion $ profits.

Remember, I disclosed that PFIZER pleaded guilty to the largest medical fraud case in USA in history relating to a drug pushed by Pfizer. So, it is not that such criminals do not exist in the pharmaceutical industry. Watch and Learn and share. (Matthias Chang)

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Author’s Introduction

Déjà Vu

Remember the unusual circumstances surrounding the April 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic.

Media disinformation. An atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Corruption at the highest levels. The data was manipulated.

In July 2009, the WHO Director General predicted with authority that: “as many as 2 billion people could become infected over the next two years — nearly one-third of the world population.” (World Health Organization as reported by the Western media, July 2009).

It was a multibillion bonanza for Big Pharma supported by the WHO’s Director-General Margaret Chan. 

In June 2009, Margaret Chan made the following statement:

“On the basis of … expert assessments of the evidence, the scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic have been met. I have therefore decided to raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from Phase 5 to Phase 6.  The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic. … Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), Press Briefing  11 June 2009)

What “expert assessments”?

In a subsequent statement she confirmed that:

 “Vaccine makers could produce 4.9 billion pandemic flu shots per year in the best-case scenario”,Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), quoted by Reuters, 21 July 2009)

 

A financial windfall for Big Pharma Vaccine Producers including GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Merck & Co., Sanofi,  Pfizer. et al.

Fake News, Fake Statistics, Lies at the Highest Levels of Government

The media went immediately into high gear (without a shred of evidence). Fear and Uncertainty. Public opinion was deliberately misled

Swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren’t successful.” (Official Statement of Obama Administration, Associated Press, 24 July 2009).

“The U.S. expects to have 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available sometime in October”, (Associated Press, 23 July 2009)

Wealthier countries such as the U.S. and Britain will pay just under $10 per dose [of the H1N1 flu vaccine]. … Developing countries will pay a lower price.” [circa $40 billion for Big Pharma?] (Business Week, July 2009)

But the pandemic never happened.

There was no pandemic affecting 2 billion people…

Millions of doses of swine flu vaccine had been ordered by national governments from Big Pharma. Millions of vaccine doses were subsequently destroyed: a financial bonanza for Big Pharma, an expenditure crisis for national governments.

There was no investigation into who was behind this multibillion dollar fraud. 

Several critics said that the H1N1 Pandemic was “Fake”

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a human rights watchdog, is publicly investigating the WHO’s motives in declaring a pandemic. Indeed, the chairman of its influential health committee, epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, has declared that the “false pandemic” is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.” (Forbes, February 10, 2010)

And in January 2010, the WHO responded with the following statement

The fundamental issue we must address pertaining to both present as well as previous public health emergencies:

Can we trust the Western media?

Can we trust the World Health Organization (WHO)?

Can We Trust the pharmaceutical companies?

The same people and institutions including the Gates Foundation, who today are pushing for the COVID-19 vaccine were actively involved in support of the H1N1 vaccine

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, May 2, 2020, June 26, 2021


The following article was published more than 11 years ago on August 25, 2009

It was granted a Project Censored Award, Sonoma State University in 2009-10

The  H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating the Data to Justify a Worldwide Public Health Emergency

by Michel Chossudovsky

August 25, 2009

“Over the course of the next few months, with the assistance of our partners in the private and public sector and at every level of government, we will move aggressively to prepare the nation for the possibility of a more severe outbreak of the H1N1 virus. We will do all we can to plan for different scenarios. We ask the American people to become actively engaged with their own preparation and prevention. It’s a responsibility we all share.”  (US Government Advisory, CDC flu.gov: Vaccines, Vaccine Allocation and Vaccine Research )

A Worldwide public health emergency is unfolding on an unprecedented scale. 4.9 billion doses of H1N1 swine flu vaccine are envisaged by the World Health Organization (WHO).

A report by President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology  “considers the H1N1 pandemic ‘a serious health threat; to the U.S. — not as serious as the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic but worse than the swine flu outbreak of 1976.”:

“It’s not that the new H1N1 pandemic strain is more deadly than previous flu threats, but that it is likely to infect more people than usual because so few people have immunity” (Get swine flu vaccine ready: U.S. advisers)

Responding to the guidelines set by the WHO, preparations for the inoculation of millions of people are ongoing, in the Americas, the European Union, in South East Asia and around the World. Priority has been given to health workers, pregnant women and children. In some countries, the H1N1 vaccination will be compulsory.

In the US, the state governments are responsible for these preparations, in coordination with federal agencies. In the State of Massachusetts, legislation has been introduced which envisages hefty fines and prison sentences for those who refuse to be vaccinated. (See VIDEO; Compulsory Vaccination in America?)

The US military is slated to assume an active role in the public health emergency

Schools and colleges across North America are preparing for mass vaccinations. (See CDC H1N1 Flu | Resources for Schools, Childcare Providers, and Colleges)

In Britain, the Home Office has envisaged the construction of mass graves in response to a rising death toll. The British Home Office report calls for  “increasing mortuary capacity”  An atmosphere of panic and insecurity prevails. (See Michel Chossudovsky Fear, Intimidation & Media Disinformation: U.K Government is Planning Mass Graves in Case of H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic)

Table contained in an official Home Office Report, reported by the British media. The complete report has not been released

Reliability of the Data

The spread of the disease is measured by country-level reports of confirmed and probable cases.

How reliable is this data. Does the data justify a Worldwide public health emergency, including a $40 billion dollar vaccination program which largely favors a handful of pharmaceutical companies? In the US alone, the costs of H1N1 preparedness are of the order of 7.5 billion dollars.( See Flu.gov: Vaccines, Vaccine Allocation and Vaccine Research)

Following the outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu in Mexico, the data collection was at the outset scanty and incomplete, as confirmed by official statements.( See Michel Chossudovsky, Is it the “Mexican Flu”, the “Swine Flu” or the “Human Flu”? Michel Chossudovsky Political Lies and Media Disinformation regarding the Swine Flu Pandemic)

The Atlanta based Center for Disease Control (CDC) acknowledged that what was being collected in the US were figures of  “confirmed and probable cases”. There was, however, no breakdown between “confirmed” and “probable”. In fact, only a small percentage of the reported cases were “confirmed” by a laboratory test.

On the basis of scanty country-level information, the WHO declared a level 4 pandemic on April 27. Two days later, a level 5 Pandemic was announced without corroborating evidence (April 29). A level 6 Pandemic was announced on June 11.

There was no attempt to improve the process of data collection in terms of lab. confirmation. In fact quite the opposite. Following the level 6 Pandemic announcement, both the WHO and the CDC decided that data collection of individual confirmed and probable cases was no longer necessary to ascertain the spread of swine flu.  As of July 10, one month after the announcement of the level six pandemic, the WHO discontinued the collection of  confirmed cases. It does not require member countries to send in figures pertaining to confirmed or probable cases.

WHO will no longer issue the global tables showing the numbers of confirmed cases for all countries.  However, as part of continued efforts to document the global spread of the H1N1 pandemic, regular updates will be provided describing the situation in the newly affected countries. WHO will continue to request that these countries report the first confirmed cases and, as far as feasible, provide weekly aggregated case numbers and descriptive epidemiology of the early cases. (WHO, Briefing note, 2009)

Based on incomplete and scantly data, the WHO nonetheless predicts with authority that: “as many as 2 billion people could become infected over the next two years — nearly one-third of the world population.” (World Health Organization as reported by the Western media, July 2009).

The statements of the WHO are notoriously contradictory. While creating an atmosphere of  fear and insecurity, pointing to am impending global public health crisis, the WHO has also acknowledged that the underlying symptoms are moderate and that “most people will recover from swine flu within a week, just as they would from seasonal forms of influenza” (WHO statement, quoted in the Independent, August 22, 2009).

The WHO’s July 10 guidelines have set the stage for a structure of scantiness and inadequacy with regard to data collection at the national level. National governments of member States of the WHO are not required to corroborate the spread of the A H1N1 swine flu, through laboratory tests.

The WHO table below provides the breakdown by geographical region. These figures, as acknowledged by the WHO are no longer based on corroborated cases, since the governments are not required since July 11 to “test and report individual cases”. In an utterly twisted logic, the WHO posits that because the governments of WHO member countries are not required to test and report individual cases, with a view to ascertaining the spread of the virus, that “the number of cases reported actually understates the real number of cases.” (See note at foot of Table). The question is: what is being reported by the countries?  How does one ascertain that the reported cases are H1N1 as opposed to seasonal influenza?

Map of affected countries and deaths as of 13 August 2009 [png 313kb]

 

TABLE 

*Given that countries are no longer required to test and report individual cases, the number of cases reported actually understates the real number of cases.

Source WHO | Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 – update 62 (revised 21 August 2009)

The WHO confirms that the above data is based on qualitative indicators:

“The qualitative indicators monitor: the global geographic spread of influenza, trends in acute respiratory diseases, the intensity of respiratory disease activity, and the impact of the pandemic on health-care services.”

These qualitative indicators are, according to the WHO, as follows:


TEXT BOX 1

Geographical spread

Geographical spread refers to the number and distribution of sites reporting influenza activity.

– No activity: no laboratory-confirmed case(s) of influenza, or evidence of increased or unusual respiratory disease activity.
– Localized: limited to one administrative unit of the country (or reporting site) only.
– Regional: appearing in multiple but <50% of the administrative units of the country (or reporting sites).
– Widespread: appearing in ≥50% of the administrative units of the country (or reporting sites).
– No information available: no information available for the previous 1-week period.

Trend

Trend refers to changes in the level of respiratory disease activity compared with the previous week.
– Increasing: evidence that the level of respiratory disease activity is increasing compared with the previous week.
– Unchanged: evidence that the level of respiratory disease activity is unchanged compared with the previous week.
– Decreasing: evidence that the level of respiratory disease activity is decreasing compared with the previous week.
– No information available.

• Intensity

The intensity indicator is an estimate of the proportion of the population with acute respiratory disease, covering the spectrum of disease from influenza-like illness to pneumonia.

– Low or moderate: a normal or slightly increased proportion of the population is currently affected by respiratory illness.
– High: a large proportion of the population is currently affected by respiratory illness.
– Very high: a very large proportion of the population is currently affected by respiratory illness.
– No information available.

• Impact

Impact refers to the degree of disruption of health-care services as a result of acute respiratory disease.

– Low: demands on health-care services are not above usual levels.
– Moderate: demands on health-care services are above the usual demand levels but still below the maximum capacity of those services.
– Severe: demands on health care services exceed the capacity of those services.
– No information available.

Source: WHO | Annex 4 of the Interim WHO guidance for the surveillance of human infection with A(H1N1) virus

The entire construct involves a non-sequitur.

In the text box below are the qualitative indicators used. What is being tabulated is 1. the spread of influenza, 2. the spread of respiratory diseases and 3. the impacts on health care services activity.

The spread of the H1N1 swine flu is not being evaluated through any concrete indicator.

An examination of the maps (click links on table below) does not suggest any particular pattern or trend, which might ascertain the spread of H1N1.

For many of the reporting countries the information is not available or indicates no particular trend.

The question is: how can this information reasonably be used to ascertain the spread of a very specific form of influenza, namely A H11N1


TEXT BOX 2

Geographic spread of influenza activity during week 31 and 32

Geographic spread of influenza activity during week 31 [png 157kb]

Geographic spread of influenza activity during week 32 [png 269kb]

Trend of respiratory diseases activity compared to the previous week during week 31 and week 32

Trend of respiratory diseases activity compared to the previous week during week 31 [png 155kb]

Trend of respiratory diseases activity compared to the previous week during week 32 [png 266kb]

Intensity of acute respiratory diseases in the population during week 31 and week 32

Intensity of acute respiratory diseases in the population during week 31 [png 153kb]

Intensity of acute respiratory diseases in the population during week 32 [png 262kb]

Impact on health care services during week 31 and week 32

Impact on health care services during week 31 [png 151kb]

Impact on health care services during week 32 [png 259kb]

Source: WHO | Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 – update 62 (revised 21 August 2009)


“Confirmed and Probable Cases” in the US

On July 24, following the WHO July 10 decision to shift from quantitative to qualitative assessments and not to require governments to ascertain the data through lab testing, the Atlanta based CDC also announced that it had discontinued the process of data collection pertaining to “confirmed and probable cases”:

“How many cases of novel H1N1 flu infection have been reported in the United States? When the novel H1N1 flu outbreak was first detected in mid-April 2009, CDC began working with states to collect, compile and analyze information regarding the novel H1N1 flu outbreak, including the numbers of confirmed and probable cases of disease. From April 15, 2009 to July 24, 2009, states reported a total of 43,771 confirmed and probable cases of novel influenza A (H1N1) infection. Of these cases reported, 5,011 people were hospitalized and 302 people died. On July 24, 2009, confirmed and probable case counts were discontinued. Aggregate national reports of hospitalizations and deaths will continue at this time. (See CDC, ,CDC H1N1 Flu | Questions and Answers About CDC’s Online Reporting)

Instead of collecting data –which would have provided empirical backing to its assessments on how the H1N1 virus was spreading– the CDC announced that it had developed a model “to try to determine the true number of novel H1N1 flu cases in the United States”.

The model took the number of cases reported by states and adjusted the figure to account for known sources of underestimation (for example; not all people with novel H1N1 flu seek medical care, and not all people who seek medical care have specimens collected by their health care provider)….

Why did CDC discontinue reporting of individual cases? Individual case counts were used in the early stages of the outbreak to track the spread of disease. As novel H1N1 flu became more widespread, individual case counts became an increasingly inaccurate representation of the true burden of disease. This is because many people likely became mildly ill with novel H1N1 flu and never sought treatment; many people may have sought and received treatment but were never officially tested or diagnosed; and as the outbreak intensified, in some cases, testing was limited to only hospitalized patients. That means that the official case count represented only a fraction of the true burden of novel H1N1 flu illness in the United States. CDC recognized early in the outbreak that once disease was widespread, it would be more valuable to transition to standard surveillance systems to monitor illness, hospitalizations and deaths. CDC discontinued official reporting of individual cases on July 24, 2009. (Ibid, emphasis added)

Biased Predictions

What is the precise nature of the data transmitted by the states to the CDC? The CDC calls for the transmission of  “aggregate national reports of hospitalizations and deaths”.

If the information is conceptually incorrect or incomplete at the outset, predictions and/or simulations will be inevitably be biased.

Without systematic lab confirmation, it is impossible to specify the nature of the virus because the symptoms of H1N1 are broadly similar to those of common influenza. In other words, do the data collected and transmitted by the states to the CDC confirm cases of H1N1 swine flu or do they indicate the prevalence of seasonal influenza?

The CDC posits that the data sent to them by the states is “underestimated”. It then hikes up these figures of “unconfirmed” cases, many of which are cases of seasonal influenza. The “corrected figures” are then inserted into the model:

Using this approach [CDC model],  it is estimated that more than one million people became ill with novel H1N1 flu between April and June 2009 in the United States. The details of this model and the modeling study will be submitted for publication in a peer reviewed journal. (Ibid)

The model is then used to predict the spread of swine flu and to justify a national health emergency. “Swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren’t successful.” (Official Statement of the US Administration, Associated Press, 24 July 2009).

Anybody who is familiar with model building and computer simulations, is acutely aware that if the data and assumptions which are fed into the model are incorrect at the outset, the results will inevitably be biased.

What we are dealing with is a process of statistical manipulation, which has far-reaching implications and which could potentially create an atmosphere of panic, particularly if it is coupled, as in the UK, with announcements that “mass graves are being set up to deal with a rising death toll.

Vaccination

The Atlanta based CDC’s model’s simulations and predictions as to the spread of H1N1 swine flu are then used to plan the implementation of a nationwide vaccination program.

Based on the model’s “predictions”, mass vaccination of half of the US population is required, with the possible provision for quarantines under civilian and/or military jurisdiction. In the case of the United Kingdom, confirmed by British press reports, the government has predicted a rising death toll requiring the provision of mass graves.

According to reports, the US government expects to have 85 million doses of the new vaccine by the end of October. In total, the US government has ordered 195 million doses from Big Pharma.

“Recommendation: Priority groups to receive the novel H1N1 vaccine

On July 29, 2009, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—an advisory committee to CDC—recommended that novel H1N1 flu vaccine be made available first to the following five groups (News Release)

Pregnant women Health care workers and emergency medical responders
People caring for infants under 6 months of age
Children and young adults from 6 months to 24 years
People aged 25 to 64 years with underlying medical conditions (e.g. asthma, diabetes)

Combined, these groups would equal approximately 159 million individuals.” (See Flu.gov: Tests, Vaccines, Medications, & Masks

According to the WHO, Western countries have already ordered one billion doses of the vaccine.

 “Northern hemisphere countries have so far ordered more than one billion doses of swine flu vaccine, the World Health Organisation said Tuesday, sparking warnings over shortages,” Agence France-Presse reports. While some countries, including Greece, The Netherlands, Canada and Israel, have ordered enough vaccine to inoculate their citizens, “[o]thers, such as Germany, the United States, Britain and France, have put in orders that would cover between 30 and 78 percent of people,” (AFP, August 19, 2009).

The WHO has made similar predictions: “Vaccine makers could produce 4.9 billion pandemic flu shots per year in the best-case scenario”, Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), quoted by Reuters, 21 July 2009)

The United Kingdom: “Suspected Cases” versus “Confirmed Cases”

Even prior to the WHO decision to suspend reporting and compilation of confirmed cases, the process of data collection in the UK revealed some highly unusual patterns.

“There are big gaps in UK data on swine flu, many of them because so few virological confirmations of H1N1 seem to be being undertaken anywhere. But virology matters – and if more tests had been done, we might begin to understand why the number of people in hospital for swine flu in England is so much greater than in Scotland.” Where have all the virologists gone? | Straight Statistics

In Scotland, the collection of data was based on “confirmed cases” (lab testing), whereas in England it was based on “suspected cases” (no lab testing). In both cases, we are dealing with hospitalization. For the same time period, according to the study, England had 3,906 incident hospitalizations for “suspect swine-flu”, compared with Scotland’s 43 for “confirmed H1N1”.

England has approximately ten times more population than Scotland. On a per capita basis, however, there are 9.1 times more people in England with “suspected H1N1” flu than in Scotland, based on “confirmed cases”: 43  confirmed cases in Scotland, 3906 in England (suspected cases), a ratio of more than 1 to 9. 

Has the H1N1 epidemic “evolved differently in Scotland and England, in extent and/or timing.”? There is no evidence to this effect. Or is this discrepancy of 9 to 1, partially the result of bias in the data for England which is based on “suspected cases”. Where have all the virologists gone? | Straight Statistics See also Call for more H1N1 data | Straight Statistics

It is on the basis of these “suspected cases” that unsubstantiated and irresponsible statements are being made by senior government health officials.

What this implies is that the hospital based data on “suspected cases” referred to above, which was already the source of bias, is no longer being collected by health personnel.

Self-Categorization

In Britain, the collection of “suspected cases” (which is known to be biased) was abandoned in favor of a system which does not require a diagnosis by a health professional, nor the testing of a lab specimens.

Since the WHO ruling on July 10, establishing new guidelines for data collection, the British authorities no longer focus on hospital based “suspected cases”, they are now collecting the data through “dedicated call centres”.

They have launched a national service where if you have flu like symptoms, you can call up dedicated call centres or check online whether you have swine flu. So, you don’t have to go to your GP, you can access antivirals quickly and don’t infect others by travelling around. (Most rapid spread of H1N1 virus in UK)

In Britain, the transition has been from “confirmed cases” (lab confirmation)  to “suspected cases” (established by health professional, not requiring testing) to “self categorization”

As the pandemic progresses, the process of data collection becomes increasingly loose and unprofessional. One would normally expect the opposite, that following the announcement of Worldwide level 6 pandemic, that the process of data collection would be developed and improved as means to formulating a public health action plan.  .

The process of data collection under the National Pandemic Flu Service is now based on “self-assessment” or self-categorization. Anybody who thinks he/she has flu-like symptoms can contact the National Pandemic Flu Service, by telephone ou through the internet, and can receive an antiviral prescription (e.g. Tamiflu) without the intermediation of a health professional and without even seeing a doctor.  You can do it on the internet or by calling up the phone help line:

“The [British] National Pandemic Flu Service is a self-care service that will assess your symptoms and, if required, provide an authorisation number which can be used to collect antiviral medication from a local collection point. For those who do not have internet access, the same service can be accessed by telephone”

According to British health sources communicated to this author, persons who receive a prescription for Tamiflu through the National Pandemic Flu Service over the phone or through the National Health Service Telephone Call Service will be categorized and recorded as a “suspected case” of  H1N1 swine flu.

 

Typical symptoms: sudden fever (38C or above) and sudden cough
1. Other symptoms include: Tiredness and chills
2. Headache, sore throat, runny nose and sneezing
3. Stomach upset, loss of appetite, diarrhoea
4. Aching muscles, limb or joint pain
Source: NHS and BBC.

The moment you enter your name into the system over the internet or by phone, which allows you to collect anti-viral  medication (e.g. tamiflu), you may be categorized as a suspected or probable case of H1N1.  (see the UK National Pandemic Flu Service guidelines in Annex 1 below)

As discussed in the England versus Scotland analysis, there is already a 9 to 1 discrepancy between “suspected” and “confirmed” cases, both of which are hospital based.

