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Photographic proof!

The shots being referred to as ‘vaccines’ are absolutely poisonous, and the proof is now here!

Dr. Jane Ruby appears at Stew Peters Show with another bombshell report. UK doctors now have indisputable proof showing exactly what these shots are doing to your blood.

Watch the interview below.

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The United States has been subject to shelling and IED attacks regularly, following its June 27th attack on positions of Iraqi and Syrian ‘resistance’ groups.

Washington’s responses were much more seldom.

However, on July 18 a suspect US strike targeted the border line between Syria and Iraq where Iranian-backed forces are known to be deployed.

The pinpoint strike destroyed a Toyota pickup truck of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).

No human losses were reported as a result of the strike.

The UAE-based al-Arabiya TV network reported that the targeted truck was loaded with weapons and ammunition.

However, sources close to the PMU said that the truck was carrying logistic supplies.

Syria’s state outlet, SANA, reported that the attack had been carried out by a US combat drone.

This isn’t the first incident of this kind.

On May 22, a combat drone targeted a vehicle in the western region of Iraq, near the border line with Syria.

The vehicle, also a Toyota pickup truck, was allegedly carrying weapons.

Late on July 13, a similar strike targeted a military crossing at the border.

Very little is known about the strikes, but it is suspected that the US carried out all of them via combat drones.

The United States’ convoys are regularly targeted by IEDs all throughout Iraq, and there’s seldom been any human injuries.

On July 17th, Turkey, Washington’s ally, had one of its convoys targeted in Iraq.

As a result, two Turkish soldiers were injured in the IED strike, alongside with one member of the Kurdish Asayish force.

The Turkish military, which has been combating the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq for many years now, maintains a large military camp in Zilkan.

It carries out frequent operations against the Kurdish groups in the nearby areas, despite constant condemnations by the Iraqi government.

While the groups behind the US attacks are unknown and the PMU is suspected, the attack on Turkey was likely carried out by the PKK.

The PKK could be considered a group allied to the United States.

This is due to the fact that the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are mostly comprised of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), and according to the CIA, the YPG is the Syria wing of the PKK.

In Syria, the SDF is fighting against ISIS, sometimes even in joint operations with the US.

Late on July 16, the US-led coalition and the SDF carried out a successful counter-terrorism operation in the town of Diban in the southeastern countryside of Deir Ezzor.

Meanwhile, the SDF are frequently targeted not only by Turkey, but also by the various tribes in the areas under their control in northeastern Syria.

The various situations along the Iraqi-Syrian border, as well as in the Kurdish regions of both countries, are incredibly chaotic, with many conditional alliances that are barely holding the status quo.

All sides are reportedly trying to contain ISIS, who are however somehow able to continue attacking.

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***

President Joe Biden has now declared that the United States is facing an existential crisis comparable to what it experienced during the Civil War, a struggle that will produce a truly democratic form of government with universal franchise or which will result in the denial of basic rights to many citizens. And he is quite willing to address the issue employing a maximum of emotion and fear mongering unmitigated by a minimum of reasonable suasion, saying “We’re facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War — the Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did on January the 6th. I’m not saying this to alarm you. I’m saying this because you should be alarmed.”

Of course, what may have occurred on January 6^th has nothing to do with the issue currently in play, which is voting rights, though it is only one aspect of what is essentially a revolution sponsored by the Democratic Party to reorder the American political system in such a fashion as to guarantee its dominance for decades to come. Other steps will include greatly increased immigration, a war on so-called domestic terrorists and decriminalizing or choosing not to prosecute many felonies committed by party constituencies.

The voting rights legislation currently before Congress includes the interestingly named For the People Act and its successor the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, both of which would seek to restore certain unconstitutional aspects of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Most important, they would eliminate the ability of the states to pass legislation that creates conditions on registering and voting. The text of the John Lewis Act now before Congress refers to these steps as “discriminatory laws, needless barriers, and partisan dirty tricks.”

At the heart of the push by the Democrats is the creation of a uniform national electoral system which will essentially make it much easier for people to vote, permitting block voting, ballot harvesting and both registration and voting itself by mail. If passed, the new legislation will compel each state to adopt “automatic and same-day voter registration, voting rights for felons, no-excuse absentee balloting, mandatory early voting, and taxpayer funding for political campaigns.”

The key objections to the new voting procedure being promoted by Biden are several, largely related to its lack of any requirement for potential voters to provide information or show documentation confirming citizenship and residency or even one’s identity. The Democrats are denouncing their Republican opponents who are raising these issues as guilty of “voter suppression.” If the Democrats win the debate, it will be possible for anyone to vote in elections without having any human contact whatsoever using the mail-in ballots which are potentially susceptible to large scale fraud.

Another problem with the Biden program to nationalize voting procedures is that the there are four amendments to the United States Constitution that make it clear that it is left to the states to determine the modalities of voting. That means that even if the new voting act passes through Congress and is signed by the president there still would certainly be challenges based on its unconstitutionality. While Blue states will presumably go along with the guidance from Washington, those states still leaning Red will undoubtedly resist any nationalization of voting procedures.

It is not as if the current voting system is fraud-resistant. All too often it is not, which is why state legislatures in Georgia, Texas and several other Republican controlled states have passed new voting laws that actually require in many cases one’s physical presence to vote as well as production of documentation or information confirming citizenship and residency. They also include the purging of electoral rolls of voters who have died or moved. The new laws come as close as is reasonably possible to creating a system where voting security and integrity will be greatly enhanced, but the fact is that the Democrats are not at all interested in reducing criminal voting. They are interested in creating a permissive environment where all their presumed supporters will be able to vote without having to make any effort to do so or even be compelled to demonstrate who they really are and that they are citizens.

Prior to the recent national election, I examined the procedures to register and vote in my home state of Virginia and determined that one could both register and vote without any human contact at all. The registration process can be accomplished by filling out an online form, which is linked here. Note particularly the following: the form requires one to check the box indicating US citizenship. It then asks for name and address as well as social security number, date of birth and whether one has a criminal record or is otherwise disqualified to vote. You then have to sign and date the document and mail it off. Within ten days, you should receive a voter’s registration card for Virginia which you can present if you vote in person, though even that is not required.

It is important to realize that no documents have to actually be presented to support the application, which means that all the information can be false. You can even opt out of providing a social security number by checking the box indicating that you have never been issued one, even though the form indicates that you must have one to be registered, and you can also submit a temporary address by claiming you are “homeless.” Even date of birth information is useless as the form does not ask where you were born, which is how birth records are filed by state and local governments. Ultimately, it is only the social security number that validates the document and that is what also appears on the Voter’s ID Card, but even that can be false or completely fabricated, as many illegal immigrant workers in the US have discovered.

Prior to the November election my wife and I received unsolicited four mail-in ballots, all of which were sent to us anonymously. I examined the ballots carefully and noted that they bore no serial numbers or other forms of validation that could conceivably be used to limit the potential for fraud. In a state like Virginia, the actual mail-in ballot only requires your signature and that of a witness, who can be anyone. That is also true in six other states. Thirty-one states require only your own signature on the ballot while just three states require that the document be notarized, a good safeguard since it requires the voter to actually produce some documentation and identification. Seven states require your additional signature on the ballot envelope and two states require that a photocopy of the voter ID accompany the ballot. Some of these procedures may have been changed since the November allegation but it appears that only the handful of Republican states that are in the process of passing new voting laws are taking the problem seriously. In other words, the safeguards in the system continue at this time to vary from state to state but in most cases, fraud would be relatively easy if one is using mail-in voting. In fact, former President Jimmy Carter’s headed a bipartisan commission in 2005 that concluded that mail-in ballots constitute the “largest source of potential voter fraud” of any voting system.

Joe Biden is of course right about a crisis developing comparable to the Civil War, but what he is choosing to ignore is that his White House is carelessly feeding into what has become a growing chorus of dissent. He and his colleagues in Congress are deliberately and with malice pushing an agenda that, if successful, will lead to something like one party rule in the United States. Combine that with impending legislation and executive action to pursue “domestic extremists,” whom the Administration has also defined as “white supremacists,” it is not hard to imagine what kind of trouble is brewing.

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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]

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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***

On Sunday, July 11, Cubans took to the streets for the first time in more than twenty years to express their dismay. It seemed like a spontaneous action, but on closer inspection there’s a bigger picture here. For sixty years the US has been trying to bring about regime change. In recent years, they have been using social media and mainstream media in a sophisticated way to do so. Recent events in Cuba are a textbook example of this.

“Washington’s hysterical dedication to crush Cuba
from almost the first days of its independence in 1959
is one of the most extraordinary phenomena
of modern history, but still,
the level of petty sadism is a constant surprise.”
– Noam Chomsky

Digital robots

The protests last Sunday 11 July were preceded by a fierce digital campaign. Renowned Spanish IT analyst Julián Macías Tovar has meticulously researched and mapped it out. His findings are shocking.

In the days before the protests, the hashtag #SOSCuba began to circulate strongly in Florida. The SOS Cuba campaign had already been launched on June 15 in New York, with the aim of influencing the vote in the United Nations General Assembly against the US blockade against Cuba. Without success. 184 countries condemned the blockade, which has been strangling Cuba for more than 6 decades. Only Israel and the US voted against.

The worsening COVID situation in Cuba in recent weeks provided an excellent opportunity to revive the campaign. On July 5, Florida-based media platform SOS Cuba launched a Twitterstorm for humanitarian intervention in Cuba. That happened under the guidance of Agustín Antonelli. This Argentinian is a member of the right-wing foundation Fundación Libertad. This was not his first campaign. He had previously launched social media operations against Evo Morales in Bolivia and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico.

The first account that used #SOSCuba in relation to the COVID situation in Cuba was based in Spain. On both July 10 and 11, it sent more than a thousand tweets, with an automatic rate of 5 retweets per second. This is done by so-called bots.[i]

Some of the robots used in this campaign are state-of-the-art, expensive and very difficult to detect. We should not forget that the US has recently created a special command for war in cyberspace.

In his research Tovar points out that tweets were sent to artists in Cuba and in Miami to participate with #SOSCuba: protest for the deaths caused by COVID and the lack of medical resources. More than 1100 responses were received to this tweet. Remarkably, almost all of those are from accounts that were created recently or no longer ago than one year. More than 1,500 of those accounts were created between July 10 and 11. The operation made intensive use of robots, algorithms and accounts newly created for the occasion.

With hundreds of thousands of tweets and the participation of many artist accounts, the hashtag became trending in several countries on Sunday 11 July. All that was needed were a few hundred Cubans to take to the streets.

The first demonstration in the town of San Antonio de Los Baños, 26 km from Havana, was immediately publicized in the US by Yusnaby’s account with thousands of retweets. Yusnaby (US Navy) is a typical example of an automated fake account.

All this suggests that there has been a coordinated campaign to attack the Cuban government and blame it for the hardships facing the Cuban people.

Fake news

The messages sent out into the world are full of fake news. One post, retweeted hundreds of times, shows a ten-thousand-strong crowd allegedly marching along the Malecón, Havana’s grand seaside boulevard. Reuters photo checkers found that it is actually a photo – in weak resolution – of a mass demonstration in Alexandria, Egypt Feb 2011. Zoomed in fragments show Egyptian flags.

Another piece of false information sent out into the world is the photo of protesters at the statue of Máximo Gómez in Havana. These were not counter-protesters but supporters of the Cuban revolution. Dozens of media outlets and major newspapers like New York Times and The Guardian, spread this piece of fake news. Reversing reality is a trick that has been used several times in the past on other occasions, including in Venezuela.

Yet another fabrication was that Raúl Castro had fled to Venezuela on a secret private plane. This fake message was retweeted almost two thousand times. The photo supposed to prove Raúl Castro’s flight is four years old, namely when he went to a summit abroad.

These are just a few examples. So were dozens more lies circulating on social media in recent days, including about police brutality.

Source of dissatisfaction

Due to COVID-19, tourism, the main source of income, has virtually come to a standstill. Food prices have risen worldwide. This is hard for Cuba because it has to import 70 percent of its food. The latest sugar crop was also disappointing. In addition, Trump had further tightened the economic blockade with 243 new sanctions. Cuba is now again on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, which makes transactions in dollars very difficult. Biden has not yet changed anything about those measures.

As a result, the country faces an acute shortage of foreign currency, which in turn causes shortages of basic goods, food and medicines. Thanks to the egalitarian system, this does not lead to famines, but Cubans sometimes have to queue for hours to get food or other goods. There are also fuel shortages and shortages of spare parts, causing power outages for hours. That paralyzes transport and it also means there is no air conditioning or refrigerator. In a tropical climate, that’s anything but pleasant.

As a result of the tightened blockade, Western Union had to close its offices in Cuba in November of last year. Many Cubans rely heavily on so-called ‘remesas’ for their purchasing power: remittances from relatives living abroad. This is the case for many countries in the South. This amounts to $500 billion annually worldwide. For Cuba, remesas have now largely stopped, as a result of which many Cubans have become a lot poorer in one fell swoop.

On top of all this misery came a fierce COVID wave. The vaccination campaign is in full swing, but the population is not yet sufficiently vaccinated to contain the infectious new virus variants. The surge of cases has put a severe strain on the health system.

Foreign sponsors

For the islanders, at least, the situation is extremely difficult. The dissatisfaction is great. According to the foreign mainstream media, the Cubans spontaneously took to the streets. By doing so, they ignore the digital campaigns we mentioned above, but there is more to the story.

A Peruvian journalist from Prensa Alternativa – El Jota has thoroughly studied the images of the demonstrations. In twelve cities between one hundred and five hundred demonstrators took to the streets. It was striking that in all those cities the same slogans were heard: against the president and for more freedom. There were no references to concrete complaints such as shortages of medicines in the nearby hospital, transport problems in their city or long queues in the stores.

Even more striking, the same banners appeared in the demonstrations with the logo of ‘Cuba Decide’. Cuba Decide is a campaign of Fundación para la Democracia Panamericana. That’s a resource-rich Miami-based NGO aimed at regime change in Cuba.

There will certainly have been spontaneous participants in the demonstrations, but the facts above indicate that the demonstrations were planned, organized and prepared. Moreover, this was done from abroad with the aim of spreading unrest and bringing about regime change. No self-respecting country would tolerate such a thing. In my country Belgium, there are severe punishments for political activity directed from abroad.[2]

Back in 2010, the US made an attempt to install a Twitter system in Cuba. According to the New York Times the purpose of ZunZuneo, as the system was called, was to “provide Cubans with a platform to share messages with a mass audience, and ultimately to be used for assembling ‘smart mobs’.” Ideal, in other words, for organizing riots.

In recent years, the U.S. government has increased its financial support of people inside Cuba and in the Cuban émigré community in Miami. This amounts to $20 million annually. Some of this money comes directly from the National Endowment for Democracy and from USAID, two organizations with ties to the CIA. Their mandate is to turn any discontent within Cuba into a political challenge to the Cuban revolution.

Media framing

The coverage of the past events in Cuba by the mainstream media is a textbook example of media framing. We highlight some aspects of it.

First, there is the vocabulary used. One does not speak of government or administration, but of ‘regime’. This suggests a reprehensible political system that should be changed (‘regime’ change). This term is never used for friendly nations, even if there are a lot of problems with democracy or human rights in those countries. In Colombia, more than 400 political murders have been committed in recent years, yet media still speak of the Colombian ‘government’. In India, camps have been built en masse to deport two million inhabitants, mainly Muslims. Yet we never hear about the ‘Indian regime’.

When it comes to Cuba, people also use the word ‘dictatorship’ without any problem or nuance, while the country has a very extensive system of consultation. No fundamental decision is taken without thoroughly consulting the population. In a dictatorship that is out of the question. Even in our political systems there is no custom or willingness to consult the population for important decisions. The current Cuban government, as well as the previous ones, have always been able to count on strong popular support, otherwise the revolution would not have survived in the extremely hostile and difficult circumstances Cuba has known.

Framing also means overemphasizing or underemphasizing certain issues. For example, the anti-government demonstrations were significantly smaller than the demonstrations in favor of the government. Below you see two pictures of demonstrations supporting the government respectively in Camagüey and in Havana. Images of such demonstrations were invisible in the mainstream media. On the contrary sometimes those images were used, as we saw above, to turn reality upside down.

In addition, the economic context and the factor of the U.S. blockade (dubbed ‘the embargo’ by the mainstream media[3]) is totally underplayed. Cuba has lost its most important trading partners and foreign investors twice in thirty years.[4] This is an economic disaster for any country. Moreover, the country has been subjected to the longest economic blockade in world history and is cut off from the use of dollars. The blockade costs the country about 5 percent of its GDP annually. Imagine a country like Belgium not being allowed to trade with the EU and to use the euro in transactions. Yet for the mainstream media, the ‘embargo’ is not an important factor. According to them, the cause of the economic misery lies in government ineptitude.

Our media like to give a forum to Joe Biden. Without any contextualization, the president of the country that keeps an economic stranglehold on Cuba is free to say that he stands by the Cuban people. President Obrador of Mexico responded that if the US really wants to help Cuba, then they must end the economic blockade. Obrador’s message did not make it into the mainstream media.

The key question

In South Africa, riots in recent days have left more than 70 people dead. In India, millions of farmers took to the streets for weeks. In Colombia, at least 44 people have been killed in protests over the past three months, another 500 have ‘disappeared’. These facts did not make the news, or barely got a mention. In Cuba, there were several thousand protesters for one day and it was prominent world news.

For serious events such as major natural disasters, massive social unrest, civil wars, coups, etc. it is obvious that they become prominent world news. If an event does not fall into such a category, then the first question we have to ask ourselves is: why is this prominent in the world press, why is this being put in the picture and why are similar events elsewhere not mentioned at all?

In other words, what makes current affairs news? And the verb is well chosen, for news is made. Or rather, a selection is made from the daily large supply of new facts and events worldwide. That selection is then presented in a framing. This selection and framing takes place within a certain ideological framework, in favor of unspoken but specific interests.

Cuba should certainly not be kept quiet in the media. There is indeed news to be found. For example, Cuba is the only small country in the world that developed its own vaccines against COVID-19. By the end of this year it will have produced 100 million doses of home made vaccines. It will export the majority to countries that need them. It would also be interesting to investigate why the country has 12 times fewer COVID deaths than the US, despite its dire economic situation and lack of medicines. Or, with the Olympics approaching, one could examine how the country has traditionally managed to win an abnormally large  amount of Olympic medals.

Apparently such articles do not fit within the ideological framework in which our media operate. Within that framework, the selection and framing of current affairs about Cuba serves primarily to bash the country. The past events are once again a textbook example of this.

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[1] The word bot comes from robot. A bot or social bot is a social media account that is controlled not by a person, but by an algorithm. Such a bot shares and reuses existing messages, for example based on certain topics and hashtags.

[2] Art. 4, §1 Law March 22, 1940 (Belgium): Any person who engages in political propaganda or any other political activity and thereby receives instructions from a foreign power or foreign organization shall be punished by imprisonment from one year to five years and by a fine from 100 to 10,000 francs, to be increased by the opdecimes.

[3] An embargo means that a country refuses to trade with another country. A blockade involves attempts to prohibit or impede trade with third countries. This is clearly the case with the U.S. economic boycott of Cuba. Still, people will use the word embargo because it sounds less severe.

[4] The first time in 1959, when the US was the major trading partner and investor in the country. In 1989 this was the case with the Eastern Bloc.

All images in this article are from the author

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***

Johnson & Johnson is reportedly considering using what legal experts call the “Texas two-step” bankruptcy law, a maneuver that would allow the company to create a new entity housing talc liabilities that would then file for bankruptcy to halt litigation.

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is exploring a plan to offload liabilities from widespread baby powder litigation by creating a new business that would then seek bankruptcy protection, Reuters reported.

During settlement discussions over its talc-containing baby powder, a J&J legal representative told plaintiffs’ lawyers the company could pursue placing a subsidiary in bankruptcy as part of a strategy to settle thousands of claims linking the product to ovarian cancer.

If executed, the plan could result in lower payouts for cases that do not settle beforehand, according to people familiar with the matter.

According to the Wall Street Journal, bankruptcy can be a powerful tool for companies facing a large number of lawsuits over allegedly defective products, or other mass-tort claims. A chapter 11 filing can pressure claimants into accepting lower settlements by halting ongoing litigation and discovery proceedings, and by creating a centralized forum to value claims.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers would initially be unable to stop J&J from taking such a step, though they could pursue legal avenues to challenge it later.

A company spokesperson said Sunday that “Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. has not decided on any particular course of action in this litigation other than to continue to defend the safety of talc and litigate these cases in the tort system, as the pending trials demonstrate.”

J&J is considering using Texas’ “divisive merger” law, which would allow the company to split into at least two entities — creating a new entity housing talc liabilities that would then file for bankruptcy to halt litigation, according to Reuters.

Should J&J proceed, plaintiffs who have not settled could find themselves in protracted bankruptcy proceedings with a much smaller company. Future payouts would be dependent on how J&J funds the entity housing its talc liabilities.

The maneuver is known among legal experts as a Texas two-step bankruptcy, a strategy used in recent years by companies facing asbestos litigation.

According to Onder Law, LLC, “A Texas two-step bankruptcy is a move that’s in line with the unscrupulous tactics Johnson & Johnson has exercised for decades. If they are successful — and we don’t believe they will be — the company hopes to discharge their liability from talc lawsuits throughout the country.”

A 2018 Reuters investigation found J&J knew for decades that asbestos, a known carcinogen, lurked in its baby powder and other cosmetic talc products.

J&J stopped selling talc powder products in the U.S. and Canada last year. But as of April 2021, there were roughly 28,900 lawsuits pending in U.S. courts against the company and its J&J Consumer Inc. subsidiary, alleging talc-containing powders caused ovarian cancer and other injuries.

J&J said in its most recent quarterly report in April that the number of talc cases continues to grow.

As The Defender reported last month, the Supreme Court on June 1 rejected an appeal by J&J to reverse a $2.1 billion verdict for plaintiffs who claim the company’s talc powder products gave them ovarian cancer.

The pharmaceutical company, which developed the Janssen COVID vaccine, asked the top court to review the verdict, arguing it didn’t receive a fair trial in Missouri where the court awarded a $4.7 billion payout to 22 women who developed ovarian cancer.

The verdict was reduced to $2.1 billion in June 2020, by the Missouri court of appeals.

Ken Starr, a prosecutor representing women who sued J&J, wrote in court briefings that the pharma company “knew for decades that their talc powders contained asbestos, a highly carcinogenic substance with no known safe exposure level.”

Starr said the company could have protected customers by switching from talc to cornstarch as their scientists proposed as early as 1973, but they were unwilling to sacrifice profits for a safer product. ”

J&J claims its baby powder is safe and does not contain asbestos or cause cancer.

Yes! The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Johnson & Johnson to reverse a $2.1 billion verdict for plaintiffs who claim the company’s talc powder products gave them ovarian cancer.

SUBSCRIBE to #TheDefender: https://t.co/zL66Edfiw5https://t.co/CdQzph2yrQ

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 3, 2021

The lawsuits linking talc powder to cancer aren’t the first time J&J has been sued over the safety of its products.

Other major J&J lawsuits and recalls for faulty products include:

• 1995: J&J was hit with a $7.5 million fine for destroying documents to cover up an investigation into wrongful marketing of its Retin-A acne cream to remove wrinkles.
• 1996: The company entered into an undisclosed settlement on false claims over condom protection against HIV and other STDs.
• 2001: J&J paid out $860 million in a class action lawsuit for misleading customers about prematurely discarding its 1-Day Acuvue soft contact lens. J&J recommended they should be worn only once, although it was discovered the lenses were no different than the regular Acuvue lens that would last for two weeks.
• 2010: The drug giant was hit with a $81 million settlement for misbranding its anti-epileptic drug Topamax to treat psychiatric disorders and hiring outside physicians to join its sales force to promote the drug for unapproved conditions. The following year, J&J paid $85 million for similar charges against its heart drug Natrecor.
• 2011: Several J&J baby products were discovered to contain carcinogenic ingredients.
• 2013: The U.S. Justice Department charged the company $2.2 billion in criminal fines for marketing its autism and antipsychotic drug Risperdal for unapproved uses. Forty-five states had filed civil lawsuits against J&J in the scandal. Other serious adverse effects from Risperdal reported by the FDA include diabetes mellitus, hyperprolactinaemia, somnolence, depression, anxiety, psychotic behavior, suicide and death.
• ​​2019: A Philadelphia jury ordered J&J to pay $8 billion in punitive damages to a Maryland man, whose lawyers argued the company illegally marketed antipsychotic drug, Risperdal, and downplayed the side effect that young men using it could grow breasts. At the time, J&J was facing approximately 13,400 claims tied to Risperdal.
• 2020: Four companies, including J&J reached a $26 billion settlement with counties and cities that sued them for damages related to the opioid epidemic in the largest federal court case in American history.

2021: J&J agreed to pay a $230 million settlement with New York state that bars the company from promoting opioids and confirmed it ended distribution of such products within the U.S.

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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

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.

***

Dr. Robert Malone, who pioneered the mRNA vaccine technology is concerned that the countries with the smallest percentage of their population vaccinated have the fewest number of new Covid cases.  Countries with the largest percentages of population vaccinated have surging numbers of new Covid cases.

See this, this and this.

Dr. Malone shares his calculations Based on CDC/VAERS data:

The Pfizer vaccine is 3-5 times more likely to cause a male 12-17 years of age to be hospitalized than Covid itself.  For a female of the same age, the vaccine is 4-5 times more likely to cause hospitalization than Covid.

Females 12-17 years of age are 72% more likely to die from the vaccine than from Covid.

Many have been asking for this. Pfizer adolescent Risk / benefit calculations based on official CDC data, forwarded to me by an actuary. Please prove these wrong? pic.twitter.com/Ao8oZXeWGn

— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) July 17, 2021

Here is another report that cannot be verified or refuted because the tyranny under which Western people live will not allow the report to be acknowledged.

According to this report, Asians have switched from vaccination to Ivermectin.

Unfortunately, the Western world has a media that suppresses dissenting views instead of bringing them into  public debate.  The only thing most Western people hear are the lies that serve establishment interests.  Western peoples are in every sense blinded by a Ministry of Propaganda.

The lying scum presstitutes, medical bureaucrats, and shills who are paid to lie for Big Pharma are trying to claim that the case surge in vaccinated countries is the new “Delta variant” while simultaneously claiming that the vaccines protect against the “Delta variant.” 

CDC director Rochelle Walensky claims falsely that “if you are fully vaccinated you are protected against severe COVID, hospitalization and death, and are even protected against the known variants, including the delta variant, circulating in this country.”  Independent scientists are suggesting that the surge in cases among vaccinated countries is caused by the vaccine itself which releases the Spike Protein into the body as does the virus.  The presstitutes continue to hide the facts, and independent experts sounding alarm continue to be censored, ridiculed, and threatened with firings.

An unfolding health catastrophe is being covered up as it happens before our eyes.

Here is the latest CDC report on adverse vaccine effects.  Remember the VAERS reporting system captures at best only 10% of the adverse vaccine reactions.  

Here is a report claiming deaths are seriously under-reported by VAERS.  As the print, TV, and NPR media are 100% unreliable along with a high percentage of the Internet media, it is difficult to know what to make of this report.

Here is a great amount of expert information about the so-called Covid vaccines and their very real dangers: see this. 

A month ago I posted Dr. Robert Malone’s concern about the dangers the vaccines present to many elements of the population.  

The grave problem that we face is that almost the entirety of the medical profession, governments, and media are invested 100% in the hype that the vaccines are the answer. They continue to call the high and rising number of deaths and adverse effects of the vaccines “rare.”

They are now blaming the astonishing number of new cases among heavily-vaccinated populations on a mutation or new variant. It is beyond their capability to consider if the vaccine itself is the cause of the new outbreak.  People this culpable in mass deceit, murder, and injuries are incapable of recognizing their mistake.  As incompetent or corrupt governments shielded the vaccine-makers from liability, there is no help for the families of those killed by the vaccine and no medical help for those injured by the vaccine.  As the corrupt medical establishment will not recognize the dangers of the vaccines, no research is being done about how to cure or ameliorate the health problems caused by the vaccines.  Instead, the health establishment continues to press forward with vaccination with many employers and universities mandating vaccination and the fool in the Oval Office wanting to send agents door-to-door to vaccinate “anti-vaxxers.” France and Greece are trying to impose Covid Passports in order to coerce their entire populations to accept vaccination with an untested, experimental, and now proven highly dangerous vaccine. Biden Demands Facebook Silence Everyone Who Questions Covid Vaccine —  see this.

We are everywhere witnessing the complete and total failure of government and public health bureaucracies.

Some doctors and scientists are concerned that the Spike proteins in the vaccines that attack the body’s vital organs will result in a high percentage of those vaccinated dying within three years, with the consequence being the collapse of societies.  Indeed, it could be too late to retrieve the situation, and the establishment is in total denial.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

It’s finally here! The BIG Event! That’s right, “Freedom Day” is upon us. After 17 months of a 3-week lockdown, the UK is re-opening for business.

Nobody in the press seems very excited about that. The Guardian reports on the “economic chaos” and the mathematical models predicting disaster. The Financial Times calls it “surrender day”. Reuters go with “anxiety day”. CNN call it a “huge gamble”. Nature says that “researchers” find it “alarming”.

They’re desperately trying to re-stoke a year-old panic by reporting rising numbers of “cases” as if that’s measure with any kind of meaning.

But none of that matters, because Britain can finally go back to normal.

…Except for all care home workers who are being forced to get vaccinated, of course. And all the businesses being “urged” to use Covid passes. And all the major cities still enforcing masks on public transport. And the wall-to-wall propaganda. That’s all here to stay.

…and the lockdowns might be coming back in the winter too.

All-in-all, “Freedom Day” is all mouth and no trousers, and unlikely do much to dissuade the growing number of people that believe the “virus” – if it truly exists – is being used as a pretext to impoverish millions, enrich dozens and perform a global-scale theft of basic human liberty.

We’ve been told that two protest events have been planned for today, both in London, one at 9 am and another at noon.

The former is reportedly a plan to “storm parliament”. If there’s any truth to that, we would consider it a mistake. Whilst we sympathise with anyone feeling angry, we could not recommend or endorse such action. Violence of any kind is the quickest way to discredit your position, and we’ve seen in the recent past how the MSM can twist a nothing-burger into a “violent insurrection”.

The last thing we need is for the UK to get its own “Capitol Hill Riot”, and have every lockdown sceptic branded a “domestic terrorist” or “violent extremist”.

The latter protest is intended to be peaceful, following the model of the “unite for Freedom” marches which have been a regular occurrence since lockdown began.

Freedom Day or no, there are big protests planned across the world for Saturday the 24th of July. You can click here to see which cities are involved and when to arrive.

This follows massive protests all across France this weekend, following Macron’s announcement that vaccine passes will be needed to enter all business and public transport, and that “vaccination” will be mandatory for all healthcare workers.

The resulting outcry turned the streets of Paris into this on Saturday:

Wow. Massive protests happening right now in Paris, France against Macron’s new coronavirus restrictions. pic.twitter.com/C3JIaUV7wJ

— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) July 17, 2021

There are more of us than them.#Parispic.twitter.com/8HguzwREGp

— Darren of Plymouth 🇬🇧 (@DarrenPlymouth) July 17, 2021

In Australia, truck drivers blocked the Sydney Harbour Bridge with their lorries in protest against lockdowns. And we’ve already seen both Russia and Israel have to abandon “Covid pass” programs thanks to simple, unorganized mass non-compliance.

There are definitely reasons to be hopeful; we are winning the argument, and more and more people every day are waking up the nature of their new reality.

A cynical person might even suggest that “freedom day” is nothing but a ploy, designed to trick the increasingly restless majority into thinking things are returning to normal, but also then blaming their “selfishness” when “freedom day” is inevitably followed up with “lockdown autumn” and “slavery Christmas”.

An even more cynical person might suggest that it’s just a massive social experiment, designed to see just how many people still wear masks, use hand sanitiser and social distance even though they don’t have to anymore.

But what do you think?

• Will “freedom day” make any difference?
• How long will “going back to normal” last?
• Will there be a “third wave” blamed on loosening the restrictions?
• Will you, or anyone you know, still follow the old rules, even when they’re not enforced?
• Will protests in Britain and France spread anywhere else as “vaccine passport” schemes emerge around the world?

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***

As the UK Government heralds “freedom day” today, which is anything but, a prominent government scientific advisor has admitted that face masks do very little to protect from coronavirus and are basically just “comfort blankets”.

Dr Colin Axon, a SAGE advisor for the government told the London Telegraph that medics have given people a “cartoonish” view of how how microscopic viruses travel through the air, and the masks have gaps in them that are up to 5000 times bigger than Covid particles.

“The small sizes are not easily understood but an imperfect analogy would be to imagine marbles fired at builders’ scaffolding, some might hit a pole and rebound, but obviously most will fly through,” Axon said.

“Once a particle is not on a biological surface it is no longer a biomedical issue, it is simply about physics. The public has only a partial view of the story if information only comes from one type of source,” Axon continued, adding “Medics have some of the answers but not a whole view.”

Noting that the “mask debate is about the particle journey,” Axon explained that “Masks can catch droplets and sputum from a cough but what is important is that SARS CoV-2 is predominantly distributed by tiny aerosols.”

“A Covid viral particle is around 100 nanometres, material gaps in blue surgical masks are up to 1,000 times that size, cloth mask gaps can be 500,000 times the size,” Axon urged.

The professor noted that

“those aerosols escape masks and will render the mask ineffective,” adding “The public were demanding something must be done, they got masks, it is just a comfort blanket. But now it is entrenched, and we are entrenching bad behaviour.”

“All around the world you can look at mask mandates and superimpose on infection rates, you cannot see that mask mandates made any effect whatsoever,” Axon further noted, adding that “The best thing you can say about any mask is that any positive effect they do have is too small to be measured.”

Axon’s comments echo those of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who wrote in February 2020 that a typical store-bought face mask “is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material.”

Fauci later reversed his position after the CDC began recommending that Americans wear face coverings. Similar recommendations were then made worldwide, with World Health Organisation officials even recommending that masks remain INDEFINTELY.

Social media networks have long censored and deleted information pertaining to the efficacy of masks, or lack thereof, despite numerous credible studies concluding that they are largely useless at stopping the spread of COVID-19.

A study in Denmark involving 6,000 participants found that “there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19,” the Spectator reported.

“1.8 per cent of those wearing masks caught Covid, compared to 2.1 per cent of the control group. As a result, it seems that any effect masks have on preventing the spread of the disease in the community is small.”

While the government says that from today masks are optional in the UK, many train companies and other businesses have said that they remain mandatory, causing widespread confusion.

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***

Three of the richest billionaires on Earth are now busily spending billions to exit our Earth’s atmosphere and enter into space. The world is watching — and reflecting.

Some commentators see our billionaire trio — Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk — as heroic heirs to the legacies of Charles Lindbergh and Sir Edmund Hillary, the first mere mortals to high jump the Atlantic alone and scale the world’s highest mountain.

Our billionaires racing into space, other charmed commentators are adding, aren’t just thrilling humankind. They’re uplifting us. The technologies that the space operations Branson, Bezos, and Musk “develop could benefit people worldwide far into the future,” says Yahoo Finance’s Daniel Howley.

But most of our commentators seem to be taking a considerably more skeptical perspective. They’re dismissing the space antics of Branson, Bezos, and Musk as the ego trips of bored billionaires, “cynical stunts by disgustingly rich businessmen,” as one British analyst puts it, “to boost their self-importance at a time when money and resources are desperately needed elsewhere.”

“Space travel used to be about ‘us,’ a collective effort by the country to reach beyond previously unreachable limits,” writes author William Rivers Pitt. “That was the Cold War propaganda, anyway, and it had an unavoidable allure. Now, it’s about ‘them,’ the 0.1 percent.”

The best of these skeptical commentators can even make us laugh.

“Really, billionaires?” comedian Seth Meyers asked earlier this month. “This is what you’re going to do with your unprecedented fortunes and influence? Drag race to outer space?”

Let’s enjoy the ridicule. But let’s not treat the billionaire space race as a laughing matter. Let’s see it as a wake-up call, a reminder that we don’t only get billionaires when wealth concentrates. We get a society that revolves around the egos of the most affluent among us and an economy where the needs of average people go unmet and don’t particularly matter.

Characters like Elon Musk, notes Paris Max, host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, are using “misleading narratives about space to fuel public excitement” and gain tax-dollar support for various projects “designed to work best — if not exclusively — for the elite.”

The three corporate space shells for Musk, Bezos, and Branson — SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic — have “all benefited greatly through partnerships with NASA and the US military,” notes CNN Business. Their common corporate goal: to get satellites, people, and cargo “into space cheaper and quicker than has been possible in decades past.”

Branson, for his part, is hawking tickets for roundtrips “to the edge of the atmosphere and back,” at $250,000 per head. He’s planning some 400 such trips a year, observes British journalist Oliver Bullough, about “almost as bad an idea as racing to see who can burn the rainforest quickest.”

The annual UN Emissions Gap Report last year concluded that the world’s richest 1 percent do more to foul the atmosphere than the entire poorest 50 percent combined. That top 1 percent, the UN report adds, would have to “reduce its footprint by a factor of 30 to stay in line” with the 2015 Paris Agreement targets. Opening space to rich people’s joyrides would stomp that footprint even bigger.

Bezos and Musk seem to have grander dreams than mere space tourism. They’re looking “to colonize the cosmos,” with Bezos pushing “artificial tube-like structures floating close to Earth” and Musk talking up the terraforming of Mars. They essentially see space as a refuge from an increasingly inhospitable planet Earth. They expect tax-dollar support to make their various pipedreams come true.

And how should we respond to all this? We should, of course, be working to create a more hospitable planet for all humanity. In the meantime, several egalitarian wags have been circulating online petitions that urge our terrestrial authorities not to let orbiting billionaires back on Earth.

“Billionaires should not exist…on Earth or in space, but should they decide the latter, they should stay there,” reads one petition nearing 200,000 signatures.

Ric Geiger, the 31-year-old automotive supplies account manager behind that effort, is hoping his petition helps the issue of maldistributed wealth “reach a broader platform.”

Activists like Geiger are going down the right track. We don’t need billionaires out to “conquer space.” We need to conquer inequality.

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Sam Pizzigati co-edits Inequality.org. His latest books include The Case for a Maximum Wage and The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970. Follow him at @Too_Much_Online.

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***

He can scant resist a slogan, but UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s insistence on describing Britain’s exit from lockdown as Freedom Day came with its usual kitschy quality.  All would be splendid as COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in the “move to step 4.”  Social contact rules would be scrapped, along with mask mandates in various public spaces.  Nightclubs could reopen; capacity limits for events and venues would be removed.  There would be a return to social responsibility or what Johnson calls protection through informed choice.

According to the government, the decision to lift most restrictions on July 19 was reached because four tests had been satisfied.  Ongoing vaccine deployment was proving a success, having “broken the link between infection and mortality.”  (Step 4 had been delayed by a month to enable more adults to be vaccinated.)  Gathered evidence showed that “vaccines are sufficiently effective in reducing hospitalisations and deaths in those vaccinated.”  Infection rates did not pose a risk to a surge in hospitalisations that would place intolerable pressure upon the National Health System (NHS).  The emergence of new COVID-19 variants did not pose a threat. 

In his July 15 speech, Johnson accepted that hospitalisations and deaths would endure.  A calculus of risk was at play.  The days and weeks ahead would be “difficult” with “more hospitalisations and … more deaths but with every day that goes by we build higher the wall of vaccine acquired immunity, a wall that is now higher and stronger in this country than almost anywhere else in the world”.

The promise of Freedom Day had the effect of setting a good number of health professionals on edge.  Arthur Hosie, a Staffordshire University microbiologist, took the view that the government was essentially disarming the populace from non-pharmacological protections.  “This is a new virus to which we have had no exposure over previous years.  Mask wearing and social distancing are important – to remove them is to remove the tools we need to live with the virus.”

Authors of a July piece for The Lancet, many members of the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, excoriated a strategy that still tolerated “natural infection for others (predominantly the young)” alongside a partially vaccinated population.  “The link between infection and death might have been weakened, but it has not been broken, and infection can still cause substantial morbidity in both acute and long-term illness.”

The authors offered a range of grave scenarios.  Unvaccinated children and young people risked being disproportionately affected.  Schools faced high rates of transmission that would cause education disruption and endanger “clinically and socially vulnerable children.”  Preliminary modelling data suggested that the opening up strategy “provides fertile ground for the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants.”  The strategy would also deplete the country’s already exhausted health services and staff.  Finally, and as has always been the case, deprived communities would continue to be disproportionately affected.

With these loud warnings come a rather troubling set of statistics.  According to the Office of National Statistics one in 95 people in England has COVID.  In Scotland, the number is one in 90.  More than half a million people find themselves in isolation and infection levels lie at over 50,000 a day.

The Delta variant is also posing challenges to the wall of immunity Johnson has been promoting.  Certainly, it does not promise to be impervious, though the figures are nonetheless impressive in preventing serious illness and hospitalisations.  While the Pfizer vaccine does pack a punch in being 88% effective in stopping symptomatic disease arising from the Indian-origin strain, AstraZeneca’s offering comes in at 60%.  Public Health England has put this down to an issue of timing, as the effectiveness of the latter vaccine requires a longer interval between first and second doses.

The country’s third COVID-19 wave is causing jolts of dysfunction, largely due to the test and trace system that continues to operate.  Marks & Spencer is considering reducing opening hours to cope with staff shortages arising from infections and self-isolation directions.  A number of factories and work sites face the prospect of shutting for similar reasons.  Parts of the London Underground were closed because of the number of staff made to self-isolate after being notified via the NHS COVID-19 app.  The Rail, Maritime and Transport union secretary Mick Lynch had predicted the previous week that the capital would face “a surge in workers pinged with self-isolation instruction next week.”  A pingdemic is upon the population.

When Freedom Day came, it did not exactly arrive with a celebratory canter.  It had a very Johnsonian air of ramshackle contradiction jammed with misrepresentation, confusion and even a sense of terror.  Physician Gabriel Scally could recall no other “episode in history where a government has willingly aided and abetted the spread of a dangerous infectious disease among its own population.”

This was also freedom of a different sort.  Hundreds of thousands of people are in mandated isolation; the Prime Minister is himself isolating after his health secretary, Sajid Javid, had tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday.  “For these people,” wrotea bleak Ross Clark for The Spectator, “it is no freedom day – it is a return to the darkest hour of lockdown.”  In fact, suggested Clark, this was worse.  “At least during lockdown we were all allowed to go to the shops, or for exercise.”

For those wishing to travel, there were also disappointments.  Travellers to so-called amber designated countries can avoid the ten day isolation requirement upon their return but must pay for testing and get a test within 72 hours of their return.   The onus is on packaged tour operators to foot that bill, should they wish to.  Independent travellers will simply have to lump it.

Jeremy Hunt, chairman of the Commons health select committee, dreads the coming autumn.  “The warning light on the NHS dashboard is not flashing amber,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, “it is flashing red.”  As William Hanage of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston observed with sharp disapproval, “The decision [to open up], and the way it has been presented, repeats a pattern of foolishly promising an outcome when dealing with a highly infectious agent.”

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image: Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a press conference on 16 March, with Chief Medical Officer Prof Chris Witty and Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance. Picture by Andrew Parsons

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***

The First Nations of Manitoba chose the right target when they toppled the statue of Queen Victoria in front of the Manitoba Legislature following discovery of the graves of more than 1000 indigenous children around three residential schools. Their action rang bells around the world because what was inflicted upon them in Victoria’s name was also inflicted upon other peoples, often at the same time and at the hands of the same British troops: military conquest, bloody repression, massive settler invasions, and racist domination.

The first burial at the Cowessess First Nation cemetery, where 751 graves of young indigenous residents were discovered, occurred in 1885. That was the year of the famous Conference of Berlin at which European powers met to divvy up Africa before they scrambled to colonize it.

1885 is also a watershed year in the history of the British Empire and its new Dominion, British North America, or Canada. It was the year that Empire sealed its third conquest in North America, after the conquest of Quebec in 1759-60 (also known as the Seven Year War or the French and Indian War), and the brutal repression of the Patriots Revolt in 1837-38, which was the equivalent of another conquest.

On November 16, 1885, the John A. MacDonald government hanged Louis Riel in the quarters North-West Mounted Police (now the RCMP). The hanging was cheered on by an Orange-Order-dominated Toronto, but was loudly and massively condemned in Montreal, including by Quebec Premier Honoré Mercier. “Louis Riel is my brother,” he said before a crowd said to be close to 50,000.

Riel’s crime was to have tried to federate the Métis and the Indigenous nations under a provisional government opposed to the land grab and massive settling of the North-West Territories that the Indigenous people had occupied for millennia.

Eleven days later, on November 27, 1885, the same MacDonald Government publicly hanged six Cree and two Nakota warriors at Battleford, Saskatchewan. They are Kah – Paypamahchukways (Wandering Spirit), Pah Pah-Me-Kee-Sick (Walking the Sky), Manchoose (Bad Arrow), Kit-Ahwah-Ke-Ni (Miserable Man), Nahpase (Iron Body), A-Pis-Chas-Koos (Little Bear), Itka (Crooked Leg), Waywahnitch (Man Without Blood).

Source: Cree Literacy Network

The largest public hanging in the history of Canada and burial in a common grave followed on hasty trials before an Anglo-Protestant Jury and a judge by the name of Charles Rouleau, who was in flagrant conflict of interest: his house had been burnt during the conflict.

To make the message clear, members of the hanged warriors’ nations were forced to attend so that they would never forget. In a confidential letter written seven days earlier, John A. MacDonald wrote: “The executions ought to convince the Red Man that the White Man governs. This message came in the wake of his declaration that Louis Riel “shall hang, even though all dogs in Quebec bark in his favour.”

“Canada’s first war,” as Desmond Morton describes it, was in fact the second military intervention aimed at imposing British sovereignty over the North-West Territories. The first occurred in 1870 and was aimed to eliminate the first provisional government of Manitoba, also led by Louis Riel.

Battleford Industrial School 1885 – Students assembled to watch hanging (Source: Cree Literacy Network)

A colonial conquest among many

The commander of British Troops sent to put down Riel in 1870 was Marshal Garnet Wolseley. More than a run-of-the-mill British officer, Wolseley was a symbol of the planetary—and bloody—expansion of the British Empire in the 19th century. Named Viscount Sir Wolseley in 1885 by Queen Victoria, Wolseley, before confronting Riel, had earned his colours in the murderous colonial repression in India in 1857 and in China in 1860, including the destruction and looting of the Old Summer Palace in Peking, that “wonder of the world,” as Victor Hugo described it.

After Riel, as Governor of the Gold Coast (now Ghana), he headed the British troops that took Kumase, capital city of the Ashanti Kingdom, and he razed it; he led British troops to put down rebellions in Egypt, in Khartoum and in South Africa. Wolseley, an avid supporter of the slavocracy general Robert E. Lee, is still honoured in Canada where streets in Montreal-West, Toronto, Thunder Bay, and Winnipeg bear his name as well as a town in Saskatchewan … just 60 kilometers away from the Cowessess First Nation.

In 1885, Major-General Frederick Middleton, another senior British officer and veteran of British colonial wars, headed the troops sent to crush the resistance led by the Métis and the First Nations. Like Wolseley, Middleton was an officer with the British Troops that brutally repressed the Indian uprising in 1857 against the Crown’s agent, the British East India Company. He had also led troops to put down the Maoris in New Zealand. Crushing Indigenous peoples was is specialty. His troops in 1885 consisted of the paramilitary militia known as the North-West Mounted Police, and volunteer militias, mostly Orangemen from Ontario. The British Crown wanted to avoid provoking the most powerful army in the world, the US army, by deploying formally British troops.

Without understanding the nature and context of this third British conquest, it is difficult to understand what followed, be it the imposition of the land-grab treaties—coyly referred to as “numbered treaties—the Indian Act or today’s dismal situation in which the Canadian government talks of “reconciliation” while First Nations’ leader demand justice.

“Strike at the heart of the tribal system” 

A characteristic of all conquests is that the conqueror will deploy all means to ensure the conquered peoples don’t rise again. These include deportation (as with the Acadians in 1755 in a prelude to the first conquest), confinement to reserves, subjugation, assimilation, or all of the former.

Louis Riel testifies at his trial (Public Domain)

Few have forgotten the hanging of Louis Riel in 1885, but most are unaware of the public hanging of the Indigenous warriors. These hangings are vital symbols in understanding the history of Canada, but they are but the tip of the iceberg of policies implemented by the conquering British Empire and its dominion of Canada.

Following Wolseley’s military operations in 1870, the Métis of Manitoba, who until then accounted for about 80 percent of the population, were chased away in what can be described as pogroms. The region was flooded with settlers from Ontario or the “British Isles,” including a large number of Orangemen, who obtained land that was refused to Métis. The land-grab treaties were rapidly inflicted on the First Nations—seven treaties in six years (1871-77) covering the entire territory that was to become Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta—. First nations were made to know that even if the Chiefs refused to sign, the Canadian Government would proceed whether they liked it or not.

The Indian Act was adopted in 1876 thereby making the Indigenous people “wards of the state.” This Act invested the Indian Agents—and the NWMP—with powers over the life and death over thousands of First Nations peoples. In 1880, the industrial and residential school policy began to be implemented seriously.

The Commissioner of Indian Affairs and Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Territories at the time was Edgar Dewdney, a favourite of John A. MacDonald’s (he was an executor of MacDonald’s will), and a man “profoundly attached to the empire and the British monarchical tradition,” according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

From the time he was appointed Indian Commissioner in 1879, Dewdney was determined to “strike at the heart of the tribal system” by quickly opening more residential schools so as to put an end to the agitation of First Nations aimed at gaining more autonomy and improved treaties. This policy worked for many years.

The “Little Lottery”: “loyal” or “disloyal “ 

A few months after Riel was arrested, on July 20, 1885, the Assistant Indian Commissioner and former Indian Agent of Battleford, Hayter Reed, submitted a report with 15 points on “The Future Management of Indians.” He also provided a list of the nations/bands described either as “loyal” or “disloyal” with additional details about the chiefs and members suspected to have been involved in some way in the Resistance. That report became the basis of Canadian policy towards the First Nations for years to come.

It touches on everything: exemplary punishment of those who resisted (whence the public hangings); severe collective punishment, including privation of rations (starvation) and other necessities, applied to any and all who, according to the Indian agents, lacked loyalty; confiscation of horses, firearms and tools among those “disloyal” members of a nation or band; confinement to reserves unless in possession of written permission from an Indian agent; all ties between the Métis “Half-breeds” and other First Nations were to be severed and communication was to be forbidden, with the same being applied to “Canadians;” the “good” Indians (loyal) were to be rewarded with “substantial recognition” to confirm their loyalty, the “bad and lazy” ones were to lose their reserve; and more and more.

This “Little Lottery” used to control the First Nations after the Riel-led resistance resembles the one used with some success by the British Crown after the brutal repression and hangings of the Patriots in Quebec in 1837-38. The goal was to coopt a certain French-Canadian elite by using political emoluments, rewards, nominations, recognition and other crumbs. That “Little Lottery” succeeded to a certain extent in transforming revolutionary Patriots into very tame collaborators of the new regime set up by the British.

What about the churches?  

In all colonial conquests, churches play an important role in support of the military and political power. They did so in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America and in North America. In the case of British North America, the Anglican Church has always been the Crown’s favourite, as the king or queen was, and is, the Supreme Governor of that Church.

Anglican run Battleford Industrial School, Carpenter’s shop. circa 1894. (CC0)

The Catholic Church joined in. It quickly reached an agreement with the British Empire. During the Patriot’s Revolt in 1837-1838 in Lower Canada, the Catholic Church supported the British by refusing Patriots and their supporters the right to be buried in Catholic cemeteries, threatened to excommunicate them, and ordered them to comply with the instructions of the British authorities.

The churches were brought in to keep the promise made by the Government of Canada and written in the treaties to provide schools to the First Nations. They were to support a policy devised by and for the conquering power, the British Empire and its Dominion of Canada. The Canadian Government was to fund the schools, but it steadily and arbitrarily reduced funding and left it up to the religious organizations to find the minimum required to keep operating.

To fill the residential schools, a law was required to force the Indigenous families to send their children to them. Canada obliged by authorizing the Indian agents to take any school age children from their families and put them in the schools. If parents refused, the agents had the power to cut off their annuities and more. Testimony has revealed that parents who opposed sending their children were threatened with prison.

The NWMP (now the RCMP) was empowered implement the law. Testimony gathered is eloquent.

“children (who) were lured onto boats and planes without parental knowledge, sometimes never to be seen again. Uniformed RCMP pulled children from their mother’s arms; many survivors described the cattle trucks and railroad cars into which they were herded each fall. Night time knocks on the doors and invasions in search of runaway children are reminiscent of war.”

The threat of police action was often the means used to return the children to school, “it was the police who brought the runaways back to school, and now it was the threat of police action which stopped a grieving father from trying to find out what had happened to his son” (Funk, 1993: 88). Some accounts refer to how the RCMP assisted by force. “They encircled reserves to stop runaways then moved from door to door taking school children over the protest of parents and children themselves. Children were locked up in nearby police stations or cattle pens until the round up was complete, then taken to school by train” (The Role of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police During the Indian Residential School System, prepared for the TRC, 2011)

In short, Canada entrusted the churches with the responsibility to establish residential schools; the government funded them; its Indian agents and its police force were empowered to force parents to send their children to the schools and use a battery of threats.

Canada had the power to put an end to the system. But it didn’t, preferring to keep it operating for some 100 years, even though its own civil servants fully informed the government of the criminal nature of the system.

The Canadian Government knew 

Dr. P.H. Bryce was Chief Medical Officer of the Department of the Interior from 1904 until 1921, when he was forced to retire. He was responsible for the health of Indigenous children in the residential schools. He became a “whistle-blower” in 1922 by publishing a booklet titled, “The Story of A National Crime, An Appeal for Justices to the Indians of Canada, The Wards of the Nation: Our Allies in the Revolutionary War: Our Brothers-in-Arms in the Great War (James Hope, 1922, Ottawa).

But it was not the first information that became public. In 1907, based on the annual report he submitted to his superiors, The Evening Citizen (now The Ottawa Citizen) ran a front-page article titled, “Schools Aid White Plague — Startling Death Rolls Revealed Among Indians — Absolute Inattention to the Bare Necessities of Health.”

Dr. Bryce’s annual reports repeated the same observations and included urgent recommendations for the First Nations. Nothing was done. Slowl he was forced to stop producing the reports.

Tuberculosis was rampant in those years. In his reports, Dr. Bryce, who was a specialist in fighting tuberculosis, compared the death rate in cities like Hamilton and Ottawa, Ontario, with those in western reserves.

Whereas death rates in the Ontario cities were constantly dropping, in the reserves, and particularly in the residential schools, the death rates were devastating, continually on the rise. The Indigenous population was plummeting each year because of tuberculosis, but each of Dr. Bryce’s reports was snuffed out. Worse yet, representatives of the Indian Affairs Department did everything possible to prevent Bryce from speaking out in public. For instance, he was prevented from speaking to the 1910 Annual Meeting of the National Tuberculosis Association.

What about Quebec’s role in this tragedy?

Since the children’s bodies were discovered in cemeteries belonging to residential schools, people have been raising Quebec’s role in the tragedy. Some see a link because of the Catholic Church and the religious orders based in Quebec. Others point to Quebec politicians or civil servants who participated in the decision-making by the Canadian government or by British authorities or in the implementation of these policies. Some refer to the two French-speaking battalions from Quebec City sent West in 1885.

Inasmuch as individuals, members of political parties or institutions bought into the British order established in Canada in the wake of the first two military conquests and in the British imperial and colonial drive westward, they obviously bear some responsibility.

But Quebecers and French-Canadians have often fiercely challenged that order throughout the history of Canada.

For instance, in the Declaration of Independence of Lower Canada written in 1838 by the Patriot Robert Nelson, it is stated in the third article: “That under the free government of Lower Canada, all citizens shall have the same rights; the Indians will cease to be subject to any kind of civil disqualification, and will enjoy the same rights as the other citizens of the state of Lower Canada.”

The same goes for the Catholic Church, which has been challenged constantly. The British—and Canadian—authorities promoted the Catholic Church, particularly in the wake of Patriot Revolt of 1837-38. Together they hoped to suppress the revolutionary republican ideas inspired by France.

As for the two French-speaking battalions under Major-general Middleton’s command sent to put down the resistance in 1885, the British showed their true colours once again. They considered that these French-speaking troops could not be trusted to fight the French-speaking Métis and Riel, so they had them sent far away from combat in Alberta. The Quebec troops quickly learned that they were, and would always be, second class members of the institutions established in British North America (Canada). This story would be repeated over and over again.

Making Canada and English country

Following the military conquest of the West in 1870 and 1885, which allowed Britain’s Dominion of Canada to impose its sovereignty, it eliminated the French language and culture with almost as much zeal as was deployed to eliminate the Indigenous languages and cultures.

In 1890, Manitoba abolished French as an official language and shortly thereafter it prohibited the use of French in schools. (Gabrielle Roy, who was born in Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, recalls in Enchantment and Sorrow how the French-speaking sisters in her Catholic school would teach them in English, but would sometimes sneak out books in French, out of sight of zealous government inspectors.)

Saskatchewan and Albert became provinces of Canada in 1905, but the bilingual status that had applied to the North-West Territories was eliminated. A few years later, use of French in government, in courts and in schools was prohibited.

Everything old is new again

In their fight against the British Empire, Canada’s First Nations and the Métis were not alone; the French-Canadians/Quebecers were not alone either. They were peoples who represented obstacles the European powers, intent on expanding their empires around the world, had to remove. In that sense, they were objective allies of the Chinese, the peoples of India and other Southern Asian countries, the Maoris of New Zeeland, the indigenous peoples of Australia and the United States, and the peoples of Africa.

One hundred fifty years later, the same European and North American powers, including Canada, are attempting to restore their hegemony in these same places, though they are meeting vigorous resistance worldwide. The methods used include lecturing these countries on human rights, applying murderous sanctions, and threatening to bomb and intervene militarily in any countries that prefer political and economic independence to the hegemony of great powers.

Today, as in the past, these powers have neither the right nor the moral authority to do what they are doing, but that will not stop them.

One lesson to be retained from the sorry history of residential schools in Canada is that our solidarity must also mean that we will not allow ourselves to be dragged into imperialist drives against other countries and peoples in the world.

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Sources

Bryce, P.H. The Story of A National Crime, An Appeal for Justices to the Indians of Canada, The Wards of the Nation: Our Allies in the Revolutionary War: Our Brothers-in-Arms in the Great War. James Hope, 1922.

Dictionnaire biographique du Canada.

Hay, Travis, Blackstock, Cindy, and Kirlew, Michael. Dr. Peter Bryce (1853-1932): whistleblower on residential schools, CMAJ, 2 March, 2020.

Kelly, Stéphane. La petite loterie. Comment la Couronne a obtenu la collaboration du Canada français après 1837, Les éditions du Boréal, 1997.

LeBeuf, Marcel-Eugène. Au nom de la GRC. Le rôle de la Gendarmerie royales du Canada sous le régime des pensionnats indiens, rapport réalisé dans le cadre de la CVR, 2011

Momudu, Samuel. « The Anglo-Ashanti Wars (1823-1900). Black Past. 24 mars 2018. https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/anglo-ashanti-wars-1823-1900/

Morton, Desmond. A Military History of Canada, From Champlain to Kosovo, Fourth Edition. M&S, 1999.

Ogg, Arden. An infamous anniversary: 130 years since Canada’s Largest Mass Hanging 27 November 1885. Cree Literacy Network. https://creeliteracy.org/2015/11/26/130th-anniversary-of-infamy-canadas-largest-mass-hanging-27-november-1885/

Reed, Hayter. Memorandum for the Hon(ourable) the Indian Commissioner Relative to the Future Management of the Indians. 20 July 1885.  http://iportal.usask.ca/index.php?sid=168308311&id=33613&t=details

Stonechild, Blair; Waiser, Bill. Loyal Till Death, Indians and the North-West Rebellion. Fifth House Publishers, 2010

Wolseley, Garnet. “General Lee”. Lee Family Digital Archive. https://leefamilyarchive.org/reference/misc/wolseley/index.html

Featured image: Cairn erected in 1975 marking the Battleford Industrial School cemetery (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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First published on June 28, 2021

Following a citizen’s petition, a Lisbon court was forced to provide verified COVID-19 mortality data, reports AndreDias.net.

According to the ruling, the number of verified COVID-19 deaths from January 2020 to April 2021 is only 152, not about 17,000 as claimed by government ministries.

All the “others” died for various reasons, although their PCR test was positive.

“We live in a fraud of unprecedented dimensions,” wrote Dias.

“The data are from the Sistema de Informação dos Certificados de Óbito (Death Certificate Information System – SICO), the only such system in Portugal. The reference to 152 death certificated issued ‘under Justice Ministry supervision’ is spurious, as all death certificates are issued under Justice Ministry auspices, being the only institution that issues them.

“In response to a popular suit, a court order was required for the Ministry to respond, desperate not to denounce the fraud.

“All those responsible for handling data from ‘cases’ and ‘deaths’ can, thereafter, only be tried for the crime if there is any dignity remaining in the rule of law,” he continued.

“If these figures are of the same order of magnitude for other countries as well, and there is no reason to assume otherwise, then the plague is a deception of unprecedented proportions and crimes committed against humanity on a huge scale have been committed here.”

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Russia /Venezuela

The U.S.-led colonial terror in Haiti since 2004 has been so terrible and horrific, that during countless anti-corruption, anti-imperialist demonstrations, the people of Haiti burned the U.S. flag and lifted up the Russian flag asking for help. But for thirteen (13) intolerable years, from 2004 to 2017, Russia voted at the U.N. Security Council to play along with the U.S. colonial conquest in Haiti. It’s true that Russia has oftentimes rhetorically responded as if they sympathize, but given every chance to recognize Michel Martelly and Jovenel Moise’s illegitimacy they have not ever rejected these colonial puppets as  de facto presidents put in by the Core Group, UN and OAS, as the people of Haiti have, en mass and very loudly. Let’s say that first.

A month (35 days) after Jovenel Moise received and accepted the letters of appointment for the new Russian Ambassador to Haiti, Sergey Melik-Bagdasarov, he was assassinated.

Sergey Melik-Bagdasarov is the Russian Ambassador to Venezuela. This Haiti rapprochement to Venezuela through Russia would not please the United States who pushed Jovenel Moise to betray a traditionally close Haiti relationship with Venezuela to recognize the un-elected imposter Juan Guaidó as president over the duly elected Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro. This unprecedented appointment of a Russian ambassador to Haiti who also is the primary Russian agent in Venezuela probably gave the Western Core Group of nations running Haiti brain aneurysms.

A seeming deepen bilateral cooperation relations with Haiti and Russia may have sealed Jovenel’s fate. Especially after the pains the U.S.-led Core group nations took to destroy the PetroCaribe fuel program in Haiti by allowing and rewarding its PHTK Legal Bandits, like Jovenel Moise and Michel Martelly, to allegedly embezzle billions of the $4billion Venezuelan fuel deal while providing the Haitian people with no successful social reform programs as Venezuela intended and thus, ultimately destroying the legitimacy of the PetroCaribe fuel program to the glee of the U.S.

⁠Turkey

Before his assassination, on June 17, 2021, Jovenel Moise, accompanied by a large delegation which included Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly rival, former de facto Prime Minister, Laurent Lamothe, visited Turkey.

The United States worries about Turkey’s growing friendship with Russia. Could this trip have added to the growing U.S. discontent with its puppet president and sealed Jovenel’s fate on many fronts: angering many former political friends, the Lebanese/Syrian oligarchs in Haiti who dislike Turkey’s attacks on Syria opposition and the U.S.-Core Group nations whose relationship with Turkey president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is almost as bad as their relationship with Venezuela’s Maduro?

There are many threads here to unpack in this newest neocolonial atrocity and foreign abuse of Haiti. There’s the Middle Eastern oligarch role vs the local politicians, the regional actors, the internationals, the personal. But Moise’s new relationship with Russia and even Erdorgan, the president of Turkey, a hated U.S. enemy would please the warmongering Western Core Group nations whatsoever. Nor, would such an African foray please the Lebanese-Syrian-Israeli billion oligarchs in Haiti who are both overseers of the Black masses locally for empire and victims/useful pawns in the U.S.-led balance of power game against Syria and who work with the DEA/State department/Pentagon/CIA/FBI to use the Colombian drugs profits to financed U.S. wars domestically and all over the planet, including to finance the opposition to Bashar Al-Assad.

Turkey is not seen as a reliable NATO ally because it nakedly protects its own interests. Still remembers itself as the Ottoman Empire and thus not in awe or providing due NATO deference to nations it formerly owned in Europe and Asia.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with President Jovenel Moïse of Haiti, who is in Turkey for the Antalya Diplomacy Forum. (Source: tccb.gov.tr)

Recall that back in August 2020, Jovenel and Erdogan strengthened Haiti and Turkey cooperation ties with the signing of seven agreements:

• Memorandum of Understanding for the formation of the political consultation mechanism between the ministries of foreign affairs;
• Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation between Chancellery Diplomacy Academies;
• Memorandum of Understanding on Disaster Management;
• Memorandum of Understanding for Economic Cooperation;
• Memorandum of understanding for cultural cooperation;
• Memorandum of Understanding for Cooperation on Archives;
• Memorandum of Understanding for Technical Cooperation.

U.S. corporations work hard to control all energy projects in the Caribbean and use the U.S. military, CIA/DEA/FBI, Israeli-Mossad mercenaries to enforce their corporate monopolies. Former de facto president, Michel Martelly, put in illegally under the Obama/Biden/Hillary Clinton administration, signed a contract for an Israeli military company (HSL) to “protect” Haiti borders, land, air and sea. (Where was their border surveillance satellites and communication spying technology on that July 7, 2021 assassination?)

I know the United States works hard to control the energy sector in Haiti. Their minions even came after the tiny solar powered clean water project I put together, after the earthquake  and UN imported cholera, to help the people have some electricity and clean water.

So imagine the Western confederate Core Group rage, absolute rage when, in November 2020, Jovenel Moise and his Turkish counterpart Reccep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly had telephone conversations as part of negotiations for the establishment of two floating power plants capable of extending electricity services to Port-au-Prince and Cap Haitian. See, Jovenel not only visited Turkey to complete preparations for these projects and signed other unknown agreements with a close friend of Russia the U.S hates, but we recall that back in March 2021, the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu also visited Haiti as part of a regional tour and issued an official invitation to Haitian leaders.

Yep, it’s not far fetch then, to see the Jovenel Moise assassination is nothing more than a desperate message, delivered by the enraged United States and Core Group hitmen and hitwomen, directly or indirectly, to all Haitians and regional actors in the Americas. The message is if you try to find allies to counter U.S. domination; if you try to leverage a bilateral relationship and new opportunities for local progress and development for Haiti through Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba, Turkey, Iran or North Korea against, for instance, the U.S.’ weaponized charity, fake humanitarian aid and (de)mock-kkracy charades in Haiti. If you do, if you resist our total domination and corruption, we will gouge out both your eyes, break your neck, your arms and your legs. (See, Haiti President Jovenel Moïse shot 12 times, “eye blown out” and, 2019: How America’s relationship with Turkey fell apart – The NATO allies’ partnership has devolved into a “slow-motion car crash.”)

Jovenel Moise – A War Criminal Looking To Save His Own Skin 

Just a few weeks ago, I spoke to a source who told me Jovenel was looking for a way out. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life running away from war criminal charges for all the massacres he presided over for the Colonists while in power. Jovenel tried to push an amendment to the Haiti constitution that would give him immunity from prosecution after his term was over. The U.S. did not strongly support his referendum, finally came out to publicly hold their support. Jovenel could have also been afraid of an indictment for money laundering and drugs which the DEA/CIA/CoreGroup nations held over him his entire term in office.

Jovenel saw the handwriting on the wall and started to look for new allies to leverage against his Western handlers to save his skin after he’d finish doing the U.S. dirty job in Haiti and his term was over.

Let’s be clear, the colonial puppet, Jovenel Moise, murdered his people, was an indicted drug money launderer and used toxic gas against school children, pregnant women, protesting demonstrators. He used the foreign-trained militarized police and sold-out media to silence and censor demonstrators.

During their terms in office, Jovenel Moise and Michel Marterlly, are known and hated by the Haiti masses for hiring white foreign mercenaries who used head-to-toe black balaclavas mask and outfits to cover all skin color. These foreign mercenaries disguised themselves as Haiti police and/or Haiti gangs to kill the poor. They would also sit atop of high peaks to use drones and long distance snipers fire to kill peaceful demonstrators and to assassinate Jovenel’s and the CoreCroup’s political opposition, at will.

We’ve lost so many people. In the last two years alone, Jovenel Moise’s local, colonial forces and death squads forces conducted at least nine massacres against poor communities protesting the nationwide persecution and corruption.

Since February 7, 2021 when his illegal term in office was over, Jovenel Moise, with the near silence of the enabling international community, illegally fired Supreme Court justices he feared could lead a transitional government and indiscriminately presided over the murder of judges, lawyers (i.e. Monferrier Dorval), journalists, human rights activists and any civil society sector that got in his way.

Jovenel Moise was an imposter. He was an Antonio Sola-consultant created U.S. puppet who was sold to Haitians as a successful entrepreneur. a banana grower.

But his Agritans company was a fake business created by the internationals simply to put him in power. Michel Martelly, his mentor, funneled state funds into Agritans to prop up Moise and his presidential campaign in 2015-16. Moise campaigned for the presidency with Guy Philippe, a convicted drug smuggler today serving time in U.S. federal prison.

Guy Philippe like Jovenel Moise was a CIA asset. Guy Philippe was used in Haiti as a paramilitary leader to take down Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide and bring in the proxy United Nations disastrous 17-year Haiti occupation that ended its direct UN proxy rule in 2017. But now the Colonist who staged Jovenel Moise’s death and its narrative are also staging a “request” for U.S. troops to be deployed to Haiti.

Of course the Haitian people want no further foreign intervention. But we don’t have the media platform and political platform, UN mission head, Helen Lalime has in Haiti. This former head of Africom now the leader of the UN’s BINUH mission in Haiti, is the person who told Haitians that the successor to Jovenel as president is the George Soros, NED-created, Claude Joseph.

Claude Joseph, as acting president is the one who conveniently asked for U.S. troops to Haiti! As I point out, create the disorder, come in to put back order. Wash, rinse, repeat. The Colonists plays hero and villain. Tries to cover all the bases.

Jovenel Moise, Michel Martelly and the local bourgeoisie and Diaspora technocrats who support neocolonialism in Haiti were allowed to misappropriate and embezzle billions from Venezuela’s oil-purchasing PetroCaribe program with impunity.

This would have incensed and enraged the US-led Core Group of Western Nations and their colonized agents. The confederated “diplomats” ruling Haiti, called the “Core Group” are from Germany, France, Canada, Spain, Brazil, EU, OAS, UN and United States. This amoral cabal, with such enormous military, media and financial power, either orchestrated his assassination or turned a blind eye to allow their local billionaire overseers, the Bigio-Mevs (Syrian-Lebonese-Israeli) family mafia in Haiti, along with their gang of PHTK House Kneegrows to take him out. I can’t prove it. I’ll never get to Court with what we Haitians know. We’re censored, marginalized, brutalized. But I am sure of it. I know the enemy is not our savior. Recall, the U.S. has the biggest embassy in the Western Hemisphere in Haiti with the most footprint in the Americas. It’s the fourth largest U.S. embassy in the world.

Ironically, those who took Jovenel out are today the “investigators” of the crime. The cover-up is annoying. But the bottom line is, the Haitian masses work to take down the neocolonial SYSTEM, not just a president and those who put him in power. The people of Haiti have no interests in protecting corrupt oligarchs, nor the brutal and amoral UN-OAS-State Department’s deep state and their Coons-Conzes who are exposing themselves, killing each other off. Let the #Cleansing go on. That’s Ancestral Prayers answered!

But we’re not celebrating, for we have fought too long not to know this entire assassination project is also a US-CoreGroup psyops and flexing of power to show us citizens that even if we can see as plain as day their FBI/CIA/DEA et al, fingerprints, footprints, smoking gun in this assassination, we’re powerless to prove it and can do NOTHING about it. The perpetrators will investigate, they have the media on their payroll and will write any narrative they please, no matter how unbelievable. And the beat goes on, on and on. (“The assassination of Haiti’s leader remains shrouded in mystery: ‘We may never know’”.)

Ezili Dantò is the founder and President of Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (“HLLN”), a network of lawyers, activists, concerned individuals and grassroots organizations dedicated to institutionalizing the rule of law and protecting the civil and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad.

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Let me be clear: capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation. — tweet from President Joe Biden, July 9, 2021

Capitalism is exploitation, period. Lol —a twitter response to Biden’s tweet, July 9, 2021

Not a day goes by in which major owners of capital and their political representatives do not promote illusions and disinformation about the obsolete capitalist economic system. The ruling elite and their entourage rejected economic science and embraced irrationalism, incoherence, and dogmatism more than a century ago.

They are unable and unwilling to offer any useful analysis of economic realities. Nothing they put forward helps advance public understanding of the economy. The mainstream news, for example, is saturated with endless mind-numbing nonsensical economic headlines. It is no accident that mainstream economics has long been called the dismal science.

The internal core logic and intrinsic operation of capital ensures greater poverty, inequality, and monopoly over time. This is the inherent nature of capital. It is how capital moves and develops. These catastrophes are not the result of external forces, extenuating circumstances, or “bad people” making “bad decisions.” They are not the outcome of ill-conceived policies made by self-serving, immoral, or uninformed people. These worsening problems did not arise because something is wrong with the intentions of some individuals who make antisocial decisions. Such notions are facile.

While individuals have consciousness, autonomy, self-determination, and agency, many phenomena (e.g., laws of economic development) operate objectively outside the will of individuals; they do not depend on the will of individuals. The laws of motion governing economic phenomena can be known, controlled, and directed, but not extinguished; they have to be consciously mastered, harnessed, and directed in a way that meets the needs of all.

Capital is first and foremost an unequal social relationship, not a person or a thing. This unequal social relationship is relentlessly reproduced in today’s society, preventing the healthy balanced extended reproduction of society. On the one side of this unequal social relationship are the majority who own nothing but their labor power and on the other side are a tiny handful who own the means of production and live off the labor of others.

Major owners of capital are the personification of capital, the embodiment of capital. This critical theoretical insight helps us avoid the rabbit hole of personal intentions and personal will, and allows us instead to objectively locate greed, insecurity, inequality, poverty, unemployment, endless debt, and other tragedies in the intrinsic built-in nature, logic, and movement of capital itself.

One of these is the inexorable tendency of competition to lead to monopoly under capitalism. Competition means winners and losers. By definition, not everyone can win when competing. Competition means rivalry for supremacy. Thousands compete in the Olympics, for example, but only a select few (“winners”) go home with a gold medal. It is no accident that the economy, media, and politics are heavily monopolized by a handful of billionaires while billions of people who actually produce the wealth in society and run society remain marginalized and disempowered.

This brutal reality cannot be reversed or overcome with the utterance of a few platitudes, the passage of some policies, or the creation of some agencies that claim to be able to fix the outdated economic system, especially when all of the above come from billionaires themselves.

On July 9, 2021, President Joe Biden issued an Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy (see this).

The order is about 7,000 words long and full of anticonscious statements. Disinformation pervades the entire order.

The opening paragraph begins with the following disinformation:

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to promote the interests of American workers, businesses, and consumers, it is hereby ordered….

Here, “American workers, businesses, and consumers” are casually misequated and no mention is made of citizens or humans. The implication is that consumerism is normal, healthy, and desirable, and that workers and big business somehow have the same aims, world outlook, and interests. This conceals the fact that owners of capital and workers have antagonistic irreconcilable interests and that people exist as humans and citizens, not just utilitarian consumers and shoppers in a taken-for-granted system based on chaos, anarchy, and violence.

Disinformation is further escalated in the next paragraph:

A fair, open, and competitive marketplace has long been a cornerstone of the American economy, while excessive market concentration threatens basic economic liberties, democratic accountability, and the welfare of workers, farmers, small businesses, startups, and consumers.

“Market concentration” has been the norm for generations. Monopolies, cartels, and oligopolies have been around since the late 1800s. Mergers and acquisitions have been taking place non-stop for decades. The so-called “free market” largely disappeared long ago. Objectively, there can be no fairness in a system rooted in wage-slavery and empire-building. Wage-slavery is the precondition for the tendency of the rich to get richer and the poor poorer. It is not a recipe for prosperity and security for all.

This is also why inequality, tyranny, violence, and surveillance have been growing over the years. Moreover, what “threatens basic economic liberties, democratic accountability, and the welfare of workers, farmers, small businesses, startups, and consumers” is the ongoing political and economic exclusion of people from control over the economy and their lives by the financial oligarchy. There can be no liberty, accountability, and welfare when most people are deprived of real decision-making power and major owners of capital make all the decisions. Problems would not constantly worsen if people had control over their lives. The “best allocation of resources” cannot be made when the economy is carved up, fractured, and controlled by competing owners of capital.

Although recurring economic crises for well over a century have repeatedly discredited “free market” ideology, the 7,000-word executive order is saturated with the language of “choice,” “competition,” and “consumers.” This is the same worn-out language used by privatizers of all hues at home and abroad.

Further, while the executive order gives many examples of “economic consolidation” in numerous sectors, the government is not interested in creating a self-reliant vibrant diverse economy that meets the needs of all. It is not committed to reversing “the harmful effects of monopoly and monopsony.” Numerous antitrust laws have not stopped either. Big mergers and acquisitions have been going on for years. Rather, the executive order is an attempt to restructure economic and political arrangements among different factions of the wealthy elite; it reflects a new stage or form of inter-capitalist rivalry for even greater domination of the economy by fewer owners of capital. In other words, moving forward, the economy will remain monopolized by a few monopolies. Wealth is only going to become more concentrated in fewer hands in the years ahead. Mountains of data from hundreds of sources document growing wealth and income inequality every year.

The bulk of the executive order is filled with endless directives, strategies, rules, and suggestions for how to curb “unfair practices” and promote “fairness” and “competition.” But these all ring hollow given concrete realities and past experience.

Today, governments at all levels have been taken over by global private monopoly interests and have become instruments of decisions made on a supranational basis. There is a fine-tuned revolving door between officials from government and the private sector; they have become synonymous for all essential purposes. The same people who run major corporations also serve in high-level government positions where they advance the narrow interests of the private sector and then they leave government and return to their high-level corporate positions. There is a reason why the majority of members of Congress are millionaires. The Executive Branch in the United States, especially the President’s Office, is a major tool for the expression of the will of the most powerful monopolies. This is why billions of dollars are spent every few years to select the President of the country.

A modern economy must be controlled and directed by workers themselves. Only such an economy can provide for the needs of all and avoid endless economic distortions. Uneven economic development, “unfair” arrangements, “market concentration,” monopolies, oligopolies, and recurring crises cannot be avoided so long as those who actually produce the social product have no control over the social product. Workers have first claim to the wealth they produce and have the right to decide how, where, and when that wealth is used. Major owners of capital are historically superfluous and a big block to progress. They are not needed for a healthy vibrant self-reliant economy that meets the needs of all.

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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, privatization and political economy. He can be reached at [email protected].

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***

From a historical perspective, Homo sapiens are an evolutionary aberrant.

Unlike other forms of life, armed with an opposing thumb and a highly developed and advanced neocortex, we have, over time, developed the capacity to destroy most organisms on planet Earth. This has been accomplished either with the energy of heat, light and power that exist inside the sun or, conversely, by slowly cooking the planet as we release fossil gases — carbon dioxide and methane.

These are the products of massive photosynthesis that millions of years ago trapped and combined carbon dioxide gas from the atmosphere into plants and organisms such as plankton and phytoplankton using chlorophyll and sunlight as catalysts. These ancient organisms were then subjected to massive geological pressures and, over eons of time, were compressed and converted into coal and oil.

Little did people know when they developed steam engines, motor cars and factories that were powered by these fossil fuels that within several centuries, such wonderful inventions which made life incredibly easy would, in the long run, threaten the biosphere with eventual extinction.

And ever since humans evolved, the male species has seen fit to harness the overwhelming power of testosterone to kill invading species, but more to the point, slaughter his fellow constituents for territorial gains, power plays and control dynamics. Yes, it is true that other male species will fight to the kill over mating imperatives, food or territorial control, but they have no access to reason, scientific knowledge and moral imperatives.

Congruent with this history, it is obvious that as we became more obsessed with gaining scientific knowledge, such wisdom would be put to better methods of killing.

So where does the human race stand now? Nine countries now own nuclear weapons, with the USA and Russia greatly predominating, owning 94 per cent of all the approximately 14,000 in the world.

Some of the largest companies in the U.S. are obsessed with designing, developing and making the most exotic and lethal weapons in the world and, what’s more, increasingly using artificial intelligence to launch and control them.

It seems inevitable that any wonderful new invention will make its way into the killing sphere.

The U.S. now spends over one trillion dollars a year on potential murder, all dressed up in the name of “national defence” which is pure rubbish. Because let’s face it, America has no enemies, Russia has joined the capitalist sphere, China is, at the moment, a little belligerent but the U.S. more so with 800 military bases in 80 foreign countries.

For the human race to survive, it is imperative that we encourage and foster friendship with all nations on Earth, that we reign in the killing testosterone instinct, that women with their nurturing hormones rapidly take control of national governments and pursuant to the teachings of the great moral profits – Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, and all others – that we rapidly learn to live in peace with each other. Or let’s face it, we are doomed and will take the wonders of billions of years of creation with us.

First published by Independent Australia

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Helen Caldicott is a pediatrician and founder of the 1978 iteration of Physicians for Social Responsibility, which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize as part of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

Featured image is a screenshot from a Youtube video via Independent Australia

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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***

Introduction

The [Israel based] NSO Group [surveillance group] claims that its Pegasus spyware is only used to “investigate terrorism and crime”  and “leaves no traces whatsoever”.

This Forensic Methodology Report shows that neither of these statements are true. This report accompanies the release of the Pegasus Project, a collaborative investigation that involves more than 80 journalists from 17 media organizations in 10 countries coordinated by Forbidden Stories with technical support of Amnesty International’s Security Lab.[1]

Amnesty International’s Security Lab has performed in-depth forensic analysis of numerous mobile devices from human rights defenders (HRDs) and journalists around the world. This research has uncovered widespread, persistent and ongoing unlawful surveillance and human rights abuses perpetrated using [Israel’s] NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.