The system of data collection in the UK through “self-categorization” has no scientific basis whatsoever. It is totally meaningless, given the fact that the H1N1 has the same symptoms as seasonal influenza. (We have, however, not been able to ascertain at the stage the extent to which the self-assessment information is being tabulated and used to establish trends pertaining to the H1N1 flu pandemic)

The pattern in other countries differs from that outlined in relation to Britain. In the US, a system of testing at the state level still prevails.

Concluding Remarks

Reports from Britain by prominent physicians (to the author) suggest that doctors and epidemiologists in the UK are being threatened. They risk being fired by the National Health authorities if  they speak out and reveal the falsehoods underlying the data as well as government statements.

It is essential that physicians, epidemiologists and health workers speak out through their respective associations and refute the statements of government health officials who are tacitly acting on behalf of Big Pharma, as well as denounce the manipulation of the data. It is also important to warn the public on the dangers of untested H1N1 flu vaccines.

What we are dealing with is a big lie. A process of generating fake data which is then used to justify a nationwide vaccination program.

The political and corporate interests behind this Worldwide public health emergency must be the target of citizens’ actions.

This public health emergency is not intended to protect humanity.

The World is at the crossroads of a major economic and social crisis. The Worldwide public health emergency serves to divert public opinion from the real crisis which is affecting the World’s people. This crisis is characterised by rising poverty and unemployment and the collapse in social services, not to mention a a US-NATO multitrillion dollar high tech “war without borders” which includes the preemptive  “first strike” use of nuclear weapons.

The dramatic causes and consequences of the “real crisis” which in real sense threaten the future of humanity must remain unheralded. Both the Economic Crisis and the Middle East Central Asian war are the object of routine and persistent media distortion and camouflage. In contrast, the H1N1 swine flu –despite its relatively mild and benign impacts– is depicted as major “Save the World” endeavor.

Author and economics professor Michel Chossudovsky is Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, Montreal, He has taught at universities and academic institutions in North America, Western Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific. He has also worked as a consultant on issues pertaining to public health and the economics of health for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA),  the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). He has also acted as adviser to governments of developing countries. 


ANNEX 1

The guidelines of UK National Pandemic Flu Service are indicated below:

If you have flu-like symptoms and are concerned that you may have swine flu:

– you have a serious underlying illness

– you are pregnant

– you have a sick child under one year old

– your condition suddenly gets much worse

– your condition is still getting worse after seven days (or five days for a child)

Note: The National Pandemic Flu Service is a self-care service that will asses your symptoms and, if required, provide an authorisation number which can be used to collect antiviral medication from a local collection point. For those who do not have internet access, the same service can be accessed by telephone on:

  • Telephone: 0800 1 513 100
  • Minicom: 0800 1 513 200

For more information on the National Pandemic Flu Service go to Flu Service – Q&A

Key actions

Swine flu is spreading fast in the UK. Prepare now by:

  • Learning to recognise the symptoms of swine flu
  • Establishing ‘flu friends’ – friends and relatives who can help if you fall ill
  • Keeping  paracetamol-based cold remedies in the house
  • Having a thermometer available so you can check your temperature if needed

Note: If you have elderly or vulnerable neighbours please check on them. They may need your help but be reluctant to ask for it. It is important you do what you can.

Source Swine flu alert from the NHS

 

Ever since they lost badly in the 2011 elections to the Frente Sandinista, Nicaragua’s political opposition has divided into conventional political parties working in the country’s legislature and an extra-parliamentary opposition based in local NGOs.

The US government, in particular, gave up supporting Nicaragua’s opposition political parties financially so as to focus on consolidating an opposition bloc exploiting the figure of “civil society” but excluding the country’s main labor and rural workers’ organizations and the cooperative movement.

The member organizations of this exclusive, bogus civil society were all financed either directly by the US and allied governments or indirectly via foreign corporate and state-funded foundations.

After a period of accumulation of resources from 2011 onward, this extra-parliamentary opposition mounted the violent, US designed coup attempt which lasted from April to July in 2018. But the main opposition political parties for the most part respected the country’s institutions and refrained from taking part either in the widespread extreme violence or in the national dialogue between the coup promoters and the government. For that reason, no leading figure from Nicaragua’s opposition political parties has been affected by the recent series of arrests of people from organizations that supported the 2018 coup attempt.

All those arrested face well-supported indictments for illegal activities that would incur criminal prosecution in the United States, any country of the European Union and practically every country in Latin America and the Caribbean. The main formal indictment against all the individuals under investigation is that of acting in violation of Nicaragua’s Law 1055, “Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination for Peace”. Under the law, it is a crime to seek foreign interference in the country’s  internal affairs, request military intervention, organize acts of terrorism and destabilization, promote coercive economic, commercial and financial measures against the country and its institutions, or request and welcome sanctions against the State of Nicaragua and its citizens.

In addition, Cristiana Chamorro of the Violeta Chamorro Foundation, Juan Sebastian Chamorro of the Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUNIDES), Felix Maradiaga of the Institute for Strategic and Public Policy Studies (IEEPP) and Violeta Granera of the Centre for Communications Research (CINCO) may also face charges for money laundering and breaking the “Foreign Agents” law which requires all organizations receiving finance from overseas to register with the authorities, report the amount of money received and how it is used. The law strengthens the already existing Law 147 regulating non-profit organizations under the supervision of the Ministry of Governance (MIGOB) which obliges non profits to report annually on their sources of income and how the money was spent.

Despite numerous reports in international media to the contrary, none of the people arrested had been selected by any of Nicaragua’s political alliances or parties as possible candidates for the upcoming general election on November 7th this year. Cristiana Chamorro, Juan Sebastan Chamorro, Arturo Cruz and Felix Maradiaga had earlier stated they aspired to the candidacy of one of the political parties, most likely the Citizens for Liberty political alliance. But none of them was formally under consideration. In any case, as many observers have noted, the figure of their possible candidacy in the elections has served as a smokescreen to distract from the criminal charges against them, for which they would face prosecution in practically any country in the world.

The other main group of Nicaragua’s extra-parliamentary opposition facing indictment under Law 1055 are the leaders of the Unamos political movement, formerly the Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS). These are former leading Sandinistas Dora Maria Tellez, Victor Hugo Tinoco and Hugo Torres and their younger colleagues Ana Margarita Vigil, Suyen Barahona, and Tamara Davila. With the cosmetic political makeover from MRS to Unamos, the MRS old guard have tried to play down their Sandinista past and links to their network of ex-combatant supporters. A relatively small but experienced and committed group of these ex-combatant MRS supporters played a key role organizing, directing and leading the violence of 2018 that resulted in over 260 deaths.

Dora Maria Tellez (left) and Hugo Torres(right) campaigning in 2008
for US government supported  right wing banker Eduardo Montealegre,
candidate of ex-President Arnoldo Aleman’s right wing PLC party

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Former guerrilla hero Hugo Torres is reported by the UK Guardian noting in relation to the recent arrests of well-known opposition figures in Nicaragua “…that’s how life goes: those who once held their principles high have now betrayed them.” Torres should know. He has collaborated with US government intervention in Nicaragua since at least 2005. Ever since then, until very recently, Tellez, Torres, Tinoco and other ex-sandinistas like Monica Baltodano and Henry Ruiz successfully fooled their foreign supporters by claiming they were loyal to some kind of authentic Sandinismo which they could never quite define.

Monica Baltodano posed as a super-revolutionary, fooling leftists in Europe especially, while all the time collaborating closely with Nicaragua’s right wing and accepting substantial funding for her Popol Nah NGO from the European Union and USAID. From 2007 to 2011, she served as a legislative deputy for the center-right social democrat MRS party of Tellez and Torres at the very time that party was allied with Nicaragua’s right wing. For example in the 2008 municipal elections they openly campaigned for oligarch banker Eduardo Montealegre, PLC political party candidate for mayor of Managua, when the PLC was still controlled by corrupt ex-president Arnoldo Alemán. For her part Baltodano has so far not figured in the current series of indictments.

Baltodano’s ex-sandinista allies in the Unamos leadership are accused of breaking the law against collusion with foreign powers, but that may well turn out to be less serious than their possible role in planning new attacks, similar to those of 2018. Between April and July that year, 22 police officers were killed and 400 suffered gunshot wounds at the hands of well-armed opposition activists. The MRS ex-sandinistas and their accomplices, like Medardo Mairena and Francisca Ramirez of the extremely violent Anti-Canal Movement and right wing Catholic Church bishops and priests, including Silvio Baez, Rolando Alvarez and Abelardo Mata, organized and supported widespread mass extortion and violence including murder, torture, arson, rape and other serious assaults affecting many hundreds of victims and their families.

After the 2018 coup attempt failed, the authorities refrained from arresting its organizers, instead focusing on people who had directly committed criminal offenses. Subsequently, the 2019 government amnesty meant that the MRS leadership, as well as Felix Maradiaga, Cristiana and Juan Sebastian Chamorro, Violeta Granera and their accomplices escaped prosecution and sentencing for their role in the coup attempt. In fact, the extremely violent events of 2018 were a massive exercise in organized crime and terrorism, during which the various components of Nicaragua’s opposition involved in it operated according to a very clear program.

For example, the MRS leadership coordinated experienced ex-combatants among their movement’s activists to help organize the violence more effectively, for example in Masaya. Felix Maradiaga coordinated with his contacts in local and regional organized crime networks to attack public buildings and run extortion operations out of Managua’s UPOLI and UNAN universities and at dozens of roadblocks. Medardo Mairena and Francisca Ramirez activated their Anti-Canal Movement thugs to do the same along the main highways leading to Nicaragua’s southern Caribbean Coast. Renegade local politicians of traditional political parties followed suit on the highway leading to the northern Caribbean Coast, for example at Rio Blanco and Mulukuku.

Right wing Catholic Church bishops and priests guaranteed logistics ensuring that churches in dioceses across the country served as headquarters for the violent opposition gangs. The private business organization COSEP also played an important role in logistics, as did opposition aligned NGO’s like the human rights organization CENIDH, and Baltodano’s Popol Nah, among others. In addition, human rights organizations like CENIDH, the Permanent Commission for Human Rights (CPDH) and the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (ANPDH), all funded by foreign governments, systematically misrepresented human rights abuses, inventing abuses by the authorities and concealing innumerable abuses by violent opposition activists.

Like all those organizations, the Chamorro NGOs – Cristiana’s Violeta Chamorro Foundation, Juan Sebastian’s FUNIDES and Carlos Fernando Chamorro’s CINCO – also facilitated the coup attempt by distributing money they received from foreign governments and foundations. Felix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastian Chamorro and others traveled internationally projecting a false “freedom and democracy” narrative, appearing in influential European media like the BBC, among others. The Chamorro media outlets La Prensa and Confidencial and the plethora of online proxies they set up with USAID funding coordinated the massive online disinformation campaign to mislead national and foreign opinion.

This massive and complex operation had been planned by the US authorities in coordination with their agents in Nicaragua over many years following the collapse of the traditional opposition political parties in 2011. Among other things, the current investigation is likely to determine whether or not the Chamorros, the Unamos ex-Sandinistas and their opposition allies, in addition to their illegal collusion with US and allied government intervention, were planning another coup attempt in the context of this year’s elections. In any case, should those currently accused end up being prosecuted and sentenced for their crimes, few people in Nicaragua will have much sympathy for them.

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The Israeli government has now confirmed that 50% of those infected had been fully vaccinated (2 shots).  What this suggests is that Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine is not only conducive to deaths and injuries, it has also resulted in an increase in Covid positive cases. 

Moreover, reports confirm that those vaccinated have contributed to the spread of the virus to those who have not received the mRNA vaccine. 

According to Israeli National News

“Israel’s campaign to promote the coronavirus vaccine – now focusing on young teens – is going full steam ahead, in spite of statistics presented by government officials showing that half of those recently infected with Covid-19 were fully vaccinated

Head of Public Health Services, Dr. Sharon Alray-Price, revealed the disturbing facts at a media presentation on June 23. According to her data, of the 891 cases of coronavirus confirmed in the last month alone, half had received both doses of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine.

According to a report on Channel 12, in the months since the vaccines were rolled out, 6,765 people who received both shots have contracted coronavirus, and epidemiological tracing has revealed that an additional 3,133 people contracted Covid-19 from those vaccinated individuals. 

Despite these findings the government of Netanyahu’s successor Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is committed to ensuring full vaccination (2 shots) as a means to containing the “killer virus”.

“The Killer vaccine” which has resulted in countless deaths and injuries is upheld as the solution. “An information campaign to encourage vaccination and stress the importance of adhering to quarantine” was launched on June 24, 2021. The reimposition of the face mask has also been contemplated.

While the data on deaths and injuries in Israel attributable to the mRNA Pfizer Biotech “experimental” Tozinameran vaccine are unavailable, the “official” EU date base of Adverse Drug Reactions confirms that the experimental mRNA is a killer vaccine: 15,472 Dead and 1.5 Million Injured (50% Serious) pertaining to Covid-19  mRNA “vaccine” shots. (Pfizer, Moderna, AsraZeneka).

With regard to the Pfizer vaccine (which is being applied in Israel), the data for the EU is as follows: 7,420 deaths and 560,256 injuries to 19/06/2021

 

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 The 2019 protests have ignited change in Chile, which the people are determined to bring to fruition, Ramona Wadi writes.

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Chilean President Sebastian Piñera would not have imagined, upon his electoral victory in 2017, that he would have mangled his political career beyond redemption. The 2017 Chilean presidential elections were characterised by a low turnout of voters, which largely indicated the left-wing electorate’s disillusionment in terms of candidates, proposals and, most importantly, the inherent corruption across the Chilean political spectrum since the country’s transition to democracy.

Prior to the 2019 protests across Chile, it was difficult to imagine any form of transition out of dictator Augusto Pinochet’s legacy. As the clamour for Piñera’s ousting and the collective cry for a new constitution resonated throughout the country, the government took a leaf out of the dictatorship’s book, imposing a military curfew and unleashing widespread, state-sanctioned violence which many Chileans said was reminiscent of the Pinochet era. Detention, torture, killings and disappearances occurred all over again, in a supposedly democratic period in Chile.

While Piñera eventually yielded to the demand for a new constitution and attempted to frame the decision as that of a government listening to its people’s demands, social movements in Chile were not acquiescing anymore to the imposed narrative. The right-wing suffered yet another blow in the vote to choose the individuals tasked with writing the new constitution, with voters electing a majority of independent and left-wing candidates.

For Piñera, however, the 2019 protests sealed his legacy. Working alongside the former Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon who, in 1998, issued an international arrest warrant for Pinochet for crimes against humanity while the dictator was in London, Chilean human rights organisations filed a report with the International Criminal Court, asking for an investigation into the crimes against humanity committed by the Chilean government during the 2019 protests. The report called for Piñera’s prosecution, along with other officials responsible for the atrocities.

Establishing criminal culpability and accountability in the Chilean courts is fraught with the prevailing political impunity. To date, many dictatorship era crimes have gone unpunished, and it is up to human rights organisations to constantly uphold the struggle for justice. One of the main arguments brought forward by Garzon and the human rights organisations, in fact, is that 3,050 cases out of 6,568 have been archived by the prosecution -a clear indication of judicial impunity.

The more recent violations are no exception. While Chileans were being beaten and shot in the eyes by the military during the protests, and human rights organisations, including international bodies, were documenting the cases, Piñera was praising the military’s conduct, exhibiting a complete dissociation when it comes to the situation on the ground for Chileans.

According to the Justice Studies Centre of the Americas (JSCA), “there is a widespread breach of informality, opportunity and thoroughness in the investigations of severe human rights violations.” The JSCA also noted that Chile’s prosecutor does not have “a specialised unit focused on investigating human rights violations, unlike other Latin American countries.”

The violations inflicted upon Chileans by the military during the 2019 protests have been classified as common crimes in Chile – a deliberate move, the human rights organisations insisted, in order to delay justice and allow the government to provide amnesty for the individuals involved.

While the ICC’s decision regarding whether the filed complaint falls within its jurisdiction may take years, the action to access international justice points both towards the Chilean courts’ failure as a result of political bias, as well as the Chilean people’s steadfastness when it comes to accountability. For decades, Pinochet’s shadow loomed over, influencing the transition to democracy as democratically-elected governments refused to make a clean break with the dictatorship. The 2019 protests have ignited change in Chile, which the people are determined to bring to fruition.

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This Tuesday notices were put in place, for users seeking to access a number of websites critical of US foreign policy, notifying them that the US government had seized the domains. According to reports, the majority of the websites taken down were linked to Iran, or supportive of Iran, leading many to the conclusion that this was a targeted takedown of pro-Iran platforms.

In an Orwellian ‘ministry of truth’ styled fashion, without any pre-warning, content platforms such as PressTV have been axed from the Internet. Iran’s state-funded PressTV has already been subjected to takedowns across social media, including having at least eight separate Youtube channels banned and even company emails blocked.

The notice reads for PressTV’s website:

“The domain presstv.com has been seized by the United States Government in accordance with a seizure warrant issued pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 981,982 and 50 U.S.C. 1701-1705 as part of a law enforcement action by the Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement and Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

If correct, this means that the FBI has been involved in some sort of censorship campaign. CNN has quoted an unnamed US national security official who allegedly told them that the websites were taken down over alleged “disinformation efforts”. There are also other allegations about the websites being taken down for support of terrorism, however these allegations are not yet substantiated as a reason behind the US governments move.

It is not just PressTV, however, that has been silenced, also a Bahraini independence news outlet based out of the United Kingdom, Lualua, has also been taken down. Similarly, the Al-Masirah website, linked to Yemen’s Ansrallah movement which is currently fighting Saudi Arabia, has also been blocked. On top of this, pro-Palestinian sites such as PalToday has also been targeted.

The Jerusalem Post noted that, in last October, the US Justice Department had announced its seizure of 92 domains allegedly linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which was registered as a terrorist organisation by the Trump administration. The IRGC is essentially Iran’s second military and is not an independent group, therefore the designation made little sense.

The fact that this has been done, targeting Iran’s only English Language news channel, not even a week after the election of the Islamic Republic’s new President, Ebrahim Raisi, speaks volumes in and of itself. As someone who has worked with PressTV as a journalist for 3 years, it is truly saddening to see all the work I have done there, and the work of my colleagues, simply disappear due to the arrogance of a US government which has apparently forgotten that freedom of speech and journalism is a right.

Funnily enough, for a country that is portrayed as such an opponent of Freedom of Speech, compared to the US, some of the first journalists allowed to question Iran’s President-elect Ebrahim Raisi were reporters from US outlets like CNN.

PressTV is banned from British television and its Youtube channels are repeatedly taken down, with even its UK branch ‘PressTV UK’ having had its channel banned without strikes or reason. I was working in the UK office at the time that PressTV UK was taken down from Youtube, after roughly 5 attempts to contact Youtube, eventually we gave up with no response or justification given for their action. The Times later wrote an article, in which they practically justified the takedown of the channel, claiming that it spread pro-Tehran and anti-Israel propaganda.

Apparently if you say anything that supports Iran or its allies you are now a target, because free speech only goes as far as saying things that the government doesn’t mind you saying in the West. It is obvious that in many countries around the world people live under dictatorships, and so censorship is expected. The problem with the West is that it claims to stand by free speech principles and democratic values, although this is clearly not the case, making it worse than the dictatorships due to the hypocrisy of it all. At least people living in a dictatorship like in Saudi Arabia, know full well that they have no right to say what they feel, but in the United States and elsewhere in the West you are told you can speak freely, only to later suffer the consequences. Now, through the power of internet giants, that right is largely being dismantled.

There is a lot of talk about racism in the West at this current moment, even US law enforcement agencies have stated that the biggest threat of terrorism comes from White Supremacists, yet White Supremacist websites are still up all over the web. So how seriously are Western governments taking the issue if they come after Iranian news outlets first?

Racist hate is often created out of an irrational fear of the unknown or unfamiliar, which is what the US government and media are currently creating and abusing when it comes to their narrative around Iran and its people. Before any war, racist policies, or genocides are undergone, first the voices of the group they are targeting must be silenced and then the disinformation about them must be spread. In order to make American’s and other Westerners fear Iran and its allies, they must first take away their voice and portray them as the enemy.

If people learn the Iranian perspective, the Palestinian perspective, the Yemeni or Bahraini perspective, then they are less likely to support killing these people and will likely take a more diplomatic stance when it comes to conflict. In my opinion, killing the voices of these groups and others is the first step towards racist hate crimes and even racist war crimes being committed. It is dangerous, and immature, and if Westerners truly cared about stopping such irrational hate, they would oppose this ridiculous censorship and take to the streets to let their governments know about it. However, it is unlikely that we will see such actions from the so-called “anti-racists,” who wouldn’t understand the term if Jim Crow and Apartheid hit them in the face.

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150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

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Recent laboratory analysis of several used face masks worn by children revealed the presence of “pathogenic bacteria” lab technicians called “dangerous” clinging to the materials of the masks.

The samples were sent by a group of Florida parents to the University of Florida’s Mass Spectrometry Research and Education Center. Amanda Donoho, one of the parents who coordinated the experiment via a local parents’ Facebook group, told Just the News she decided to test the masks after her son developed a “giant rash” on his face.

Repeated treatments from her child’s pediatrician were not successful in curing the rash. A facial scraping from a dermatologist finally determined it was a fungal infection. The dermatological clinicians said the moisture from the mask was to blame.

Watch the video here.

Donoho said she and several other parents had been “talking to the school board about lifting some of these mask requirements since fall of last year.” After her son’s diagnosis, she helped organize the mask test with the University of Florida lab.

The reports from the lab found multiple, “quite dangerous” bacteria samples in the tested masks, among them streptococcus pneumoniae, mycobacterium tuberculosis, staphylococcus aureus, and numerous others.

In some cases, the lab technicians pointedly underscored the dangers presented by the bacteria. Noting the presence of neisseria meningitidis in the masks, the technicians wrote that the bacterium “causes meningitis and life threatening sepsis,” while another bacteria, staphylococcus pyogenes serotype M3 Strep can result in a “severe invasive infection.”

Kari Basso, the director of the University of Florida lab, said the masks were “submitted as a service for a fee, similar to sending a blood test to Lab Core.”

She declined to comment on the findings, though she confirmed that the reports were written directly by the lab technicians.

Many schools have implemented strict mask mandates for children who returned to in-person instruction, though data have regularly indicated that children remain at very low risk for catching or spreading SARS-Cov-2.

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Vandana Shiva: A New Wave of Colonization, Carbon Slavery

June 25th, 2021 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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Big Tech is driving a new wave of colonization in the name of sustainability and “net zero” carbon emissions

Tech billionaire Bill Gates, now the largest owner of farmland in the U.S., is at the root of the problem, pushing technology as the only mechanism to save the world, and in so doing denying real solutions

Shiva calls Gates’ book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” which pushes for the elimination of age-old farming traditions and widespread adoption of fake meat, “rubbish”

According to Shiva, in order to force the world to accept this new food and agricultural system, new conditionalities are being created through net zero “nature-based” solutions, which will only further destroy indigenous people and small farmers

Net zero does not mean zero emissions, Shiva says; it means the rich polluters will continue to pollute and also grab the land and resources of those who have not polluted

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Vandana Shiva is a brilliant mind calling for inhabitants of the Earth to unite against forces that are threatening to destroy the planet, in part via a new wave of colonization in the name of sustainability.

Tech billionaire Bill Gates, now the largest owner of farmland in the U.S.,1 is at the root of the problem, pushing technology as the only mechanism to save the world, and in so doing denying real solutions. This path is not accidental but carefully orchestrated to amass wealth, power and control, while making all but the elite subservient.

In my interview with Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., she spoke about Gates Ag One,2 which is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, where Monsanto is also headquartered.

“Gates Ag One is one [type of] agriculture for the whole world, organized top down. He’s written about it. We have a whole section on it in our new report,3 ‘Gates to a Global Empire,'” she said. This includes digital farming, in which farmers are surveilled and mined for their agricultural data, which is then repackaged and sold back to them.

Bill Gates’ New Book Is ‘Rubbish’

In the above Under the Skin podcast with Russel Brand, Shiva takes aim at Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need,” which was released in February 20214 — calling it “rubbish:”5

“Just by chance I was reading the rubbish in Bill Gates’ new book. I normally don’t read rubbish but when they want to be rulers through rubbish, I read it. And it’s lovely because he says the greenhouse gases from factory farms are not because of factory farms and putting animals in prisons … it’s because the cows were the problem. They had four stomachs and the four stomachs make the methane.”

The reason cows in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) emit methane that smells is because they’re fed an unnatural diet of grains and placed in crowded quarters. It’s not a natural phenomenon. It’s a man-made one. “You walk behind a good cow on a grazing pasture, she’s not stinking,” Shiva said.6

The strong recommendation to replace beef with fake meat is also made in Gates’ book7 — another example of replacing a whole, natural food with something engineered, heavily processed and fake. It all stems from an overreaching theme of arrogance and the desire for recolonization and a global empire.

The idea is to imply, or create the environment in which, survival isn’t possible without technology. “It is a denial of the richness of agroecological knowledges and practices that are resurging around the world,” according to one of Navdanya’s reports.8

Shiva founded Navdanya, a nonprofit organization promoting biodiversity, organic farming and seed saving, in 1994. She has also travelled the globe to warn other countries, including Africa, about plans to displace rural farmers so investors can turn the land into industrial farms to export the commodities.

Gates’ book talks about eliminating age-old farming traditions, which Shiva believes must be protected. Speaking with Brand, Shiva said:9

“He [Gates] has put the Indian plow that has existed for 10,000 years and says this primitive technology must go. I call this, as the future technology, a partnership between our bodies, the body of the Earth, and the body of the animals — realizing that we are not masters but we are there to serve through what Gandhi called bread labor, the labor of our body in the service of the Earth, in the service of community.

So we are for sure at an epic moment where everything wrong is being given a new life just at the time when the world was waking up … I think this is happening … because of arrogance … we’ve destroyed every international law, we’ve destroyed all democracy, we have locked people into fear … you know, the British empire had that arrogance.” 

Breaking the Sacred Relationship With Food

Industrialization started the process of severing humans’ age-old connections to their food and the land on which it’s grown. “Now, with digitalization,” Shiva said, “they would like to end it forever.”10Tech giants, in an effort to drive home digital agriculture, are working to reduce life to software11 while advancing digital surveillance systems.

So far, Shiva’s organization has managed to prevent Gates from introducing a seed surveillance startup, where farmers would not be allowed to grow seeds unless approved by Gates’ surveillance system. The data mining, Shiva says, is needed because they don’t actually know agriculture.

This is why Gates finances the policing of farmers. He needs to mine their data to learn how farming is actually done. In countering the tech giants’ attempts to remove humans’ sacred relationship to food, Shiva states we can fight back by remembering and focusing on a few essential principles:12

  • Food is the currency of life
  • The highest duty is to grow and give food in abundance
  • The worst sin is to let someone go hungry in your neighborhood, not grow food and, worse, sell bad food

“We’ve got to bring to the center of our everyday life the rituals that make life sacred,” Shiva said. “Our breath … breath is what connects us to the world … water connects us to the world. Food connects us to the world.”13

‘Net Zero’ Nonsense

Gates has been vocal that achieving “net zero” emissions will be the “most amazing thing humanity has ever done.”14 By 2030, he’s pushing for drastic, fundamental changes, including widespread consumption of fake meat, adoption of next generation nuclear energy and growing a fugus as a new type of nutritional protein.15

The deadline Gates has given to reach net zero emissions is 2050,16 likely because he wants to realize his global vision during his lifetime. But according to Shiva, in order to force the world to accept this new food and agricultural system, new conditionalities are being created through net zero “nature-based” solutions. Navdanya’s report, “Earth Democracy: Connecting Rights of Mother Earth to Human Rights and Well-Being of All,” explains:17

“If ‘feeding the world’ through chemicals and dwarf varieties bred for chemicals was the false narrative created to impose the Green Revolution, the new false narrative is ‘sustainability’ and ‘saving the planet.’ In the new ‘net zero’ world, farmers will not be respected and rewarded as custodians of the land and caregivers, as Annadatas, the providers of our food and health.

They will not be paid a fair and just price for growing healthy food through ecological processes, which protect and regenerate the farming systems as a whole.

They will be paid for linear extraction of fragments of the ecological functions of the system, which can be tied to the new ‘net zero’ false climate solution based on a fake calculus, fake science allowing continued emissions while taking control over the land of indigenous people and small farmers.

‘Net Zero’ is a new strategy to get rid of small farmers in first through ‘digital farming’ and ‘farming without farmers’ and then through the burden of fake carbon accounting.

Carbon offsets and the new accounting trick of ‘net zero’ does not mean zero emissions. It means the rich polluters will continue to pollute and also grab the land and resources of those who have not polluted — indigenous people and small farmers — for carbon offsets.”

Gates already alluded to this double-standard in responding to those who criticized him for the hypocrisy of being a serious polluter himself, with a 66,000 square-foot mansion, a private jet, 242,000 acres of farmland and investments in fossil fuel-dependent industries such as airlines, heavy machinery and cars.18

This pollution is acceptable, Gates said, because, “I am offsetting my carbon emissions by buying clean aviation fuel, and funding carbon capture and funding low-cost housing projects to use electricity instead of natural gas.”19

Carbon Colonization and Carbon Slavery

Carbon colonization and carbon slavery are two terms being used to explain the reality behind carbon trade, which is being regarded by Big Tech as the next big opportunity, Shiva says.20 Carbon trade refers to the buying and selling of credits that allow a company to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide,21 but by buying up credits from nonpolluters, industry can continue to pollute.

Technocracy is also a resource-based economic system, which is why the World Economic Forum talks about the creation of “sustainable digital finance,”22 a carbon-based economy and carbon credit trading.23 As explained on its website:24

“Digital finance refers to the integration of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), mobile platforms, blockchain and the Internet of things (IoT) in the provision of financial services. Sustainable finance refers to financial services integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria into the business or investment decisions.

When combined, sustainable digital finance can take advantage of emerging technologies to analyze data, power investment decisions and grow jobs in sectors supporting a transition to a low-carbon economy.”

As Navdanya’s report explains, however, this will ultimately further remove the rights of small farmers, who will be forced into a new form of data slavery:25

“A global ‘seal’ of approval based on fake science, fake economics of maximizing profits through extraction will create new data slavery for farmers. Instead of using their own heads and cocreating with the Earth, they will be forced to buy ‘Big Data.’ Instead of obeying the laws of Mother Earth, they will be forced to obey algorithms created by Big Tech and Big Ag.”

Focusing solely on carbon reductionism also misses the point that “forests, lands, ecosystems are so much more than the carbon stored in them,” and putting conditionalities on small farmers will only make environmental injustices worse. The report adds:26

“Conditionalities under any condition violate democratic principles and human rights. Farmers are guided by Earth care. The culture of Earth care needs to be respected and rewarded because it is centered on rights of the Earth and rights of all her children … Conditionalities put on the nonpolluters by the polluters who want to continue to pollute is unjust and ecologically, morally and ethically bankrupt.”

‘The Universe Is Divine’

According to the ancient Vedas, the universe is divine, and everything therein — even the smallest grass — is an expression of the divine. “When I go to villages,” Shiva told Brand, “women will do sacred ceremonies with indigenous seed. They will never use a hybrid seed for a sacred ceremony … It’s quite amazing. No one told them, but they have that understanding of integrity and what the sacred means. It means to treat without violation.”27

The universe exists for the well-being of all, but her gifts must be enjoyed without greed, Shiva explained. Taking more than your share is theft, and will only backfire. The solution to true sustainability doesn’t lie with new technology, but in relying on the natural “technology” that is the universe:28

“It is by learning from the Earth that we can regenerate the Earth. We have to become students of Mother Earth, not try and dominate her. When we practice agriculture in unison with the Earth’s ecological processes aligned with the ecological laws of nature and the Earth, we evolve an agriculture of care for the land, for the soil. We participate in the process of regenerating the seed and biodiversity, soil and water.”

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Notes

1 Fortune March 13, 2021

2 Independent Science News November 16, 2020

3, 8 Navdanya International, Gates to a Global Empire

4, 7 Market Watch February 16, 2021

5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 27 YouTube April 13, 2021

11 Navdanya, Earth Rights Are Human Rights

14 BBC News February 15, 2021

15 ZeroHedge February 16, 2021

16, 19 Fox Business February 21, 2021

17 Navdanya, Earth Rights Are Human Rights, Page 14

18 The Nation February 16, 2021

20, 25, 26 Navdanya, Earth Rights Are Human Rights, Page 15

21 Investopedia, Carbon Trade

22, 24 World Economic Forum, Sustainable Digital Finance Can Unlock a Low-Carbon Economy

23 World Economic Forum, What Is a Carbon Credit?

28 Navdanya, Earth Rights Are Human Rights, Page 19

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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Initial autopsy results showed the previously healthy boy suffered from myocarditis, an inflammatory heart condition CDC officials have acknowledged is “likely” linked to mRNA COVID vaccines.

A 13-year-old Michigan boy died June 16, three days after he received his second dose of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.

Preliminary autopsy results indicated that following his vaccination, Jacob Clynick’s heart became enlarged and was surrounded by fluid — symptoms similar to those documented in other teen boys who experienced myocarditis following COVID vaccination.

On June 20, Clynick’s aunt, Tami Burages, posted a tweet with a photo of her nephew’s vaccination card and this statement, though she has since removed this tweet:

“A week ago today my brother’s 13-year-old son had his 2nd covid shot. Less than 3 days later he died. The initial autopsy results (done Friday) were that his heart was enlarged and there was some fluid surrounding it. He had no known health problems. Was on no medications.”

Tweet Jacob

Burages also tweeted, which she also removed:

“Our family is devastated. I struggled with putting this out on Twitter. I am pro-vaccine. We vaccinated my own 14-year-old son as soon as it was available. I know it is *mostly safe*.

“The @CDCgov needs to investigate this. There have been other cases of myocarditis in young men receiving their 2nd @pfizer shot. Have others died from it in the United States or is my nephew the first?

“Should any innocent child be a sacrificial lamb in this endeavor? There are moral, ethical and health questions that need to be answered. If Jacob had not received the 2nd shot, we believe he would be alive today.”

Tweet about Jacob

The teen’s death was reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is under investigation by federal health regulators to determine if there is a correlation between the death and vaccination — according to the Saginaw County Health Department — which received notice from the Saginaw Medical Examiner’s office of the boy’s death.

“Loss of life in an adolescent for any reason is heartbreaking,” the health department said in a statement. “Health officer Chris Harrington, MPH, and medical director Delicia Pruitt, MD, are mothers of children near the boy’s age, so it hits close to home for them.”

As of Wednesday, the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) did not include an entry for a Michigan teen who died in June. According to various reports, there is a two-month data lag between reports made to VAERS and those published to the public.

FDA to add warning about heart inflammation to Pfizer and Moderna vaccines

During a June 23 meeting, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) said there is a “likely association” of “mild” heart inflammation in adolescents and young adults after vaccination.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it will add a warning to COVID vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna about rare cases of heart inflammation in adolescents and young adults.

During the June 23 ACIP meeting, members acknowledged more than 1,200 cases of heart inflammation in 16- to 24-year-olds, mostly occurring in men. However, they said the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks.

Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, said in a presentation that data from one of the agency’s safety monitoring systems — Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) — suggests a rate of 12.6 cases per million in 12- to 39-year-olds during the three weeks after the second shot.

During the meeting’s public comment session, commenters chastised the CDC and its advisory committee for claiming the benefits of experimental COVID vaccines outweigh the risks in teens, when teens have a relative zero risk of dying from COVID, and are at a very low risk of experiencing adverse events.

Dr. Meryl Nass, an internal medicine physician, pointed out several flaws in the data used during the ACIP’s presentation:

“As of now, two major ways the rate of myocarditis were minimized [during the presentation] was to lump people from age 39 and down –– even though the highest rates [of myocarditis] are in the youngest kids. This waters down the rate. The other method was to only include a very narrow window of time after vaccinations started in the 12-15 age group, thus omitting the vast majority of second doses, which is when about 75% or more of the myocarditis cases occur. Also, the genders were sometimes mixed. And rates in girls are much lower than boys.”

During the presentation, Dr. Megan Wallance stated the overall efficacy of Pfizer’s COVID vaccinein the 12 to 15 age group is 100% and Moderna’s was comparable. Wallace then did a risk/benefit analysis comparing myocarditis cases versus hospitalization rates for COVID in people between the ages of 12 and 29.

“The problem with her analysis is that now the myocarditis rate used is too low. But the risk from COVID is magnified,” Nass said.

Other public commenters accused the CDC of withholding VAERS data and delaying publication of adverse event reports. Actual numbers, one commenter estimated, are three to 14 times higher than what’s been made public to date.

Physician Dr. Leslie Moore said current VAERS data is atrocious and frightening:

“All we have is the VAERS system, which is voluntary self-reporting. We know VAERS only captures 1-10% of all adverse events. Adverse events are grossly under-reported for a variety of reasons. I looked at open VAERS this morning. These products have amassed 6,000 deaths and 20,000 hospitalizations in the U.S, alone –– which is more than the other 70 vaccines for the last 30 years combined. That is with gross under-reporting and a two-month backlog. Let’s face it, these vaccines are not safe.”

The latest data from VAERS show 1,117 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation) in all age groups reported in the U.S. following COVID vaccination between Dec.14, 2020 and June 11, 2021. Of the 1,117 cases reported, 686 cases were attributed to Pfizer, 391 cases to Moderna and 36 cases to Johnson & Johnson’s COVID vaccine.

Though Shimabukuro, during the June 23 ACIP meeting, cited VSD data about the rate of heart inflammation in 12- to 39-year-olds, The Defender has been unable to report on VSD data related to COVID vaccine adverse events, including heart inflammation. That’s because unlike VAERS, the VSD does not make data collected through the system readily available to the public.

The VSD is a collaborative project between the CDC and “several large health plans,” according to its website. Though the public can’t access the VSD data, there is a process whereby researchers can apply to access data.

According to the VSD website:

“There are several ways interested researchers can access VSD data. In 2002, the VSD established a data sharing program at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Research Data Center (RDC) to allow external Guest Analysts to (1) conduct new vaccine safety studies using VSD data files available at CDC or (2) to reanalyze study-specific datasets from published VSD studies.”

The VSD data sharing program is a three-step process:

  1. Submission of proposals to CDC’s RDC at NCHS
  2. Submission of proposals to VSD site Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)
  3. Use of CDC’s RDC at NCHS

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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

Featured image is from CHD

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Dr. Robert Malone told Tucker Carlson we know the vaccines pose risks, but it’s hard to assess them because the government isn’t capturing the data “rigorously enough,” so we don’t have the information we need to make a reasonable decision.

In the segment below on last night’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson interviewed Dr. Robert Malone, creator of mRNA vaccine technology, about his opinion that COVID vaccines are unsafe for certain people, and how YouTube censored him for discussing vaccine safety.

YouTube took down an episode of the Dark Horse Podcast that featured an interview with Malone, despite Malone likely being “the single most qualified person on the planet” to discuss vaccine risks, Carlson explained. “He helped create the mRNA technology used in COVID vaccines.”

Malone told Carlson he’s concerned about vaccine safety in young people who are at low risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from COVID.

Malone’s comment followed news this week that within 24 hours of the World Health Organization (WHO) updating its guidance on who should get the COVID vaccine — with this statement: “Children should not be vaccinated for the moment” — the WHO removed the statement. The revised guidance now says the vaccines are “suitable for use” by children “over the age of 12.”

Malone told Carlson:

“One of my concerns is the government is not being transparent with us. I’m of the opinion that people have the right to decide whether to accept vaccines or not, especially since these are experimental vaccines. This is a fundamental right having to do with clinical research ethics.”

We know there are risks, but it’s hard to assess them because the government isn’t capturing the data “rigorously enough,” Malone said. “We don’t have the information we need to make a reasonable decision.”

Malone said the risk-benefit analysis has not been done.

“Normally, at this stage, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices would’ve performed those risk-benefit analyses,” said Malone. “They would be data-based and science-based. They’re not right now.”

Carlson also highlighted a Norwegian study linking the Pfizer vaccine to deaths in nursing home residents.

The study found that out of the first 100 reported deaths in nursing home residents who received the Pfizer vaccine, 10 were “likely” due to the vaccine. An additional 26 deaths were “possibly” caused by the vaccine, said the study authors.

Watch Tucker Carlson’s segment here:

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New research released Monday shows the post-9/11 wars launched by the U.S. military since 2001 have resulted in over 30,000 suicides by active duty American solders and veterans—over four times the number killed in combat operations.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project—established in 2010 to account for the loss of lives and taxpayer dollars spent on U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—an estimated 30,177 veterans and service members have killed themselves over the last nearly two decades, compared with 7,057 members of the military who have been killed in combat.

The findings were compiled from interviews, government data, and secondary literature.

The report (pdf) “reveals an increasingly severe crisis,” the authors wrote, with the veteran suicide rate per 100,000 people in the U.S. outpacing that of the public.

“The V.A. 2020 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report reveals the suicide rate of veterans overall and adjusted for age and sex is 1.5 times that of the general population,” the report reads. “This rate is likely a conservative one because, unlike earlier reports, the V.A. only counts veterans who were federally activated, leaving out Reservists and National Guardsmen who were not federally activated.”

From 2011 to 2020 an estimated 1,193 National Guard members and 1,607 Reservists have died by suicide; data is not available for the first decade after 9/11.

Among active duty service members, 5,116 have died by suicide in the past two decades.

The suicide rate among active duty service members has historically been lower than that of the general U.S. population, the report noted, revealing “a significant shift.”

The study points to a number of factors that may have contributed to the rise in suicides, including an increase in the use of improvised explosive devices and their association with traumatic brain injuries, exposure to trauma, military culture and training, the wide availability of guns, and stressors associated with returning to civilian life.

Multiple deployments was also highlighted as a factor unique to service members post-September 11, 2001.

“Modern medical advances have also allowed service members to survive physical traumas and return to the frontlines for multiple deployments, even though the combination of multiple traumatic exposures, chronic pain, and lasting physical wounds is linked to suicidal behaviors,” reads the report. “The sheer length of the war has kept service members in the fight longer, providing more opportunities for traumatic exposure. The U.S. government’s inability to address the suicide crisis is a significant cost of the U.S. post-9/11 wars, and the result is a mental health crisis among our veterans and service members with significant long-term consequences.”