As laid out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, NSO Group should urgently take pro-active steps to ensure that it does not cause or contribute to human rights abuses within its global operations, and to respond to any human rights abuses when they do occur. In order to meet that responsibility, NSO Group must carry out adequate human rights due diligence and take steps to ensure that HRDs and journalists do not continue to become targets of unlawful surveillance.

In this Forensic Methodology Report, Amnesty International is sharing its methodology and publishing an open-source mobile forensics tool and detailed technical indicators, in order to assist information security researchers and civil society with detecting and responding to these serious threats.

This report documents the forensic traces left on iOS and Android devices following targeting with the Pegasus spyware. This includes forensic records linking recent Pegasus infections back to the 2016 Pegasus payload used to target the HRD Ahmed Mansoor.

The Pegasus attacks detailed in this report and accompanying appendices are from 2014 up to as recently as July 2021. These also include so-called “zero-click” attacks which do not require any interaction from the target. Zero-click attacks have been observed since May 2018 and continue until now. Most recently, a successful “zero-click” attack has been observed exploiting multiple zero-days to attack a fully patched iPhone 12 running iOS 14.6 in July 2021.

Sections 1 to 8 of this report outline the forensic traces left on mobile devices following a Pegasus infection. This evidence has been collected from the phones of HRDs and journalists in multiple countries.

Finally, in section 9 the report documents the evolution of the Pegasus network infrastructure since 2016. NSO Group has redesigned their attack infrastructure by employing multiple layers of domains and servers. Repeated operational security mistakes have allowed the Amnesty International Security Lab to maintain continued visibility into this infrastructure. We are publishing a set of 700 Pegasus-related domains.

Names of several of the civil society targets in the report have been anonymized for safety and security reasons. Individuals who have been anonymized have been assigned an alphanumeric code name in this report.

To read the full article by Amnesty International click here

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Featured image is from Howie Shia/Amnesty International

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***

If the US-dominated Ukrainian government can confidently chart a mutually beneficial strategic partnership with China in response to feeling betrayed by its American patron following last month’s Biden-Putin Summit, then there’s no reason why the comparatively more independent and much stronger Polish government can’t do the same as well.

Ukraine recently surprised many multipolar-friendly observers, but this time in a pleasant way for once. It withdrew its signature from a politicized United Nations Human Rights Council statement last month that accused China of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, shortly after which it subsequently agreed to strengthen infrastructure cooperation with the People’s Republic in a move that some described as Ukraine agreeing to become China’s “bridge” to Europe. These remarkable developments were likely motivated by how betrayed Ukraine felt by its American patron following last month’s Biden-Putin Summit. It also suggests that if this US-dominated government can confidently chart a mutually beneficial strategic partnership with China despite the ever-intensifying New Cold War, then there’s no reason why the comparatively more independent and much stronger Polish government can’t do the same as well.

Polish-American relations, just like Ukrainian-American ones, are presently experiencing unprecedented strain following the Biden-Putin Summit and the US’ preceding waiver of most Nord Stream II sanctions. Poland’s increasing isolation from the regionally relevant Great Powers of the US, Germany, and Russia – the first two of which are jointly waging a Hybrid War aimed at overthrowing Warsaw’s conservative-nationalist government – has put the Central European leader in a precarious strategic position. The only realistic solution is two-fold, and that’s for Poland to negotiate an informal “non-aggression pact” with Russia in Belarus & Ukraine together with economically pivoting towards China. This would reduce the unnecessary US-provoked pressure along its eastern flank in parallel with showing its transatlantic patron that it has viable alternatives to American and German investment so that they don’t attempt to weaponize this to put further pressure on the ruling party.

There’s never been a better chance for Poland to pursue these solutions. The unexpectedly intensified Chinese-Ukrainian Strategic Partnership will add serious economic substance to the Warsaw-led “Three Seas Initiative” (3SI) for connecting the Adriatic, Baltic, and Black Seas by reducing this transregional network’s dependence on the US and Germany. It could also facilitate pragmatic dialogue with Russia since China might envision the Eurasian Land Bridge (ELB) across its territory as being the preferred means for more directly linking its economy with Ukraine’s. Of course, the People’s Republic could also utilize the “Middle Corridor‘s” South Caucasus infrastructure in Georgia and thenceforth across the Black Sea as a multimodal workaround in the event that Russian-Ukrainian relations remain tense like expected, but this could still be beneficial for Poland since it’ll nevertheless reduce its and the 3SI’s disproportionate economic dependence on the US and Germany.

Observers should also be aware that China’s Great Stone Industrial Park in Minsk is its Belt & Road Initiative’s (BRI) largest such project in Europe. Belarus falls within Poland’s and Russia’s overlapping “spheres of influence”, and its continental-wide economic potential through BRI can’t be fully tapped until the US-backed and Polish-led Hybrid War against its government ends. The proposed Polish-Russian “non-aggression pact” in Belarus and Ukraine could help gradually transition their zero-sum geopolitical competition there to a win-win geo-economic one focused on the concept of “competitive connectivity”, facilitated as it would be by BRI’s leading role in all four of those countries. Belarus and Ukraine could then serve as the convergence point of relevant Polish-Russian interests instead of dividing them further, thus reducing pressure on Poland’s eastern flank and therefore enabling it to concentrate more on thwarting the joint US-German Hybrid War.

With time, the ELB could become more fully developed across all four of their territories, which would lead to the natural creation of an economically sustainable trade zone between them. In other words, BRI might ultimately be responsible for bringing together the Polish-led 3SI and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) through its envisioned role in Belarus and Ukraine. This isn’t political speculation either since such a scenario is nowadays credible after US-dominated Ukraine of all countries bravely resisted its patron’s demands by confidently pioneering a new phase of strategic economic relations with China. If Ukraine could do this, then so too could Poland. In fact, they could even coordinate their complementary efforts in this respect in order to create a new center of economic gravity between them for mutually enhancing their strategic independence with time. All that it’ll take to make this more viable is political will on the part of Poland’s leadership.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

Featured image is from OneWorld

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***

While it may appear to be ‘every individual for himself’ in this forever shifting hall of smoke and mirrors called Covid, actually there is a process of coalescence taking place just under the surface which is heralding the emergence of what I term ‘the new resistance’. 

This new resistance is arising as a kick-back against unremitting pressure to conform to a state of engineered chaos and control which has caste the word ‘deception’ into a whole new dimension of toxicity which very few can grasp. 

We are, after all, confronted by a carefully crafted global plan entirely constructed around and upon, abject lies – from beginning to end. The first and foremost of which is to proclaim its objective as ‘saving mankind from a virulent pandemic’ which never existed in the first place. 

So gross is the degree of lie distortion that for the great majority it has proved impossible to consider that it could all be a planned heist whose barely cloaked ulterior motive is a mass depopulation event, long since planned for by the protagonists of A New World Order, now known as ‘The Great Reset’. 

The population reduction plan was given a menacingly seductive twist by attaching it to a ‘green saviour mission’ ostensibly designed to rescue the species from ‘global warming’, a grand deception which started the increasingly perverse ‘lie ball’ rolling some fifty years ago at the Club of Rome.

After one and a half years of relentless Covid ‘plandemic’ propaganda designed to scare the pants off every mortal here on Earth, we have arrived at a confluence of reactions. Those whose imaginations lack the breadth to grasp the depths of the deception and those who have recognised the game for what it is are are now sharing their knowledge and push-back plans with others.

The New Resistance is being formed by the latter grouping, who include amongst their ranks the braver doctors, nurses, lawyers, scientists and a smallish number of artists, who recognise that the very future of life itself is on the line in this macabre war against humanity.

Standing in the way of a grand expose and key legal actions to incarcerate the chief Covid protagonists, are the entire political ‘elite’, royalty, the press, leaders of notorious institutions and banking empires that administer the global policy agenda, a handful of multimillionaires and hundreds of millions of citizens of various countries who prefer to ‘live the lie’ than confront the truth.

It’s The New Resistance’s job to break-through this wall of denial via finding its weak points and instigating actions to publicly expose the criminal activities of the chief protagonists. Those involved in premeditated genocide on an unprecedented scale.

Key to the success of this operation will be the emergence of many more whistle blowers. Those who have inside knowledge and have the guts to come forward and speak openly about it. Already many professional individuals have taken this courageous step and many more are no doubt contemplating doing the same. They should not contemplate long – but step onto the platform and make their voice heard.

With no mainstream media editors daring to break-out of their straight-jacketted conformity with the lie, the job of conveying truth is a challenging one. However, a burgeoning alternative media is making ingress into mainstream territory, and with an emphasis on holding high the flag of rational observation and honest reporting, is bit by bit puncturing the ‘fake news’ wall of deception and indoctrination that has seduced and mind-controlled such a large segment of the global population.

What can each of us do to speed-up the chance of a break-through?

Here is a reminder of direct actions that can be put into effect with minimum cost:

Firstly, and as a general rule, build greater self determination not to cooperate with a system which is intent upon destroying you!

Secondly, practice ‘civil disobedience’ wherever you are being manipulated and coerced into doing something that goes against your deepest instincts of self preservation and belief. Standing firm in what one believes in is the key to all successful resistance movements. 

Thirdly, openly question the law when confronted by authorities who claim you must do this that or the other. The majority of Covid impositions are illegal under key international conventions like The Geneva Convention and the Nuremberg Convention. Use the many excellent websites giving advice on how to stand up for your rights! 

Now I’m listing simple practical actions all of us can engage in immediately:

• Draw upon the mass of high quality evidence now available to produce your own ‘short’ leaflet or newsletter for circulation in your neighbourhood. You can expose the Covid lie and ‘the Great Reset’s’ attempt to introduce a Nazi style central control agenda on humanity as a whole (see this)
• Hammer your parliamentarian/senator by letter or phone. Present him/her with facts about Covid, many of which are actually published on government websites, but ignored by political ‘leaders’ intent upon forcing conformity to the fake agenda.
• Regularly visit places where you can purchase ‘real food’, as much as possible locally and direct from the farmer and definitely avoiding supermarkets. This should be pro-ecological grown/raised foods that respect benign time honoured laws of the land and do not rely on agrichemical poisons and Frankenstein GMO gene engineering. These farmers must get our support if they are to survive and if we are to have access to safe and nourishing food.
• Find a way to start growing your own foods. This is the best of all ways to establish a measure of genuine control of your destiny. 
• Hold gatherings with others who you feel to be receptive to resisting the imposition of deeply antisocial and anti-human regulations in the name of ‘protecting’ your health and welfare – and focus attention on stopping 5G masts being erected in your neighbourhood.
• Join in with existing positive initiatives like marches, ‘meetings in the park’, distribution and displaying of strong messages via posters, stickers and flyers.

You will no doubt have further creative ideas how to form vital cells of resistance and become part of the great push-back whose growing momentum will finally topple the criminal slave drivers who have declared war on humanity and are illegally occupying the seats of power at this time.

Our passion for life will not allow us to simply sit back and passively watch irreplaceable key qualities of life crumbling away right in front of our eyes.

Now is the hour of our common calling to act bravely and collectively for the future of life on Earth. For no one’s life will be worth living if we fail to rise to the task of defeating the heartless agents of genocide holding our world to ransom.

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Julian Rose is an international campaigner against GMO and 5G, an author and organic farming pioneer. He led the campaign that prevented a ban of unpasteurised milk sales in the UK in 1989 and 1997 and, with his Polish wife Jadwiga Lopata, headed the campaign which led to GMO seeds and plants to be banned in Poland (2006). Julian’s latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind’ has been widely acclaimed and can be purchased via www.julianrose.info

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

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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***

People in France who enter a bar or restaurant without a COVID pass face 6 months in jail, while business owners who fail to check their status face a 1 year prison sentence and a €45,000 fine.

Yes, really.

The punishments are part of a draconian effort by the French government to force citizens to get the coronavirus jab amidst multiple unruly protests across numerous major cities.

President Emmanuel Macron announced earlier this week that those unable to prove they’re vaccinated or a negative COVID test (at their own cost) will be banned from using public transport, entering a cinema, shopping mall, bar, cafe, restaurant and other venues from August 1st.

“People unable to present a valid health pass risk up to six months in prison and a fine of up to €10,000 (£8,500), according to the draft text of the law, while owners of “establishments welcoming the public” who fail to check patrons’ passes could go to jail for a year and be hit with a €45,000 fine,” reports the Guardian.

There will soon prison sentences attached to the new French law for vaccine passports.

If you are caught in a restaurant without proof of vaccination, you face up to six months in jail.

The restaurant owner faces up to a year for hosting you.

Does that sound extreme?

— Dr. David Samadi (@drdavidsamadi) July 16, 2021

The sanctions represent the most authoritarian move to force vaccine compliance in the west, and probably outstrip a lot of actual dictatorships in other parts of the world.

The Guardian rather euphemistically describes it as a “big stick approach,” which would be true if that ‘big stick’ were an electric cattle prod the size of the One World Trade Center building in New York.

The government had to withdraw a similar law back in December following numerous riots, but merely re-introduced the same legislation with even tougher punishments for dissenters.

As we previously highlighted, police in Paris used tear gas to disperse demonstrators protesting against the measures in scenes that unfolded in several other major cities throughout the country.

We are now entering the phase of the pandemic where it’s becoming clear that those who refuse to take the vaccine will remain under the most onerous lockdown measures yet in perpetuity.

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***

Kicking life-saving solutions endlessly down the road is the mark of the brutish power of the corporations over the innocents.

Fifty years ago, medical research warned about the overuse of antibiotics creating mutations of resistant bacterium, making these drugs less effective. Dr. Sidney Wolfe warned about this criminal negligence again and again, along with other colleagues. But the drug companies kept over-promoting to get physicians to over-prescribe. Today, antibiotic resistance takes over 100,000 lives a year just in the U.S. Some bacterium are mutating beyond the ability of medical science to catch up with new more powerful antibiotics to curb new antibiotic resistance bacterium.

Deadly Lag Time.

For decades, starting in the 1970s, at the very least, both the big oil companies and knowledgeable government officials warned about global warming. Exxon’s own scientists sounded the alarm internally as well. Now with little preparedness to move fast from fossil fuels to renewables and conserve energy, the climate crisis is upon the world. Mega storms, floods, wildfires, and rising sea levels threaten everything and everybody. As James Gustave Speth’s forthcoming book, They Knew: The U.S. Federal Government’s Fifty-Year Role in Causing the Climate Crisis, people knew, including the graphic, forecast report in 1993, now forgotten, authored by Bill Clinton and Al Gore who promptly gave the auto industry an eight-year holiday from the regulatory push on fuel efficiency.

Deadly Lag Time.

Great physicians such as Quentin Young, Arnold Relman, Steffie Woolhandler, and David Himmelstein warned of the avoidable casualties and price gouging if we did not enact single-payer universal health insurance. They were ignored. The delay is costing trillions of dollars and about 100,000 lives a year with many more injuries and illnesses for those unable to afford health insurance to get a timely diagnosis and treatment.

Dr. Philip Lee supported a study by Harvard Medical School physicians back in the early 1990s, estimating the huge fatality toll annually from medical malpractice just in hospitals. In 2015, Johns Hopkins medical researchers reported a minimum of 250,000 deaths a year from preventable problems in hospitals excluding clinics and doctors’ offices. The prophets warned, but the power structure, including the media, turned a largely deaf ear.

Deadly Lag Time.

Walter Hang, an environmental scientist, has warned for years about the toxic nature of fluids used in fracking of gas and oil. He and others mobilized people in New York state to persuade Gov. Andrew Cuomo to ban the practice, unlike the increasingly poisoned fracking sites in Pennsylvania and other fracking states. Now we have been told by scientists that a chemical used in the mining breaks down into a toxic giant called PFAS, which they call a “forever” pollutant endangering underground drinking water sources.

Deadly Lag Time.

Over twenty-five years ago, scientists spoke out against the rising epidemic now known as the opioid disaster, promoted by drug companies and their owners like the Sackler family. The government and medical professions dillydallied. Last year, a record 90,000 people died in America from drug overdoses, mostly from opioids.

Deadly Lag Time.

In the 1950s, government scientists reported the connection between cigarette smoking and cancer. In 1964, the annual report by the Surgeon General (launched by Dr. Luther Terry) kept adding to the evidence of diseases from this highly promoted tobacco industry killer. Philip Morris Co., R.J. Reynolds and others kept promoting, denying, deceiving and regularly luring youngsters with free samples near schools. Over 400,000 annual deaths in the U.S. are attributed to smoking-related diseases.

When Congress, the media, and the public health groups started banging the drums in the 1980s, Big Tobacco was put on the defensive year after year. The number of daily smokers declined to under 15% from a high of 42% in 1964. Non-smokers more aggressively demanded smoke-free places and helped mightily to turn the tide. Who remembers the handful of tobacco-use fighters for their courageous and prescient advocacy?

Deadly Lag Time.

Lag time is another phrase for the “democracy gap.” It is the space between what most of the people want and need, and what those same passive people suffer and tolerate.

The same “lag time” bleeds people economically. The federal minimum wage is still frozen by Congress at $7.25 per hour. Many millions of workers are between that number and $15 per hour.

Prof. Malcolm Sparrow of Harvard has led the way in highlighting the many billing frauds in the health care industry that totals $350 billion or more this year alone. His detailed warnings and his classic book, License to Steal: Why Fraud Plagues America’s Health Care System, came out years ago in 1996. Still, a corporate Congress does nothing. The Biden Administration does not ask for necessary money for this area of enforcement, even though $1billion would save over $15 billion from fraudulent billing.

Jake Lewis and Jonathan Brown wrote and spoke about the damaging influence of the Federal Reserve and its Big Bank patrons back in the 60s and 70s. The lag time became worse, especially under Fed Chairman Jerome Powell who studies show has made the super-rich and corporate giants soaked in unearned wealth more rich while expanding the impact of gross inequality against the masses. (See the op-ed by Karen Petrou in the New York Times, July 12, 2021).

New Time Lags are underway. We have been forewarned about Medicare [Dis]Advantage, yet its corporate deceivers continue to devour traditional Medicare (controlling over 40% of Medicare beneficiaries).

Technology seers are warning against the terrible effects on younger people, including children, who will become addicted to Facebook’s rollout of the Oculus or augmented reality goggles. Avaricious Zuckerberg continues to expand his dangerous monopolistic empire.

All those who told us so are largely forgotten, uncelebrated and, if they are still active, hardly getting their calls returned. Is there a more abject sign of a decaying democracy?

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***

Cuba was rocked by a series of anti-government street protests earlier this week. The U.S. establishment immediately hailed the events, putting its full weight behind the protestors. Yet documents suggest that Washington might be more involved in the events than it cares to publicly divulge.

As many have reported, the protests, which started on Sunday in the town of San Antonio de los Baños in the west of the island, were led and vocally supported by artists and musicians, particularly from its vibrant hip-hop scene.

“For those new to the issue of Cuba, the protests we are witnessing were started by artists, not politicians. This song ‘Patria y Vida’ powerfully explains how young Cubans feel. And its release was so impactful, you will go to jail if caught playing it in Cuba,” said Florida Senator Marco Rubio, referencing a track by rapper Yotuel.

Both NPR and The New York Times published in-depth features about the song and how it was galvanizing the movement. “The Hip-Hop Song That’s Driving Cuba’s Unprecedented Protests,” ran NPR’s headline. Yotuel himself led a sympathy demonstration in Miami.

But what these accounts did not mention was the remarkable extent to which Cuban rappers like Yotuel have been recruited by the American government in order to sow discontent in the Caribbean nation. The latest grant publications of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — an organization established by the Reagan administration as a front group for the CIA — show that Washington is trying to infiltrate the Cuban arts scene in order to bring about regime change. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” NED co-founder Allen Weinstein once told The Washington Post.

For instance, one project, entitled “Empowering Cuban Hip-Hop Artists as Leaders in Society,” states that its goal is to “promote citizen participation and social change,” and to “raise awareness about the role hip-hop artists have in strengthening democracy in the region.” Another, called “Promoting Freedom of Expression in Cuba through the Arts,” claims it is helping local artists on projects related to “democracy, human rights, and historical memory,” and to help “increase awareness about the Cuban reality.” This “reality,” as President Joe Biden himself stated this week, is that the Cuban government is an “authoritarian regime” that has meted out “decades of repression” while leaders only “enrich themselves.”

Other operations the NED is currently funding include enhancing Cuban civil society’s ability to “propose political alternatives” and to “transition to democracy.” The agency never divulges with whom it works inside Cuba, nor any more information beyond a couple of anodyne blurbs, leaving Cubans to wonder whether any group even vaguely challenging political or societal norms is secretly bankrolled by Washington.

“The State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Agency for Global Media have all financed programs to support Cuban artists, journalists, bloggers and musicians,” Tracey Eaton, a journalist who runs The Cuba Money Project, told MintPress. “It’s impossible to say how many U.S. tax dollars have gone toward these programs over the years because details of many projects are kept secret,” he added.

A currently active grant offer from the NED’s sister organization, USAID, is offering $2 million worth of funding to groups that use culture to bring about social change in Cuba. Applicants have until July 30 to ask for up to $1 million each. The announcement itself references Yotuel’s song, noting, “Artists and musicians have taken to the streets to protest government repression, producing anthems such as ‘Patria y Vida,’ which has not only brought greater global awareness to the plight of the Cuban people but also served as a rallying cry for change on the island.”

The hip-hop scene in particular has long been a target for American agencies like the NED and USAID. Gaining popularity in the late 1990s, local rappers had a considerable impact on society, helping bring to the fore many previously under-discussed topics. The U.S. saw their biting critiques of racism as a wedge they could exploit, and attempted to recruit them into their ranks, although it is far from clear how far they got in this endeavor, as few in the rap community wanted to be part of such an operation.

The graphic below shows how much money various artists have received from the US government. Credit | Cuba Money Project

Click here for the full list.

MintPress also spoke with Professor Sujatha Fernandes, a sociologist at the University of Sydney and an expert in Cuban music culture. Fernandes stated:

For many years, under the banner of regime change, organizations like USAID have tried to infiltrate Cuban rap groups and fund covert operations to provoke youth protests. These programs have involved a frightening level of manipulation of Cuban artists, have put Cubans at risk, and threatened a closure of the critical spaces of artistic dialogue many worked hard to build.”

Other areas in which U.S. organizations are focussing resources include sports journalism — which the NED hopes to use as a “vehicle to narrate the political, social, and cultural realities of Cuban society” — and gender and LGBTQ+ groups, the intersectional empire apparently seeing an opportunity to also use these issues to increase fissures in Cuban society.

The House Appropriations Budget, published earlier this month, also sets aside up to $20 million for “democracy programs” in Cuba, including those that support “free enterprise and private business organizations.” What is meant by “democracy” is made clear in the document, which states in no uncertain terms that “none of the funds made available under such paragraph may be used for assistance for the government of Cuba.” Thus, any mention of “democracy” in Cuba is all but synonymous with regime change.

Capitalizing on a battered economy

The protests began on Sunday after a power outage left residents in San Antonio de los Baños without electricity during the summer heat. That appeared to be the spark that led to hundreds of people marching in the street. However, Cuba’s economy has also taken a nosedive of late. As Professor Aviva Chomsky of Salem State University, author of “A History of the Cuban Revolution,” told MintPress:

Cuba’s current economic situation is pretty dire (as is, I should point out, almost all of the Third World’s). The U.S. embargo (or, as Cubans call it, blockade) has been yet another obstacle (on top of the obstacles faced by all poor countries) in Cuba’s fight against COVID-19. The collapse of tourism has been devastating to Cuba’s economy — again, as it has been in pretty much all tourism-heavy places.”

However, Chomsky also noted that it could be a mistake to label all the protestors as yearning for free-market shock therapy. “It’s interesting to note that many of the protesters are actually protesting Cuba’s capitalist reforms, rather than socialism. ‘They have money to build hotels but we have no money for food, we are starving,’ said one protester. That’s capitalism in a nutshell!” Chomsky said.

Eaton was skeptical of the idea that all those marching were in the pay of the U.S. “Certainly, much of the uprising was organic, driven by Cubans who are desperate, poor, hungry and fed up with their government’s inability to meet their basic needs,” he said. Yet there were signs that at least some were not simply making a point about the lack of food in stores or medicines in pharmacies. A number of demonstrators marched underneath the American flag and the events were immediately endorsed by the U.S. government.

“We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom,” read an official statement from the White House. Julie Chung, Biden’s Acting Assistant Secretary for U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, added:

Cuba’s people continue to bravely express yearning for freedom in the face of repression. We call on Cuba’s government to: refrain from violence, listen to their citizens’ demands, respect protestor and journalist rights. The Cuban people have waited long enough for ¡Libertad!”

Republicans went much further. Mayor of Miami Francis Suarez demanded that the United States intervene militarily, telling Fox News that the U.S. should put together a “coalition of potential military action in Cuba.” Meanwhile, Florida Congressman Anthony Sabbatini called for regime change on the island, tweeting:

High-ranking communist officials in Cuba should be given an ultimatum now:

Either immediately assist in the transition of government away from communism or be prosecuted and executed thereafter #SOSCuba

— Rep. Anthony Sabatini (@AnthonySabatini) July 12, 2021

The corporate media cheering section

Corporate media were also extremely interested in the protests, devoting a great deal of column inches and air time to the demonstrations. This is extremely unusual for such actions in Latin America. Colombia has been living through months of general strikes against a repressive government, while there have been three years of near-daily protests in Haiti that were almost completely ignored until earlier this month, when U.S.-backed President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated.

The effect of U.S. sanctions was constantly downplayed or not even mentioned in reporting. For example, The Washington Post’s editorial board came out in favor of the protestors, claiming Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel was reacting “with predictable thuggishness…blaming everything on the United States and the U.S. trade embargo.” Other outlets did not even mention the embargo, leaving readers with the impression that the events could only be understood as a democratic uprising against a decaying dictatorship.

This is particularly pernicious because government documents explicitly state that the goal of the U.S. sanctions is to “decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and [the] overthrow of [the] government” — exactly the conditions brewing in Cuba right now. Professor Chomsky noted:

The U.S. embargo/blockade is one (not the only) cause of Cuba’s economic crisis. The U.S. has overtly and continuously said that the goal of the embargo is to destroy Cuba’s economy so that the government will collapse. So it’s not just reasonable, it’s obvious that the U.S. has some kind of hand in this.”

Chomsky also took issue with the media’s explanation of events, stating:

Look at coverage of Black Lives Matter or Occupy Wall Street protests in this country. One thing that we see consistently is that when people protest in capitalist countries, the media never explains the problems they are protesting as caused by capitalism. When people protest in communist or socialist countries, the media attributes the problems to communism or socialism.”

Media were at pains to emphasize how large and widespread the anti-government demonstrations were, insisting that the pro-government counter-demonstrations were smaller in number, despite images from the protests suggesting that the opposite might be true. As Reuters reported, “Thousands took to the streets in various parts of Havana on Sunday including the historic centre, drowning out groups of government supporters waving the Cuban flag and chanting Fidel.”

If this were the case, it is odd indeed that so many outlets used images of pro-government movements to illustrate the supposed size and scope of the anti-government action. The Guardian, Fox News, The Financial Times, NBC and Yahoo! News all falsely claimed a picture of a large socialist gathering was, in fact, an anti-government demo. The large red and black banners emblazoned with the words “26 Julio” (the name of Fidel Castro’s political party) should have been a dead giveaway to any editors or fact checkers. Meanwhile, CNN and National Geographic illustrated articles on the protests in Cuba with images of gatherings in Miami — gatherings that looked far better attended than any similar ones 90 miles to the south.

A ton of corporate media, including the Financial Times, Fox News, The New York Times and The Guardian have used a pic of a PRO-govt rally in Cuba 🇨🇺 to illustrate their articles on anti-government protests, falsely claiming the huge crowds to be on the side of the US. pic.twitter.com/eKo9QJzzeP

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) July 13, 2021

Social media meltdown

Social media also played a pivotal role in turning what was a localized protest into a nationwide event. NBC’s Director of Latin America, Mary Murray, noted that it was only when live streams of the events were picked up and signal-boosted by the expat community in Miami that it “started to catch fire,” something that suggests the growth of the movement was partially artificial. After the government blocked the internet, the protests died down.

The hashtag #SOSCuba trended for over a day. There are currently over 120,000 photos on Instagram using the hashtag. But as Arnold August, the writer of a host of books on Cuba and Cuban-American relations, told MintPress, much of the attention the protests was getting was the result of inauthentic activity:

The latest attempt of regime change also has its roots in Spain. Historically, the former colonizer of Cuba plays its role in all major attempts of regime change, not only for Cuba, but also, for example, in Venezuela. The July operation made intensive use of robots, algorithms and accounts recently created for the occasion.”

Within days the #SOSCUBA hashtag generated over 120,000 images on Instagram

August noted that the first account using #SOSCuba on Twitter was actually located in Spain. This account posted nearly 1,300 tweets on July 11. The hashtag was also buoyed by hundreds of accounts tweeting the exact same phrases in Spanish, replete with the same small typos. One common message read (translated from Spanish), “Cuba is going through the greatest humanitarian crisis since the start of the pandemic. Anyone who posts the hashtag #SOSCuba would help us a lot. Everyone who sees this should help with the hashtag.” Another text, reading “We Cubans don’t want the end of the embargo if that means the regime and dictatorship stays, we want them gone, no more communism,” was so overused that it became a meme in itself, with social media users parodying it, posting the text alongside pictures of demonstrations beside the Eiffel Tower, crowds at Disneyland, or pictures of Trump’s inauguration. Spanish journalist Julian Macías Tovar also cataloged the suspicious number of brand new accounts using the hashtag.

Much of the operation was so crude that it could not have failed to be discovered, and many of the accounts, including the first user of the #SOSCuba hashtag, have now been suspended for inauthentic behavior. Yet Twitter itself still chose to put the protests at the top of its “What’s Happening” for over 24 hours, meaning that every user would be notified, a decision that further amplified the astroturfed movement.

Twitter leadership has long displayed open hostility towards the Cuban government. In 2019, it took coordinated action to suspend virtually every Cuban state media account, as well as those belonging to the Communist Party. This was part of a wider trend of deleting or banning accounts favorable to governments the U.S. State Department considers enemies, including Venezuela, China and Russia.

In case you're wondering why Cuba is trending worldwide…pic.twitter.com/pzYae6DNS1

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) July 12, 2021

In 2010, USAID secretly created a Cuban social media app called Zunzuneo, often described as Cuba’s Twitter. At its peak, it had 40,000 Cuban users — a very large number for that time on the famously Internet-sparse island. None of these users were aware that the app had been secretly designed and marketed to them by the U.S. government. The point was to create a great service that would slowly start to feed Cubans regime-change propaganda and direct them to protests and “smart mobs” aimed at triggering a color-style revolution.

In an effort to hide its ownership of the project, the U.S. government held a secret meeting with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, aimed at getting him to invest in the project. It is unclear to what extent, if any, Dorsey helped, as he has declined to speak on the matter. This is not the only anti-government app the U.S. has funded in Cuba. Yet, considering both what happened this week and the increasingly close ties between Silicon Valley and the National Security State, it is possible the U.S. government considers further cloak-and-dagger apps unnecessary: Twitter already acts as an instrument for regime change.

Cuba in perennial crosshairs

By the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had effectively conquered its entire contiguous landmass; the frontier was declared closed in 1890. Almost immediately, it began to look for opportunities to expand westwards into the Pacific — to Hawaii, the Philippines and Guam. It also began looking southwards. In 1898, the U.S. intervened in the Cuban Independence War against Spain, using the mysterious sinking of the U.S.S. Maine as a pretext to invade and occupy Cuba. The U.S. operated Cuba as a client state for decades, until the Batista regime was overthrown in the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power.

The U.S. launched a botched invasion of the island in 1961, the Bay of Pigs event driving Castro closer to the Soviet Union, laying the groundwork for the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. The U.S. reportedly attempted to kill Castro hundreds of times, all without any luck. It did, however, carry out a bitter and protracted terroristic war against Cuba and its infrastructure, including using biological weapons against the island. Along with this came a long-standing economic war, the 60-year U.S. blockade of the island that throttled its development. In addition to this, it has attempted to bombard the Caribbean nation with anti-communist propaganda. TV Martí, a Florida-based media network, has cost the U.S. taxpayer well over half a billion dollars since its creation in 1990, despite the fact that the Cuban government successfully jams the signal, meaning virtually nobody watches its content.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba was left without its main trading partner, to which it had geared its economy. Without a guaranteed buyer for its sugar, and without subsidized Russian oil imports, the economy crashed. Sensing blood, the U.S. intensified the sanctions. Yet Cuba pulled through the grim time collectively known as the “Special Period.”

After a wave of left-wing, anti-imperialist governments came to power across Latin America in the 2000s, the Obama administration was forced to move towards normalizing diplomatic relations with the island. However, once in office, President Donald Trump reversed these actions, intensifying the blockade and halting vital remittances from Cuban-Americans to the island. Trump advisor John Bolton labeled Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny” — a clear reference to George Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech, implying that these three nations could expect military action against them soon. In its last days, the Trump administration also declared Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism.

While Biden had intimated that he might turn the U.S. Cuba policy back to the Obama days, he has, so far, done little to move away from the Trump line, his unequivocal endorsement of this week’s actions the latest example of this.

Despite monumental worldwide media coverage, encouragement and legitimation from world leaders, including the president of the United States himself, the recent action petered out after barely 24 hours. In most cases, counter-protests effectively diluted the protests, without the need for repressive forces to be deployed.

The U.S. government can cause economic misery for the Cuban people, but it cannot, it appears, convince them to overthrow their government. “The current events in Cuba constitute in reality the U.S.S. Maine of 2021,” August said. If this really was an attempted color revolution, as August is implying, it was not a very successful one, amounting to little more than a Bay of Tweets.

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Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

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As protests erupted in Cuba over shortages of basic necessities, the decades-long illegal U.S. blockade on Cuba was no longer a part of mainstream media narratives. In 2020, media focus was on the Cuban contribution to the fight against Covid19 and how, despite the blockade, Cuba had still managed its internationalist approach, while manufacturing its own vaccines. For a brief period, talk about lifting the illegal blockade on Cuba was also part of the international narrative, even as the medical brigades were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Meanwhile, due to the blockade and Covid19, Cuba’s economy contracted further. Unwaveringly, the U.S. government also continued with its funding of anti-governments groups. Only the U.S. intentions are not democratic, despite what mainstream propaganda disseminates.

In April 1960, a memorandum under the heading “The Decline and Fall of Castro” partly stated, “The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” Calling for economic deprivation, the memorandum further advocated for action which, “while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

Given that the U.S. has never relented in its aggressive policy against Cuba, why is the imperialist narrative suddenly excluded from the greater picture of Cubans protesting against the existing shortages on the island. The U.S.’s economic sabotage of Cuba is well documented and for 60 years, the Cuban people have suffered the effects of U.S. foreign policy against the island, particularly when it comes to restrictions on trade. Repeated non-binding UN resolutions to lift the illegal blockade have not wrought any change in this regard. The near unanimous agreement at an international level that the U.S. blockade is harming Cuba is up against imperialist foreign policy, which the mainstream media takes and leaves, depending on which narrative best suits its interests.

U.S. President Joe Biden has not been particularly forthcoming about Cuba until now, biding his time, it seems, until an opportune moment to build upon the Trump administration’s foundations. With Cuba still on the U.S. terror sponsor list, and no effort to rescind any of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies on Cuba, Biden is now playing the humanitarian card to foment political unrest.

The White House statement describes Cubans “bravely asserting their fundamental and universal rights.” Undoubtedly so, but not in line with the imperialist designations for the island. If the U.S. has not relented in its repressive tactics against Cuba, there is nothing to suggest that the people would trade one rule of law for another that has sought their downfall, to reconstruct Cuba as the U.S.’s playground reminiscent of the days before the Cuban revolution.

So after upholding Trump’s policies, not to mention the illegal blockade, Biden stated he would be prepared to offer humanitarian aid for Cuba and “to give significant amounts of vaccine” if an international organization would step in. This after Cuban has successfully manufactured its own vaccines which rival both Pfizer and Moderna in terms of efficacy.

Calls for foreign intervention from Cuban dissidents in Miami are adding to the hostility against the island. Would the media think back to the CIA-sponsored assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, and the terror attacks against Cubans, and consider the calls for military intervention in light of decades of failure to bring Cuba under imperialist designs? “We hope that in 2021, President Biden can fix what Kennedy broke in 1961,” Cuban exile Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat stated.

The Miami assumption that military intervention would fix Cuba holds no ground, besides illustrating how, decades after the Bay of Pigs invasion, the interests of the anti-revolution dissidents in Miami are aligned with those of the U.S. The logical step would be for the U.S. to end the blockade and let the Cuban people who have not betrayed the island for the U.S. chart their course.

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Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist, book reviewer and blogger. Her writing covers a range of themes in relation to Palestine, Chile and Latin America.

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Exits of Netanyahu & Trump: chance to dial down Mideast tensions?

The Iraqi geopolitical analyst, Ali Fahim, recently said in an interview with The Tehran Times:

“The arrival of [newly elected Iranian President] Ebrahim Raisi at the helm of power gives a great moral impetus to the resistance axis.”

Further, with new administrations in the United States, Israel, and Iran, another opportunity presents itself to reinstate fully the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement, as well as completely lift the US economic sanctions from Iran.

Let us wait and see after Raisi is in power in August 2021. It is a fact that, since the Trump administration pulled out of the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal, tensions have been on the rise. One can legitimately suspect that the Trump pull out had as its real intentions: first, to provoke Tehran; second to undo one of the only foreign policy achievements of the Obama administration, which was negotiated by John Kerry for the US. The Trump administration also used unfair economic sanctions on Iran as a squeeze for regime-change purposes. This was a complete fiasco: the Islamic Republic of Iran suffered but held together.

As far as military tensions in the region, there are many countries besides Syria where conflicts between Iran-supported groups and US-supported proxies are simmering, or full blown. The US does its work, not only via Israel in the entire region, but also Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen, and presently Turkey in Syria. Right now conflicts are active in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine, but something could ignite in Lebanon at any time.

Iran views itself as the lead supporter of the resistance movement, not only through its support for regional allies like Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad, but also beyond the Middle-East, for Maduro in Venezuela. The upcoming Iranian administration does not hide its international ambition. For better or worse, Iran sees itself as a global leader of smaller nonaligned countries that are resisting US imperialism, be it Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, or Venezuela. Even though Iran is completely different ideologically, it has replaced the leadership of Yugoslavia’s Tito or Cuba’s Castro. Both were not only Marxists but also leaders of the nonaligned movement during the Cold War, when the US and the USSR were competing to split the world in two. Now the dynamics have shifted because of China’s rising global influence, and the Iran Islamic Republic thinks it has a card to play in this complex geopolitical imbroglio.

In the US, Europe and Gulf States, Raisi has been categorized as a hardliner cleric and judge, but this gives Raisi more power than he will have as president. In Iran, major foreign policy issues are not merely up to the president to decide but a consensus process involving many. In the end such critical decisions are always signed off by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Khamenei has already indicated that he supports going back to the 2015 nuclear deal. During his electoral campaign, Raisi, who is close to Khamenei despite previous opposition, said that if elected he would uphold the 2015 landmark nuclear agreement.

Ottoman empire revival under Erdogan

Turkey’s President, Recep Erdogan, often behaves as a modern day Sultan. He is shrewd and extremely ambitious. He fancies himself to be the global leader, politically and militarily, of Sunny Islam. Under Erdogan, Turkey has flexed its military muscles, either directly or through Syrian proxies, not only in Syria, but also in Libya, as well as in Turkey’s support for Qatar in the small Gulf State’s recent skirmish with Saudi Arabia. Erdogan thinks he now has a card to play in Afghanistan. More immediately and strategically, the serious issue on Erdogan’s plate is called Idlib.

The problem of the pocket of Idlib has to be resolved, and unfortunately, for all the civilian population that has been and will be in the crossfire, it can only be solved by a full-on military operation, with troops from Bashar al-Assad and Russia. Turkey is, of course, adamant about keeping a military presence and influence within Syria to prevent a complete Assad victory. Time will tell, but the war of attrition has to end. For this to happen, Russia has to commit to face Turkey from a military standpoint. If Russia is ready for a direct confrontation with Turkey, then Bashar al-Assad’s troops, and Russian forces bringing mainly logistic and air support, should prevail.

What should make this easier is the fact Erdogan has overplayed his hand for quite some time. This includes his tense relationships with his supposed NATO allies, many of whom, including France, Greece and even Germany, would not mind having him out of NATO altogether.

There are important factors that explain, not only why Erdogan is quite popular with Turks, but also why his position could become precarious. Erdogan is playing on the Turkish nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire.

From one Empire to two others: the Sykes-Picot agreement

To understand better this imperial dynamic, we must go back to the middle of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire was allied with Germany. In 1916, the Sykes-Picot secret agreement effectively sealed the fate of post World War I Middle-East. This British-French agreement, in expectation of a final victory, was a de-facto split of the Ottoman Empire. In the resulting colonial or imperial zones of influence, a euphemism for an Anglo-French control of the region, the British would get Palestine, Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf area, while France would take control of Syria and Lebanon. More than 100 years later, the misery created by this imperialist deal lingers in the entire region, from Palestine, with the 1948 English-blessed creation of the Zionist state of Israel, to Iraq. France put in place two protectorates in Syria and Lebanon, in which the respective populations did not fare much better. Even today, French governments still act as if they have a say in Lebanese affairs.