Thomas “Ben” Suitt III, who authored the report, said many service members don’t get the treatment they need—sometimes as a result of trying to hide their struggles—and the paper details how this makes them more vulnerable to suicidal behavior.

“There was a sense that an active service member would rather lie on a screening to be able to stay in the military,” Suitt told NBC News. “If they have a traumatic brain injury but no other physical injuries, they downplay the injuries to stay in their career.”

The report comes days after the World Health Organization (WHO) released a study showing that one in 100 deaths around the world is the result of suicide, and that in the Americas region, including the U.S., the rate rose by 17% between 2000 and 2009.

“We cannot—and must not—ignore suicide,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO. “Each one is a tragedy. Our attention to suicide prevention is even more important now, after many months living with the Covid-19 pandemic, with many of the risk factors for suicide—job loss, financial stress and social isolation—still very much present.”

As we come closer to the twentieth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, we must reflect on the mental health cost of the Global War on Terror. The human cost for our veterans and service members far outweighs even the most crippling financial costs we have endured to send them to war.

Stephanie Savell, co-director of the Costs of War Project, said policymakers in the U.S. “must examine and address those factors” which are leading greater numbers of service members and veterans to take their own lives.

“As we come closer to the twentieth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, we must reflect on the mental health cost of the Global War on Terror,” the report reads. “The human cost for our veterans and service members far outweighs even the most crippling financial costs we have endured to send them to war.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

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As if we didn’t have enough weird things going on, now birds are suddenly dropping dead in large numbers all across the eastern half of the country.  Before they die, a lot of these birds are exhibiting very strange symptoms.  Experts are telling us that in many cases birds are developing “crusty or puffy eyes”, and often they appear to go completely blind.  In addition, quite a few of these dying birds lose their ability to stay balanced, and we are being told that some even seem to be having “seizures”.  If scientists understood what was causing this to happen, that would be one thing.  But at this point they have no idea why this is taking place, and that is quite alarming.

So far, confirmed incidents of this strange phenomenon have been documented in Washington D.C., Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana.

Could it be possible that we are dealing with a “mystery disease” that started in one state and that has now spread to other surrounding states?

Or is something else going on here?

We are being told that “blue jays, common grackles and European starlings” are the most common birds that are being affected.

But whatever is happening is not just limited to one species of birds, and I think that should be a red flag.

If our best experts even had a decent working theory about why so many birds are dying, I probably would not have written this article.  But at this point they are openly admitting that they have absolutely no idea why so many birds are suddenly dropping dead…

“We’re experiencing an unusual amount of bird mortality this year,” said Kate Slankard, an avian biologist with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “We have yet to figure out what the problem is. The condition seems to be pretty deadly.”

In Kentucky, the bird deaths seem to have begun in late May.  The following comes directly from the official website of the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources…

In late May, the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources began receiving reports of sick and dying birds with eye swelling and crusty discharge, as well as neurological signs. Wildlife agencies in Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia, Washington, D.C. and West Virginia have reported similar problems.

State wildlife agencies are working with diagnostic laboratories to investigate the cause of mortality. Kentucky Fish and Wildlife has sent more than 20 samples for lab testing to the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia. More results are pending, but no definitive cause of death has been identified at this time.

After testing 20 samples, they still have no idea what is going on.

According to Slankard, “hundreds of birds” in her state have now become victims…

“They’ll just sit still, often kind of shaking,” Slankard said. “It’s pretty safe to say that hundreds of birds in the state have had this problem.”

But of course the truth is that we have no way of knowing how many birds have actually been affected.

It could be thousands of birds in the state.

It could be hundreds of thousands.

We just don’t know, and Kentucky is just one of the states that has been hit.

In Indiana, authorities tested for avian flu and West Nile virus, but those tests came back negative

Indiana wildlife officials said there have been suspicious deaths of blue jays, robins, northern cardinals and brown-headed cowbirds in five counties. James Brindle, spokesman for the state’s Department of Natural Resources, said birds there have tested negative for avian influenza and West Nile virus.

One theory that is floating around is that these birds are ingesting large amounts of pesticides because of all the cicadas that they are eating.

Some experts are flatly dismissing that theory because “the disease has also appeared in states where cicadas are not present”.

But how can they be so sure that it is a disease if they have absolutely no idea why this is happening?

I don’t think that we should jump to any conclusions that are not backed up by science.

Obviously a lot more testing needs to be done.  If it does turn out to be a disease that is causing this, is it a disease that can also spread to humans?  Moving forward, that could be one of the most important questions that needs to be answered.

Hopefully we can get some solid answers, because this is not the first time something like this has happened.  Back in September, one expert said that it appeared that “hundreds of thousands” of birds were dropping dead in New Mexico…

Wildlife experts in New Mexico say birds in the region are dropping dead in alarming numbers, potentially in the “hundreds of thousands.”

“It appears to be an unprecedented and a very large number,” Martha Desmond, a professor at New Mexico State University’s department of fish, wildlife, and conservation ecology, told NBC’s Albuquerque affiliate KOB.

But whatever was causing those deaths to happen in New Mexico seems to have stopped.

Is there any connection between that event and the deaths that are happening in the eastern half of the country now?

I wish that I had the answer to that question.

We live at a time when pesticides, high technology and other forms of human activity are having a greater impact on birds and animals than ever before.  But we have also entered an era when I believe that great pestilences are going to become very common.

Obviously something is killing all those birds, and hopefully scientists will have something solid to tell us very soon.

With each passing day, our world is getting crazier, and so much is going wrong all around us.

Many are hoping that 2020 and 2021 will just turn out to be anomalies, but I am entirely convinced that they are just the very small tip of a very large iceberg.

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Warmongering British Actions in the Black Sea

June 25th, 2021 by Craig Murray

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The pre-positioning of the BBC correspondent on HMS Defender shatters the pretence that the BBC is something different to a state propaganda broadcaster. It also makes plain that this propaganda exercise to provoke the Russian military was calculated and deliberate. Indeed that was confirmed by that BBC correspondent’s TV news report last night when he broadcast that the Defender’s route “had been approved at the very highest levels of the British government.”

The Prime Minister does not normally look at the precise positions of British ships. This was a deliberate act of dangerous belligerence.

The presence of a BBC correspondent is more than a political point. In fact it has important legal consequences. One thing that is plain is that the Defender cannot possible claim it was engaged in “innocent passage” through territorial waters, between Odessa and Georgia. Let me for now leave aside the fact that there is absolutely no necessity to pass within 12 miles of Cape Fiolent on such passage, and the designated sea lane (originally designated by Ukraine) stays just out of the territorial sea. Look at the definition of innocent passage in Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea:

Very plainly this was not innocent passage. It was certainly 2 (d) an act of propaganda, and equally certainly 2 (c), an exercise in collecting information on military defences. I would argue it is also 2 (a), a threat of force.

So far as I can establish, the British are not claiming they were engaged in innocent passage, which is plainly nonsense, but that they were entering territorial waters off Crimea at the invitation of the government of Ukraine, and that they regard Crimea as the territory of Ukraine and Crimean territorial waters as Ukrainian territorial waters.

I want to impress on you how mad this is. The whole point of “territorial sea” is that, legally, it is an integral part of the state and that the state’s full domestic law applies within the territorial sea. That is not the case with the much larger 200 mile exclusive economic zone or sometimes even larger continental shelf, where the coastal state’s legal jurisdiction only applies to specific marine or mineral resources rights.

Let me put it this way. If somebody is murdered on a ship within twelve nautical miles of the coast, the coastal state has jurisdiction and its law applies. If somebody is murdered on a ship more than twelve miles off the coast, the jurisdiction and law of the flag state of the ship applies, not the law of any coastal state in whose exclusive economic zone the ship is.

In international law, the twelve mile territorial sea is as much part of the state as its land. So to sail a warship into Crimean territorial seas is exactly the same act as to land a regiment of paratroops in the Crimea and declare you are doing so at the invitation of the Government of Ukraine.

There is no dispute that Russia is in de facto control of the Crimea, irrespective of British support for the government of Ukraine’s claim to the region. It is also true that Russian annexation of the Crimea was not carried out in an accordance with international law. However, it is not, in practice, likely to be reversed and the situation needs to be resolved by treaty or by the International Court of Justice. In the interim, the UK government legal position can only be that Russia is an “occupying power”. It is impossible that the UK government legal position is that Ukraine is in “effective control” of the territory.

We need to see the legal advice provided by FCO legal advisers. It is simply not the practice in international law to ignore the existence of an occupying power which is a recognised state, and act with armed forces on the authority of a government not in effective control. The difference in British attitude towards Russia as an occupying power and towards Israel is tellingly different.

The legality of the British action is, at very best, moot. In realpolitik, it is an act of brinkmanship with a nuclear power and further effort to ramp up the new Cold War with Russia, to the benefit of the military, security services and armaments companies and the disbenefit of those who need more socially useful government spending. It is further an act of jingoist populism for the neo-liberal elite to distract the masses, as the billionaires’ incredible wealth continues to boom.

NATO will shortly commence a naval exercise in the Black Sea. As not all the member states of NATO are quite as unhinged as Johnson, it is to be hoped it will refrain from this kind of extra layer of provocation. There is a large part of me that says they cannot possibly be mad enough to attempt to intervene in Ukraine with military force, or at least its threat. But then I look at Johnson and Biden, and worry. This can all go horribly wrong.

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Demand Legal Governance in the United States!

June 25th, 2021 by Emanuel Pastreich

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The formulation of policy in the United States takes place in a sticky and rancid black box.  The low-intensity evil perpetrated there, in slow motion so that citizens cannot perceive the shifts taking place, is not the result of a particular politician, or a specific political party.

What is considered common sense, standard practice, in the Capitol, is, in reality, insanity and depravity. It has boiled over, spilling its lurid juices on the marble floor.

“Politics” was not originally a criminal activity, but rather implementing in the real world of moral imperatives that can be traced back to ancient times. Sadly, the decay of institutions over the last three decades have reduced “politics” to a Punch and Judy show wherein politicians work day and night to convince us that policies exclusively serving the rich are formulated for our good.

The politician is not a public servant—although he or she is funded with tax dollars. He or she does not ask what our nation needs for the long term. No, the politician is up late at night finding ways to distract and to confuse us, to overwhelm our senses with images and associations—to anything that will keep us from thinking rationally.

The fundamental questions of politics, of governance, will never, never, be addressed by today’s politicians:

What is the role of government?

What is money and who controls it?

What is security and how can we best maintain it?

How can we create an environment in which citizens are educated properly so that they can serve their role as citizens, and provided with the time, and the inclination, to play their constitutional role as citizen?

Instead of asking citizens what our country should be, what our government can, or cannot, do, politicians join up with the false gods of the commercial media to promote the idea that growth, consumption, the stock market, exports and imports are somehow measures of prosperity and well-being that are dictated by God, that are natural like the law of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics.

These criminal practices in government have been around for decades, but they have slipped into the final stage of exponential decay recently.

However, no matter how many times lies are repeated, they do not become truth.

Congressmen, governors and judges, department heads and mayors, know that their primary job is pleasing their true masters, taking the orders given to them by lobbyists representing the billionaires. They are not public servants; they are simply criminals. These politicians have only two priorities: getting elected and getting reelected. They will offer up human sacrifices to any false god that aids them in that task.

Other issues are boring, even irritating, for the politician.

But politicians do get pleasure from attacking other politicians, the men and women with whom they cavort in private at the offices of investment bankers. They attack each other on cue from PR firms for odd behavior at trivial events, for supposedly improper comments about insignificant policy. These plastic, single-use, political attacks are a saccharine grand guignol for our consumption.

What policy formulation should be

The process by which policy is formulated in the Congress, planned in the Executive branch, and then implemented in the Federal government, should reflect priorities based on a long-term scientific understanding, and should respond to the actual needs of citizens.

The formulation of policy involves assessing the effectiveness of the standards by which we assess the health of the nation, determining the most effective tools for realizing meaningful change, and formulating policies that respond to current problems based on an accurate understanding of long term developments. The formulation of policy must also grapple with the critical issue of what government cannot, and should not, do, and what powers must be denied to other institutions that are wont to pray on citizens.

The process must be democratic, must reflect the opinions of the people in an accurate manner, but it also must be based on the truth, on science. If the vast majority of people vote for a candidate, or support a law, because they have been subject to misinformation pushed on them by the rich, then this process cannot be considered democracy. Our nation has wandered out into a wasteland of tyranny, corruption and cruel feudalism. The billions stolen from the citizens by banks and corporations are rolled back into paying authorities and celebrities to pretend that everything is just fine.

We have passed the inflection point. Some form of massive social unrest is guaranteed. We must not fool ourselves.

Rather, we must step back to consider how the policy making process ought to work according to the Constitution and set a goal for what we wish to achieve.

The powerful who determine policy today do not want us to have any goal. They want us to just get mad at a politician, at a celebrity, and blow off steam in the pointless manner they have decided for us in advance.

Even if our goal is the establishment of a constitutional democracy for the people, by the people and of the people, there will be different visions and conflicting interests. The process will not be smooth, but if we have even just a handful of citizens, intellectuals and practitioners who are dedicated to the pursuit of truth and to moral governance, we can minimalize the disagreements and focus on our future.

The Ideal for a Constitutional Democracy

The formulation of policy should take place within the Congress and it should be undertaken by representatives from each district and each state of the nation who are elected in a fair and transparent manner. Fair means that influence cannot be bought by multinational corporations and banks using dark money and that public officials are accountable only to the citizens. Transparent means that the information offered by journalists is scientific and accurate and there is no opportunity to distort it through the use of money.

The congressmen are paid a salary by the Federal Government and they serve the needs of the people for the short term and the long term. They have a moral and legal responsibility to reject the influence of the rich and powerful.

All citizens must be protected from a self-indulgent and narcissistic culture created by multinational corporations for the purpose of dumbing them down and degrading their capacity to make the judgements they must to be citizens in accord with the Constitution. Elections are meaningless if citizens are forced to rely on a corrupting consumption culture of waste and sexual suggestion, or on misleading, intellectually degrading, sources of information.

The elections must be a process wherein citizens are allowed to, and encouraged to, understand the issues and to engage the candidates in a frank and science-based, discussion about long-term interests of the nation.

Once elected, congressmen must work to understand the true state of affairs in the district, the state, and the nation. They must make decisions based on accurate information. They must balance their duty to represent their constituents’ immediate concerns with a moral duty to uphold the true interests of the nation, based on a scientific evaluation.

There will be moments when they must make decisions for the greater good that go against the perceived short-term interests of the region, or of the nation. It is essential that citizens be encouraged to think in a rational, long-term, manner so they will understand how such decisions are made. That critical part of governance, however, is impossible in the current consumption culture promoted by multinational corporations that encourages immediate gratification and discourages deeper understanding.

Congressmen cannot possibly have the specialized understanding necessary to make accurate and appropriate decisions regarding all policy. That means that he or she must be briefed constantly by experts, and that he or she must be given the time, and the incentive, to develop his or her expertise. That search for knowledge, and for wisdom, is critical to governance.

Those briefing and informing the congressmen must be experts with a high level competence and objectivity. Objectivity means that they are not beholden to the rich and powerful and they do not have a personal stake in the issue regarding which they brief the congressmen.

The experts are professors, or technical experts, who work for institutions that are funded by the government for the long-term so as to assure that experts remain objective and they have no incentive to distort their analysis so as to please funders, or other powerful figures. Experts at institutions that depend on funding from the wealthy, from corporations and banks or from foreign interests, have no role in the briefing of congressmen.

There must be opportunities for citizens, who often have valuable firsthand understanding of problems, to offer their opinions and insights to congressmen. Extra care must be taken to assure that citizens approach congressmen in good faith, and no individuals paid in secret to represent the powerful.

This vision for what the United States could be, how to “Make America great for the first time,” draws on the philosophy of Frederick Douglass. Douglass led a fight against slavery similar to the fight that we are engaged in today. He recognized that the drafting of the Constitution in 1787 was undertaken by the privileged and that parts of it were biased towards the protection of property and the defense of slavery and indentured labor. Yet Douglass held that the words of the Constitution, and the spirit of that unique gathering of 1787, offered the potential to realize better government. He stressed that although Thomas Jefferson was a defender of slavery, his insights on freedom could be separated from his personal weaknesses. He argued that we must realize the potential in the words of the Constitution, which say nothing of race or class, and not on the manner in which it was interpreted to suit the barbaric habits of that age.

How is policy made today?

Sadly, policy making in Washington does not resemble the process I have described above and has virtually nothing to do with the mandate of the Constitution, or with the needs of citizens. Congressmen spend their time begging for money and pushing gimmicks in the commercial media. The actual discussion of policy takes place far away from the Capitol, in secret. Policy is formulated by those who do the bidding of multinational corporations and investment banks on Wall Street, or in Hong Kong, or London. The entire process, from beginning to end, is illegal and immoral.

Although the Russell Senate Building and the Rayburn House Building still stand, although staff members still shuffle around to arrange meetings and to answer phone calls, government, in the true sense of the word, is nowhere to be found. The final blow was delivered in the 2020 election, but it was but the exponential acceleration of a trend leading back to the Kennedy assassination.

Small consulting firms that represent the super-rich, directly, or through private equity firms, set the priorities for the country in secret and feed it to the Congress. Moreover, for the last twenty years, power has shifted to a shadow government run according to secret law. Secret laws are passed by Congress and have have profound impact on policy. But it is illegal to disclose them to the public. Although the full range of the abuse of secret law and classified orders on policy in Congress and in the Executive branch is known only to God, we know that it is possible now to block the qualified from running for office, to give billions of dollars to corporations in secret, and to prohibit the discussion, under pain of prison, of the rampant corruption in our nation.

The general assumptions about what is good for the nation are set by corporations through the media sources that they control.

It is assumed to be a scientific truth that growth, in terms of production and consumption, is a positive for the nation and that the value of stocks (owned primarily by the rich), the manufacture and consumption of unnecessary things, and the export of agricultural goods and manufactured goods must be the primary concern of government.

The corporations force-feed us lies about the value of the global trade that they control, paying experts to convince us that the trade between multinationals in the United States, China, Japan, Germany and France has any relationship to the economic interests of ordinary people.

It is also presented as a given that the Federal Reserve, now controlled by international investment banks like BlackRock, can make monetary and fiscal policy with no accountability to the citizen, and that the citizen has no right to suggest how money should be defined, employed, or loaned out to corporations. Journalism is a subdomain of corporate advertising that hides from us how the inflation, produced when corporations use the Federal Reserve to print up money and buy their own stock, eats away at the paltry savings of ordinary people.

Although no one who is permitted to speak to the people mentions the dark empire of global finance, the facts are now so obvious that even those drenched in sugary food, marinated in pornography and action films, and drowned in fashion and seductive pop music, notice that something is wrong.

There is an assumption in our society, a patently false assumption, that corporations have the right to place suggestive and misleading images and messages anywhere they want, on billboards and in buses, in commercials, or embedded in movies, that justify a criminal economic and social system that benefits them.

Internet, commercial television and movies, and social media have as their primary goal the reprogramming of the brains of citizens so as to render them up to corporations as docile consumers incapable of action. This agenda is unconstitutional and criminal yet few resist it. Powerful, but invisible, totalitarian structures that have been erected across our nation.

The foreign wars that destroy the Earth, and cripple our sons and daughters, driving the militarization of our government, and of the corporations that occupy it, cannot be kept secret any longer.

The forced use of throwaway GMO seeds, and plants modified to be poisonous and innutritious, the criminal purchase of farmland by corporations using phony money that created for them by banks, the sprinkling of deadly pesticides and fertilizers on fields that not only poison our water but also destroy the precious soil that took hundreds of years to develop, are opening the Gates of Hell for future famines that the blind baby boomers never imagined possible.

The assumption in policy is that the only way to solve problems is tax the people (not to tax corporations or the super-rich) and then to use that tax money to magically resolve all issues. Although government has played a helpful role in the past, and could in the future, the institutions that call themselves “government” are no longer capable of playing that role. The money for those programs will come out of our pockets in terms of taxes, inflation, and additional costs for the products we must buy since we are prohibited from growing our own food or making our own furniture and tools.

Citizens are blocked from obtaining good educations, and teachers are treated with contempt. That policy is implemented because educated citizens can oppose corporate greed. But the corporations also want to define what a good education is, and make that specific form of education that they define the requirement for the high paying jobs they control.

Citizens who try to assert their constitutional right to “secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” or who just try to get buy, find nothing but unemployment, underemployment, exploitation and crippling debt. They are brainwashed, or simply tricked, into spending what little money they have on non-essential products.

The final step in this process is to deprive the citizen of the right to support himself or herself economically. Small businesses, small farms, every aspect of economic activity for the citizen has been destroyed by operation COVID19, the “controlled demolition of the economy.” We are forced take COVID19 payments, established without any democratic process. In the next year, most will be made dependent on these pathetic corporate payouts; we will be slaves in every sense of the word.

The great majority of government money for “COVID19” goes to corporations. The criminal media tell us that the money will create jobs, but in most cases it will be used for automation that will destroy jobs, or to hire private intelligence firms to spy on, and to infiltrate, workers so that they cannot offer resistance.

The time for action has come, fellow citizens. We cannot allow the rich and powerful to play on our human weaknesses any more. We must realize our capacity to think for ourselves, to create our own free economy, to think scientifically and to organize ourselves in opposition to this criminal takeover of our society.

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


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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For weeks I’ve been predicting Biden would capitulate to the Republican-McConnell proposals on infrastructure, including funding it without taxing corps-investors-wealthy. Today, June 24, he did just that, after paring down his original $2.3T proposal for Infrastructure spending step by step. Biden reportedly now agrees to only $579B in new infrastructure spending. What’s not revealed, however, is how much of this total is being earmarked in separate bills that have been moving toward passage that subsidize manufacturing, tech corps, and chip-auto companies. The latter, already agreed to is $52B. Another $110B is in the so-called ‘Endless Frontier Act’, subsidizing US tech development in competition with China. Another unknown amount will no doubt come from Biden’s original $400B targeting manufacturing in his original Infrastructure (aka American Jobs Act) proposal of $2.3T when initially announced months ago.

We now have the latest Corporate Wing of the Democrat Party (Biden, Shumer, Manchin, et. al.) completing their charade negotiations with the Republicans. Step by step the spending was cut, from $2.3T, to the current $579B. Behind the scenes over the past weeks, segments of Biden’s $2.3T were ‘broken out’ of the original $2.3T and moved on separate tracks toward passage. Both Dems and Repubs were in agreement on these elements: i.e. $52B for US semiconductor and auto companies, R&D for US manufacturers in the so-called ‘Endless Frontier Act’, and other provisions of Biden’s $400B proposed spending on manufacturing and US multinational corp subsidization in his original $2.3T Infrastructure proposal.

As we await the final version of the stripped down $579B in next few days, the only question is how much of it will be paid by consumers in the form of gas taxes, fees, and government borrowing (raising the national debt) vs. how much by tax hikes on the wealthy originally proposed by Biden and the Dems during the election. Having already dropped his proposal to raise taxes on corporations back to 28% from the 21% level under Trump (who cut it from 35%), thus raising $850B in revenue, Biden will likely now drop remaining tax hikes on wealthy individuals he originally proposed as well.

Make no mistake, this was all nicely ‘engineered’ by the corporate wing of the Democrat party, firmly in control since 1992 of policy, in cooperation with McConnell and the Republicans. Blue Dog Democrat Senator, Joe Manchin, served nicely as the ‘point man’ to take the heat off the Democrat leadership, as all parties danced toward a pre-arranged ‘compromise’ that leaves Trump’s corporate-Investor-Wealthy tax cuts under Trump ($4T) intact.

Biden and Dems will now try to spin the result, claiming it will provide millions of jobs, when it won’t. It will likely encourage more offshoring of jobs, subsidizing US tech and multinational corp manufacturers instead. With Biden having separately agreed to a minimal 15% corporate tax rate with European capitalists, the Trump 21% vs. the 15% will certainly encourage the continued offshoring of US jobs. In addition, the new subsidies to US multinational tech and manufacturing corps in the $52B chip bill, the ‘Endless Frontier’ bill, and the elements of the $579B now agreed infrastructure bill, will all further exacerbate the loss of US jobs mostly to offshore.

For the US economy recovery, it is clear the $579B will be too little and likely too late. The Covid 19 relief act passed earlier this year will dissipate in terms of its economic impact by late summer 2021–just as the 2020 minimal stimulus acts dissipated within months. The US economy is getting a ‘bump’ from reopening this spring and summer, just like it did from the aborted reopening last summer 2020. That temporary rebound relapsed by fourth quarter 2020. It will be interesting to watch as the current insufficient stimulus of $579B has the same temporary rebound and results in another fading economic recovery by early 2022!

(The following are my ‘running tweets’ since early June predicting the course of events with regard to infrastructure spending, now culminating in Biden’s capitulation. It’s all beginning to look a lot like Obama’s in 2009-10):

  • June 24

#Infrastructure Next question: how much of Biden’s $579B capitulation includes prior agreed to $52B subsidy to US chip corps, $110B ‘Endless Frontier Act’ subsidy for US corps R&D, & Biden’s $400B proposal for US manuf subsidies in his initial $2.3T proposed infrastructure bill?

  • June 24

#BIdenomics If Biden & Dems can only pass a McConnell-Repub infrastructure bill, Biden’s Family Plan stimulus supposed to follow infrastructure is clearly DOA! Ditto any Biden promises to take back Trump’s $4T 2017 tax cuts for investors, business, wealthiest 1%. Deja vu 2009-11

  • June 24

#Inrastructure Biden capitulates. Agrees to $579B (down from $2.3T) Repub-Dem ‘Blue Dog’ proposal. Details also likely to show Trump tax cuts untouched & consumers to pay with gas tax hike, fees, etc. = Insufficient stimulus as Covid relief spending dissipates by late summer.

  • Jun 23

#Infrastructure Senate group, with 10 Dems, proposing $973B package (with $394B already authorized in prior transport & other spending–only $579B new). Biden at $1.2T. Watch around $1.1T (as predicted here). Paid for by fees, leaving Trump’s $4T wealthy tax cuts untouched.

  • Jun 14

#infrastructure It’s now clear: Biden & Dem party corp wing will never do budget reconciliation. Biden dropped corp tax ($850B) proposal. Watch him now cut back personal tax proposals (on $1M individuals, inheritance, etc.) & agree to $1T spending (w/o climate, elderly measures)

  • Jun 11

#Infrastructure Romney & blue dog Dem Senema propose $587B ‘new money’ (+add $394B from hiway budget+$350B from budget for local govts in Covid bill, both already authorized) and there’s your $1.2T! Biden signals he’s ok with it. Now fight over paring down individual income tax.

  • Jun 10

#Infrastructure New Biden strategy: break out parts of proposed $1T bill (down from $2.2T) and pass laws separately: $250B for manuf, R&D, chips; $303B for road-rail transport; Prior $174B proposed for govt buying electric busses & building charging stations, now down to $8.1B.

  • Jun 9

#Infrastructure Deja vu 2020: $1.3T mitigation spending March 2020 Cares Act, followed by McConnell blocking June 2020 Heroes Act stimulus; $1.8T March 2021 Covid Relief Act, followed by blocking of Infrastructure bill (except for $250B subsidy for manufacturing-tech-chip corps)

  • Jun 9

#Infrastructure negotiations break down between Dems and Republicans. In the process, Biden cuts his proposal from $2.25T to $1T with no Republican counter except to ‘move money around’ already authorized to be spent. (McConnell, with Manchin help, out-maneuvering Dems again)

  • Jun 7

#Infrastructure: prediction: watch Biden cut total new spending to $700B (over 10 yrs) but claim it’s still $1T by adopting Manchin’s proposal to include $308B already authorized in highway spending + most of $700B will be subsidies to manufacturing & tech corps already agreed to

#Infrastructure negotiations update: Biden now at $1T. Republicans propose: use $394B already authorized for transport + transfer $350B already authorized for local govt spending + add about $250B new (over 10 yrs). Manchin-McConnell want more cuts. Watch Biden cut to $700B total

  • May 28

#Infrastructure Why did Biden reportedly ‘signal’ to Republican Senators when he last met with them that he’d accept a $1 trillion package? If he did, he’s either incompetent as a negotiator, or else negotiations are just a game being played for public consumption by both parties

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More on Domestic Terrorism: Who Will be the Target?

June 25th, 2021 by Philip Giraldi

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When the so-called war on domestic terrorism was declared quite early on in the Joe Biden Administration it provoked a wave of dissent from those who recognized that it would inevitably be used to stifle free speech and target constituencies that do not agree with the White House’s plans for sweeping changes in how the country is governed. Some rightly pointed out that every time the Federal government declares war on anyone or anything, to include drugs, poverty, or even Afghanistan, the results are generally counter-productive. But others noted that once fundamental liberties are taken away they will likely never return.

At first there were reports that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were increasing their investigations, many centered on the so-called U.S. Capitol “insurrection” of January 6th, which it now appears might have been in part incited by the FBI itself. The scope of the inquiries into how perfectly legal opposition groups operate and proliferate in the U.S. soon broadened to include opponents of much of the social engineering that the Democrats have brought with them to change the face of America. “Hate” or “extremist” groups and individuals became the targets with “hate” and “extremism” liberally defined as anyone whose identity or agenda did not coincide with that of the Democratic Party.

This effort to root out “domestic terrorism” needed a focus and that came with what was claimed to be an intelligence community joint assessment in March which labeled “white supremacists” and “anti-government extremists” as “the two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat.” The White House echoed that judgement, claiming that the report’s conclusions had identified “the most urgent terrorism threat the United States faces today.”

The report’s conclusions were somewhat odd and it would be interesting to know who wrote it and whether there was any dissent over what it included. Presumably, no one was empowered to suggest that surging black violence over the past year is a major “domestic terror” issue. The conclusion therefore was skewed – while no one would deny that there have been violent incidents involving white racist group and individuals, they are far outnumbered by the deaths that have taken place due to the black lives matter movement, which both government and corporate America have embraced. Given that, the targeting of “white” groups must be considered to be essentially political, particularly insofar as the White House and Attorney General Merrick Garland have made every effort to link the “racist-extremists” to the Republican Party and more particularly to Donald Trump.

All of this came together last Tuesday when Garland released the first-ever “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” which had been a work in progress ordered by President Biden on his very first day in office. The plan is a curious mixture of enhancement of traditional law enforcement measures, to include calls for increased information-sharing between governments and technology sectors, as well as an infusion of over $100 million to hire more focused prosecutors, investigators, and intelligence specialists. Ominously, it also supports setting up mechanisms for screening government employees for ties to “extremist” and hate groups, meaning that anyone belonging to a group that praises the virtues of European nations or the white race will quickly become unemployed. Such screening is already taking place in the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department. The overall strategic objective is to attempt to prevent recruitment by extremist groups by, inter alia, increasing the law enforcement penetration and investigation of such entities while also marginalizing and punishing those individuals who do become members.

Biden’s war on domestic terrorism is so far lacking new legislation that will enable the authorities “to successfully hunt down, prosecute, and imprison homegrown extremists” just because they have been generically labeled extreme, but presumably that is coming. Interestingly, one would expect a Justice Department document to be race and gender neutral, but it is anything but that, again reenforcing that it is a political statement. It sees as a major objective for the government to directly confront “racism and bigotry as drivers of domestic terrorism.”

Merrick Garland spoke briefly to the media when he was releasing the document. He claimed that the robust government approach would not infringe on First and Fourth Amendment Constitutional rights, the rights of free speech and assembly and freedom from searches without due process. But then he oddly enough added that “The only way to find sustainable solutions is not only to disrupt and deter, but also to address the root causes of violence.” If one follows that line of reasoning and accepts that white supremacists are the major problem, then the assumption is that available resources will go to where the problem is: white people who oppose government policies, which might presumably include anyone who voted for Donald Trump.

Garland then added that the new strategy would be “focused on violence, not on ideology,” as “We do not prosecute people for their beliefs.” One might argue with that assertion as the policy clearly targets individuals for their beliefs, including that they have a constitutional right to be left alone by a meddling federal government. Ironically, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) responded to the document by complaining that its tactics employ “abusive counterterrorism tools that result in unfair and unjustified surveillance and targeting of Black and Brown people, particularly Muslims.” ACLU has it wrong and should have read the document more carefully: it actually targets white people.

Inevitably such a report that is seeking to pursue and transform most of the U.S. population produced a reaction. One of the most ridiculous came from Cynthia Miller-Idriss, who heads the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University,  writing for The Atlantic,  who believes it is a “public health problem, not a security issue.” She wrote “The extremism we’re now seeing in the U.S. is ‘post-organizational,’ characterized by fluid online boundaries and a breakdown of formal groups and movements …. To fight this amorphous kind of radicalization, the federal government needs to see the problem as a whole-of-society, public-health issue.”

So if it is a public health issue the government will no doubt order development of a vaccine at great expense that will be mandatory for all Americans above the age of twelve. As Biden has identified the threat in racial terms, even though it is being claimed that no one’s rights will be violated, how will a law enforcement let off the leash to pursue the target of choice respond? What to do about the numerous white ethnic societies that exist in the United States to celebrate their heritage? Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans and German-Americans watch out! And wait a minute, aren’t organizations like black lives matter already supporting a certain level of violence to bring about change? But presumably only “whites” will be surveilled because the government has identified them as the problem. Looking at the issues being raised and the solutions being suggested one might conclude that the real problem in America is not necessarily extremism among the people but rather extremism in the government. We have been taught undesired and quite frankly hypocritical lessons by four presidents in a row and perhaps it is now time that we be left alone! 

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

Featured image: Outside during the US Capitol during the January 6, 2021 attack on the building (Flickr/Creative Commons)

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An exchange between the United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, and several Republican Congressmen in Washington, D.C. on June 23, illustrates the level of hysteria prevalent among ruling circles as it relates to what can and cannot be taught within educational institutions including the military.

Gen. Milley was questioned about a “diversity training” program within the military which utilized reading materials that some members of Congress strongly object.

This questioning of Milley took place within the context of attempts by the Pentagon to supposedly uncover “extremists” within its ranks who are harboring racist right-wing views. Some members of Congress are even calling for a cutback in funding to the Pentagon claiming that conservatives are being targeted and accused of racism and neo-fascism.

The top U.S. military general said in response to the questioning, that:

“I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. What is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend? And I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned, our noncommissioned officers, of being ‘woke.'” (See this)

Of course, Gen. Milley is by no means a proponent of anti-racist education. The reasoning of the Pentagon is related to the need for some form of cohesion within the ranks of the various divisions of the military forces. Events in recent months, particularly the right-wing mob attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, could easily prefigure a split within the security apparatus of the U.S. Such divisions which undoubtedly exist between white soldiers and their counterparts from the oppressed communities, would hamper the operational capacity of the Pentagon to engage in combat internationally as well as domestically.

Among the ranks of those involved in the Capitol Hill attack on January 6 were veterans of the military. Milley also said before Congress: “I want to understand white rage, and I’m white. And I want to understand it.”

Earlier Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who is an African American career military officer, was questioned on the same topic by conservative lawmakers. Austin disassociated the Pentagon and its training academies from what is being referred to as “critical race theory.”

Austin emphasized before Congress:

“We do not teach critical race theory. We don’t embrace critical race theory and I think that’s a spurious conversation. We are focused on extremist behaviors, and not ideology.”

These discussions are taking place across the length and breath of the U.S. In several states, legislative bodies are debating and approving bills which ostensibly ban the teaching of “critical race theory.” In Oklahoma, the governor was asked to leave a state commission on the Tulsa Race Massacre of a century ago after he signed into law a bill which prohibits teaching about the realities of the U.S. being a racist society, born in the forced removal and genocide of Native Americans, and the centuries-long enslavement and national oppression of African Americans.

The U.S. military are the guardians of this racist, capitalist and imperialist system which has extended its tentacles around the globe. Their ability to function as a fighting force necessitates a common viewpoint about who their adversaries are and what needs to be done from an imperialist perspective.

This holds true for U.S. society as a whole in regard to the nature and character of the educational system. To demonize the study and analysis of the actual history and social development of the country can only foster more tensions between the races.

Defining “Critical Race Theory” and Its Origins

What is interesting in the discourse about “Critical Race Theory” is the inability of the right-wing critics to define what they are against. Judging from their public pronouncements and legislative actions, it becomes quite obvious that it does not matter what “Critical Race Theory” is and why it came about in the U.S.

As a field of academic study, the plight of African people in the U.S. and around the world has always been controversial as far as the ruling class is concerned. The fact that education itself was systematically denied to enslaved Africans is a strong indication of the politics of knowledge acquisition and production.

An entry in the online Encyclopedia Britannica describes this school of thought as:

“[Critical race theory (CRT), [is an] intellectual movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color. Critical race theorists hold that the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans.”

If this definition is accepted in part or in its entirety, then the dominant approach of most African world scholars since the 18th and 19th centuries would fall under this category. The early narratives written by enslaved Africans such as Frederick Douglass were sharp indictments against racist exploitation and its social consequences.

African American women writers and public figures such as Maria Stewart, Mary Ann Shadd, Francis Watkins Harper, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Anna Julia Cooper, among others, during the 19th and 20th centuries, published books, newspapers, pamphlets and speeches which served to raise the consciousness of African people. A censorship regime in denial about institutional racism and national oppression, would not allow the works of these pioneers in Africana Studies and mass organizing to be read within the public school system.

During the 20th century, books by scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois, William Leo Hansberry and Drusilla Dunjee Houston laid the foundations for the African and Black Studies programs which emerged during and after the 1960s. Similarly, as in the 21st century, these scholars were subjected to political attacks by the ruling interests of the time period.

Du Bois, a Harvard graduate with a doctoral degree in History awarded in 1896, was never invited to teach or lecture at the private institution. After being labelled a troublemaker and later communist, his name and works were generally ignored within higher education.

Hansberry, also a Harvard graduate, was unable to acquire a Ph.D in African Studies in the 1920s and 1930s due to the fact that not one university in the U.S. had anyone that could supervise his dissertation. Efforts were made to have him removed from the same African Studies program he created at Howard University, the first in the U.S. Later in life, Hansberry’s contributions were recognized when a former student of his, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, invited him to establish an African Studies program at a leading institution in that West African state.

Houston worked as a journalist and publisher in Oklahoma and other states during the early 20th century. Her prodigious research on African history in the eastern region and West Asia remains a source of discussion today.

Education as an Arena of Struggle

Almost all of the Black, Latinx, Asian and Gender Studies programs at universities and colleges around the U.S. emerged as a result of mass demonstrations during the 1960s, 1970s and beyond. These programs and hiring of staff and faculty from African American and other oppressed communities were the products of political pressure exerted by student and community organizations.

African Americans in several former Confederate states created the framework for public education during the 1860s and 1870s. One source on the history of Georgia noted:

“Before the Civil War (1861-65), Georgia had no system of public education. Its school tax assisted poor white children with tuition at private schools. In 1870 the state made its first effort to create public schools and found that, in the Black community at least, the rudiments of such a system were already in place.  Reconstruction-era legislation required segregated schools and allowed discrimination in the distribution of school funds to white and Black schools.” (See this)

Therefore, recent and long past events suggest that the attempts to outlaw the teaching of African American, Latinx, Asian, Native Indigenous and working class histories which are rooted in the experiences of these peoples, will prompt the continuation of the struggle against racism in all its forms.

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

Featured image: Georgia African Americans obtain education during the 1890s (Georgia Historical Society)

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Recent remarks by UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, make clear she now openly supports organized crime in Nicaragua financed by the United States and European Union governments. That she does so comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed her earlier record of bad faith reporting on Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Her latest remarks derive directly from false reports on Nicaragua produced by the team of officials from her office that visited the country in 2018. Those officials failed to comply with the formally agreed terms of their visit, never interviewed victims of the coup activists’ wholesale terrorist violence, but still falsely claimed the violence in Nicaragua in 2018 resulted from disproportionate police repression of peaceful protests. Among the great majority of people in Nicaragua and Venezuela, UN High Commissioner Bachelet and her colleagues responsible for the dishonest reports on which she has based her repeated attacks on those country’s governments, have zero credibility.

In Nicaragua’s case, in 2018 the country suffered a vicious, violent failed coup attempt, lasting from April 18th to July 17th of that year, aimed at overthrowing the country’s elected government. The coup attempt was planned, organized and financed by the United States government and its European allies. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights purposefully dissembled the human rights consequences of the coup attempt, covering up the widespread terrorist violence it involved. Their representatives told the Nicaraguan authorities that they classed opposition violence as common crime falling outside their remit. When the Nicaraguan authorities then prosecuted those crimes, Bachelet’s office and the IACHR immediately cynically claimed the prosecutions were political, as they continue to do.

Few observers expect impartial reporting from the Organization of American States and its component institutions, like the IACHR, because they have been permanently co-opted by the US government since the founding of the OAS in 1948. Of more concern is that the office of the UN High Comissioner for Human Rights is now self-evidently as corrupted as other international bodies that have been similarly co-opted by the United States and European Union governments, of which the most egregious recent example has been the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and its false reporting on Syria. Michelle Bachelet’s remarks in her declaration to the 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council, apart from being mostly factually false, in effect seek impunity for crimes committed by US and EU funded individuals and organizations in Nicaragua in violation of both domestic and international law.

In terms of domestic law, Nicaragua’s Constitution explicitly obliges its citizens in Article One:

Independence, sovereignty and national self-determination are inalienable rights of the people and foundations of the Nicaraguan nation. Any foreign interference in the internal affairs of Nicaragua or any attempt to undermine these rights is an attempt against the life of the people. It is the duty of all Nicaraguans to preserve and defend these rights.”

Likewise, the Constitution’s Article 24 establishes  the duty of all citizens to respect not only their obligations to the nation but the rights of others in Nicaragua and among humanity in general:

“Every person has duties to the family, the community, the nation and humanity. The rights of each person are limited by the rights of others, by the security of all, and by just demands for the common good.”