The weight of history and the nostalgia of 600 years of rule in the Middle-East are why some Turks — especially Erdogan — feel entitled to an intrusive role in the region. The unfortunate story of the Middle-East has been to go from one imperialism to another. With the American empire taking over in the mid-1950s, the only competition during the Cold War became the USSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US had carte blanche. It became more blunt about the exploitation of resources, regime-change policies and its role as the eternal champion of the sacred state of Israel. Quickly, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar became the US’ best friends in the Arab world. I have called this alliance between the West, Israel and the oil-rich Gulf states an unholy alliance. It is still at play, mainly against Iran.

Since the collapse of the USSR, the US empire has tried to assert a worldwide hegemony by mainly two different approaches: support of autocratic regimes like those in the Gulf States, or pursuit of regime change policies to get rid of sovereign nations. This is what I have identified as engineering failed states: a doctrine at play in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Often, Islam soldiers of fortune — called at first freedom fighters as in Afghanistan, or the so-called Free Syrian Army — have mutated down the line into ISIS terrorists. Once the mercenaries developed independent ambitions, they served a dual purpose: firstly, as tools of proxy wars; secondly as a justification for direct military interventions by the empire and its vassals. Since the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq the bottom line results have been the same: death and destruction. Tabula rasa of Iraq, Libya and Syria, with countries left in ruins, millions killed, and millions of others turned into refugees and scattered to the winds. The numbers are mind boggling in the sheer horrors they reflect. According to the remarkable non-partisan Brown University Costs of War project, since the start of the US-led so-called war on terror, post September 11, 2001, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere the direct cost in people killed has been over 801,000. So far, the financial burden for US taxpayers has been $6.4 trillion.

Does Erdogan think he can do better than Alexander the Great with Afghans?

Apparently Erdogan’s imperial ambitions reach as far as the land of the Pashtuns. The Taliban already control about 85 percent of Afghanistan. While most NATO troops have either left or are in the process of doing so, Erdogan has volunteered Turkish troops to secure Kabul’s airport. Some in the Middle-East speculate, rightly or wrongly, that Erdogan plans to send to Afghanistan some of his available Syrian mercenaries, like those he has used in Libya. Even if this is rubber stamped by regional powers like Pakistan or Iran, which it won’t be, such a direct or proxy occupation will fail. If Turkish or Syrian mercenaries, or any other foreign proxies for that matter, try to get in the way of the Taliban, they will be shredded to bits.

Does Erdogan think he is a modern day version of Alexander the Great? This is plainly laughable! The Taliban are resuming control of Afghanistan, and that is the reality. Something Afghans agree upon is that they want all occupying foreigners out. This will include Turkish and Syrian mercenaries.

Post Netanyahu Israel: more of the same for Palestinians?

For the Palestinians living either in Gaza or in the occupied territories, one element that has changed in Israel is that Netanyahu is no longer in power. It would be naive to think that the new Israeli administration will be less Zionist in its support for Jewish settlers expanding their occupation of Palestinian land, but we might see a small shift, more like a pause in Israel’s bellicose behavior.

Lebanon on the brink: opportunity for Israel to attack Hezbollah?

Despite Lebanon’s dreadful political and economic situation, Israel would be ill advised to consider any military action. Hezbollah is a formidable fighting force of 70,000 men, who have been battle hardened for almost a decade in Syria. Vis a vis Iran, a direct aggression of Israel is even less likely. With Trump gone, it seems that Israel’s hawks have missed out on that opportunity. Furthermore, it would be borderline suicidal for the Jewish state to open up many potential fronts at once against Hezbollah, Hamas, and Bashar al-Assad’s army. All of them would have the backing and logistic support of Iran.

Once the 2015 nuclear agreement is in force again, with the Biden administration, the tensions in the region should significantly decrease. It is probable that in the new negotiations, Iran will request that all the US economic sanctions, which were put in place by the Trump administration, be lifted.

Neocolonial imperialism: a scourge that can be defeated

One thing about US administrations that has remained constant pretty much since the end of World War II is an almost absolute continuity in foreign policy. From Bush to Obama, Obama to Trump, and now Trump to Biden, it hardly matters if the US president is a Democrat or Republican. The cornerstone of foreign policy is to maintain, and preferably increase, US hegemony by any means necessary. This assertion of US imperial domination, with help from its NATO vassals, can be blunt like it was with Trump, or more hypocritical with a pseudo humanitarian narrative as during the Obama era.

The imperatives of military and economic dominance have been at the core of US policies, and it is doubtful that this could easily change. Mohammed bin-Salman‘s war in Yemen is part of this scenario. Some naively thought MBS would be pushed aside by the Biden administration. The clout of the Saudis remained intact, however, despite the CIA report on the gruesome assassination of a Washington Post journalist in Turkey. All evidence pointed to bin-Salman, but he was not pushed aside by his father. Under Biden, MBS is still Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, and de-facto autocratic ruler. The Saudis’ oil and money still have considerable influence in Washington.

The Saudis understand very well that, since the 1970s, their real geopolitical power has resided in the way they can impact global oil prices. They can still make the barrel price go up or down to serve specific geopolitical interests. For example, recently the Saudis tried to help the US regime change policy in Venezuela by flooding the global market to make oil prices crash. Saudi Arabia and its United Arab Emirates ally have used the black gold as an economic weapon countless times, and very effectively.

The great appetite of the Saudis for expensive weapons systems is another reason why they have a lot of weight in Washington and elsewhere. How can one oppose the will of a major client of the corporate merchants of death of the military-industrial complex?

History will eventually record the 20-year Afghanistan war as a defeat and perhaps the beginning of the end for the US empire that established its global dominance aspiration in 1945. People from countries like Yemen, Palestine, as well as Mali, Kashmir, and even Haiti, who are fighting against an occupation of their lands, respectively, by the imperial little helpers Saudi Arabia, Israel, France, India and the United Nations, should find hope in what is going on in Afghanistan. My News Junkie Post partner Dady Chery has explained the mechanics of it brilliantly in her book, We Have Dared to Be Free. Yes, occupiers of all stripes can be defeated! No, small sovereign nations or tribes should not despair! The 20-year US-NATO folly in Afghanistan is about to end. The real outcome is a victory of the Pashtuns-Taliban that is entirely against all odds. It is a victory against the most powerful military alliance ever assembled in history. Yemenites, Palestinians, Tuaregs, Kashmiris, Haitians and other proud people, fighting from different form of neocolonial occupations, should find inspiration from it. It can be done!

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Gilbert Mercier is the author of The Orwellian Empire.

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After being assigned to cover treatments being used at a Houston hospital, Hecker’s bosses at Fox censored a physician’s comment in her report about hydroxychloroquine being part of his successful treatment of covid patients.

Shocked, Hecker pushed back and began recording conversations with her bosses, capturing video of them telling her to cease and desist reporting on hydroxychloroquine, explaining why she was being censored, and discussing false claims they made in a warning letter they sent to her before she was fired.

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***

On June 18, 2021, the Iranian people elected Ebrahim Raeisi as the next president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Raeisi is a conservative jurist who ran for office pledging to fight “poverty, corruption, humiliation and discrimination.” He is viewed in Washington as a tool of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

At a press conference held on Monday, June 21, 2021, Raeisi called for an end to U.S. sanctions that were imposed on Iran by Donald Trump in violation of international law.  He also announced that “all parties must return to the nuclear agreement.”  However, he noted that Iran would not accept restrictions on its ballistic missile program or support for regional militias.  Nor would he meet with President Biden if given the opportunity.

The U.S. response was swift in coming.  A disturbing pattern of harassment emerged that included cyber, military and legal provocations perpetrated within the context of economic war being waged against Iran.

On Tuesday, June 22, 2021, the Biden administration shut down the web domain of Presstv, an English language Iranian news outlet, violating the principle of free speech.  The censorship of Presstv.com prevents Westerners, particularly Americans, who visit the website from obtaining information about the Middle East that contradicts the official U.S. narrative.

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 the United States launched airstrikes on the border of Syria and Iraq targeting “operational and weapons storage facilities of Iran-backed militias.”  Commander-in-Chief Biden promised he would act to “protect U.S. personnel” in the region.  This is the second time Biden ordered airstrikes in Syria, the first being launched on February 26^th of this year.

On July 14, 2021, the U.S. Justice Department sought indictments of four Iranians who were accused of plotting to kidnap Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian journalist currently living in Brooklyn, New York.  An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson called the allegations “baseless and ridiculous.”  Washington shows grave concern for the well-being of journalists who criticize its enemies but hostility to those, like Julian Assange, who excoriate the American empire.

The most dangerous provocations are air assaults in a region where one spark can ignite a conflagration.  By ordering airstrikes, Biden picked up where Trump left off.  Both presidents portrayed military actions as “defensive.” They were not.  They were offensive.  U.S. troop deployments in Syria and Iraq are illegal.

The U.S. militarily occupies Syrian oil fields in violation of the country’s sovereignty.  Those troops are not there to protect the Syrian people from the “dictator” Assad or to fight ISIS.  They are deployed to destabilize the Syrian government and steal Syrian oil.

After the United States assassinated Iranian General Soleimani in Baghdad’s airport, the Iraqi Parliament passed a resolution to expel all foreign troops from the country.  U.S. leaders ignored the decree and maintain 2,500 troops in Iraq.

The legality of U.S. military operations in other countries are never questioned by the political elite and their media presstitutes who think America has a right to rule the world.  The doctrine is known as “exceptionalism” and is shared by both wings of the property party.

The “Iranian-backed militias” bombed by American warplanes belong to the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces who helped to fight ISIS.  Kata’b Hezbollah and Kata’b Sayyid al-Shuhada are Shia para-military organizations that fought alongside the Iraqi army against the ISIS insurgency.

U.S. media claims American troops remain in Iraq to “train and support” the Iraqi military.  The reporting is convoluted and disingenuous.  Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces are an extension of the Iraqi military.  By bombing those forces, the United States reveals its genuine intention to dominate the region.  The ‘war on terror’ against ISIS is only a pretext for military aggression.  The American military will not defeat the remnants of ISIS by bombing forces that are fighting ISIS.

To make geopolitical sense of U.S. foreign policy towards Iran, three factors need to be considered.  Empire, oil and Israel.

First, empire.  No country can be allowed to defy rulers of U.S. global empire.  Economic nationalism and political independence cannot be allowed by the hegemon.  If one country can defy the dictates of Washington, other countries will follow its lead.  National sovereignty is a threat to empire.  The goal of U.S. foreign policy is to make the world safe for capital accumulation.  U.S. banks and corporations must control the world’s land, labor, resources, markets, currencies and governments.  No economic or military challenge to U.S. power is acceptable in the empire. This is true in the Middle East because of its key energy resources.

Second, oil.  Since the collapse of the British empire, the United States exercises hegemony in Southwest Asia.  At the end of World War II, U.S. policy in the Middle East was guided by insuring the cheap flow of oil from the region. The U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia is predicated on oil.  Franklin Roosevelt met with Saudi King Ibn Saud on February 14, 1945.  Roosevelt scheduled the meeting aboard a U.S. cruise ship in the Suez Canal on the way home from the Yalta Conference where he unceremoniously informed Churchill that Britain was out of the empire business. At the meeting with King Saud, Roosevelt created an arrangement whereby the United States would protect the Saudi monarchy for an endless flow of cheap oil.

It is also important to note that Ibn Saud opposed the partition of Palestine during the meeting, a harbinger of things to come as Saudi Arabia led the OPEC oil embargo against the United States in 1973 because of American support for Israel’s war with Egypt and Syria.  The House of Saud has long since abandoned the Palestinian cause.

The United States and Saudi Arabia also created the petro-dollar system in 1973 when the monarchy agreed to sell crude oil for U.S. dollars.  In 1975, OPEC nations followed suit.

Third, Israel.  Not only did the United States dislodge the British and French empires in the Middle East after World War II, it supplanted Britain as Israel’s main benefactor.  It was Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917 that established a “Jewish Homeland” in Palestine.  And it was the United States that pushed through the UN partition of Palestine in 1947.  The United States was the first country to extend diplomatic recognition of the Zionist state in 1948.  Just to show who was boss in the Middle East, the United States thwarted the British, French and Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956.  Rulers of the American empire have called the shots in the region ever since.

Iran challenges America on all three counts.  It established economic sovereignty in 1951, possesses large reserves of oil that are nationalized and opposes Israel’s colonization of Palestine.

In March 1951, the Iranian Parliament enacted legislation that nationalized the Iranian oil industry.  Shortly thereafter, Mohammad Mossadegh was elected Prime Minister of Iran, a position he occupied until being overthrown by a CIA coup in 1953.  His crime? Advancing economic sovereignty and exerting control over Iran’s oil resources.

In the coup’s aftermath, Shah Reza Pahlavi was restored to power by the United States until his tyrannical monarchy was overthrown by the Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini in February 1979.

Iran possesses the fourth largest oil reserves in the world.  After the overthrow of Mossadegh, the Shah returned oil profits to British and American companies.  He used the SAVAK, Iran’s secret police, to torture and kill opponents of his autocratic rule.  The establishment of the Islamic Republic returned control of Iranian oil to the Iranian government.

The National Iranian Oil Company controls oil and national gas operations and is owned by the state.  China is a major consumer of Iranian oil, followed by the EU.  The oil and natural gas sectors have been severely crippled by U.S. sanctions that were imposed after Trump’s exit from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal negotiated by Obama.

For the United States and Israel, Iran is the heart of an “axis of resistance” that includes Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Occupied Palestine.  They are joined by Saudi Arabia in their effort to smash the axis.  The dirty war in Syria was waged to topple the Assad government and isolate Iran.  The Saudis consider Iran to be part of a “Shai arc” stretching from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus to Beirut.  As early as 2007, neoconservatives in the Bush administration actively supported Sunni forces led by Saudi Arabia against Shia forces led by Iran.

The Syrian proxy war was organized by the CIA.  The operation code named “Timber Sycamore” was approved by the Obama regime in 2012.  Washington armed and trained the jihadists who terrorized Syria.  Saudi Arabia and Qatar provided funding.  Israel consistently used its air force to support jihadist fighters by bombing Syria.  Turkey joined the war to suppress the Kurds in northern Syria.

Vladimir Putin’s Russian military intervention in September 2015 thwarted the plan by saving the Assad government and preserving Syrian independence.  Fighters from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Hezbollah and the Popular Mobilization Forces of Iraq supported the Syrian Arab Army in the proxy war against so-called Free Syrian Army, ISIS and the fundamentalist insurgency.

Most significantly, Israel fears the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb that would break the Zionist state’s nuclear monopoly and constrain its aggressive behavior.  During a recent visit by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Joe Biden assured his guest that U.S. support for Israel is “iron-clad” and Iran will never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon during his administration.  Rivlin admonished Biden not to re-enter the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran because of its purported desire, never proven, to develop a nuclear weapon.  In fact, JCPOA ensures Iran can only develop nuclear power for energy and medical purposes.  Nothing is ever mentioned about Israel’s secret stockpile of over 400 nuclear weapons.

Despite efforts of the United States and its allies, the insurgency was defeated, Assad remains in power and Israel had its wings clipped when Russia provided Syria with an S-300 missile defense system.

Yet, neoconservative domination of the American foreign policy establishment remains intact. Israel and the neocons want war with Iran.  They believe the path to destruction of Palestinian resistance lies through Tehran.  Researchers at the notorious Rand Corporation, assert that Iran controls a network of para-military organizations that present a threat to U.S. forces in the Middle East that needs to be neutralized.

American political leaders evince a pathological hatred of Iran.  Hillary Clinton threatened to “obliterate” Iran should it attack Israel in 2008.  The late warmonger John McCain, pledged to “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” to the tune of a Beach Boys song as a presidential candidate in 2007.  Donald Trump threatened to “obliterate parts of Iran” if it attacked “anything American” in 2019.

The June election of a hardline government bodes ill for rulers of American empire who seek to bring Iran to its knees by continuing crippling economic sanctions.  At present, Iran promises to re-join the JCPOA nuclear agreement if the United States lifts sanctions.  However, the Americans will not lift sanctions unless Iran stops missile development and support for “terrorist” organizations, meaning Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Occupied Palestine, Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

President Ebrahim Raeisi will take power in August.  He provides little room for compromise. The result is stalemate, continuation of economic warfare and persistent low intensity conflict.

A key question needs to be pondered in the increasingly ominous future.  How long can Iran endure the sanctions regime and avoid war with an imperialist power that will never rest until it inspires regime change in the homeland of the Persian people?

*

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Donald Monaco is a political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War.  He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective.  His recent book is titled, The Politics ofTerrorism, and is available at amazon.com.

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

Click here to order.

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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***

This report explains the truth you’re not getting in the news about the uprising now happening in France.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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.

***

Dr. David Martin was recently interviewed by Attorney Reiner Fuellmich who is seeking to bring criminal charges against crimes committed during the COVID-19 Plandemic.

The full interview is nearly 90 minutes, and I have received numerous emails from subscribers to Health Impact News alerting us to this interview.

Most of the comments I have seen in reference to this interview have been mentioning that Dr. Martin reveals that there have been patents on the Sars Coronavirus since the late 1990s, which is actually “old news” since he revealed that last year in Mikki Willis’ film, “Plandemic.”

If you have not watched that documentary yet, it is MUST viewing: PLANDEMIC: Full Feature Film Released Online Amidst Tremendous Opposition and Attempts to Censor it

Mikki Willis did the world a huge favor by releasing this film to the public, free of charge. So I like to always give him credit where credit is due, because so many people have copied clips from his work without giving him the proper credit.

I have now been able to view the interview with Dr. Martin, and of course we can always depend upon Dr. Martin to provide new and current information. Here are some of our previous articles featuring Dr. Martin’s very excellent work if you are not yet familiar with him:

• Dr. David Martin Exposes the False Foundation of Eugenics: “You Don’t Have DNA”
• Plandemic Film Stars Dr. David Martin and Dr. Judy Mikovits together in Public for the First Time Doing a Q&A Session
• Dr. David Martin on Experimental mRNA COVID Vaccines: This is NOT a Vaccine! It is a Medical Device

In this interview with Attorney Reiner Fuellmich, Dr. Martin goes into detail about how the patents for Sars coronaviruses existed before any “outbreaks,” as did the patents on “spike proteins” to produce vaccines. They precede the current COVID-19 virus by 20 years.

The original research into these vaccines was for veterinary purposes, rabbits and canines, and then was used in 2002 and later by Anthony Fauci and the U.S. National Institute of Health for AIDS vaccine research. DARPA then got involved for applications as a “bioweapon.”

When Anthony Fauci originally tried to get a patent on an mRNA vaccine for HIV, he was rejected by the patent office, because his mRNA vaccine did not meet the legal definition of a “vaccine.”

It is a biological weapon.

And as far as the current “Delta variant”?

Click on the clip below to hear Dr. Martin’s response.

This is from our Bitchute channel, and it should also be available shortly on our Rumble channel.

I don’t know where the original video was published. If anyone knows, please contact me and let me know so we can give proper credit.

The 90+ minute versions are all over the Internet. If you do a search on Bitchute, for example, you find multiple copies. The full interview is well worth watching.

*

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***

Sixty years ago this summer, on August 7, 1961, President John Kennedy signed the bill creating The Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts.  It consists of forty miles of immaculate sandy beach, marshes, ponds, and upland along the Atlantic Ocean, with some portions stretching across the land to Cape Cod Bay in the west.  Henry Thoreau walked this wild Outer Atlantic Beach in 1849.  He said you can stand there and look out to sea and “put all America behind” you.

I am trying to do that as I stand looking at the waves breaking on a foggy early morning shore.  I am alone except for the hundreds of seals moaning on a sand bar and the gulls fishing in the tidal inlet at the far southern end of Coast Guard Light Beach.  A few laughing gulls swoop by as if to mock me with their laugh-like calls.

It is very hard to put the United States of America behind you when the fog of an endless propaganda war warps your mind and tries to crush your spirit even when you look away as far as the eye can see.

Across the ocean to the northeast, Mathew Arnold, on a far distant shore in England, wrote his famous poem “Dover Beach” at about the same time that Thoreau was walking where I stand.  Two very different men standing in different worlds, not just one at a window and the other in the blowing wind.

The former was an academically connected school inspector whose faith, vague as it was, was falling away as he described in “Dover Beach”: the turbulent ebb and flow of the breaking waves of faith that was being replaced by the sad withdrawing roar of melancholic human misery, devoid of love, light, joy, certitude, or help for pain.  It was the rhythmic sound of world weariness and declining faith in the Old World.

The latter, a child of the New World, harsh critic though he was of the resigned lives of quiet desperation most people live, was still a man of deep if unorthodox faith in the divine, telling us that most people are determined not to live by faith if they can help it, as if anyone could live without faith in something, whether that something be God, skepticism, atheism, or the then emerging new god of science. He considered people’s constant distrustful anxiety an incurable disease and he would no doubt consider the current religion of science a subject for his withering scorn and underappreciated humor.  Try imagining the government telling Thoreau that he had to be vaccinated and he needed a document to travel by stagecoach from his home in Concord to the Cape.

The young rebel Thoreau (he was in his early thirties like Arnold) still held to the conviction that if enough people gave serious attention to the transcendent nature of their natural surroundings and lived by its divine revelations, a new world was possible.  But also only if they simplified their lives and lived by principles that excluded the mad pursuit of money, slavery, and the worship of false gods.  This was eleven years before the American Civil War, which Thoreau didn’t survive.  He died on May 6, 1862.  His final words were: “Now comes good sailing.”

Arnold died at age sixty-six of a heart attack while running to catch a train.

Old and new symbols of power marked their final journeys: the iron horse and wind-filled sails.

Where Arnold saw a nightmarish illusion in the sea, Thoreau saw wonder and possibility, but not devoid of possible doom.  Although often cast as a wild dreamer, Thoreau had his feet planted solidly in plain reality.

“I sat down on the boundless level and enjoyed the solitude, drank it in, the medicine for which I had pined,” wrote Thoreau, so I followed his lead and sat on a stretch of sand with no human in sight and gazed at the glimmer of a fading moon until I lost my senses.  For a few minutes I was gone.

But nature and solitude do not necessarily quiet the mind, and when I returned from my cataleptic state the wind was blowing from the west and the USA snuck up behind my back.  America may be hard to find, but it’s also hard to lose. The wind blew my mind’s eye straight across the imaginary northern latitude line to Cannes, France and its Film Festival where Oliver Stone’s new documentary, “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking-Glass,” written by James DiEugenio, has just premiered.

It is hard here on the sands of the Cape not to think of JFK, especially since he saved these sands for posterity, a bit of the USA that remains if you ever go looking for it. He saved this land whose evil CIA forces slayed him. And the ironic thing about Stone’s documentary is that he could find no US backers for his film and had to go to Arnold’s Old-World England to get the money to tell this inherently American story, which still doesn’t have a distributor in the United States..

Thirty years ago, his movie JFK was sabotaged by the CIA-controlled media as a fictional illusion, and now the truth is still verboten here.  But Stone will win out.  For his new work tells the same story but tells it straight with facts, the same facts, and more, that supported JFK in 1991.  And the facts tell an overwhelming tale of truth, not the nonsense still proffered by disinformation specialists that JFK was a war-monger, a phony, and a cold warrior to the end.  Those accusations are either lies or ignorance, as if the CIA would want to assassinate him if they were true.

JFK was murdered because he was trying to end the Cold War, eliminate nuclear weapons through negotiations with the Soviet Union, withdraw American military advisers from Vietnam, reign in the CIA, and reduce the power of the military industrial complex.  This is why he was killed. These are among what Stone calls “conspiracy facts,” and even as I look out at the wild Atlantic and try “to put America behind” me for a short respite, the wind fills my mind with their contemporary importance.

Stone is out front where you can see and hear him, while the CIA always operates behind our backs.

As I return to myself and my contemplation of the ocean, a lone fisherman approaches and passes me with a nod and a rod.  I soon see him disappear around the strand where the inlet flows like a strong river deep into the marshes.  Memory tells me Thoreau was right to say that “many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish that they are after.”

Thoreau knew he was always obsessively fishing for elusive truth and needed no bait, only his eyes and ears and the deep state he entered when he cast his pencil across the vastness of an empty page.

Oliver Stone, too, has spent his life chasing the light of truth to expose the crimes of another deep state, the despicable men who conspired to execute JFK, the man who many a day looked out upon these waters and saw a vision of a new country he hoped to bring to reality even at the risk of his life.  A country devoted to peace and domestic tranquility.

It is so beautiful where I sit.  The sun is breaking through the fog and blue patches stipple the heavens. Call it dreamy. Here the Nauset Indians fished these waters long before Thoreau.  Fishing for them was like the clam shells that litter the beach.  It was bifold, providing sustenance for body and soul, and their connection to the Cape eco-system was sacred. (I ask them for forgiveness for using the word eco-system.) This was long before the profane skepticism and faith in science of Arnold’s mind and times seeped in to poison land, water, and consciousness, not to mention human and animal bodies.

As I recall, “Dover Beach” was composed a few decades after the first generally accepted laboratory synthesis of a naturally occurring organic compound from inorganic materials. Only yesterday I saw many beachgoers spraying themselves with canisters of chemicals that are the offspring of that original synthetic creation that is called urea but which I call piss.  I don’t know what the Nausets called it, but I am sure they did what I did as I got up and pissed into the wind and water, hoping it wouldn’t come back to get me.  It was a relief, although my mind kept reeling backwards historically.

The white invaders – they like to be called explorers – led by Captain Thomas Hunt, arrived on the Cape in 1614 and captured seven Nausets together with twenty from the Pawtucket tribe and sold them into slavery.  There is so much US history that is hard to stomach. Thinking of the slaughter of native peoples from California to the New York island can only make a US American deeply ashamed.  When Woody Guthrie composed and sang “This Land Is Your Land,” I hope he had a double entendre in mind, for surely the shore I sit upon is soaked with the blood and tears of many an innocent soul whose land was stolen from them.

It is no exaggeration to say that from the enlarging sandbar the seals’ moans sound like restless ghosts. The wind carries their ancient calls like a Greek chorus above the crashing waves.  I feel as though I am attending a sacred rite that is both a funeral, a celebration, and a call to resist. The music haunts me.  My mind’s eye ebbs with the receding tide.  More sand bars emerge as the sun pierces the fog veiling the water and my mind.

Behind me across the narrow strip of land and Cape Cod Bay lies the city of Boston.  It was built to its current renown on the money made by its famous blue blood families through the opium trade that killed so many Chinese in the 19^th century.  They were money-obsessed, bloodthirsty killers. I don’t think they warned the Chinese that they were being sold a drug pandemic.  You have heard their “illustrious” names: Forbes, Cabot, Cushing, Weld, Delano (the grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Perkins.  These drug dealers laundered their massive drug profits by giving to Harvard, founding Massachusetts General Hospital, and creating Boston’s renown reputation for culture and education.

First the native Americans and then the Chinese and Vietnamese and Afghanis, et al. – it makes no difference whose blood was shed to create an elegant city upon a hill, a beacon of human benevolence – and to keep it going.  The beat goes on.  It is a war of drugs, foreign and domestic.  Follow the trail.

These “illustrious” families were also crucial in the founding of the CIA whose tentacles stretch their banking interests in black operations worldwide.  These are the criminals they like to call the Agency whose existence is sustained through drugs and blood.  Agents of death.

It is terrible to think such thoughts on this beautiful beach, but my forgettery seems to fail me when the wind is blowing from behind.

And to think the disinformation specialists doing the CIA’s bidding have for years tried to denigrate those Irish upstarts, the Kennedys, by falsely claiming Joseph Kennedy made his fortune in the illegal liquor business and in association with the Mob.  The CIA’s war on the Kennedys, and their murder of their leading men, is a multi-faceted operation, as Oliver Stone will show you.

Here on the beach the light now seems to be chasing me.  I look to my left and see a figure walking my way.  It is time for me to leave.  I turn and start walking north, back to civilization.  As the figure gets nearer, I see it’s a woman.  I gasp at the mask she is wearing.  No doubt she has taken the drug the authorities have told her was necessary to inject if she wanted to be safe and join the crowd.  The drug trade is where the money is. It runs on lies, but it brings power and glory and will anesthetize your fears until it is too late.  It’s not a new story, and it brings death.

We pass and she looks away.

I hear the laughing gulls and turn to see the seals standing on the waves howling in delight as they clap their flippers in applause.  I’m happy to laugh along.

In the distance I see a boat heading for land.

The wind off the water blows this Dylan song into my ears: “When the Ship Comes in”.

*

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***

“The people have woken up – at last!” declared local Gilet Jaune rebel Michelle as she watched the vast crowds assembling on the main square of Montpellier in southern France.

She has been involved with the Yellow Vest movement since the very start of the popular revolt against the Macron regime in November 2018.

Two years ago, in April 2019, another Gilet Jaune told me on the same spot, the Place de la Comédie, that France was witnessing “a turning point in history”.

Despite the vast levels of militarised repression used against the Yellow Vests, not to speak of the relentless propaganda in the mass media, the movement never abandoned the struggle.

Only the “emergency” of the Covid crisis pushed it, more or less, off the streets.

The spirit of revolt has not been very much in evidence in France since March 2020, with the population divided and fearful, as elsewhere.

But now, with the announcement that vaccine passports will be required for cafés, restaurants, leisure centres, shopping malls and trains, something seems to have snapped.

The arguments about viruses and masks and lockdowns now seem less relevant in the face of this chilling assault on the most fundamental of human rights.

Even the jab itself is not really the issue any more, with those who have already had it joining in the protests against the totalitarian laws due to come into place on August 1.

I was impressed by the turn-out for the emergency protest in Montpellier on Wednesday July 14, but Saturday’s numbers were on a completely different scale.

Even the authorities at the Préfecture admitted that there were 5,000 on the streets on a hot Mediterranean afternoon.

The crowd represented a very wide cross-section of the local population. The Gilets Jaunes had already started this process of breaking down the old “left” and “right” political divisions in favour of a broad popular struggle against the power elite.

But the process has now clearly gone a step further, with a new mood of defiant unity that must be striking fear into the hearts of Macron and his cronies, not to speak of Klaus Schwab and the global string-pullers.

The sense of possibility has been increased by the news that the French Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti is under criminal investigation for allleged “conflicts of interest”.

“We don’t want the pass sanitaire!” chanted the thousands in Montpellier. “Macron resign!” “Résistance!” “Liberté!”

It was the same picture everywhere, with massive numbers not just in Paris, but all across France, as this compilation sets out.

The people took to the streets in Aix-en-Provence, Quimper, Annecy, Lyons, Perpignan, Nice, Metz, Lille, Dijon, Caen, Toulouse, Reims, Saint-Brieuc, Pau, Strasbourg, Rouen, La Rochelle, Brest, Mulhouse, Bayonne, Narbonne, Saint-Étienne, Albi, Nîmes and La Réunion.

They protested in Toulon, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes and Rennes. Tear gas was used on protesters at Besançon and demonstrators blocked a main road at Chambéry.

The politics of division seem to be failing as the French people come together to defend the principles of liberté, égalité and fraternité on which their republic is supposed to be founded.

I bumped into a couple of anarchist friends on the protest and also took a leaflet from a group called Arme Révolutionnaire Marxiste.

This condemns the “Apartheid sanitaire” being imposed by the state: “Treated like fearful cattle, ever more controlled, divided and stripped of our freedoms, we are condemned by power to still further exploitation.

“But this time the government’s medicine is not going down, there are more and more of us all the time who understand the reality of this medical mascarade, just as we understand better and better the scam of elections”.

Insisted Gilet Jaune Michelle: “This vaccine passport just can’t happen. We can’t give up”.

Disobedience! We are not QR codes.

“Our children are not guinea pigs” “My body does not belong to medicine”

Yes to unconditional freedom

For enlightened choice

66 million men and women can still say no. Resist! You are not alone!

Down with the techno-medical dictatorship!

“Together, ‘vaccinated’ or not. No to intimidation, constraint, discrimination. Yes to free choice, equality, fraternity”

Vaccinated or not, united and in solidarity for our freedoms!

You are powerful, Act like it.

A lie repeated a thousand times becomes a truth

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All images in this article are from Winter Oak

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This year marks a seminal turning point in human history. For the first time since human civilization began, our species is being genetically modified. Read more…

Pakistan’s “Balancing Between Great Powers”: “The New Quad” (US- Pakistan- Afghanistan- Uzbekistan): Is Better than the Old One?

By Andrew Korybko, July 18, 2021

The newly established US-Pakistan-Afghanistan-Uzbekistan framework is the embodiment of Pakistan’s multi-alignment policy of balancing between Great Powers. Read more…

Battle of the Atlantic: Citing Nazi Germany as Model, U.S. Military Chief Hails New NATO Command

By Rick Rozoff, July 16, 2021

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Norfolk, Virginia on July 15 to mark the second NATO command in America achieving full operational capability. Read more…

CDC: 10,991 Dead, 551,172 Injuries Following COVID-19 Injections

By Brian Shilhavy, July 17, 2021

You will not find a single corporate media outlet reporting these government statistics, as this has to be the MOST CENSORED information in the United States. Read more…

Ivermectin: Asia Departs from the Gates/Schwab Agenda of Vaccinating the World

By Martin Armstrong, July 18, 2021

Ivermectin, a drug used to treat parasitic infections in humans that are more commonly used on animals, is now trending and exploding in Asia. Read more…

History: Why Nazi Germany Failed to Defeat the Soviet Union? Folly of War

By Shane Quinn, July 16, 2021

As the First World War was erupting from late summer 1914, the great majority of political leaders believed it would be of short duration. Read more…

The Assassination of John F. Kennedy

By Michael Welch and James DiEugenio, July 16, 2021

March 22, 1963. The Kennedy family lost a brother. America lost a president. And the world lost a hope for a more peaceful world. Read more…

How the Rich Keep Workers Poor – Outsourcing and Sweatshops

By Rod Driver, July 18, 2021

Big brands put pressure on factories overseas. This has become worse due to the development of what is called fast fashion. Read more…

Doctors for COVID Ethics Signatories

By Doctors for COVID Ethics, July 16, 2021

Doctors for Covid Ethics has written three open letters to the European Medicines Agency regarding COVID-19 vaccine dangers. Read more…

US Targets Nicaraguan Presidential Election: Former Solidarity Activists Echo Imperial Talking Points

By Roger D. Harris, July 18, 2021

US intervention in Nicaragua and, indeed, in all of Latin America under the 1823 Monroe Doctrine has a long history continuing to the present. Read more…

Experts Warn of ‘Huge Risk’ as Moderna Launches COVID Vaccine Trials for Pregnant Women

By Megan Redshaw, July 16, 2021

Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says pregnant women can get a COVID vaccine. But the CDC also acknowledges there is limited data available about the safety of COVID vaccines for people who are pregnant. Read more…

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.

***

“After years of IT experts telling us that we ‘can’t break the internet’ by pressing the wrong button, it turns out we can do it by updating our settings.” – Phil Coughlin, The Guardian, Jun 11, 2021

On June 8, an internet blackout was precipitated by one customer updating their settings through a “valid configuration change”.  With speed, 85% of the network of the tech infrastructure company Fastly began returning errors.  A global outage ensued.  “The downed sites,” according to Brian Barrett of Wired, “shared no obvious theme or geography; the outages were global, and they hit everything from Reddit to Spotify to The New York Times.”

Nick Rockwell, the Senior Vice President of engineering and infrastructure at the company, outlined the incident in a blog post.  “We experienced a global outage due to an undiscovered software bug that surfaced on June 8 when it was triggered by a valid customer configuration change.”  The bug had been introduced in a software deployment on May 12 “that could be triggered by a specific customer configuration under specific circumstances.”

Fastly’s role is important, since it, along with such entities as Akamai and Cloudflare, constitutes part of the content delivery network (CDN) essential to the internet’s infrastructure and the speed with which information is relayed.  Such CDN entities are physical manifestations in utilising servers to minimise download times.  They supply a service that enables websites, notably those attracting heavy traffic, to retain copies of their pages “closer” to their customers. 

Angelique Medina, director of product marketing at network monitoring firm Cisco ThousandEyes, offers an explanation of that function.  “It basically enables really high performance for content, whether that’s streaming video or a site or all the little images that pop up when you go to an ecommerce site.” Reuters similarly describes this as offering “a better experience for users, enabling pages to load quicker and sites to manage high volumes of page requests better, for example in a breaking news situation.”

The drawback of having such an intertwined system populated by so few providers is that any modest hiccup in the supply conveyed via the services of the CDN network can result in a global blackout. This stands to reason: a beast such as Akamai has 340,000 servers on its platform deployed across 4,100 locations across 130 countries.  This problem might be rectified by having websites host their own content exclusively, but that, as Paul Haskell-Dowland points out, would slow web browsing and undermine that fetish cyber cognoscenti call the “experience”.

Such incidents have become recurring features of shock in the tech landscape.  Initially, they generate a flash of discussion, but are quickly submerged by the banality of technological acceptance.  Cloudflare itself experienced problems in 2019 with an outrage that disrupted Soundcloud, Medium and Dropbox.  The explanation given then was similar to that of Fastly: the outage had resulted from a “bad software” deployment that caused a “massive spike in CPU utilization” on the company’s network.  “Once [the software was rolled back] the service returned to normal operation and all domains using Cloudflare returned to normal traffic levels.” 

A certain degree of error on the part of CDN providers tends to be tolerated, even readily exonerated.  In the week of June 12, global internet outages rose by 43%, or 481 in total.  317 of these took place in the US.  As this was happening, the stock market was busily rewarding the very agents behind such outages.  Fastly’s stock price rose through June while Akamai’s share price rallied after June 18.  Such a centralised market tends to deliver riches while ignoring, as Geoff Huston of the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre observes, “a minor inconvenient truth about the less-than-solid foundations of the technology, and incidents that impact operations that continue to happen.”

And just to cause more ripples of excitement, Akamai became the second CDN provider to suffer an outage later in June for one of its Prolexic DDoS mitigation services.  As the company mentioned in a statement, “A routing table value used by this particular service was inadvertently exceeded.  The effect was an unanticipated disruption of service.”  Outages were subsequently felt across banking services, many located in Australia, a number of airlines and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.  The public relations departments across Akamai’s client base were scrambled to dampen any panic.

Reactions from the CDN high priests to these disruptions are rehearsals of apology followed by businesslike solutions.  They know they are the titans with few contenders.  Rockwell’s response served to mask the more critical issues of CDN concentration. “Even though there were specific conditions that triggered this outage, we should have anticipated it.”  But he emphasised the speed of detection and rectification.  The disruption was detected within one minute, “then identified and isolated the cause, and disabling the configuration.  Within 49 minutes, 95 per cent of our network was operating normal.”  The company, he promised, would “figure out why we didn’t detect the bug during our software quality assurance and testing processes.” 

The irony of such outrages is that they defy the spirit of decentralisation that was meant to underlie the web.  As David Warburton of cybersecurity company F5 Labs rightly notes, the past decade has borne witness to “the unintentional centralisation of many core services through large cloud solution providers like infrastructure vendors and CDNs.”  Economies of scale have prevailed and competition all but quashed.  The “comparative shopping list is not exactly large,” remarks the ever valuable Huston, if you wish to choose a CDN that optimises “service delivery yet leaves the customer in control of such critical aspects of the security and integrity of the service (such as private keys)”.  Till that problem is addressed, the disruptive outage will become the tolerated manifestation of an unacceptably centralised market.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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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).

***

This article was originally published in April 2021.

Charles Hoffe has been a medical doctor for 28 years in the small, rural town of Lytton in British Columbia, Canada. The town is comprised of many indigenous groups and the “First Nations.”

When Dr. Hoffe was given 900 doses of the Moderna experimental COVID-19 injections, he administered the doses through the Lytton Medical Clinic to those who wanted them.

He chose not to inject himself.

Dr. Hoffe reports that the result of injecting 900 people among the indigenous First Nations community was that 2 people went into anaphylactic shock, one person died, and several others have suffered what appear to be permanent disabilities. He relates how one of his patients is in so much pain now, that she prefers death to life.

By contrast, no one in the community died or became permanently disabled due to the COVID-19 virus for the past year.

Dr. Hoffe reported these adverse reactions by email to the medical personnel in his community who were responsible for the roll-out of the Moderna shots, which included pharmacists, nurses, and doctors in his area, a total of about 18 people he says.

His email expressed grave concern over the side effects he was seeing, and he asked if perhaps they should pause the injections for a while.

He reports that within 48 hours he received a very stern rebuke from his superiors at the Interior Health Authority accusing him of causing “vaccine hesitancy” and that they were going to report him to BC College of Physicians and Surgeons.

They forbade him from saying anything negative about the Moderna shots by issuing a gag order against him.

Dr. Hoffe explains that this is a method of intimidation that is being used against other doctors who have become too afraid to speak out, because the College of Physicians and Surgeons has great authority to shut down doctors’ careers, or heavily fine them.

As he continued to see more injuries the following week, he became very angry about his gag order. He was told that if he had any concerns about the injections that he had to contact the medical health officer in charge of the Moderna roll out.

He did, but when he did not receive a reply, he decided to write an open letter directly to Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia Provincial Health Officer, in direct defiance of his gag order since he made it public.

Here is a copy of the letter.

***

Dr. Charles D. Hoffe, BSc, MB, BCh, LMCC
Lytton Medical Clinic
Lytton BC V0K 1Z0

5 April, 2021

Dr. Bonnie Henry,
British Columbia Provincial Health Officer
Ministry of Health
1515 Blanchard Street
Victoria, BC, V8W 3C9

Dear Dr. Henry,

The first dose of the Moderna vaccine has now been administered to some of my patients in the community of Lytton, BC. This began with the First Nations members of our community in mid-January, 2021. 900 doses have now been administered.