Those fundamental provisions in the Constitution of the Republic of Nicaragua have been elaborated and expressed more strongly and in more detail in subsequent national legislation and also via the ratification by the Nicaraguan State of numerous international legal instruments. Among many others, the international measures relevant to the recent arrests of people involved in organized crime in Nicaragua include the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which came into force in 2002 the same year it was ratified by Nicaragua, the 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism  and other instruments related to specific forms of terrorist crime such as the 1979 International Convention against the Taking of Hostages.

Among Nicaragua’s domestic legislation relevant to Bachelet’s false accusations of lack of legality in the actions of Nicaragua’s authorities are :

The UN Convention Against Financing Terrorism dates from 1999, President Enrique Bolaños (qepd)  decreed Nicaragua’s ratification in 2002  via Decree 3287, thus committing the country to adopting the recommendations generated by the operation of that convention. As explained by Javier Morazán, then Director of the Special Unit against Organized Crime of Nicaragua’s Public Prosecutor’s Office in a 2018 interview, Law 977 was passed in July 2018 precisely so as to enable Nicaragua to comply with the demands under the convention of international organizations like the Latin American Financial Action Group (GAFILAT) to control money laundering and associated criminal activities.

In her latest declaration on Nicaragua to the UN Human Rights Council, Michelle Bachelet referred, in the very selective and dishonest way typical of her office, to just part of this broad and deep legal basis for the arrest of  the individuals currently under investigation by the Nicaraguan authorities. She falsely claimed the arrests were related to to the electoral process currently under way leading up to Nicaragua’s general elections scheduled for November of this year. Among her many completely false accusations, she claimed incorrectly that two political parties were arbitrarily denied permission to participate in the elections, when in fact those two parties had explicitly and flagrantly violated long standing electoral law.

Bachelet used that egregious falsehood as context to be able to claim, also falsely, that the recent arrests of people involved in money laundering, collusion with foreign powers to destabilize Nicaragua’s economic and social well being and breach of regulations relating to non profits, are an unlawful abuse related to the electoral process. In fact, a glance at the provisions of both the relevant Nicaraguan domestic law and the international instruments to which it is a signatory show that her claim is at once grossly misleading and ultimately extremely sinister.

Five of the various people recently arrested, Cristiana Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Felix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastian Chamorro and Miguel Mora had expressed their aspirations to run as presidential candidates but none of them are members of any of the seventeen political parties eligible to take part in the elections. Among those detained only two minor figures are members of legitimate political parties. Some of the five individuals mentioned represent marginal opposition movements in Nicaragua like the National White and Blue Unity movement or the Civic Alliance movement both of which are funded and supported by foreign governments, agencies and foundations. All of them are individuals with a long record of collaboration with US and European governments and agencies funded by those governments and by foreign corporations. Their relationship with foreign governments and agencies de facto rendered their aspirations to be presidential candidates moot, as Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council explained in a communiqué on the issue on June 3rd this year.

This means very explicitly that Michelle Bachelet’s claim that the arrests were meant to stop the individuals concerned running as election candidates is egregiously false, like practically everything else she affirmed in her remarks. Even if they had not been arrested no political party could have presented them as candidates either for the presidency or for the legislature. It should also be noted in the case of Nicaragua, that Michelle Bachelet is defending several individuals responsible for promoting the following actions in 2018 which the UN office on Drugs and Organized Crime define as terrorism and organized crime:

  • the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

  • the conduct of premeditated violent acts or the threat of violence perpetrated by members of an organized group, designed to create fear in an adversary or specific segment of society

  • the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change

  • the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion or intimidation.

  • illegitimate use of force to achieve a political objective by targeting innocent people

Furthermore, the 2018 coup activists, organized and financed by several of the individuals whom Michelle Bachelet is supporting, routinely took hostages in violation of  1979 International Convention against the Taking of Hostages which is a terrorist act. The convention defines a hostage taker as “any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or group of persons, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage”.

Similarly, in relation to the organization and financing of the 2018 coup, the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime defines organized crime as “A structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences established in accordance with this Convention, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit.” Among the Convention’s definitions of transnational organized crime is any offence committed in one State but when a substantial part of its preparation, planning, direction or control takes place in another State. All these definitions apply to the violent crimes of the US funded Nicaraguan opposition in 2018, which Javier Morazán also described in the interview he gave in 2018.

Likewise, within the framework of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, a person commits a criminal offence if they: [B]y any means, directly or indirectly, unlawfully and wilfully, provide or collect funds with the intention that they should be used or in the knowledge that they are to be used, in full or in part, in order to carry out: […] (b) Any other act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.

Michelle Bachelet not only gave false witness to the UN Human Rights Council by falsely linking the recent arrests in Nicaragua to the country’s electoral process, she also carefully omitted the highly relevant Amnesty Law 996. Article 3 of that law states “The persons benefited by this Law must refrain from perpetrating any new action that may result in repetitive behavior generating the crimes contemplated herein. The non-observance of the principle of Non Repetition will result in the revocation of the benefit established by this Law.” Several of the people currently arrested and being investigated by Nicaragua’s authorities benefited from that Amnesty Law and may be found to have violated the law’s condition of non-repetition.

Overall the various people under arrest are accused of different charges. Some have to do with breaking the law regulating the activities of non profits, some over collaborating with foreign powers to damage Nicaragua’s economic and social stability,  some in relation to money laundering and other financial malfeasance, and some have to do with violating the terms of the 2018 Amnesty law. The complete formal criminal indictments will be known as and when the current investigations are completed.
Michelle Bachelet’s recent remarks confirm that she not only denies Nicaragua’s right to defend its sovereignty, independence and self-determination against foreign intervention. She also supports individuals and organizations demonstrably involved in organized crime and terrorism financed by governments, agencies and foundations of the United States and the European Union. Bachelet has once again made very clear that a principal function of her office is to subvert the sovereignty of nation states at the behest of Western governments and corporate elites determined to suppress genuine popular movements and destroy revolutionary governments in Latin America and the Caribbean and elsewhere.

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Case in point is Belarus. On 23 May 2021 President Lukashenko ordered the Ryanair plane, flying from Athens to Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, carrying his “Nazi-schooled” threatening opponent and activist Protasevich and his girlfriend, to be diverted to Minsk. He did so after having received a message of a bomb threat on board the plane from the Swiss e-mail provider Proton Mail. Proton later said the message was sent after the plane was already diverted.  Whom to believe? – If Proton Mail is right, why then send a message in the first place? – Neutral Switzerland is again caught red-handed – and red-faced.

The opposition activist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, were immediately arrested upon landing in Minsk and are now jailed, awaiting judgement and / or extradition to Ukraine, where Protasevich is accused of having participated fighting in Kiev’s neo-Nazi battalion against Donbass.

As reported by RT, authorities of the self-proclaimed Lugansk Republic (LNR) have accused Roman Protasevich, of being part of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. The LNR is an unrecognized state located in Ukraine, and has existed since the 2014 western prompted “civil war” in Donbass, when separatists unilaterally declared independence from Kiev. The Azov Battalion is an ultra-right-wing military unit now incorporated into the National Guard of Kiev-Ukraine.

RT states that Azov fought during the height of the Donbass war, first seeing action at the Battle of Mariupol. The group is heavily linked to neo-Nazi ideology, with the regiment’s logo featuring the Wolfsangel, a symbol of many divisions of the Nazi German Army during World War II. Joining the Azov Battalion is illegal in Donbass, as well as in Belarus.

An LNR Prosecutor says, there is evidence that Protasevich has fought in the Donbass war on the side of Kiev. See this and this.

Given the tense circumstances, call them western aggressions, after President Lukashenko’s landslide reelection, there may be good justification for Lukashenko to arrest his archenemy, Protasevich, who’s unpredictability – and especially, his most likely following orders from the west, predominantly the US and its EU “compradores” – might be a threat to Lukashenko’s life.

The arrest of Protasevich is the official reason for predominantly the US, followed by the vassalic Europeans, to initiate a series of “sanctions” against the Lukashenko Government and Belarus. Sanctions include travel bans for prominent people, the freezing of Belarusian state assets and Belarusian private assets in the US and EU and in the west in general. For those who don’t know, this is only possible because the western dollar-based economy, is totally controlled by US / Wall Street banks. Any western currency transaction flows automatically through a US bank – mostly through the SWIFT system – thus, can be interrupted and confiscated at any time by Washington orders.

The point is, the west – again especially the US – wants to get rid of Lukashenko, a close Kreml ally. They want to replace Lukashenko by a friend of the west, so as to be free to advance with NATO into Belarus, as step closer to Moscow’s doorstep. Belarus is extremely important for Russia, not only as buffer zone, but mores o because of Russa’s two key military bases in Belarus. The importance of Belarus to Russia is about equivalent to the importance of Crimea and particularly Sebastopol, for Moscow.

NATO aggression; that’s the key reason. The west couldn’t care less about human rights, the reason they bring forward for the sanctions. The west has never cared – and under the current constellation will never care – for human rights. In fact, the west is the world’s biggest and most brutal offender of both civil and human rights. And this doesn’t even take into account the western instigated worldwide covid drama – decimating world population, as well as the world economy.

Just imagine the reverse, a ferocious eastern enemy of the Biden Administration, on a plane approaching the US, but destined to a neighboring country, say Nicaragua or Mexico, or, god-forbid, Cuba – with threats to harm President Biden or people of his entourage. The US would just let it go? I don’t think so. If Washington had a chance to bringing the threatening eastern enemy onto US soil and arrest him, they would do so.

Would the east, and I mean the entire eastern alliance of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) – about the equivalent of the western alliance – start sanctioning the US, foremost the US President and his close support group; the European Union, putting up travel bans for political leaders and high officials of the US / EU Administrations – plus a myriad of economic sanctions, i.e. interrupting the eastern supply chain for western consumer goods, but foremost, for eastern (mostly Chinese) produced pharmaceuticals on which the west heavily depends?

Have eastern countries ever sanctioned the west? Never, as far as my history books say, and they were all edited and printed in the west. It’s not part of the eastern cultural and ethical standards punishing other countries – even their western self-proclaimed enemies – to punish them for their autonomous and sovereign independent behavior. China, Russia, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea – to name just a few – might not like what is done to them by the west, but “sanctioning” an autonomous sovereign nation, for example, by cutting off their energy supply, is not in the cards for the east.

Is it surprising that the east is increasingly going its own way – a way offering incorporation for those who want a peaceful social and economic development, but no longer a way of dependence and obedience to Washington and western puppets. Sorry to call the European “puppets” of the Washington empire. They may be the “parents” – the parent empire – of today’s US-empire, but that they follow in their offspring’s criminal footstep is not a feast of honor, or of inspiring respect.

Back to Belarus. Lukashenko has done what he had to do to protect the integrity of his country and government – and viewing ahead with a looking glass – to protect their ally Russia from another NATO step closer to Moscow. And so did President Putin, when he had his arch-enemy and traitor, Alexei Navalny, arrested; Navalny, who claimed the nonsensical, having been poisoned by Russia – when the very Russian authorities let him go to the west, Berlin as it were, to receive medical treatment against his “poison”. A huge western anti-Russia propaganda ensued.

Did Russia sanction Germany, the EU or the US for these abject lies?

There seems to be no limit – on any subject, on any issue – to western lies and manipulation of the truth. At least until now. This may change as more people are waking up, seeing ever clearer through the thinning sham of vail. It also seems that the west doesn’t realize that their very empire is committing suicide by this eternal regime of “sanctioning” whomever doesn’t dance according to their flute. Former or potential allies are driven away into the more peaceful camp of eastern respect for the sovereignty of their allies.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)

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

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184 Countries Vote in the United Nations to Condemn U.S. Blockade of Cuba—But As Usual, Only Two Countries Vote Against the Resolution: the U.S. and Israel

While Conditions in Cuba Under the Blockade are Worsening—Potentially Worse than the Special Period—Cuba’s Biotechnological and Pharmaceutical Industry May Help Them Out of the Pandemic

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On June 23rd, 184 countries at the United Nations voted yet again to condemn the U.S. blockade of Cuba, with 3 countries abstaining and 4 not voting. Every year since 1992—2020 being an exception when the vote was not held given COVID restrictions—Cuba has introduced a resolution to end the blockade. And every year, only two countries vote against it: the U.S. and Israel, with Bolsonaro’s Brazil joining them in 2019. Notwithstanding the ongoing nightmare Cubans continue to suffer under the blockade, the focus on health care and their advanced biotechnological and pharmaceutical industry may help them out of the pandemic.

A picture containing text, crowd Description automatically generated

Photo taken during the last United Nations General Assembly vote on the necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba. (November 7, 2019) [Source: un.org]

For over 60 years, the U.S. blockade of Cuba has not stopped the island-nation from pursuing its goals of living independently from neocolonial and neoliberal control, using its own national resources for the benefit of the Cuban people and instituting social programs like free universal health care and education.

Yet the blockade continues to stifle the Cuban economy and harm the Cuban people. But further, the policy quashes all the productive potential normal relations with Cuba would foster, even for Americans.

According to some sources, conditions in Cuba are now worse than in the so-called “Special Period” in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. Food shortages were so dire then that malnutrition led to an epidemic disease of blindness afflicting tens of thousands.

With Cuba now facing the worst phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, lifting the blockade—not to mention easening it with the stroke of a pen—would clearly be the most rational and humanitarian act.

The dire situation in Cuba is in great part the result of U.S. policy: isolate nations like Cuba who rid themselves of U.S.-backed dictators and foreign control of their assets. This serves not only to punish those who go their own way and reject neoliberal policies but also serves to showcase struggling, blockaded economies while misleading the public on the causes. The policy is aggressively pursued for fear that successful examples will inspire others to rid themselves of the shackles of the U.S. empire and plutocratic interests.

While Obama’s policy of engagement, among other remedies, renewed diplomatic relations and eased restrictions on travel and remittances to the island, Trump reversed that trend and issued unprecedented aggressive policies against Cuba culminating in its inclusion on the unilateral State Sponsors of Terrorism list.

On the campaign trail last September, Biden slammed Trump’s policies, calling them an “abject failure,” and promised that he would, if elected, “…reverse the failed Trump policies that inflicted harm on Cubans and their families.” Indeed, Cuba is no mystery to the Bidens. Biden’s wife, Jill, now First Lady, actually traveled to Cuba on an educational and cultural trip in 2016.

Will Biden Keep His Promise?

It is no surprise to seasoned CAM readers that Biden’s position seems to have evaporated under the pressures of U.S. electoral politics, particularly from the Cuban-American lobby that has kept Cuba locked in isolation for decades. While Biden has rescinded dozens of Trump’s policies, on Cuba he has remained silent. Of the 240-plus measures adopted by Trump to toughen the blockade against Cuba, Biden has not rescinded even one.

Indeed, Biden’s finite political capital and razor-thin margin in the Senate leaves him wary of upsetting even one Democrat, including anti-Castro hawks like Cuban-American Bob Menendez (D-NJ), not to mention Republican hawks like Cuban-American Marco Rubio (R-FL).

Mounting Pressures

Pressures to get Biden to fulfill his promise are mounting in the U.S. and include Cuban-Americans. Organizations like Bridges of Love and other solidarity groups have staged rallies, protests and caravans nationwide in hopes of pushing the Biden administration to soften its strategy.

Dozens of nonprofit groups, from Oxfam to the DC Metro Coalition, have asked the U.S. to “…act as soon as possible to normalize relations with Cuba…” and lift the blockade on humanitarian grounds. Various leading think tanks, including the Council for Democracy in the Americas (CDA), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Cuba Study Group (CSG) have asked the new administration to restore Obama’s policy of rapprochement and critical engagement. The National Network on Cuba has produced a Hands Off Cuba Map! that can be clicked on to see the particular organizations around the U.S. working to end the blockade.

Graphical user interface, map Description automatically generated

To see the organizations, click the Hands Off Cuba Map! [Source: nnoc.info]

To defend the ongoing illegal and cruel blockade, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken ratcheted up the rhetoric at the 51st Conference of the Council of the Americas stating that Washington “…will defend the human rights of the Cuban people…” to which the Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez responded: “If Secretary Blinken was interested in the human rights of the Cuban people, he would lift the embargo and the 243 measures adopted by the previous government…”

Cuban Permanent Representative to the United Nations Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta added: “All those measures remain in force today, and are a reflection of the unprecedented levels that the economic war against Cuba has reached, bringing about hardships of all kinds and material shortages in the daily lives of every Cuban.”

Pedroso continued: “Our challenges in terms of human rights, like those of any other country, are known to our people and our government and we will continue to work on their solution on the basis of our Constitution,” he said. “But Cuba is equally concerned about the human rights situation in the United States. Flagrant violations are committed here [in the U.S.] on a daily basis, which arouse concern within the international community.”

Pedroso issued an additional statement on Tuesday, June 22, before the vote:

“The entire world knows that the US blockade against Cuba is a genocidal and criminal policy, which really harms the Cuban people especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic…”

It is “…an act of genocide under the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide, due to its declared purpose and the political, legal and administrative framework it is based on.”

Rodriguez’s and Pedroso’s statements are especially compelling given the pandemic. Maintaining a blockade on Cuba at this time—much less on any country—is particularly anti-humanitarian, especially when Cuba is currently facing the worst phase of the COVID-19 outbreak since the start of the pandemic.

How is Cuba supposed to battle the pandemic? Venezuela, for example, tried to acquire vaccines by actually paying for them; shockingly the remittances were rejected given the economic blockade on Venezuela.

Cuba’s Health Care, Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industry

The Cubans, however, are in a unique situation. Since the 1959 revolution, Cuba has focused on health care, among other social programs. They send more doctors around the world than the World Health Organization and have implemented programs like Doctor de la Familia which house doctors in communities around the island-nation in two-floor homes.

Typically, the doctor de la familia lives with his/her family on the second floor, and the practice resides on the ground floor. In addition to receiving patients at the local clinic, doctors and healthcare workers visit community neighbors in their homes and provide an overall more holistic service.

The Cuban government has made the obvious choice not to rely on foreign vaccines. In spite of the blockade, they are advancing their own vaccine development, testing, and delivery with their own advanced pharmaceutical industry which has exported vaccines for decades.

page1image1122712144

[Source: bio.org]

The Cuban biotechnological and pharmaceutical industry, under the coordination of the BioCubaFarma group, has built 14 organizatons with 78 manufacturing facilities operated by 21,785 employees. The Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and the Finlay Institute, part of BioCubaFarma, have produced five coronavirus vaccine candidates, two of which, Soberana 2 and Abdala, are particularly promising.

On Monday, BioCubaFarma announced that its three-shot Abdala vaccine had proved 92.28% effective against the coronavirus in last-stage clinical trials. Soberana 2, announced days earlier, has proven to be 62% effective with just two of its three doses. Both vaccines are expected to be granted emergency approval.

A picture containing bottle, indoor, toothbrush, close Description automatically generated

[Source: twitter.com]

Cuba will likely be in a position to vaccinate its own population and further burnish its own scientific reputation by exporting vaccines against coronavirus. This will provide much-needed currency not to mention assist in the world-wide vaccination effort. Numerous countries, from Argentina and Jamaica to Mexico, Vietnam and Venezuela, are interested in buying Cuba’s vaccines. Iran started producing Soberana 2 earlier this year.

What You Can Do To Help

Get involved in the solidarity campaigns with Cuba listed above. There are many. One organization I worked with in the 1990s was Global Health Partners (GHP): They are particularly efficient and have been sending medicines and medical supplies to Cuba since the 1990s.

Now that the Cubans have potentially developed viable vaccines, they need syringes. Go to the GHP website and support them in getting syringes to Cuba.

[Source: ghpartners.org]

The Cuban government is planning to produce 100 million vaccines for its population and to share with developing countries around the world. As GHP notes: “Over the past year alone, Cuba has sent 3,700 health workers, in 52 international medical brigades, to 39 countries overwhelmed by the pandemic. Cuba’s international medical brigades have treated patients and saved lives for the past 15 years in 53 countries confronting natural disasters and serious epidemics, such as the Ebola crisis in West Africa.”

In spite of Cuban advances in health care, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, the blockade is a daily nightmare for most of the 11.3 million people on the largest Caribbean island-nation. While the pandemic is a deadly layer added to the suffering, the promise of change comes at a crucial moment for Cubans. Will Biden fulfill his promise to relax the blockade and join the rest of the world, or will he carry on with the old Cold War rhetoric against Cuba that has only harmed the Cuban people and exacerbated the anti-humanitarian U.S. image worldwide?

A picture containing calendar Description automatically generated

The Ironic Curtain, still relevant and still deadly. [Source: gregasclutoo.com]

U.S. diplomat Rodney Hunter rhetorically told the U.N. General Assembly before the vote that ‘sanctions were one set of tools in Washington’s broader effort toward Cuba to advance democracy, promote respect for human rights and help the Cuban people exercise fundamental freedoms.’ It seems, given this latest U.S. vote at the United Nations, that the Biden Administration is not yet interested in fulfilling its promise to tear down the cruel wall.

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Chris Agee is Executive Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He teaches at the City University of New York, the State University of New York and is the author of numerous articles in various publications. He can be reached at: [email protected].

Featured image is from mintpressnews.com

This Week’s Most Popular Articles

June 25th, 2021 by Global Research News

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Selected Articles: Pediacide — Vaccine Risks for Kids

June 25th, 2021 by Global Research News

Suppression of Evidence: CBC Censorship of Top Scientists in COVID-19 Research: Prof. Anthony Hall

By Anthony Hall, June 24, 2021

Mr. Sloan invited Prof. Bryam Bridle (Guelph University), Dr. Patrick Philips and Dr. Dan Welsh to speak on the attacks taking place against them. The analysis of these fully accredited researchers, academics and medical practitioners on COVID-19, lockdowns, vaccines and such is not in line with the narrow doctrinaire orthodoxy pushed uniformly by the CBC and by many other commercial media venues.

Video: Covid-19 “Pack of Lies”: Crimes against Humanity. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 24, 2021

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext and a justification to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.

Mounting Debts, Bankruptcies, Inflation, Mass Unemployment: The Financial Establishment Promotes “Economic Nonsense” and Incoherent Analysis

By Dr. Shawgi Tell, June 24, 2021

While the ordinary person knows that all is not well with the economy and society, the wealthy elite that run the Federal Reserve, which is a private entity, continue to make miscalculations and poor judgements about the economy and then nonchalantly plead ignorance when reality slaps them in the face.

The Digital Financial Complex: Central Bank Digital Currencies, The End of All Democracy?

By Ernst Wolff, June 24, 2021

The world is currently in the midst of the biggest economic and social experiment of its entire history, with big tech trying to completely digitize our entire lives. Under the pretext of preventing the spread of a disease, we are being pushed to work from home, learn via homeschooling, shop only online, communicate via internet conference platforms, and to have our movement and contact profile recorded via tracking apps.

Pfizer COVID Vaccine Linked to Rare Blood Clot Disorder, Israeli Researchers Say

By Megan Redshaw, June 24, 2021

A team of Israeli researchers said they began studying the possible link between Pfizer’s vaccine and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura after reports of a sudden increase in cases across Israel — four cases in one month compared to two or three cases per year. Israeli researchers on Monday said they discovered a link between Pfizer’s COVID vaccine and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), a rare blood disease.

CDC Finds More Cases than Expected of Heart Inflammation After COVID Vaccine

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, June 24, 2021

The CDC is getting more reports than expected of heart inflammation cases after the COVID-19 vaccinations, according to Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office.

Pediacide — Vaccine Risks for Kids

By Dr. Stephanie Seneff and Dr. Michelle Perro, June 24, 2021

The following article is a joint collaboration between Michelle Perro, MD (Executive Director) and Stephanie Seneff, PhD (MIT Research Scientist). In 2017, Dr. Perro and Dr. Adams produced the highly acclaimed book, What’s Making our Children Sick? with a focus on the effects of industrial food on children’s health, highlighting patients’ stories and victories.

How FDR Was Manipulated and Betrayed by His Own Naval Intelligence Chief in the Fateful Last Months of WWII

By James Bradley, June 24, 2021

Unknown for decades, declassified documents show that FDR’s mail was deliberately diverted and falsified to prevent a historic meeting with Mao Zedong that might have shortened the war, changed history, and reshaped the modern world.

With Bezos at the Helm, Democracy Dies at the Washington Post Editorial Board

By Alan MacLeod, June 24, 2021

The Washington Post’s glaring conflicts of interest have of late once again been the subject of scrutiny online, thanks to a new article denouncing a supposed attempt to “soak” billionaires in taxes. Written by star columnist Megan McArdle — who previously argued that Walmart’s wages are too high, that there is nothing wrong with Google’s monopoly, and that the Grenfell Fire was a price worth paying for cheaper buildings — the article claimed that Americans have such class envy that the government would “destroy [billionaires’] fortunes so that the rest of us don’t have to look at them.”

Raisi’s Landslide Victory Could be Turning Point for Islamic Republic

By Michael Jansen, June 24, 2021

The landslide election of Ebrahim Raisi as 8th president of Iran could be a turning point for the Islamic Republic. The landslide victory for the ultra-conservative former chief justice and protege of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could lead to an overhaul of the framework put in place when the two-tier regime was established in 1979. This structure imposed powerful clerical institutions on elected presidents and parliaments.

Black Ops in the Black Sea

By Craig Murray, June 24, 2021

Sometimes it is worth stating the obvious. The United Kingdom does not have a coast in the Black Sea. British warships are not infesting the Black Sea out of a peaceful intent, and there is no cause for them to be entering disputed waters close to anybody’s coast. This is not a question of freedom of navigation under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.

Toxic Corporations Are Destroying the Planet’s Soil

By Colin Todhunter, June 24, 2021

A newly published analysis in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science argues that a toxic soup of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides is causing havoc beneath fields covered in corn, soybeans, wheat and other monoculture crops. The research is the most comprehensive review ever conducted on how pesticides affect soil health.

International Criminal Court Closes in on Duterte

June 25th, 2021 by Jason Castaneda

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The British Navy’s violation of Russia’s Black Sea maritime border on Wednesday was a dangerous attempt to sabotage Russia’s rapprochement with the West by provoking an international security incident between these nuclear-armed Great Powers.

The world was shocked on Wednesday after reports came streaming in that Russian fighter jets and ships fired off warning shots at the British Navy after the latter violated the Eurasian Great Power’s maritime border in the Black Sea.

For its part, London denied that any such warning shots were fired and insisted that it behaved within international norms. Moscow immediately countered by accusing the UK of lying, which seems to be the most accurate interpretation of reality after a BBC journalist’s account conforms with Russia’s. The UK doesn’t recognize Crimea’s democratic reunification with Russia though, hence its claim that everything it did was “legal”. This observation very strongly suggests that the UK was deliberately trying to provoke an international security incident with Russia, which raises the question of why it would do so.

While it can’t be known for sure, it might very well be the case that the UK wanted to sabotage Russia’s rapprochement with the West after last week’s Geneva Summit.

That event brought together Presidents Putin and Biden, who both agreed that it’s time to de-escalate tensions between their countries and more responsibly manage their comprehensive competition with one another. The outcome of that scenario successfully unfolding could increase the UK’s post-Brexit strategic isolation, especially if it results in a complementary Russian-EU rapprochement as well.

Speaking of which, it might be more than a coincidence that the UK’s dangerous provocation against Russia occurred just hours before reports came in that French President Macron and German Chancellor Merkel are considering inviting President Putin to a European leaders summit sometime in the coming future. The UK might have been tipped off and sought to sabotage it.

Readers should remember that the UK has been waging a fierce Hybrid War against Russia for the past couple of years. I hyperlinked to six of my relevant analyses in a piece two months ago asking “Are The British Behind Czechia’s Surprise Decision To Expel Russian Diplomats?”, which should at the very least be skimmed by anyone who’s interested in this topic. My argument is that empirical evidence very strongly suggests that the UK is acting as the US’ anti-Russian attack dog in continental Europe after Brexit, but considering the recent geopolitical twist of the publicly expressed desire from both Washington and Moscow to repair their immensely damaged relations after last week’s Geneva Summit, it’s entirely possible that London is “going rogue” to an extent. Either that, or it’s more powerfully under the influence of the remaining anti-Russian faction of the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”).

The UK, just like Poland, mistakenly bet everything on the US continuing its anti-Russian grand strategic course. London invested heavily in expanding its hybrid capabilities in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), in particular Latvia, from where it runs a regional disinformation network. It therefore might have understandably felt left in the lurch in light of recent developments. Not only that, but former MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s leading role in the factually debunked Russiagate conspiracy theory’s origins hints at the close working relationship between British intelligence and the anti-Russian faction of the US “deep state”. It therefore wouldn’t be too surprising if the UK is continuing to act as the US’ anti-Russian attack dog in Europe, albeit at the orders of an increasingly less influential “deep state” faction as opposed to the American state itself. This would explain why it just dangerously attempted to provoke a security incident between two nuclear-armed Great Powers.

Keeping in mind the recent fast-moving developments in Russian-American relations and Russian-Western ones more broadly, it doesn’t seem all that likely that the UK will succeed unless the US’ anti-Russian “deep state” faction somehow surprisingly regains its influence at this decisive moment in time, whether due to this particular provocation or perhaps following subsequent ones that might soon be attempted by other disgruntled states like the Baltic ones, Poland, and/or Ukraine. Should this gambit fail like some expect it to, then the UK will only find itself more isolated than ever before from both the US and EU. It could also potentially serve as a deterrent to others like the ones that were mentioned in the preceding sentence unless they become even more desperate to attempt their own provocations. In any case, the Biden Administration must urgently regain control of its allies lest the most Russophobic among them ruin relations with Russia.

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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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to CBC, Ombudsman, BRODIE

21 June, 2021

Dear Jack Nagler

CBC Ombudsman

Thank you for your speedy reply to my complaint where I elaborated a specific illustration to elucidate a larger allegation that CBC’s news and public affairs divisions are not doing honest, ethical, and evidence-based journalism. In my view CBC journalists are instead presenting Canadians with a fraudulent, censored and impoverished picture of what is going on with the COVID crisis.

I am aware of a growing body of citizens’ opinion, written interventions and even pending court cases advancing the argument that, since 2020, CBC journalists have become boosters and cheerleaders for an interpretation of public health which is not born out by the findings of evidence-based science. In fact CBC journalists seem inexplicably to have taken on the assignment to hide relevant facts and information from the Canadian public. Our lives are thereby being put in jeopardy and sometimes snuffed out because of the withholding of relevant information concerning the real nature of the predominant threats in this pandemic. Many voices have been raised to emphasize that media disinformation figures significantly among those threats.

The suppression of Prof Bridle‘s commentary at a Parliamentary press conference is an excellent example of the suppression of evidence by a whistleblower in a sound position to know how seriously the rushed emergency measures COVID jabs are threatening the very lives of Canadians. As Prof. Bridle sees it from his own independent research as a fully accredited and well published authority in the area of immuno-vaccinology at the University of Guelph, the COVID jabs are causing the proliferation of toxic spike proteins throughout the vascular systems of injection recipients.

Prof. Bridle was very clear in stating in the Canadian Parliament at the invitation of Independent MP Derek Sloan that, in his professional opinion, the mass dissemination COVID jabs is currently creating the conditions for untold numbers  of unnecessary blood clots, infertility cases, myocarditis, heart attacks and death. This list is far from complete.

Dr. Bridle also explained his dismay that the Ontario College of Physicians has coercively imposed improper pressure on the professional independence of doctors and, by implication, on Canadian university professors whose expertise lies in professional fields pertinent to public health. As Prof. Bridle and Dr. Patrick Philips asserted in the Parliamentary press conference, the College is instructing its members to refrain from stating any position that might be considered “anti-vaccine.”

click to access video. MP Derek Sloan

 

Prof. Bridle indicated he was receiving many SOS interventions from professionals, including from journalists, experiencing the pinch of executive silencing from above. It seems to me entirely possible that CBC is part of this pattern. You, Mr. Nagler, are in a position to look into this possible problem at the CBC. Could you please do so. I can’t imagine that the morale of some CBC employees is very good these days given the kinds of repression being reported by all kinds of professional personnel these days.

Is the CBC doing the same as the College of Physicians in applying coercion on the independent judgments of its own journalistic professionals in order to muzzle them when they arrive at evidence-based conclusions inconsistent with the political policies of the minority government in Ottawa. Only recently Prime Minister Justin Trudeau boasted publicly that he is skilled in controlling what does and does not appear in the media through his liberal application of financial bribes.

Over the years I have looked at various times for statements outlining CBC’s missions, mandates, duties, and responsibilities. For the most part these functions have been assigned to the CBC through Parliament by its primary funders, namely us, the Canadian people. I have been especially concerned with the public broadcaster’s responsibilities concerning its broadcasting of news and public affairs. Part of this concern stems from my suspicion that the CBC engages in blacklisting to prevent our national community from receiving a wide sampling of our own voices representing a wide array of arbitrarily excluded perspectives and opinions. Is Prof. Bridle being blacklisted because his professional findings and opinions are inconsistent with the biases and prejudices of the CBC’s chain of command?

When I have looked into what you call CBC’s “journalism policies,” I have been surprised by the number of changes and revisions in the missions, duties, responsibilities and mandates assigned to the CBC by Parliament and sometimes by the federal Executive branch. Could you please send me a text giving the precise wording in all significant documents describing the current version of the “journalism policy” meant to govern the production of news and public affairs at the CBC.

It seems to me very unlikely that CBC’s journalism policy includes provisions sanctioning inaccuracy in CBC journalism, including through the crime of omission. I can’t envisage that there would be provisions in CBC’s journalism policy allowing for the public broadcaster to withhold news whose effect in this instance is to deprive Canadians of information that would help us avoid unnecessary deaths, injuries and permanent disabilities. I can’t believe that the CBC’s journalism policy makes provision to encourage ignorance in Canadians by excluding vital coverage (even in Parliament) by accredited experts in the public health arena with significant strategic insights into the true nature of the COVID crisis.

Let’s scrutinize together the “journalism policy” that our public broadcaster is mandated to deliver to its owners and its audience. It would obviously help to include some history of how this policy came to be, how it has changed over time and why it has changed over time. Furthermore, it seems clear to me that CBC’s journalistic policy would have to be understood within a host of policies and statements of a more general nature about the character of the CBC’s mandate to serve Canadians as a public broadcaster rather than as a government broadcaster.

As I see it, the larger context of our exchange here, Mr. Nagler, arises because the CBC is supposed to be a public broadcaster accountable to the citizens it is meant to serve. Could we please help raise the quality of our exchange in order to give expression to the higher ideals of public broadcasting. Or has the CBC already become effectively a government broadcaster.

Until we clarify the nature of the criteria you were going by Mr. Nagler, I don’t think you are in a sound position to have immediately declared without any supporting evidence or discussion that the “information content the CBC has produced fully respects CBC’s journalism policy.” That statement seems to me like a prefabricated throwaway phrase manifesting a lack of due diligence on the part of its author. The effect of such a glib dismissal of a serious intervention might be to discourage and sideline the good-faith intervention of conscientious citizens including me. Of course my interest in criticizing the CBC is to find out if it is possible to improve the institution at this stage.

The CBC is playing with fire by suppressing a serious and credible warning from an important independent whistleblower, Dr. Bridle, who makes a credible case that a concerted campaign is underway to destroy the messenger in order to kill his message. Is Dr. Bridle that messenger being set up for professional assassination and obscurity in order to prevent his warning from being widely heard by a wide array of Canadians?

Dr. Bridle is far from alone in raising his voice to point out that the obscenity of politically-driven censorship and career wrecking is destroying the foundations of our supposedly free and democratic society.

The censored researcher makes it clear that the CBC has plenty of accomplices in preventing the public from becoming familiar with Dr. Bridle’s cutting edge work developed meticulously over a long period of time on an important platform of publicly-funded independent science in Canada. The long and short of it is that the lives of Canadians are being put at risk by the mass, unscreened delivery of COVID jabs while other remedies are being wrongfully repressed in a misguided effort to meet the legal requirements for an emergency measure utilization of an insufficiently tested medical product.

Why isn’t CBC diligently following the science including the science behind Dr. Bridle’s warning? Why isn’t the CBC educating Canadians on the law of medical experimentation on human subjects as outlined in the Nuremberg Code? The condition for experimentation on human subjects is that authorities must meet high standards of public education in order to achieve informed consent from the human subjects participating in the huge medical experiment presently underwayThe capacity in Canada to provide a firm basis of informed consent from the human subjects in this unfolding medical experiment is being undermined by the censorious coverage of the COVID-19 crisis by our national public broadcaster.

Unfortunately the CBC seems to be mired these days in a lack of respect not only for science but also for due diligence as well as for getting to the bottom of the whole story, not just the aspects of the story that support the political policies of the government. I would be gratified, sir, if you were to prove me wrong in this accusation through your conduct of a genuine independent investigation of the CBC’s flawed and biased COVID coverage.

The Bridle case embodies a convergence of many controversies that should be rocking the CBC to its very foundation. The credibility of the entire Crown Corporation is presently at issue as is the credibility of the Office you now fill Mr. Nagler. From what I can see from my Internet search, Radio Canada is also suppressing the story outlined on June 17 in Canada’s Parliamentary press conference facility.

So, in conclusion, let me return to my main theme. I very much doubt that the journalism policy of CBC/Radio Canada allows for the suppression of information touching not only on the state of knowledge of Canadians but also on our ability to make independent decisions with informed consent about matters that have major life or death implications for our entire citizenry.

Yours Sincerely,

Anthony James Hall

Professor Emeritus

University of Lethbridge

*

CBC Ombud <[email protected]>7:36 AM (7 hours ago)

to OmbudsmanBRODIE, me

Dear Professor Hall,

I write to acknowledge receipt of your email. Mr. Guy Gendron is the Ombudsman for French Services at Radio-Canada, and I am the Ombudsman for English Services at CBC. You sent your email to me, so I am taking the liberty of replying, and copying Mr. Gendron.

The answer would be the same from both of us. The two Ombudsman offices are independent of CBC News management and thus have no say in day-to-day decision-making about which stories are covered.  Our mandate is to determine whether information content the CBC has produced fully respects CBC’s journalism policy.  Establishing editorial priorities is, appropriately, the prerogative of programmers.

However, I have shared your email directly with Brodie Fenlon, Editor in Chief of CBC News, so that he will be aware of your concerns.

Sincerely,

Jack Nagler

CBC Ombudsman

[email protected]www.cbc.ca/ombudsman

*

19 June, 2021

Guy Gendron,

CBC Ombudsman

Dear Mr. Gendron;

I am asking you, Mr. Gendron, to please investigate the failure of CBC/Radio Canada to report on the substance of an important Parliamentary Press Conference hosted by Independent MP Derek Sloan on June 17.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/MJz1yNUoWMJL/

Mr. Sloan invited Prof. Bryam Bridle (Guelph University), Dr. Patrick Philips and Dr. Dan Welsh to speak on the attacks taking place against them. The analysis of these fully accredited researchers, academics and medical practitioners on COVID-19, lockdowns, vaccines and such is not in line with the narrow doctrinaire orthodoxy pushed uniformly by the CBC and by many other commercial media venues. The guests of MP Sloan explained how they have been persecuted and pressured to conform with dictatorially imposed positions on the COVID crisis with which they do not agree.

Please view the video of the press conference. MP Sloan’s invitees make especially serious accusations against the Ontario College of Surgeons, the Ontario College of Nurses, and the Canadian Armed Forces. Mr Sloan comments himself on the force of the authoritarian push to silence and censor even top experts in their fields, experts with commentaries that do not fit within the narrow uniformity of permitted discourse.

The failure of CBC/Radio Canada to cover this very significant event in the unfolding history of the COVID crisis is consistent with the limited, biased, one-sided coverage offered by the CBC on the event labelled a pandemic by the WHO. The media censorship during this pandemic of voices as well as of diverse perspectives and professional opinions is, in my view, appalling. CBC/Radio Canada ranks highly among the worst offenders. The failure to even report on the Bridle case, let alone to report fairly and accurately, is especially worthy of criticism and analysis.

Please look into this matter and share with me the journalistic rationale used by the CBC/Radio Canada for depriving Canadians of proper reporting of the Parliamentary press conference hosted by Mr. Sloan on June 17. Prof. Bridle mentioned he has been contacted by many muzzled professionals including within the Canadian media. The clampdown on open discourse and debate is extremely obvious and it is serious enough that I am beginning to wonder if the CBC/Radio should be abolished so that it can be replaced by a genuine public broadcaster willing to seek balance, accuracy and fairness in the content of its programs.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/i-dont-recognize-the-country-i-was-born-into-medical-experts-in-canada-protest-censorship

Yours Sincerely,

Anthony James Hall

Professor Emeritus

University of Lethbridge

*

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First published on May 5, 2021

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***

A new study published today by the academic journal Frontiers in Environmental Science finds that pesticides widely used in American agriculture pose a grave threat to organisms that are critical to healthy soil, biodiversity and soil carbon sequestration to fight climate change. Yet those harms are not considered by U.S. regulators.

The study, by researchers at the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth U.S. and the University of Maryland, is the largest, most comprehensive review of the impacts of agricultural pesticides on soil organisms ever conducted.

The researchers compiled data from nearly 400 studies, finding that pesticides harmed beneficial, soil-dwelling invertebrates including earthworms, ants, beetles and ground nesting bees in 71% of cases reviewed.

“It’s extremely concerning that 71% of cases show pesticides significantly harm soil invertebrates,” said Dr. Tara Cornelisse, an entomologist at the Center and co-author of the study. “Our results add to the evidence that pesticides are contributing to widespread declines of insects, like beneficial predaceous beetles and pollinating solitary bees. These troubling findings add to the urgency of reining in pesticide use.”

The findings come on the heels of a recent study published in the journal Science showing pesticide toxicity has more than doubled for many invertebrates since 2005. Despite reduced overall use of insecticides, the chemicals most commonly used today, including neonicotinoids, are increasingly toxic to beneficial insects and other invertebrates. Pesticides can linger in the soil for years or decades after they are applied, continuing to harm soil health.

The reviewed studies showed impacts on soil organisms that ranged from increased mortality to reduced reproduction, growth, cellular functions and even reduced overall species diversity. Despite these known harms, the Environmental Protection Agency does not require soil organisms to be considered in any risk analysis of pesticides. What’s more, the EPA gravely underestimates the risk of pesticides to soil health by using a species that spends its entire life aboveground — the European honeybee — to estimate harm to all soil invertebrates.