I have been quite alarmed at the high rate of serious side-effects from this novel treatment.
From this relatively small number of people vaccinated so far, we have had:

1. Numerous allergic reactions, with two cases of anaphylaxis.
2. One (presumed) vaccine induced sudden death, (in a 72 year old patient with COPD. This patient complained of being more short of breath continually after receiving the vaccine, and died very suddenly and unexpectedly on day 24, after the vaccine. He had no history of cardiovascular disease).
3. Three people with ongoing and disabling neurological deficits, with associated chronic pain, persisting for more than 10 weeks after their first vaccine. These neurological deficits include: continual and disabling dizziness, generalised or localized neuromuscular weakness, with or without sensory loss. The chronic pain in these patients is either generalised or regional, with or without headaches.

So in short, in our small community of Lytton, BC, we have one person dead, and three people who look as though they will be permanently disabled, following their first dose of the Moderna vaccine. The age of those affected ranges from 38 to 82 years of age.

So I have a couple of questions and comments:

1. Are these considered normal and acceptable long term side-effects for gene modification therapy? Judging by medical reports from around the world, our Lytton experience is not unusual.
2. Do you have any idea what disease processes may have been initiated, to be producing these ongoing neurological symptoms?
3. Do you have any suggestions as to how I should treat the vaccine induced neurological weakness, the dizziness, the sensory loss, and the chronic pain syndromes in these people, or should they be all simply referred to a neurologist? I anticipate that many more will follow, as the vaccine is rolled out. This was only phase one, and the first dose.
4. In stark contrast to the deleterious effects of this vaccine in our community, we have not had to give any medical care what-so-ever, to anyone with Covid-19. So in our limited experience, this vaccine is quite clearly more dangerous than Covid-19.
5. I realize that every medical therapy has a risk-benefit ratio, and that serious disease calls for serious medicine. But we now know that the recovery rate of Covid-19, is similar to the seasonal flu, in every age category. Furthermore, it is well known that the side effects following a second shot, are significantly worse than the first. So the worst is still to come.
6. It must be emphasised, that these people were not sick people, being treated for some devastating disease. These were previously healthy people, who were offered an experimental therapy, with unknown long-term side-effects, to protect them against an illness that has the same mortality rate as the flu. Sadly, their lives have now been ruined.
7. It is normally considered a fundamental principal of medical ethics, to discontinue a clinical trial if significant harm is demonstrated from the treatment under investigation.
8. So my last question is this: Is it medically ethical to continue this vaccine rollout, in view of the severity of these life altering side-effects, after just the first shot? In Lytton, BC, we have an incidence of 1 in 225 of severe life altering side-effects, from this experimental gene modification therapy.

I have also noticed that these vaccine induced side effects are going almost entirely unreported, by those responsible for the vaccine rollout. I am aware that this is often a problem, with vaccines in general, and that delayed side-effects after vaccines, are sometimes labelled as being “coincidences”, as causality is often hard to prove. However, in view of the fact that this is an experimental treatment, with no long-term safety data, I think that perhaps this issue should be addressed too.

Furthermore I have noticed, that the provincial vaccine injury reporting form, which was clearly designed for conventional vaccines, does not even have any place to report vaccine injuries of the nature and severity that we are seeing from this new mRNA therapy.

It is now clearly apparent with medical evidence from around the world, that the side-effect profiles of the various gene modification therapies against Covid-19, have been vastly understated by their manufacturers, who were eager to prove their safety.

Thank you for attention to this critically urgent public health matter.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Charles Hoffe

***

The IH (Interior Health) responded to his letter publicly and it was published in the Ashcroft Cache Creek Journal as they tried to do “damage control” and attack Dr. Hoffe.

***

IH says COVID-19 vaccines safe despite claims of Lytton physician

Doctor makes unsubstantiated claims about serious side effects of Moderna vaccine

by BARBARA RODEN

Interior Health (IH) is reassuring Lytton and area residents about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, after a physician in that community shared a letter in which he claimed that the death of a Lytton resident was linked to the Moderna vaccine.

In a letter to Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry dated April 5, Dr. Charles Hoffe claimed that there had been “numerous” allergic reactions — including two cases of anaphylaxis — among people in Lytton and area who had received the Moderna vaccine. He also claimed that three people were exhibiting “ongoing and disabling” neurological deficits.

Hoffe also claimed that the death of a 72-year-old patient with COPD, 24 days after the man was vaccinated, was “presumed” to be vaccine-induced. The physician did not produce any evidence to prove that any of the events resulted from the vaccine.

“It has been a challenge for us to investigate this thoroughly and take reports seriously,” says Dr. Carol Fenton, Medical Health Officer with IH. In a written statement issued on April 14, Fenton says that “There have been no deaths or lasting adverse reactions connected to the Moderna/Pfizer vaccines, or any COVID-19 vaccine, in Lytton, Interior Health, or B.C. at this time.”

The statement adds that IH knows unequivocally that the vaccines are safer than COVID-19 itself, and that the vaccines have been demonstrated to be safe and effective through all levels of clinical trials.

“There is a detailed process to review all adverse effects following immunizations, and all serious events are recorded and reported to the provincial and national level to monitor for safety signals that may be missed at the local level. With the information we have from the vaccine roll-out so far, the COVID-19 vaccines are very safe.”

Fenton tells the Journal that while there will always be some variations between medical practitioners, when it comes to the safety of vaccines it is important to look at consensus-based reports from those who are trained in the field.

“These people are the experts of the experts,” she says. “I can answer most vaccine questions, but I don’t consider myself to be an expert in vaccines. The decisions and analyses are defined by people with the skills and expertise to parse through the information we have.”

The immunization clinics being run by IH have trained vaccinators on site to monitor for and respond to allergic and anaphylactic reactions, which are rare, but can occur with any vaccine or medication.

“The safety of people in Lytton, Nlaka’pamux, and Northern St’at’imc Nations and all communities is the top priority, and our recommendation is that all individuals should get immunized when they are eligible,” says the statement. (Full article here.)

***

So basically the same as what we are seeing around the rest of the world when honest doctors come forward and report the truth.

The health authorities lie. No science, no statistics, just an appeal to authority. “We know what we are talking about, but this doctor does not.”

A local and independent talk show host in Canada, Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, tracked down and interviewed Dr. Hoffe. The original show is an hour long and on her Facebook Page, as well as her Bitchute Channel.

We have extracted the 30 minute interview with Dr. Hoffe, and it is on our Rumble channel, and will also be on our Bitchute channel.

Dr. Hoffe has served the members of his community for 28 years, and he had a wonderful reputation among his patients, with glowing online reviews.

It is being reported now on some social media sites that his patients are being told he is no longer available to meet with them.

*

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***

OneWorld is republishing the full text that Andrew Korybko sent to The New Indian Express’ Pushkar Banakar in response to his inquiry about Korybko’s thoughts on the newly established US-Pakistan-Afghanistan-Uzbekistan framework.

The newly established US-Pakistan-Afghanistan-Uzbekistan framework is the embodiment of Pakistan’s multi-alignment policy of balancing between Great Powers. It complements the 2016 Quadrilateral Cooperation & Coordination Mechanism (QCCM) with itself, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and China, as well as its recent outreaches to Russia.

The US wants to use the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Uzbekistan (PAKAFUZ) railway that was agreed to in February to expand its economic influence into post-withdrawal Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics (CARs), while Russia wants to use it to attain its centuries-long strategic goal of reaching the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

Meanwhile, last month’s virtual Foreign Ministers meeting between the top Chinese, Pakistani, and Afghan diplomats saw Kabul agreeing to rely more on BRI and in particular CPEC’s Gwadar.

Beijing is also naturally in support of PAKAFUZ since it essentially functions as the northern branch of CPEC (N-CPEC+).

Through these means, Pakistan is making good on its new grand strategy of geo-economics that its political, diplomatic, and military leadership jointly unveiled during March’s inaugural Islamabad Security Dialogue. Instead of pursuing zero-sum geopolitical gains, it wants to advance win-win geo-economic ones that bring together all stakeholders.

This has serious implications for India. Firstly, it shows that Pakistan’s version of geo-economically driven multi-alignment is much more successful even in its first few months than India’s geopolitically driven version has been over the past decade.

Secondly, it makes the US a stakeholder in Pakistan’s stability, which could lead to America putting pressure on India not to destabilize its rival by proxy like Islamabad accuses it of doing despite New Delhi consistently denying this.

Thirdly, the US’ regional economic focus might shift from India to Pakistan. The US and India failed to reach a comprehensive trade pact despite years of negotiations, yet now the US is signaling that it might prefer Pakistan as its base of regional economic investments instead due to PAKAFUZ’s access to the CARs.

It should be remembered that Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s summer 2019 summit with Trump saw the former US leader promise to drastically scale up bilateral economic relations. It appears as though Biden is serious about following up on this important element of his predecessor’s policy.

America is interested in repairing its relations with Pakistan because Islamabad is the key to peace in Afghanistan. It also provides access to the CARs via PAKAFUZ. Moreover, the US wants to balance Chinese investments there in order to prevent Pakistan from falling too closely into Beijing’s orbit.

By contrast, the only real interest that the US has in India is to exploit it as a proxy for “containing” China through zero-sum military means. This places India at serious risk if US-encouraged tensions with China once again soar but America abandons it as part of a “backroom deal” with Beijing.

Pakistan, meanwhile, wants the US and China to engage in a friendly form of “competitive connectivity” which will only bring tangible economic benefits to its own people without any of the risks that India’s US-backed zero-sum military competition with China entail.

Faced with this growing strategic predicament, India should seriously consider recalibrating its multi-alignment away from its former and arguably failed geopolitical basis and more towards replicating the geo-economic example set by Pakistan. The first step is to comprehensively enhance economic relations with Russia.

That’s already a plan in progress as the two cooperate on the Vladivostok-Chennai Maritime Corridor (VCMC) and North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC). India must also make progress on reaching a trade deal with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Moreover, India should give privileged incentives to Russian investors in order to diversify economic ties away from their present dependence on arms and natural resources.

At the same time, India should also more responsibly manage its relations with China by not allowing itself to continue being influenced by the US, which it certainly can’t trust any longer after America just clinched this quadrilateral economic-political pact with Pakistan. If any third party is to influence Indian-Chinese ties, it must only be their mutual trusted Russian one which solely wants peace and stability between them, not rivalry and war like the US does.

That doesn’t mean that India should move away from the US, but just that it must take the prescribed steps in order to improve its strategic negotiating leverage so as not to be exploited by America as that country’s proxy against China at the possible expense of its own national interests.

An excerpt from this text was included in The New Indian Express’ article titled “New Quad Could Impact India’s Role In Region, Says Russia-Based American Analyst”

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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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***

There are some parts of the US where municipal elected officials who ordinarily concern themselves with things like trash removal, parking regulations, and petty graft are occasionally expected to take passionate stances on foreign policy issues. Israel would be that issue in certain heavily Jewish enclaves around the New York City area, although recently those political dynamics have shifted somewhat. In select Hudson County, NJ towns like North Bergen, West New York, Guttenberg, and Union City — that foreign policy issue is Cuba. 

Example: Although he conceded he was “not an expert” and therefore not in a position to recommend any specific US policy action in response to protests currently underway in the island nation, North Bergen “Public Safety” commissioner Allen Pascual told me this week he longed for the days when the “Rat Pack” could run wild in Cuba. So that’s the kind of Wikipedia-level cultural nostalgia driving at least some portion of Cuba-related opinion among these low-level municipal officials. Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. serenading succulent young ladies amidst plumes of cigar smoke and organized crime oligopolies, or something.

Pascual had been participating in an emergency “Cuban Liberation” rally and march that kicked off in his stomping grounds of North Bergen, then proceeded south down through Guttenberg, and culminated at City Hall in West New York. I would estimate there were somewhere between two and four thousand people there — but don’t hold me to that, because attempting to guess crowd sizes always leads to trouble. In any event, the participants were substantially more rabid than I would expect to see at any “pro-Israel” rally under present circumstances. And I say “rabid” not necessarily as a pejorative — just to capture how uninhibited and enthusiastically expressive these Cuban-American rally-goers were. It’s likely a function of Cuban-Americans operating within their own relatively-more-insular political/demographic subgroup than “pro-Israel” factions.

Sometimes referred to as “Havana on the Hudson,” this area is populated by the largest enclave of Cuban-Americans outside Florida. Hudson County is also a place where you can simultaneously serve as a NJ State Senator and Mayor, which is absolutely brilliant for accumulating and entrenching political cache, as well as accumulating and entrenching one’s public pension. Brian Stack has been mayor of Union City for nearly 21 years, and a simultaneous NJ State Senator for 13. (Four years of faithful NJ Assembly service before that.)

Brian Stack (center) Nicholas Sacco (left) and Hudson County Sheriff Frank Schillari (right) all declared support for US military action against Cuba

As one of the few English-speakers addressing the rally, Stack really let loose and explicitly called for a US military invasion of Cuba. “The same as we’ve liberated other countries,” he subsequently told me. “We should’ve been in Cuba many many years ago… just like we went in and liberated Kuwait.” He continued, “Cuba, no doubt about it — this should be a democracy. And we have a great opportunity now with something that’s 90 miles off the Florida Keys, to make it a democracy.”

Asked (by me) whether recent US military inventions should inspire confidence in the success of this plan he was proposing, Stack said: “Listen, I’m not here to judge the invasions around the world.”

Fortunately for those who regard a potential US invasion of Cuba as insane, Brian Stack doesn’t have direct influence over the conduct of US foreign policy. He’s an elected official in one of the few parts of the country where there is genuinely a mass constituency for US military action against Cuba, and from the standpoint of political self-interest his rabble-rousing activities are perfectly explicable. But he does have influence over Democratic Party machine politics in New Jersey. As a resident of the area, I can attest that there are currently campaign billboards all over the place emblazoned with his photo smiling alongside Gov. Phil Murphy, with both having just prevailed in uncontested Democratic state primaries. (Although, side note: Stack is one of the many New Jersey Democratic power brokers who endorsed Chris Christie.)

And he was not a mere participant at this “Cuban Liberation” extravaganza; Stack personally organized the rally on 24 hours’ notice along with fellow Democratic mayors Nicholas Sacco, Wayne Zitt, and Gabriel Rodriguez. So this was effectively a state-run and state-endorsed event, which is a curious contrast with other forms of less “official” public protest. (Avowed state-backing was also a feature of many “BLM” rallies that took place last summer.)

Sacco is another quintessentially NJ political creature. Amazingly, he’s been mayor of North Bergen since 1991 and a State Senator since 1994, thus drawing two public salaries (“double-dipping”) for a whopping 27 years. This dual office-holding practice was legislatively banned in 2008, but Sacco was “grandfathered” in, as was Stack. That frees them both up to engage in a little military intervention advocacy on the side. “If it takes the force and strength of the United States, it should be used to free those people,” the famed double-dipper Sacco declared Tuesday.

While anything could happen, it’s doubtful that Joe Biden will accede to these demands for military intervention. But in some ways, the pro-intervention advocacy on display in New Jersey could be even more influential on a Democratic administration than the pro-intervention advocacy also rabidly underway in South Florida, where Cubans are more reliably Republican. (GOP mayor of Miami Francis Suarez just called for US airstrikes.) Hudson County, NJ on the other hand is a major Democratic stronghold, and so calls for military action emanating out of it could scramble some of the expected partisan configurations surrounding the issue.

But perhaps most importantly, Union City is the political base of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), a former Senate colleague of Biden and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He preceded Stack as mayor of Union City. While Menendez generally takes a predictably hard line on Cuba policy, just as he does on most other foreign policy issues including Israel and Iran, as yet he’s refrained from following in the footsteps of his mayoral successor Stack to endorse outright military intervention. (Although he did just proclaim this week on MSNBC, “We Have To Challenge The Regime,” whatever that means exactly.) Here is what Juan Pachon, a spokesperson for Menendez, told me:

To answer your question, Chairman Menendez was absolutely clear at a press gaggle earlier this week in saying there will NOT be military invasion or intervention in Cuba. I’ll let you quote from him but he went through the history of how even the most anti-regime and anti-communist presidents going back to Reagan had never entertained that as a real possibility. To my boss, that is exactly the type of rhetoric and theories that the regime wants to push

So, that’s the best indicator one’s likely to get that no military intervention is in the cards. In the Biden-to-Trump transition, Menendez has supplanted Marco Rubio (R-FL) as the most influential Senator on the matter vis-a-vis Executive Branch policy. Rubio, no doubt smarting from his demotion as Trump Administration pointman for fomenting regime change across Latin America — with his fevered antics having backfired spectacularly in Venezuela — now has limited sway. He’ll have to content himself with whipping up Twitter frenzies, and sporting a brand new repurposed Communist “raised fist” logo as his profile pic.

Yes, the woman holding this sign explicitly wanted “help” in the form of a US military intervention

It should not be under-stated how fervently these Cuban-American populations want concrete US military action. With the exception of one sole person, every rally attendee I spoke to was explicit that the “help” they were seeking from the US was a military intervention. I deliberately did not “cherry-pick” these answers — it was the clear sentiment of Cubans-Americans engaging in public activism right now.

No matter how alienated the US populace is purported to be with US interventionism after so many failed misadventures of late, the logic of interventionism always seems to resurface. Which makes sense, given that the US is one of the few countries with the capacity to overthrow foreign governments at will. As former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is reported to have once said: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

It’s extremely easy to posture as an “anti-interventionist” in the abstract — few would overtly brand as a committed “interventionist” these days — and then throw your skepticism out the window when it comes to specific circumstances in which you think it’d be a great idea to deploy US power to topple a foreign government.

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After attending the rally, I asked my Twitter followers if there was anyone who could provide something resembling a “balanced” take on what’s currently happening in Cuba. While I have zero doubt that there are plenty of Cubans disillusioned with the government and their general living conditions — state officials report the economy contracted 11% in 2020 — the information being fed into the US media ecosystem right now is largely filtered by émigré populations who have deep ideological, personal, and financial investment in overthrowing the government. Their hostility to the Cuban government is understandable, but also cause for some measure of journalistic skepticism as it relates to the information flooding social media and elsewhere.

Nick Ramos supplied exactly what I was asking for with this Medium article, which I highly recommend reading. We also had a livestream discussion on Rokfin, the full version which you can watch here. An excerpt is available on YouTube here.

One thing I brought up to Ramos was an impression I got attending the rally/march this week, which ironically relates to a slightly counter-intuitive notion of “American Exceptionalism.” The protests struck me as highlighting something “exceptional” about America, in the sense that decades-long preferential treatment can be given to a particular ethnic/nationality group, and then that same group has no compunction about agitating for the US government to invade their previous country. The vast majority of Cuban immigration to the US since the Cuban Revolution of 1959 has been enabled by special provisions of US federal law. As a 2016 Congressional Research Service report noted, “US immigration policy toward Cuba is the product of a unique set of circumstances and is unlike US immigration policy toward any other nation in the world.” The Cuban Adjustment Act fast-tracks Cubans present in the US to citizenship, and they are eligible to receive federal resettlement assistance. “Unlike most other applicants for adjustment to [Lawful Permanent Resident] status, Cuban nationals do not have to be sponsored by an eligible family member or employer,” the report says.

It also seems “exceptional” that Cuban-Americans who’ve been granted these special privileges can freely agitate for invasion in their native language, as was the case at the NJ rally/march, which was conducted almost exclusively in Spanish aside from a handful of gringo politicians like Brian Stack. According to another report from the Migration Policy Institute, “Cuban immigrants are much less likely to be proficient in English and speak English at home than the overall foreign-born population. In FY 2018, about 61 percent of Cubans ages 5 and over reported limited English proficiency, compared to 47 percent of the total foreign-born population.” Ordinarily you’d think US conservatives would be especially exercised about a thing like this, but they don’t seem too worried at the moment.

Image on the right: Rally-goers “urgently” call for “humanitarian intervention”

Should no invasion materialize, the protesters can at least take solace in the policy continuity between the Trump and Biden Administrations. In June, the US under Biden continued its normal posture of opposing a UN resolution calling on the US to rescind the trade embargo against Cuba, 184 to 2, with Israel being the only country that joined the US in voting against. The émigrés can also take solace in knowing that protests often occur throughout the world — including in the Caribbean — but receive comparatively negligible US media attention when longstanding US geopolitical imperatives are not implicated.

Recognizing the distortions of these dynamics doesn’t require denying that people in Cuba have legitimate grievances. Affirmatively defending the clearly decrepit Cuban system of government, with its deprivation of individual liberty, would be ridiculous. Free expression is severely stifled in Cuba, among many other iniquities that make it a vastly less desirable place to live than the US. But what Americans have direct influence over is the policies of their own government, and the US government has been embargoing Cuba for more than six decades. Certain groups are now enjoining it to launch another invasion. So that’s all the more reason to at least look askance at specially generated hashtags like #SOSCuba, because there’s a reason these messages are being transmitted in the manner they are to US audiences: to solicit US policy action.

One of the few English speakers at the NJ march/rally exhorted the crowd to “keep posting.”  OK fine, keep posting. I think a more prudent motto would be: “post, but verify.”

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For 60 years, Cuba has lived under siege from the most powerful nation on earth, denying it basics like food, medicine and building equipment – anyone who cares about economic hardship must call for it to end.

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A draft of the global framework to combat biodiversity loss was released today, and it fails to call for a halt to species’ extinctions. The framework is being negotiated by parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity — 195 countries plus the European Union — and the Convention is meant to function as the premier international agreement on biodiversity conservation. The framework has been under negotiation since 2019 and is supposed to guide the parties in sustaining a healthy planet during the next decade and on to 2050.

“We’re in the midst of a gut-wrenching biodiversity crisis and stand to lose over a million species unless we change the way we do business. Yet the framework meant to address this crisis globally doesn’t even call for stopping extinctions,” said Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This isn’t the transformative change that the scientific advisors on this treaty have called for. Human-induced loss of species needs to stop, and it needs to stop yesterday. So we can focus on species recovery.”

The so-called “first draft” that was released today, following the previous “zero draft,” requires greater ambition to protect biodiversity. Additionally, as the zero draft was being negotiated in 2020, the virus causing COVID-19 was quickly spreading globally. But despite the likely zoonotic origins of the virus and its probable ties to wildlife trade, the only outcome was a call for such trade to be “safe.” The version released today, in the wake of COVID-19’s catastrophic global consequences, is a call for trade, harvesting and use to be “safe for human health.”

“To truly minimize future pandemic risk, we need to rethink commercial use of wildlife. That means eliminating trade and exploitation that isn’t ecologically sustainable or legal, or poses a risk to human or animal health,” said Sanerib. “With a COVID-like event predicted every decade, we need decisive measures to reduce wildlife consumption. Otherwise we’ll all be reliving 2020 again and again.”

The framework includes a call to protect 30% of land and sea globally. While the United States is not a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, in early 2021 President Joe Biden signed an executive order — dubbed the 30×30 Initiative — directing the Interior Department to conserve at least 30% of America’s lands and waters by the year 2030. But the executive order allows a lower standard for what counts as conservation when compared to the framework. Only 12% of U.S. land is currently protected.

The global framework is scheduled to be adopted in October at the CBD meeting in Kunming, China. But first the parties will meet virtually in August and September to negotiate the next draft.

“All hope rests on the upcoming virtual negotiations and whether nations can collectively agree to increase ambition and address the extinction crisis head-on,” said Sanerib. “Right now the road to Kunming is blocked by a lack of ambition. But I have faith we can overcome the obstacles and set our sights on saving life on Earth.”

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Oprah vs Noam Chomsky: Isn’t there room for both in America’s progressive culture? The idea of celebrities being involved in social issues was once met with mockery.

Oprah and Kaepernick changed that. So did SLN and Chomsky.

Who prevails as our most effective changemaker remains to be seen.

Arguably, in America, most progressive paths—highways, suburban streets, lanes– over the past two generations lead back to (or through) Oprah Winfrey. So why do liberal media bypass her? Are sociologists and progressive journalists waiting for her passing to acknowledge Oprah’s unmatched, still evolving, role as a catalyst for change? Not erudite enough for highbrow ‘alternative’ media? Too ho-hum-midday-mainstream for smart American college elites who believe that nighttime analyses offer the real fix for America’s troubles?  

(Put aside international policies where, to start, both our elites and masses support any US military action to guarantee global stability.) 

On domestic affairs Oprah has a worthy place.

Regrettably, except for climate change added to our woes, we debate the same stubbornly persistent issues: health, gender equity, abuse, violence, racial and economic inequality, censorship, voting and immigrant rights. Decades-old challenges still scream for a solution. Many are the very topics that TV talk-show host Oprah Winfrey helped propel into public consciousness. She still hasn’t abandoned them.

This lady’s no gadfly. Through her multiple media platforms she’s tackling America’s endemic problems today even more vigorously and strategically.

It seems to me that progressives could strengthen their arguments, their influence too, by at least occasionally referencing Oprah’s projects, evaluating her style and examining her statements and her strategies (even with her missteps). Why ignore her? Even if unavailable for interviews, she’s on record—anywhere.

Our progressive media seem to prefer ancient, long-winded men–personalities like the inimitable Noam Chomsky. Let’s face it, the MIT- icon adds little that’s new in his dispassionate recalls of American war crimes and injustices. I wonder: are progressives so uncertain of their agenda, so embarrassed by setbacks, that they invoke Chomsky’s composed level headedness to stifle their rage and affirm some moral superiority?

If you’re giving marks for longevity and dependability, Oprah matches Chomsky. 

America’s progressive media aren’t averse to invoking celebrity witticisms to support their positions. (Trevor Noah and John Oliver are certainly deserving.) But do liberals champion satirists because ridicule decorously reinforces their own elite views?

Oprah’s approach to culture and America’s problems couldn’t be more in contrast to those luminaries–neither the satirists nor the professors. Still, a touch of emotion along with her patriotism, her verve, her capacity to change, her personal faith– not least, her public reach—surely warrant this woman a place in our liberal political dialogues. 

Oprah’s identification of social issues precedes by decades many principles and problems which progressives are focused on. One hardly needs to recall how her TV talk show led the way– tackling painful social and medical issues, drawing celebrities into social action, launching socially relevant media projects from Dr. Oz to filmmakers Lisa Ling and Ava DuVernay.

Even if liberals bypass her, Oprah forges ahead, again innovating, again tapping new sources and resources, again a film. 

With the exception of Spike Lee, Oprah has arguably done more than anyone to advance film productions re Black history and culture onto a new plane. That began 35 years ago with her roles in feature films followed by productions she executive-produced:– series like “Queen Sugar” and exposés like “When They See Us”.

Even after some flops, with each new venture, Oprah more rigorously advances her social change goals: a) identifying, nurturing and employing Black talent; b) creating and affirming a real alternative representation of African-America, a nation and a history once  patronizingly confined to the Black victim or Black noble savage. If you haven’t seen it, check out Oprah’s “Black Love” series launched in 2017 on OWN network. You may have also missed OWN’s four masterfully produced pre-2020 election town halls across six states. Its success was not star power, but brilliant management, timeliness and grace. Oprah, hosting, gives the floor to regional activists Stacey Abrams and Reverend Barber, Black women university and college leaders, city mayors and sorority presidents, members of Congress, Women’s March organizers and Color of Change advisors. Authority is subsumed by respect, by voices of mainly women representing constituents ready to meet hundreds of thousands of voters.

All that while liberal media pundits damn Trump and his crowd.

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

Barbara is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Before Henry Kissinger became a Clinton pal, liberals condemned him for saying: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” The 1973 US-backed coup and bloodbath in Chile followed. Now Uncle Sam has a problem in Nicaragua, where independent polls predict a landslide victory for Daniel Ortega’s leftist Sandinista slate in the November 7^th presidential elections.

The US government and its sycophantic media are working to prevent Ortega’s reelection. On July 12, the US slapped visa restrictions on one hundred Nicaraguan elected legislative officials, members of the judiciary, and their families for “undermining democracy.” A month earlier, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on President Ortega’s daughter, along with a military general, the head of the central bank, and an elected legislator.

These and other recent illegal US sanctions on Nicaragua are designed to promote regime change and are based on the ridiculous charge that this poor and tiny nation is a “extraordinary and unusual threat to the US national security,” when the opposite is the case.

The NICA Act of 2018, under the Trump administration, imposed sanctions, including blocking loans from international financial institutions controlled by the US. In August 2020, the Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) plan was revealed, which is a multi-faceted coup strategy by which the US contracted corporations to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. RAIN calls for a “sudden, unanticipated transition” government to forestall what they admit would otherwise be a Sandinista victory in a free election. In a seamless handoff from the Trump to the Biden administration, the pending RENACER Act would further extended “targeted sanctions.”

US intervention in Nicaragua and, indeed, in all of Latin America under the 1823 Monroe Doctrine has a long history continuing to the present. Back in 1856, US citizen William Walker tried to impose himself as head of a slave state in Nicaragua, only to be assassinated four years later. In 1912, the US began an occupation of Nicaragua, forcing the country to become a US protectorate. The US was ousted in 1933 in a war led by national hero Augusto C. Sandino, after whom the present revolutionary party was named. In the 1980s, the US government proxies, the Contras, fought the new Sandinistas after they overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship.

Problematic premises

In the past, most US progressives opposed the imperialism of their government. But more recently, as Jeremy Kuzmarov of CovertAction Magazine observed:

“United States warmakers have become so skilled at propaganda that not only can they wage a war of aggression without arousing protest; they can also compel liberals to denounce peace activists using language reminiscent of the McCarthy era.”

A recent Open Letter to the Nicaraguan Government from U.S. Solidarity Workers 1979-1990 reflects the US imperial talking points. This US open letter, dated July 1, is joined by one from Europeans, formerly active in solidarity with Nicaragua, and one from international academics, mainly in the field of Latin American studies. (Links to all three letters may be dodgy.) All three letters, likely coordinated, use similar language to make matching critiques and demands.

While other international activists from the 1980s still prioritize non-intervention and solidarity with the Sandinista government, the concerns expressed in the open letter should be respectfully evaluated. The open letter is based on the following problematic premises:

1. The open letter claims the Ortega “regime” is guilty of “crimes against humanity.”

In fact, Nicaragua is by far the most progressive country in Central America under the Sandinista government.

Unlike the Guatemalans, Hondurans, and El Salvadorians in these US client states, Nicaraguans are not fleeing to the US in search of a better life. Poverty and extreme poverty have been halved in Nicaragua, and the UN Millennium Development Goal of cutting malnutrition has been achieved. Basic healthcare and education are free, and illiteracy has been virtually eliminated, while boasting of the highest level of gender equality in the Americas. Nicaragua, which enjoys the lowest homicide rate in Central America, also has the smallest police force with the smallest budget in the region. These are not the hallmarks of a dictatorship.

2. The open letter claims the 2018 coup attempt was simply a “demonstration of self-determination.” While the open letter correctly notes that the events of 2018 reflected an element of popular discontent, it renders invisible the millions of dollars and many years of US sponsored subversion in Nicaragua.

Social media campaigns of false information orchestrated by US-sponsored groups fueled viciously violent protests. According to solidarity activist Jorge Capelán: “those who kidnapped, tortured, robbed, murdered and raped citizens here in Nicaragua in April 2018 were the coup promoters. They themselves recorded everything with their cell phones. They even set fire to murdered Sandinista comrades in the street.”

Benjamin Waddell, a signatory to the open letter, admitted “it’s becoming more and more clear that the US support has helped play a role in nurturing the current [2018] uprisings.” Dan La Botz, another Ortega-must-go partisan, provided the background: “US organizations such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and no doubt the CIA had for decades, of course, worked in Nicaragua as they do everywhere in the world.”

No substantive progressive alternative was offered by the opposition in 2018, according to William Robinson, another signatory to the open letter. Rather, 2018 was an attempt to achieve by violent means what could not be achieved democratically at the ballot box.

3. The open letter claims the Nicaraguan government “in no way represents the values, principles and goals of the Sandinista revolution.”This stance arrogates to foreigners the role of telling the Nicaraguan people how to evaluate their revolution. The electoral process in Nicaragua makes clear that the Nicaraguans think otherwise.=

After successfully overthrowing the US-backed dictator Somoza and fighting the counter-revolutionary war against the US-backed Contras, the Sandinista’s lost the 1990 election. Notably, outgoing President Ortega without hesitation obeyed the electoral mandate, the first time in Nicaragua’s history that governing power was passed peacefully to another political party. After 17 years of neoliberal austerity, Daniel Ortega won the presidential election of 2006 with a 38% plurality and went on to win in 2011 with 63% and 72.5% in 2016. Ortega’s ever increasing electoral margins suggest the majority of Nicaraguans support him as the legitimate leader of the Sandinista revolution.

Problematic proposals

Using the same loaded language as the US government, the open letter calls on the “Ortega-Murillo regime” to release political prisoners currently being held, including “pre-candidates,” members of the opposition, and “historic leaders” of the Sandinista revolution; rescind the national security law under which these individuals were arrested; and negotiate electoral reforms.

Nicaragua has passed two recent laws: the Foreign Agents Law and the Law to Defend the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination for Peace. These laws, which the open letter wants rescinded, criminalize promoting foreign interference in Nicaragua’s internal affairs, seeking foreign military intervention, organizing acts of terrorism, and promoting coercive economic measures against their country. These are activities, it should be noted, that are similarly prohibited in the US’s FARA Act, after which the Nicaraguan laws were modeled.

The recent actions of the Nicaraguan government prosecuting people who break their laws is a normal function of governance. That some of the accused perpetrators may have political aspirations does not immunize those individuals from arrest for unlawful activities.

The letter from the aforementioned academics claims that among those detained are the “most prominent potential opposition presidential candidates.” In fact, none of the 17 political parties in Nicaragua have chosen their candidates, and “most of those currently under investigation do not belong to any legally registered party.” In fact, Stephen Sefton reports from Nicaragua that “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.”

One of the most prominent of those arrested is NGO director Cristiana Chamorro, charged with money laundering for receiving millions of dollars from the USAID, other US government agencies, and allied foundations for regime-change purposes. In her defense, she incredulously claimed that the US State Department had audited her and found everything to their liking.

The “historic leaders” of the Sandinista revolution are just that; people who had broken with the revolution long ago and since 1994 had collaborated with the US-allied rightwing opposition and NGOs. More to the point, they are being charged with illegal collusion with foreign powers.

The open letter calls for “negotiating electoral reforms,” but electoral law in Nicaragua as in the US is determined by the legislative process and not by negotiations among various power blocks. Nicaragua has implemented some but not all reforms mandated by the Organization of American States. The fourth branch of government, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), oversees elections. A third of the current CSE is composed of representatives of parties other than the ruling party, even though the Sandinistas hold a supermajority in the legislature.

The right of the Nicaraguan revolution to defend itself

While acknowledging “the long and shameful history of US government intervention,” the open letter does not acknowledge the right of the Nicaraguan revolution to defend itself. On the contrary, their implied endorsement of the 2018 coup attempt is a call for regime change by non-democratic means and an implicit pass for US interference.

The open letter’s finding that “the crimes of the US government – past and present – are not the cause of, nor do they justify or excuse” the behavior of the current government in Nicaragua is a door that swings two ways. Whatever the alleged wrongdoings the Ortega government, that still does not justify the US government’s regime-change campaign. The open letter is thunderously silent on current US intervention, notably the punishing NICA and RENACER acts.

The Nicaraguan government has prioritized the needs of poor and working people and has made astounding progress on multiple fronts. That is why they are being targeted for regime change, and why the Nicaraguans have taken measures to thwart US intervention.

The Trump administration specifically targeted the so-called “Troika of Tyranny” – Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua – with repressive illegal sanctions aimed at regime change. That policy of US domination did not start with Trump, nor is it ending with the new US administration.

The imperialists are clear on who they target as their enemy; some elements on the left are less clear on who is their friend and whether Nicaragua has a right to defend itself. If the signers of the open letter believe, as they claim, “in the Nicaraguan people’s right to self-determination…of a sovereign people determining their own destiny,” then the November 2021 election should be protected, free from interference by the US, its international allies, and its funded NGOs.

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Roger D. Harris is with the human rights organization the Task Force on the Americas, founded in 1985.

Featured image is from Pressenza

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U.S. European Command (EUCOM) and officials from the Hungarian Defense Force met at the Kecskemét Air Base in Hungary on July 16 to sign an agreement allowing the U.S. assess to and use of two air bases in the country. The bases are the one the agreement was signed at and the Pápa Air Base.

Army Major General Charles Miller, EUCOM’s director of plans, policy, strategy and capabilities, was quoted by his command’s website as stating:

“These agreements allow U.S. forces to access and utilize these air bases in cooperation with the Hungarian Defence Force.” Indicating that securing the bases is not the final stage in bilateral military cooperation, he added, “This signing brings with it new opportunities for even greater collaboration and coordination with our Hungarian Allies.”

The agreement was reached under provisions of the 2019 Defense Cooperation Agreement between the U.S. and Hungary. Similar pacts have been signed with most former members of the long-defunct Warsaw Pact to provide air bases to the U.S. and NATO since 2004. A partial list of such bases will follow.

The American chargé d’dffaires in Budapest, Marc Dillard, affirmed:

“This signing demonstrates that the Defense Cooperation Agreement continues to deepen our already robust collective defense cooperation as NATO Allies and helps us prepare for the 21st century security challenges we face together.”

After Hungary joined the military alliance in 1999 the Pápa Air Base was declared a NATO reserve base. It was designated a Main Operating Base and hosted three NATO Strategic Airlift Capability aircraft from 2007 onward.

In 2020 the NATO Support and Procurement Agency completed a project to modernise components of the base. It has hosted C-17 Globemaster III long-range cargo jets as the Heavy Airlift Wing facet of the 12-nation multinational Strategic Airlift Capability, the world’s first multinational strategic airlift operation. Its partners at the time it achieved full operational capability in 2012 were NATO members Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and the U.S., as well as (now) NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partners Finland and Sweden. The base and the operation were used extensively for NATO’s war in Afghanistan.

With the acquisition of the two Hungarian bases the U.S, and NATO (they’re truly indistinguishable) have now moved into several air bases in former Warsaw Pact countries since the first round of post-Cold War NATO expansion in 1999.

They include:

• Bulgaria: Bezmer Air Base and Graf Ignatievo Air Base
• Estonia: Ämari Air Base
• Hungary: Kecskemét Air Base and Pápa Air Base
• Lithuania: Šiauliai Air Base
• Poland: Łask Air Base and Malbork Air Base
• Romania: Deveselu Air Base, Mihail Kogălniceanu International Airport and Romanian Air Force 71st Air Base at Câmpia Turzii.

The Deveselu Air Base in Romania was reopened by the U.S. and NATO and now hosts Standard Missile-3 interceptor missiles directly across the Black Sea from Russia. All have been expanding and modernized.

The air force component of NATO’s military buildup along what the military alliance terms its Eastern Flank – which is Russia’s western border – is constantly advancing. Someone in Moscow should be getting the message by now.

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Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website

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

Featured image: First Boeing C-17 Globemaster III lands at the Pápa Air Base in 2009 (Source: Anti-bellum)

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The U.S. Air Force says it is planning on sending roughly one-fifth of its combat-coded F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to the Western Pacific later this month as part of a major airpower exercise. The service says that the goal is to demonstrate its “strategic flexibility” in deploying significant numbers of combat aircraft to conduct operations from forward locations in the region. This is how it would expect to respond, at least in part, to any major contingency in this part of the world in the future, such as potential crises or conflict with China. 

Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), the Air Force’s top command in the Pacific, recently provided details about the upcoming Pacific Iron 2021 exercise, which, so far, it has only said is set to take place “in July.” Some of the participating aircraft have already touched down at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. The exercise will see various aircraft fly from Andersen, as well as the adjacent Northwest field airstrip and the island’s Won Pat International Airport, along with Tinian International Airport on the island of Tinian, which is part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Both Guam and Tinian are U.S. territories. It’s very possible that the aircraft will also make spots elsewhere in the course of this training event.

F-22 Raptors from the Hawaii Air National Guard’s 199th Fighter Squadron fly past Mount Fuji in Japan during a deployment earlier in 2021. (USAF)

Around 25 F-22s will take part in the exercise, according to an official release. These aircraft will come from the 525th Fighter Squadron, part of the 3rd Wing at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, and the 199th Fighter Squadron, an element of the Hawaii Air National Guard’s 154th Wing. A total of 10 F-15E Strike Eagles from the 389th Fighter Squadron, part of the 366th Fighter Wing at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, along with a pair of C-130J Hercules cargo aircraft from the 374th Airlift Wing at Yokota Air Base in Japan, will also be among the participants.

F-15E Strike Eagles at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam on July 14, 2021, after having arrived for Pacific Iron 2021. (USAF)

However, the F-22s, which remain some of the Air Force’s most capable fighters, are clearly the stars of the show. “We have never had this many Raptors deployed together in the Pacific Air Forces area of operations,” Air Force General Ken Wilsbach, head of PACAF, told CNN.

A contingent of 25 F-22s may not necessarily seem like a large number, but, at present, the Air Force only has around 186 of these jets. Of those, only 125 of them are assigned to combat-coded units, with the rest being set aside for various training and test and evaluation duties. Many of the jets in the latter categories have not been upgraded to the most recent block configuration, either. All told, the 25 Raptors set to head the Pacific represent around 20 percent of the combat-coded aircraft and just over 13 percent of the total fleet.

A row of F-22 Raptors, including non-combat-coded jets. (USAF)

Beyond that, the F-22s are notoriously maintenance-intensive aircraft that have only become more difficult to sustain over the years. This is especially true when it comes to maintaining their special radar-absorbent skins, which are sensitive to environmental conditions. In 2020, only around half of the entire Raptor fleet, on average, was actually capable of performing any assigned missions, according to data that Air Force Magazine obtained earlier this year. If only half of the combat-coded jets are actually available for combat missions at any one time, 25 jets would actually represent around 40 percent of the real capacity of the Air Force’s F-22 fleet.

As such, Pacific Iron 2021 is set to be a significant demonstration of the Air Force’s ability to muster up a large number of some of its most advanced stealth fighters, in addition to showing off the service’s force projection capabilities more generally. How the Raptors actually perform will be an important reflection of the real capabilities the fleet has to offer.

This could also be doubly significant now that the service is openly talking about planning for the end of the F-22’s career and the potential replacement of these jets with a new sixth-generation fighter in development as part of the larger Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, which you can read more about in detail here. Air Force officials have separately talked about the importance of NGAD program, as well as future upgrades to its fleet of F-35A Joint Strike Fighters, to winning conflicts in the Pacific region, especially any potential future altercations with China.

Pacific Iron 2021 will notably come around a month after the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sent 28 military aircraft into the southwestern corner of Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ. This was the largest number of Chinese sorties in that area since the PLA began sending planes there on a near-daily basis back in 2020 and came after authorities in Beijing had reacted angrily to criticism of Chinese policies on various issues from the G7 group of industrialized nations, which includes the United States.

28 PLA aircraft (Y-8 ASW, H-6*4, Y-8 EW, KJ-500 AEW&C*2, J-16*14 and J-11*6) entered #Taiwan’s southwest ADIZ on June. 15, 2021. Please check our official website for more information: https://t.co/JnfN8bOwgl pic.twitter.com/MBJv2jbNMZ

— 國防部 Ministry of National Defense, R.O.C. 🇹🇼 (@MoNDefense) June 15, 2021

As already noted, Pacific Iron 2021 will also be yet another demonstration of the Air Force’s ongoing development of new concepts of operations surrounding rapid deployments and distributed operations, which the service presently refers to as Agile Combat Employment (ACE). This is all heavily tied to broader efforts to be more prepared for higher-end conflicts, particularly in the Pacific, and to rely less on established bases. Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, a key strategic American military outpost in the region, would be a primary target in any large-scale fight with a near-peer adversary in the Pacific region, such as China.

This reality has already pushed the Air Force to work on expanding the available facilities at Guam’s Northwest Field, as well as on Tinian, among other locations in the Pacific, to provide alternative basing options. Earlier this year, some of the service’s F-35As, as well as F-16C/D Viper fighter jets, deployed to Northwest Field to demonstrate that airstrip’s ability to handle more robust combat aviation operations. Before recent improvements were made, it was only able to accommodate C-130-type cargo aircraft and helicopters.

Altogether, it will be very interesting to see how Pacific Iron 2021 plays out and what conclusions the Air Force might draw about its Agile Combat Employment concept, as well as about the future of its F-22s as those jets get closer to the twilight of their careers.

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Ivermectin, a drug used to treat parasitic infections in humans that are more commonly used on animals, is now trending and exploding in Asia. This is true in India as well. In Indonesia, pharmacies across Asia are reporting a boom in sales of the medication, and it has been sold out on e-commerce sites such as Bukalapak and Shopee. “People have been flocking to buy it,” said a pharmacist at Penang Island Pharmacy in the city of Medan in North Sumatra, who did not want to be named. Asians are not about to die to make Bill Gates boast, “I told you so.”

Dr. David Nabarro, Britain’s envoy to the World Health Organisation (WHO), contradicted the WHO and his own Boris Johnson. Nabarro condemned mass coronavirus lockdowns calling them the “ghastly global catastrophe,” which has caused the unprecedented crash of the world economy.

Nabarro appealed to world leaders, telling them to stop “using lockdowns as your primary control method” of the coronavirus. He correctly pointed out that the only thing lockdowns achieved was to increase poverty rather than potentially saving lives.

Nabarro had the courage to stand up against the WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, nicknamed Tedros the Terrible, who, as far back as April 2020, gave his full support for lockdowns and even warned against lifting them too soon, as reported back on April 10, 2020, in most mainstream media. In May, the WHO came out and justified the lockdowns saying the virus has jumped because of ending lockdowns too soon.

There has been an agenda here. The vaccine companies have most likely paid vast amounts of bribes to pull this off to prevent anyone from trying to treat COVID by saying everything else is dangerous. They are getting $19.50 per shot per person and have already said they will raise prices to $125 per shot next year. This is tearing the world apart and creating separatist movements between vaccinated and non-vaccinated.

United Airlines just lost my business. They created the United Sweepstakes Gives Vaccinated Customers a Shot to Win Free Flights, a Year of Travel. Do we need to start a non-vaccinated airline? No sheep allowed?

There has been a MAJOR effort to only vaccinate people and prevent anything that would actually treat the virus. If we had a real government that was truly on the side of the people, they would be investigating what is going on, drag the people out, and put them on trial for crimes against humanity.

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Undoubtedly, the Miami Cubans are happy and may have contributed to these Cuban protests. But in my view, this was an attempt – maybe the most ferocious one, in the 60+ years of Cuban revolution to “putsch” Cuba.

Why? For a number of reasons, two them:

Biden who campaigned saying he would consider the idea of renewing relations with Cuba, is under a lot of pressure from a lot of conservatives who voted for him because they hate Trump, not because they love Biden.

There will be Congressional elections next year and has an obligation towards the democrats who “elected” him. This is one way of showing that he is with the conservatives – i.e., the Miami Cubans, who voted for him.

Second, if one follows developments in Venezuela, in Caracas especially – there has been an explosion of violent gang crimes, in parallel with the Cuban protests. Fifth Columnists are well integrated in both countries.

The Biden people, or rather those behind Biden, those who direct Biden, wanted a double whammy – break the Maduro Government and take over Cuba. Especially since Trump “failed” in their eyes. With these two countries back in the US backyard, Washington thinks they are free – they have a green card – to advance in taking “back” all of Latin America. Venezuela and Cuba are indeed hindering blocks.

This will not happen.

Both countries’ leaders are well aware about what happens. Actually, President Maduro stood up and declared full solidarity with Cuba. Maduro also has the full support from Moscow and Beijing. – and of course, Cuba.

Losing this not so “soft coup” – violence and death – in both countries, may be the first big nail in Biden’s political coffin.

With Cuba’s 60-plus years of Revolution and Venezuela’s 20 years – they will not cave in to a Biden Administration, that hasn’t even managed to gather a majority of votes in the last election, but is in power because of the globalist agenda that had no space for nationalist Trump. Voter fraud is gradually emerging – first in Arizona, and we’ll see, where next. But that’s a different story.

“The Backyard” has seized being a backyard years ago, but Washington has hardly noticed, as they keep proceeding with their old, outdated “soft coup” methods, hoping these two tremendous pillars for Latin America will cave it.

Again. They will not.

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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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Assassination of Jovenal Moise and the demonstrations against the Communist Party of Cuba are being traced to the United States’ ongoing interference in the internal affairs of Caribbean states.

Haitian President Jovenal Moise was assassinated in his private residence during the early morning hours of July 7 in Port-au-Prince.

The circumstances surrounding his death continue to unfold within various news agencies and investigative efforts inside and outside of Haiti.

Many of the links to those arrested as suspects in the killing of the former president lead right back to the United States through the Pentagon and federal law-enforcement agencies. Although the administration of President Joe Biden has said that it does not have the “deployment of troops on its agenda” in regard to Haiti, they have admitted that a team of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies have been sent to Haiti. These federal agents are now inside the Caribbean country while Marines are being dispatched ostensibly to protect the U.S. embassy.

Moise had enjoyed the monetary and diplomatic support of Washington since he was elected as president under very controversial circumstances in 2016. It would take months for Moise to be seated as president during February 2017. Almost immediately mass demonstrations and strikes erupted in response to his policies which negatively impacted the working class and poor.

Yet despite his close ties with the previous administration of President Donald Trump, it was not enough to stabilize the situation politically. Eruptions of social unrest occurred from 2018 to the present. In recent months, there has been the rise of organized criminal gangs which were in support of Moise and his Tet Kale Party (Bald Headed) as they terrorized and destroyed several communities in the capital of Port-au-Prince.

The majority of the suspected assassins come from the South American state of Colombia, a longtime close ally of the U.S. The Colombian security forces have received enormous assistance from successive administrations in Washington in an effort to stave off revolutionary movements which have broad support among the population.

A number of the Colombian suspects were trained by the Pentagon. The U.S. Defense Department often provides military training to personnel from countries throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia in order to maintain influence and even dominance within the security apparatus of oppressed nations that are aligned with Washington.

Even the Voice of America, the media outlet for the State Department, wrote on July 16 that:

“Some of the Colombian nationals detained by the Haitian National police in connection with the assassination of President Jovenel Moise took part in ‘U.S. military training and education programs,’ a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed in a statement emailed to VOA.  The information came to light during a review of training databases, Lt. Col. Ken Hoffman said, without specifying when or where the training took place.  ‘Our review is ongoing, so we do not have additional details at this time,’ Hoffman said. The development was first reported by The Washington Post. The U.S. Defense Department says it trains thousands of military people from South America, Central America and the Caribbean each year.”

Three of the Haitians who have been apprehended all have U.S. citizenship. Two of them were captured alongside the people from Colombia. They reportedly worked for a military services firm which does security for governments, wealthy individuals and corporations.

Compounding these ties to the U.S., there are reports that the armed individuals who arrived at former President Moise’s private home identified themselves as agents of the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Some of the suspects have been quoted as saying they were at the location to serve a search and arrest warrant for Moise.

At least one person linked to the assassination has been identified as a “source”, meaning an informant or operative, with the DEA. Haiti for a number of years has been accused of being a conduit for drug trafficking into the U.S.

Cuba and the Ongoing Blockade Prompts Subversive Attempts by Washington

In the aftermath of the assassination of President Moise, on July 11, reports emanating from the corporate media in the U.S. claimed that thousands of people had taken to the streets in several Cuban cities to protest the lack of food, medicines and civil liberties. The focus of the demonstrations was said to have been directed against the ruling Cuban Communist Party.

Cuba First Secretary of the Communist Party outgoing and incoming

Nonetheless, there was no mention of the economic crisis engendered by the six decades-long blockade of Cuba by the U.S. which extends itself internationally. Over the last two decades, Cuba has relied on the growth in tourism and the opening up of the national economy to U.S. currency and forms of small and medium business enterprises.

Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic the entire world economic system has suffered mass unemployment, impoverishment and dislocation. Healthcare systems in the most advanced capitalist countries of the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Japan, have been overburdened with coronavirus patients.

Cuba had done well in containing the spread of the pandemic until recent months when the country began to reopen in the tourism sector. Over the last several weeks there has been an escalation in coronavirus infections just as the government is rolling out its own domestically produced vaccines. The rise in cases is not limited to Cuba. Inside the U.S., the emergence of the Delta variant and other mutations are fueling hospitalizations particularly in the southern region of the country.

Cuban solidarity groups and anti-imperialists are echoing the position of the President Miguel Diaz-Canel in saying that if the administration of President Joe Biden is so concerned about the humanitarian situation inside the socialist Caribbean state, then he should through executive order lift the restrictions placed on U.S.-Cuban relations enacted by his predecessor Donald J. Trump.

Cuba commemorates centenary of the CPC

The measures imposed by Trump limited the ability to provide remittances from Cubans living in the U.S. to their homeland. Other draconian executive orders by Trump were an attempt to undermine the path towards normalization begun by former President Barack Obama. Although Obama re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba, the blockade and sanctions will have to be eliminated by the U.S. Congress.

In an article published by the Venezuelan-based Telesur news agency, it notes:

“On Friday (July 16), Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel questioned U.S. President Joe Biden’s concern about the crisis on the Island and argued that Washington has failed to destroy the Revolution despite wasting billions of dollars in its attempts to do so. ‘If Biden had sincere humanitarian concern for the Cuban people, he could eliminate the 243 crippling sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump as a first step towards ending the economic blockade,’ Diaz-Canel stated. The coercive measures, which have contributed to Cuba’s worst economic crisis in decades, limit the travel of U.S. citizens to the Island, restrict the sending of remittances, and sanction foreign companies doing business with Cuba. Cuban officials and many analysts charge the reactionary Cuban-American community, which has a strong political influence on Florida State, for driving the U.S. policy on Cuba.”

The Biden administration immediately spoke out in support of the July 11 anti-government protests in Cuba. Such an approach merely reinforces the economic plight of the Cuban people while stoking animosity between the revolutionary government and Washington.

Role of Anti-imperialists in the U.S.

Of course, the task of those committed to liberation and world peace within the imperialist countries in the face of attacks against the oppressed nations and socialist states, is to provide support to the people. In Cuba, the gains of the socialist revolution domestically and internationally deserve the maximum solidarity of the progressive forces in the industrialized states.

In the case of Haiti, which was founded in 1804 after a revolutionary war waged by enslaved Africans which lasted for twelve years against France, England and Spain with the backing of the U.S., Washington from its inception has strangled the capacity of Haiti to develop as an independent nation. There have been numerous blockades and direct military interventions in Haiti along with neighboring Dominican Republic which shares the island of Hispaniola. France, in exchange for the diplomatic recognition of Haiti, the Caribbean state was forced to pay “indemnity” for the destruction of the sugar plantations and other properties owned by the French colonial enslavers.

Irrespective of the political character of recent Haitian administrations, anti-imperialists must defend the sovereign rights of the masses of workers, farmers, youth and all democratic forces to the right of self-determination. Haiti cannot develop in its own interests as long as the U.S. continues to interfere in its internal affairs.

Cuba casted off the yoke of U.S domination which was consolidated after the so-called Spanish-American War which took place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The revolution of 1959 became radicalized through the necessity of safeguarding the genuine independence of the island-nation. The attempted invasion at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 amid a never-ending blockade has defined relations between Washington and Havana for 62 years.

The Haitians and Cubans are not the enemies of the people within the U.S. Imperialism must not be allowed to divide the working class and oppressed of the industrialized states from their counterparts in the oppressed and socialist nations. Only the unity of the proletariat and oppressed globally can create the conditions for the building of equal relations between the peoples of the world.

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

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Outsourcing

Outsourcing is where company A pays company B to do work that could be done by company A. Internationally, this means that jobs which were done in rich nations are now done in poorer nations because wages are lower. Many goods are made in China, clothes come from Bangladesh, and call centres are in India. The typical earnings for workers in the clothing industry in Bangladesh are £75/month, about half the amount needed to live on.(1)

Sweatshops 

A sweatshop is the term used to describe companies where employees work excessively long hours for very little pay with few rights, often in extremely unpleasant or unsafe working conditions. This can include sewage on the floor, no toilet breaks, serious bullying (including physical violence), extreme temperatures, inadequate ventilation, fire hazards, unpaid overtime, arbitrary fines and poisonous materials. This can lead to poor health, extreme stress, and increased suicide. Sweatshops are particularly prevalent in the fashion industry. In one study in 2010 it was found that workers earned 10c for each $80 shirt that they sewed.(2) Big corporations and their PR departments would like you to believe that sweatshops are a thing of the past. This is not true.

The issue is debated occasionally in the media when something dramatic happens. In 2013, 1100 workers died in a garment factory known as Rana plaza in Bangladesh.(3) Cracks had appeared the day before, but workers were forced back to work. The building collapsed.

In another famous example, the tech company, Apple, used a subcontractor in China called Foxxconn where, in 2010, 18 workers committed suicide.(4) Each incident leads to promises from companies saying how hard they are working to solve these problems, and there have been some improvements in some places, but the general situation has not improved.

The Importance of Unions

These workers are often being exposed to pollution and emissions that have been deemed illegal in more advanced nations, and they get poisoned by all manner of toxic substances such as lead or mercury. If they suffer illness and injury, they can be fired and replaced. It is estimated that less than 10% of garment workers are in unions, so they have no-one to help them. People who attempt to create unions have been beaten, thrown in jail, blacklisted and even killed. The right to unionise might not seem important to richer people, but historically it has been extremely important in helping employees bargain with employers for better pay and working conditions. One of the main reasons why international companies want to outsource to poorer countries is that they know they can exploit people.

Companies Are Not Passive

Corporations claim that these are difficult problems to solve because they do not have control over what goes on in other countries. In reality the opposite is the case. The corporations demand ever-cheaper workers and weaker employment law. Companies are not just passively taking advantage of the system. They actively lobby their governments to reinforce the system, and they lobby foreign governments to crush unions. They take advantage of weak enforcement of regulations, and widespread corruption. Low cost factories (known as maquiladoras) were set up in Mexico, only to be subsequently relocated to China.(5) When China tried to raise standards, corporations closed their factories and moved production to countries with even lower standards.(6)

Big brands put pressure on factories overseas. This has become worse due to the development of what is called fast fashion,(7) which involves large numbers of new clothes, of very low quality, being introduced each week. Suppliers are expected to be able to increase production very quickly, putting pressure on staff. The prices that are paid by big Western companies can be so low that subcontractors cannot afford to comply with safety laws, so accidents and injuries are common. Many of these people are extremely productive, but the extra profits go to rich people in advanced nations.

The trend towards fast fashion has led to people buying five times as many clothes as they did 20 years ago.(8) Much of this is rapidly discarded and ends up in landfill. The clothing industry is one of the most polluting in the world.

Hiding Exploitation

Outsourcing overseas is not simply about being cheaper. It is also intended to make it more difficult to hold companies to account, because they can say that any problems are not their fault. They claim it is the fault of a subcontractor, or a subcontractor of a subcontractor, in another country. They are therefore able to say that they have no legal obligations to the workers.(9) They are deliberately secretive about the supply chains for their goods, so it can be impossible to know who is producing their raw material, such as cotton, and under what conditions. This is a deliberate strategy to hide exploitation.

The Big Picture

One argument that is put forward repeatedly in defense of low wages paid by big corporations is “What else would these people do? If sweatshops were not employing them, they would be unemployed or earning even less.” Some economists even argue that sweatshops help poor countries escape poverty. This is yet another theory that sounds good in a textbook, but is not true in practice.

We need to understand why these people are unable to find better jobs, and why children need to work, in their country. The explanation is the bigger picture described in other posts. Their governments are not doing the things that would end poverty, and developing better-paying alternatives, because they do not represent their people. They represent the rich in their own country, and Western corporations, either by choice because they will benefit, or because they have been threatened and/or bribed by the US. The focus of their economic policies is on working with rich countries and corporations to allow them to control resources and trade.

A country like Bangladesh, which has a terrible track record regarding sweatshops, provides an excellent case study. The US helped to overthrow the government in 1975 and replaced him with a military dictatorship. They pursued extreme economic policies intended to benefit rich people and exploit poor people. Two family dynasties have dominated politics in Bangladesh ever since, maintaining similar policies.(10) Much of the debate, among economists and in the media, about low wages paid by big corporations in poor countries, overlooks the powerful forces that manipulate the economic system.

Proper Laws Could Make a Difference

It is important to note that simplistic solutions are not the answer. Closing down sweatshops, and even banning child labour, in circumstances where those employees have no alternative income, has created problems on some occasions.(11) We should obviously strive to end child labour and sweatshops, but we need to ensure that governments put in place other policies to ensure that children can go to school, and to ensure that their families can meet their basic needs. Ultimately, solutions will involve changing many aspects of the system described in these posts.

For the people in poor countries, outsourcing might make sense if everyone was paid enough to live on, and they were employed in good conditions. There is no reason why international companies cannot be forced to ensure that all employees in their production chain (including subcontractors) have decent pay and conditions. This could easily be used as a route to a better standard of living for a large number of poor people.

Propaganda – The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI)

Some companies are part of a system known as the Ethical Trading Initiative. Under this system, companies are supposed to ensure higher standards of pay and working conditions for suppliers overseas. However, an investigation in 2016 found that the ETI was not very effective, and most companies involved merely see it as Public Relations to give the impression that they are better than they really are.(12)

Roger and Me – Destroying Whole Towns and Cities

For the people in rich countries, outsourcing only makes sense if we can find replacement jobs at good wages for everyone. Unfortunately, the US and British governments are not interested in this. Some of the downsides of outsourcing for rich nations were described by Michael Moore in his 1989 film, ‘Roger and Me.’(13) This looked at the sequence of events that took place in Moore’s home town of Flint, Michigan between 1978 and 1992, when General Motors (GM) closed down some of the large car plants that were the biggest employers in the town. GM relocated production to Mexico, with lower wages and no unions. Tens of thousands of Flint GM workers lost their jobs. The social safety nets and opportunities for re-training were inadequate. Those local businesses that were dependent on the earnings of the GM workers went bust. This had a ripple effect, causing more and more businesses to close, until eventually Flint had almost become a ghost town with mass unemployment. Crime skyrocketed. Flint was then described by Money magazine as the worst place to live in America. The situation in Flint did not begin to improve until 2002.

General Motors will have increased its profits by relocating, but the cost to society (impossible to measure accurately) was many times greater. This is an excellent example of how a corporation can create terrible outcomes for society when it aggressively pursues profit. This pattern has been replicated throughout industrial regions of the US, and in some areas in Britain, where industries such as shipbuilding and coalmining closed down, leaving swathes of people unemployed. The average income of US citizens has not improved for 40 years, partly because of outsourcing overseas.

Workers in Britain and the US are Still Being Exploited

Sweatshops have reappeared in the UK and US in the last few years, with clothing companies paying employees well below the minimum wage.(14)

This is part of a wider pattern where companies are finding ever-more deceptive ways to exploit people. In a recent analysis, it was found that many Deliveroo drivers were earning less than the minimum wage in Britain.(15) Deliveroo, and other companies such as Uber, were able to do this by pretending that their riders and drivers were self-employed. The UK Supreme Court has now ruled against this.(16)

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Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda, and explaining war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media. This article was first posted at medium.com/elephantsintheroom

Notes 

1) War On Want, ‘Sweatshops in Bangladesh’, at https://waronwant.org/sweatshops-bangladesh

2) Thomas J. Ryan, ‘Reebok accused of sweatshop violations in El Salvador’, SGBmedia, 17 Feb 2010, at https://sgbonline.com/reebok-accused-of-sweatshop-violations-in-el-salvador/ 

3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Dhaka_garment_factory_collapse

4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides

5) ‘The FTAA and The Scourge of Sweatshops’, at www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/ftaa/FTAAWTOSweatshops.html 

6) Paul Mason, China’s Migrant Workers, BBC Newsnight, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/video/default.stm 

www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_7310000/newsid_7315700?redirect=7315756.stm&news=1&nbram=1&bbram=1&nbwm=1&bbwm=1

7) Josephine Moulds, ‘Child labour in the fashion supply chain’, Unicef, at https://labs.theguardian.com/unicef-child-labour/

8) Andrew Morgan, ‘The True Cost: Who pays the real price for your clothes’, 2015, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-0zHqYGnlo

9) Intan Suwundi, ‘Outsourcing exploitation: global labor-value chains’, openDemocracy, 20 Aug 2019, at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/outsourcing-exploitation-global-labor-value-chains/ 

10) Michael Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty, pp.159-166

11) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweatshop

12) Tim Conner, Annie Delaney, Sarah Rennie, ‘The Ethical Trading Initiative: Negotiated Solutions to human rights violations in global supply chains?’, Corporate Accountability Research, 2016, at https://corporateaccountabilityresearch.net/njm-report-xviii-eti 

13) Michael Moore, ‘Roger and Me’, 1989 documentary, discussed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_%26_Me

14) Natalie Kitroeff, ‘Fashion Nova’s Secret:Underpaid Workers in Los Angeles Factories’, New York Times, 16 Dec 2019, at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/16/business/fashion-nova-underpaid-workers.html?curator=FashionREDEF 

Renuka Odedra, ‘I work for half the minimum wage in a British sweatshop’, Vice, 4 Aug 2020, at https://www.vice.com/en/article/akzadz/i-work-for-half-the-minimum-wage-in-a-british-sweatshop 

15) Emiliano Melline, Charles Boutard and Gareth Davies, ‘Deliveroo riders can earn as little as £2 an hour during shifts, as boss stands to make £500 million’, Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 25 March 2021, at https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2021-03-25/deliveroo-riders-earning-as-little-as-2-pounds 

Natalie Kitroeff and Victoria Kim, ‘Behind a $13 shirt, a $6 an hour worker’, LA Times, 31 Aug 2017, at https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-forever-21-factory-workers/ 

16) Caroline Davies, ‘Uber ‘willing to change’ as drivers get minimum wage, holiday pay and pensions’, BBC, 17 March 2021, at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56412397

The U.S. CDC released more data today in their Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a U.S. Government funded database, and now admit that they have received reports of nearly 12,000 deaths during a 7-month period since the COVID-19 shots were given emergency use authorization by the FDA last December.

This includes 997 deaths among unborn children, which is separate from the 10,991 deaths recorded where the “patient” (the one getting the shot) died.

There are now 551,172 adverse reactions recorded out of 463,457 cases, including 9,274 permanent disabilities, 59,403 emergency room visits, 30,781 hospitalizations, and 8,831 life threatening injuries.

You will not find a single corporate media outlet reporting these government statistics, as this has to be the MOST CENSORED information in the United States.

Not only will you NOT find this information reported in the corporate media, you will find “fact checking” articles trying to debunk these statistics, by stating that the presence of these reports does not “prove causation.”

To put this in perspective, however, these recorded deaths during the last 7 months are now almost twice as many deaths as have been recorded by the CDC following vaccinations since they started recording such statistics back in 1990.

The Medalerts.org interface for the VAERS government database allows one to search all the way back to 1901, and from January 1, 1901 through November 30, 2020, which is the last month before the COVID-19 shots were given emergency use authorization, there are a total of 6,255 deaths recorded following ALL vaccines.

And what is the U.S. Government’s position on these 12,000 deaths and half million injuries recorded from those who chose to receive one of these experimental injections during the last 7 months?

Go door-to-door and try to convince even more people to get them, as the pharmaceutical companies producing these shots now expand their trials to include young children and pregnant women.

If you are pregnant or have children, you do not need to wait for the results of these trials. There is plenty of data here to show how deadly these shots are.

Brushing off these statistics, which represent only a fraction of what is actually happening in the public since so few health professionals report these adverse reactions to VAERS in the first place, is most certainly a criminal act leading to genocide.

This is a non-partisan issue as not a single U.S. Governor from either a Blue or Red state has taken action to stop these injections in pregnant women or children. They are ALL accomplices to mass murder, and should be arrested and tried for these crimes.

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As the First World War was erupting from late summer 1914, the great majority of political leaders believed it would be of short duration.

Only the rare far-sighted individual knew what was coming, such as Herbert Kitchener, Britain’s Secretary of War. At one of the first British Cabinet conferences at the conflict’s outset, Kitchener predicted the fighting would rumble on for three years, and that Britain would eventually be required to deploy its full resources (1). His estimation of a three-year war was shy of just one year.

Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, recalled that Kitchener’s prediction had “seemed to most of us unlikely, if not incredible” (2). On 8 August 1914 Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, estimated that the war would last for nine months, which was longer than many thought.

Kitchener’s colleagues failed to realise, such was mankind’s advancements in technology by the early 20th century – about 150 years after the Industrial Revolution had begun in Britain around 1760 – that a war between the great powers would most likely be lengthy, and a slaughter of unprecedented proportions could only ensue. After the bloodletting finally stopped on 11 November 1918, realistic analysts like Vladimir Lenin stated that the waging of war was “a survival from the bourgeois world”; while the German commander Hans von Seeckt said “war was no longer an intelligent way to conduct a nation’s policy”. (3)

The rise to power in Italy and Germany of fervent warmongers, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, was a near guarantee that another large-scale conflict was in the offing.

Both Mussolini and Hitler’s taking of power, in 1922 and 1933 respectively, was assisted massively by the social upheaval and destabilisation induced as a result of World War I.

Neville Chamberlain, Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini Meet in 1938

The weak-willed response of the western democracies to Nazi enlargement from the mid-1930s, particularly the timid French reaction, emboldened Hitler on the path to war. British professor Evan Mawdsley, who specialises in Russian history, wrote of the Third Reich’s position by 1941 that “invading Russia was not the fatal mistake of Nazi Germany. After all, what was Hitler’s alternative? Not to invade Russia? Inaction would have allowed Germany’s enemies to become stronger, and would have left Germany economically dependent on Russia. The lethal mistake had been made earlier, when Hitler’s adventures in Czechoslovakia and Poland led Germany into a general war”. (4)

The fighting initially went as well as the Wehrmacht could have hoped for; they routed Poland in September 1939 and then scored further routine victories in Scandinavia and across western Europe, during the spring and summer of 1940. The principal opposing force, the French Army, had been decaying ever since 1917. That year mutinies spread to no less than 54 French divisions by 9 June 1917. Even in those formations where no mutinies occurred, over 50% of French soldiers returning from leave reported back drunk (5). These amazing occurrences were hushed up as best they could by the French military command, and the silence needlessly continued long afterwards.

Canadian historian Donald J. Goodspeed explained,

“Shame and pride are bad counselors, and the causes of the catastrophe in French morale that occurred in 1917 were never brought out into full daylight, where they could have been analysed and perhaps cured. That no real cure was effected, the debacle of 1940 conclusively proved”. (6)

The Nazis now turned their attention to the main target of their imperialist foreign policy: the Soviet Union, which Hitler had envisaged conquering for many years. Hitler was given encouragement by the Soviet Army’s underwhelming performance, in the 1939-1940 Winter War against Finland, with its population of around 4 million.

Yet as the Finns’ leading commander Gustaf Mannerheim fairly concluded, the Soviets learnt lessons from their opening military shortcomings on Finnish soil, and their performance “slowly improved” as the weeks elapsed (7). The gradual uptake in Russia’s military display here was unknown to the few German military observers, who had accompanied the Red Army on their Finnish incursion. The Germans were left unimpressed by the first Soviet raids, before departing homeward early.

The Wehrmacht meanwhile enjoyed more swift triumphs, over Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941, which only emboldened Hitler further. The German conquest of Yugoslavia and Greece compelled Hitler to postpone his invasion of the USSR by 38 days. This delay is often purported to be a crucial reason, in the Nazis’ failure to capture Moscow and overthrow the Soviet Union.

American military historian Samuel W. Mitcham, who focuses largely on the Nazi regime, revealed otherwise as “the spring rains in eastern Poland and the western sections of European Russia came late in 1941, and were much heavier than usual. Many of the Polish-Russian river valleys (including the Bug) were still flooded as late as June 1; therefore, the invasion of the Soviet Union could not have begun until after that”. (8)

The ground in the western USSR had dried out by 22 June 1941. It was ideal for the panzers, half-tracks, and so on to move with ease. In addition, for weeks Joseph Stalin had refused to believe the swell of intelligence accounts he received in person from his own agencies, and from abroad, warning of a coming German attack.

Lt. Col. Goodspeed wrote,

“The reports from Soviet intelligence were the most plausible, accurate and detailed of all; and they displayed a remarkable convergence, which should have augmented their credibility. Victor Sukolov, the head of the Rote Kopelle [Red Orchestra] in Brussels, Rudolph Rössler in Switzerland, Leopold Trepper in Paris, and Dr. Richard Sorge in Tokyo all informed Stalin of Barbarossa”. (9)

The Kremlin was clearly not expecting the German invasion to fall in the summer of 1941. Marshal Nikolay Voronov, a top level Russian commander in charge of the Red Army’s artillery forces, and a future Hero of the Soviet Union, remembered on the eve of Hitler’s attack, “I did not know in that time whether we had any kind of operative-strategic plan, in case of war. I only knew that the plan for artillery and combat artillery tactics had not yet been approved, although the first draft had been worked out in 1938”. (10)

Further evidence of the lack of Russian preparedness was seen when, in the opening phase of the invasion, large numbers of Soviet airplanes were destroyed by the Germans, much of them on the ground. Air units of the Soviet Western Military District lost 740 of its 1,540 aircraft (a 48% loss) on the first day alone of the German attack (11); its local commander, General Ivan Kopets, viewed the destruction with despair and shot himself on 23 June 1941.

The ruin of the Soviet Air Force was even worse in the Baltic Military District. During the first three days of Operation Barbarossa, 920 Soviet aircraft out of a total of 1,080 were destroyed in the Baltic region, an 85% loss (12). Furthermore, many undamaged and repairable Russian planes had to be abandoned, as the Germans and their Axis allies (mainly Romanians and Finns at first) swarmed over Soviet terrain. By the first week of July 1941, the Soviets had lost almost 4,000 aircraft, while the Luftwaffe was shorn of just 550 of its planes at that point. (13)

Stalin had been awoken by his security chief, Nikolai Vlasik, in the early hours of 22 June 1941, and he was told of heavy German shelling along the Nazi-Soviet frontier. Stalin at first refused to believe that the worst had occurred and he said, “Hitler surely doesn’t know about it” (14). Later in the morning of 22 June, Stalin ordered the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov to seek out the German ambassador to the USSR, Friedrich von Schulenburg. The latter confirmed Nazi Germany’s declaration of war on the Soviet Union.

A dismayed Molotov (image left) reported back to Stalin,

“The German government has declared war on us”. Robert Service, the British historian of Soviet history, noted that upon hearing this, “Stalin slumped in his chair and an unbearable silence followed”. When General Georgy Zhukov then suggested they put in place measures, to hold up the German advance, Service wrote “Stalin continued to stipulate that Soviet ground forces should not infringe German territorial integrity”. (15)

Contrary to what is commonly claimed, on learning that the Germans had certainly attacked with Hitler’s agreement, Stalin did not suffer a breakdown and disappear. On 23 June 1941 for example, as Service wrote in his biography of the Soviet ruler, “Stalin worked without rest in his Kremlin office. For 15 hours at a stretch from 3.20 am, he consulted with the members of the Supreme Command” (16). As the hours went by Service writes that Stalin “called generals to his office, made his enquiries about the situation to the west of Moscow, and gave his instructions. About his supremacy there was no doubt”.

Only from the early morning of 29 June 1941 did Stalin suffer a relapse, and retire to his nearby dacha in a deeply depressed condition. This was quite probably a delayed reaction brought on by his difficult visit, on 27 June, to the Soviet Ministry of Defence. When Generals Zhukov and Semyon Timoshenko showed Stalin, on operational maps, the astonishing advancements made by the German Army, Service wrote that Stalin “was shocked by the extent of the disaster for the Red Army”. (17)

General Zhukov (right)

By 27 June, units from German Army Group Centre had already reached Minsk, the capital of Soviet Belorussia, and less than 450 miles west of Moscow. Shaken and disturbed by this Stalin reportedly lamented, “Lenin founded our state and we’ve f**ked it up”. (18)

After Hitler had ordered the attack against Russia on 22 June, the authorities in Britain and America forecast another brisk German victory. Their views were influenced by the apparent invincibility of the Wehrmacht, their dislike of Bolshevism, and also Stalin’s recent purge of the Red Army. Outside observers mistakenly believed the purge had decimated Soviet fighting capacity. Mawdsley in his extensive study of the Nazi-Soviet war wrote, “Many able middle-level commanders survived the purges” while the “commanders and commissars who were shot made up a minority”. (19)

A major offensive in the modern era, perhaps in any age, constitutes a huge gamble on the part of the invader, brutal as these attacks usually are, and the Nazi invasion was the most vicious of all. Various factors can combine to result in its failure: strength of the invasion force, strategic errors, quality of the terrain, underestimation of the enemy, the weather, etc. These elements are magnified when attacking the world’s largest country (Russia), as Napoleon had discovered and soon Hitler too.

Nevertheless, there are a couple of overwhelming reasons why the German attack would fail. Firstly, Hitler did not place the German nation on a Total War footing, until February 1943, much too late. The Nazi economy in the early 1940s produced an “extraordinary degree of inefficiency and wastefulness”, the English historian Richard Overy discerned (20). It resulted in labour shortages, fewer German weapons, aircraft and panzers, and less soldiers, while German women for the most part remained at home, rather than working in the armament factories.

After the defeat of France, a full mobilisation of German manpower would have produced a Wehrmacht attacking force of about 6 million men in June 1941 (21). This is double the size of the 3 million German soldiers which invaded Russia that month. Taking into account strategic mistakes committed and heroic Russian resistance, a German invasion with 6 million troops would surely have been too much for the Soviets to contend with, and it was possible to achieve.

Albert Speer, German Minister of Armaments and Munitions from 1942-1945, wrote on 29 March 1947,

“In the middle of 1941, Hitler could easily have had an army equipped twice as powerfully as it was… We could even have mobilised approximately 3 million more men of the younger age-groups before 1942, without losses in production… 3 million additional soldiers would have added up to many divisions. These, moreover, could have been excellently equipped as a result of the increased production”. (22)

Another monumental error, on the part of the German high command and Hitler, was the strategic design for Operation Barbarossa. This consisted of splitting their forces into three large Army Groups, and ordering them to capture three different objectives simultaneously (Leningrad, Moscow and the Ukraine); rather than directing their resources towards easily the most important goal – Moscow, the communications stronghold and heartbeat of Soviet Russia, which will be discussed further here.

Lt. Col. Goodspeed, a skilled military strategist, wrote that,

“Although in operations and tactics the German Army had proved itself far and away superior to the Red Army, the same could not be said of German strategy. The fault was so simple and obvious that a child might have foreseen it. The German high command had attempted too many things at the same time”. (23)

The German attack was launched across almost the entire breadth of the western USSR. Its Schwerpunkt, that is the heavy point of the German blow, fell north of the famous Pripet Marshes in Belorussia. However, the Germans and their Axis allies were ordered to attack everywhere at once. The strategic planning for Barbarossa went beyond even the Wehrmacht’s military capabilities; it was breathtaking in its boldness, irresponsible and grotesque.

Goodspeed summarised,

“But Hitler wanted too much and, as a consequence, got nothing. This same fundamental error was repeated again and again. It recurs like a leitmotif in the Führer’s strategic thought. When the advance against Moscow might have been successfully resumed in August, and previous mistakes rectified, Hitler turned his thrust south into the Ukraine and north against Leningrad. Again, two objectives and both of them the wrong ones. When Leningrad might have been taken in September, Hitler diverted forces back from Army Group North to Moscow, and thereby captured neither Leningrad nor Moscow”. (24)

This viewpoint is supported by Mawdsley who pinpointed the “mistake that Hitler and his high command made in 1941” which was “to attack everywhere” (25). Hitler did not designate primary importance to Moscow, until it was weeks too late. The Russian capital held critical significance as the centre of Soviet communications, which was recognised by military leaders like Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, the commander of German Army Group Centre, which was supposed to capture Moscow (26). Virtually all roads and railways led to the capital, like spokes into the hub of a wheel.

This was not the case when Napoleon’s forces had occupied Moscow on 14 September 1812. Moscow at that time did not hold the same status, by comparison to its importance in the 20th century, when armies had become reliant on railways and motorised transport for supplies. The first railway line in Russia was built in 1837, a quarter of a century after Napoleon’s invasion.

Were Moscow to be captured in the autumn of 1941, the Russians would have had tremendous difficulty supplying and reinforcing their northern and southern fronts (27). This includes the Leningrad and Ukrainian sectors. The rail system of the western USSR would have been shattered, inflicting a hammer blow on the Soviet Army.

Goodspeed wrote that from Barbarossa’s outset,

“Quite conceivably, a single great thrust along the Warsaw-Smolensk-Moscow axis might have secured the Russian capital for the Germans by the end of August. Army Groups North and South could have acted as flank guards for such a thrust, and once the Russian centre had been demolished and the communications hub of Moscow taken, the Soviet northern and southern fronts would have been isolated from one another. Then a drive down the Volga in September might well have achieved a second victory, greater even than the Battle of Kiev. This done, Leningrad and the northern front could have been dealt with at leisure, and by another overwhelming concentration of force”. (28)

One major thrust towards Moscow would, also, have taken the ferocious Russian weather out of the equation. The autumn rains and snow arrived in force from early October 1941, weeks after Moscow could have been taken. As events panned out, such weather seriously slowed the German advance.

The political ramifications of Moscow’s capitulation would have been considerable too. Stalin and his entourage were headquartered there. What would Stalin have done had Moscow fallen to the Germans in August or September 1941? He may have decided to stay and thereby seal his fate, or he could have chosen to relocate to Asiatic Russia, where it would have been arduous to hold together a government.

Most importantly of all, as Germany’s generals were aware, the bulk of the Red Army was centred in front of Moscow for the defence of the capital. If these Russian divisions were to be surrounded in a vast pincers movement and forced to surrender, the war would have been practically over. (29)

Two months into the invasion, on 21 August 1941 Hitler fatefully intervened in the direction of the war, believing he would be proved right and the German generals wrong – as had been repeatedly the case on political matters. Hitler compounded Barbarossa’s early strategic mistakes by ordering on this date: “The most important objective to be taken before the coming of the winter is NOT the capture of Moscow, but the capture of the Crimea and of the industrial and coal-mining area of the Donets, and the cutting off of Russian oil supplies from the Caucasus; and to the north the investment of Leningrad and the linking up with the Finns”. (30)

Hitler’s Chief of Operations, General Alfred Jodl, defended this decision by claiming that Hitler wished to avoid the blunders of Napoleon (31). As mentioned earlier, Moscow was of much greater importance in the year 1941 as opposed to 1812. Hitler was greedy and saw too many things at once, rather than focusing on a single goal at a time (similar strategic errors were committed in July 1942, when Hitler split up his forces to capture two objectives simultaneously, Stalingrad and the Caucasus).

Hitler’s wish, to strike everywhere, could have been influenced too because of his desire to spread as much death and destruction to the Soviet Union as possible, which he believed was the homeland of “Jewish Bolshevism”.