“Below the surface of fields covered with monoculture crops of corn and soybeans, pesticides are destroying the very foundations of the web of life,” said Dr. Nathan Donley, another co-author and scientist at the Center. “Study after study indicates the unchecked use of pesticides across hundreds of millions of acres each year is poisoning the organisms critical to maintaining healthy soils. But our regulators have been ignoring the harm to these important ecosystems for decades.”

Soil invertebrates provide a variety of essential ecosystem benefits such as cycling nutrients that plants need to grow, decomposing dead plants and animals so that they can nourish new life, and regulating pests and diseases. They’re also critical for the process of carbon conversion. As the idea of “regenerative agriculture” and using soil as a carbon sponge to help fight climate change gains momentum around the world, the findings of this study confirm that reducing pesticide use is a key factor in protecting the invertebrate ecosystem engineers that play a critical role in carbon sequestration in the soil.

“Pesticide companies are continually trying to greenwash their products, arguing for the use of pesticides in ‘regenerative’ or ‘climate-smart’ agriculture,” said Dr. Kendra Klein, a co-author who’s also a senior scientist at Friends of the Earth. “This research shatters that notion and demonstrates that pesticide reduction must be a key part of combatting climate change in agriculture.”

“We know that farming practices such as cover cropping and composting build healthy soil ecosystems and reduce the need for pesticides in the first place,” said co-author Dr. Aditi Dubey of the University of Maryland. “However, our farm policies continue to prop up a pesticide-intensive food system. Our results highlight the need for policies that support farmers to adopt ecological farming methods that help biodiversity flourish both in the soil and above ground.”

Background

The review paper looked at 394 published papers on the effects of pesticides on non-target invertebrates that have egg, larval or immature development in the soil. That review encompassed 275 unique species or groups of soil organisms and 284 different pesticide active ingredients or unique mixtures of pesticides.

The assessment analyzed how pesticides affected the following endpoints: mortality, abundance, richness and diversity, behavior, biochemical markers, impairment of reproduction and growth, and structural changes to the organism. This resulted in an analysis of more than 2,800 separate “cases” for analysis, measured as a change in a specific endpoint following exposure of a specific organism to a specific pesticide. It found that 71% of cases showed negative effects.

Negative effects were evident in both lab and field studies, across all studied pesticide classes, and in a wide variety of soil organisms and endpoints. Organophosphate, neonicotinoid, pyrethroid and carbamate insecticides, amide/anilide herbicides and benzimidazole and inorganic fungicides harmed soil organisms in more than 70% of cases reviewed.

Insecticides caused the most harm to nontarget invertebrates, with studies showing around 80% of tested endpoints negatively affected in ground beetles, ground nesting solitary bees, parasitic wasps, millipedes, centipedes, earthworms and springtails.

Herbicides and fungicides were especially detrimental to earthworms, nematodes and springtails.

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***

While the ordinary person knows that all is not well with the economy and society, the wealthy elite that run the Federal Reserve, which is a private entity, continue to make miscalculations and poor judgements about the economy and then nonchalantly plead ignorance when reality slaps them in the face.

Prices on dozens of products, including houses and gas, are soaring. So is debt of all kinds.

Thousands of capitalist firms at home and abroad are “zombie companies”—companies that generate revenue but have very little left over after paying off their debts. In other words, they don’t really make a profit. Millions have not returned to work.

The U.S. labor force participation rate remains flat and millions of people that do have jobs do not make much money at all. More than 1.5 million people are still losing jobs every month in the U.S. In addition, unemployment insurance for millions has ended or will be ending soon. Meanwhile income and wealth inequality have skyrocketed and generalized anxiety has increased throughout the globe. Worldwide, hundreds of millions of people have sunk into poverty as a result of the decisions and policies of the rich and their political and media representatives. Crisis never seems to end.

In remarks made on June 16, 2021, Jerome Powell, head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, admitted that, “the recovery is incomplete and risks to the economic outlook remain” (see this). Powell also said that, “the pace of improvement has been uneven” in the “labor market.”

He added that, “Employment in this [leisure & hospitality] sector and the economy as a whole remains well below [already-low] pre-pandemic levels” (emphasis added). Powell then repeated the nonsense that the economy would recover further as more people got vaccinated, as if to imply that horrible economic conditions are the result of an inadequate number of vaccinated people. Besides the fact that millions are already vaccinated, vaccines and viruses have nothing to do with economic “booms and busts” under capitalism. They may function as extenuating circumstances but they are not the root cause of constant economic instability, insecurity, and chaos. Many economies around the world were in decline well before the “Covid Pandemic” started. Many will not “recover” for at least a decade.

After listing a few more indicators of a continually failing economy and finally backing away a little from overly-rosy economic forecasts, Powell, like his predecessors, throws his hands up in the air and casually asserts:

I will also say though, the last thing I’ll say is this is an extraordinarily unusual time. And we really don’t have a template or, you know, any experience of a situation like this. And so I think we have to be humble about our ability to understand the data. It’s not a time to try to reach hard conclusions about the labor market, about inflation, about the path of policy. We need to see more data. We need to be a little bit patient. And I do think though, that we’ll be seeing some things coming up in coming months that will inform our thinking. (emphasis added)

This is neither inspiring nor scientific. Such assertions leave no one feeling confident or like we are in good hands.

Right around the time of the Wall-Street-engineered economic collapse of 2008, many prominent economic “experts” and leaders of finance repeated the nonsense that they did not know how such a major economic collapse could have happened and that they could not have predicted such a calamity and that everything they thought they knew about the economy did not apply to the catastrophe that was unfolding. Everyone apparently was caught off guard and no one presumably could have predicted what would unfold, despite the fact that capitalism is defined by recurring crises. In other words, “leaders” and “experts” took zero responsibility for one of the most devastating economic collapses of the last 100 years.

Back in 2008, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before Congress about the economic collapse. He casually stated that he was in a “state of shocked disbelief” over a so-called “once-in-a-century credit tsunami.” With no sense of irony he declared that, “We’re not smart enough as people, we can’t see events that far in advance. And it’s very difficult to say in retrospect why didn’t we catch something.”

He also said, “I still do not fully understand why it [the collapse] happened and obviously to the extent that I figure where it happened and why I will change my views. If the facts change I will change.” Even more embarrassing, he went on to declare that there was a “flaw in the model of how I perceived the world works.” Tens of millions continue to suffer from the “Great Recession” of 2008, and only 12 years later humanity finds itself besieged by the 2020 economic collapse.

For his part, Nobel Prize winning economist Eugene Fama openly and scandalously stated:

“We don’t know what causes recessions. I’m not a macroeconomist, so I don’t feel bad about that. We’ve never known. Debates go on to this day about what caused the Great Depression. Economics is not very good at explaining swings in economic activity… If I could have predicted the crisis, I would have. I don’t see it.  I’d love to know more about what causes business cycles.”

Sadly, Greenspan and Fama were not the only ones declaring Know-Nothingism and promoting incoherence. Many other prominent economists and capital-centered ideologues repeated in unison that they had no idea how or why such an economic collapse could occur. Each of them made it sound like years of education, numerous awards, and multiple credentials did not prepare them to foresee such an economic calamity. Such is the miserable bankruptcy of capital-centered economics.

Society does not need incompetent and retrogressive forces leading society or managing the economy. It needs a real public authority committed to building a balanced, self-reliant, diverse, consciously organized economy that drives modern nation-building and uses human-centered science to make economic decisions. So long as the wealthy elite are in charge, the economy and society will continue to lurch from one crisis to another.

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Shawgi Tell, PhD, is author of the book “Charter School Report Card.” His main research interests include charter schools, neoliberal education policy, and privatization. He can be reached at [email protected].

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***

The world is currently in the midst of the biggest economic and social experiment of its entire history, with big tech trying to completely digitize our entire lives.

Under the pretext of preventing the spread of a disease, we are being pushed to work from home, learn via homeschooling, shop only online, communicate via internet conference platforms, and to have our movement and contact profile recorded via tracking apps.

Digitization is also being forced upon us in the financial sector: Bank branches are being closed, cash is being pushed back, and central banks are working on what is by far the most important project of our time: the introduction of central bank digital currencies (CBDC’s).

At the same time, we are experiencing an ever-greater loss of our fundamental rights. Governments have restricted our freedom of travel and taken from us the right of assembly, while freedom of expression is being increasingly curtailed by social media.

There is a direct link between these developments: The future into which we are being led, cannot be reconciled with the principles of democracy. This is caused by the fact that we live in a society dominated by an extremely wealthy and extremely powerful, but at the same time tiny, minority. Their greatest interest is to maintain their own prosperity and power. Therefore, digitization is not for our benefit, but for the benefit of this minority.

However, since digitization itself offers tremendous opportunities for democratization and could thereby endanger the rule of the few, this tiny minority is forced to constantly resort to new mechanisms of oppression.

An example of this development is China, where the government monitors, controls its subjects like no other country on earth. The fact that this government, of all things, is provided by a communist party shows that the ideology of those, who sit at the levers of political power, is completely irrelevant.

This is because there is a force that stands high above all governments, pulling the strings in the background, a force that exists in China just as it does in the US or in any other country. It is the digital-financial complex, the symbiosis of the most powerful corporations in the digital and financial sectors.

This complex has managed to concentrate more money and more power in its hands than any force in human history. It has done so by controlling the two most important lifelines of our time: global data and financial flows. However, this complex has for some time been facing a huge problem: The monetary system, on which its power is based, broke down in March 2020. After being artificially maintained for more than 12 years by money creation and interest rate cuts, interest rates have reached zero, leaving only unconditional money creation. But this leads straight into the devaluation of money.

Now this devaluation of money is not at all inconvenient for the digital-financial complex, because it is currently facing the highest level of debt of all times – and inflation is a highly suitable means of getting rid of these debts. But what happens once inflation has eliminated much of the debt? There is a plan for that, too, namely the introduction of CBDC’s. But this will change our lives in a historically unique way, and certainly not for the better.

Money has two basic properties: It is a means of payment and an instrument of power. As such, it has always been used by those who issued it to consolidate and expand their grip on others. This has been done in a variety of ways: by charging interest, by sparking inflation, by tying credit to conditions, or by entangling people in a web of debt.

These undemocratic characteristics of money as an instrument of domination are now to be taken to extremes. In the case of the CBDC’S, which will almost certainly be introduced in the form of what is euphemistically called a ‘universal basic income’, entirely new dictatorial mechanisms will be added to the old ones:

It will be possible to control the recipients’ consumer behavior, making saving impossible for them and forcing them to spend the money for specific purposes within predefined time periods. It will also be possible to reward good behavior, punish criticism and even cut off individuals from all financial flows.

CBDC’s will be the core of a coercive social regime that will largely manage without overt violence because it can stifle any opposition without people noticing. CBDC’s will be an almost perfect means of controlling, manipulating, and conditioning the population, leading to a largely invisible exercise of power. When this new money is introduced, it will be nothing less than the most profoundly intrusive monetary reform of all time.

All of this sounds unsettling, and the prospects are indeed depressing, as this development has been dramatically accelerated in recent months by the lockdowns. So, will we no longer be able to escape this new monetary regime?

This depends on only one factor, namely: the awareness of the majority of the people. At present, only a tiny part of the population even knows about this project, because it is largely kept secret by politicians and the mainstream media. And even those who do know about it are mostly unaware of its dramatic consequences.

For this very reason, it is of utmost importance to make it clear to as many people as possible what CBDC’s herald: the end of all democracy and the final transition to a regime of authoritarian corporatism, also called fascism, based on the monetary system.

Henry Ford once said, ” “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

Such a revolution is urgently needed, not in the streets, but in the minds of people.

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Pillaging the WorldPillaging the World

Author: Ernst Wolff

ISBN-13: 9783828834385

Publisher: Tectum Verlag

Pages: 208

Click here to purchase.

.

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***

While well over a million people died unnecessary deaths because effective non-patented treatments were deliberately systemically suppressed, behavioral scientists weaponized fear to control the global population.

According to behavioral scientists who were members of the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviors (SPI-B), we have all been strategically systematically “stunned by the weaponization of behavioral psychology” throughout the pandemic.

In a recently released book, A State of Fear: How the UK Government Weaponized Fear During the Covid-19 Pandemic, author Laura Dodsworth and several whistleblowers expose the Psychological Operations (PSYOPS):

Psyops at-a-glance

Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavior (SPI-B), a subcommittee that advises the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), admit the government is using fear to control and manipulate the population;

  • SPI-B, which advocated for the use of fear messaging, now says it was unethical, totalitarian and a regrettable mistake;
  • Aside from the barrage of bad-news-only data — which was heavily manipulated in a variety of ways — fear and anxiety are also generated by keeping you confused;
  • Giving out contradictory recommendations is being done on purpose, to keep you psychologically vulnerable;
  • By layering confusion and uncertainty on top of fear, you can bring an individual to a state in which they can no longer think rationally;
  • Once driven into an illogical state, you are easily manipulated;
  • Government’s reliance on behavioral psychology didn’t just happen as a result of the pandemic. These tactics have been used for years, and are increasing.

As this report in the Telegraph summed it up:

Use of fear to control behavior in Covid crisis was ‘totalitarian,’ admit scientists

SAGE scientists admit to fear and control tactics

SAGE-SPI-B scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to control people’s behavior during the Covid pandemic have admitted its work was ‘unethical’ and ‘totalitarian.’…

Gavin Morgan, a psychologist on the team, said: ‘Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.’…

One SPI-B scientist told Ms Dodsworth… ‘There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear. The way we have used fear is dystopian.’

‘The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.’

Another SPI-B member said: ‘You could call psychology ‘mind control.’’

‘That’s what we do… it has been used nefariously in the past.’

One warned that ‘people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise…’

‘We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in.’

Another said: ‘Without a vaccine, psychology is your main weapon….’

As well as overt warnings about the danger of the virus, the Government has been accused of feeding the public a non-stop diet of bad news, such as deaths and hospitalizations, without ever putting the figures in context with news of how many people have recovered, or whether daily death tolls are above or below seasonal averages.

Another member of SPI-B said they were ‘stunned by the weaponization of behavioral psychology’ during the pandemic, and that ‘psychologists didn’t seem to notice when it stopped being altruistic and became manipulative.’

‘They have too much power and it intoxicates them.’

‘As SAGE SPI-B knows very well, fear is our most powerful emotion. It is rooted deep within the inner reaches of our minds.

When we’re afraid, we do dangerous and irrational things.’

‘Manipulating our most primitive instincts to change behavior is taken from the textbook of tyrants.’

‘Over the past year, we have seen the biggest Campaign of Fear the world has ever seen.’

We now face an unprecedented mental health crisis….’

Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the Covid Recovery Group of Tory MPs, said: ‘If it is true that the state took the decision to terrify the public to get compliance with rules, that raises extremely serious questions about the type of society we want to become.’

‘If we’re being really honest, do I fear that Government policy today is playing into the roots of totalitarianism? Yes, of course it is.’”

Here are some excerpts from a new article by Dr. Joseph Mercola on Laura’s book and the weaponization of fear throughout the media’s coverage of the pandemic:

“Information that would have balanced out the bad news — such as recovery rates and just how many so-called ‘cases’ actually weren’t, because they never had a single symptom — were censored and suppressed.

They also refused to put any of the data into context, such as reviewing whether the death toll actually differed significantly from previous years. Instead, each new case was treated as an emergency and a sign of catastrophic doom.

Don’t Be Confused — Contradiction Is a Warfare Tactic

Aside from the barrage of bad-news-only data — which, by the way, was heavily manipulated in a variety of ways — fear and anxiety are also generated by keeping you confused. According to Dodsworth, giving out contradictory recommendations and vague instructions is being done intentionally, to keep you psychologically vulnerable.

‘When you create a state of confusion, people become ever more reliant on the messaging. Instead of feeling confident about making decisions, they end up waiting for instructions from the Government,’ she said in a May 20, 2021, interview on the Planet Normal podcast.

An example provided by Dodsworth are the pandemic measures implemented over Christmas 2020:

‘Family Christmases were on, then off, then back on, then off again. You have got someone tightening the screw, then loosening the screw, then tightening it again. It’s like a torture scenario.’

But that’s not all. As explained by psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin, by layering confusion and uncertainty on top of fear, you can bring an individual to a state in which they can no longer think rationally.

Once driven into an illogical state, they are easily manipulated. I have no doubt driving people into a state where logic and reason no longer registers is the whole point behind much of the conflicting information we’re given….

The Fear Factory

In her book, Dodsworth details a number of branches of the British government that are using psychological warfare methods in their interaction with the public. In addition to the SPI-B, there’s the:

  • Behavioral Insights team, the so-called ‘nudge unit,’ a semi-independent government body that applies ‘behavioral insights to inform policy, improve public services and deliver positive results for people and communities.’ This team also advises foreign nations.
  • Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), which is part of the U.K.’s Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, advises front groups disguised as public ‘grassroots’ organizations on how to ‘covertly engineer the thoughts of people.’
  • Rapid Response Unit, launched in 2018, operates across the British Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s office (colloquially known as ‘Number 10’ as in the physical address, 10 Downing Street in London) to ‘counter misinformation and disinformation.’ They also work with the National Security Communications Team during crises to ensure ‘official information’ gets maximum visibility.
  • Counter Disinformation Cell, which is part of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Both monitor social media and combat ‘fake news’ about science in general and COVID-19 in particular, with ‘fake news’ being anything that contradicts the World Health Organization’s guidance.
  • Government Communications Headquarters (QCHQ), an intelligence and security organization that provides information to the U.K. government and the armed forces. According to Dodsworth, QCHQ personnel, and even members of the 77th Brigade, have been enlisted as so-called sockpuppets and trolls to combat anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown messaging on social media.

According to Dodsworth, there are many others.

In her book, she claims at least 10 different government departments in the U.K. are working with ‘behavioral insights teams’ to manipulate the public.

Importantly, government’s reliance on behavioral psychology didn’t just happen as a result of the pandemic. These tactics have been used for years, for myriad PR purposes, and while the pandemic may be winding down, Dodsworth warns that more and more behavioral scientists are being hired:

‘It’s growing and growing. Right now, I feel we are in a maelstrom of nudge,’ she says.

‘In the past, there have been calls to consult the public on the use of behavioral psychology, and those calls have come from the behavioral scientists themselves.

And yet it hasn’t happened.

We haven’t yet been consulted on the use of subconscious techniques which effectively strip away our choices…

I fervently hope this book [‘The State of Fear’] is actually going to inspire a much-needed conversation about the use of fear, not just in the epidemic, but the way we use behavioral psychology overall.

It’s not just a genie that has been let out the bottle. It’s like we’ve unleashed a Hydra and you can keep chopping its head off, but they keep employing more of these behavioral scientists throughout different government departments.

It’s very much how the Government now does business. It’s the business of fear….

I think ultimately people don’t want to be manipulated. People don’t enjoy being hoodwinked and they don’t want to live in a state of fear. We maybe need to be a bit bolder about standing up more quickly when something is not right.’”

For deeper overall context, here are excerpts from report I published on the weaponization of PSYOPS when the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal gave the general public a rare in-depth look into Psychological Operations (PSYOPS).

As Analytica’s CEO Alexander Nix summed it up back then:

“Your behavior is driven by your personality and actually the more you can understand about people’s personality as psychological drivers, the more you can actually start to really tap in to why and how they make their decisions.

We call this behavioral microtargeting and this is really our secret sauce, if you like.

This is what we’re bringing to America.”

As Scout.AI summed it up:

“‘This is a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit them…. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen before.

They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional leash and never letting them go,’ said professor Jonathan Albright….

It was a piece of a much bigger and darker puzzle – a Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine being used to manipulate our opinions and behavior to advance specific political agendas.

By leveraging automated emotional manipulation alongside swarms of bots, Facebook dark posts, A/B testing, and fake news networks, a company called Cambridge Analytica has activated an invisible machine that preys on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in public opinion….

This new wave has brought the world something exponentially more insidious – personalized, adaptive, and ultimately addictive propaganda.

Silicon Valley spent the last ten years building platforms whose natural end state is digital addiction….

Welcome to the age of Weaponized AI Propaganda…. Big Data Surveillance Meets Computational Psychology….

Analytica’s personality model has allowed it to create a personality profile for every adult in the U.S. — 220 million of them, each with up to 5,000 data points.

And those profiles are being continually updated and improved the more data you spew out online.”

Think about all of this in context of COVID PSYOPS, which are significantly more evolved than Analytica’s 2016 behavioral micro-targeting:

“[Imagine an election campaign with] 250 million algorithmic versions of their political message all updating in real-time, personalized to precisely fit the worldview and attack the insecurities of their targets…

Instead of having to deal with misleading politicians, we may soon witness a cambrian explosion of pathologically-lying political and corporate bots that constantly improve at manipulating us.”

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” ~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I cannot stress this enough: the weaponization of PSYOPS and behavioral psychology is the enslavement of humanity.

Everything we communicate on our phones and online is now weaponized against us.

A.I. machine-learned algorithmic manipulation of individual-specific confirmation biases is the psychological enslavement of humanity – such a devastating weapon!

Imperial mind snatchers will think for you. They are already thinking for a significant percentage of humanity.

Cogito, ergo sum.

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