Upon hearing the new orders of 21 August 1941, two days later General Heinz Guderian travelled west to Hitler’s headquarters, situated in the dense forests near Rastenburg, East Prussia. Guderian, commanding the 2nd Panzer Group, informed Hitler that the taking of Moscow would paralyse the Soviet transportation and communication networks; the general stressed the political significance of Moscow’s demise, and the huge lift it would provide to German morale. (32)

Moreover, Guderian insisted that the fall of the capital would make it easier to conquer other parts of the USSR, such as the Ukraine. Yet Hitler’s mind was firmly set and he told Guderian that his generals “know nothing of the economic aspects of war”. The orders were left unchanged.

Goodspeed observed,

“Thus, quietly, in a headquarters far from the sound of guns, Germany lost the war. The Führer directive of August 21, 1941, marked a great turning point in modern history. Many horrors were still to come, and mankind has by no means moved out from the darkness of these times, but at least the world was to be spared a Nazi victory”. (33)

General Franz Halder, Chief of Staff of the German Army High Command, stated that Hitler’s above directive was “decisive to the outcome of this campaign”. (34)

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 Peter Simkins, “Kitchener, Horatio Herbert Kitchener Earl”, 1914-1918-online, 29 March 2018

2 Paul Addison, Churchill on the Home Front, 1900-1955 (Faber and Faber; Main edition, 11 June 2013) Chapter 4, Two Faces of a Home Secretary, 1910-1911

3 Donald J. Goodspeed, The Conspirators: A Study of the Coup d’Etat (Macmillan, 1 January 1962), Intro., pp. x-xi

4 Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 (Hodder Arnold, 23 Feb. 2007) pp. 7-8

5 Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 2nd edition, 3 April 1985) p. 235

6 Ibid.

7 Oliver Warner, Marshal Mannerheim & The Finns (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1st Edition, 1 January 1967) p. 169

8 Samuel W. Mitcham, The Rise of the Wehrmacht: The German Armed Forces and World War II (Praeger Publishers Inc., 30 June 2008) p. 402

9 Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 392

10 Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad (Da Capo Press, 30 Sep. 1985) p. 78

11 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 58

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., p. 59

14 Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Pan; Reprints edition, 16 Apr. 2010) p. 410

15 Ibid., p. 411

16 Ibid., p. 413

17 Ibid., p. 414

18 Shane Kenny, “The Man Who Really Defeated Hitler”, Irish Times, 30 April 2005

19 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 21

20 Richard Overy, Goering: The Iron Man (Bloomsbury Academic, 2nd edition, 1 Oct. 2020) p. 169

21 Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries (Fontana, London, 1977) p. 62

22 Ibid., pp. 62-63

23 Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 403

24 Ibid., p. 404

25 Mawdsley, Thunder In The East, p. 128

26 Antony Beevor, The Second World War (Phoenix Press, 2013) p. 201

27 Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 395

28 Ibid., pp. 403-404

29 Ibid., p. 396

30 Ibid.

31 Beevor, The Second World War, p. 201

32 Paul Schultz, The Führer Virus: A Tale of Espionage (Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency, LLC, 19 Nov. 2008) p. 313

33 Goodspeed, The German Wars, pp. 396-397

34 Andrew Roberts, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (Allen Lane, 22 July 2009) Chapter 5, June-December 1941

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The EU Commission has rejected criticism of its report on plants and New GE (New Genetic Engineering, genome editing). In a letter to Testbiotech, the Commission stated that there were no new risks associated with plants derived from genetically engineered plants compared to conventionally bred plants, as long as no transgenes were inserted. The Commission is directly repeating claims made by industry and affiliated experts that are contrary to existing scientific evidence. Testbiotech is therefore warning against the spread of misinformation and disregarding of science.

The EU Commission refers to two methods of genetic engineering: these are targeted mutagenesis (New GE), which uses tools such as CRISPR/Cas, and cisgenesis, which involves the use of genetic engineering to transfer genes within the same or closely related species. In its letter, the Commission states: “Finally, based on EFSA scientific opinions and a significant part of scientific bodies, the study finds that plants obtained by targeted mutagenesis and cisgenesis do not pose new risks compared to conventionally bred plants.”

The statement shows that the Commission is in effect ignoring all the scientific evidence that New GE is indeed associated with new and specific risks. For example, experts from environmental authorities in Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland and Switzerland recently published a joint scientific paper showing that all plants derived from New GE should be subjected to mandatory risk assessment that considers intended and unintended effects.

The reason: Tools such as CRISPR/Cas make the genome available for changes to larger extent compared to conventional breeding. They enable genetic changes which would otherwise be unlikely to occur. In many cases, the resulting intended and unintended effects as well as risks can be clearly distinguished from those associated with conventionally bred plants.

The Commission refers in its letter to European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) opinions. However, more detailed analysis shows that the claim made by the Commission is not actually supported by the EFSA. First of all, EFSA never had a mandate to comprehensively examine the risks arising from New GE techniques. Secondly, in one of its reports on New GE, EFSA emphasises that the genetic changes arising from targeted mutagenesis can go far beyond those of any genetically engineered plants submitted for risk assessment so far.

Testbiotech has criticised the Commission for incorporating strongly biased terminology and an industry-led perspective into its report on New GE, which are clearly not sufficiently based on the science.

This all creates the impression that the Commission is actively supporting the extreme demands of industry to deregulate New GE plants. However, according to a ruling of the EU Court of Justice, these plants must be subjected to a mandatory approval process since they carry risks for health and the environment.

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There are no fact-checkers for victory laps. Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo summarized his experience with the Covid-19 crisis: “Speaking for myself, it was a tremendous personal benefit.” Cuomo made that declaration in a speech concluding his one-year chairmanship of the National Governors Association. Because Cuomo’s spiel sought to rewrite history to exonerate politicians who ravaged Americans’ rights and liberties, it requires a rebuttal. 

Cuomo declared that “we maximized the moment as governors. Governors have a new credibility. Governors have a new status.” Cuomo epitomized the rush to “absolute power” that occurred in governor’s mansions across the nation. After he fueled pandemic fears, the New York Times proclaimed, “Andrew Cuomo Is the Control Freak We Need Right Now.” A New Yorker profile, titled “Andrew Cuomo, King of New York,” explained that Cuomo and his aides saw the battle over Covid policy as “between people who believe government can be a force for good and those who think otherwise.” Cuomo denounced anyone who disobeyed his edicts, including condemning sheriffs as “dictators” for refusing to enforce his mask mandate inside people’s homes.

Cuomo justified placing almost 20 million people under house arrest: “If everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.” Though his repressive policies failed to prevent New York from having among the nation’s highest Covid death rates, he became a superhero thanks largely to media scoring that ignored almost all of the harms he inflicted. Cuomo won an Emmy Award for his “masterful use of television” during the pandemic. Media valorization helped make Cuomo’s self-tribute book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, a bestseller.

Cuomo had plenty of power-mad accomplices in the governors’ association.  Oregon Governor Kate Brown banned residents from leaving their homes except for essential work, buying food, and other narrow exemptions and also banned all recreational travel. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer imposed some of the most severe restrictions, prohibiting anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti even banned people from walking or bicycling outside. The CDC eventually admitted that there was almost no risk of Covid contagion from outdoors activity not amidst a throng of people. But that did not stop politicians from claiming that “science and data” justified locking people in their homes.

Some governors have acted as if their shutdown orders gave them unlimited sway to decree when normal life could resume. California Gov. Gavin Newsom decreed that Covid restrictions would be perpetuated in California counties based on voter turnout, alcohol availability, and other non-health factors. California assemblyman Kevin Kiley groused, “An entire county can be kept shut down because certain areas are judged to be lacking in ‘equity,’ even if the whole county has relatively few cases of Covid.” The end of Covid restrictions turned into hostage release negotiations with domineering rulers clinging to all their new prerogatives.

Cuomo was proud that, when he visits a school, he is no longer asked “‘What does a governor do?” because “people know what governors do and how important governors are.” Governors can wreck kids’ futures by shutting down schools and placing children under indefinite home detention, costing millions of children almost an entire year of learning. In some areas, private schools remained open and took precautions that kept children safe in the classroom. As Washington Examiner editor Tim Carney noted, students in Catholic schools in Montgomery County, Maryland continued attending school and were kept safer than public school students: “Kids learning remotely got Covid at 3 times the rate as kids learning in person.” Unreliable “distance learning” produced a more than 500 percent increase in the number of black and Hispanic students failing classes in Montgomery County government schools.

A Journal of the American Medical Association analysis concluded that shutting down the schools would reduce the current crop of students’ collective years of life by more than five million, based on “lower income, reduced educational attainment, and worse health outcomes.” School shutdowns blighted the lives of millions of children in part because the Centers for Disease Control proclaimed that six feet of “social distancing” was necessary to avoid contagion – an arbitrary standard pulled out of thin air that was denounced by former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb.

The lockdowns that governors imposed also pointlessly ravaged many Americans’ mental health. The Centers for Disease Control last month reported a 51% increase in emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts by teenage girls in early 2021. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found a 300% increase in the percentage of adults reporting symptoms of anxiety disorder and/or depressive disorder (41% of adults in January 2021). The CDC also reported a record number of drug overdose deaths last year, due in part to the lockdowns and other government-imposed disruptions.

Cuomo boasted that the Covid-19 responses “were probably the most consequential decisions that governors had made in generations. They were literally about life and death. You make the wrong decision, people could die.” Thousands of New Yorkers died because of Cuomo’s mistakes and cover-ups. New York state initially reported barely half of the total of more than 12,000 New York nursing home patients who died of Covid – one out of eight nursing home residents in the state that occurred after Cuomo ordered nursing homes to admit Covid patients. Early in the pandemic, Cuomo pushed to include a legislative provision written by the Greater New York Hospital Association to give a waiver of liability to nursing homes and hospitals whose patients died of Covid. A report earlier this year by the New York Attorney General warned, “The immunity laws could be wrongly used to protect any individual or entity from liability, even if those decisions were not made in good faith or motivated by financial incentives.” As the Guardian noted, “Cuomo’s political machine received more than $2 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association, its executives and its lobbying firms.”

Any politician who recited the magic words “science and data” became entitled to outlaw any activity he chose. Cuomo and other governors acted as if they had discovered a “good intentions” exemption to all limits on their power. Federal judge William Stickman IV condemned Pennsylvania’s Covid restrictions: “Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.” But Cuomo and other governors presumed that proclaiming emergencies nullified the constitutional rights of any citizen under their sway. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Cuomo’s restrictions on limited religious gatherings because they were “far more restrictive than any Covid-related regulations that have previously come before the Court… and far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus.”

Cuomo’s spiel to the governors included Washington’s most revered banality: “We spoke truth to power.” But Cuomo’s own appointees suppressed the data on nursing home deaths while he was negotiating a $5 million advance for his book on pandemic leadership lessons. Last August, the Justice Department announced an investigation into state nursing home policies that boosted Covid death tolls in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Cuomo is probably confident that Biden’s Justice Department will throttle any such investigation that could tarnish Democratic governors. But will other investigations or Freedom of Information Act disclosures eventually obliterate the bragging rights of the Covid lockdowners?

Governors’ response to Covid was supposedly a glorious triumph because not every nursing home patient died, not every small business was bankrupted, and not every teenager attempted suicide from isolation and despair. Despite the severe repression of everyday life, more than 620,000 Americans reportedly died of Covid and more than 114 million were infected. According to the CDC more than ten million jobs were lost thanks to lockdowns, a major reason why life expectancy in the United States last year had its sharpest plunge since World War Two. CNN reported last month that “New York’s economy is America’s worst,” with economic activity at only 83% of pre-pandemic levels.

In reality, Cuomo’s speech relied on what Hegel called “the truth which lies in power.” As long as politicians are exalted, the actual details of their decrees are irrelevant: they have been coronated as saviors. Cuomo assured his fellow Covid-profiteering governors that “this will happen again.” This is why Americans must recognize the catastrophic failure of political iron fists during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan, Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader’s Digest, and many other publications. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a frequent contributor to The Hill, and a contributing editor for American Conservative

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The United States government says it is going to help Central America fight corruption, combat the “root causes” of migration in Mexico and Central America and help the Cuban people with freedom too.

But the US’s domestic and foreign track record demonstrates that it isn’t qualified to teach anyone about democracy, combating poverty, ending corruption, or anything related to human rights. Instead, its recent discourse regarding Latin American countries is aimed at dressing itself — the bully — as the saviour.

By manufacturing problems (i.e. by directly causing hunger and medicine shortages), as well as by magnifying or distorting existing problems and combining those with real hardships, the US has been framing its intervention and dominance in certain countries as help that no one can reasonably oppose. The help discourse makes it hard for many people to perceive the US’s real agenda and political interests, and it makes it very easy for the mainstream media to cover up the US’s desire to increase it’s exploitation of Latin America.

In US “help speak”, financial support for anti-government (read pro-US agenda) groups is spun as aid, particularly through USAID. Bringing a pro-US leader to power is framed as toppling a cruel dictator. Building towns where US corporations and manufacturing plants can do whatever they want — such as the Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs) in Honduras or industrial parks in Mexico. Imposing privatisation policies on poor countries is called “freedom”, “democracy”, “investment” or “economic support”.

While the US’s blockade of Cuba for the past six decades has caused more than US$144 billion in losses to the country’s economy, US President Joe Biden sided with protests there, and called for “relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic … and economic suffering”. The blockade is what is causing severe shortages in Cuba, an oil crisis, and making it hard for the country to manufacture enough vaccines.

Daniel Monterro, an independent journalist in Havana who was arrested during the protests, told Democracy Now! the media had skipped over the fact that most people arrested were released the same day, and that there was violence by both police and protesters. He said the sanctions were the main cause of economic hardships, and Cubans in Florida calling for a military intervention in Cuba was “some of the most colonial behaviour I’ve seen in my life”.

Biden called on the Cuban government to “refrain from violence” — a hypocritical stance given the police murders and repression in his own country. “We are assessing how we can be helpful to the people of Cuba,” said White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, using the saviour discourse, but not considering repealing the sanctions.

Meanwhile, US Vice-President Kamala Harris has been making a show of helping Central America and Mexico by ostensibly addressing corruption and the “root causes” of migration in the region. Seven months into the year and no actual help has arrived, but she did tell migrants fleeing for their lives not to come to the US, and the US has kept its border closed — in stark violation of human rights and its own asylum seeker laws.

The White House declared a “fight against corruption” in Central America in June, and made it a US national security interest. In general, a security interest is code for war, intervention and attacks on countries that don’t conform to US interests.

Further, the State Department was involved in the Car Wash anti-corruption operation in Brazil which saw pro-poor president Luiz Inacio Lula arrested. “A gift from the CIA,” said one US prosecutor of Lula’s imprisonment. The main liaison for the FBI at the time, Leslie Backschies, boasted that it had “toppled presidents in Brazil.”

During a press conference in May, Harris hinted at the US’s real intentions with the latest so-called fight against corruption, “In the Northern Triangle, we also know that corruption prevents us from creating the conditions on the ground to best attract investment.” Even the White House statement admits the anti-corruption efforts are about securing “a critical advantage for the United States”.

The US government recently released its list of powerful corrupt figures in Central America who will be denied US visas. The list includes former Honduran president Jose Lobo, whom the US helped bring to power by supporting a coup in 2009, and a current legal advisor to the Salvadoran president. But it doesn’t include proven criminal and current Honduran president Juan Hernández — suggesting that political interests underlie the chosen figures.

The US also wants to raise the financing, resource support and “political assistance” to actors in foreign countries who “exhibit the desire to reduce corruption” (conveniently vague phrasing) and promote “partnerships with the private sector”. An Anticorruption Task Force will provide “training” to Central American authorities and US law enforcement experts will be deployed to “provide mentoring”. Here, it is worth noting the US’s long record in training coup leaders, repressive military leaders, and counter-revolutionaries.

A frequently used strategy to ensure compliance

For at least a century, the US has had an abusive relationship with Latin America, using it as a source of cheap labour, gutting its land for minerals, pillaging its resources, and demanding in an authoritarian way — ironic, given its overtures to “freedom” — total compliance with its self-benefiting trade policies.

When countries refuse to obey, when they assert their identity, strive for dignity, and combat poverty — and, therefore, reduce that cheap supply of labour — the US reacts. It supported the counter-revolution in Nicaragua with money and training, the CIA carried out a coup to remove Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz and end the revolution there, the US sided with the coup plotters recently in Bolivia, it repeatedly supported anti-democratic movements to overthrow Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, and time and again it has tried to kill or remove the Cuban president.

It systematically supports repressive, conservative governments because they are the ones that protect its business interests. And despite its current discourse on the “root causes of migration”, the US consistently and violently opposes movements and governments that side with the poor and could actually lower inequality and prevent forced migration.

The US, and the US-centric mainstream media, have two sets of standards: one for rebellious countries, and another for pro-US countries. That’s why the US and the media are speaking out about arrests in Cuba, while staying silent about disappearing activists and journalists in Mexico. It’s why the US State Department recently talked about the “violence and vandalism” of the protesters in Colombia instead of criticising the brutal repression. Biden has publicly supported Plan Colombia (currently called Peace Colombia), which makes the country one of the largest buyers of US military equipment.

The two sets of standards are also why US Secretary of State Antony Blinken talked about Cubans being allowed to “determine their own future” — something he would never call for in most other countries of the world where the majority are excluded from economic and political decision-making.

What we’re seeing at the moment regarding the US’s attitude towards Cuba is nothing new. I witnessed very similar tactics being employed in Venezuela. It was #SOSVenezuela placards and tweets when I was there, then #SOSEcuador was used against Correa while I was working in Ecuador, and now it’s #SOSCuba.

The formula also includes versions of the following: causing or worsening food and medicine scarcity through blockades and hoarding; a media campaign portraying the government as a dictatorial regime; marches by mostly white and upper-class people; media and social media coverage of anti-government marches that exaggerate their size with selective visuals or even photos from other countries (or in the recent case of Cuba, using pro-government rallies as photos of opposition rallies); and a total media boycott of any pro-government marches. There is a focus on “freedom” and an absence of any context, historical causes of problems, or any real solutions, while everything is blamed on the government the US seeks to change.

The #SOSCuba social media campaign began just a week before the marches. The first tweets came from an account in Spain (with more than a thousand tweets in a few days and automated retweets), which was then supported by other bots and recently-created accounts. The tweets coincided with a rise in COVID-19 cases in Cuba, though the figures (about 40 deaths a day) are well below the US’s current death rate.

Any help or aid from the US always comes with conditions and ulterior motives. No matter how intricate his manipulations are, the bully isn’t actually going to help anyone.

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Tamara Pearson is a journalist, activist, and author of The Butterfly Prison. She is based in Mexico, and her writing can be found at her blog resistancewords.com.

Featured image: This Associated Press photo of a pro-government protest in Havana was used to illustrate articles on anti-government protests in The Guardian and other mainstream media. Image: @AlanRMacLeod/Twitter

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***

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Norfolk, Virginia on July 15 to mark the second NATO command in America achieving full operational capability. NATO’s Joint Force Command – Norfolk (JFC-Norfolk ) joined NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) in the same city as the only NATO commands outside Europe.

ACT, whose website is titled Allied Command Transformation: NATO’s Warfare Development Command, was inaugurated in 2003.

The new command was initially launched shortly after NATO’s Joint Support and Enabling Command was in Ulm, Germany in late 2019. Both commands at that time achieved initial operational capability (or initial operating capability). Joint Force Command – Norfolk is designed to expedite the deployment of troops and armor across the Atlantic; Joint Support and Enabling Command’s mission is to “speed up, coordinate and safeguard the movement of allied armour and infantry across European borders.” The two are thus integrally connected.

Their joint purpose is to move military personnel and equipment from the U.S. across the Atlantic Ocean, then from European ports across the continent to the Russian border. The recent DEFENDER Europe-21, the largest since the Cold Warwith 31,000 troops from 27 nations, activated the new system to expedite the transit of large military, including armored, units from the U.S. to the Russian border.

On July 15 General Milley addressed what the Defense Department described as assembled dignitaries on board the USS Kearsarge amphibious assault ship and was accompanied by the new Joint Force Command – Norfolk commander Vice Admiral Andrew Lewis. Lewis is also the commander of the U.S. Second Fleet. As with other NATO commands, its commander is simultaneously in charge of a U.S. command as well, as with U.S. European Command/Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet/Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO and U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa/NATO’s Allied Air Command.

As the Pentagon story on the event states at the beginning and without equivocation, “If deterrence fails, the mission of the command is to fight and win the Battle of the Atlantic.”

In language that evokes the epochal if not the apocalyptic, Milley said:

“In my view, the world is entering a period of potential instability as some nations…and clearly terrorist groups and perhaps some rogue actors, are seeking to undermine and challenge the existing international order. They seek to weaken the system of cooperation and collective security that has been in existence for some time. The dynamic nature of today’s current environment is counterbalanced by an order that was put in place 76 years ago, at the end of World War II.”

The activities of terrorist groups are hardly capable of upsetting the entire post-World War II global order. The nations he alluded to are Russia and China. They can be no others. Every American unified combatant command has recently identified those two nations as the main focus of the Pentagon’s attention, in every part of the world, with Iran and North Korea branded second-tier regional threats.

He further frightened his listeners with the figure of 150 million lives lost between 1914 and 1945, that is from the beginning of World War I to the end of World War II, then issued this brutal assessment: “That is the butcher’s bill of great power war. That’s what this international order that’s been in existence for seven and a half decades, is designed to prevent. That’s what JFC-Norfolk is all about. It’s to prevent that outcome.”

No modesty there; no sense of perspective or proportion; no subtlety, nuance or intricacy; surely no attempt at statesmanship. Accept NATO’s role in dominating the international military and security realm or horrors unimaginable will be unleashed on humanity. But at the bottom of that Pandora’s box there isn’t hope.

He further stated that the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 was the “brainchild” of the Western leaders who waged and won World War II and established the post-war order. He intoned: “Without question, NATO has been the most successful military alliance in human history. And NATO is still very much a vital and critical part of our regional security framework, and indeed, our global security framework. In fact, in my view, it’s the linchpin that holds together the period of great power peace that we are now enjoying.”

Without NATO, he communicated, the world would have been plunged into another Second World War, magnified by nuclear devastation. And now the international order, recently rechristened the rules-based international order, is under attack.

Another factor that is of grave concern is the change in the character of war, the general said. Milley defined that bedrock of warfighting as “how we fight, the organizations we fight with and the technologies that we use.” The last time such a qualitative transformation in warmaking capabilities occurred was between the two world wars with the introduction (in World War I) and improvement of aviation, tanks and other armored vehicles, new naval technologies and other technological advancements – “radio, radar and more ” – to integrate the above.

He then elaborated further by stating that although the former belligerents in the First World War all possessed the same technology, only one – Germany – successfully developed, integrated and applied technological innovations: “Germany, combined those technologies, and the German way of war, and combine them to organizations and leader development in such a way that Nazi Germany was able to overrun Western Europe in 18 months. Other countries combined it in different ways. And they didn’t have success.”

That clearly appears to be citing the German model of the Third Reich as an exemplary one to be emulated. To leave no doubt, he added: “And I would tell you that the same thing is happening right this minute. There’s a whole set of technologies that are driving fundamental change.”

Notwithstanding his liberal use of the word peace in his address – as in armies with their weapons developed to kill people and destroy property and soldiers trained to kill only exist to bring peace to the world – he belied his own duplicity in the following statement:

“I would argue that the country that masters those technologies, combines them with their doctrine, develops their leadership to take maximum advantage of them, is likely going to have significant and perhaps even decisive advantage at the beginning of the next war.“

If more naked and brazen threats have been made in modern times by the top military commander of a major nation – and of the world’s military superpower at that – they’re unfamiliar to this writer.

Milley’s peroration included touting NATO as the most powerful military alliance in the world (his precise words) and the U.S. as wielder of “the most powerful and capable military in the world,” and ended with this hardly-disguised throwing down of the gauntlet to Russia, China and the world:

“We have to maintain the readiness of the present, we have to modernize for the future. We are ready right now. Those who think we are not are mistaken. And any adversary that seeks to challenge the United States military resolve will do well to respect this military, and our alliances and NATO.”

With that language, why not dispense altogether with diplomacy, with the State Department, with embassies, with the United Nations, with international law? The world is a jungle and the savage with the most lethal, the most technologically-sophisticated weapons dominates it. That is the message and no other.

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Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website

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

Featured image: General Milley with the Italian Chief of Army Staff Lieutenant General Danilo Errico at the Pentagon (Public Domain)

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***

Spain’s top court has ruled that the country’s national COVID-19 lockdown was unconstitutional following a lawsuit filed by the populist Vox party.

“While leaving intact most of the state of emergency’s terms, the court said that the key articles ordering the population off the streets except for shorts trips for shopping and unavoidable commutes for work and other official business were unconstitutional,” reports the Associated Press.

“According to TVE, the ruling said that the limitations on movement violated citizens´ basic rights and therefore the state of emergency was insufficient to give them constitutional backing. The six magistrates said that a state of exception, which does allow the government to suspend basic rights, would have been necessary.”

During the first six weeks of the lockdown, stay at home measures were so strict that Spaniards weren’t even allowed to go outside to exercise or walk their dogs.

In one case, police were called after a neighbor spotted two brothers playing soccer in their own back yard.

As we previously highlighted, Spain’s lockdown laws were so draconian that at one point authorities briefly told citizens that wearing masks while swimming in the sea was mandatory.

For many months during hot weather, wearing masks in every outdoor setting, even on beaches, was compulsory.

People were also issued fines of €2,000 euros for “disrespecting” a police officer during lockdown.

Numerous instances of police beating people for not wearing masks also emerged, while protesters at one point freed a woman from police arrest while cops were trying to handcuff her for not wearing a face covering.

Early on during the first lockdown, police helicopters fitted with loudspeakers were also used to aggressively order beachgoers to go home.

The Spanish government many now face multiple lawsuits as a result of the lockdown being declared unlawful.

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Featured image: Anti-racist campaign launched by Attorney Antonio Liu Yang in Spain to combat misinformation about coronavirus. | Photo: @antonioliuyang

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***

Thousands of people protested against mandatory vaccinations and other measures imposed by the Greek government to  tackle the pandemic in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities around Greece on Wednesday.

Alongside the around 4,000 that turned out in front of the Greek Parliament in Athens, police said several hundred people also took to the streets in the cities of Thessaloniki, Ioannina and Heraklion for the same reason.

Source: Greek Reporter

These were the largest demonstrations in Greece against mandatory vaccination, state radio reported.

The demonstrations followed the Greek government’s announcement recently that only vaccinated people would be allowed to eat inside at restaurants and to enter cultural institutions.

Immune-only venues and spaces in Greece will be only for those who have been fully vaccinated or have immunity through having had the virus in the last six months.

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***

The battle in central Yemen remains as volatile as ever, with Saudi-led coalition and Ansar Allah clashing for Marib city, but also for Baydha.

In Baydha, the Houthis (as Ansar Allah movement is known) are on the defensive, as the Saudi-led coalition began an offensive to recapture the area earlier in July.

Fighting raged between Yemen’s government forces and Houthi rebels, killing 320 fighters from both sides in the central province on July 12^th and 13^th.

Fighting in Bayda came as the Houthis attempted to break through government defenses in the strategic city of Marib, also located in central Yemen. The rebels have been trying to capture it from the Saudi-led coalition since February.

The government has been sending reinforcements to Bayda since losing to the Houthis some of the districts.

The Houthis, alongside defending from the Saudi-led coalition are also reportedly fighting ISIS and Al-Qaeda elements from Baydha, announcing recently the clearing of terrorists in Al-Soma’a and Al-Zahir.

Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree claimed that the group would stop the Saudi-led coalition’s advance in Baydha and push them back in “three days” from July 13^th.

This comes as Ansar Allah have stopped their almost daily drone and rocket attacks on various positions in Saudi Arabia.

Still, on July 14, a series of explosions rocked the outskirts of the central Saudi city of al-Kharaj to the south of the Kingdom’s capital Riyadh.

Local activists shared videos on social media showing large explosions near al-Kharaj, where ammunition depots and military bases are known to be located.

A spokesman for the Saudi Ministry of Defense, Brigadier General Turki al-Malki, claimed in a brief statement that an “accident” was behind the explosions.

Despite the statement, some sources suppose that the al-Kharaj explosions were the result of an attack by the Houthis. The group is yet to make any claims in regard to the explosions.

Saudi Arabia continues its daily airstrikes, in addition to hundreds of ceasefire violations in al-Hudaydah, despite claiming that it has stopped. It only hasn’t targeted the capital Sana’a for a while.

Meanwhile, any form of peace appears out of reach. The Yemen puppet government in Aden urged the Saudi-backed coalition to shift its way of dealing with the Iranian-backed Houthi militias’ inflexibility in peace efforts.

Still, the government speaks against the Houthis and says that they need to back down, as well. Apart from condemning the Houthis for their aggressions, the Yemen government praised the Saudi-led Arab Coalition for backing pro-government forces in their fight against the militias and their efforts to restore security, peace and stability to Yemen.

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***

Profligate, vain and utterly pleased with himself, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson could boast about his latest adventure of megalomania.   Unlike others of the stinking rich set, he is incapable of keeping quiet.  He pretends to be the people’s tycoon.  His wealthy adventurism is as much for himself as it is for us.  “The pitch,” wrote the late Jenny Diski of this type, “is to demand to be seen as ordinary, just like you and me, only richer and more glamorous, of course, because it does the populace a power of good to see heightened images of what they might have been, kitted out in fine frocks and indulging in dangerous sports no one else can afford.”

Such demand was evident in spades on July 11.  Branson made his way in his Virgin Galactic rocket plane for a 1.5-hour mission to the edge of space, a mission he promised to embark upon as far back as 2004.  Then, he told the BBC that some 3,000 people “would want to do this.”  Were he to develop a successful program, he envisaged “orbital flights and then, possibly, even get a hotel up there.”

The effort was plagued with delays and difficulties, a tendency not alien to the Virgin brand.  In 2014, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo space tourism craft succumbed to what the company described as “a serious anomaly”.  The crash in the Mojave Desert killed a pilot and injured another.  “Space is hard – but worth it,” a regretful Branson said at the time.  “We will persevere and move forward together.” 

On this occasion, there was no flop or anomaly.  The VSS Unity reached the appropriate height to achieve weightlessness.  Branson and his crew swooned and clucked at the panoramic views of Earth.  Using a feathering system, the craft then made its gliding way back.

On his blog, Branson referred to those childhood memories filled with thoughts of space travel.  “I have dreamt about this moment since I was a child, but nothing could have prepared me for the view of Earth from space.  It was magical.”  On Twitter, he did his man of the people act, with a note of encouragement.  “To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, just imagine what you can do.” 

This first official salvo of space tourism on the VSS Unity prompted much chatter as to what Branson had actually done.  Had the Briton’s brief journey really qualified as space travel?  One line of authority accepts that the boundary of space lies at the point aerodynamics ends and aeronautics begins, otherwise known as the Kármán Line and recognised by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.  The US government designation of the edge of space is 80 km above sea level, 20 km less than the Kármán Line. 

In a correcting mood, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson told CNN that Branson had not actually journeyed in space. “First of all, it was suborbital.  NASA did it 60 years ago with Alan Shepard, took off from Cape Canaveral and landed in the ocean.  If you don’t go fast enough to reach orbit you will fall and return to Earth.”  For all that, he was delighted about this “new tourist attraction” which “should have happened decades ago”.

There was also another reason for the Briton to be smug.  Branson had pipped another of the megalomaniacal fraternity wishing to cash in on suborbital space tourism to the post.  On July 20, Amazon magnate Jeff Bezos, along with his brother Mark and aviator Wally Funk, are scheduled to make a journey on Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket.  And just to make things worthwhile for Branson, the individual who won a ticket through a charity auction valued at $28 million for the pleasure of keeping Bezos company had a change of heart due to “scheduling conflicts”.  The winner has been replaced by recent high school graduate, the 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, a move which did not lack Bransonian overtones.  “Oliver,” Blue Origin stated, “represents a new generation of people who will help us build a road to space.

Branson is not ignorant to the fact that his project is a vanity of vanities.  According to David Runciman, he is playing the same game as many a Russian oligarch but through the looking-glass.  The wealthy will do what they always do, and projects dealing with climate change, the pandemic and economic inequality, while important, should not prevent the pursuit of play.  “I 100% agree that people who are in positions of wealth should spend most of their money, 90% or more of their money, trying to tackle these issues,” Branson explained, “but we should also create new industries that can create 800 engineers, and scientists who can create wonderful things that can make space accessible at a fraction of the environmental cost that it’s been in the past.” 

Branson’s message, along with those of other space adventurers, has its willing consumers and advocates.  Rick Tumlinson, founder of the venture capital firm SpaceFund, sees the egos as only distractingly problematic.  “These are not the robber barons of the 1800s.”  They were, instead, Apollo’s children.  The last space race “was between nations that wanted to blow us up and take the planet with them.”  Taxpayer dollars go towards developing weapons of mass death and destruction.  By focusing on the ills of state-based competition, Tumlinson praises the commercial instinct, ignoring its defects.  The likes of Branson, Bezos and Elon Musk are, all too conveniently, let off the hook.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image: Branson in April 2009 at the launch of Virgin America in Orange County, California (CC BY 3.0)

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***

The drive toward a cashless society has been in progress for some time, but the COVID-19 pandemic has been used as a pretext to accelerate the process

In the documentary “Cash or Card — Will COVID-19 Kill Cash?” producer Kersten Schüssler asks some important questions, like what’s at stake if society truly goes cashless? The answer is both your privacy and your freedom

The digital footprints or financial data trails that you leave every time you pay by card or mobile app are being watched closely and form an important part of surveillance capitalism

Information like how much alcohol you drink or how much you spend on vacation can all be tracked and “sold to the highest bidder”

As a result of this data, you and your neighbor might end up paying different prices for things like flights and hotels, or you might be refused insurance or be passed over for a job offer

Electronic payments are extremely lucrative for banks and payment service providers, while the data broker industry is also making huge revenues

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Cash has long been king, but an increasing number of people have ditched cash in favor of credit cards and other contactless, digital payment options. The drive toward a cashless society has been in progress for some time, but the COVID-19 pandemic has been used as a pretext to accelerate the process.

With infectious disease at the top of everyone’s mind, bills and coins suddenly seemed especially filthy, even though they haven’t been linked to disease transmission, while electronic payment was clean, convenient and fast.

But, in the DW documentary “Cash or Card — Will COVID-19 Kill Cash?”¹ producer Kersten Schüssler asks some important questions, like what’s at stake if society truly goes cashless? The answer is both your privacy and your freedom.

You Pay for Cashless Payments With Your Privacy

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has been vocal about its agenda of moving away from cash and to a digital currency, including in the U.S., for years.² But in the last year, the pandemic has led to a drastic acceleration. In Germany, where people have been famously reluctant to embrace payment by card or app, the number of people paying by card increased by 26% since the start of the pandemic.³

Cash is still being widely used there and is even the only currency accepted in many markets and bakeries. This isn’t the case in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, however, where cash has practically become a thing of the past. You won’t find ATMs very often and if you go to a convenience store, you’re likely to be told you have to pay by card.

In Sweden, your cash may be no good at a bakery, and shop employees view this as a good thing. One young bakery clerk interviewed in the film said it’s much safer to not have any cash at the store because it cuts down on robberies.

Till Grune-Yanoff, a professor of philosophy at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, also states that payment apps let him monitor exactly what his two children are buying. And this is a key tenet of the cashless system. While cash is anonymous, paying by card or app leaves a digital trail.

Already in Sweden, most banks no longer give out cash because it’s too much of a hassle, and payment using cellphone apps is booming. You can transfer money from one cellphone to another as easily and quickly as you can send a text message.

“Here, money has become merely digital information,” Schüssler said. But there’s a downside for the convenience. “This also means that Swedish electronic payment systems can track most people’s financial transactions. Big Brother is watching you.”

Is This the End of Cash?

The film questions whether Sweden is the shape of things to come, “a future in which cash is a thing of the past — and every payment for everything we buy can be traced and tracked.”⁴ Marion Laboure, a Harvard lecturer and research analyst at Deutsche Bank, has stated that COVID-19 could be the catalyst to bring digital payments into the mainstream.⁵ She told Schüssler:⁶

“It’s not the end of cash yet. But what we have noticed since the beginning of this year, and especially since the start of the corona crisis, the amount of cash in circulation has definitely increased because it’s considered as safe in terms of holding its value.

However, if we consider cash as a means of payment, it has definitely decreased. Fewer and fewer people are paying by cash. In December, 30% of people made contactless payments in Germany. And today, it’s almost 50%.”

Laboure described even more striking advances in other countries, such as South Korea and China, which quarantined and destroyed bank notes. In the U.S., “the Fed decided to quarantine banknotes coming from Asia to make sure they were safe,” she said. When asked whether this was a reasonable response to the pandemic, Laboure said, “The risk is very low. But they felt it was necessary.”⁷

Throughout the pandemic, it’s been implied that contactless, cashless payments are the preferred “safer” choice, allowing you to keep your distance and eliminating the need to pass “dirty” cash back and forth. But are you really at greater risk of catching COVID if you pay with cash?

Johannes Beermann, an executive board member of Bundesbank in Berlin, doesn’t think so, and he also doesn’t believe cash will be replaced by apps or cards anytime soon. “I would say that’s been sufficiently disproven,” he said. “If you look at the bank notes, like the five-euro or 10-euro bills here — which are in particularly heavy circulation — they have a special coating. We know from research that bills and coins don’t play any role in the spread of infections.”⁸

Corruption and money laundering concerns were also cited when banks stopped issuing 500-euro bills in 2019, while the Better Than Cash Alliance, an initiative with 77 members, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Visa and Mastercard,⁹ that is “committed to digitizing payments,” has also called for cash to be abolished due to “slush funds, dirty money, money laundering and big sums not declared to tax authorities or the state.”¹⁰

“Of course, we have to combat money laundering, tax evasion and the financing of terrorism, and I think cash has to be monitored, as should other payment methods,” Beermann said. “We have to ensure that. But I don’t think that this [digitized payments] will vanquish the underground economy.”

Leaving a Digital Footprint With Every Payment

The digital footprints or financial data trails that you leave every time you pay by card or mobile app are being watched closely. Sarah Spiekermann, professor for information systems and society at Vienna’s University of Economics and Business, researches how this data is observed and analyzed, and states that credit card information and electronic payment data are feeding an industry of data brokers:¹¹

“We know that credit card companies pass on this data. In the meantime, they can observe everyone in real time via all the digital media that they use to create large-scale profiles. It’s almost become normal to have 30,000 to 40,000 pieces of data on each person. And with this high-resolution history, they know what you do, the routes you take, what you buy, what you pay for, where you go on vacation, how much you pay. They know it all.”

Information like how much alcohol you drink or how much you spend on vacation can all be tracked and “sold to the highest bidder.” We’re at a point where once fledgling startups have morphed into immense information empires, in control of our information and our privacy is in their hands.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear how valuable digital technologies are in acting as a safety net to allow many activities to continue, but because governments haven’t dealt with fundamental issues to protect privacy and digital rights, these information empires continue to own and operate the Internet and global means of communication.

These monopolies lead to uncontrolled power that, in turn, leads people to be even more constrained and living in a society based increasingly on surveillance, and digital payments are a necessary part of this plan and further surveillance capitalism. Spiekermann explained:¹²

“We’ve analyzed, for example, how Oracle Blue Kai has described collecting 30,000 user attributes from 200 data vendors, which would allow them to create the profiles of 700 million people. That’s probably the entire western world.

And if we look to see who’s providing that data: Visa, Mastercard or Acxiom, Google, Facebook, Twitter interfaces. That’s surveillance capitalism. Surveillance capitalism involves hundreds and thousands of companies with data exchange agreements working together behind the scenes.”

As a result of this data, you and your neighbor might end up paying different prices for things like flights and hotels, or you might be refused insurance or be passed over for a job offer. You might think these things are just bad luck or fate, she said, “when in reality, it’s the result of databases making some sort of prediction about them. And people behind the scenes are earning money to create these profiles of people. It’s disgraceful.”¹³

There are no laws in place to curtail this brand-new type of surveillance capitalism, and the only reason it has been able to flourish over the past 20 years is because there’s been an absence of laws against it, primarily because it has never previously existed. Surveillance has become the biggest for-profit industry on the planet, and your entire existence is now being targeted for profit.

Payment Technologies Are Rapidly Developing

You’ve probably used one or more types of contactless, digital payments, but this is only the beginning of the payment technologies to come. In China, Chinese and U.S. companies are testing “smile to pay” facial recognition technology, which ties your ability to pay for goods and services with your smile.

But it doesn’t end there. Ultimately, the plan is to use facial scans when you enter a store, which employ artificial intelligence to recognize the person and their credit rating. AI also detects emotions, social affiliations and whether you’re under stress or getting sick.

All of this personal information is the cost of relying on this digitized system, and it could have significant ramifications for both psychology and security. Spiekermann, who wants cash to be retained, said in the film:¹⁴

“If I pay with a smile and I start to connect smiling to economic transactions, then this habit will also leave its imprint in my real world. I don’t think we really want those kinds of associations to develop. Our society and social interactions would become subtly commercialized … [also] power can be rapidly knocked out, as can IT systems. It’s a matter of security. We need a concrete backup. We still need cash — for security reasons.”

While all-digital mobile banks are already up and running, alternative options are also emerging. Berlin company Barzahlen.de offers a modern digital-analogue hybrid payment system that uses encrypted barcodes to get money or make a payment.

The barcode stipulates how much is paid in or out. No transfer of account or credit card data is needed, and each transaction gets a new barcode, allowing you to use cash in a digital context but without leaving behind data trails.

In addition, while U.S. federal law does not require businesses to accept cash as payment, cities and states can enact local laws to do so. At least 21 cities and states, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey, have passed or are considering laws that prohibit retailers from refusing cash payments.

It’s unclear how strictly such laws are being enforced, but in New York City, for example, businesses can face steep fines for refusing cash or charging higher prices to customers paying cash.¹⁵

Former Interpol President Opposes Cash-Free Society

Bjorn Eriksson, former Interpol president, was also interviewed for the film. He’s familiar with cyberattacks and money laundering, and states that cash should be available as an option for people, including those who aren’t tech savvy — a population he estimates to be about 1 million people in Sweden alone.

“They are looked on as unprofitable. Just leave them,” he said. “I don’t like that type of society.” Security is another major concern to leaving cash behind. “What happens if the Russians, Putin or somebody, switches off the system? We have no defense. How do you then defend yourself if you just have this card that doesn’t function? Cash is a perfect option.”¹⁶

The interference with your freedom and privacy, however, is what he believes will drive young people to push for cash to be preserved:¹⁷

“[What] … attracts a lot of young people is what they see in China and some other nations where you use these to control your citizens. Because if you have a system with card, you’ll have a technology with cameras, you have a technology with artificial intelligence, you’re really going to be checked. Young people don’t like that.”

He also believes the pandemic is being used as pretext to switch to a cashless society even though “there is no proof whatsoever that cash is carrying that type of threat from corona.”

The push to eliminate cash is going to continue, especially since electronic payments are extremely lucrative for banks and payment service providers, while the data broker industry is also making huge revenues, Schüssler said.¹⁸ Still, cash represents a form of freedom, one that should be passed on to the next generation to preserve as much autonomy and privacy as possible.

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Notes

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***

In less than six months in office President Joe Biden has already developed a national security policy that appears to lean strongly towards proactive use of military force in questionable circumstances, as if war is the answer to every problem. Biden should nevertheless be applauded for his persistence in withdrawing from Afghanistan after twenty years of ill-considered nation building, but even the departure from that country appears to be characterized by a lack of coordination, rather reminiscent of helicopters taking off from the embassy roof in Saigon in 1975.

For the second time the president has ordered a US bombing raid on two targets in Syria, and for the first time, he also attacked a site inside Iraq. According to one report possibly as many as seven Iraqis died in the attacks which targeted alleged weapons storage facilities along the Syria-Iraq border belonging to Kata’ib Hezbollah and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada militias. The US claims that the two Iraqi militias have ties to Iran, which may be more than usually true because the Iraqis and Iranians have cooperated regularly in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS). The Pentagon also claims that the militias were behind recent attacks on American targets, see more below.

After the attacks carried out by US fighter-bombers, the excuse provided was the same one employed after Biden’s first air attack in February, namely that the US, as described by Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “conducted defensive precision airstrikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region.” He added verbiage what has now become a regular feature of all US military actions, that “the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense.” For those who are intrigued by Pentagon newspeak the expression “defensive precision airstrikes” must be considered as a new entry in the crowded field of phrases that largely have no meaning.

The strikes were framed as being retaliatory, but the most interesting aspect of this latest bombing is that the initial US government justifications for the action were on somewhat tentative. Reportedly, someone had used drones with explosives attached for mostly night-time attacks directed “against places where Americans were located in Iraq,” which were further described as including diplomatic, intelligence and military facilities. The Pentagon refers to the drones as “unmanned aerial vehicles” or UAVs. No Americans were killed in the alleged attacks and there were no reports of any substantial damage, though the Pentagon is apparently collecting information and preparing a comprehensive report which the public undoubtedly will not be allowed to see.

Oddly, the initial media reporting on what had occurred and who had been blamed for it included a weasel word, “suspected.” In government-speak that frequently means there was little or no evidence that the militias that had been targeted were actually the perpetrators, but it is convenient to assume that they are responsible, making them “suspects.” After all, it is relatively easy to transport a number of drones on the bed of a pickup truck, drive with it to a location where one is unlikely to be observed and then release them at a fixed target. Even if you don’t hit anything, you will spread fear and trigger a response that might well be exploited to vilify the occupying forces. You will also provide justification for your own retaliation.

The Iraqi government, which was not informed in advance of the US bombings, not surprisingly reacted strongly, registering its opposition to such activity on the part of its so-called ally, though occupier has been suggested as a more appropriate description. Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s office called the airstrikes a “blatant and unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty and Iraqi national security.” After the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad Airport in January 2020, the Iraqi Parliament had called for the departure of all US forces, but the Trump Administration ignored the demand, claiming that it was in Iraq to help the Iraqis in their fight against ISIS and other terrorist groups.

The US currently has a claimed 2,500 soldiers in Iraq who, it asserts, are in country advising and training their local counterparts. Meanwhile, “Fighting terrorists and training friendly forces” is roughly the same excuse that has been used to justify remaining in neighboring Syria, where the US has deployed roughly 500 soldiers who have been taking possession of the production of the country’s oil fields, which it then provides to Israel. The US is also, by the way, trying to overthrow the legitimate Syrian government in Damascus, using some of the very terrorists it claims to be fighting to do the job, but that is of course another story.

If the United States government is beginning to sound a bit like the Israeli government that should surprise no one, as Israel is clearly heavily involved in whatever on goes vis-à-vis Syria and Iran directly and in Iraq by proxy. One almost expects new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to provide an endorsement, parroting the Pentagon line as well as his own country’s rhetoric, saying “the US has a right to defend itself.” Of course, the unasked question then becomes “to defend itself against what?” Israel was at least able to pretend that there was some kind of threat coming from Gaza since the two share a border, but the United States would be hard pressed to explain why it has soldiers in Syria and Iraq at all, particularly since the Iraqi government has called upon them to depart.

A neocon journalist supportive of a global crusade to spread “democracy” once quipped that the nice thing about having an empire is never having to say you are sorry, but that has not meant that mindless acts of violence inflicted throughout the Middle East are have been consequence free. One has to suspect in this case that the use of force to include a target within the borders of a nominal ally was also mostly intended to send a signal to Iran. A Pentagon spokesman ironically boasted afterwards that “This action should send a message to Iran that it cannot hide behind its proxy forces to attack the United States and our Iraqi partners.” The spokesman appears to be oblivious to the fact that it was Iraqi militiamen tied to the government that had been killed, not Iranians. And his assumption that it would reduce the level of violence also proved wrong as there have been a number of new drone, rocket and mortar attacks against American targets in Iraq since Biden’s “defensive precision airstrikes” were launched. One of the militias that lost fighters to the US airstrikes, said it would “avenge the blood of our righteous martyrs.”  Another Iranian supported group, the Popular Mobilization Forces went further, threatening to “enter an open war with the American occupation.” In short, all the attacks really accomplished was to anger the Iraqi people over the continued US presence and to guarantee more incidents.

Biden’s “sending a message to Iran” would undoubtedly be intended to do the same to the Iraqi government, telling them that drawing any closer to the Iranians is too close as far as the Pentagon and White House are concerned. In terms of the timing of the airstrikes, it is also important to note that the US has been working closely with the new Israeli government to establish a unified policy on Iranian “regional aggression” and its nuclear program. Biden met recently with retiring Israeli President Reuven Rivlin at the White House and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has been having discussions with Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid. Iran was the focus of both meetings.

So, Joe Biden and whoever is advising him are continuing down the path that began with George W. Bush, with military action used as a substitute for any real foreign policy. The problem with the meddling in the Middle East is primarily that it permits no exit strategy. It will end ignominiously when it ends as is happening in Afghanistan, without any remorse and little to show for all the expense and the deaths. Given that reality, rather than concoct largely fabricated reasons to keep US troops in Iraq and Syria the Administration should be looking for ways to end the torment for everyone involved.

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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] 

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Vice President Joe Biden, Austin, and Command Sergeant Major Earl Rice, at an event marking the award of the Iraq Commitment Medal in December 2011

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

Click here to order.

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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***

Doctors for Covid Ethics has written three open letters to the European Medicines Agency regarding COVID-19 vaccine dangers. In those letters we have insisted upon evidence that risks of clotting, bleeding and platelet abnormalities were appropriately ruled out in legitimate empirical trials prior to human use. We foresaw deaths and harm from clotting, warning of these dangers before blood clots led to vaccine suspensions around the world.

The first letter, emailed February 28 and hand-delivered March 1st, can be found here. The EMA’s reply of March 23rd can be found here, and our rebuttal letter, of April 1st, here, all summarised in a press release here. Our most recent letter, warning that “cardinal symptoms of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) dominate the list of adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines” is here.

Doctors, scientists and colleagues in allied disciplines related to health, ethics, law and human rights can sign the open letters by sending their name, qualifications, areas of expertise and country of practice to: [email protected], with web verification (eg workplace or registration link, not for publication).

Signatories across the three letters are as follows:

Founding signatories

Professsor Sucharit Bhakdi MD, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Former Chair, Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Germany and Thailand)

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

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

Dr Margareta Griesz-Brisson MD PhD, Consultant Neurologist and Neurophysiologist (studied Medicine in Freiburg, Germany, speciality training for Neurology at New York University, Fellowship in Neurophysiology at Mount Sinai Medical Centre, New York City; PhD in Pharmacology with special interest in chronic low level neurotoxicology and effects of environmental factors on brain health), Medical Director, The London Neurology and Pain Clinic (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Germany and United Kingdom)

Professor Martin Haditsch MD PhD, Specialist (Austria) in Hygiene and Microbiology, Specialist (Germany) in Microbiology, Virology, Epidemiology/Infectious Diseases, Specialist (Austria) in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Medical Director, TravelMedCenter, Leonding, Austria, Medical Director, Labor Hannover MVZ GmbH (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Austria and Germany)

Professor Stefan Hockertz, Professor of Toxicology and Pharmacology, European registered Toxicologist, Specialist in Immunology and Immunotoxicology, CEO tpi consult GmbH. (Scientist) (Germany)

Dr Lissa Johnson, BSc BA(Media) MPsych(Clin) PhD, Clinical Psychologist and Behavioural Scientist, Expertise in the social psychology of atrocity, torture, collective violence and propaganda, former professional body Public Interest Advisory Group member (Psychologist) (Australia)

Professor Ulrike Kämmerer PhD, Associate Professor of Experimental Reproductive Immunology and Tumor Biology at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University Hospital of Würzburg, Germany, Trained molecular virologist (Diploma, PhD-Thesis) and Immunologist (Habilitation), Remains engaged in active laboratory research (Molecular Biology, Cell Biology) (Scientist) (Germany)

Associate Professor Michael Palmer MD, Department of Chemistry (studied Medicine and Medical Microbiology in Germany, has taught Biochemistry since 2001 in present university in Canada); focus on Pharmacology, metabolism, biological membranes, computer programming; experimental research focus on bacterial toxins and antibiotics (Daptomycin); has written a textbook on Biochemical Pharmacology, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Canada and Germany)

Professor Karina Reiss PhD, Professor of Biochemistry, Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, Expertise in Cell Biology, Biochemistry (Scientist) (Germany)

Professor Andreas Sönnichsen MD, Professor of General Practice and Family Medicine, Department of General Practice and Family Medicine, Center of Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna (Medical Doctor) (Austria)

Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, Specialist in Pulmonary and Bronchial Internal Medicine, Hygiene and Environmental Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health; Honorary Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and former Head of the Health Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe; former Member of Parliament, German Bundestag; Initiator and Spokesman for the study commission ‘Ethics and Law in Modern Medicine’; Author and University Lecturer (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Michael Yeadon BSc (Joint Honours in Biochemistry and Toxicology) PhD (Pharmacology), Formerly Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer Allergy & Respiratory, Pfizer Global R&D; Co-founder & CEO, Ziarco Pharma Ltd.; Independent Consultant (Scientist) (United Kingdom)

Endorsing signatories

Dr Reem Abu-Sbaih, DO, Doctor of Osteopathy, Associate Professor Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine/ Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Adriana Reyes Agudelo, MD, Surgeon (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Dr Véronique Ahari, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (France)

Dr Maria José Martínez Albarracín, Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery, Physician and Professor of Clinical Diagnostic Processes, Specialized in Clinical Analysis (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Dr Alicja Alda, General Practitioner and Ear Nose and Throat specialist (Medical Doctor) (Norway)

Dr Fernando Ania, ND, Naturopathic Doctor (Canada)

Dr Carmen Soler Arnedo, Surgeon, General Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Dr Lenn-Adolph D. Arre, PhD, FNIU, Former Associate Professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, San Beda University, Manila (Scientist) (Philippines)

Dr Mario Cabrera Avivar, MD, Specialist in Public Health, former Consultant to the Pan American Health Organisation, the World Health Organisation Regional Office for the Americas (OPS/OMS) (Medical Doctor) (Uruguay)

Rena Bartolettti, Pharmacist, previously of the General Pharmacy Inspectorate, Registration Service Medicines, Federal Public Health and Safety Authority (Pharmacist) (Belgium)

Dr Gabriela Bachmann, General Medicine, Specialising in children and young people (Medical Doctor) (Austria)

Dr. Elizabeth Bastian, BSc (Genetics and Microbiology), MDCM, Family Medicine, General Practitioner in Oncology, sub specialty trained in Palliative Care (Medical Doctor) (Canada)

Dr Pedro López Bastido, Stomatologist (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Dr Professor Mila Aleckovic Bataille, Specialising in Psychiatry, Psychology and Anthropology (Medical Doctor and Social Scientist) (France, Serbia)

Dr Michael D Bell, MB, ChB (1978 Edinburgh) MRCGP (1989), General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Rev. Reuben P. Bell, DO, MS, MDiv, PhD, Osteopathic family physician since 1982, Bachelors and Masters degrees in Zoology, formerly Professor of Biology (including Molecular Genetics and Developmental Biology), M.Div. and Ph.D. in theological studies, with attention to issues of science and religion (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (USA)

Dr Francisco Lacruz Bescos, MD, PhD, Consultant Neurologist with special training and dedication to Neuroimmunology and Multiple Sclerosis (Retired) (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Dr Thomas Binder, MD, specialised in Cardiology and Internal Medicine, thesis in Immunology and Virology, with 32 years experience in diagnosis and treatment of Acute Respiratory Illness (Medical Doctor) (Switzerland)

Sarah Binns, MA VetMB, MS, MRCVS, MSc, PhD, DipLSHTM, Former Veterinary Infectious Disease Epidemiologist (United Kingdom)

Dr Rainer Bliefert, Dentist (Switzerland)

Dr Michael Brandner, Dr. Med. (Medical Doctor) (Germay)

Dr Rachel Brown, MBChB, LLM (Medical Law & Ethics), MRCPsych CFMP, Consultant Psychiatrist (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Dr Roxana Bruno, PhD in Immunology, Researcher in Biochemistry, Immunology, Neuroinmunology and Genetics (Scientist) (Argentina)

Dr Elizabeth Burton, MBChB, General Medical Practitioner (Retired)(Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Dr Natalia Prego Cancelo, MD, Community and Family Medicine Specialist, founder of “Médicos por la Verdad” (Doctors for the Truth) worldwide, platform of doctors in more than 17 countries (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Professor David P. Capper, MD, Internal Medicine, Hospice & Palliative Medicine, Professor and Chair, Department of Clinical Sciences, Director of Palliative Care (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Ronald S. Carlson, AB Chem/Bio, DDS, Dentist (USA)

Dr Rafael Reinoso Casado, Family and Community Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Dr Alexandra Henrion Caude, Researcher, PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics, Focus in Epigenetics and non-coding RNA and mitochondria, Focus on simple, durable ethical, low-cost solutions for Health and One Health, CEO of SimplissimA Research Institute, Former Director of Research at the French NIH (Retired), Member of the Circle for Innovation Galien (France), Member of the IDF Ethical Space Committee, Eisenhower Fellow from the Multination Program (Scientist) (France and Mauritius)

Dr Volker Christoffel, PhD in Biochemistry, Specialist in preclinical development (Scientist) (Germany)

Dr Vernon Coleman, MB, ChB, General Practice Principal (Retired) (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Isabella Cooper, BSc (Hons) Biochemistry, AFHEA, AMRSB, AfENDO, Doctoral Researcher, Areas of expertise: hyperinsulinaemia, disseminated intravascular coagulability, mitochondrial molecular biology and cancer metabolism (Scientist) (United Kingdom)

Dr Johan Corthouts, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (Belgium)

Jonathan Jay Couey, Assistant Professor of Research, Pitt School of Medicine Research Faculty, Department of Neurobiology, examining cortical and subcortical microcircuits using promotor/enhancer driven gene expression (Scientist) (USA)

Dr David Critchley, BSc, PhD, Clinical Research Scientist with more than 30 years experience, including projects in Virology and Immunology (Scientist) (United Kingdom)

Professor Barbara A Crothers, DO, Associate Professor, Pathology, Gynecologic, Breast and Cytopathology (USA)

Dr Rita Darby, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (Wales)

Dr. Daniel de la Torre Llorente, Biology Professor, Biotechnology-Plant Biology Department, Agronomic, Food and Biosystems Engineering School (ETSIAAB) Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Scientist) (Spain)

Dr John Day, MD, Family Medicine (Board certified since 1990) (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Hilde De Smet, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (Belgium)

Dr Johan Denis, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (Belgium)

Dr Steven Depicker, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (Belgium)

Dr Cindy de Villiers, MBChB, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (New Zealand)

Dr M. Doesburg-van Kleffens, MSc, PhD, Specialist in Laboratory Medicine (Clinical Chemistry), of Stichting Artsen Covid Collectief, an independent Dutch Collective of Medical Professionals (Scientist) (The Netherlands)

Dr Geanina Dragnea, Obstetrician-Gynecologist (Medical Doctor) (Romania)

Dr Doris Draehne, Specialist in Obstetrics and Gynaecology (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Nyjon Eccles, BSc, MBBS, MRCP, PhD, Specialist in Functional & Environmental Medicine (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Dr Karin Eisfeld, Molecular Biologist, Senior Regulatory Affairs Manager in the approval of new drugs and medical devices (Scientist) (Germany)

Dr Blanca Assumption Lario Elboj, Specialsit in Ophthalmology (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Dr Kjetil H. Elvevold, Senior Scientist, worked as Senior Scientist in a Contract Research Organization (CRO) in Norway that performed pre-clinical experiments for the pharmaceutical industry (Scientist) (Norway)

Dr Andreas Emmert, Specialist in Microbiology, Head Physician at Østfold Regional Hospital, Norway (Medical Doctor) (Norway)

Merit Enckell, Civ. Ing, PhD, Independent researcher, Structural Health Monitoring and Emerging Technologies, Formerly of KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Scientist) (Sweden)

Dr Sonia Andrés Espallardo, Psychiatrist (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Dr Radimé Farhumand, Specialist in Anesthesia (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Thomas Faulkner, MChiro, DC, Managing Director and Chiropractor (United Kingdom)

Dr Susan Flett, Specialist in Psychiatry, Child Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (Semi-retired) (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Dr Konstantinos Fountzoulas, MD, PGDiP Orth Eng., FEBOT, FRCS (Tr & Orth), Consultant Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgeon (Medical Doctor) (England and Italy)

Dr Paul Christian Friedl, Ophthalmologist (Medical Doctor) (Austria)

Dr Carrie Ganek, MD, Adult Psychiatry (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Martin E Ganek, MD, Board Certified Paediatrician (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Emanuel E. Garcia, MD (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, 1986), Psychiatrist (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Parisi Giovanni, Specialist in Ophthalmology and Sports Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Italy)

Dr Hartmut Glossmann, Professor Emeritus, Doctor of Medicine and Specialist in Pharmacology / Clinical Pharmacology, Institute for Biochemical Pharmacology, Innsbruck (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Germany)

Amparo de Luque González, Dentist (Spain)

Dr Alexandra Efthimiadou Griva, MD, Physician, practicing natural medicine for over 40 years (Medical Doctor) (Greece)

Dr Maria-Myrto Griva, MD, Physician, with a special focus on natural medicine (Medical Doctor) (Greece)

Dr Kleanthis Grivas, MD, PhD, Neurologist — Psychiatrist, author of books and articles, writer on Totalitarian Therapeutic State (Medical Doctor) (Greece)

Dr Céline Guérin, PhD in Neurosciences, Master in Microbiology and Genetics (Scientist-Practitioner) (France)

Dr Nicholas James Guntobon, MBBCh, BAO, LRCP, SI, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (Malaysia)

Dr. Olga Petrovna Guzova, Pediatrician, Dermatologist and Dermatopathologist (Medical Doctor) (Panama)

Dr Hans-Michael Hackenberg, Family Doctor and Sports Medicine Specialist (Retired) (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Roman Häussler, General Medicine (Austria)

Dr Jutta Heinrich-Nols, Doctor and Clinical Pharmacologist (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Germany)

Julie Henrotte, Quality System Expert, 12+ years in GSK Pharma (Scientist) (Belgium)

Dr Angel Ruiz-Valdepeñas Herreros, Bachelor of Medicine, Licenciado en Medicina por la Universidad de Murcia, Specialist in Family and Community Medicine, co-founder of “Médicos por la Verdad” (Doctors for the Truth) worldwide, platform of doctors in more than 17 countries (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Dr Birgit Hörger, Resident Doctor, Specialist in General Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Mignon Hugues, MD, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (Belgium)

Dr April M. Hurley, MD, Family Physician for 35 years (Medical Doctor) (USA)

William Ip, BSc. MIBMS, Former NHS Biomedical Scientist (Specialist in Microbiology), for over 30 years (Sicentist) (United Kingdom)

Prof. Dr Ciro Isidoro, Doctor of Science and Medical Doctor, Full Professor of Pathology, School of Medicine, Department of Health Sciences, Università del Piemonte Orientale, Novara (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Italy)

Dr Hervé Janecek, Veterinarian (France)

Hannah Januszczyk, Psychiatric Pharmacist (England)

Jerzy Jaskowski, MD, PhD, MS, Specialties in General Surgery, Environmental Medicine, Physics and Biophysics (Retired)(Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Poland)

Dr. Elisabeth Jenik, General Medicine, Occupational Medicine and Psychosomatic Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Austria)

Dr Alain Joseph, General Medicine Specialist (Retired) (Medical Doctor) (France)

Dr Konstantinos Kakleas, MD, MRCPCH, MSc, PhD, Paediatric Allergy Consultant, Leicester Royal Infirmary Hospital (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Dr George Katsonis, Homeopathic Doctor (Medical Doctor)(Cyprus)

Dr Hootan Kazemi, BDS Dental Surgeon, MSc(Distinc.) Clinical Biochemistry, BSc(Hons) Physiology (General Dental Practitioner) (United Kingdom)

Dr Richard Kent MB BS, Retired General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Dr Ingrid Kiesel, Specialist in Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and General Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Alina Kislich, General Practitioner, Graduated from the Medical University of Vienna (Medical Doctor) (Austria)

Dr Wiltrud Kling, Specialist in General Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Ewa Konik, MD, Heart Transplant Cardiologist (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Doris Krien, Assistant Doctor, Günzburg District Hospital (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Brigitte Lacroix, clinical PKPD and PBPK modeler (Pharma industry), PhD in Pharmacy (Paris XI University), PhD in Pharmacometrics (Uppsala University) (Scientist) (France, Sweden)

Dr Andreas Lang, MD (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Paul Laursen, PhD, Adjunct Professor, AUT University (Scientist) (New Zealand and Canada)

Dr Michael S Lavender, Consultant Anaesthetist (Medical Doctor) (Australia)

Dr Tess Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD, Guideline methodologist and evidence synthesis expert, Director of The Evidence Based Medicine Consultancy Ltd, Bath UK. Honorary Researcher at the Royal United Hospital, Bath UK (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (United Kingdom)

Dr Bronia Lee, MBBCh, MRCGP, Retired General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Dr Katrina Lewis, MD, BSc in Immunology and Physiological Chemistry, triple Board certified ( USA) in Anesthesiology, Pain Medicine and Functional Medicine (Medical Doctor) (South Africa, USA)

Dr Derek Lohan, Consultant Radiologist and Director, Helix Radiology (Medical doctor) (Ireland)

Dr Ricardo Arriola López, General Medicine, (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Dr. Adele Lorigan, BSC (Chiro), Chiropractor (Australia)

Dr Antje Lueg, Specialist in Ophthalmology (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr. Thomas Ly, MD, Infectologist and Paediatrician, Specialized in Tropical Medicine, Head of MedicalQM, a think tank on medical quality management and patient safety, Founder of the upcoming International Institute for Human Pathogenic Infectious Diseases “InfectCore” (Medical Doctor) (Germany and Thailand)

Dr Kulvinder S. Manik, MBChB, MA, LLM, MRCGP, GP (Medical Doctor) (England)

Dr. Rosemarie Mayr, Specialist in Psychiatry and Psychotherapeutic Medicine and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, ÖÄK Diploma for Homeopathy (Retired) (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Nathi Mdladla, Associate Professor and Chief of ICU, Dr George Mukhari Academic Hospital and Sefako Makgatho University (Medical Doctor) (South Africa)

Dr Janet Menage, MA, MB, ChB, General Medical Practitioner (Retired) Qualified Psychological Counsellor (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Dr Niall McCrae, PhD, MSc, RMN, Mental health researcher, Psychiatric Nurse (United Kingdom)

Professor Nathalie McDonell, MD, PhD (human genetics), Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (France)

Dr Ciaran Montague, MVB, MRCVS, Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons certified veterinary dermatologist with 25 years general and referral practice (Veterinarian) (N. Ireland)

Dr Alistair J Montgomery, MB.ChB., MRCGP, DRCOG, NHS General Practitioner (Retired) (Medical Doctor) (UK)

Dr Sabine de Monvallier, General Practitoner (Medical Doctor) (France)

Dr Ines Mörbitz, Specialist in General Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Amir Mortasawi, Physician and author (Germany)

Dr Jens Münch, Neurologist, Psychoanalyst and Specialist in Psychosomatic Medicine and Trauma (Medical Doctor) (France)

Dr. Graeme Munro-Hall, BDS, Dentist (retired), pioneered the use of glutathione with vitamin C, awarded a Fellowship of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology in 1996 (Dentist) (United Kingdom)

Dr Souha Nasreddine, MD, Ob/Gyn, Graduated from the Free University of Brussels Belgium, Holistic Gynecology (Lebanon)

Dr Meryl Nass, MD, BS Biology (M.I.T.), Specialist in Internal Medicine, with a focus on fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War illnesses, and anthrax vaccine injuries. First person to demonstrate that an epidemic resulted from biowarfare. Helped lead a coalition to fight anthrax vaccine mandates and revoke the vaccine license (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Anthousa Nicolaidou, MD, General Practitioner and Holistic Doctor (Medical Doctor) (Cyprus)

Akhmetzhanova Tamara Nikolaevna, Therapist and Cardiologist, the Republican Medical Genetic Center, Ufa (Medical Doctor) (Russia)

Dr Terezia Novotna, General Practitioner, Emergency Doctor, and Anesthesiologist in Training (Medical Doctor) (Austria)

Ole C G Olesen, Double specialist in General Surgery, as well as Orthopedic Surgery and Trauma (Medical Doctor) (Denmark, Norway, Sweden and United Kingdom)

Dr Carlos Muñoz-Caravaca Ortega, Graduate in Surgery, Specialist in Emergency Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Dr Fatma Özguler, Specialist in Internal Medicine, General Medicine and Emergency Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Waltraud Parta-Kehry, Biologist and Doctor for Gynaecology and Reproductive Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Arun Kumar Patel, MBBS, MPH, MRCPH, FFPH, Medical Public Health Specialist (Retired), NHS (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Dr E. Peeters, MD, Internal Medicine Specialist, Endocrinology, of Stichting Artsen Covid Collectief, an independent Dutch Collective of Medical Professionals (Medical Doctor) (The Netherlands)

Dr Berber Pieksma, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (The Netherlands)

Dr. Cristina Pinho, MD, Gastroenterologist (Medical Doctor) (Portugal)

Dr Hélène Potrich, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (France)

Panagiotis Papaspyrou, Specialist in Orthopedics (Germany)

Dr Fabio Quirici, Swiss Medical Association (Medical Doctor) (Switzerland)

Professor Denis Rancourt, PhD, Researcher, Ontario Civil Liberties Association, Member scientist, PANDA (Pandemics Data & Analysis), Retired former Full Professor of Physics, University of Ottawa, with expertise in environmental nanoparticles, molecular science, molecular dynamics, statistical analysis methods and mathematical and epidemiological modelling (Scientist) (Canada)’

Dr Sabine Rauch, General Practitioner, Specialist in General Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Rafael Reinoso, Family and Community Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Spain)

Dr Nicola Reiser, Anaesthetist and Intensive Care Physician, Senior Physician at the University Clinic UMEÅ (Medical Doctor) (Sweden)

Claudia Riempp, Psychologist and psychotherapist, expert in health education (Germany)

Dr Tred J Rissacher, DC, Chiropractor specialising in obesity and diabetes (USA)

Pablo Enrique Palomo Robles, Pharmaceutical Chemist, Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance (Scientist) (Guatemala)

Rhys Rogers, BSc, Physiotherapy, 12 years experience as a frontline Physiotherapist (United Kingdom)

Dr Tamara Roycroft, BMBS, BSc (Hons) Nutrition, AIT RCGP, Doctor, Nutritionist and Former Research Scientist/Research Physician in the pharmaceutical industry, and Co-Investigator on vaccine trials (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (United Kingdom)

Professor Simon Ruijsenaars, Professor in Mathematical Physics, School of Mathematics, University of Leeds (Scientist) (United Kingdom)

Dr Claudio Sacilotto, MD, Otolaryngologist and Audiologist, former Professor at the University of Udine and former Doctor at the Udine University Hospital, former Professor at the Music Conservatory of Udine (Medical Doctor) (Italy)

Dr Sam Saidi, MB, ChB, BSc, FRCOG, PhD, University of Sydney (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Australia)

Dr. Vanessa Schmidt-Krüger, Cell Biologist with over 20 years’ experience in molecular medicine, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (Scientist) (Germany)

Dr Claudia Schoene,Veterinarian with specialisation in Veterinary Epidemiology and Tropical Veterinary Medicine, Animal Health Management and Wildlife management, Formerly Scientific Researcher at the Institute for Epidemiology of the German Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, and the Information Centre for Biological Security of the Robert-Koch Institute (Veterinarian and Scientist) (Germany)

Dr Eva-Maria Schottdorf, MD, MSc, Master of Science in Drug Research and Management, Emergency Physician, Board Certified Specialist in Radiation Oncology (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Ullrich Schubert, (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Pamela Shervanick, DO, Medical doctor and Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, with specialization in Psychiatry (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Guido Spanoghe, Gastroenterologist (Medical Doctor) (Belgium)

Dr Dietmar Spengler, Paediatrician and Neonatologist (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr. Jutta Steinacker-Palden, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (Austria)

Dr Paul Steven Spradbery, Forensic and Research Biologist, Foundation for Science and Technology, Lisbon, Intertek Life Sciences, London (Scientist) (United Kingdom)

Dr Duncan Syme, MBBS, FRACGP, Dip Prac Derm University of Cardiff, Graduate Monash University 1987, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (Australia)

Dr Carol Taccetta, MD, FCAP (Fellow of the College of American Pathologists), Pharmaceutical Physician for over 25 years, specializing in drug safety (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Noel Thomas, MA, MB, ChB, DCH, DObsRCOG, DTM&H, MFHom. Semi retired NHS GP and homeopath (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Dr Corinne Tilloy, General Practitioner, (Medical Doctor) (France)

Dr Gilbert Tominez, General Practitioner (Retired) (Medical Doctor) (France)

Dr M. Tóth, MD, Psychiatrist, of Stichting Artsen Covid Collectief, an independent Dutch Collective of Medical Professionals (Medical Doctor) (The Netherlands)

Dr Julio Trindade, Masters in Epidemiology, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, Masters in Strategy (Veterinarian & Epidemiologist) (Uruguay)

Dr Georgy Urushadze, Naturopathic Doctor, Paediatrician (Pirogov Russian National Medical University), Emergency Doctor, Physiotherapist, Researcher (Russia)

Dr Francisco J. Llull Vera, Dental Medicine Doctor, graduated from the Dental Medicine School (University of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico), Postdoctoral Studies in Infectious Diseases (Harvard University, MA), Postdoctoral Studies in Dental Implantology and Oral Surgery (NYU Dental Medicine School, NY), Former President Puerto Rico College of Surgeons Dentists, South Region (Dentist) (Puerto Rico)

Dr H. Visser, MD, Internal Medicine Specialist and Infectologist, of Stichting Artsen Covid Collectief, an independent Dutch Collective of Medical Professionals (Medical Doctor) (The Netherlands)

Dr Jasmina Vucic-Peev, PhD, studied in Freiburg, Germany, training in Psychiatry in Switzerland (Medical Doctor) (Germany, Switzerland, Portugal)

Dr William H. Warrick III, MD, Family Practice Doctor (Retired) (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Jo Waller, UK State registered Biomedical Scientist since 1990 (Scientist) (United Kingdom)

Dr Maja Waibel, Dermatologist with specialty in Melanoma prevention (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Gerard A Waters, Mb, Bch, BAO, MICGP, General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (Ireland)

Dr Craig M. Wax, DO, Family Physician, Founder of Independent Physicians for Patient Independence, Host of Your Health Matters (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Markus Wegscheider, General Practitioner (Austrla)

Dr Ronald Weikl, Gynecologist and General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (Germany)

Dr Helen Westwood MBChB (Hons), MRCGP, DCH, DRCOG, GP (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Dr R Matison White, MD, Family Practice Physician of 49 years (Medical Doctor) (USA)

Dr Madhu Wickremaratchi, MBChB, MRCP, Acute and General Medicine (United Kingdom)

Dr Anna Maria Wiedemann, General Practitioner, Specialist in General Medicine (Medical Doctor) (Sweden and Germany)

Dr Clive Wilder-Smith, FRCP, AGAF, MD, Consultant Gastroenterologst, Director of Research (Medical Doctor) (Switzerland)

Thomas Robin Wilks, MA, BSc(Hons) FHEA, CPhys, MInstP, University Science Lecturer, Maths, Mathematical Modelling and Physics, Open University (Scientist) (United Kingdom)

Dr Christopher Wood, MBBS, Retired General Practitioner (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom)

Dr Olga Sergeevna Yakimanskaya, General Practitioner, Polyclinic Physician (Medical doctor) (Russia)

Dr Reinhild Zenklusen, MD, Pathologist and Cytopathologist (Medical Doctor) (Switzerland)

Signatures of Colleagues in Allied Disciplines relating to Ethics, Health and Human Rights

Reece Francis Allawatt, Registered Nurse, Specialty in Psychiatry and Mental Health (USA)

Sue Cook, BSc (Hons) Lic LCCH, Neurodevelopment Specialist (United Kingdom)

Joseph Dassas, LLB, LLM, LPC, Solicitor and Advocate (Greece, Israel, United Kingdom)

Professor Peter Gichure, Associate Professor of Theology and Peace Studies, Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Director of Graduate Studies, with special interest in ethics (Kenya)

Nuria Iturralde, LL.M, MBA, Human Rights Lawyer (Luxembourg)

Dr Chris Lavers, BSc Hons (Exon), PhD, FHEA, M Inst P, C Phys, C Sci, ILTM, RUT, PGCE(LTHE), Academic Programme Manager DipHE in Marine Studies, Subject Matter Expert (Sensors), Dartmouth Centre for Sea Power and Strategy, Plymouth University at Britannia Royal Naval College, Visiting Research Fellow, Changing Character of War Centre, Pembroke, Oxford (UK)

Dr. Reinhard Lindner, MBA, Economist (Austria)

Shabnam Palesa Mohamed, Journalist, Activist and Mediator (South Africa)

John O’Sullivan, CEO of Principia Scientific International, an independent international scientific body defending the traditional scientific method, incorporated for charitable purposes as a Community Interest Company (United Kingdom)

Matthieu Smyth, Anthropologist, University of Strasbourg (France)

Dr Violeta Sotirova, MPhil, PhD, Lecturer in English (United Kingdom)

United People’s Front (EPAM) Health Committee, Independent political party (Greece)

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Moderna will begin studying its COVID vaccine in pregnant women, according to a posting on ClinicalTrials.gov. The observational study, expected to begin July 22, will enroll about 1,000 females over age 18 who will be studied over a 21-month period.

Women who received a Moderna vaccine during the 28 days prior to their last menstrual period, or at any time during pregnancy, are eligible.

The brief summary of the trial states the main goal is “to evaluate the outcomes of pregnancy in females exposed to the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine (mRNA-1273) during pregnancy.”

The study will measure the number of participants who have infants with suspected major and minor congenital malformations, the number of participants with any pregnancy complications, the number of participants with any pregnancy outcomes and the number of participants with infant outcomes, Fox Business reported.

Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says pregnant women can get a COVID vaccine. But the CDC also acknowledges there is limited data available about the safety of COVID vaccines for people who are pregnant.

The CDC website states:

“No evidence exists of risk to the fetus from vaccinating pregnant people with non-replicating vaccines in general. However, the potential risks of COVID-19 vaccines to the pregnant person and the fetus are unknown, because these vaccines have not been extensively studied in pregnant people.”

According to the CDC’s website, as of June 29, data collected from the CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) safety monitoring systems had not identified “any safety concerns for pregnant people who were vaccinated or their babies,” but the agencies stressed findings are preliminary.

Experts urge caution

“Pregnant women are taking what may be a huge risk with the COVID vaccine,” said Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., author of “Your Baby, Your Way.”

Margulis told The Defender in an email:

“We have no long-term studies showing it’s safe. We made this mistake with diethylstilbestrol— a synthetic estrogen thought to be safe during pregnancy that was later found to cause aggressive (and sometimes lethal) cancer in the genitals of young teenagers whose moms had been prescribed it.”

Margulis believes it is irresponsible, and even unethical, to assert that we know the Moderna vaccine is safe for pregnancy.

She said:

“It’s imperative to use the precautionary principle when it comes to this highly experimental technology. The burden of proof must be on the intervention. We have no evidence that this is safe. But ample evidence shows that it is dangerous to expose pregnant women and unborn babies to drugs and interventions that can disrupt immunity.”

The most recent data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) — one of the safety monitoring systems co-managed by the FDA and CDC — has received 2,678 reports of adverse events related to COVID vaccines in pregnant women, including 994 reports of miscarriage or premature birth between Dec. 14, 2020 and July 2, 2021.

Data assessing safety of COVID vaccines in pregnant women is lacking

Since the FDA in December 2020 granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for COVID vaccines, the CDC has recommended pregnant women be offered the vaccine — despite the fact that pregnant women were excluded from preauthorization clinical trials, and despite the limited data on safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines during pregnancy.

In January, the World Health Organization said pregnant women should not receive a COVID vaccine. A week later, the agency changed its guidance and advised everyone to take the shot, including pregnant women.

According to a March 1 safety update by the CDC’s vaccine safety panel on the COVID vaccine and pregnancy, post-authorization safety monitoring and research are the primary ways the CDC obtains safety data on COVID vaccination during pregnancy.

In other words, the vaccine is given to pregnant women before studies determine whether the vaccine is safe for that population. The CDC’s website states that 133,466 pregnant women have already received a COVID vaccine as of July 12.

“It seems bass-ackwards to release the vaccine to pregnant women before doing a clinical trial or proper animal studies,” said Lyn Redwood, RN, MSN and president emerita of Children’s Health Defense.

Redwood said:

“Does the vaccine lipid nanoparticle cross through the placenta? If so, what is the effect on the offspring with regard to morbidity or mortality? These are questions we need to be asking. Pregnancy used to be a time where we were to protect the mother and baby from any potential harms, especially during the first trimester.”

In April, the CDC started actively recommending all pregnant women get vaccinated for COVIDbased off of one retrospective study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The retrospective study, “Preliminary Findings of mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine Safety in Pregnant Persons,” relied on multiple vaccine surveillance systems from December 2020 to February to assess the safety of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines in more than 35,000 pregnant women who had chosen to get vaccinated after the vaccines were approved for emergency use.

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The authors of the study stated they found no increased risks during pregnancy, or birth complications or identifiable risks to the fetus among those who received the vaccine.

Shortly after, the CDC updated its official recommendations that pregnant women receive a COVID vaccine based on the study’s data compiled over the course of two months.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky highlighted the findings at an April 23 briefing where she stated the “CDC recommends that pregnant people receive the COVID-19 vaccine.”

According to Dr. Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., Children’s Health Defense chief scientific officer and professor of biology at Simpson University, the results regarding pregnancy loss were highly skewed.

Hooker told The Defender:

“The majority of the denominator received their vaccine in the third trimester where pregnancy loss would be much less. Most of the pregnancy losses were in the first trimester and there are no data on the outcomes of the other women who received their vaccine in the first trimester (i.e., whether they carried to term), or data on the temporal relationship between receipt of the vaccine and miscarriage which is suspect.

“There is also no data regarding any incidence of clotting disorders reported or any type of blood malady that may occur (e.g., spotting or bleeding during pregnancy), and very limited treatment of neonatal outcomes (no APGAR score, etc.) due to the very limited duration of the study.

“This is typical ‘nothing to see here’ CDC propaganda and the paper is essentially meaningless regarding pregnancy outcomes. In order to adequately assess these outcomes, pregnancies need to be followed to term.”

Although Moderna’s clinical trial is expected to begin July 22, Pfizer and J&J already are conducting clinical trials testing the safety and efficacy of their vaccine in pregnant women.

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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